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G: It was Grampa’s, too. The same chairs, the same couch, slippery horsehair, the same table model TV with the vase on top. I can’t believe I could remember it all. But you said you didn’t care about that.
E: Did you try to lift the floor?
G (after a long pause): Yes… I got it a little way…
E: What did you see?
G: Darkness.
E: The cellar, then.
G (after a long pause): I don’t think so. I put it down. The floor. It was heavy.
E: Anything else? When you lifted the floor?
G: There was a bad smell. A stink. (Long pause) Stench.
That evening I went down to the beach and Elgin was on the bench and I sat down beside him.
“Did you transcribe your notes, William?” Clicking his lighter open and closed.
“I will tonight. What was in that beaker?”
“Nothing remarkable. Flurazepam. Not even a clinical dose. Very diluted.”
“No drug would do what we saw.”
“No. But it rendered her suggestible. I told her what to do and she did it. Accessed the reality beneath the dream, if you will. Assuming there is such a thing, reality being what it is. Or isn’t.”
“What it did to her teeth…”
“Yes.” The serenity was back. “Remarkable, wouldn’t you say? Proof. The Polaroids show it, in case you think we were sharing a hallucination.”
“The idea never crossed my mind. What are you doing?”
“Now you ask.”
“Yes. Now I ask.”
“Have you considered existence, William? Really considered it? Because few people ever do.”
“Considered it and seen the end of it.”
“You mean in the war.”
“Yes.”
“But wars are human affairs. In relation to the universe, which encompasses all existence, including time both backward and forward, human wars mean no more than those you might see in an anthill with a magnifying glass. Earth is our anthill. The stars we see at night are just eternity’s first inch. Someday telescopes, perhaps hurled into space as far as the moon or Mars or beyond, will show us galaxies beyond galaxies, nebulae hidden behind other nebulae, wonders unthoughtof, on and on to the edge of the universe, beyond which another universe may await. And consider the other end of that spectrum.”
He laid his Zippo aside and bent over and picked up a fistful of beachsand and let it run through his fingers.
“Ten thousand tiny flecks of the earth in my fist, maybe twenty thousand or even fifty. Each one composed of a billion or trillion or a googleplex of atoms and protons, whirling their courses. What holds it all together? What is the binding force?”
“Do you have a theory?”
“No, but now I have a way to look. You saw it today. So did I. Suppose our dreams are a barrier between us and this neverending matrix of existence? That binding force? Suppose it’s conscious? Suppose we could defeat that barrier not by trying to go through it but by looking under it, like a kid peeking under a circus tent to see the show going on inside?”
“Barriers are usually there for a reason.”
