Chapter 5 - in which Gill pinks my Floyd

I’m having a bad dose of self-pity. It just came from nowhere. Disoriented, I can’t for the life of me work out what is wrong. I notice a beetle moving towards me. It looks like it is trying to say something. Absurd. Beetles can’t talk. Then... a buzzing in my ears.

“Your signal went down,” Gill explains.

“Er – signal? What’s that?”

Then it all comes flooding back in a flash, as they say, or a flush. I’m once again up to my eyeballs in liquid strangeness, and something in me would rather it went away.

“That’s the obliviator you can feel now. It’s guiding you to choose oblivion rather than deal with what is... You know, like the Pink Floyd song.”

This was Gill’s master stroke. I was happy to go along with the obliviator and forget all of this weirdness, but I’ve always had a soft spot for Pink Floyd, don’t know why – maybe because I’m a tad gloomy, and so the song she is referring to pops into mind: “Comfortably numb” I chirp, as chuffed as a schoolboy who’s correctly guessed the triple-points bonus question.

“Well done,” Gill smiles, evidently pleased to see her ruse has worked – that I’ve not gone the way so many choose – back into easy forgetfulness – we do so hate being confronted with strangeness, you know.

Well now my spirits are soaring – talk about mood swing – you couldn’t stop me if you tried. “No, Gill, I’m not the kind to take the soft option. I laugh in the face of danger and face difficulties without flinching. But the obliviator you referred to – is it a sentient being?”

“You could say so... in any case, it’s the obliviator that ensures no one gets back to Faery unless they’re ready to do so. They just blank out and reset in 3D reality.”

“Oh... And Faery...?” I press on, still far from clear what it might be, other than some kind of fantasy world beyond our own.

“Faery is...”

Gill pauses a moment as if searching for the right word, “... the unedited version of what you call “reality” – it’s broader, deeper, faster, fuller and...” another pause, “trans-dimensional.”

Well, if you’re anything like me, words like “trans-dimensional” aren’t going to fire your cylinders. I’d have glazed over by now under normal circumstances, but either the unappealing image of an obliviator snapping at my heels or the sudden pick me up mysteriously delivered by Pink Floyd makes me more receptive to Gill’s heroic, but near futile attempt to explain what Faery encompasses.

Sensing this she tries another tack. “Your version of reality is heavily redacted and badly distorted.  It’s easily controlled and manipulated because its flow has been restricted artificially, like a dammed river regulated by sluices. A cross between a machine, a work of art, a science project it’s both wondrous to behold yet diabolical, and though appearing to be realistic, it is no more “real” than the dreams you see at night.”

I don’t know about you, but I’ve never had a lot of sympathy for the “life’s just an illusion” crowd. It’s always seemed real enough to me, and falling out of bed onto a cold hard floor has always felt a lot more real than dreaming the same thing a few minutes earlier, so as you can imagine, I’m fairly lukewarm, tepid even, in my response to what Gill is saying. To her credit, she isn’t overly discouraged by my lack of faith and continues calmly:

“In your current version of reality humans seem to rule the roost. You tend to dismiss as inferior all other lifeforms. Likewise your planet is thought by many to be the only one of consequence in a vast universe. Faery changes this. It restores you to oneness with all life in one fell stroke, not by fancy magic tricks or technology but simply by untangling and reconnecting the threads of that which is.”

“Er... that which is what?” I think to myself.

“Not “what” but “is” – the natural state of being – what I call the “isness” of Be...”

I cannot help but sigh - the mind is wheezing and labouring so:  “Isness of Be? Is there no way you could be more specific Gill? I don’t do philosophy, you know.”

I told you we’re wasting our time, Chumba Wumba butts in, unable to contain himself. What do they teach these Earthlings in school? I expect they start with the mathematical fallacy that 1+1=2. Well, if that’s the case you can hardly blame Roger for being so slow on the uptake. I...