Out of the Bottle
"Oh bull shit," I blurted as I sat up on the foot rest of the permanent recliner.
Terry is laughing quite vigorously, "Quite rightly, this isn't fair and I'm sorry that we tricked you." "Vera's office is fitted with an ambient holographic projector." "And all of this stuff is my art and I couldn't resist either. Your the most fun we've had with a new guest ever." "For the worlds best psychic you really are suggestible when you project." "I suppose that's what makes you the best, your imagination is notorious." "No wonder you shun the lime light" "What I don't understand," says Terry with conviction, "How do you stay on the top of your game? I mean, really?"
"I want to know what's happening, NOW!" "How did you manage to retrieve my dreams?" I ask.
"We didn't." "You've written so much on that time when you never spoke to anyone, that it's been easy to reconstruct the hallucinations from your forgotten manuscripts." "You just filled in all the blanks for us, as we expected." "But most of what you've heard from us is true, and we do want to know if you can help us."
I feel a little cheated, I'm still not sure what is real or whether this is just another one of my lucid subjunctives. "Can't you just go somewhere on your own, Gretchen seems to be the only one with family ties?"
"There's nothing stopping us other than the fact that we are freaks." "Once we go, "Out of the Bottle," Where can we go?" "You don't necessarily see it, but we all stick out like sore thumbs." "We all want to continue to make a contribution to society still, But time stopped for us." "We make others look and feel terrible." "We're not any fun any more." "The only other place we can go is where people share our sense of immediacy, and that's in the third world." "Even there, problems are finding solutions solved, peoples lives are improving without our help." "The only eventuality is the truth." "We would just get in the way." "You changed the game, by sharing "your" views, you changed us and we're not alone anymore." "We mustn't interfere, ever." "Most people can't handle knowing what the future is going to be, and we all will just screw everything up if we try to help." "We may have already gone to far with our latest issue of the "Confidence Game." "There's just too much joy, too much mirth, too much whimsy." "Can you see what you've done to us?" "Tomorrow when you leave, we'll all be bored again." "What kind of a life is this?" "Is this all we have to look forward to?" "Is this all we have to offer others?" "Really?" "You know what I'm saying," says Terry.
I'm startled by his grim assessment of life in the era of enlightened selfishness. Who in their right mind would want to date someone who knows exactly what is going to happen, Honestly?
I'm afraid Terry is right. I too went through realizing the utter futility of control. I rationally fought the inevitable downhill slope of deterministic prognostication, only to discover that the people around me wanted certainty. A kind of certainty that, even when I do know, I do not share, not ever. Loneliness leads to boredom, boredom leads to finality. Why would I wish that on anyone?
