i wrote to remember

the morning reflected it, and i certainly remember dreaming it, that the outsides of the spheres were like miniature globes floating in space, though confined like a bedroom, but with stars around the walls and on the ceiling and the floor, everywhere you could see. and the television screens hung down from nothing. the professors and news people talked about the problems they were having, the issues that arose from trying to understand and control “metaquasars” and “hypnogravity” and “dynamic range ballistics” - the ideas that they had in regards to hyper-space travel, intersecting wormholes and the like - i couldn’t quite comprehend. my attention was focused on the immediate problem of keeping the two halves of the sphere from connecting to each other. that problem, of course, became an immediate disaster, however inevitable, and the two pieces game together. the faux ceilings and earth faded into the space and where there was matter was nothing but space. a metallic rectangle floated out ahead of me but trying to “fly” toward it proved to be a greater problem than keeping the two halves apart. it’s very near impossible to get any sort of grip or traction or sense of direction towards anything in deep space. will is your only weapon, your only means of doing. it took all i had to make it to the platform and still maintain my grip on the orb. meanwhile i had figured the solution to this problem - destroy the orb and reset space back to a normal environment, maybe return the earth to where it belongs, at least anything to resemble that. but i had made it to the platform. that was a start. and so i tried to stand on the wobbling piece of substance, trying to steady myself under the weightlessness of an empty void, position myself in a way to give me the best opportunity to destroy the orb. and then there was another metal thing, a shelf that had grown out from a wall in the side of the original piece of metal. things becoming more things. getting bigger. so i took the opportunity. smashed the metal sphere with my hand. shattered it into tiny molecules. the earth came back. the lights came back. the monitors came back. as if nothing ever happened. all reset. and in the inside of the sphere, a tiny wire, like a plug, with a light on the end. i pulled it out from its place and swung it above my head, lassoed a metal railing on the opposite side of the field, and swung down to the stars below me.

we're working toward something here...

Matthew T. Jenson died in his sleep on Christmas morning. His remains lay wrapped in Egyptian cloth and silk upon a rosewood divan. The doctor, upon examining his limp frame, would later conclude that his passing was the result of “severe bronchial hemorrhaging brought upon by a globular roving blood clot,” though none of us really knew what that meant. Up until his sudden death Matthew’s medical records were seldom visited – he had made it of utmost priority that his health be top notch, his physical condition be of a “most superior upkeep”. The fact that Matthew was, at least to us, in peak physical condition made the circumstances of his demise that much more peculiar. We all had our own theories on the matter - Timothy believed his death to be the cause of excessive and blunt force trauma, though there were no bruises or other indications to support this (Timothy was always slightly behind the rest of us as far as smarts went, or as Margaret put it, he seemed to have “one foot off the merry-go-round,” however most of us were convinced she never really had the proper grasp of that saying) but mostly we left the speculation to the physician.

I was in the downstairs dining room when the doctor first approached me regarding Matthew. He had with him a leather briefcase which carried his tools and other items a doctor would employ. It rested against makeshift hand-cart, fashioned out of rusted metal and designed specifically for him. The disruptive clanking of the crude thing coming down the staircase preceded his aberrance. The doctor himself was dressed to toe in a peach colored lab coat, a stethoscope around his neck being the only conventional thing about him. As he entered the dining room to greet me he set his case against an antique dresser beside the table and checked the watch in his side pocket. He sneezed quite rapidly, three times, as if out of no where and I said, bless you.
“My dear boy,” he said, “my thanks to you.” I nodded and told him he was welcome. “Your manners, I must say, in a time of great dismay catch my heart with a warmth and generosity. Though surely this must be, for you, a trying thing, take comfort that it is the way of living things.”
“I appreciate your concern, doctor,” I stumbled, caught off guard at the melodic manner in which he spoke.