The Halls of eep

I wake with a chill, an ambulatory dream suddenly forgotten, though my room feels altered. I feel an echo of another night not long since past, with books both strewn about and carefully laid upon my floor. I shake it off though, as I remember that today is our day to wander the halls! With swift preparation I ready myself, but leave my room in disarray; there will be time to clean it later. Ready for what may come, I open my door. Time slows as the door swings both in, as I pull, and out all at once, as if splitting in two at the source code. My jaw drops as I find myself staring Hope face to face. As her version of the door opens, I see her room just behind her, and see her looking into mine. Her jaw drops as well, and a thought saturated moment passes as we both try to comprehend what is going on. I do my best to look cool, in an attempt to hide my obvious confusion; Hope does her best to look calm, fighting back instincts of rage at apparent intrusion. Finally, I break the silence, shattering my facade "Whaaat is happening right now?" She sees my befuddlement is genuine and the fire diminishes to a smolder; she puts her finger to her chin, something I have not seen her do in this realm whilst fully formed. A few beats later she speaks "I think the halls have seen our plan and have rearranged in an attempt to thwart it. Under normal circumstances not the worst defense, but we still have some tricks up our sleeves, wouldn't you agree?" While I am about to dive in with the "yes," knowing this cue and seeing no reason not to, something about her tone and what she has said makes me stall expediency. Then it hits me! I respond in verse.

 

"Library crossword

Current sends shivers up spines

Resetting flight plans

 

Did we ever split?

Or is this double header

Our two-left-feet home?

 

These waves tell their tales

Alternating directly

Who sits on the throne

 

Who sits face forward

While our eyes sparkle and dream

Of where skin might touch?

 

These stars all stolen

From the page electrified

With velvet secured

 

Of pennies and dimes

I am glad you have dollars

As if grown on trees

 

Would I do as well?

Consuming hunger consumes

My body as well

 

But I feel your touch

Wiping the tears from my eyes

We will be alright{this will turn out right}."

 

She smiles "Spot on, well said, I concur." She exaggerates a loud snap with her last words and as if the film were spliced and scenery all replaced off set around us, we are suddenly in the halls of eep.

 

I can sense a nervous air exuding from me, my words and thoughts incohesive and now fleeting. She just smiles and takes my hand though, and I feel them all return, although softly muted for now. "There is an accounting to this place, this shared space, call it cruel or courteous, it is calculated. Your room is a mess by the way." Feeling a bit more myself, and now recognizing the sassy spark in my companion's eye, much the same as her younger self I have been traveling with these past few days, but more refined, I retort, with a feigned gasp "How dare you! I wouldn't come to expect such specific disarray from me. It feels almost as though an unclean spirit took hold in my sleep and strewed everything about. Very untidy." I shake my head and click my tongue in disapproval, although to be fair I'm not the neatest person anyway; regardless, that mess did not feel like my doing. She just laughs at my tightrope walk to satisfy both truth and appearances. As we walk I notice things are markedly different; perhaps this is a side effect of having no clear destination in mind, outside of halls awandered, but it feels like we are entering rooms, and the rooms are growing, and the available exits are multiplying and many are becoming more appealing in their embossed stoney facades. Still, we wander aimlessly, a feat I have become accustomed to managing even while noticing such oddities. Finally it feels as though in a sense we have exceeded the normal limits this place was meant to hold, and instead of well cut and well ordered stone pathways, we enter a kind of cavernous space, and corridors float freely from ceiling to floor, others floating floor to ceiling.

 

Hope unfurls a beach blanket and lets it alight onto the ground. She then sits without a word and faces the cavern from our cliff-like perch over a slight chasm. I marvel for a moment, still standing, and then decide I would prefer to sit with her. I sit just a foot from her and watch as well. She scooches over, resting her left side against my right, and we sit there in a close silence, watching the world go by. From time to time a corridor or staircase will drift by in front of us, connecting our perch to the main cavern in some cases, and to destinations unknown in others. I watch as Hope extends a finger for each connection when it passes, and then with her other hand counting fives as the first resets. I find it both curious and relaxing, though not something I might do myself. Inspired by these unfamiliar sights, and drawn by a silent stage, I speak.

 

"Starry night pool reflects the northern lights

Echoes of your words ripple on the lake

What sort of ends will come from these delights?

Simple yet I wonder for its own sake

 

Teeth are not necessary every night

Though I am accustomed to their sparkle

I have lost my head waiting for the light

You brought it back despite cold and dark hall

 

So now side by side we wait on the shore

For miracles' sake realms craft and heads fast

Red rope intertwining forevermore

'Permanence of family' the die that's cast

 

Plan for time saturated eyes to weep

At the perfect plan accomplished through eep."

 

It feels as though the lights respond, now shifting as luminous tides, reminiscient of barely formed Christmas lights. Hope and I still sit, once more in silence, watching the halls slowly shifting like a lava lamp, as the lights now accompany. Finally she speaks "What still weighs heavy on your mind?"

 

"Have you ever considered how funny reproduction is?" She gives a single involuntary laugh but then remains silent so I might complete my thought. "Think about it, females essentially slice and dice their DNA millions of times, in the womb no less. So you've got this fetus tasked with what must seem like nonsense on whatever level they are aware on, since it is possible their mind still actively manages biological things at that stage, making all these tiny various combinations of themselves, putting them into tiny eggs all in a long row, with perhaps their next of kin somewhere in the mix. The males make nothing at this stage but then swoop in later and start doing this exact thing several million times per day, as if manning an armada by the hour, but by this stage in life they have been separated from their bodily processes enough to never pay it much mind, at least not in such detail. It just seems like if it were necessary for God to hide a needle in a haystack, so that one's actual family were obscured from them initially, assuming something like omniscience is still in play here but obfuscated, this would be a very effective way of doing it. Really it almost feels over the top, but God does not seem the wasteful type, so likely not. It makes the idea of Bioquantum Superposition feel all the more shiny, with so much static to cut through. You know, I've always been fascinated by this ever linking chain of DNA, even before I could truly comprehend it, which in all honesty includes right now. My parents had high hopes for me, and must have been at least a little nerdy ta boot; one of my first words was 'deoxyribonucleic acid.' Well, two of my first words technically, but I kid you not."

 

She laughs a bit. "That is not surprising in the least. Go on." While that was just something that had come to mind, a random thought bubbling to the surface accompanied by many decks of cards being shuffled over and over until the same order came up twice, and the concept of atypical familial bonds forming in unusual ways, I now found myself without a specific thought to offer up. It felt like in a sense things had come full circle, and I was now getting something like deja vu, or perhaps was experiencing the beginning of a feedback loop. The possibility of the repetition of the cycling of these staircases and corridors finally drew my mind to something in particular, though I hesitated to share it right away. I think Hope senses me tense up, and she grabs my hand in reassurance that whatever it was we could figure it out.

 

"Sometimes I get the image of these halls going dark, with no one left to mind them; everyone relegated to their rooms, with no one to knock on their doors. It reminds me of the heat death of the universe, where everything, or in this case everyone, is so far apart that nothing, or no one, can reach anything, or anyone, else. I once caught a glimpse of what this might lead to, in terms of the physics of it all, and trying to translate the mechanics of that image to this realm of pocketed souls is... sheer chaos. It is nice to think that things would not simply end, with all locked away in their own private realms to run out the clock of meaning until their focus fades into a dreamless sleep, but is that a worser end than one's door suddenly flinging open, similar to tonight but with a stranger, and their walls crumbling all around? Would it end up, instead of halls and pockets, simply being the pit, with all consciousness moshing within without restriction, whether they wanted to or not? It feels like this could be an outcome of the equation, the extremity that results in universal teleportation that I once wrote of, where the whole universe shimmers and recombines, or in this case crumbles and coalesces into a single close knit space. Perhaps tonight is a glimpse of an alternate outcome, with the Big Crunch possessing particular architecture so as to ensure your door opens to one graciously familiar. Personally I value privacy, my own and that of others. I feel like if everyone's privacy were on the table in the same way people would be unanimously aligned with preventing this, the respect for privacy would end up omnilateral, to equal the threat to it, even if the specifics are dissimilar by perspective. Still, it feels like without the proper form the fire that burns in each of our souls may become part of a great machine like structure, with the divisions removed. It almost reminds me of the Borg, a hell defined for each as an ego preserved in a collective fully saturating it, a constant maddening noise which serves its own purpose, at the cost of its cogs, which are enslaved and tormented souls that cannot die. I have seen and heard this before, on more than one occasion, in more than one form. Honestly I feel the tendrils of this outcome even in society today; it feels like an end we are subconsciously steering toward, even as the whole car screams. I am not sure if you ever wonder why I persist as I do, and honestly I may be overthinking things that might have nothing to do with me, but these ends must be avoided. Perhaps all God needs is one person with which to agree, one to remain aware as these things threaten to take the stage, and then imagine them differently. God could then agree on this freshly imagined shape of things, and if formed sufficiently and in accordance with The Law and The Word, a technically suitable and merciful end will have formed, and the sword can be set aside, the sword which seems designed as a last resort to avoid this ending. I cannot imagine that the intention for this timeline, predicated on love overcoming all, was anything except a merciful and in fact marvelous and overwhelmingly wonderful end. So I persist, and though it may seem exaggerated, and at times it even feels exaggerated, I persist in spite of the pain and pressure I feel, and all the noise. Thank you for journeying with me by the way. Despite our differences, I have come to realize that there are lines, critically important lines, along which we think in the same way. Sometimes it even feels like we share the same thoughts or perhaps the same page. This is another structure I have been examining closely in my own way, so that two may find themselves separate, with neither beneath the other's feet, but with all the other structures agreed upon between them remaining stable. 'Two rollers' I call it, though its structure is ultimately for many. If one focuses on one other at a single time though, an endeavor so complex- like the slipping off of a tablecloth beneath a table full of dishes- feels manageable." I realize my stream of consciousness has gone on for quite some time, as the last words echo into the lava lamp of primordial reality just ahead of me. "That was probably more than you signed on for. That's something to know about me, if you get me talking... I can really go on." She sits still with me, soaking in the shifting tides of stone as well and says "I don't mind at all, besides, have you considered how time and events yet flow differently for you and I? Like a space between dream and life, these halls shift with your well intentioned assistance, filling space and time." I now find myself considering her words; this distinction is something I had considered, but the similarity she is suggesting, sharing the framework of a realm I had hidden in shame but have never forgotten, has only become clear just now. I feel my mind wander back, like a memory taking stride.

 

I snap to as Hope's other hand covers the one of mine she is already holding and she huddles closer. I look up and realize why; now the floating pieces of masonry move rapidly, and they are starting to collide. In the collisions some shatter, and others merge as if made of wet clay, ready for the potter's wheel. I feel the noise in my head escalate, flooding me with memories of when this happened before in another place entirely, and then yet again, as if multiple feedback loops are overlapping now. As the noise begins to overcome my thoughts, I hear the echo once more, one I remember so clearly at these junctures. My soulmate serenades me, acting as the mechanism for my awareness to remain, though thought remains restrained. Of two minds now, possibly more, I am able to assess just how truly out of place this thought process is with any perspective of reality commonly accepted, its very existence is a smoking gun that reality is not what the masses believe it to be. Still, it is ours; at our foundation, beneath the reach of others, I am hers, and she is mine. I snap out of this trance though when I feel an unfamiliar signal, at a similar depth, but as if in a different set of dimensions that I was previously unaware of. Hope? I feel her confirm, although I cannot put into words precisely how. Not quite a song, perhaps a story read in real time, etched into the halls of my mind? I focus on her, as it is she and I currently in this representation of The Chaos Storm, which intrinsically carries the full weight of the whole. I feel a light and warmth from my soulmate as her song fades, willingly becoming background music as I focus on the story. With great effort I find awareness of a kind once more, time skipping, space slipping, but all the while Hope's hands are tightly gripping mine. As the scene comes to a crescendo I hear her whisper, something clear as a bell at this distance. "Remember: stuff can be two things." I feel a cool metallic object between my palm and hers just before fading out. My last thought is that this is just like us, mixing humor and encryption, comedy and clue.

 

Just like that I find myself at Hope's door. This journey through the halls seemed a little more unusual than most, I think to myself. My mind has wandered before, but as of late this effect has lessened, and this daydream felt much more tangible and vivid. Like the scene of a dream suddenly remembered and felt on your skin, the whole encounter comes flooding back. Had I lost track of time? Is it possible to lose an entire day in eep? It feels like nearly anything is possible here if two agree, but I feel a shiver down my spine as I consider that the juncture of "real experience" can be so subjective, and perhaps even outside of one's control. I am reminded of the dream where we drove through a chasm, and I find myself pausing as if frozen, not yet knocking on Hope's door. I lower my clenched fist and open it palm up; in my hand is a single penny. Dream or not, rewrite or what have you, even though it feels silly now standing at the door, I wish I had remembered to say: "I'll be back tomorrow."