So, there are I am riding along on the new funky e-trike. I'm finicking with my helmet, because I'm still not used to wearing these things. There, now it's better, I hate feeling like my head can't breathe. I turn right from 100 East street and head up Parrish lane towards the mountains. I'm gonna take her up to the firebreak road and see show she rides on that big hill. I pedal up to 400 East and cross the street, continuing up the hill towards the access road. The bike is doing great, it helps get me up the hill with little issue and soon I'm on the firebreak road coasting along looking out over the valley. I ride a little ways a stop to take it all in. Feels nice up here, I dig it. That's when something hits me in the head.

 

WHAM! Whatever it is throws me from the bike and see myself flying down the hill and facefirst into the bushes. Blackness consumes me, but soon I awake with a groan. There's dirt and other various forms of matter in my mouth. Funny, I don't feel that bad as I spit out the offending material. What was that? I look around and notice that everything is so much brighter than before. It hurts my eyes at first. Damn, how long was I out? I look myself over and don't see any gushing blood, missing limbs, or digits. Well, that's good.

 

I walk back up the hill to the road where the trike still sits and standing there in front of the trike is an American Indian man, in full ancient regalia.

 

"Damn, that's a good costume, buddy," I say to him, as it is that time of season for dressing up after all.

 

The Indian man just glared at me, a face like granite and eyes of cold steel. He said nothing, just crossed his arms over his chest tight in a grumpy manner as he gazed off over the valley. I looked out over the valley to where he was looking and up in the sky was a giant vortex of purple and blues, all swirling together to a dark point in the middle. It is massive, like a planet in close orbit to us. It feel ominous and there are streaks of light coming from all over the place and flying into the vortex, swirling in with the colors and eventually vanishing in the center.

 

I looked back at the Indian man and he was now staring at me and pointing at the vortex. He nodded at me, like, "Go."

 

"No way, I'm not going in there," I told him.

 

Then he looked behind him and what once was just a dirt hill was now a cave entrance with torches on each side. It also felt incredibly ominous and nothing inside of me wanted to go in there either.

 

The Indian man pointed at the vortex again and mutter the word "Recycle", then he pointed over his shoulder and said, "Under."

 

He looked annoying, like I was supposed to know this. I needed to make a choice here, either the crazy space vortex or grab a torch and head into what I was sure was the ancient underworld. I could tell my time was running out to choose. The air around me began to turn yellow and felt hard to breath. I was getting super tired. I looked up and the Indian guy was gone, so was one of the torches into the cave. So I made the decision to follow. I had to get out of this yellow air, which was now becoming thick like chemical weapon gas. It was hard to see the torch, but I grabbed it and ran into the cave.

 

I heard a snicker, like someone making fun of me as the ground fell out from beneath my feet and I was plunged into complete blackness. I seemed to be floating, there was nothing around me, but it felt incredibly uncomfortable in here. Like that feeling of being watched, but super strong. I could not see the walls, but it felt tiny and claustrophobic to me, like being locked in a chest by your asshole friends when you were a kid.

 

I float there for a bit and decided to try and find somewhere to go, but my hands just waved through empty space. Then a voice rang out and light began to flicker behind me.

 

It was the sound of an old fashioned movie projector and a little film began to play right there in the darkness in front of me. It looked like something being projected onto a wall, but there was no walls. I saw a room full of glass beakers and test tubes, then the camera pans to an old man with a white beard and glasses. He's laughing like crazy, which annoys me because I'm not having a lot of fun here.

 

"Had enough?", the man said, still kind of chordaling from laughter.

 

"Of what?" I asked. "Can you help me get out of here?"

 

"Why outer darkness, of course!" Laughed the old man.

 

"Oh, there it is.", said the old man looking downwards.

 

Now I was floating in a carved stone chamber. Big arching stone work covered the ceiling like a giant tunnel lined with notches containing bright torches which illuminated the entire chamber. I was now standing on solid ground and below me sat a little brown tobacco pouch. What is that?

 

"You really going in there?" Said the old man. It's much worse in there, I can guarantee you."

 

I bent down to pick up the pouch. As my fingers touched it the movie vanished and I was now alone in the stone chamber. The pouch was old and stiff, it crunched in my hand as little pieces of leather fell off from age. I opened the pouch and looked it. Suddenly the smell of old pipe tobacco smoke flooded my senses. In a flash I was now floating in a dark space again, this time filled with smoke. I'm coughing and hacking, that feeling of being watched was back but a thousand times worse and it felt like the entire universe consisted of me and this tiny chamber I'm stuck in. My anxiety soared and panic began to rise in me. It was so uncomfortable. Suddenly I hear the projector again and the old man is back.

 

"You done yet?" he said.

 

"Done with what? Where the hell am I?" I coughed out in the smokey haze.

 

"With suffering, you finished now? It's been, oh, fourty or so years now. How much longer are you planning on staying in there? I don't suggest going much deeper, it's hard enough for me to get this far in. Trust me, it only gets worse from here on out."

 

"Okay, I'm done, I'd like to get out of here now!" I screamed in gasping frustration.

 

Suddenly I'm in the room with the old man. I'm a laboratory and the old man is sitting at a metal table across from me. He's laughing again, so hard he nearly falls off his stool.

 

"Why did you go and do that for?" He asked me.

 

"Do what?", I asked.

 

"Choose that, that......well whatever that was," responded the old man.

 

"Do you really think you're that bad of a person? That you need to suffer like that?"

 

"Hell, you chose that for yourself, my friend. I don't know why, but I'm glad you're done punishing yourself.", continued the old man.

 

He continued laughing as he handed me book. I opened the book and it seemed to contain a language that conveyed more than words, but entire lifetimes of experience and feeling. It was such a wonderful feeling to behold.

 

Then old man suddenly grabbed the book from me and slammed it shut, placing it back on his book shelf.

 

"You're not ready for that yet", he said.

 

"How do you know?", I said.

 

"Because I'm you. Not you right now. But you all the same," said the old man.

 

I felt a rush through my body, I knew it was true and suddenly I could see, it was another dimension of awareness. I could see myself in what looked like a giant 3rd map, living out many different lives and experiences, as me. Not someone else, but me. Each dot connected to the others creating nodes in a giant network buzzing with energy and life. I suddenly felt so small. This picture was so immense, so unfathomable. So complex but it sort of made sense. I couldn't get the whole picture, but I was given a glimpse of a higher awareness.

 

I looked at one of the nodes at the bottom and saw myself as a real low life, I was robbing a store at gunpoint, probably for drugs. I could feel the fear and panic from the other people in the store. I could feel my cold indifference to them and it felt awful. I could feel it in the pit of my stomach. Then the next node up I was a clerk at a similar gas station, I wasn't being robbed but I didn't have much life or energy to me. I just sat there on my phone doing whatever meaningless task I did day to day in my shitty boring job. It also felt bad, but not as bad as before. It felt like dead weight, music playing through a speaker covered by a thick quilt, sight through clouded glass.

 

There were an endless amount of nodes, all running at the same time. All me, like a giant server with millions of users connected to my game. But they're all me. All different, living different experiences and lives. Good and bad.

 

The old man Pat explained to me (Current Pat) that you make choices and those choices affect the network, but they are all important. It is not an issue of good and bad or right and wrong, it is everything all at once. All of these nodes in my network, which seemed to stretch the length of the universe was just one level. If I peaked up beyond just a little bit more, I could see that my entire network was just one node in another much larger network consisting infinitely. That was almost too much for me.

 

"Don't go too far," said old man Pat.

 

"It's so hard to understand it all," I said winsing in pain from looking beyond my ability.

 

"You will, I know you will, because I do and I'm you!" laughed old man Pat.

 

He then poured me a glass of green stuff and told me to drink it, that it would take away my headache. Event the glass he poured the liquid into seemed to glow with the same energy as the nodes. Why? Because they are everything and everywhere. It was a mind boggling moment that made sense at the time, but doesn't any more.

 

"Remember kid," said the old man. "Laughter, love, real connections, that's the ticket. That's what you'd call God in a way you can understand. Next time try not to beat yourself up so much. There is no reason to ever suffer as you tried to. Remember that you choose and that's the same there as it is here. "Cheers", and I winked at me.

 

And then I woke up.