I didn’t like how we had left it, Kitty and I, when we parted from her bedroom doorway. I had to make it up to her, after my long departure, which was a point when neither of us were sure if we’d see each other again.

Maybe if I took her to a Dew place, we could turn a new leaf, I thought.

Dew places were those 5th-dimensional locales that sat outside of time. Infinite Earth iterations flew by the multiversal voyager as they surfed the movierain—my nickname for the multiverse. In between those droplet worlds, connecting them, was the ethereal field of the Dew. The Dew, in this sense, were the subtle mist between physical realities.

The Thunderbird Equipment Room was a prime example of a Dew place. Thunderbirds, like Bill “Big Cat” Thunderbird myself congregated at our headquarters, the Equipment Room. It contained the complete Thunderbird archives, an academy for trainees, and infinite stacks of equipment to outfit a practicing Thunderbird on their journey.

I had furnished my Drop, in fact, with artifacts acquired from the eternal Equipment Room—my healing waterfall, the stone and grass zen garden, and my back door. The Equipment Room was a wary Thunderbird’s home base, when seeking sanctuary from a long, long trip deep from the rabbit hole.

As a Thunderbird trainee herself, Kitty was well familiar with the Equipment Room. This trip wouldn’t dazzle her. We would require a more rare and sought-after destination to get back into good graces.

So the next morning, upon my return to the Cheshire after a 42-year hiatus (from my perspective), we set out for the metaphysical newspaper, the North Star.

“You sure you’re ready to leap this soon?” Kitty said in the threshold of her doorway. She was still salty and perhaps a little skeptical of my multiverse surfing capabilities after being absent for so long.

“Yeah, I need you,” I said without hesitation. “We’re going to a higher Dew place today, not any Earth version. I require your tether as we surf the movierain. Wouldn’t want to get lost again.”

I smirked after saying this. I thought a little humor would lighten her mood. It didn’t, but my appeal for her assistance at least piqued her interest.

“What Dew place?” she said.

“The North Star. I was thinking of contributing a story from my last leap. Plus, I can’t think of a better Dew locale that indexes so many 5th-dimensional oases.”

A twinkle glinted in Kitty’s eye. And we were off.

---

If the local Akashic of our neck of the multiverse had a fulcrum, a nexus point, it would be the North Star. Its canonical coverage of 5th-dimensional events latticed an ever expanding network, a growing organism of occurrence. This heightened place provided the gravitas for continuity in a locale outside of time to exist. My dream was to report for Them, and I wanted Kitty to see it too.

Dew places like the North Star made a plane like the multiverse perceptible by linear-borne entities (like earthlings). They captured the confluence of concurrence among many worlds at once. While the goal was always an objective account, each piece slanted subjectively from wherever the contributor originated—an occupational hazard of a many-world staff.

And thank god an institution such as this existed. Whenever a formerly terrestrial entity enlightened to the higher reality—that his world was but one of many—usually their first inkling was to experience all perspectives from their home world. And then experience all past peoples, and their respective points of view. The Herculean task could last endless lifetimes. But once one of these world-leaping novices caught wise to the North Star, they quickly abandoned this home-planet preference and opened their minds to the greater splendor of the multiverse.

I was thinking of submitting my latest account of Earth-42 to the hallowed monitor of our movierain. It certainly did not qualify as a Dew place itself, this lowly Earth version of my latest mortal life, but maybe my editor would send me on assignments, if he liked my style.

Extraordinary worlds, places, haunts, you see, weren’t enough to qualify as a Dew place. The convergence of events and the players involved were what mattered most. That’s why I thought a humble account of my terrestrial stay down on Earth-42 could possibly pique the editor’s interest: it was the path I took, from the ground to the heavens; it was a periscope into my firsthand account, the relationships formed in which were worth a listen to even the most divine of readers. The ensuing events contained the seeds for transcendence.

And there were more Earth versions where that came from. Maybe the editor could assign me an Earth beat. Within all the Earths I had visited thus far, I had left plants, breadcrumbs bookmarking the spacetime exit point, waiting, frozen in relative time for my return. The connections to the people inhabiting these haunts held gravitas for me to develop their respective stories in a column I had coined, “The Earths Beat.” Even in news reporting, it’s all about who you know. And I had met throngs of people across many worlds at that point.

---

I remember I had mentioned at dinner one night on the Cheshire that I was thinking of reporting for the North Star. This was a past memory, before I had leapt down to Earth-42. Ron, our spaceship’s resident skeptic, struggled to understand why this endeavor intrigued me.

“Why would you want to write about stories that have already happened?” Ron questioned my passion for journalism among a multiverse where everything that can happen had. “The local Akashic of Earth has already recorded every possible version of the planet, including every occurrence that would transpire.”

I put down my knife and fork to retort.

“You’re right, Ron—that every possibility has already happened,” I said. “They haven’t, however, been told through my specific lens from our here and now. The unique perspective I can provide to the paper on select events, in my own words, would still count as an original contribution.”

“But what’s the end goal?” he still wasn’t convinced. “So you’re like a DJ of happening that decides to select his favorite events on a newspaper playlist?”

“Everything has occurred, yes,” I continued, unwavering. “But we— you, me, the rest of the crew—don’t hold personal knowledge on all of this reality. In pulling pivotal events into our purview, our consciousness assigns them gravitas. They take on new meaning. Patterns also exist among the sea of all that is. We’re not necessarily interested in those cyclical, predictable phenomena. My goal on the ‘Earths Beat’ is to isolate miracles, the stories that transcend mundane into the extraordinary. The North Star’s ongoing search concerns these pearl Earth events that lie among all the other planetary minutia. If contributors like me can extract these gems and articulate them effectively, we may be well on our way to further elevating consciousness.”

Ron now had what could have been an entire side of beef in his left cheek, chewing on the meat and my words. He contemplated for a moment and swallowed.

“Perhaps a worthwhile endeavor, then,” he said stoically. “And how will you locate these diamonds in the rough, so to speak?”

I paused for a moment. I hadn’t considered this obstacle until Ron illuminated it to me. But inspiration struck a few moments later.

“That’s why I’ll have to live down on one of these Earths for a time, as a terrestrial. I’ll absorb Her version as my own mortal id. And when I return to the Cheshire after this earthly life, I’ll possess an entire planet’s history from which to set a course. My own personal history and that world at large—and all the events contained within the overlap—will supply launching points to pursue. I’ll forget my true identity for a time, but eventually, hopefully, frequencies will align to remind me of my higher Thunderbird soul. I can return to this planet often, after the fact, and pivot off the events naturally transpiring there. I can spin off sister worlds that explore what shape the Earth would take if, say, JFK wasn’t assassinated or if the combustion engine hadn’t taken hold of cars, instead of their original electric motor. I’ll become this version of Earth to draw inspiration upon the rich soil of Her fertility.”

Kitty, who had only been half listening to this point, suddenly piped up at the thought of my pitch of rebirth down on the ground below.

“Will you let me know when you descend down there into a new life?” she said, lilting her voice with concern for my sustained existence. She knew she was probably the only other person aboard the Cheshire besides yours truly that could sufficiently supply the necessary support, should someone venture into the risk of oblivion berthing into an Earth planet. She also knew the only proper way to approach such a daunting endeavor was to operate with a qualified leaper such as herself to act as the safety net, if anything went awry at any point down on the ground.

“Yes, yes, of course,” I said, reassuring her. Secretly, though, I knew this would have to be a solo mission. I’d have to risk oblivion to truly comprehend the full complexity of an Earth planet. I’d have to breathe Her air, drink Her water, become the Earth Herself, living, breathing, eating and dreaming as Her human child. If I left any of my former self on the Cheshire, even a mere twinkle in Kitty’s eye, I’d never fully be present down on the ground. Kitty, as a Thunderbird trainee, wasn’t yet ready for this hard truth. So I lied to protect her.

---

Now, back in my Drop, sitting with Kitty as we readied to mount our tethered leap to the North Star, I wasn’t about to make the mistake of lying to her again.

“Envision a city in the sky, hanging high in an ether as thin as thought,” I said to Kitty, as we sat, positioned as lotuses down in the sanctitude of my Drop off the Cheshire spaceship. We were mentally, emotionally, spiritually preparing for a tethered, astral leap to the aforementioned metaphysical newspaper. Kitty sat in perfect zen, hearing my words and the gentle babble of the nearby waterfall.

“The North Star is a beacon of light hovering brilliantly at a frequency so high It sits above nearly all other known reality. In other words, you can’t mistake it, once it enters into our purview,” I continued. “We’ll have to elevate a few echelons as we navigate the movierain Dew, skipping over increasingly complex droplet worlds… Are you ready?”

“Let’s do this,” she said.

We astrally leapt up into the movierain from the Drop, Kitty and I, tethered by energetic entanglement as we surfed through the Dew. Before long, as we climbed up the droplet worlds of increasing complexity, the intent of our metaphysical pursuit took shape.

“Do you see what appears to be a city in the sky in that swelling droplet on our 12?” I yelled to Kitty who kept her satellite orb in close orbit to mine. She affirmed she did.

“I’ll need to slingshot you into Its heightened reality!” I said. Dew places weren’t a simple descent like we’d drop into Earth versions. We had to step up into Its more sophisticated frequency.

I slung Kitty onto the large, sprawling, marble entrance steps to the North Star and then dismounted from the Dew to stand next to her.

“We’re here,” I said.

Kitty’s jaw dropped as she took in her current whereabouts. The hallowed Dew place that is the North Star stood as an edifice that looked as though gods built it. From human perspective, they did. The front face stretched as far as the eye could see, from left to right. Its top was lost to the clouds. The entire building held a presence impossibly heavy, yet it hung weightless among the Dew as a golden city in the sky.

We entered. I whisked Kitty down a narrow corridor that opened into the calamitous newsroom of controlled chaos. Endless desks stretched across the floor, where lively reporters dialed calls on telephones and typed vigorously on their typewriters. Countless clocks lined the walls of this vibrant newsroom, tracking the time zones of all the worlds the North Star covered.

“So much action,” Kitty said. “How can a manager keep track of all this?”

“I’m sure there’s a system,” I said. “Let’s visit the Earth archives.”

We filed down another long, narrow corridor, further into the bowels of the North Star’s offices. The hallway opened up into what I imagined how the inside of a cathedral looked. We were inside an immense dome, decorated from floor to ceiling in stained glass. The room was circular, but tough to tell how far its diameter stretched. Its floor lined with countless stacks. “Welcome to the North Star Archives,” read a wooden sign above its entrance. We quickly located the section on Earth versions, which only consisted of half a shelf.

“Hmf,” Kitty sounded disappointed. “Not a lot here.”

“Earth’s apparently not as well known here,” I said. “Let’s visit the main index over there.” I pointed to the center of the cathedral dome, where we could reference top Dew place listings.

Technically, the North Star Itself stood as a Dew place. The Thunderbird Equipment Room was also a prominent locale in this esteemed list, since it served as Thunderbird headquarters.

Others that Kitty and I recognized were the holy Twelve’s Paradise Paddock, where giant demigods assumed their megalithic thrones amidst a heavenly garden. The Twelve were so heightened in consciousness, in fact, that They hadn’t heard of Earth before Kitty and I introduced Her to Them.

A new one we noticed, as we ran our fingers down the printed ledger behind glass like the way Earth’s U.S. Constitution was encased, was the Workshop. I had faint brushes with the Workshop in my dimension leaping escapades, but had never experienced this Dew place directly.

Picture the wings of some Broadway play. The Workshop was the backstage of all 3rd-dimensional reality (including Earths). As a 3D being, like some Earth dweller, if you ever sensed someone pulling the strings behind that stage that was your everyday reality, your gut intuition was probably right. They were influencing your local reality from the Workshop.

“Let’s head to the editor’s office,” I said. “I have a submission for him.”

“Oh ya? What’s that?” Kitty said.

“Earth-42.”

The newspaper’s floors stretched wide and intricately like a labyrinth. An uninformed visitor could easily get lost. But, before long, we found ourselves at the door of the editor’s office. I held my draft for the Earth-42 story in hand.

“Come in!” I heard from the other side. The editor’s secretary must have let him know we had arrived.

The short news story I held in my right hand read like this:

The humans on Earth-42 were a species with amnesia. What a fascinating and charismatic bunch these people were. I never found my group. In retrospect, this makes sense: my family resides on the Cheshire spaceship hanging a million miles above Earth-42’s atmosphere. Still, there was much I left behind.

By the time I leapt off planet—in the 2020’s A.D.—the species had been pitted at odds with another. Sports competitions. Political races. Games of all kind had turned the local reality into a never-ending contest. But it was the people who were getting played, while the true powers at large were free to operate things behind the scenes unfettered.

Capitalism was the reigning economic structure. It boasted the illusion of free enterprise, but the reality was that the top one percent of the top one percent controlled 90 percent of the world’s wealth.

What further facilitated these centralists’ dominance was the computer technology that had infiltrated all aspects of society. When co-founder of Apple Computers Steve Jobs revolutionized personal computing with the Macintosh in 1984, and then again with the iPhone in 2008, computers and the programmers who ran them performed a coup on all other forms of control. Consolidated wealth and further dependence on technology strengthened their strangle hold on the status quo.

Earth-42 was unlike my home Earth—the planet that berthed me—in primarily this computer technological aspect. My home world had embraced more of the analog tech well into the 2020’s, when I finally leapt back to the Cheshire.

The cybernetic hyper connectedness had, ironically, isolated people more than anyone could remember in recent history. Why reach out to your fellow human, when you could just look down at a screen and receive instant gratification? We, as a collective of individuals were spread much farther apart than those golden 1980’s analog days. Ultimately, I was thankful for the tension created between tech and humanity. It supplied the innate sense that I was not of this world.

Conflict, competition and distraction kept most earthlings ignorant and stuck on the ground. The powers that be, in fact, manned this oppressive ceiling to keep the people down and them on top. Ironically, these forces so immense, they supplied the fuel for this Thunderbird to break free from their control.

Instead of fighting them, I let these forces into my center of gravity, concentrating their electromagnetic vectors into a fine point of ball lightning. Before long, the immense force redirected acted as a launch pad to finally propel me off planet and return to my Drop on the spaceship Cheshire.

The inhabitants I left below won’t miss me. But, having lived and breathed this Earth for 42 years as Her child, I can return to Her often and spin sister worlds from Her fertile foundation. I’ve left my earthly body sat in the lotus position on an Tibetan rug down in my quaint apartment, ever waiting for my eternal soul to return.

---

I handed the 500-word story to the North Star’s editor, while Kitty waited patiently just outside his office. I sat on the couch opposite the editor’s desk as he read.

After a few minutes, the editor quietly put down his reading glasses and looked up at me.

“It’s good,” he said. “I like your narrative here and how you’ve put yourself into the story. It’s certainly a unique style on world reporting. You know that this Earth isn’t a Dew place, though, right?”

“Yes,” I said. “I meant this submission as more of a writing sample. I’m hoping to leverage this version of Earth, that I’ve lived and breathed for 42 years, to find more, increasingly interesting haunts as offshoots. After covering this ‘Earths Beat’ of sorts for a time, maybe the connected latticework of stories can elevate Earths to a Dew place.”

“Interesting,” he said. “I may have an assignment for you then. I’ve caught wind that your Thunderbird Order has been experimenting with planet intervention. I believe Earth is one such candidate for this program. If you can locate the particular Earth version the Thunderbirds have nominated, I’ll want 700 or so words to cover the event.”

“I really appreciate the opportunity, sir,” I said. “When do you need it by?”

We both chuckled, as I meant this rhetorical question to be funny. For a newspaper that stood outside of time, the North Star cared little for deadlines.

---

This story emanates from the multiverse of “Big Cat,” a novel.

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Photo attribution: Kreuzschnabel, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons