Split Image
Without releasing me, Ben leads me out of the dining hall and into what seems another dream. I don't think I can wake up. I don't think the seizure is over, I'm going under again. I find my self back here with you in 2013. I'm typing this down for the first time and a wave of re-entry dread crushes the breath from my lungs. As I struggle to breathe I'm in two places at once. This is why I stopped taking drugs. I need a nap.
I realize I'm having a narcoleptic seizure on this side too. Before I get to close my eyes the world disappears and I find myself in an examination chair and Benjamin's voice is calling me to look at the monitor to see if I can follow the cursor as it cycles through it series of pulses and juxtapositions.
Generally during a seizure I hallucinate. Slipping above and below the level of waking, I dream. I dream of here. I dream of over here. And I dream I dream. Here at home, (I know you) and here in the future I know you too but you are someone else I never met. But we are good friends. I'm walking past George the night watch, at the front desk of my condo. "Good evening Mr. Johnson. How are you tonight?"
"Thanks George, a little out of it. Did anyone leave me a package, I'm expecting some documentation?"
"What? Did you say something?" It was Benjamin. I have lapsed out again and I'm making the equipment buzz and beep and I'm ringing the bells like one of those old time pinball machines that I loved so much back in the fifties. This is not a gaming arcade. Benjamin is hooking me up to all the available monitoring devices he has and I'm starting to look like a switch board. He wants to make sure I don't die. I haven't been this sick in a very long time.
In diffused light of the exam room, strobe lights tease my brain. As the room slowly spins I feel I'm twirling in the opposite direction. Benjamin seems amused. I glance over to the screens glowing in his eyes and face. He's in a luminous glow with waves of iridescent rainbow hues as he turns and says, "You don't have to look at the monitor any more." I was getting nauseous and my heart was starting to stop beating in rhythm. My head was pounding again but at least I was starting to wake up.
"Dude, has anyone ever told you what a pretty brain you have?" Ben turns on the large screen in front of me and there is my brain scan doing a dance. I can see that the right temporal lobe is putting out irregular pulses that branch and merge with almost every other part of my brain, even those parts of mind that aren't supposed to be able to communicate back and forth. "Do you chant?" is his next question.
"I've been voice training most of my life, and I use music to stir deep emotions." "But that's not what you're asking is it?" I was amazed I could talk much less form thoughts. The pains fade.
"You are a freak." "How do you function?" "This is what happens to people on Angel Dust." "Your brain is sparking like a sparkler, but the cycles are still in sync with each other." "I read your dossier and I guess this is what your profile described as your "Ecstasies." "How do you function?"
"Could you speak a little softer?" "I'm still a little nauseous." I don't tell Benjamin how turned on I am. I learned to keep my private business to myself. Being a living ecstatic does have it's perks. But I wonder if it's worth the inter dimensional jet lag.
