Gideon McGee's Dream: Chapter Five

Simon felt the thrashing before he heard the screams. It was a gurgling sound he heard first, as though someone was drowning. Then came a howl of terror. Simon threw off his covers and jumped the six feet to the floor, landing hard on his heels.
“Gideon!” Simon said, shaking his shivering brother. “Wake up. You’re having a bad dream.”

“What?” Gideon asked, gradually awakening from a deep sleep, and realizing he had been in the middle of a nightmare.
“Come on...” Simon shook his brother again. “Wake up. You’ve had a nightmare.” He wondered what junk food his brother had eaten to cause such a reaction.

It was two a.m. Sunday morning. The room was as black as a Kentucky cave at midnight. Gideon could hear and feel his brother, but his body was formless, blending with the color of night.

“Man! I’m freezing,” Gideon said, his body shaking as though he had gone for a swim in a glacier-field lake. “Why is it so cold in here?”
Simon felt the goose bumps on Gideon’s arms, and had he not been in the same room with his shivering brother he would have sworn Gideon just left a meat freezer. “That must have been some dream,” he said. “I’ve never seen you like this before. What happened?”

Gideon stopped shaking for a moment as he tried to remember. “I was falling through a funnel that looked like a tornado. It was blacker than the pupil of my eye, and cold, so cold.” His shivering increased.
“It was just a dream,” Simon said, trying to soothe his brother. “Go back to sleep now. It’s over.”

Simon tucked-in his still-shivering brother, then felt his way to the linen closet in the hall for an extra blanket. By the time he returned Gideon was asleep. Simon covered him with the blanket and went back to bed.

* * *

By the time Gideon McGee woke up five hours later he had largely forgotten his dream, but an unsettled feeling lingered, a sense of foreboding. The January warm-snap continued, but did little to diminish the chill that remained in Gideon McGee’s bones. It was like a cold virus that nothing could touch but time. He needed to get out of the house, and when Prudence asked to join him for a walk in the woods, he accepted.

“You’re being really quiet this morning,” Prudence said as they entered the path through the woods to Round Pond. “You haven’t said a single mean thing to me and it’s almost noon.”
“You talk too much,” Gideon said, wanting more to listen to the crunch of the dead leaves under his feet than to his sister’s voice. He was glad she was with him, but needed the silence. He didn’t know how to say that, so he had snapped at her instead.

“There’s the Gideon I know,” Prudence said, scrunching up her face at his response, but out of his line of sight.

Gideon was tired. Prudence could see it in the slump of his shoulders and the downward cast of his eyes. His inner world reflected itself in the way he carried himself in the outer world. Gideon McGee was tired of complaining. He was tired of feeling that life was nothing more than good luck or bad luck, and that his was usually bad. He was tired of seeing his life governed by the whims of others. He was tired of all these things, but didn’t know it. What Gideon McGee knew was that something strange was happening to him, something beyond his comprehension. As he walked with his sister to Round Pond he felt like a marionette, and wondered who the puppeteer was.

The ice from the storm of a week ago had long since melted, and the woods were dry and brown, deep in their winter hibernation. Round Pond, looking like a perfect circular diamond, loomed before them. Prudence broke into a run.
“It’s so beautiful, Gideon. Come on,” Prudence yelled in a voice filled with the wonder and excitement of a ten year old, a voice that indicated no awareness of the critically thinned ice.

By the time Gideon snapped out of his dark brooding Prudence was at the edge of the ice-covered pond, and fear grabbed her brother by the throat.
“Get off the ice Pru! Get off! It’s too thin!” Gideon screamed. He broke into a run, his legs turning faster than he thought possible, while his sister glided to the center of the pond.
“Don’t be silly,” she yelled. “Look! It’s holding me just fine.” To prove her point Prudence McGee began jumping as if on an invisible pogo stick. On the fourth jump she disappeared.

Gideon dove belly first onto the ice as though thrown by an invisible hand. He slid twenty feet before coming to a stop, still thirty feet from the black hole through which Prudence disappeared. He snaked forward on his belly, spreading his weight over a larger area, and reducing his risk of falling through. Prudence’s head popped above the surface of the ice like a fishing bob, a look of terror frozen on her face.

“Gideon!” she screamed between coughs that sprayed the air with forty-degree pond water. Prudence managed to get her arms onto the ice, but the cold water brought on a sleep-like state that turned her spindly muscles into oatmeal. She was too weak to save herself. Only her eyes reached out to her brother.

“Grab my hand, Pru,” Gideon said, extending his straining arm toward her. He was plastered to the ice like paint on a wall, flat on his belly, and uncaring of the danger he was in. Prudence was too weak to speak, but her eyes spoke for her. Gideon knew the look, for he had it in his own eyes only a few short hours ago as he spiraled down a dark tunnel in his nightmare. The memory flooded him with a will to succeed.

With an effort, he thought only his older brother could muster, Gideon grabbed hold of Prudence’s small cold hand. From his position he didn’t have the leverage or the angle that would allow him to pull her out. He had to stand up.
Gideon heard the low-pitched growl of cracking ice, and time stood still as he saw himself plunge into the black water of Round Pond. With a presence of mind that seemed not his own, he realized that time was short and that his sister's life depended upon his quick and decisive action. As his head resurfaced, Gideon McGee grabbed his sister by the waist. He gasped for air, and with a prayer on his lips he threw Prudence out of her watery grave and onto the ice.

“Stay on your stomach, Pru!” Gideon screamed. “Crawl to the near-bank and get help at the fire station. Hurry!”

Gideon attempted to pull himself out of the water, but his weight was too much for the thin ice to support. His body grew numb, and his mind weary. Thick winter clothing, soaked with ice-water, sealed his fate. Gideon McGee’s mind drifted between reality and dream. The world slowed down, as though he and all that he surveyed were part of a slow-motion movie. His voice dragged like a tape on a Walkman whose batteries could no longer hold a charge.

“Hurry...Pru...” The words oozed out like cold molasses, his mouth numbed like the rest of his body. Novocain could not have done a better job.
The sun’s light began to dim as though a full eclipse was in progress. As the last of the sun’s light faded from Gideon McGee’s mind, he saw his sister reach the bank and race toward the fire house a hundred yards away.

Gideon felt nothing. A peace came over him as he slowly sank to the bottom of the shallow pond. Ten feet above, like a halo, stood the hole through which he fell. Suddenly a light appeared. Could it be that his rescuers had arrived so soon, he thought. Then, through the opening in the ice there appeared a Being-of-light that floated down toward Gideon’s still body.

“Do not be afraid, Gideon,” the Being-of-light said. He was as bright as a thousand floodlights, and difficult to look at.
“Who are you?” Gideon asked, surprised at his own calm until he noticed he was floating beside the Being-of-light, breathing easily, and looking down at his body.

“My name is Zacharaias, but you may call me Zack.”
“I didn’t ask what your name is. I asked who you are, what you are. What are you?”
Knowing that Gideon could not accept the truth he told him what he could accept. “Your people call me a guardian angel; others call me a spirit guide. The name is not important. I have been with you since the beginning. We’re a team, so to speak.”

“Am I... dead?” Gideon asked, with no more concern than he’d have when asking about the weather.
“The choice is yours,” Zacharaias replied. “No one dies before their time despite the evidence to the contrary. But before you make your decision you must accompany me on a journey. I will show you things that will make your passage through life much more bearable, if you decide to live.”

“Easier?” Gideon asked.
“Not necessarily easier, but certainly easier to bear.”
Gideon was at peace, maybe for the first time in his conscious life. He trusted this Zacharaias, whose form was beginning to coalesce within the light. He was old, but not like the old people he knew. There was a youthfulness to him like that seen in a playful old dog. But it was Zack’s eyes that won over Gideon McGee. They were the eyes of someone who no longer searches, the eyes of a man who has found what he was looking for, the eyes of peace and compassion, the eyes of knowing and love, the eyes Gideon wanted to have. And so he fell under their spell.

“Where will you take me?” Gideon asked, staring down at his lifeless body, unconcerned.
“We shall visit several realities,” Zack answered. “The first is the realm of the ‘Gatekeeper’. From there we shall travel to the world of ‘What is Good? What is Bad?’ Our third sojourn will take us to the land of the ‘Tree Clingers’, and finally, our most important stop, ‘The World of No Opposites.’”
Gideon was not completely ignorant of the effects of time on a body lying ten feet under water that was a heart-stopping 40 degrees.

“Uh...that sounds like it will take a long time,” Gideon said nervously. “Won’t my body die?”

Realizing that only a small percentage of humans understood that time existed only in their universe, Zacharaias extended his arm and pointed at Gideon’s lifeless body. From the tip of his long bony finger shot a beam of golden light that surrounded the body that lay at the bottom of Round Pond like a sunken ship. From Gideon McGee’s physical body to his light body ran a silver thread.
“Have no fear, Gideon,” Zack said. “Nothing shall happen to your body until you have decided to either complete your work here, or move on.” Zacharaias didn’t really need to surround his body with light or run a silver thread from it, but he knew the gesture would comfort Gideon because he had a belief in such things.

Gideon felt as he did many years ago as his mother rocked him in her arms, and sang him a lullaby to soothe his raging fever. He felt safe and loved in the presence of Zacharaias, and was tempted to have him cut the silver thread. But the vision of him in his mother’s arms reminded him that he might be able to recapture that feeling on earth.

“When do we leave?” Gideon asked.
“Take hold of my hand,” Zacharaias commanded, extend¬ing his glowing left hand to Gideon.

No sooner had Gideon taken hold of his guardian’s hand than they began rising out of Round Pond, slowly at first, but then with ever-increasing speed. Gideon looked down and saw his body surrounded by the golden light and from it to his new light-body ran the silver thread, no thicker than the edge of a razor blade.
“Is there any part of your home that you would like to visit before we begin?” Zack asked. “Your home is very large, much larger than you imagine.”
“Larger than I imagine?” Gideon repeated. “What do you mean?”

Zacharaias was a master teacher, spending thousands of lifetimes traveling the universes, imparting his knowledge and wisdom. He began his first lesson. “In 1492 you thought the earth to be flat and the heavens to be filled with seven thousand stars that you could see with your naked eye. That flat plate was your home, and the stars were out there. That was your reality.” Zacharaias pointed to the heavens that both he and his traveling partner were fast approaching.

“In your time the earth has expanded to the dimensions of a globe, and trillions upon trillions of stars, more than your computers could ever calculate, populate the heavens. Your earth is larger now, but you are more crowded than ever. You refuse to see that your real home is eighteen trillion galaxies big. You are made of stardust yet you insist upon seeing yourself as puny, insignificant beings.”

Zack held his thumb and forefinger together so that the slimmest filament of light passed through. “Come!” he commanded. “I am going to show you your home.”
Gideon floated alongside his newly discovered friend and held tightly to his hand. Suddenly his concept of speed, travel and time were challenged to the limits of his imagination. The speed of light appeared as sluggish as a horse-drawn cart in comparison to the rate at which he and Zack were hurtling through the universe. Stars, even galaxies, streaked by in a kaleidoscope of blurred colors.

“How can we be going so fast?” Gideon asked, stunned by the ease with which all the physical laws he knew were broken.
“This is how the exploration of your home is to be done, Gideon,” Zack replied. “We’re actually traveling at a snail’s pace due to your inexperience with thought-travel.”

“Thought travel?” Gideon asked.
“Yes. In the future you need only think of where you wish to be, and you are there. You see, Gideon, you continue to see yourselves as a mere hodgepodge of cells and matter that through some cosmic coincidence learned how to think. The reality is that you are a consciousness, that is to say, a mind that has learned to create a body. You are energy.

“You are much like the light bulb. What is important about the light bulb is not the glass or the filament that carries the light. It is the light itself.”
“This has got to be a dream,” Gideon said, looking back to see if the silver thread was still attached. “As a matter of fact, this is weirder than any dream I’ve ever had. Where are you taking me?”

“We’re going to the planet Moebius, in a galaxy its inhabitants have named Spiral. Next to your planet Earth, Moebius is the most beautiful planet in this universe.” Zack turned his head slightly to the left and pointed. “There it is now.”
Moebius, the second most beautiful planet in the universe, stood suspended in the black void of space, as though from an invisible thread. It was a world much like Earth in size and color. The skin of Moebius was splashed with different shadings of blues, browns, greens and whites. As Zacharaias and Gideon slowed to a more reasonable space\time speed, Moebius came into sharp focus.

“This is great,” Gideon said, feeling much as he does when around Jenny Bloom. “I feel like an eagle. How do I steer myself?”
“Just think of where you want to go,” Zack replied. “It’s a lot like flying a plane, but without the rudder and ailerons. Thought-travel is tricky at first, because you’re so used to moving across distances. You see yourself moving from point A to point B by moving across space, and by taking a certain amount of time. In advanced thought-travel no time lapses between the thought of where you want to be and being there.”

Gideon looked down on Moebius and decided to visit a kidney-shaped continent colored in greens and browns and a few specks of white that looked like bird droppings. His attention was drawn to the white, and no sooner had he focused his attention on it than he appeared directly above the snow-capped peaks of a mountain range.

“Sh...” Gideon caught himself. “I mean Wow! That was wild. Did I do that myself?”
“I provided no assistance in that maneuver, Gideon.”
“Does my body need to be...almost... dead to be able to do this?”
“No, but thought-travel will not be accomplished by the human race during your generation. You are only now beginning to scratch the surface of the potential of the right side of your brain, but even more importantly it is your beliefs that hold you back.”

“Why will it take us so long?” Gideon asked, more interested in the flight than the answer to his question.
“Because you are still operating under the old rules of your reality. Just as an infant must sit before it stands, and crawl before it walks, so too does awareness take time to develop. It is a process of experience.”

“Awareness?” asked Gideon.
“Yes, awareness. At this stage of your shifting reality your awareness is quite limited. You continue to focus your awareness on things external, and not on your self. If I could compare your awareness to your physical development, you are just reaching the stage where the infant begins to sit unsupported. But it will develop rapidly.

“You only perceive what your five senses submit to your brain. You think it is all ‘out there’ when in reality it is all created ‘in here’.”
“What else is there, though, beside what I perceive?” Gideon asked, his interest shifting from the planet to the answer.

“How about me?” Zack answered. “I’ve been by your side like stink on ...well... never mind the analogy. I’ve been with you like a shadow from the moment you were born, yet only now do you be come aware of me.”

“Why did you hang around if I couldn’t see you or hear you? I mean, what good are you if I can’t hear your advice?” Gideon noticed a large bird, unlike any he had seen on earth, soaring over the peak of the highest mountain.
“You could hear me, Gideon. You just didn’t know it was me. I’m that little voice in your head you always wonder about. Most of the time you ignore me, but there are times when I come through, like your question to Dr. Spiro about the ocean that the iceberg floats in.”

“But I never see you,” Gideon pro¬tested.
“Do you remember two years ago standing on the corner of Hazard Street?” Zack asked. “You were paying no attention to traffic, and stepped off the curb into the path of an oncoming truck. An old man with a white beard, tattered clothing and pushing a grocery-cart filled with his worldly possessions jerked you back just in time. Do you remember?.”

The realization hit Gideon like a dive into the North Atlantic in May. “That was you?” He shrieked in astonishment. “But if I could see you then, why can’ I see you all the time?”
“It takes nothing more than a glance in the mirror. You are so much more than you realize. You need only remember.”

This information stretched Gideon’s awareness to the limit. His mind felt like a balloon that was blown-up to the point of popping, and before it exploded he refocused his attention on Moebius below. The mountain range he hovered above extended from one end of the kidney-shaped continent to the other. It looked like a ragged brown and white belt made by a child.

“Moebius is a young planet,” Zack explained. “It is in the middle stages of self creation

Gideon and Zacharaias traversed the planet in what seemed an instant, yet every detail of the earth-sized planet registered on his mind. The twelve oceans running in color from black to sky blue; the ten continents, some flat, barren and sandy brown, and others lush, undulating and kaleidoscopic in their range of colors, reminded Gideon of earth. The thought travelers saw active volcanoes, fierce hurricanes that leveled the vegetation that lay in their path, lightning storms that ignited the forests, and earthquakes that split the skin of Moebius like a sharp knife.

They also saw the peaceful face of the planet; gentle waves lapping white-sand beaches under clear blue skies; lush tropical forests teeming with wildlife very similar to earth’s, and huge azure lakes upon which nested all forms of water fowl.
“There are no people on Moebius,” Gideon observed.
“It is preparing itself,” came Zack's cryptic reply. “Just as a woman’s body must be prepared before giving birth.

“Come. It is time for you to visit the Gatekeeper.”