Alternative Universe
A Haven from Heaven
“I need to pick thy brains,” Rupert announces to the shaman; “On the nature of the matrix.” He waves a ruffled sleeve at the flames. “Take this electromagnetic substance called fire, for instance. We’re agreed that it’s a form of plasma, aye?” The shaman nods as they stare at dancing flares of infralight. “The fourth estate of matter,” he agrees. “Like electricity - the most excited vibratory state of chaotic order that intermingling vorticles can customarily maintain for any length of time in a three dimensional matrix. Vortexes,” he amends, and Amber catches his eye as she nestles beneath the wing of his overarching arm. “There are more than four states in which matter can form,” she informs him. Rupert inclines his brow in her direction. “Of course,” he agrees with an amiable leer. “There are Bose-Einstein condensates – that means there are five elemental states…”
“And more,” Amber avers. “There are also condensates of fermions, and…” The earl interrupts her again as his eyes crinkle with faint surprise. “Let’s get back to that later,” he insists. “The heretic you’re sitting next to has developed some more basic but nonetheless interesting ideas…”
“They’re really just extensions of classic theories,” Ram’yana objects. “Supposedly outdated ideas that have…” The earl interjects once more; “He calls the nodes that atomic nuclei occupy ‘vorticles’, Rupert explains, “and insists that so-called ‘protons’ and ‘neutrons’ are made up of the same beasties as what we call electrons, simply arranged into certain specific geometric patterns. He maintains that particles are actually nothing at all - just spinning vortices of aether – and that matter is continually being spun from nothing.”
“The aether could hardly be called ‘nothing’,” Amber objects. “The aether is everything.” She crosses her legs when Rupert’s eyes follow the long lines of her slender curves. “Ah,” the earl says as he nudges the shaman in the ribs. “You seem to have found a willing convert…” He continues before Amber’s downcast lips can form another objection; “He says that each particle – pardon me, vorticle – is a tiny mirror of the entire macrocosm, of the entire universe…”
“It’s in the nature of a hologram,” the shaman insists, “that every part contains and refracts the whole. As the universe is a hologram within a multiverse of holograms, each tiniest part must contain an image of the whole; as the poet said, infinity resides in each grain of sand and every drop of water...” He holds the hashish up in the firelight before sniffing the chunk judiciously. “Local,” Rupert informs him. “But they do a pretty good job around here these days – they don’t use acetylene baths or anything like that any more; Dutch water method…” His eyes follow the sparks up to heaven and he stares at the slowly wheeling stars.
“Where were we?” he asks the Pleiades with serious intensity as the crowd bursts into a spasm of guffaws. “Oh yes - to say that everything is a mirror maze within a mirror maze is a rather narcissistic view, surely?” The earl’s inquisitive declaration is emphasised by an eloquent flourish of a silver-ringed hand. “But I suppose we’re all looking at reflections…” He mimes the act of holding a hand-held mirror to his face and peers through the imaginary looking glass at the pink-rimmed stoned eyes of the oriental woman; “…and amusing ourselves with stories…”
“We are all reflections and refractions of each other,” Amber murmurs as she slides against Ram’s side. “Everything is mirrored in everything else – it is surely obvious that…”
“Indeed,” Rupert interrupts, nodding as he slips the imaginary mirror into his jacket. “But I wish to discuss something else entirely – hear it from the horse’s mouth, so to speak…” He winks at the shaman prince and flips a cigarette into Ram’s hand. “Please use this,” he insists. “I can’t handle rollies with hash any more; it’s a taste I’ve unacquired. Don’t look at me like that,” he frowned. “At least I didn’t say a ‘horse’s ass’.”
“More of a cross betwixt horse and donkey, I suppose” Ram’yana mutters as he crumbles the hashish into his palm. “A mule, if you prefer.” Rupert’s eyebrows rise with the corners of his moustache. “A fertile hybrid, from what I hear,” he observes while the shaman stares into Amber’s eyes. “How many sprogs hast thou sired to date – or does the easygoing Lord’s Deathwatch have no idea?” Ram turns to face his insouciant smile with a carefully neutral expression.
“Never mind,” Rupert laughs, flinging a packet of king-sized papers into the shaman’s lap with a flip of his wrist. “I shan’t compound thy embarrassment in front of thy lady – back to my query, dearie, before it sails right out of my mind. Ye reckon that the quantum foam – you know, the infinite sea of possibility – is continually twisting between different time streams and universes, and these ‘vorticles’ of yours only manifest here at certain stages in their multidimensional rotation?”
“Aye,” the shaman nods. “And when they’re arranged in certain configurations – internally symmetrical Pythagorean solids, for instance…”
“…they manifest as what we laughably refer to as atoms, yes, yes, I’m aware of that; parts of thy ‘vorticle’ theory have been expressed in similar ways by others over the last century, as I’m sure thou art aware - but does that not imply that gateways to other dimensions and alternate realities exist everywhere?” Rupert fingers his moustache. “Canst the connexions be tweaked, dost thou think? Can we focus the innate proclivity of the energy field to take us to other places – other timespaces?”
“Aye,” Ram repeats. “The theory is partly designed to explain my ongoing observations of such transmigrations – and of our continual unaware participation in them; we shift universes all the time without noticing. Focus, concentration and tuning can deliver specific results; but an individual’s transition to a parallel material plane more commonly occurs only in moments of extremis, or at specific locations in timespace. Focus – and a new locus - can also be achieved by creating a tuneable lens, of course…”
“Like a Tardis,” Rupert nods, “or a flying saucer-shaped lens - or a correctly charged and aligned magic circle or sacred site. People have been known to do extraordinary things in unplanned moments of death-defying ingenuity - but do ye claim that we can make the transit voluntarily?”
The shapes and images that Rupert describes flit through Ram’s mind as the earl speaks their names amidst an abounding field of synchronies. The tripping shaman watches the world in his peripheral vision and listens to the responses of universal consciousness, manifesting as interpretable words and interpenetrating sounds in reaction to their conversation. The thought-forms evoked by the earl’s magically mundane syllables circle the stoned gathering and alter the course of the orator’s spiel. “Let the rich bastards have their bases on other planets,” the dreadlocked preacher declaims. “Let them all piss off and leave Jah’s good green Earth to the sons and daughters of men and women…”
“Gaia’s Earth, you mean,” yells the same woman who’d earlier cried out an objection. “Ah, the Great Mother Gaia - the first of the titans,” the performer declares with another sweeping bow. “And you know how the gods conquered their titanic rivals and left them to rule over the planes of limbo …”
“Remember the fifth state of matter,” the shaman states as catcalls deride the speaker’s summation. “You can’t see the sap for the trees!” a heckler cries. Rupert laughs. “As in earth, water, fire, air - and spit?” he enquires. “Or is life the fifth element?”
“Aye,” Ram’yana agrees. “And the lens,” he declares as his fingers squeeze hash and tobacco together. “The all pervasive consciousness that brings the rest into focus; and in the fifth energy state all particles achieve simultaneous resonant coherence…”
“Ah!” Rupert claps his hands. “Of course – we return to the infamous Bose-Einstein condensate – and to lasers and masers! But can a living being achieve such a coherent state voluntarily?”
“Voluntarily?” the shaman echoes. “Aye,” he replies, “Everything is alive, and we transmigrate all the time; almost every single night we transform our location in timespace and emerge into a completely different continuum. Whenever we pass beyond delta-wave deep sleep - when all thought stops and we drift to the centre of the cyclone – we merge and emerge into a different universe.”
Ram’yana marvels at the way the words trip from his tongue, fully formed and readily present with a will seemingly all their own; he wonders whether the pellucidly lucid stream flows from a deeper source than the mere mental parroting of his old ingrained ideas – from some prepossessing spirit or an enlargened version of himself, who communicates with the land of the living through the conduit of his blown-open being. Rupert’s brows knit together as he squints at the shaman and purses his lips; the astrological symbol of the constellation Virgo is clearly inscribed on the man’s forehead, writ in the transient conformation of his wrinkles.
“Whenever we arrive in a new world the differences are usually so minor we relegate them to the backburner of our minds, if we notice them at all…” Ram continues; “…and we promptly forget any inconsistencies as we integrate with our familiar new surrounds. Can we have any real idea of how many universes there are in an infinite multiverse, or how many infinitely minor shadings of difference there can be?” He pulls another paper from the packet and quickly continues, to keep up with the chain of interlinked thoughts that rapidly unreels from the capstan of his memories – or from another source entirely.
“Usually the differences we awaken to are so minor we barely notice them at all – the pattern of a lawn, the placement of a single tree in a forest, a misplaced boulder on a sandy beach... or an altered phrase in a well-read book. Most people don’t concentrate on the world around them enough to consciously notice the changes; being here now in the realm of the senses is a very rare experience for most domesticated primates. It takes a great deal of focused concentration - or a spontaneously desperate act of will - to bring about larger changes; ones you can’t fail to notice or easily dismiss.”
“Naturally,” the earl agrees. “Traditionally, it takes the sort of hyper-aware desperation produced by near-death trauma,” Rupert muses as he retrieves the packet of papers from the shaman’s knee. “But I was thinking of something else… a way of focusing the matrix to bring about specific changes…”
“Images are stored in the substance of the world by intently focused will or strongly held emotion,” the prince reminds his interlocutor. “And any supremely intense act or feeling will fix more than mere visions in the dreaming mind of the multiverse.” He continues to mull hash into the dry shards of cigarette tobacco. “An orgasm will transform the universe just as surely as less pleasant but equally impassioned intensities. The key - or the doorway - ye so obviously seek is probably best fulfilled by Tantra.”
He strokes his beard into a sharp point and the heat blazing from Amber’s body rivals that of the leaping flames when he meets the earl’s watery blue stare. “In any case, we always carry the weather with us,” he declares to the older man. “This is the best of all possible worlds, after all – otherwise we’d be having this conversation somewhere else right now, wouldn’t we?”
“I see where you’re coming from,” the ginger-aired noble nods with amiable enthusiasm. He fixes the prince with a steely eye. “But where art ye going when the shit hits the fan, eh? Dost thou want to be here now when the Trump of Doom splits air and earth with its booming tune?” His eyes flicker between the mage’s dilated gaze and Amber’s sultry glare as he revels in his rhyme. “Wilt thou both mate and fly, a metamorphosis of angels making love in the cyclone’s great unblinking eye?”
The shaman’s fingers entwine with Amber’s atop the flaming pit of her lap and he passes an elongated and perfectly formed joint to the earl. “The fat lady is still only clearing her throat,” he declares, “and the result of the race is hardly a foregone conclusion.”
“This species is incapable of evolving,” Rupert demurs as he twists the white cylinder between thumb and forefinger. “They stopped doing that when they started wearing clothes and counting their babies’ fingers...” He gestures toward the moonlit rural scenery that has so recently replaced a once-mighty primordial Eden; “…and burning down the trees that gave them life. How canst thou save the world when so much of it is surely lost already – or is it possible to bring about global resurrection, or even bypass the coming cataclysms entirely?”
Ram’yana peers over the glowing sheen of Amber’s jet black hair as she smiles into the fire. He holds the other man’s stare through the rolling waves of their concordantly hallucinating awarenesses. “The best way to avoid such painful junctures is to concentrate on something else entirely – a far more pleasant and wonderful future - and give the spinning world another vector to turn toward. The Sun’s course isn’t fixed, but malleable; Sol surfs the tides of the luminiferous aether, and the state of the swell can alter the artistically chosen path of the shepherd - and his devoted flock of planets.” The tripping hippy surprises himself with the vigour of his spontaneously erupting rebuttal. “And the aether is mindstuff itself! Surely ye recall - it was demonstrated back in the ’80s that focusing a tiny fraction of collective human consciousness can alter the frequency of sunspots…”
“Aye,” Rupert agrees, “There was that group that meditated on peace and the heart chakra and the Sun all at once, who got together every month, all over the world. What were they called again? ‘Group 13’ or ‘Club 31’ or something? But no-one’s doing it any more, are they? We’re all on a slippery slope toward cataclysm – and arma getting’ outta here!”
Ram’yana swallows to moisten the crackling husk of his throat before the stream of words erupts from his mouth anew; “The time of changes may well be near, but cataclysms are powered by fear; alternative paths await those who steer brave vessels toward safe seas more clear – the blessed haven that’s held most dear in the hearts of all who sail there from here.” Ram’s palm presses against his breastbone as Amber’s eyes widen in the firelight as he pauses for breath. “The wheel must be turned ’fore the bend is approached, not after the future’s already been broached.” He gasps; the little ditty had come from nowhere and beyond, and its meaning departed the tripping hippy’s mind almost as quickly as he uttered it. “Never mind…” he mumbles as he licks the next cigarette paper.
“Neverland?” Rupert says from the smouldering base of a rising cloud of smoke. “So we all partake of this cosmic mirror-maze of self absorbed narcissism - compounded by a Peter Pan complex, eh?” Amber pulls her knees up to her chin and turns to regard the grinning earl with a faintly disdainful expression. “Dreaming of Neverland is preferable to megalomania compounded by overcompensation,” the feline woman purrs; her broad smile doesn’t extend to her extraordinary orange irises. “I was wondering,” Rupert muses as he tears his eyes away from hers; “How cam’st thee by this little theory? I haven’t seen its specific ilk in any of the science fiction I’ve read, and the idea of these multiversal gearbox connexions seems to join the dots between various current theories… although the notion that particles are vortexes instead of spheres certainly isn’t new; it goes way back, at least to the time of ancient Greece…”
“Way beyond,” the prince agrees, “It lies in the dimensional foundations of Creation itself. A vortex is the geometric reciprocal of a sphere, after all; they’re really both aspects of the same crossing waveforms. I started drawing the pictures and writing the ideas down in 2000,” he muses, “just after my youngest was born; just after most of my shattered teeth were dug out of my face in a particularly excruciating visit to the dentist… but I first began to notice that the universe was malleable - or permeable - when I was twelve.”
Rupert’s guffaws threaten to drown the words of the entertaining performer as his soliloquy extends to fill the intermission between acts. “So there were twelve of you, eh? I guess that makes you a schizophrenic, too. No, really,” he reassures the frowning woman at Ram’s side, “I want to hear all about it; please go on. It looks like we have plenty of timespace to fill before the next band begins – and I want to see if you can actually maintain such a complexly woven thread while you’re tripping!”
“It isn’t complex at all,” Ram’yana avers. “It’s simplexity itself. The first time I really noticed what was going on was when I first visited zany old Doctor Hoffmann…”
A True Story
Continues…
From Psychedelic Water 16 at
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