Under a Starless Sky

Chapter 26

Shen decided the ‘dream’ friends were right; he needed to make contact. He didn’t care if it was Other,

alien, tree spirit, earth spirits, water spirits, or Jinn. Calling ‘Typsy,’ his personal Jinn, didn’t have any

noticeable results; she was so magically and physically flamboyant, there would have been no doubt

about response. Histrionics would be understating her presence. She was to him as Q was to Picard.

She was as wondrously bizarre as a Katy Perry video. Still, he wanted contact with someone,

something, and he wanted it now. He wanted contact with a being that was at his level of

understanding or greater, who was also genuinely and affectionately disposed with kindness towards

all beings. Especially him. This latter was a reasonable caveat when tossing miscellaneous, psychic

invitations to the wind.

Lotus pose, right hand palm up resting on leg, left hand resting in right hand also palm up, and the orb

resting in his left hand, gently cupped by fingers. It glowed. He closed his eyes and his sight rose to the

top of the Sleeping Forest. He felt drawn there, without volition. He did not fight it. He had experienced

astral redirection in the past and had never been harmed, so he trusted his inner guide to influence his

experience. At least, he was hopeful he was being guided, as opposed to just being a random tourist.

He almost laughed, as if tickled; “I am the planchette and the world is the Ouija board.”

Above the canopy of sleeping trees, it was a different world. If he didn’t know it was forest top, he

would have thought it a grassy plain. It was a sea of leaves. There were even wheat fields in the sky.

There were more animal and insect life up here than he had yet seen below the canopy. To his

knowledge, very few of these creatures touched the ground- from cradle to grave, they were tree top

bound. He found it too amazing to believe that the human world was so comparatively barren, when

there was so much here. Birds. Reptiles. Insects. Alien creatures. Day or night, life flourished. At night,

it was like Christmas. During the day, it was akin to Cameron’s Avatar. Flying reptiles, dragonish,

reminded him of Anne McCaffrey’s Pern. They were the size of cats. Floating things, like balloon, Exclusive © content by N(ô)ve/l/Drama.Org.

tethered to trees. When they broke free they rose and popped and glittery, golden dust fell like a glitter

bomb. Bat like creatures swarmed the glitter trying to eat it all. The dragons ate these guys. If any of

the humans had seen the flying reptiles, then yeah, the stories of dragons would be real enough.

The thought of dragons carried him further from the forests. He found himself at sea. It was fast travel,

a blur and a turning, not too unlike the movie adaptation of Doctor Strange. Columns of rocks rose from

the sea. The tops of these columns were nests to full size dragons. They were lazy creatures, their

wings stretched absorbing sunlight. They reminded him of walrus seals, trying to own their perches,

sometimes sharing, sometimes fighting, and snuggling like a group of bats. The occasionally leapt from

their perch, dove into the water, and when they emerged, they took flight carrying bottle nose dolphin

sized fish, perhaps tuna. What wasn’t eaten or shared was shoved off- landing on nooks where lesser

birds and reptiles had their fill, or if it the water, other fish ate. This place was full of life.

From there he saw varied landscapes. Deserts. Oceans. More variety of sea life surfacing and visible

just below the sea than he could take in. A life time of categorizing wouldn’t catch a tenth of what the

astral eye was perceiving. He came across a place that reminded him of Japan’s Izu peninsula.

Waterfalls, natural arches, exotic plant, alien landscapes, pink lakes, and it was coming so fast he was

having trouble keeping up with it. He was no longer flying, but jumping from place to place.

He surfed his visions like a kid with ADHD, going from place to place at the whisk of a thought, seeing

wonders, and frightening things, and was so filled with delight, wonder, and fear that he wondered if it

were all a dream. A giant, sentient plant that ate meat! It wasn’t a Venus fly trap, but tentacles would

catch animals that wandered too close and drop it into a lotus where it would be digested. The open

lotus was a pool of acid. There were bits and pieces still dissolving. He suspected the animal inside

was a squirrel. He saw a ‘Tulpa’ squirrel- it was the spirit of the plant manifested in a way to attract

more squirrels- the last thing it had eaten. It was not only an ambush predator, but it created it’s on bait

based on the last thing it had eaten!

“Am I dreaming?” he asked himself. He frequently asked this and would perform reality checks.

“No,” came the voice. This was Oa. He was absolutely sure about that.

Shen was so startled, he popped out of his Astral meditation. He cursed himself for being so easily

frightened. He got up and walked. He was now too ‘awake’ to return to another session. There was no

apparent evidence for life above the Sleeper Trees from down here, except for the occasional fallen

fire-snake. He rationalized, ‘I am on the edge of the forest.’ If they pooped or pissed, it wasn’t

‘apparently’ reaching the ground. He could not discern the top of the trees from the ground in the dark.

Even if he calmed his mind and brightened the gift orb, he could not see the top. The further into the

forest he went, the thicker the trees became the darker the path became. They became so huge he

had to forcibly remind himself this was a tree, not a wall. There were places where it was impossible to

go further, either because the tree trunk had joined with others, or the tree was that big. He had gotten

lost several times, and if he hadn’t been able to minimally remote view the lake side home or the cave,

he might have stayed lost.

He dreamt of Loxy. It was a normal dream, not lucid, not informative- probably just a tease.

“Can you open a portal and come to us?”

“I am not in that world,” he reminded her.

“Magic is magic. Tech is tech. And I am telling you, there is no difference between the two,” Loxy said.

On his ship, he could manifest things through replicator technology. In the more magical universes,

tech was not absent, but if he wanted something, he could manifest it. “If only I had my world war two

mail bag.”

“The cloth one? With MASH on it?”

“Yeah,” Shen said.

“Is the bag magic, or are you magic?”

Shen didn’t answer. He was tired of hearing that. The ‘Secret’ was not only a lie, it was a damn lie. He

relented some. Not a lie. Just not accurate. It was complicated. It was not just about the ‘I’ I think I am,

but there was another deeper self who also had a vote in what happened. If one accepted neural

science, the conscious experience was complete confabulation and choice was an illusion, everything

experienced was hallucination. He didn’t buy that, but he did accept he didn’t have full control of

everything. Even in his lucid dreams, he didn’t control every detail. If he went into a dream New York

and looked up at all the windows on a building, some would be lit and some wouldn’t. Could he pick a

window and say, ‘lights on’ and lights come on? Yeah, but he wasn’t in charge of every detail.

Something bigger than him had him. He was the goldfish, the water was the subconscious and the

bowl was the super-conscious that held it all together.

“It’s not the bag. Any arch can become a gateway to any world. You’ve done this. You’ve lived this,”

Loxy said.

In another dream he found himself having returned home. Not origin home, but Second Home. There

were many strangers in his house, and they were watching television. Loxy took his arm and they went

to the couch and sat. What they were watching was his own life on television.

“I died and this is a life review?”

“The others are still sorting you, through Oa,” Loxy said. She ‘shushed’ him. “This is one of my favorite

parts.”

On the screen was a woman on a death bed. She was cursing him, reminding him he was never loved,

never wanted, and yet he lingered, offering only kindness. His only reprieve came when she slept. In

those moments, he quietly and tearfully nursed his wounds.

“Seriously? This is a horrible scene. I wanted to speed her own her way,” Shen said. His thoughts were

part of the movie. They were layered and hidden, requiring additional tech- like ear phones or glasses

that revealed layered captions. If he gave into the layers, he would have been mesmerized by the inner

dialogue and the depth and complexity it ran. What arrived at the surface of his inner thoughts was

hardly a tree compared to the root system that gave rise to it.

“You responded only with kindness. What you thought was well hidden,” Loxy said.

He cried. The scene wasn’t over. There was a nurse that was attracted to him, partly because of the

kindness he showed to his mother, and partly because she noticed he was hurting. Co-dependence is

a real thing; it was a better defined term than anything in the DSM V, and yet, not included because

one can’t throw a pill at co-dependence. The DSM V, after all, is about making money. The proof of that

is, they don’t give the book away for free. There isn’t an online digital reference freely available to all

that can be shared worldwide and updated as easily as Wikipedia, as opposed to having to print out

new copies every-time it’s updated. It is a contrived artifact of the gatekeepers is wish to hold power

over their domain.

The nurse flirted, he accepted, the sex was mutual, but it was dishonest. He was not interested in her

in anyway other than a quick fuck. It was also a fun fuck, in terms they had to find ways to be clever, as

she was fucking him on shift- and likely violating her own board’s ethics. It was always fast and furious

and ranged from lavatories, to closet, and even in a room with a guy in a coma. There were promises

to meet outside of the hospital, to grow a relationship, but he ghosted her.

“It was hot while it lasted,” Loxy said.

“I lied to keep the sex going,” Jon said.

“I know. I am pretty sure everyone knows. Even she,” Loxy said. Her inner captions were not available

in this movie version. “If you want a frank analysis, neither one of you were ready for a relationship.

You were at risk of distance pursuer relationship. She was on the rebound. You were in the beginnings

of your own trauma recovery. She overstepped her professional boundaries. You overstepped your

personal boundaries. There are lots of things you can find wrong in this interaction pattern. You can

find a lot of human things in this interaction pattern. It ultimately wasn’t person centered, life affirming

and relationship growing. It also wasn’t completely evil. It was, for lack of something better, just human.

Both of you were selfishly motivated, but you both offered moments of kindness, respect, and love.

Was it sustainable? No. But both of you knew that on a deeper level and you ignored that. If both of

you walked away from that with greater understanding of self and other, then that interaction was

beneficial. If either of you walk away hating the other or all people of the opposite gender, you’ve not

learned what you contracted with each other to learn. All interactions are subconsciously contractual.”

“You always find good ways to see me,” Shen said.

“I love you. You are sometimes cloaked in shadows. I am not afraid of the dark. I will go through the

shadow to get to the inner light,” Loxy said. “You’re full of light.”

Shen wiped his eyes. She kissed him.

“Jung?” Shen asked.

“Variation,” Loxy agreed. “Truth is truth.”

“Though I walk through the shadow into full darkness, your rod and staff strengthen me,” Shen said.

“Oh,” Loxy said, kissing him again and hugging him close.