I tossed and turned in a half-awake state when, suddenly, the sound of birds caused my eyes to shoot open as I bolted upright in the cot, fully awake. Those had been tropical bird calls, sothing I hadn’t heard in years. How could they be here? The darkness of my garage vanished into a cheerfully bright sunlight, illuminating a beautiful beach as the bird songs continued.
Instead of my cot, I was now sitting up on a beach chair, and next to was apparently Santa Claus. The mories ca flooding back that I only seed to be able to fully grasp while I was asleep. Damn, those creatures were still heading for Earth, and this intelligence was stuck here because I couldn’t find a way to make myself rember any of this happened.
“Hello again, Dave. I’m afraid as usual, I have so bad news. With your new return to Earth it seems to have further drawn in those monsters. And it appears you’ve had no luck in rembering any of our conversations in your waking world,” Santa said. I did my best not to let the scene of Santa Claus on a beach distract too deeply.
“No, I haven’t, and we already have a ton of problems going on. I wish I could add yours to the list, but I’m not sure how to. The mont I wake up, this is all entirely gone,” I said. This was a serious problem, but I had no way to solve it or even work on solving it.
“What about that strange black box over the ocean? Could that help?” Santa asked, pointing one of his jolly fingers toward the water. My eyes followed where he was indicating, only to spot a giant, familiar black ssage box that was usually only in my mind.
Corey: Dave, what is going on? There is another presence in our link.
Dave: Corey, are you asleep? Do you sleep exactly?
Corey: I relax my ntal state and go into a lower thought mode. I do not shut down like most species, nor do I dream.
Dave: Perfect. I think that ans you’re the solution to this giant problem.
Corey: What problem is that?
Santa: The potential invasion of your universe by monsters from beyond.
Dave: You can ssage here as well?
Santa: Apparently. Can most people not?
Corey: No, this should be private. I do not understand how you are able to speak here.
Dave: When I had my out-of-body experience, I made contact with this entity, and it must have tied us together in so fashion. That isn’t important right now, though. Corey, you need to tell everything about this conversation. Including that I’ve t him twice before, once in my father’s form and again as a clown.
Corey: Do you trust him?
Dave: I think I do, yeah. He believes he used to be a person who experienced sothing similar to what I did and that there are so sort of shark-like monsters being drawn to Earth. Tell all of this when I wake up.
Corey: Understood.
Santa: This has all gotten very interesting. I almost feel like a human again. Does that an I was human?
Dave: That too, Corey.
Corey: Understood.
I rolled over in my cot as I started to wake up. The sll of breakfast wafted in from the house. Why was there already a chat ssage from Corey? I quickly read through its contents.
Dave: And you’re entirely certain of this?
Corey: Yes, it was real.
Dave: Great, let’s keep this to ourselves for now. I want to talk to Elody about it in private. Everyone else has enough to worry about.
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Corey: Understood.
As I climbed out of bed, the temptation of eggs too great to ignore, I wondered how hard my dream self had been fighting to try and make my awake self rember. How did that even work anyway? Was it just my subconscious, or were there entire mories tucked away inside my head that were refusing to make themselves known? I wasn’t sure I particularly liked either of those possibilities.
“Morning, Dad, surprised it took you so long to get here, but I saved so eggs just for you,” John said as I entered the kitchen, spotting him doing his best to clean up what he could, the destroyed sink greatly impeding his progress.
“Yeah, I had so weird dreams. I may put up a good front, but the anxiety is still there strong,” I answered, giving him half a smile, hopefully hiding so of my own insecurity about everything.
“So about mom,” John started while I was pilling the remaining eggs onto a plate.
I cut him off, wanting to speak there first. “I did a lot of thinking about that while I had so ti, and I want to try to find her first. Since we’re all heading out to see how bad Earth is, we’ll do so search and rescue of where she was, and from there, we can tell your sister if we can’t find her. Sound good?” I asked after giving my plan, trying my best to sound hopeful. It wasn’t a feeling I totally shared, but Laura deserved, at the very least, an attempt to find her.
“That’s actually what I was hoping you’d say,” he sighed slightly, seemingly glad for my answer before continuing. “And on that sa note, how do you think what’s left of the world governnts are going to respond to this? To you, for that matter?” I had been avoiding that line of thought. So I took a few bites of egg before responding.
“I honestly don’t know how they’ll respond to . I doubt anyone is just going to roll over and accept my rule, and I really don’t want them to anyway. I’ve never been great at the whole politics ga; that was always your mother’s area of expertise, but if I had to guess, initially, there’s going to be so much chaos to handle worldwide they’ll have their hands full in the imdiate future. After that, we’ll see,” I answered as best I could. I purposely left out the fact that eventually, whether they wanted to or not, the whole Earth was becoming part of the Spiral, and we would need to present a united front before it was too late.
“Dad, what happened between you two?” John asked suddenly. I felt the panic grip my stomach, and I almost dropped my plate. For a split second I was there again, the day Laura had told she wanted the divorce. I shouldn’t have been so blindsided by it. I know that now, but at the ti, it was like being hit by a truck.
I forced in a deep breath and started answering. “So, when my parents died, I went deeper and deeper into a shell. I kind of withdrew a lot from the world. You didn’t really experience before that, so it was probably hard for you to see the change, but it was there. Your mom tried to help . She did her best. It wasn’t her fault. Eventually, she couldn’t take it anymore, and then I made everything worse by running out here and almost losing you guys,” I answered. It was a very abridged story, but considering it had taken years and mostly moved at a snail’s pace of small events, it was best told this way. The simple reality was that I had gone into a deep depression and was totally unwilling and unable to start my climb out of the hole.
“Oh,” was all John said back, looking at with both pity and sadness in his eyes.
“It’s alright, let’s change the topic. Too much to do to dwell on things we can’t change,” I said, finishing off my plate. John nodded, though not looking entirely convinced. “Oh, since you’re officially in charge of stocking, I think it might be best you draw up so plans for a kitchen remodel.” I figured that would help take his mind off it.
“Not a bad idea. You’ve got a ton of space outside we could add on with. As long as none of the building disrupts Cecile’s plantings, he might kill us for that,” John said, finally returning to a smiling face. Poor kid, I wish he had inherited less of my anxiety.
“The real question is if Cecile’s plants can kill us. I’ve had so surprisingly painful encounters with several overly mobile plants recently in my life I’d rather not repeat here,” I said as I left the room, leaving John to dwell on just what kind of creatures I had encountered, hoping that added to his distractions.
“Ah, good you’re awake.” Pryte’s voice called from the living room as I left the kitchen. He set down whatever he had been reading and looked up at . “l wanted us to start the etings as soon as you were ready to go. We’re starting with just the three of us.”
I sighed. It was ti for a different conversation with Pryte before we found l. “So, rember when we first t and how clueless I was?” I asked the small man, trying to make a point very clear to him.
“I do,” he answered.
“Consider that when I ask the next question, as I’m still more or less there. I’ve had months of exposure to only a tiny subset of the Spiral compared to your apparent millions of years. From now on, I want you, alongside your other duties, to be my official explanation guy. Tell how things are supposed to be and how bad or good it would be if I decided to do them differently. I also want you to answer anything I ask as though I know nothing about the topic. Does that make sense?” I asked, hoping he understood my intent, as I wasn’t sure I had explained it perfectly.
“That sowhat was already my role, but I understand. You need to be a bit more hands-on with leading you. That alone is a pretty big difference in most of the rulers, especially the older ones. Though so newer factions will appreciate it more. How about we start taking so ti out each night as ti allows for a few lessons?” Pryte explained before making the offer. It seed like a good idea.
“Yeah, I’d like that. Alright, let’s go figure out these etings with l,” I said, feeling a bit more reassured about the day. I was glad Pryte understood my real plight here, a lack of information.
Who is the oldest being in the Spiral? It’s a question I’ve long wished to know the answer to, but I’ve realized my question was flawed. It only pertained to the Spiral itself, and in that eternal darkness that exists outside of the connected universes live so many beings fully aware of the Spiral and older than ti itself. So then, my new question is which being can rember the most of existence, and will they talk to ?
Grom’s Musings
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