R³, page 13
“Don’t move I said!” threatens the leader once again, raising his rifle. The intruder does so, but the leader quickly realizes it’s not due to his weapon.
The intruder’s attention is glued to the sick man, who slowly begins to rise, holding his head in intense pain. He groans, loudly. The pain increases. He holds his head with both hands as if it were about to explode. The leader’s panic spreads.
“What did you do to him??”
The groans intensify, shattering the man’s nerves.
If any harm comes his way, an all-destructive force will be unleashed…
The intruder doesn’t move an inch. The leader decides to call out the sick man’s name.
“John! Talk to me! What’s going on??”
John?
John.
More groans, which rapidly escalate to screams. Suddenly the Native American man breaks his stance and turns, one more time, in an attempt to attend to the sick man. Fed by raw impulse and the sudden amount of pressure, the leader pulls the trigger.
A clean, dry BANG.
Abrupt silence overtakes the desert. The groans have stopped. Smoke and gun powder clouds the armed man’s vision. He breathes heavily. His blood-pumping heart beats loudly, deep inside his ears. He squints, unable to see, but never lowers his weapon.
“John?”
Then he finally sees it. As the curtain of smoke clears, John, the young man, stands opposite him; the Native American lies crouched on the ground behind him, out of harm’s way.
A perforation is evident on John’s chest, but no blood. He looks down at it, confused. Suddenly a stream of blue light jets out of the bullet hole blinding the leader momentarily. He takes a few steps back, trips and lands on his injured spine. He lets out a stymied sob.
More streams radiate out of John’s chest and spiral around him, weaving into a sphere of light. The blue beams pulsate, contracting in and out, spiraling and interweaving organically.
Sharp, crystalline needles, shoot out of the light sphere and sink back in. The motion repeats as the sphere reaches a stage of maximum incandescence.
The exquisite aurora blinds the leader. Then it happens. He sees it all. Propelled by an exterior force, his eyes snap wide open, enveloped by the radiant white.
Snippets of the entire universe flash before his mind’s eye. Past. Present. Future. All possibilities flicker past his very own eyes in a moment of transcendence. Before he can grasp any sense of what’s happening, the sphere contracts to the size of a marble and vanishes completely.
Overwhelmed and drained of color, the leader faints, collapsing onto the dirt.
The leader rises, rubbing his eyes. Stars have fully faded, as blue and yellow morning hues take over the deep blacks of the night.
He looks around, confused: what in the world happened?
The fire has long been extinguished; only ashes remain.
Both the Native American man and John are missing. No trace of them left behind, except for the intruder’s bowl. He picks it up and sniffs its contents. He frowns and takes a sip. The deeply furrowed brow immediately softens, as he pours the rest of the contents into his parched mouth—every last drop in desperation.
Water.
He reaches the top of a tall cliff, sits down on a large rock, and admires the vast view. The sun rises, breaking through the irregular horizon line created by the silhouetted mountains, laying out a blanket of pink and orange. Not a cloud in sight.
He takes a deep breath, taking it all in, enjoying the beginning of a new day, sensing creatures throughout the globe groggily rising, preparing to face this clean slate of possibilities.
He retrieves his diary and begins to write.
Chapter 24: This has happened before.
This has happened before.
I’m back in my room. With Nina.
We are covered in purple and green. The neon lights from the convenience store next door bleed in through the blinds on my bedroom window. She wraps around me, or under me, or next to me, not sure where’s up and where’s down—she becomes an extension of myself.
I get lost in her eyes—so many different colors and shapes, constantly moving and shifting like tectonic plates—true kaleidoscope eyes reeling me into an unknown world, a great whirlpool of fate sucking me in.
My entire body vibrates. A strange electric current grips my muscles as she kisses my neck gently. Electrons spark whenever our skins touch. There is no pain; only pleasure. Skin on skin contact is purely orgasmic.
“You know what you have to do,” she says into my ear.
I nod, not knowing what she’s talking about. Suddenly my entire body contracts, jerking my jaw open as a violent gasp scrapes my dry throat. Sweat pours profusely out of my every pore as my eyes are forced wide open, and all I see is her; Nina, glowing on top of me.
She guides my hands, wrapping them around her elegant neck.
“You must live,” she says.
These words resonate in my mind as I fight every urge to strangle Nina. My entire being is suddenly controlled by an external force, a force trying to terminate her.
Every muscle in my body tenses, my face boils red, fighting the external force. A painful groan parts my clenched teeth as I begin to release Nina’s neck from my grasp—the bones in my fingers and hands cracking and snapping—and I pull my hands down towards my own neck. Once there, they lock and I gasp.
The shiny metallic object moves fast.
Fast.
FAST.
Cutting through the vibrant, space-like environment, leaving massive diamond-shaped ripples behind.
Isaac lies dead on the floor.
Back in my apartment.
The hammer incident with Dr. Hammond has just occurred.
Suddenly his blood seeps back into his body. Reawakened, he jolts back to life, every movement in reverse motion, rewinding like a tape back to before Isaac’s death.
And there he is. Alive, standing in front of me, his back turned to me, his eyes glued to the coffee table in the middle of the room. The R³ bottle, the pharmaceutical bottles, the old syringe—the buffet of drugs, all laid out. On perfect display.
From behind, Isaac slowly reaches towards his waistcoat: a gun? Cold sweat trickles down my neck and spine. It has to be a gun. My eyes dart around the room, looking for something.
This has happened before.
There’s no time. Isaac turns briskly, his hand wrapped around a cold, black object.
The metallic projectile pierces through the air, travelling at super speed, surrounded by colorful streaks, seconds away from reaching its target.
When it finally cuts through a chromatic membrane—the “hole in the stratosphere”—our surroundings become hazy.
And far below we see the city... getting closer and closer...
Everything falls, everything lands, everything arrives at its destination and comes full circle.
Isaac holds the black object—his phone—against his ear. It rings. My eyes dart to the table where the hammer should’ve been, except it’s not. It’s not there.
The hammer isn’t there.
The hammer wasn’t there.
Dr. Hammond’s hammer was never there.
“You’re fucked, Hammond,” Isaac sneers. “Fucked.”
I can hear the 911 operator faintly on the other end of the receiver.
And then it happens.
I hear the window glass pop seconds before the sixteenth century rifle bullet pierces through my chest.
It’s finally reached me.
Blood sputters out. I look down, confused, corking the opening with my hand.
My knees fail, allowing my body to cave in, victim to gravity.
Everything falls…
Isaac doesn’t move. Panic takes over his now fragile body. He lowers the phone and looks around, hoping to find the reset button. But it isn’t there. This is the reset. He looks so small, I think, so helpless.
“I didn’t shoot. I didn’t shoot!” he screams to no one, to the neighbors, to god, maybe to himself—who knows—, as my face distorts in pain and I finally collapse on the floor.
Dead.
Isaac looks around, lost.
Chapter 25: Time to become one again.
Time to become one again.
I’m back in my apartment. All my furniture remains pushed up against the door and windows, barricading every exit.
I sit in the middle of the room as blue-ish light beams out of my mouth and eyes. The bloody bandages remain on the rippling floor below me. The membrane on the top of my head glows faintly.
That’s when I feel it. The string pulling me back in. Pulling us all back together, one by one. My wondering eyes look down, finding a hole—a bullet hole—on my chest. It doesn’t bleed blood, but it bleeds light, a blue light.
Slightly curious, I stick my finger into the orifice and slowly pull it open. There’s no discernible pain or discomfort.
The exposed insides of my body reveal themselves to be bright blue crystal beads in myriad shapes and sizes, arranged inside me in no particular fashion. The light pulsates like a beating heart.
The front door is pushed open, moving furniture aside, but I care too little to turn and see who it is.
The intruder makes his way up to me, walks around, and finally faces me. I look up with clouded eyes, coming face to face with my kaleidoscopic self.
With John.
My other self who woke up in the incubator, finally freed from hypnosis.
He knows it’s time…
Time to become one again.
In sync with one another, he crouches and sticks his head into the opening in my chest. His arms and torso follow. The bright blue crystals absorb the rest of his body with welcoming ease.
Suddenly the light increases to a blinding level, consuming everything in sight. Then back to darkness.
The apartment is now empty. We are both gone.
The dirty bandages remain on the floor.
Abandoned. Forgotten. Alone
3.14
March 14th, 1592
It was gone, as fast as it’d appeared. No longer to be seen, devoured by the void. It was everything and anything all at once. It was beautiful. I saw it all, the end through the beginning. As a mathematician, my initial reaction was to examine, to deconstruct, but even as numbers, the knowledge was ungraspable. I was ecstatic, filled with joy as tears swelled my eyes. Yet all I did was smile. It was the absolute. The first and the last. Infinity within the water drop. All infinite potentials and outcomes in one.
Nothing in my life had ever prepared me for this experience. Millions of thoughts flooded my mind, instantly doubting what my every sense was experiencing. I blamed it on my lack of water; dehydrated for days. The scorching sun overpowered my weak limbs, but I knew I had a grip on my wits. This was real. Real as real can get. Tangible as tangible gets. It wasn’t my tired mind playing tricks on me because I was not the only one there. Yet, I was the only one left. The thought of poison did cross my mind. A strong hallucinogen, perhaps? But I hadn’t ingested anything other than what was in my pack. Another disproving option, discarded. What struck me the most, however, was what followed.
A sequence of infinite numbers flashed before me. Then merged into one. Next, lives flickered past me. They also merged into one. Past, present, future; all radiated through the one eye, the source. And that’s when I knew—this was the answer.
The answer to everything, to every single question. The secret to all life and the universe.
We are all born to d—
Chapter 0: Non-Space & Non-Time Environment.
NON-SPACE & NON-TIME ENVIRONMENT
Lights flash everywhere around us on a black canvas, as if we were traveling through space, except we are aware that this is not “space”. Various coruscations of light and images pass us, some resembling aurora borealis, others pixels and phosphorescent geometry.
Our movement slows down as we reach a giant, glowing triangle—the entrance to a tunnel. It’s lit from within. We’re inside it. Mystified as we are, we are not scared.
The tunnel becomes a cube, not too big, not too small. Grooves cover its every surface forming spatially pleasant patterns. The intricacy and attention to detail is reminiscent of ancient hieroglyphs. Streams of light pulsate along the wall’s crevices, up and down, left to right, bursting like shooting stars constrained to a secure track. They outline every single pattern, before fading away completely.
We face something that wasn’t there before and float towards it, self-propelled through the vacuous air.
Facing us is a sphere of glass-like light. Pulsating crystal spikes undulate in and out, constantly in motion, breathing—both exceptionally beautiful and soothing.
We approach, confident. Our faces reflect back at us on the glass-like surface. Millions of tiny “Johns” all over. Our facial features gradually blur out, leaving only a peach-colored dot on the reflection.
Blank.
Smooth skin, revealing no signs of expression, bone structure or breathing orifices.
Suddenly a gust of wind materializes out of nowhere and blows little, crystal pieces off our bodies. We quickly realize, these crystal particles are in fact ourselves—we are disintegrating.
In a matter of seconds, our entire being has broken down into tiny, twinkling flecks that descend as if pulled by some foreign source of gravity.
When examined up close, the crystal-like particles are in fact: snowflakes. All of them unique. None of them alike. As they fall, they sparkle vibrantly, cascading down toward a vast pool of water below us that seems to extend to infinity—water and sky merging at the horizon.
The pool mirrors the shimmering snowflakes as they finally land on its surface, melting, fusing completely with the water.
The snowflakes fully dissolve into the ocean. A faint glimmer glows on its surface, but soon fades away.
As we descend and transition through the liquid, the emptiness surrounding us gradually takes shape, becoming red and warm. A single object morphs before us, shifting into a small, round head.
We float in the plasmatic liquid, next to an unborn child. Curious, we swim around it, hoping to get a full view of its face.
The unborn child has one eye. It sits somewhere between where both eyes should normally be.
Suddenly it snaps open. The iris is partially dilated, revealing kaleidoscopic patterns. Its gaze is fixated on us.
Blink. And we switch.
It’s us, staring out, waiting silently, taking the baby’s point of view, gazing at the vacuity of our unfamiliar, yet alluring, surroundings.
We can feel its serenity…
…which gradually becomes ours.
We can hear its heartbeat…
…which gradually becomes ours.
And then we hear her voice:
…dream.
Yet we soon wake up and forget.
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Table of Contents
Part One
Chapter 0 DARKNESS
Chapter 1 Have you dreamt before?
Chapter 2 Her name is Nina, she says.
Chapter 2.5 I should’ve brought something to read.
Chapter 3How does one grasp such nonsensical reality?
Chapter 4Russian Dolls.
Chapter 5 All infinite possible potentials and outcomes in one.
Chapter 5.5An unreliable author.
Chapter 6 You are dead, right?
Chapter 7There’s a syncopation in reality.
Chapter 8Reuse. Redream. Recycle.
Chapter 9 I died, but then I was reborn.
Chapter 9.5 I must not let my mind deceive me.
Chapter 10: They’re looking for you.
Chapter 10.5: The poster girl for dreaming.
Chapter 11: Unus Mundus.
Chapter 12: Our reality is slowly collapsing.
Chapter 13: Gregor Samsa.
Chapter 14: Has somebody else been living my life all this time?
PART TWO
Chapter 14.5: Where did her dreams go?
Chapter 15: Bill.
Chapter 16: Not safe outside. Stay inside. Inside. Inside. Safe inside.
Chapter 16.5: What happened to the time?
Chapter 17: Can you bring back Mr. Normal?
Chapter 18: A universal joke.
ROSE’S DATE
Chapter 18.5: The well ran dry.
Chapter 19: His brain has turned to mush.
Chapter 20: The Crystal Field.
Chapter 21: Everything falls in this reality.
Chapter 22: It’s time, isn’t it?
Chapter 23: John.
Chapter 24: This has happened before.
Chapter 25: Time to become one again.
Jorge Enrique Ponce, R³
