The True Story of the Vortex. The Transcendence Files
by A.D. Stratu
(c) 2014. All rights reserved.
Prologue
Brock Cairn, December 1996
‘You know, Doctor
Court? Maybe...’ I pause.
‘Yes, Agata?’
‘Please… call
me Gate. Anyway, I think the problem is the cultural field I grew up in,’ I
explain.
Doctor Court
looks at me puzzled, his bald patch glistening in the soft lamp light. He is
very old. I stare at his seahorse-patterned tie. The fabric hippocampi seem to
mock me in their dumb jolliness.
I was
definitely right to rephrase the hell out of my sentence. What I initially
wanted to ask was a question about the behavioral influence of my noosphere.
‘Dreams are
the only loophole in the ironclad Western psyche. If I were born in India with
a long line of Brahman ancestors in my wake, I’d probably feel totally OK. Like
a unicorn in an enchanted forest’, I elaborate. Dr. Court doesn’t like it. To
him, my way to speak is yet another sign of my… deviances.
’I think the Vortex dreams are somehow related to my short-term amnesia.’ I continue. ‘How
come I don’t remember one single day? It’s like it was deleted off my brain by
the Men in Black! Is it even medically possible – amnesias with that kind of
selectiveness?’
I can see
he’s irritated. Of course. No one likes know-it-alls, especially if they’re
teenagers.
‘The Men in
Black?’ he asks, frowning.
‘I made a
reference to an obscure 1953 graphic novel! Not that I was abducted by aliens!’
Outrageous.
OK, calm now, Gate. He’s just a stupid shrink.
‘I think that
little comic’s got potential, though.’
How long has
it been now? I’ve been having those dreams since I was a little girl in
boarding school, after Rose, Ginger and I spent our Christmas in the woods. That
was quite a story: we disappeared, we were found on the next day, and none of
us remembered a thing.
Another mystery is that all three of us were lightly
dressed, and winters in Scotland are no mean feat. However, none of us had any
signs of hypothermia or frostbite. The 24 hours of our absence were obliterated
from our minds. Several days later, I saw my first Sol Vortex dream.
The girls
were successfully guidance-counseled back to normalcy or whatever passes for it these days. My parents still keep on
inflicting shrink after shrink on me.
Now I got Dr. Court and his nefarious
tie. Marvelous.
‘Never mind,’
he says dryly. ‘You still cannot tell me what exactly happens in the dreams?’
‘I don’t
remember the exact events’, I say truthfully, for the thousandth time, I think.
Yes, the
action is always different and always forgotten as I awake. The surroundings are
always the same. Violet oceans, amethyst and diamond rocks, majestic suns in
multicolored skies home to the Celestial Castle… talking, almost sapient
plants, ferocious predators, subsurface so rich the inhabitants carve citadels
out of precious crystalline rock… Values so different, power balances so
complex, evils so dangerous…
I call it The Vortex.
Sometimes
it’s so beautiful I wake up crying. Sometimes it’s so terrifying I wake up
screaming. And some day, when I will be able to capture the dreams, I will
write the story of it.
Right now, as
I stare at Dr. Court’s tie, I have no idea it will become the true story of the Sol Vortex.
***
16 years later
To: L.N. Axelsson <l.n.axelsson@gmail.com>
From: A.D.C. Whitcomb-Carson <info@fantasyvortex.com>
Date: Tue 16 Feb, 2012 03:05:14
Subject: A little self-analysis… please don’t be mad
Dear friend,
I know you
don’t like ruminations, but you are the only person I can possibly talk to… I
obviously can’t tell him, he’ll just
freak out and blame himself, as usual. Rose is out of the question, unless
she’s an undercover Starplayer – she fits the race description all right. I
guess I’ll never figure out the amount of lies that you guys have built around
me.
When I was writing
my Skydwellers game draft, I had absolutely no idea of how my dreams would shape
up my life, or how sharply that life – a senseless petty existence – would
mutate into something so different that I changed unrecognizably as my life was
changing.
I can say
with certainty that I am no longer the Gate Carson who embarked on that journey
of a thousand roads starting with merely a few weird dreams and a passion for
an exceptional and inaccessible man. And it still scares me.
Still, I
regret nothing, not a single moment in my beautiful, dangerous, soon-to-be-over
life. Please don’t frown. You know my time is numbered down to seconds, still
many of them, but each is murderously short.
We have a
story, though. The most wonderful story. The story that brought to life so many
things… two civilizations, my best friend, and the man I will love forever.
I wish I knew
where to start ending it… will it be the Maya who will put an end to my misery?
Thank you for
listening.
Gate
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