Francis Bacon, philosopher and statesman, 1561 – 1626.

Gabriel and Mirabelle materialized in front of a gàrradh, a stone fence that surrounded a yard of more stones before a crude cabin. The cabin’s walls had been fashioned also of stone, atop which had been thrown wooden planks and then sod. A thin trickle of smoke wafted up from the chimney on the back of the cabin. In front by the door a young man about 20 years old sat on a bench, clad only in a worn pair of wool pants tied to his thin waist with a rope. He grabbed a bit of dry hay from the ground, touched it to a small clay pot by his side that held an ember of charcoal, and used it to light his pipe. As he puffed on it to get the tobacco to light, another young man climbed over the low stone wall, carrying a haversack.

“Hallo, Cormac,” the visitor said. “I’m awful glad t’ see you’ve got your brazier out tonight. I’ll be glad of a good pipe after a long walk. An’ I brought ye a bit of grog for a bit av company, aye?” He sat down on the ground to Cormac’s right, away from the door, and pulled out a bottle of dark amber liquid from his bag which he handed up to his friend. From inside the cabin a woman cried out, and another chorus of female voices murmured in response.

“Aye, Father Connelly, it’s allus good to see ye, but now I’m mighty glad to see ye!” Cormac exclaimed. He took a long draught of whiskey and passed the bottle back. “It’s a bit chilly tonight, and that old harridan Maisre threw me out afore I could grab me tow shirt!”

“I see ye got your pipe and bowl, though,” grinned Father Connelly.

“Aye,” admitted Cormac. “And me pants. A man’s got to set some priorities, see.” A couple of curious geese waddled over to the pair to see what they were doing at this time of night. “Shoo,” hissed Cormac, waving his pipe at them. “They’ll be knocking over the brazier, or worse, the bottle,” he explained to the good father.

“Best we not set the bottle down yet, then, aye?” he replied. Having already procured his own pipe from the sack, filled it with loose tobacco from a tin, tamped it with his forefinger and lit it, Father Connelly picked up the bottle, drank a goodly amount, and passed it back.

“So, Father,” said Cormac, after a respectable amount of silence and drinking had passed, “how did ye come so quickly? It’s only been an hour I’ve been thrown from me bed, innit?”

“Well, ye sent young Bill to get the midwife, aye?” replied the man, to which Cormac nodded. When it was plain that his wife Muireall was due any day, they decided to invite his nephew to stay with them for just this reason. “An’ Bill’s a bright lad, ain’t he? He came right round to the glebe house to get me. Thought ye might be in need of some company.”

“To be sure that’s a lad with his wits about ‘im,” agreed Cormac, taking another long pull off the bottle. “Where’s the boy run off to then?”

Father Connelly cogitated for a moment and decided it wouldn’t be unethical to reveal. “I suppose as every gossip in the village will have told the tale by morning, and he didn’t tell me in confession, I can tell ye now,” he replied slowly.

“The gels like their bit of palaver, now, don’t they?” mused Cormac.

“Aye, ‘tis true, ‘tis true,” he agreed. “Ye know Maisre needed to borrow old Aodhán’s milking stool for a birthing chair, aye? So Maisre’s gel Annie went to get it, which woke up the cow. I could hear it lowing down to the church, I did. I figure wily young Bill realized that it would wake up  Aodhán’s neighbors, too, see…”

Cormac grinned as he, too, understood what happened next. “Including one daughter of Jimmy Wilson, a  fair lass goes by Eileen?”

“Aye,” replied Father Connelly. “I suspect they’re out somewhere calling each other ‘Mo chroí’ and ‘mo chuisle’ right now.”

Over by the wooden gate in the front on the yard, Gabriel whispered to Mirabelle, “Muh-cree? Muh-cooshla? What do they mean?”

“You don’t have to whisper, Gabriel,” she answered brightly, smiling. “They can’t hear or see us. They mean, ‘my heart’ and ‘my pulse.’ Gaelic terms of endearment.”

“And I’ll bet they’re kissing, too,” he said, to show he knew what “endearment” meant. Mirabelle’s smile froze in place, and she put her arm around Gabe, realizing that he had only ever heard of these things from books and not experience. “Yes, they most certainly are,” she said. “Perhaps we should go inside now and see about Fiona’s birth.”

Inside the cabin, the only light was provided by a fire over which hung a large, black cauldron half-full of boiling water. The hissing of the roiling water could hardly be heard over the loud, vexatious conference of women trying to lead a clearly overdue, pregnant Muireall toward a huge brass bed that dominated the interior. There was barely room for the two girls pulling at the exasperated mother-to-be and the older, experienced midwife who was attempting to pull them off her.

“Stop! Stop! She’s no about to set on that bed, you foolish fishwives!” cried Maisre. “Annie! How many times have I tol’ ye that it’s better for a gel to stand when she’s pushing?”

“Maisre!” cried Muireall. “Don’t let them pull at me so! I won’t even sleep in that…that thing!”

“What?” said Annie. “If I had a fine bed such as that, I’d never get up in the morning!”

“It takes a team of wild horses to drag you out of bed as it is,” replied Maisre, her mother.

“You can have the damn bed, Annie, if you’ll only let go of me!” Muireall screamed.

Annie let go of Muireall suddenly, causing her to fall into the other girl, who fell against the head of the brass bed with a loud thonk and a wail. “You heard her, Ma! She said I could have the bed!”

“You’ll have no such thing, you wicked gel. Now get some of those strips o’  cloth out of the pot, and wrap one around Ginny’s poor head. You’ve given her a fright such as never been seen since the baby Jesus first spoke to his mother out of the manger. Do as I say, Annie! Now!” Annie sheepishly complied, fetching the hot cloth and tending to Ginny.

“I’m sure as sorry, Muireall,” Maisre said, leading the poor, young woman away from the bed, as much as the tiny room and huge bed would allow. “I don’ t know what’s gotten into them, except as every other woman in the village does insist on lying abed to give birth. Against my advice, I might add.”

“It’ s all right,” replied Maisre. “Ow!” She clutched at her swollen belly.

“They’ re coming faster now, aren’t they? We’ re at the pinch of the game, I’d say. It’d be better if you would squat and lean back against Annie, but that fool would drop you in a hot second. I think we’d best set you on the stool, leaning back against the wall there. Annie, you stoat, bring me the milking stool!” As Annie got up from patting Ginny uselessly on the head to get it, Gabriel turned to Mirabelle.

“That bed,” he said. “That’s the one in that corridor that my mother was sleeping on.  Isn’t it?”

“Yes,” Mirabelle answered. “That’s what gave me the clue to come to this life, you see. You and your parents lived many lives together, but this is the one I think Judith was most preoccupied with. Wherever she is.”

“You don’t know?” Gabe asked. “If you don’t know, how will I ever figure this all out?”

“I’m not her oversoul, Gabriel. I’m yours. Maximillian is your father’s. We haven’t seen or heard from Miranda in a long time, in your terms. We know she’s busy at work on some very important project, but we don’t know what, nor when she will come back.”

“Who’s that man beside Muireall, and why are his hands glowing?” Gabe asked. For indeed, there was a young man in his mid-twenties kneeling beside her as she leaned back on the stool. In the low, flickering light from the fire you could plainly see the concern on his face, and one hand rested on the back of her neck, while the other rested on her belly.

“That is your father, Gabriel. He’s trying to ease the pain of her contractions.”

“Dad! Dad!” Gabriel yelled, starting over to speak to him.

“Wait, Gabriel!” Mirabella cried, but Gabriel kept trying to get the man’s attention to no avail.

“He can’t see or hear me,” said Gabe sadly, returning to Mirabella’s side.

“Even if he could, he wouldn’t know who you are. Your father in your life is Muireall in this one. He’s dreaming himself here to assist in Fiona’s birth, just as she will when you are born years later. Howard has just arrived from having a dream from when he was a young man before meeting your mother. You weren’t born yet, and he wouldn’t know who you are.”

“He’s helping her with her pain?” asked Gabriel. “He was professor of religion and philosophy when I knew him. When did he learn to heal?”

“Well, it was a skill he gained over many lifetimes. All of his lives are present here for the birth, too, but your father is, more or less, the most present, I would say. That’s why they’ve taken his form. He never got to use that skill much in his life as a professor. It was a time when science took over and declared such things as faith healing irrelevant or impossible. You might have noticed, though, when you were a child and were sick with a fever, you always felt better after he touched your forehead. Am I right?”

“Yes,” Gabe agreed, surprised to remember. “And his hands were always so cool. Much cooler than I thought they should have been. I always thought that memory was one I made up, or that I was too feverish to remember things properly.”

Mirabella smiled sadly. “We almost always alter the facts to fit our beliefs,” she said. “Anyway, he continued to study and develop his healing abilities in his dreams  since they couldn’t be acknowledged by his waking self, his scientific self.”

About that time, Ginny and Annie had come to stand on either side of Muireall, while Maisre went out to get a breath of fresh air and let Cormac know how she was doing.

“Oh Lord,” said Maisre, stepping out into the cool, night air. As she wiped the sweat from her forehead and stretched her back, she turned to see Cormac’s visitor. “Oh, hallo, Father. Allus good to see you, it is. I’m sure glad that Cormac isn’t getting seasoned into a stupor all by hisself. You’ll see to him, will ye?”

“Of course, good woman. You can rely upon this humble servant of the Lord to see to the Lord’s work,” replied the young man seriously, although there was a twinkle in his eye.

“You may have the Lord’s work to do, but I’ve the work of cleaning up after the devil got into Cormac here, and you know how it goes with a man when he’d been drinking after a hard day digging in the fields for a scrap of potatoes. Well, I’d best be getting in afore Annie does aught to affront Muireall any further,” she said, sighing. “She tried to get her to lie in that bed earlier.”

“Oh God, no!” both men said at once.

“Oh, yes, that gel will be the death of me!” Maisre said as she went back into the cabin.

“Didn’t you want to go with them, my dear?” Mercier said to Fiona. Mirabella had, of course, gone with Gabe into the “potato” to provide whatever assistance he might need.

“No thanks,” she replied, shuddering. “I’m going to be born there soon enough. It’s messy and painful, and I really don’t want any advanced notice of how it’s going to be. I’m reluctant enough as it is.”

“Very wise, young lady,” said another voice, approaching them.

Mercier almost dropped the glass potato and swore. “Sacré Bleu!” he cried, carefully replacing the potato on its proper spot on the shelf before wheeling around to accuse the miscreant. “You! you…you…” he sputtered, turning red and searching for an inflaming insult. “You buffoon, you moron, you three-sexed, methane-breathing amphibian from the Pleiades! How dare you sneak up on me! May you get the French pox in an era before the discovery of penicillin!” Mercier was only getting started, but Fiona placed her hand gently on one of his waving arms. At first she was très amusé, but she remembered to be empathetic and tuned in to both Mercier’s growing anger and the stranger’s alarm and guilt.

“This is my friend, Mr. Hargreaves,” she said. “He didn’t mean…” she began to appease him.

“I’m very sorry,” said the man. “I had no intention of startling you. And, incidentally, I already died once of tertiary syphillis when I was Scott Joplin.”

Mercier got a hold of himself, drew in a deep breath to puff up his chest and took stock of the stranger. The man was tall, fair of face with black hair hastily powdered and tied in the back with a black ribbon. His waistcoat was threadbare, and his stockings had splotches of oil on them. The buckle on his left shoe had come loose and lay at an angle.

“And just who are you?” Mercier said coolly, raising one eyebrow and giving him the fish-eye.

“I am James Hargreave,” he replied, drawing himself up and taking hold of both lapels of his waistcoat.

“Yes,” added Fiona. “He’s helping me with my spinning lessons.”

“I’m sorry for not coming sooner, Fiona,” James added, turning to her. “I’ve been studying with Babbage and his difference engine. In my next life, I’m going to be something called an ‘information technology’ technician who works with ‘computers.’ And my name is going to be ‘Melvin,’” he added sadly.

“Ah,” said Mercier, dropping his shoulders and relaxing. “So you’re the famous inventor of the Spinning Jenny.”

James bristled a little at that remark. “Alas, History has recorded another falsehood and turned it into legend. I only developed someone else’s invention and made good use of it. They say that my daughter Jenny turned over a spinning wheel and gave me the idea for the machine, but I don’t even have a daughter named Jenny! In any case, Fiona, we had better go back to your studies. Your birth is scheduled soon, and you’ll want as much practice as possible, I’m sure. It’s a hard life you’ve chosen.”

“I didn’t choose it!” she replied, petulantly.

“Oh?” said Mercier. “You’ll find that you did eventually, waving his hand dismissively and turning back to pick up the potato. “See yourselves out, please. I’m going to follow up on this scene of Mirabelle’s. It’s an interesting case.” James held out his hand to Fiona, and when she gave hers to him, they turned and made their way out of the stacks, fading slowly as they went.

“Well, my new friend,” said Mercier, picking up the potato and staring into it, “let’s see what you’ve gotten yourself into.”

What is the sound of one hand clapping? The obvious answer is: silence. But what kind of silence? The sound of angry bees sealed in a mason jar by a scientifically curious but empathetically deficient eight-year-old boy? Or the expectant hush that inevitably falls when the house lights dim at a concert hall? It is to these questions that the philosophers of the 21st century must not turn up their noses.

Unanswerable questions, repetitive menial tasks and sleep deprivation have long been the technologies of the ancient Zen master and contemporary cult leader. After a constant barrage of emotional assaults, interrogations, and impossible-to-fulfill demands, the pupil or convert suddenly snaps; the personality loses its self-defining edge and the near constant chatter of self-talk ceases.

Subjects interviewed after returning to society from a cult or behavior modification therapy weekend (such as EST in the 1970′s) reported sensations of weightlessness or floating, hallucinations, and a marked inability to make simple decisions.

Is this enlightenment? Or the cracking of an already chipped but precious vessel shaped by a cosmic designer through eons of evolution and fired by self- and value-fulfillment? How many licks does it take to get to the center of a mildly dysfunctional ego? The world may never know…

es • cha • tol • o • gy

1 : a branch of theology concerned with the final events in the history of the world or of humankind

2 : a belief concerning death, the end of the world, or the ultimate destiny of humankind; specifically : any of various Christian doctrines concerning the Second Coming, the resurrection of the dead, or the Last Judgement.

sca • tol • o • gy

1 : interest in or treatment of obscene matters especially in literature.

2 : the biologically oriented study of excrement (as for taxonomic purposes or for the determination of diet).

Eschatology and Scatology

Is the millennial movement full of shit? Am I the only one asking this question?

As we approached the end of 1999, the semi-literate throngs, without a clue about the programming of their personal computers, decided en masse to panic over two digits. Years ago, the geeks and nerds that designed software for the world at large failed to have any foresight and wrote thousands of programs containing the characters 19 followed by a variable for the tens and ones digit to represent the year. Did they simply fail to consider that their customer base might want to continue buying car insurance and scanning beer and potato chips after December 31st, 1999? Or, for all of you conspiracy theorists, did they plan it that way, prognosticating on their ancient vacuum-tube Eniacs and Univacs that the dot com revolution would go sour and give themselves job security for a little longer to correct the problem?

Of course, the demographic most concerned was the least familiar with the technological system of cash translated into bits and bytes: “Would we get our social security checks on time?” must have flown across the wires and through the air to cell phone towers billions of times over those final months.

The last days proved, however, to be the quietest end-of-the-world ever. Expecting at least a small riot or even supermarket shelves where toilet paper and duct tape would have been, we had instead, a populace that mostly stayed home to watch the apocalypse on TV, anxiously awaiting planes to fall on their heads perhaps.

Add the fact that the new millennium didn’t really begin until 2001, due to the fact that the pope in charge of the new calendar (without considering the consequences for us post-modern secularists, as popes are wont to do. See JP’s four hundred year old late apology to Galileo) started the whole mind-numbing, clock watching scheme at the year 1 instead of 0,  and you get two or three column inches in the print media compared to the volumes of interviews and speculations about the death and destruction that could follow should we not reprogram those computerized alarm and air traffic control systems by the deadliest of deadlines.

Let us hope that someone quietly flips the switch on the behemoth, centralized computer that will control our very heartbeats in the dystopian future, Y3K, which most schizophrenics and pot heads with an IQ of one hundred and too much time on their hands envision for all of us to subsist in. Big Brother isn’t watching you, George Orwell, he doesn’t care that much!

(Special thanks to Merriam Webster for the definitions…

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/scatology

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/eschatology

— D. Farthing, ed.)

Mirabella and Gabe caught up with Fiona, who was lifting up her skirt and sidestepping various piles of horse apples left in the street by passing carts. The gendarmes had arrived and were arguing pointedly with several fishmongers about their tossing fish heads on the pavement. The shopkeepers had complained so much that a law was passed against this, but as soon as the police would leave, they would start tossing them about again.

None of the shops had signs, Gabe noticed, presumably because most people couldn’t read. Mirabella led them into a rather dark shop next to a butcher (who didn’t need a sign anyway; sausages and freshly skinned hare hung from the ceiling just inside a window that had no glass).

Inside, a short, squat fellow with a handlebar mustache and a long beard looked up at the sound of the tinkling bell. He pulled a pince-nez out of his suit pocket and placed them in front of his eyes.

“Ah, Madame Mirabella!” he cried, placing the eye-glasses back into his pocket. “It is so good to see you again. What brings you to my humble apothecary?” He approached her and grasped her hand warmly, raising it to his lips for a gallant, smacking kiss. Gabe looked around at the myriad shelves of baskets containing dried herbs of all kinds. Along one wall, a shelf had a deer skull next to several glass jars, one of which he wasn’t sure but thought contained various sizes of shriveled eyeballs floating in salt water.

Mirabella looked around and noticed a young woman searching through a basket of oddly shaped roots, and said, sotto voce, “Monsieur Mercier, these are my, um, pupils, Gabriel and Fiona. We’d like to look at your, um, private inventory?”

“Ah, very well, Madame,” he replied. He approached the customer and put two of the hairy roots into her hand. “Here,” he exclaimed, “Please take these free of charge. I have an emergency to attend to and must close the shop at once!” Startled at his outburst, the young woman backed away a couple of steps then turned and fled for the door, dropping the tubers in the street outside.

“Well, young people,” he said genially. “Follow me back here.” He walked behind the counter next to a burlap curtain that hid a pitch black room beyond. Hanging on the wall beside the curtain was a basket full of candle stubs. He took several of these and passed them out to his three special guests.

Then he reached beneath his suit jacket and into a pocket of his vest, pulling out first a rabbit’s foot, then several scraps of paper with cryptic notes and a recipe for a potion to simulate death for one hour, a few glass marbles which he accidentally dropped to the floor and ignored, and finally a small tinder box containing pieces of flint and a carbon steel ring, or striker. Then he searched beneath the counter for a few minutes, pushing around boxes and metal objects that clanked until he found a ceramic mortar and pestle which he placed on the counter. He removed the grinding cylinder and went back under the counter until he found some dried sage.

After placing the sage into the bowl, he struck the flint with the striker above it, and, when a few sparks had caught, he blew on it gently until the flame grew. “Here, light your candles quickly. I’m always losing matches,” he added sadly. “And in any case, I can’t use them here since they weren’t invented until sometime in the 1820’s. I don’t want to be burned at the stake for witchcraft, oh, no! And Chinese sulfur sticks never made it as far as Europe. Follow me, please.” He held back the curtain and beckoned them onward.

Inside, Gabriel saw among the shadows cast by his pitifully wan candle crates of bones, including a thigh much too large to be human, a moose maybe? How on earth did Monsieur Mercier get a moose skeleton to a small town in France? For that matter, why? Covered in cobwebs, rows of shelves held sheaves of papers written in arcane, cabbalistic symbols, rusty gardening tools, gleaming surgical instruments, leather-bound, hand-printed books, dusty unfinished manuscripts, collections of rocks, both sedimentary and igneous, and bags of flora with leaves and twigs poking through the burlap, to mention only a few items. On and on among the impedimenta strewn haphazardly along the limestone floor M. Mercier led the trio, silent except for the odd sneeze from Fiona or the occasional “oof!” from Gabriel as he lurched into a too suddenly seen pile of whatnot or crate of quisquis.

Mirabella, who had made this trip countless times before, or more accurately in her case, was making this trip thousands of times with hundreds of her charges all at once, tended to float a few inches off the ground. This option never occurred to Fiona or Gabe as they were still thinking in terms of walking as they had when alive.

Though they had traveled only a few yards (and many more than could actually have been constructed behind the shop without running into the alley and the buildings beyond), the gloomy interior made it seem to Gabe as though they had been walking much further. Finally, oh how finally, Gabe thought, M. Mercier stopped at an aged, wooden door reinforced with an iron frame. As he started to unbar it, he grinned, not unwickedly and turned to Mirabella.

“I have a lovely version of the archive in the mid twenty-first century. It’s borrowed from a corporate pharmacy with lovely gleaming shelves that reflect the pale pink florescent lights just so. I think some marketing group managed to convince the powers-that-were that people bought more under the influence of pink. Oh! And all the data are represented by lovely integrated circuit boards, USB drives, floppy disks and even punch cards! Can you imagine? I’ve even got a good reproduction of Babbage’s Difference Engine the user can look up the location of the storage unit. Such fine brass gears and levers! And the clanking when one turns the crank! Shall I, Mademoiselle Mirabelle?”

Mirabelle pouted slightly then corrected herself into a gentle smile. “Our guests are not technophiles, M. Mercier. Gabriel is a contemplative and Fiona un type de fille sportive. I think we should stick with the more traditional glass globes on a rack, don’t you think?”

“But I always do globes for your egos,” he said sadly. “Toujours les globes, hélas!”

Mirabella thought for a moment, stroking her chin which promptly grew an incongruous Van Dyke beard in response. “How about you make the globe into some sort of shape that helps represent the life contained within? Like a farrier could have a horseshoe, mmm? Que pensez-vous?”

“Or a cooper could have a barrel,” added Fiona, in an uncharacteristic fit of sympathy.

“And a king, a crown,” cried Gabe, getting into the spirit, though of what he had no idea.

“Yes, yes,” enthused Mercier. “It could work. I do think it could. Very well, follow me, lord and ladies of the spatio-temporal sea. In here be dragons!” For his height, pot-bellied weight and seeming advanced age, it surprised Gabe that Mercier raised up the heavy plank from its resting place across the door with such vigor and ease. When he turned to see if Mirabella was following before he stepped across the threshold, he was further surprised to see her suddenly sporting an auburn goatee, soul patch and curling mustache. He raised his eyebrows in stunned silence.

“What? What?” she said, then realized the import of his facial gesture. “Oh, this. It happens sometimes, especially when I am thinking hard. You still see me as female, don’t you. I’ve been both male and female so many times, I just don’t see myself as one or the other anymore. Sorry.” And she swiped at her chin and mimed the act of throwing something away as a magician would misdirect his audience. The hair was gone, thankfully, for Gabe was apprehensive enough to be entering a new chamber in this decidedly odd apothecary shop.

“I wonder,” he said, as he politely held out his right arm to indicate that Fiona and Mirabelle should go through first, “was that what the author of The Gospel According to Thomas meant when he quoted Jesus as saying ‘When you make the two into one, and when you make the inner like the outer and the outer like the inner, and the upper like the lower, and when you make male and female into a single one, so that the male will not be male nor the female be female, when you make eyes in place of an eye, a hand in place of a hand, a foot in place of a foot, an image in place of an image, then you will enter the kingdom of heaven.’”

Mirabella beamed broadly, pinched his cheek a little too strongly like a favorite aunt, and said, “My little reader. How much have you stored away in that voluminous nervous system of yours that may one day yet bloom? If only I could laugh and sigh profound inanities all at once in a way that you might comprehend! Or should that be inane profundities? I shall have to ponder this at our next pause.”

“Well, not if you’re going to grow another beard again, please,” begged Gabriel, causing Monsieur Mercier to grab his portly middle and guffaw. Shaking it off, the scholar adjusted his pence-nez, changed his mind and made it into a monocle, coughed eruditely and stated, “We are now entering the Archives of the Book of Life, known by some as the Akashic Records, written on soniferous aether, represented in this spacetime continuum as, well, um, snow globes.” On the last phrase, his voice lost some of its salutatory timbre as he drifted into embarrassment. “Ahem,” he continued, trying to regain the sermon-like quality, “I think we should switch to hurricane lamps.” With a dismissive wave of his hand, the candle stubs in their hands turned into brass lanterns. “Oh, merde,” he said. “The mind does wander. But that will do.” He led them along rows of shelves laid out like the spokes of a wheel to a lectern in the center on a dais. On it rested a gilded tome with an inlaid Alpha and Omega on the cover which he opened, casually flipping through the pages. “I take it,” he said to Mirabella, “that you want to show Gabriel his life as Fiona?”

“It’s as if you read my mind,” she replied, knowing full well he had.

“Very well, it says here, aisle Gimel, row Beit, item Tav-Vav-Reish-Hei. Follow me.” And we strode with ancient purpose down from the platform and into the bewildering array of shelves.

“What was that? Hebrew?” Gabe whispered.

“Yes,” replied Mirabella. “Aisle G, row B, item number 611.”

“Oh,” said Gabe, disappointed. “I thought it was some special incantation.”

Mercier turned back for a second and gave them a long look. “Do you think I am some sort of hermetic magician? Do you take me for an alchemist in futile pursuit of the philosopher’s stone? I am a librarian, thank you very much. A far more noble profession. Ah, here we are.” He bent down to reach a lower shelf and picked up a glass object that appeared to be a perfectly formed potato.

“Appropriate, n’est-ce pas?” He held up his handiwork for them all to admire.

“I should think so,” replied Fiona, a little sourly since she had borne the brunt of supporting her family most recently in the Great Potato Famine of Ireland.

“What are all those sparkly bits? The ones connected by glowing lines?” Gabe asked, a little in awe of the librarian-slash-shop keeper. Inside every differently shaped “globe” was suspended a number of dots of light, each one glowing with a different luminosity. The dots were connected by lines; the brighter the point, the more lines led from it.

Mirabella spoke. “You normally experience your life as a series of moments in time. This representation is more like how your mind flows through and around it, by association. If you think of a favorite ink pen in a drawer, your mind might turn to a time when you used that pen to write a love letter. And that might lead you to think of a time you walked with your lover in a meadow on a windy day. And so on.  Each dot is an experience, the brighter the point, the more laden with emotion. And the lines represent the associations leading from one event to another. You see?”

“I think so,” said Gabe. “What am I supposed to do now? Just stare at the potato?”

“More or less,” replied Mercier. “Here, it helps if you hold it. Don’t think about it. Just look into it and you’ll feel drawn to one of the points. Let yourself go.”

“People always say that,” Gabe said, as he stared into the glass potato drowsily, “but they never tell you how.”

“What people?” asked Fiona, suddenly interested in this turn of conversation.

“Oh, you know, hypnotists, Zen Buddhist meditators…” replied Gabriel, drifting off as he felt himself drawn inside. He thought he could hear “Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds” playing on a lone fiddle in three-quarter time. An Irish jig, if you will.

“Child,” cautioned Mirabella. “We’re in the Paris market of Quinze-Vingts on a busy day. Do you hear all that noise?”

Gigs drawn by two horses clattered by, vendors cried out “Figs, fresh figs!” or “Fish, mackerel, fresh fish!” as they cut the heads off and tossed them onto the cobblestone street, and an aboyeur, or howler, called out “Make way for the Duchess DeMomfort! Make room, make room!” to let the poor customers know to scurry out of the way so that the dozen odd footmen who were taking turns carrying the Duchess in an elaborate sedan chair could fit among the narrow space between the stalls.

“Most of these people are still unaware that they’ve died,” continued Mirabella, “and we don’t need a riot because you’re wearing a bustier and a leather miniskirt that shows your thighs!”

“I don’t see how this is helping me calm down,” whined Fiona. “I want to go back to the castle.”

“Oh, brother,” said Gabe, rolling his eyes. “Do you have to be such a drama queen?”

“Why do we have to dress like peasants?” demanded Fiona, ignoring Gabriel and grasping a handful of thin, obviously re-mended fabric for emphasis.

“Couldn’t we be from the nobility at least?”

“I think someone’s having trouble letting go of Frederick,” Gabe remarked pointedly. “Members of the nobility usually don’t buy their own fish, Fiona. They have servants and cooks and stuff. They probably didn’t even dress themselves.”

“Well, tell that to the Duchess of DeMomfort,” Fiona retorted. “You’d think it was Napoleon’s army marching through there.”

Mirabella interrupted them. “Enough! The Duchess didn’t come here to shop, Fiona. She probably got a new sedan chair and is parading around the streets of Paris to let everybody and his new mistress know. Instead of arguing we could be soaking up the atmosphere, enjoying ourselves. So what’s more important, worrying over what you look like to people who don’t know you and will never see you again, or learning something new? Hmm?”

Fiona folded her arms dramatically and strode out ahead of them toward the main street. “C’est des conneries,” she muttered. Frederick had been a major sensation in Europe in the 2020s and 30s, and he picked up a few curses in les discotheques from the many admiring young ladies he had turned away. Upon seeing the chaos of the 17th century marketplace, Fiona/Frederick suddenly realized that she didn’t know where they were headed and spun around on her heel.

“Are you coming or not?”

“What did she say?” Gabe asked Mirabella in a whisper.

“This is bullshit,” she replied.

“Oh,” he said, smiling. He crooked his left arm in invitation and grinned. “Let’s get on with it then. Maybe something interesting will catch her eye and we can get on with this lesson in peace.” Mirabella slipped one arm into his, manifested a much-used, ragged wicker basket on the opposing arm, and said, “That’s the spirit! Let’s go shopping!”

A Bird In The Hand

From Gabe and Mirabella’s perspective, the curved walls and alcoves of the Parthenon pixilated into tiny squares that fell to the ground around them and blew away like autumn leaves. Groups of different colored squares fell from above like a panoramic, three-dimensional game of Tetris. As they plopped into place with audible clicks, Gabriel and Mirabella found themselves standing on a stone walkway overlooking a promontory. Below them, mist rose from a lake.

“Where is this?” asked Gabe.

“I don’t know,” replied Mirabella quietly. “I was imagining a little shop in Paris in the late 1600’s.” They looked around to find that they were standing on the second story of a castle keep just before dawn. Torches set into a shoulder-high wall on either side of a gap threw shadows onto the floor. Between the flickering flames, Gabe looked down at the lake and shivered.

“This was a murder hole, I bet. They threw down boiling oil and stuff on the enemy.”

“I could do with a cauldron of boiling oil,” said Mirabella. “I’m cold. Would you like an anorak or something?” She imagined herself in a full motorcycle rain suit (except helmet, of course), black with a wide red and silver stripe laid diagonally across the front of the jacket.

“No, thanks,” replied Gabe. “What’s up with everything just barely glowing?” The flagstones beneath their feet, the sky, the mist rising from the lake, everything was a tad brighter, more colorful than it should have been in the darkness.

A small voice coming from a young girl as she stepped out of the castle proper and onto the balcony replied, “That’s because we’re not on Earth.” She was dressed in a blouse and miniskirt made of fur that resembled a calico cat. Her legs were wrapped in thick, neon orange woolen leggings, and she had shimmering pink ballets slippers on her feet.

“This is Castle Carrickfergus in County Antrim, Ireland. Or rather, this is the Idea of Castle Carrickfergus. Everything in the physical world is first imagined here. There isn’t a name for where we are, really. The beings who imagine everything into existence don’t really talk to each other using language. Matter is lighter here, too, less dense and kind of spongy.”

“Uh, okay,” said Gabe. “Who are you?”

“Don’t you remember me from the other balcony?” she said, coyly.

“Yeah, you kinda look familiar,” he said, “but I wasn’t really clear on what was going on back then, so I don’t really remember who you are or what you said or anything.”

The girl switched back into the dress of daisies and black-eyed Susans she was wearing previously. “Does this help?”

“I recognize you just fine,” Gabe said, in an arch tone. “I just don’t remember your name.” Irritation at being tested so much spewed off Gabe in waves that put the torches out. “I’m not stupid,” he added.

“My name is Fiona,” she said. “I’m sorry if I hurt your feelings.” This last was tacked on since Mirabella was giving her a “look,” but it still came out with a twinge of sarcasm. Mirabella continued to look stern, but now she raised her eyebrows. “Okay, okay,” said Fiona. “I get it. I’m going into my next life to learn more empathy. I’m really sorry, Gabe. But why did you get so cross with me in the first place?”

“Everybody’s been testing me to see if I’m paying attention,” he replied. “That’s what I’ve got to work on next, I guess.” He looked down at his feet morosely.

Fiona slapped him on the shoulder and said, “Hey, can’t be worse than being rude most of the time. That’s what I’m up against. I was Frederick Smyth-Blaine the famous pop star of 2027 in my last life, and I got to where I expected everyone to do my bidding. I became a bit of a tyrant, I’m afraid.”

“You last life was in 2027? That’s a long time from now, isn’t it?” Gabe asked. Mirabella was getting a little tired of standing in the dark, eerily glowing landscape so she had the sun rise a little bit over the horizon, just a sliver’s worth, and froze it. She wasn’t so fond of the heat of the day, but the beginning of dawn was quite nice.

“Remember that exercise we did with the flower and the seeds?” Mirabella unzipped her jacket to relieve her internal warmth and drew a breeze toward herself from the lake.

“Yeah, but it’s hard to put it into words,” Gabe replied.

“Don’t worry about that part so much,” Mirabella replied. “It’s just like an insight or a creative inspiration you get when you wanted to write a poem back when you were alive. First you have the wordless experience in its entirety, and then the possible linear explanations come later. Just think back to how it felt.”

“Oh, I get it,” said Gabe. “You live in many times at once. So it doesn’t really matter what order the seeds, I mean the egos experience them in.”

“Well, it does to the egos,” Fiona put in. She was getting bored and had started dyeing some of the daisies pale blue or green.

“Do you remember that dream you had where it felt like you were in two places at once?” Mirabella asked Gabriel.

“Yes,” he replied. “I was curious about out of body experiences and had read up on them on the internet. In the dream, I was simultaneously sitting at the computer terminal reading the instructions on how to get out of your body while lying in bed following them. It was sort of like those transparency things they used on the overhead projector at school. Only each reality wasn’t see-through. I was just aware of them both at once.”

“Exactly,” said Mirabella. “That was a taste of my experience all the time. When you are asleep, you’re still learning, your consciousness is still expanding and growing.”

“Well, that’s all great,” Fiona said, plucking a daisy’s petals and tossing them away. “What are you doing here? This is my place, my sanctuary. I’m supposed to be relaxing after my lessons, and this isn’t helping.” The poor daisies were looking ragged being targets of her fury.

“Well, Gabe, this explains why we wound up here when I wanted to go to a drug store in Paris. Whenever one of my personalities gets stuck, it draws me there for support. Fiona, just exactly how successful was this ‘rest period’?Were you pacing back and forth along the parapet, fuming again?”

“Uh, yes,” she said, abashed. “I was practicing making thread with the spinning jenny and it kept breaking. I know I’m supposed to be learning how to fix it, but this was just too frustrating, and Mr. Hargreaves wouldn’t come when I called. I guess he was busy,” she added, forlornly.

“I’m just so mad!” When she punctuated this statement by stamping her feet, the mushy matter composing the flagstones rippled, frightening the curious pigeons that were gathered around. They flapped away indignantly, squawking and firing off fecal missiles and feathers. “Well, this would be a good time to do those breathing exercises I taught you and then reminded you of about a hundred times, wouldn’t it? You have got to start working on those emotions now. Your birth is getting closer and closer and it’s much harder for me to help you then. I always come when you call, but you won’t necessarily follow up on the impulses I give you.” Mirabella gently put her arm around Fiona’s back and clasped her shoulder, giving her a hug.

“I know, I know,” moaned Fiona. “I promise I’ll remember the next time. I’ve just got to! My next life is going to be so hard!”

“What do you mean it’s going to be so hard?” asked Gabe. “How do you know if you haven’t lived it yet?”

“I keep forgetting you only just got here,” said Fiona. “Look, after you do your Life Review and study your other lives you start planning your next one…”

“If you need a next one,” interrupted Mirabella. The pigeons came back, deciding that Fiona’s tantrum was finished. Mirabella held out her right hand, inviting one to come closer, and one did. She stroked its neck and scratched its head while nodding at Fiona to continue.

“Well, I took a look through my options, and Mirabella helped me realize what all I needed to learn, so I picked out Fiona. You already lived her life, and so I went through your version of it, and some other versions of it. Fiona and her family live through the Great Famine in Ireland. You know, when the potato blight hits the farmers for several years in a row in the 1840’s? My family will live in the countryside between Larne and Carrickfergus. That’s why I chose this castle to try to calm down in. My parent’s will take me there to see the castle and teach me a little bit of Irish History, and it’s one of my favorite memories. It will be, I mean. It’s so hard to explain…”

One of the other pigeons, emboldened by the one that Mirabella had invited to come closer, flew up and tried to land on Fiona’s shoulder.

“Shoo! Shoo! Fecking bird!” She stamped her feet again, so hard this time that even the walls and a bit of the sky above rippled, scattering the pigeons once more.

“Can we go somewhere else, please?” she begged. “I feel like Tippi Hedren in The Birds.”

“Sure,” replied Mirabella. “I wanted to take Gabe to Monsieur Mercier’s herb shop anyway. Hold my hand and try to empty your minds, please. I’d rather not end up on a deserted island because you happen to think of Robinson Crusoe, okay?” Gabe and Fiona each took one of her outstretched arms and together they disappeared.

Bhavacakra

(Or, How I Got Run Over By The Wheel of Existence)

“It looks like something off a Chinese menu,” said Gabe, as he stared into the hologram. It depicted a fearsome looking creature with fangs biting into a wheel that it held over its belly, its four sharply-nailed claws holding the circle in place. As the image rotated, the strains of a trilling flute and strumming electric guitar played Jethro Tull’s “Life’s A Long Song” in accompaniment. Gabe stared into the image for a while, enjoying one of his favorite songs until the words “well don’t you squeal as the heel grinds you under the wheel” sounded. He remarked, “Oh, that line, ‘and the symphony sounds underground put you under duress!’ I always thought it said, ‘but you wanted due rest.’”

“You know,” said Mirabella, “I like your version better.”

“Did you know that the word for a song lyric misheard is Mondegreen?” continued Gabe. “Sylvia Wright coined the term in a magazine article in the fifties because her mother used to read from a book of English ballads. One of them went ‘Ye Highlands and ye Lowlands/ Oh, where hae ye been?/ They hae slain the Earl Amurray,/ And laid him on the green.’ But she always heard it, ‘They hae slain the Earl Amurray,/ And Lady Mondegreen.’”

“That’s fascinating, Gabe, if a bit off topic,” replied Mirabella. “Do you have any idea what you are looking at?”

“It looks familiar, like I might have seen it in one of my father’s books on world religions,” Gabe said.

“Yes, that’s probably where you saw it before. Most of my egos don’t usually come up with something this esoteric. That’s the Bhavacakra, most popularly known in twentieth century America as ‘The Wheel of Birth and Death,’” intoned Mirabella. One of her favorite personalities was an eighteenth-century schoolmarm, and as she talked, her 1930’s evening wear shimmered into an austere, dark brown gown with thick black buttons and a high-necked collar fringed with lace. The clutch purse shrunk horizontally and expanded vertically into a stick for pointing at things on a blackboard that wasn’t there.

“I remember now,” said Gabe. “The six sections of the wheel are ‘The World of the Gods, The World of the Demigods, The World of the Humans, The World of the Animals, The World of the Hungry Ghosts, and The World of Hell, right?”

“Yes, that’s right,” Mirabella said, “but that’s irrelevant to…”

Gabe interrupted her before she could finish, his eyes widening in momentary fear. “Are there really hungry ghosts? Do I have to watch out for them? Do they eat souls?” he stammered.

“Stop!” Mirabella cried, holding her hand up, palm outward in a command to cease and desist. “There is nothing here for you to fear! If you let your emotions run away like that, you could create a really nasty environment, and I would really prefer we get on with our lesson, wouldn’t you?”

“Yes,” he replied, hanging his head down a little. “But to answer your question, yes, there are. There are always some souls, some obsessed with something, alcohol, drugs, sex, another person, a perceived enemy, for example, that insist on focusing on that to the exclusion of all else. If I took you back to earth for a moment and we went inside a bar, you could see all the recently dead alcoholics hanging around the living, trying to enjoy their addiction vicariously.”

“That’s awful,” exclaimed Gabe. “Do they do that forever? What happens to them?”

“Eventually the lack of temporary satisfaction drives them to seek the company of other dead people they might have known who weren’t addicted. Or, they finally turn away from the living drinker to notice that a guide has been trying to get their attention.”

“Oh, good,” said Gabe, relieved on behalf of all the dead drug addicts and alcoholics, but particularly Mrs. Olsen, who in spite of her exile from her daughter in-law’s home to Serenity Village, managed to get someone to sneak her a fifth of peppermint schnapps every few days. Gabe was fond of her endless reminiscences but would head the other way if she seemed drunk, because she would go on and on about “those spoons” someone took from her at the church picnic. She had died a few weeks before Gabe because her scarred liver finally quit trying to filter out the accumulation of poisons in her system, leaving her with jaundiced eyes, a distended abdomen the size of a large medicine ball, and red, spidery veins showing through her tissue-paper thin, translucent skin. She died sense of humor intact, Gabe knew, because her last conversation with him ended with “Well, I’d always heard that Uncle Ole drank himself to death, and now I know how he managed it!”

“But what about Hell?” he asked. “Why am I not in Hell if I didn’t believe in Jesus like I was supposed to?”

“You’re not in Hell precisely because you didn’t believe. If you had believed that you weren’t ‘saved’ as the Christians so quaintly put it, you would have hallucinated hellish conditions for yourself. If you believed you were saved, you would have hallucinated being in Heaven, streets of gold and all.”

“So people put themselves in Hell when they die? Do they really suffer? What happens to them?”

Mirabella smiled. “It’s absolutely wonderful that you feel such compassion for people, Gabriel. You needn’t worry, though. There are always guides who have taken on the work of trying to teach newly dead souls their true conditions. Just as I and my friends did for you.”

“I hope they don’t suffer too long,” Gabe said seriously. “Oh, the ones in hell usually don’t,” Mirabella snorted. “They’re quite ready to listen to anyone to avoid the pain. It’s the ones in heaven that can take for what seems like forever. They’re often just not motivated to get off their cloud until they find endless hymn singing boring. And that can take eons!” She laughed. A tinkling sound accompanied Mirabella’s mirth, as if the wind were streaming through a glass chandelier composed of a myriad of crystal dewdrops. “But let’s get back to the topic, shall we? This wheel of birth and death is the physical realization of an idea that…let’s call them earth gods of antiquity… they tried to transmit this idea to the people living long ago in their dreams. Whenever life conditions become untenable and the suffering is too great, people will long for truth, and very ancient beings come to their aid. Unfortunately, these great truths often become distorted simply by coming through the belief systems of the receivers, and then of course, down through the ages more errors creep in through the constant retelling and recopying of the initial inspiration.”

“Like a multidimensional game of Gossip,” said Gabe, his head glowing briefly like the rear of a firefly.

“Uh, what?” asked Mirabella. She wasn’t accustomed to feeling at a loss with a concept.

“In kindergarten, they usually seat the children in a circle and whisper something in the ear of the first one, who then whispers it into the second one’s ear and so on. By the time the last person speaks aloud what they heard, the original statement is revealed to be something completely unrelated. Like “I like hotdogs” comes out the other end as “A goose bit me.”

“Oh, well,” stammered Mirabella. “Yes, something like that. Something quite like that in fact.” Picking up the images and feelings of Gabe’s remembered event made her smile with understanding. “So, this wheel originally was a response to a time when people desperately needed to know that their lives mattered and that they and their loved ones would survive death with their feelings and experiences intact.”

Gabriel interrupted again. “Like when the Spiritualist movement regained some strength in the face of the horrors of World War I. There was a lot of automatic writing by mediums published with the intent of giving comfort to those who had lost family in the war.”

“Exactly,” replied Mirabella. “The original truth about continued incarnation then picked up a lot of superstition about Hell and ghosts and such, but it continued to serve as a rallying point around which living people could pin their faith, and the recently dead could understand their new condition. Now we’re going to look at your once and future lives.”

“Future lives?” Gabe asked. “How can I already have lived in the future?”

“You just spent a life living from one moment to the next,” said Mirabella, “so this may be difficult at first, but to me, all of your lives are happening Now at the same time in my experience. While we are here discussing this, I am also aware of your birth, your whole life, in fact, part of me is back at the hotel beckoning you in as we speak. Each of the times that you dipped into a particular timestream, I’ve been there. You see, I am what you really are. An oversoul that lives many lives at once. You’ve had to forget this in order to benefit from the experience of earthly life, and each time you’ve died, we work together to bring you closer and closer to an understanding of your true nature.”

Gabe thrust his head forward at her and squinted. “My head feels all melty, and you’re fading a bit, getting fuzzy around the edges.” He could hear the buzz of an electric guitar and Grace Slick’s masculine alto singing, “one pill makes you larger…” As White Rabbit continued to play, Mirabella appeared to be less solid and more painted, as if the artist had become dissatisfied with her brushstrokes and began obliterating the edges of her subject with her thumb to get a  blurry effect. Mirabella was literally smearing into the background. All the while, Gabe felt as if he were growing larger, expanding to contain first the holographic wheel of existence and finally the whole of the Pantheon. The falling stars seemed to tickle him from the inside, like the little pulses of electricity one might get touching an electric fence but pleasurable, indeed orgasmic. As they fell into the minds of the tiny patrons of the library, Gabe felt each insight as a tiny pop in his body. “Don’t… beeeee… alaaaaaarrrrrrmmmmed…,” called Mirabella, her voicing seeping into Gabe from a distance through a tunnel, forming tiny ripples on his right knee.

Quickly realizing the nature of Gabe’s growth, she materialized a little portion of herself near his left ear into the form of Tinkerbell. “This is normal, Gabriel, dearest,” she said clearly, twinkling and flapping her tiny wings. “Ideas you have in life are three dimensional. Brief electro-magnetic pulses that appear and disappear. Those are only the edges of Ideas coming from this sphere of activity. Here, when you are grasping a new concept, you dive into it. You take it in to your whole being and become what you are trying to know. Let this happen without resistance,” she said, carefully timing the pitch and speed of her voice to match the slowing vibration of his etheric body. “Now,” she said after a pause to let Gabe relax into the new sensations, “imagine that you are a great sunflower, and that out of your center pour seeds. Each seed is a life that spills into the ground of the Earth at a different place and time. Each of these seeds can talk to each other, and you talk to them all at the same time. You are telling them how to grow. How to become what you are now. You are calling to them from the future, and they listen to you and sing to you and each other of their experiences as they each become You, transforming themselves and You in the process. Do you feel what I mean, Gabriel?”

“Oh, my God, yes!” he cried, tears of joy streaming down his face and pouring down into the library, temporarily drenching several of the visitors, who shook their tiny fists into the air and quickly materialized umbrellas. Gabriel laughed and wiped his eyes. Slowly and quietly, he returned to his original size and found himself sitting in the lotus position before the rotating holograph of the Bhavacakra. “I’d rather be a hammer than a nail,” bemoaned Paul Simon in harmony with Art Garfunkel. “Yes, I woooould…” The fluttering tremolo of Peruvian flutes rang throughout the vast circular hall.

A couple of stern looking Asian men on horseback clad in heavy silk blouses and leather armor and carrying a scimitar and a mace, respectively, trotted over to Gabriel and Mirabella. “If you two round-eyes are to continue your lessons in this rather dramatic fashion, you must leave the Pantheon,” said the larger of the two, obviously the leader.

“Yes, take your party elsewhere, Western pigs,” squeaked his companion in a disconcertingly high voice. Gabe made his facial muscles rigid not to laugh. “I see by your inflexible lips you think I am funny, son of a painted whore with fat hips,” he said, trying unsuccessfully to lower his timbre. He raised his mace and swung it menacingly.

“I see that it’s Genghis Khan’s week to provide security in the library,” said Mirabella, bowing respectfully to the other warrior. He nodded and dismounted his snorting steed.

“I humbly beg your pardon, Lady. You must still go, however. Other patrons are complaining of the noise and salty rain. There are elders here who prefer the use of parchment, you understand.” He, too, bowed politely. Then he smacked his companion on the leg with not a little force and growled.

“I’ve told you a thousand times. The mace is just for show. You can’t smite the already dead, you imbecile.”

“Sorry, venerable Noyan,” the man apologized, lowering his weapon. “Old habits, you know.” He scowled at Gabriel for lack of a better option.

“Come, Gabriel,” said Mirabella. “We can continue this anywhere you wish. How about a nice foggy dawn at Stonehenge? Or perhaps, a stroll down the Avenue des Champs-Élysées in the evening? I’d rather go before 1806 when Napoleon ordered that stupid Arc de Triomphe thingy. It ruins the sunset, if you ask me.”

“Uh, wherever is fine with me. Let’s just get out of here. People are staring.” Gabe took the hand that Mirabella held out to him, and waved her other arm in a manner that remarkably resembled “jazz hands” of the late twentieth century Broadway entertainers. In a fit of pique, she added the sound of a hundred bags of microwave popcorn exploding, and they vanished.

“In the world I fill up a place, which may be better supplied when I have made it empty.” – William Shakespeare, 1564 – 1616.

Dinner was a sober affair, in spite of Mrs. Bennet’s attempts to make it special by lighting candles and placing a centerpiece of purple and white bougainvillea flowers floating in a wooden bowl of water.

“We’re having pork chops and mashed potatoes tonight,” she announced.

“Thank you, dear,” said her husband, smiling weakly. He picked up a steak knife and began slicing on his empty plate. Gabe stared at him for a moment, then looked to his side below the table where Shorty sat eagerly waiting. Gabe looked back at his father and raised his eyebrows in a mute question. Shorty impatiently placed a paw on the side of Gabe’s leg.

“I’ve told you a thousand times not to feed that dog at the table, Gabriel,” said his mother.

“It only encourages her.”

“Please, Judith,” begged her husband. “What harm does it do, really.”

He winked at Gabe and whispered, “Go ahead. She can see it, son.” Gabe shrugged his shoulders, cut a piece of imaginary pork chop and slipped it beneath the table to the snapping jaws of his beloved pet. Shorty chewed once, swallowed and sat back on her haunches, waiting.

“What’s the matter, Gabe?” his mother asked. “Aren’t you hungry?”

“I don’t know,” he replied, sadly. He had always loved his mother’s cooking. “I don’t think so. Maybe I should go lie down. I feel odd.”

“I’ll put your plate in the oven in case you feel better later,” his mother said. She placed her hand on his forehead. “You do feel a little warm.”

“Go on, son,” said his father. “I’ll be up later to check on you.” He continued to pretend to eat for a while, dabbing his lips periodically and perfunctorily with a linen napkin. Shorty knew she wouldn’t get anything more from the table and trotted up the stairs after Gabriel, curling up behind his knees when he lay down on his side, arms folded up across his chest. He felt like crying, but didn’t know why. For a while he watched the sunset accentuate the flowering trees in Judith’s garden through his window. The encroaching shadows swallowing up the foliage did not make for a good escape from his mood though. Eventually, his father’s light tread echoed up the stair, and he came to sit beside his son’s reclining form.

“What’s wrong, son?” he asked softly.

“Everything,” replied Gabe, sniffing. “There isn’t any food or any money, but they act like there is.”

“Have you felt hungry since you arrived?” asked his father.

“No,” said Gabe. “What’s that got to do with anything?”

“Do you think you’re dreaming?”

“I did. I mean, I do. But it’s going on for an awful long time, isn’t it?” Gabe sat up and turned to face his father.

“How old are you, Gabe?”

“Forty-seven, I think,” he replied.

“Take a look at yourself,” his father said gently. “How old do you look now?”

“I feel like I’m eleven years old,” Gabe replied, slowly. “Nothing makes sense here.”

“It will,” said his father. “If you realize where you are. What’s the last thing you remember before coming here?”

“I was in the woods in France.”

“No, I mean, what is the last thing you remember before this dream began?”

Gabe thought back. Shorty pushed her nose beneath his hand, and Gabe began absently stroking her behind the ears. “I was having a picnic with Jeanette. I felt tired suddenly and lay back. Then I felt something snapping in my head, and then I felt like I was falling?” Gabe looked at his father, who was smiling, though he had the brightness that comes with the holding back of tears in his eyes.

“And do your dreams begin this way usually?”

“I don’t really remember the beginning of dreams,” Gabe said thoughtfully. “I just find myself in the middle of them or just before I wake up. This isn’t a dream, is it?”

No, son,” his father said, grinning now that his son was close to understanding. “Where would you be if you didn’t need to eat or sleep?”

“Oh,” said Gabe. “Are we dead?”

“Yes,” replied his father. He gently lay his hand on Gabe’s shoulder. “It’s going to be all right now. I mean, you’re going to be all right now. Others aren’t so fortunate as you to not really have any opinions on what happens after death that get in the way.”

“You mean like mother?”

“Yes, she doesn’t want to know her true condition yet. Deep down she feels conflicted and unready to depart from life.” Dr. Bennet picked up the little dog and cradled her in his arms, rubbing her nose with his in what his wife always called “Eskimo kisses.”

“What’s beyond this then? Do you know? Have you met God?”

“I don’t know much, son,” he replied, sadly. “I’m waiting for your mother to wake up. At first I tried to tell her the truth. I tried to remind her of the accident, but it was so painful for her, and I just couldn’t stand to hurt her so.”

“Oh, God, Dad,” cried Gabe, suddenly growing into his forty-seven year old form and sitting up. “This is all my fault. The accident…”

“No, son,” Dr. Bennet said, standing up and putting both his hands firmly on his son’s shoulders and peering directly into his eyes. “You can never take responsibility for what someone else does with their own experience.”

“But I caused the accident. I disobeyed. I rode my bike too far!”

“Yes, you did. But you didn’t cause us to feel fear or to drive recklessly after you,” insisted his father.

“What can we do? I have to help her.” Dr. Bennet realized then that his son might understand that they were dead, but he wasn’t mature enough to understand the true nature of karma and responsibility. “Perhaps if you come with me, Gabe. I’ve something to show you.” He took a piece of chalk out the pocket of the cardigan he was wearing and drew the crude form of a door on the wall.

“Push here, son.” Gabe did as he was told and the wall gave away into a dark corridor. His father imagined he had a candle and a lighter in his other pocket and took these out and handed them to Gabe.

“Light this, first. It’s always dark in there. I’ll follow you.” They stepped into a large room, seemingly to go on forever with beds of all kinds, from straw pallets and simple iron affairs to huge ornate English Tudor beds with carved posts, molded cornices and recessed panel ceilings. In each one lay a supine form, some human who during life did not believe in the soul’s survival of death, or perhaps did, but was too afraid of what they’d encounter. Each case was unique, as was each bed.

Dr. Bennet beckoned his son to follow him to a gleaming brass bed with flowered pillows shams and lace dust ruffles where Judith lay snoring softly with Shorty stretched out by her side. The dog had her back pressed against Gabe’s mother with her legs splayed out, twitching, making snuffling sounds.

“We just left Shorty up there,” said Gabe, puzzled. “I don’t understand.” The dog heard her name and opened one eye.

“This is the reality of their situation,” said his father, materializing a cloth and a can of Brasso metal polish. He started to clean the railings in the bed’s plain headstand which reflected Judith’s love of the simple but practical elements of design as well as her firm, clear cut beliefs.

“I come down here often to talk to her. Just like people do when they have a family member in a coma in a nursing home, hoping she will hear me, hoping she will wake up. Up there is a sort of collective dream, each person… and dog, too, I guess,” he added, smiling, “helping to create the conditions they were comfortable with in life. I think Shorty stayed here because she could see and taste the food your mother prepared. You spoiled that dog, son.” At this, he patted Gabe on the shoulder affectionately. “That was one happy dog. Plus, I think she waited for you.”

Shorty sat up and yawned, blinking and Gabe. “I love you, too, Shorty.” He reached out to her and she came to be petted. “When did she die, Dad?”

“Shorty, you mean?” his father asked. Gabe nodded. “Not long after we did. I guess Animal Control finally got her. She would get out and tear up the neighbor’s flower beds, bark at them and generally terrorize everybody. Don’t feel bad, son. I think she was anxious to find us, anyway.”

“What can we do? I don’t want to leave her here anymore than you do, but I don’t think I can come up with anything you haven’t already thought of.”

With that, Mirabella and Maximillian materialized on the other side of the bed, dressed in upper-class Victorian evening wear and carrying hurricane lamps. “Don’t be too sure of that,” said Mirabella.

“Max!” cried Dr. Bennet. “I haven’t seen you in so long. How is my mother and sisters? Have they chosen new lives yet?”

“Yes,” replied Max. “As well you should be doing. But we needn’t have this argument again. I know you aren’t coming without Judith, and Mirabella thinks that Gabe might be key in helping you both. Don’t you, Bella?”

He turned to give her center stage, so she obligingly took a step forward and spoke. “Yes, I do. You should come with me, Gabriel and we can begin your education. It’s time you learned the nature of your situation and what your options are.”

“If it means leaving my parents here forever, I’m not going.” Gabe crossed his arms and immediately shrunk back into his eleven year old self, frowning.

“Now, Gabe,” said Max. “Give Mirabella a chance. You might find a way to help them. Your father has been here for over thirty-five years, and he hasn’t made any significant headway, yet.”

“Yes, Gabriel,” his father agreed. “Maybe you can figure out something with their help. I don’t want to go on without her, but I think you must.”

“All right,” Gabe said finally, uncrossing his arms and reaching out to scratch Shorty’s left thigh. “Can I come back and visit you, Dad? I’ve missed you so much and I…” he choked at this point, unsure how to put all that emotion into words.

“Of course, you can, Son,” replied his father. “Free will always applies everywhere.”

“Come,” said Mirabella, holding out a frilly umbrella which she had produced from behind her back, that is to say, nowhere. Take hold of this. We can fly like Mary Poppins, if you like, instead of just disappearing. You look like you could use a bit of fun after all this heavy realization you’ve been doing. It’s necessary, but not all the damn time, I say, eh what?” she added in the thick baritone accent of a Yorkshire colonel she liked to imagine when reading Agatha Christie.

Mirabella looked at Maximillian and said, “Could you materialize a ladder for us? And Dr. Bennet, if you please, step up to the ceiling and draw a big enough circle for two?”

Max frowned for a second while tapping the side of his head. “Do you want a twentieth-century step ladder found in most garages in North America, a medieval Macedonian plinth, or twenty-fifth anti-gravity discus with inertial dampening?”

“Oh, Max, please. Just pick one. And nothing after 2200, okay. I think that was the century someone first got some reasonably priced antigrav on the market, but try to remember what time frame we’re in now. It’s not like you haven’t had thousands of years to get it together, all right?” She changed her face to that of an elderly Queen Elizabeth II, gave herself black lipstick, and made a moue at him.

Max laughed. “Okay, okay, I get it. Something from the reign of Elizabeth, simple yet functional.” He snapped his fingers and it appeared beside the bed.  Howard Bennet scrambled up the ladder, and reached out with his chalk.

“A little higher, please,” he said. Max winked at Gabe and waved his arm unnecessarily through the air as the ladder rose another foot. He had long since not needed hand gestures to crystallize his thought-forms, but his humorous flair for the dramatic went back (and forth) several lives. Howard drew the circle, popped his fist through it, and climbed back down amid the dust and bits of particle board that fell, coughing.

“Thank you, gentlemen, and we bid you a fond adieu,” said Mirabella in mock-imperious tones. She rose slowly, pulling the umbrella and Gabriel behind her through the hole, then spun off suddenly into the whirlpool of unthought-formed supermatter that comprised the astral plane, which Gabe had come to think of as the “black fog.” It felt damp and slightly sticky without sticking to him. There was the sound of rushing wind, caused by the illusion of movement, but the surrounding unjelled goo fell against him and back in little ripples gave the feeling of being stuck and stationary. This sensual cognitive dissonance disconcerted Gabe, to say the least.

“This feels weird. Makes me feel dizzy,” he said.

“Oh, sorry,” said Mirabella. “You have to think an environment. Atmospheric conditions, ground flying past us, birds in the sky, that sort of thing. I’ve been doing it for you, for the most part, but it’s time you started taking over. I’ll help fill in the details until you’re entirely comfortable with the process.”

“Thanks,” he replied, remembering a sunny afternoon with a slight cool breeze outside Serenity Village, and imagining that they were flying above it.

“Much better,” he said to himself. “Where are we going?”

“Up there,” she replied, pointing at an 83-degree angle coincident with the ground. “A good place to start learning.” Gabe looked in the direction she indicated and saw a massive, dark-grey thunderhead flashing with potential electricity upholding an circular structure modeled on the Emperor Hadrian’s rebuilt version of the Pantheon of ancient Rome, except that part of the roof had been blasted away and wisps of light fell into it from the star-riddled sky above. As they approached, Gabe could see other souls flying toward a rectangular porch whose roof arched beside the cracked dome, some landing between the huge Corinthian columns and walking inside. Mirabella slowed as they neared the entrance, and Gabe read the words “M. AGRIPPA L.F. COS. TERTIUM FECIT” inscribed in the in the concrete above the columns.

“What does that mean?” he began to ask, but already as he formed the question in his mind the words fizzled into the English “Marcus Agrippa, son of Lucius, in his third consulate, made this.”

“Okay,” he said to the words as they morphed back into Latin. “What was a consulate and why was it his third one?” Mirabella herself had landed on the black marble floor, recently reimagined by a consortium of ancient Roman citizens who had, by consensus, control over the decorative aspects of the architecture for a period of three weeks. After that, some eighteenth century French aristocrats from Paris during the Age of Enlightenment would have it for a whole month and a half. All had to agree to keep the essential outline of the Pantheon more or less the same, but were free to change the materials, the lighting, and the busts scattered about in equidistant recesses.

In response to Gabe’s question the ceiling inscription replied, “We’ve a library inside. Look it up for yourself.” Cheeky inscription! he thought.

“Come on down, Gabriel,” Mirabella said impatiently. He was still floating in the air slightly above her, holding onto the umbrella, but not paying attention at all. “I’ve got a lot of ‘splainin’ to do.” She said this last in the Cuban-American accent of Ricky Ricardo. She had made the afterlife equivalent of straight A’s in Twen-Cen Mass Communications. As they went through the already open, 21 feet high, bronze double doors into the main rotunda, Gabe saw the sparks of light falling in through the oculus in the center of the dome into the heads of visitors, where they flashed, briefly illuminating the brains within like an X-ray.

“What is that?” he exclaimed.

“You mean the light formations?” she asked, quickly scanning his mind for what “that” referred to. As he nodded, she continued.

“They’re receiving insights as they learn. And it’s high time I helped you get some of them,” she added stentoriously. “Since you had internet access, we’ll go to one of the terminals. Or would you prefer the card catalog?” she asked, waving her right arm in the direction of a tremendous cabinet that seemed much larger than the space provided. In fact, a portion of it swayed in the breeze, State Empire building-like, as it protruded upwards through a portion of the dome that had been blasted away.

“Um,” Gabe gulped. “I’d like to see a terminal please.” So Mirabella walked toward a lit recess in the curved wall that contained a bust of Athena. She snapped her fingers and the head swiveled around revealing a monitor in the back. “Let’s start with the concept of oversoul,” she said. “Which by the way is what I am to you. I’m an oversoul, and you are one of my ego-personalities.” She closed her eyes in concentration, nodded to the monitor, and rays of light poured out of the monitor to form a hologram of the concepts Mirabella wanted Gabriel to grasp.