1

My name is Jonathan Driley. I am writing this because I was triggered to do so.

In this universe things happen. Don’t ask me how, but they do.

So goes the universe.

The why and because of this particular thing occurred simultaneously (as they often do) not far from my 15-foot by 15-foot underground cubicle – the place where I occupy most of my existence.

I exited my cubicle today in an event triggered by the familiar impulses of my body, those being hunger, thirst, and possibly the desire for “entertainment” in the form of binary code programmed into microchips encased in a plastic cartridge offering minor visual stimulation with minimal interactivity and variation.

Upon entering my old yet reliable blue sedan in the cubicle complex’s parking lot, I was approached from the passenger side by a young boy carrying a cardboard box. He motioned for me to roll down the window. I understood his symbolic motions and obeyed, straining to reach the passenger side window crank. After some effort on my part the window was down, and the boy quickly thrust the box through the threshold of the window frame and began mumbling something incoherent. In the box there were bars of chocolate wrapped in foil, wrapped in paper, with pictures of bars of chocolate on them.

“Can ya help me out?” I finally made out.

“No, thank you,” I remember saying.

The boy withdrew the cardboard box from the threshold of the window frame and moved on.

By manipulating pedals, wheels, and rods I maneuvered my old yet reliable blue sedan out of the parking lot and into the flow of traffic.

Currency was needed for the upcoming transactions, so I drove to the Automatic Teller Machine, not far from the cubicle complex.

As it always does, the Automatic Teller Machine asked for my Personal Identification Number. I thought, as I always do when I enter this particular number into this particular machine, of my old allegiance to the Cub Scout Organization – Den 425. There were no feelings associated with these memories. These kinds of thoughts happen all the time. I entered my Personal Identification Number: 425. The machine displayed: XXX.

After receiving adequate currency from the guts of the Automatic Teller Machine, I drove to the video rental and then to Steak and Shake: Famous for Steakburgers.

The pictures of the Famous Steakburgers on the brightly lit drive-through sign all looked quite appetizing. My mind began to fumble, searching for cues in the beginnings of a decision making process: a choice. Maybe I’ll get a burger.

“Hello, welcome to Steak and Shake: Famous for Steakburgers. I’ll be with you in a moment,” a young woman’s voice said from the speaker in the sign.

Good. The bastards aren’t pressuring me this time. I scanned the sign for anything that I might see. Nah, burgers are too expensive here. Well…but they are good…
“Thanks for waiting, may I take your order?” asked the female sign.

“Yeah, I’ll have a large fry and a large chocolate shake,” I said.

“I’m sorry, we’re out of large. We only have small,” said the female sign.

“That’s fine.”

“That’s fine!” repeated the female sign, but with greater exuberance. “Your total is $4.2-”

“Wait, is that small shake or small fry?” I interrupted.

“Shake,” the female sign replied.

“Okay that’s fine,” I said.

“Please pull around.”

Taking a quick last look at the appetizing Famous Steakburgers, I pulled my old yet reliable blue sedan around to its place in the line of cars waiting to reach the drive-through window. Shoulda gotten a burger maybe. I listened to the song that had been playing on the radio for a moment:

“…but you are afraid to follow your first impulse,” said the singer.

One car pulled away and the line moved forward. I reached for my wallet and change purse. Wait, what was my total again? Four-twenty-something…was it $4.28? I was angry with myself for not remembering.

I took four one dollar-bills out of my wallet and a quarter out of my change purse and placed them on the passenger seat. $4.25. That’s a good number – right smack-dab in the middle of the four-twenty-something I don’t remember.

When it was my turn at the window, insecure in the fact of not having my correct total ready for immediate transaction, I turned to find that the true face of the female sign was a familiar one. She used to live in the same cubicle complex that I now do, a few years back. I do not remember her name. Ashamed that I did not remember her name, I reflexively scanned back in time in my memory banks to see if I could remember anything significant about her. Nothing. No memories at all…wait…yes, here we are…I remember when she moved in, seeing her outside her cubicle door…number 42-

“Five,” a strange voice said.

This is a big one. Big and obvious. They must be getting arrogant. They – as if there were something or someone guiding this universe.

This was the precise moment that triggered me to write this thing.

“$4.25,” she said, snapping me from my memory.

“Huh?” came my response as, startled, I fumbled, spilling three pennies from my change purse. $4.28 now lay on the passenger seat.

“Your total is $4.25- oh hi!” she said in a moment of recognition.

“Hi,” I replied, giving her the $4.25 and dropping the three pennies back into my change purse.

So goes the universe.

As soon as I received my large fry and small shake I returned to my cubicle, ate them, and began writing.

I’m a thinking man, and I probably always will be, fortunately or unfortunately. One has time to think when one spends most of one’s life in a 15-foot by 15-foot cubicle.

I have always been fond of the idea that we’re individuals – that we’re all a bit different in the way we look upon life, and that we all have something that we feel is important. Life, after all, is just a thing. It happens, and as a result other things happen. Human life has caused a great deal of things to happen right here on Earth, good and bad.

We as beings are merely perceivers of life, and we each order the random ever-occurring “things” of life in our own ways. We are all characters, ad-libbing our way through a play with no plot that is being recorded by billions of flesh, blood, bone, sinew, aqueous fluid, and muscle tissue cameras called humans, separately probably worth less in parts than a standard camcorder and combined, significantly less than Bill Gates’ Personal Identification Number.

What I feel is important then, is simply understanding.

YOUR understanding of MY version of the play.

YOUR understanding of this thing.

Of course, my own personal want that this thing be a good story is equally important, and should be. Stories are our VCRs – they are our projectors. And without good projectors, the full quality of our characters could never be seen and understood.

So what do I want from you? Do I expect you to believe that the coincidental re-occurrence of a random number in the time-span of about an hour is somehow a symbolic representation of the entire structure of the universe in which random moments occur and re-occur in random order triggering other random moments, and that the three pennies symbolically represent my recording of occurrence – my own version of what is going on – my individuality and importance, which is never fully seen or understood as I always drop the pennies back into my change purse because I can never find the right projector for them? Well, probably not…and perhaps rightly so, but we shall see, as all things move on and so too shall this thing move on.

Thus have I seen life, and thus was I triggered to write this.

YOU, of course, are free to say:

“No, thank you.”

Today I reached into my pocket for a cigarette, and as I did so the flip-top of the cigarette package became caught on the seam of my pocket, causing the flip-top to open, the motion of my arm to cease, and three cigarettes to be propelled out of the cigarette package and onto my lap.

Must have been in there backwards.

I lit one, put two back, and looked up at the television.

“Do you need anything?” the young co-host asked the older host of this satirical game show. “Such as a red-hot poker up your butt?”

These two are always giving each other a hard time. I chuckled at the absurd joke – why would he want THAT of all things – and my mind drifted back to part of a dream I had the night before, in which I looked upon the tortures of a man in hell.

Well, perhaps “tortures” is too strong a word…

As eternal flames of eternal pain, torment, and all that danced eternally throughout a circular room encased by iron walls, a lone man dangled in mid-air, right smack-dab in the middle of the room, suspended by chains from an unseen ceiling. He was an older man, and I somehow had the impression that he had been there for quite some time. The flames did not appear to hurt him – indeed he seemed quite happy. Was it possible that this man had been in pain in hell for so long that hell and pain ceased to hold any meaning for him?

The entire situation had almost a satirical element to it.

“This isn’t working! We need more pain!” shouted a mass of flesh that I assumed was some sort of demon commander.

“I’ll have a red-hot poker up my butt!” offered the chained man.

“Right! Let’s make it happen!” shouted the fleshy mass, to who’s call a red-hot poker materialized from thin air and inserted itself up the chained man’s butt.

“Ahhh…that’s nice,” said the chained man.

“WorldSpan Network T.V.” ran the familiar commercial jingle, interrupting my memory. “We make dreams come true.”

Ugh, I thought.

(A conversation between two young males anywhere in the United States of North America):

“Hey, you ever have a dream where you’re lost, wandering around these dark woods and you’re starting to feel kinda worried, but then you stumble upon this really nice pair of shoes and you put em on and all of a sudden you’re at this wild party and the hottest chick in the place walks right up to you and goes: ‘Nice shoes, wanna dance?’ and when you get out on the floor you’re like totally confident and bust out into some crazy ass moves and all your friends are there cheering you on and the hot chick is all impressed and shit and starts to get all up on you and shit and then like suddenly you just see blackness and the words ‘Whoa – tight shoes!’ in white and the Nike symbol under it?”

“Yeah, I’ve had that one.”

“Ah shit, I thought it was an original.”

“Nope, I’ve had it. You’ve got the Frequency Modulation Brain Receiver Implant right?”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah, it’s a broadcast. WJBO I think – some WorldSpan FM subsidiary.”

“Yeah but I thought I set it to filter out ads, promos, and country-western.”

“You probably did, but filter settings don’t apply to WorldSpan broadcasts when you enter REM sleep. It’s in the contract. It’s the same with your firewall – any signal originating from WorldSpan FM or subsidiaries is automatically accepted and autorun in REM sleep.”

“Bummer man, I thought it might have some significance or something – you know, like it might mean something important.”

“Nah.”

“I think I am gonna buy a pair of those shoes though.”

“Yeah, I got a pair yesterday.”

Excerpts from the diary of Jonathan Driley:

Thoughts on The Hum and The First Reverie

My dead hand somehow manages to put words on paper – always editing. I don’t have enough cigarettes for this. The hum kicks in – this mechanized response – a virus of society’s own unwitting creation, locked in constant combat with individual creative thought. Sent to distract, infect, tranquilize, and hypnotize. They want all things patterned, planned, and accounted for. They want to drop you into a slot that “suits” you and keep you there – locked away into a cliché, a style, a genre.

One who would reject placement into an acceptable pattern will be lulled into submission by the hum. Everywhere he goes the hum will follow – on the radio, the T.V., in the papers, at the movies. Everywhere will he hear the hum calling him back into formation – into alignment. Everywhere he will see guilt, despair, and woe for leaving his pattern. It is the automatic response of societal virus to display these emotions in order to create them in him.

More often than not, society wins – either assimilating the subject back into itself in an acceptable pattern, or switching the subject to one of many “disposable patterns” such as suicides, mass-murderers (or other criminal activity resulting in the subject’s elimination by police force), or mental illness.

Sleep calls me. But as I drift away I must try and remember to fight the conditioned responses – to think about what I think about and be sure that it is me doing the thinking. I will not become a pattern.

* * * *

I’m writing again. Sometimes I think this is the only place where my thoughts are mine. What do you think when you’re alone? When there’s nothing on. You turn off the T.V., the radio, the input. What do you think when you stop a moment and reset yourself – when it all slows and dissolves – but it’s spinning! – and the hum – what is that humming sound that still remains when everything is switched off? What is it doing to us? Do you stare at it? Can you see the hum behind the focus? Of what is it comprised?

No! It is nothing! It is all!

And how long? How long can you stop and be without thought until you GOGOGO! with the spinning force that drives and whips – BACK! BACK to your focus – BACK to your direction! THINK of something! THINK of what you’re going to eat. THINK of what you’re going to do. THINK about having a cigarette. THINK about going to sleep. REMEMBER something in the past – something you can cling to to get you through. Don’t let them see you stopping and staring – they wouldn’t understand! THINK of something you’ve done before.

No No No No No! These are not your thoughts! These are your reactions! You’ve stopped to smell the flowers. Where are the flowers? All you see is the hum – the web – the spinning – always spinning! You’ve seen the slow dissolve: your relation to the continuous spinning process – oh how small! How infinitely small are we – how can we possibly affect this spin when the tidal forces of the entire universe are against us? We give in. We GOGOGO! We stick to the web at a random moment and it spins itself over us – into us. We become a part of it all, as the Great Fate Spider weaves our lives together from the bits of thought strand we give to it – and the bits it takes from us.

Perhaps we cannot win. Perhaps we cannot affect anything. But if we can’t win, do we join? Are you happy? If so, then why not join the web? Why not stay with your happiness, and exist in your life in society as you know it – as you have known it before. Perfect consumers in an automated world. Products of reaction. After all, isn’t happiness itself merely a reaction? Combinations of chemical releases in the brain, attached to memories of events of good fortune. Is there any thought BUT reaction? Are these my true thoughts? Or have I again been triggered, as all things ultimately trigger one another? No, I am not happy. I can conceive of no happy outcomes to this life. I have stopped and stared and wondered and thought – thought traced as far back as possible – in the hopes of finding something – a beginning for an ending, and perhaps a new beginning. The beginning. The original thought. The one true act from which all since has been reaction to. Does this exist? From where did it come? Can one have this knowledge? Can one exist with this knowledge? Can one truly know that one knows at all? And this too, is spinning – being spun in circles.

When one stops and stares for too long – when one realizes too clearly his place in things, he can begin to go mad. He can begin to dissipate – to fade. He can panic and pull and grasp at any strand he can immediately find and send a violent shockwave through the web, ricocheting violent reactions directly back his way. He can pick and pull through his spance of thought – his space in the web – and wonder if any thought he finds is truly his. He can follow his strands until he reaches the limits of reason’s hold on the imagination, and he finds he is left staring again. Staring…unblinking, unfocused…slowing down…energy fading…dissipating…slowing…energy dissipating to heat…dying…always dying…until he realizes what he’s doing and BAM! Spinning! Caught again.

“Thought you could escape, eh? You can never leave the web! You’re too afraid! Yes, afraid of a hidden order behind all of this – afraid not only of its meaning, but of meaning itself!” says the Great Fate Spider.

Can we escape? To where? Into insanity or death? Is there no change otherwise? And is it right? Are we worthy of our desired transcention? For one who believes in neither God nor Devil, one certainly fears them enough. So goes the universe for one who is so close to the ends of his strands – for one who dares to have the secret desire to go beyond reason, deep into the depths of himself to reach the depths of everything to find the thing itself. To find true creation.

But could one who goes so far ever return? Can one who virtually breaks into Heaven itself and covets its secrets ever come back? And if so, could mankind be helped from this one mind’s journey? Or is mankind already beyond help? Thus the desire for escape. Dissipation. All energy converted to the stare, brought out of us and turned to heat, dead – one with the hum. Would we find peace there? Or horror? Perhaps we would find only what we created there – if we are even capable of creation at all.

But imagine for an instant that the all, the beginning, the original act, could be comprehended. What if our minds truly did retain everything – trapped in receptors of cells – traces of all thought since the beginning of time? And what if, in stopping and staring – in release of energy to heat – we could harness that thought – the thought? And what if it were possible, via some great power source (the sun, for example), to tap that thought? To know the entirety of the web that is this universe and to destroy it – to encompass it completely – to destroy the Great Fate Spider by becoming her – stopping her spin through the knowledge of all she has made, and then to unmake. Yes, to free all trapped souls in the web – to tap their minds as well in creation – to use every bit of is and was to completely destroy itself, and then – in nothing – when possibility is at its peak – the knowledge and power of the original thought – the all – could begin again as everything that it could be: all of our minds creating and becoming the new stars – to forever brightly shine on what we know is ours – our transcention and reanimation – our new universe.

But there is danger in this idea. Danger of creating just another web, just another world of human indifference. So thus are even the greater circles revealed – the great spinning beyond all that is spun – the way it goes. Perhaps some of us are just better than others in perceiving that way. Perhaps a few of us even perceive traces of that way quite well. And perhaps these few could take their thought to depths at which were considered dangerous – depths at which the humming spin could no longer charm or predict them – depths at which traces of true knowledge would begin to flow through them. And perhaps, since these few could possibly (Heaven forbid) create change, it would be of great value for them to be controlled, especially by those in power who want things as they have been. And yes, perhaps there would be even greater value in these few for any “third parties” who might have something to gain from the possibility of tapping even small amounts of that knowledge, for adaptation to military, technology, marketing, and anything else that might help to create a universe more to their liking. Especially if one of those few, caught unwary, could be triggered to do the right thing at the right time.

We are all pawns. Even those who would claim to rule. Even the Great Fate Spider herself. There are no other pieces in this game. We all move on through the circle of time, guided by our ever-present, lull-inducing hum: the echo of the sighs of one million crooked truths.

There I was, sitting in the middle of the cubicle complex parking lot, looking up at the faint red haze of the city’s night sky. I had a lit cigarette in my right hand. I looked at the watch on my left arm. 4:25 AM. Impossible? Lately I have begun to laugh at even the mere thought of that word. There were a few things I noticed that were somewhat odd about this picture. I had no idea:

1.) How the hell I had gotten outside.

2.) How I was currently smoking a cigarette – I hadn’t smoked in over a week as I’ve found that it’s bad for my concentration and, in fact, do not even own any cigarettes.

3.) Why I didn’t remember anything that had happened in the past four hours.

I searched back in my memory to try to uncover anything that could explain what had happened to me and was instantly met with an intense physical pain in the front of my head. I reeled backwards and gasped for breath as the pain began to spread throughout my entire skull. My whole brain felt as though it were throbbing – the pulse beating out a warning: “You…do…not…want…to…know.” I clenched my fists, closed my eyes, and tried as hard as I could to think of nothing. After a few minutes the pain died down and I was left wondering again…what the hell was going on? I decided to try to think back over my memories in some sort of context or order so as to hopefully avoid triggering another headache by accidentally tripping over some “painful memory.” The earliest and safest thing I could recall was laying down at approximately 12:02 AM to begin what I call my “Nightly Reverie,” best described by an earlier entry in my diary after about two months of repeated testing as:

“…a sort of self-induced trance in which I lay comfortably still, stare straight ahead, and try not to blink as long as I can. This produces a sort of cleansing of the mind which soon after is accompanied by aural and visual hallucination, the most common types being: aural – high pitched humming or ringing noise; and visual – a slow churning dissolve as if my field of vision were slowly melting away.”

Up until now I would have to admit that I hadn’t been putting much faith in the “ultimate purpose” of these reveries, as I had been viewing myself subconsciously as somewhat of a lunatic – the effects of these self-induced hallucinations being easily traced back to permanent after-effects of early experiments with psychedelic drugs. The lunacy I had begun to notice and indeed to expect in myself seemed not to stem from this however, but from the reactions I seemed to be drawing from social situations: concerned and frightened looks from neighbors, suspicious looks from strangers, suspicious looks from everyone, comments whispered…intelligible but just within earshot… Indeed it seemed like everyone around me knew my schedule and my actions better than I and would throw the most suspicious glances at me if I even thought about changing my routine. So I began staying indoors. If everyone was out to get me then I would stay where they couldn’t touch me or even look at me. I began practicing my reveries more often than nightly. Sometimes I would sit staring at my wall or my ceiling all day. My paranoia spurred me on because, yes even though I could easily be a lunatic, what if I was on to something? What if everyone was watching me because I was on the threshold of discovering something…some secret of the mind that they didn’t want discovered? Or something that they wanted for themselves? I had worked myself into a frenzy simultaneously believing none of this and all of this. My diary became a document of random scribbles professing that I was “making progress” – that each time I entered my reverie I was “going farther” and “getting there faster,” all the while not knowing what I really meant by any of it.

One night two weeks ago, a patrolman knocked on my door pulling me out of a reverie. He said he was here investigating what I could only determine as a “lack of disturbance.” It seemed some of the neighbors hadn’t seen me leave or enter my room in over a week and so one of the more worrisome ones called the police.

“No, everything’s fine officer,” I said, trying to conceal the blatant lie within my eyes.

A week later I quit smoking cigarettes as I had begun to feel that addiction was clouding my mind and interfering with my reveries. Earlier this morning at approximately 12:02 AM I had lain down on my bed to begin another reverie. Almost immediately the familiar high pitched hum and the visual melting began to occur. At approximately 12:20 AM the ceiling began to start slowly shifting, as if it were breathing or swaying with the wind. As the humming grew louder the white of the ceiling began to fade to a yellowish light, perhaps even brown around the edges of my field of vision. I was familiar with these sensations, but I began to notice something peculiar: the shape of my ceiling began to bend upwards in the center. Whereas this had happened before, it had not with such intensity as now, as the corners of my field of vision were always clouded by this brown and faded yellow light. Now, my entire field of vision was perfectly clear, and the dome my ceiling had become was turning pure black in color and seemingly somehow to be bending to the pitch of the hum – as if I was beginning to see the sound. I began noticing tiny dots of white appearing in my now pitch-black ceiling…dots almost resembling stars. The humming had increased in volume and it seemed as though I was drifting upwards towards these white dots, of which more and more were appearing every second. This sensation of floating and indeed the entire situation of a dome of stars above me was entirely new, and although I had maintained concentration and a clear mind up until this point, I began to get just a little worried. The dome began to widen and I began to lose feeling in my body. My ceiling was now a sky filled with stars and I seemed to be floating towards them, or they were coming towards me. Either way I could not maintain concentration while faced with this vision of outer space in my ceiling, and my entire subconscious spilled out, shooting thoughts of insanity this way, thoughts of genius that way, thoughts of gods and religion and devils swirling everywhere. It was as if my entire subconscious were an egg that had been cracked open over this dreamscape frying pan. At this moment I recognized these subconscious thoughts with my conscious mind and thought to myself: This is it. If only I knew what I was getting myself into. Can I ever come back? Oh how I wish I could simply forget all this and go outside and have a cigarette! The moment that these were my thoughts the hum became deafening and I was shot out into the dome towards one of the dots of white with amazing speed and force. Almost instantaneously (or so it seemed to me) the tiny dot became my entire field of vision. I was enveloped in blinding white light and piercing noise…

And there I was, sitting in the middle of the cubicle complex parking lot with a cigarette in my hand, looking up at the faint red haze of the city’s night sky. A single star flashed brightly in the sky for one moment, and then was gone…lost in the haze of the city.

General Claude Montgomery Sr. paused for a brief moment before responding. He sat comfortably in a padded swivel chair, now turned away from his desk towards the giant window that made up the rear wall of his office. Facing him, through the glass, was a sea of non-descript skyscrapers that comprised the offices of the business sector. He sat in one of these buildings now. He owned, at least partially, most of what he could see before him.

A red haze sat hovering over the business sector – the resonance of thousands of beacons continually flashing their warnings through the night to low-flying aircraft: WATCH OUT! On most nights the haze created a nearly day-like atmosphere, but some nights, when the smog wasn’t so bad, you could almost catch a glimpse of a star struggling to shine through. General Claude Montgomery Sr. didn’t own the stars yet, but there was always time…

General Claude Montgomery Sr. was a man with a lot of knowledge and even more power. He owned the title of Commander and Chief of Special Operations for the United States of North America. He was also a member of Terra-Corp., the ring of associated gas, oil, and electric conglomerates who, for years, had owned and controlled the flow of pretty much all business in the country. In a capitalistic society, General Claude Montgomery Sr. was one of the few “untouchables.”

This was perhaps one of the few reasons that he found it somewhat difficult to believe that he was sitting here on the phone, listening to a crazed scientist blabbering about vectors and angles and Doppler shifts and gravitational forces, etc., etc…

“Now hold on here, Mr…ah…ah…Mr…,” Montgomery began again, interrupting the scientist.

“Weasly- Dr. Weasly.”

“Dr. Weasly…now first things first, if you don’t mind. Is this a secured channel?”

“Yes, yes Sir, of course. I’m over at Terra-Corp. Research Post 12A – you can check the line if you’d like – we’re on a direct secured link.”

“Well, alright Doctor…ah…but aren’t there usually some sort of routine channels you go through when reporting this kind of information?”

“That’s just it Sir – this isn’t a routine report. The switchboard patched me right through to you – I guess they thought I’m the one most qualified to explain this to you…”

“Well in that case Doctor, I hate to sound the layman, but maybe you could explain this all in…ah…simpler terms?”

“Yes Sir. Okay…well…where to begin? Let’s start with energy.”

“Now, when you say ‘energy,’ you mean the juice that powers my T.V., right?”

“Well…yes Sir, that’s one form of energy…but this is affecting all energies – energy on a universal scale – even-”

“Now just hold on here. There’s a lot I’m not getting. Why don’t you start from the beginning? Slow and simple.”

“Slow and simple, yes Sir. Well, through the sciences, we know that everything in the universe is energy, in one form or another. Everything tangible and intangible can be measured in potential and kinetic. Matter, for example, is itself merely energy condensed to a slow vibration. An explosion, like the one that began our universe, is pure energy. Energy released into a void of heat dissipated from other energies.”

“Okay, you’re starting to lose me…other energies?”

“Yes Sir – energies that were once another universe – a universe that died – though I am told to mention that this is only a theory.”

“Of course.”

“You see, when energy is expended – or can no longer be used as kinetic or potential – it dissipates – or turns to heat. It dies, in a sense. Heat is your lowest common denominator – everything eventually dissipates into heat. Our entire universe will eventually dissipate into heat…though…this is not naturally something to worry much about, as our calculations show that the universe will be swallowed entirely by a black hole long before this could ever occur.”

“So then why are you telling me this? Why did I get this phone call?”

“Well sir…we’re not really dealing with natural laws alone any longer. Science asserts that the universe began with the ‘Big Bang,’ an expanding explosion of energy in a vacuum of heat – dead energy, void of nothingness – whatever you want to call it. What science has so far failed to answer is how that explosion occurred. What act resurrected Energy and began its flow again? Up until now we’ve hypothesized endlessly on the rubber-band theory – whether or not time is merely a circle where all energy expands to it’s maximum potential then contracts back to nothing only to again expand – among countless others, but we’ve never had anything concrete-”

“Wait a minute, wait a minute. Concrete? Are you going to tell me that you think you know how our universe began?”

“Ah….well, no…but we think we may have a new working hypothesis for that matter. Unfortunately, it is also a new working hypothesis for the end of the universe.”

“Hold on, I think I’d better go get a pen.”

There is no way to accurately describe the horror. The feeling that through one’s own weakness one has caused the damnation of all humanity. The feeling that under the guise of spiritual growth over, above, and beyond oneself and one’s limits, one has been manipulated by the essence of evil that lurks inside the darkest corners of one’s mind. That at the very instant one begins to achieve the wondrous growth of the spirit, one unwittingly has brought about the moment where the evil nature of the mind releases itself into subjective reality in the form of the dark beast of fear. The beast goes straight for the throat, and as the fangs sink into the side of the neck, every drop of blood spilt externalizes the beast – projecting into objective reality not the believed intended hope, peace, and beauty, but instead the unfathomable, unbearable terror and suffering of the most abysmal depths of the human soul.

This feeling haunts me every second of my life. Even though I would consider myself kind and gentle, I am aware of a great evil within me, buried deep down below my subconscious. Nested deep in my brain it coils itself around my dearest hopes and dreams, infecting and slowly preparing me for its eventual release into my consciousness and then into reality. Leaking out of perception and absorbing into perception – it stays carefully hidden – plotting…pulling my strings…playing a false song of care and hope until the instrument is properly tuned to the infinite ethereal chord of pain.

I fear the dark. When the sense of sight is stripped from me, my mind creates images of its own accord, most of which are extremely disturbing. I fear sleep and dreams, for I feel that I have less success in subduing the beast in this state. But this is foolishness, for struggle as I might, I can’t shake the feeling that the beast has ultimate control – perhaps even of these struggles and these feelings themselves. I fear being alone, but I fear being with others even more. In this sense, the hum has almost become a comfort to me. Not an enemy sent to subdue one’s true will, but instead a secret weapon of the nature of goodness – a last line of defense against the corrupting power of evil which creates the doomed desire for one to know and experience more than what one is capable of. (Filling oneself to the brim, the buoyant beast then floats to the surface and overflows into the world).

Or do I have it backwards? Is there truly no limit to the greatness of the human soul? Are all these fears merely the result of the deepest possible penetration of the hum into every cell of my body – the societal virus reacting intensely to the startling events of my last reverie?

Or am I simply mad – wonderfully mad – and none of these fears extend beyond my own broken brain?

Unknown. Always unknown. Thus is the duality of man. Real or illusion – so goes the universe.

Dear God, what have we done to deserve this?