The Space Between Dreams a novel by Lee Turcotte (a.k.a. K’an) 88028 words / 340 pages Double-spaced 12 pt Times New Roman 1” top & bottom margins, 1.25” left and right margins Copyright © Lee Turcotte / K’an, Ottawa, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004… All rights reserved by author. This story is dedicated to your free and insubordinate will; which has no price, cannot be sold or sold out, and is always getting you unjustly punished for asking inappropriate questions, creating inappropriate art, and telling inappropriate truth. * Create, Evolve, Disobey * Chapter Zero Dreams have no beginning; no end… Awake, and naked, and alone. Denatured by some recent and mysterious intemperance; left with literally nothing but a searing chemical hangover. Nauseous and prostrate atop a hundred foot igneous erection protruding from the South Pacific. Surrounded by a flat infinity of water, except for one hazy grayish speck on the horizon. Trying in vain to reconstruct some fractured rhyme or folk song or poem, repeating that one line over and over and over in the mind obsessively… something about a spider trapped in an hourglass. …you already know how this ends This is Howard's first memory. He is eighteen years old. He has absolutely no idea who he was before this moment. He simply woke up into the world tabula rasa like this; burning and clutching at some lost fragment of rhyme. After a few thousand mental repetitions, individual words like hourglass lose their meaning, and in his dehydrated delirium, he believes his name to be Howard Glass. Free from any attachments, he clings 1 to this Howard Glass identity as a metaphysical foothold. He begins making binary distinctions, constructing a functional level of sanity for himself; evoking pattern from the random spacetime that engulfs him. And the struggle to understand that which understands itself becomes Howard. He knows he can't climb down… he will probably die if he jumps… he will certainly dehydrate if he waits… More than anything, he realizes that he wants to feel the cool water, at least before he dies, and this desire becomes the one deciding factor to act. He crawls up to the ledge, focuses his mind in fierce defiance of all his survival instincts, closes his eyes and rolls off, plummeting headlong into a spontaneous, all-nullifying SNAP. He swims to an empty and featureless place where even time has no jurisdiction, and there he meets Death. Again. Death tells him the next time they meet, his return to this place will trigger an apocalypse in America’s mind. He will die strangely, painfully, probably murdered… “Enough, I don’t want to hear any more. I’d rather not follow along with the inevitable details of my horrific death as they unfold, and besides, if this place… this sensory deprivation environment you call an ‘afterlife’ is all I have to look forward to after at least two near-death experiences and one painful murder, you can stick this nondescript infinity up your nondescript ass.” Death smiles and tells him not to worry; this is a special, intermediate place safe for his consciousness to experience without permanently dying. Then his body coughs up two lungfuls of warm brine and he’s having a seizure on a beach at night; choking and overstimulated by all the agonies of resurrection. 2 There were no witnesses. He just dealt with it, patiently controlling panic until he could breathe normally. He got up like an unkillable villain and dragged his bright red blistering ass through a small jungle, past rusted and vine-entangled warplane skeletons crashed in some ancient war, and finally making his way into the open terrace of a small beach resort. He submerged his whole head in a blue tile fountain and started choking down its cloudy, chlorinated water. The grayish speck turned out to be the Solomon Islands. Mindlessly gulping the warm pissy fountain water of life, he felt a hand grasp and carefully squeeze his skull with a grip that could gently flatten railroad track. A short, bald, stocky man pulled him from the fountain. He was about five foot naught, Asian, and sporting a shaven head and massive tattooed Popeye forearms. He wore a loose gray hooded sweatshirt, loose-fitting drawstring pants, and no shoes… the man was a little powerhouse, built for jujitsu or judo, with a radiant aura of total, relaxed confidence that advertised his mastery of such an art. "Don't drink that," he smiled, "you’ll shit your intestines. Come with me, let's go get some dinner, my treat." His voice, or maybe his posture, somehow commanded calm, friendly obedience. “You like beer? Seafood? All you can eat. On me. Cmon.” Howard followed the man, whose name was Asano, into the resort, where Asano gave him a white hooded sweatshirt, pants, and sandals. “White,” Asano said, “usually represents focus on the mental sphere. Grey, like what I’m wearing, shows that I focus my training on spiritual energies. Black hoods are physical, like, you know, acrobats, ninjas and Wushu masters.” Howard had no idea what 3 the fuck he was talking about, but at the prospect of free beer and seafood, he just smiled and nodded complacently. Right… Mental sphere. Check. When do we eat? They ate dinner on a thatched veranda, watching refracted moonlight dance like weightless platinum blades on distant and fleeting wave-crests. They listened to its whispered roars and purrs between Asano’s casual outbursts of metaphysics. "So where are you from, Howard?" He snapped open a crab leg with his thumb. Howard would never forget the smell of the ocean after tonight. "The ocean." Asano laughed heartily at this, interpreting it as the Zen answer to a pointless question. "Gotcha. Let's talk about something else. Who are you?" Howard replied, “Howard… uh, Glass, sorry. Howard Glass.” Asano immediately blew him off, interrupting him as soon as he said ‘Howard.’ “No, I mean who are you?” Howard thought, shrugged and cautiously pointed to himself. Asano shook his head and smiled. “Better, but no. Okay, how about this… when you dream, how would you describe the first person character in those dreams?” “I - I’ve never had any dreams. Well, none that I can remember, anyway.” He closed his eyes and tried to empty his beer-clouded mind. Something came. He was… drowning… or no - travelling… but the I in that scene was a different person… waiting for… a ride that wasn’t coming… he couldn’t remember anything else. Suddenly it occurred to Howard that he didn’t even know what he looked like, or even what colour his own eyes and hair were. “Howard, would you agree that everything of which you are currently conscious IS you?” 4 “That means… who I am is changing into something different every moment?” “Yep.” “And if I’m conscious of you, and of your consciousness, and if you’re conscious of me, and of my consciousness at the same time, we… share consciousness?” Howard was suddenly terrified that Asano was inside his head somehow, snooping around. His consciousness instinctively contracted, tightened, narrowed, solidified and clung to fundamentals and mantras. Flawless and effective psychic self-defense reaction; as if the product of professional training. Asano sensed something seriously wrong and changed the subject. "Uhhh, okay, let's talk about free will instead. Do you like the idea of free will?" Howard’s subconscious found the subject intimately familiar and opened up again. "Yeah. Of course." He tried to imitate Asano's crab leg maneuver, nearly spraining his thumb. He quickly resorted to cutlery. "Me too. Actually, I can't handle the idea that I don't get to decide what I think and say and do. I mean I hate the idea of no free will, but I also can't disprove it." Asano growled in appreciation as he chewed the warm buttery crabmeat. Howard was staring at his own alien reflection for the first time in the plate glass across from their table. I don’t recognize my own face. Weird. Dark, wiry, messy hair… dark circles under my eyes… some kind of sore on my neck… “Like, Howard, I mean, do you agree that nothing can happen unless the right conditions for it to happen are met?" "?" 5 "Like, a tree isn't going to grow unless conditions like water and sunlight and nutrients and air are all in the right place at the right time, right?" Howard nodded absently. "Right." "So would you agree that this applies to every event, every happening?" He stopped gawking at himself and thought about it. "Sure ... yes. Definitely." Asano clapped his hands together for emphasis, startling Howard. "Now, when you decide to do something, why should that be any different?" “I'm sorry. I think I'm a little brain damaged or something. I'm not following you... what?” He licked some garlic butter from his fingertips and snatched up a succulent pink butterfly shrimp, devouring it in one fluid motion. Asano smiled again, languidly trying to shake the Piňa Colada foam from the plastic cup into his mouth. “Why did you eat that shrimp?” “I was hungry.” “Sure. But did you decide to eat it?” "Mm-hmm, yeah." "No you didn't decide. See, the conditions were right for you eating shrimp: you were hungry, it smelled good, edible, nontoxic, it was in front of you, the butter on your fingers reminded you of them, there were no repercussions for eating it, you didn't sense that I would try to stop you.