One night, I was sitting in my living room on a quiet, fall evening. I was thumbing through a book I had picked up from the library—Big Cat. It was the firsthand account of a man who transcended humanity to become something greater, a Thunderbird, who could leap freely among alternate dimensions. The back cover contained a hand-drawn map to a magical place that existed on no atlas I had ever encountered. The place was called Gardanne.
I read through the book. I read it again, and again. It was a page-turner, yes, but I kept up the reading repetition because each time I completed the text, I could feel my mind, body and spirit learning the ability to leap out of this 3rd dimension myself.
At the notion I could put the text to practice, the hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. An electromagnetic orb formed from nothing inside my cozy space, seven feet from my head. It grew rapidly in diameter, and out dropped Kitty Thunderbird and her crew.
“I see you’ve checked out Big Cat,” She said. “Would you like to leap with us to Gardanne?”
Upon adopting the extra-dimensional leaping techniques, via the text, Kitty would later tell me that my existential signature had assumed a frequency for which they had been searching. I was one hopeful for citizenship in the 7th-dimensional city state of Gardanne. I obliged and soon found myself stepping foot on the lush paddock at the center of the heightened city, standing just outside the tabernacle.
“Go inside and watch the commercial,” She said. “If you like what you see, stay for orientation. If not, we’ll bring you back down to Earth.”
I filtered into the tabernacle, along with other hopefuls. I found a seat close to the front row. The commercial played minutes later, as a few stragglers clammered to find their place in a now dark theatre, lit only by what was projecting on the front, silver screen.
The commercial:
A colorful torus appeared on the screen. Earth versions erupted from the torus’s center, overflowing and then recycling back through the bottom to spring forth from its center, ad infinitum. The camera zoomed closer into the fountain-like torus to reveal that each droplet of the perpetual torrent encapsulated events down on 3rd-dimensional Earths.
“Are you sick of the endless churn of reincarnation?” said the disembodied voice of the narrator. “You are now here, outside of the grind, in Gardanne.”
A red arrow blinked on the screen, above the torus to indicate a 7th-dimensional location sitting just above the infinite churn of a reincarnation torus.
“The choice is entirely yours,” the narrator continued. “You can experience past lives regression during this respite between mortal lives. If you find there are matters left unresolved down on an Earth you once lived, you can choose to return. You can also choose to remain here, in Gardanne, a higher-dimensional reality specifically tailored for humans gearing up to move onto higher planes.”
The camera swept over the top of Gardanne, the tabernacle at Her center, and out to the periphery neighborhoods each distinct and evenly spaced, forming a five-point star. The 7th-dimensional city state featured a residential neighborhood—Gardanne Heights—that housed more permanent citizens. There was a university and city library just northwest of that. Continuing in a counterclockwise fashion, next came Gardanne’s downtown and the prominent bar, Old Faithful. The city periphery tour completed with a ballpark where the Gardanne Gnomes played.
“If you choose to stay here, you can remain for as long as you like. To be clear, we’re not heaven, but do enjoy an existence unfettered by capitalism or any other oppressive forces holding its subjects under control. We are a community, free to create, explore and expand human consciousness. We understand the shadows that human existence can cast, and we can help human souls integrate these dark forces. There’s no money here, but we operate at a higher frequency than you may be used to. Ultimately, we’re here to help you on your soul’s path.”
The commercial had me at “…sick of the endless churn of reincarnation?” but the narrator had to deliver his full pitch. “During your stay, creating, collaborating, living your life in the 7th, we’ll delve into the histories of humanity, on the Earths below. Perhaps you’ll break through some writer’s block with genetic revelations on your origins that result from these expeditions. We understand the unique challenges of what it means to be human, seeking to rise into the higher dimensions.”
The commercial concluded. The screen returned to silver and the lights came back on in the theatre. A petite woman who looked like a librarian, with hair pulled tightly back and reading glasses, sauntered out to the stage from the wings.
She addressed the crowd, “Well, there you have it. Now you know where you are, Gardanne. You either found us on your own or were selected by our scouting team. You’ve seen what we’re all about. If this seems like a place for you, please remain seated for orientation. For any of you whom this did not resonate, please follow me out of the tabernacle.”
The librarian then stepped down from the stage and proceeded her sauntering, this time up one of the aisles. Audience members looked around at each other, everyone looking to see what everyone else might do. A few—only two or three—individuals stood to follow her out of the tabernacle. The rest of us remained sat for orientation.
Next, Kitty Thunderbird walked out on stage from the opposite wing. She had just picked me up from Earth moments ago.
“I’m glad you’ve all chosen to stay,” She said. “Before we get you settled, there are several things we must discuss.”
I felt this odd connection to our current public speaker, yet I had no memory of our meeting, save the moments just prior when She retrieved me.
“First of all, this place sits on the seventh dimension,” She said. “You’ll witness phenomena unlike anything on Earth. This includes communing with beings of heightened consciousness, who don’t interact with time and space the same way as earthlings. Should you witness said phenomena, you can apply to learn these divine techniques. But be patient. Elevating your consciousness takes time, dedication and an open mind. Any questions so far?”
I looked around the room. Nobody raised their hand.
“Some things may not be easily explained,” She pressed on with Her orientation. “Again, be patient. If you should find yourself perplexed, remember to forget those preconceived notions impeding your comprehension. And See Mr. Cumulus. He may have plant medicine for that.
“Be on the lookout for your introduction in the Gardanne Register‘s ‘Oi!’ section, which stands for obituaries and introductions. Obits are also a bit different up here. Death is merely a passage to another plane. That could mean a descension back down to 3rd-dimensional Earths. It could mean a lateral move to another 7th-dimensinoal oasis. In the best case scenarios, an obit for a former Gardanne citizen informs us of someone’s ascension into realities somewhat unfathomable from our current purview. I love reading these obits the most since they could provide insight into how others who remain could ascend.”
“Have former Gardanne citizens ever returned?” a man yelled from the crowd.
“Yes, we’ve had former Gardanners return, after taking another spin down on some terrestrial Earth,” She said. “We also enjoy visitors from other 7th-dimensional realities, courtesy of the city lab’s ham radio department, who can pick up frequencies from existentially nearby (relatively speaking). But once souls ascend to higher dimensions, through the 8th into the 9th and beyond, we’ve never heard from them again. That doesn’t mean they couldn’t grace us from higher realms at some point in Gardanne’s future. It’s just unprecedented. It would be a Black Swan event.”
The man gently nodded, seemingly satisfied with Her otherworldly explanation.
“OK, any other questions?” Kitty said. No one raised their hand. “Good. You’ll see my colleagues standing at the ends of the aisles. Please follow them out of the tabernacle and we’ll get you settled.”
Then, She locked eyes directly with me still sitting. She didn’t have to say anything. I could tell She wanted me, and only me, to remain seated. I waited for everyone to exit. Kitty descended down from the stage and walked over to me.
“Everyone else is going to release past-life regressions,” She said. “We want to postpone that exercise with you specifically. Our operators in the ham radio department think you may have taken invaluable intel with you from Earth below. And we wouldn’t want that muddled with the plethora of other earthly life flooding in.”
“OK,” I said, not entirely sure what She meant but ready to find out.
I followed Kitty backstage in the tabernacle. We entered a subterranean space beneath the venue, which led to a parking garage. She led me to Her ’66 Shelby Mustang parked in a reserved space. “Get in,” She said.
The engine revved in true American muscle car fashion and we reemerged onto Gardanne’s surface in style. We were headed straight downtown, to the city labs, She told me. We drove over the river bridge that connected Gardanne Heights with the city state’s urban center—downtown, creative spaces and the city labs, where we were headed. We parked just outside the city labs building—a towering, slender pyramid that stretched deep into the upper stratus clouds above.
“This is where I leave you… for now,” She said, glancing at me from the driver’s seat, the heavy V8 still idling like a snow panther purring. “Go and tell the front desk that you want to see Dr. Benny up on the 13th floor. They’re expecting you.”
I entered the lobby, did what She told me, and within minutes found myself sat in a telecommunications lab way up on the 13th floor with scientists and other technicians. There was an organic quality to the technology surrounding us. It almost seemed alive itself. It also didn’t resemble the plastic and metal machines of my former Earth. The apparati all around beamed more emblematic of magic trees from an ancient and sacred realm. I was overwhelmed, until Dr. Benny broke my daze.
“Mr. Florian, I presume,” he said. “Bryan Florian is it?”
I nodded.
“We’re nearly ready for you. Just sit tight, we’re rounding up our daily briefing.”
I sat in a swivel seat in the corner to stay out of the way as these magical minds collaborated on otherworldly matters.
“We’ve sent beacons to all the known 7th-dimensional worlds in the North Star‘s index. You know, the usuals: ValHalla, Shambhala, Nirvana, the rest of the ‘ahs’… ahhh, Most have already sent pingbacks to confirm receipt of our transmission,” a city lab technician said to their director Dr. Benny. “It also occurred to us that we should construct some kind of receiving bay for visiting entities from worlds not known to the North Star. We’re currently playing a game of multiversal Minesweeper to detect intriguing frequencies from uncharted channels. If one of those should ping back and wish to send a messenger, it’d be one less thing we have to do.”
“Excellent,” Benny said. “That all sounds good. Now, ladies and gentlemen, I’d like to take this moment of pause to introduce Bryan Florian, one of Kitty Thunderbird’s latest recruits from Earth_42.”
I received gentle nods from all the lab coats and responded with a meek hello.
“Bryan is a Thunderbird hopeful, but hasn’t experienced full anamnesis yet,” he said. I didn’t quite know what he meant by ‘Thunderbird hopeful,’ but remained quiet so that he could proceed. “Kitty detected his resonating signature on one of Her recent scouting missions.” Then, he turned to me.
“Bryan, we understand that you checked out the book Big Cat on your Earth below,” he said.
“Yes, and I believe there was a map to Gardanne on the inside cover,” I said.
“That’s right. We believe you would have eventually found this place on your own, but the frequencies emitting from your soul signature were intriguing. We believe your unique experience may help us out of a current bind.”
“How can I help?”
Benny continued his scientific cross-examination, “We’re particularly interested in what you were thinking, experiencing just prior to Kitty Thunderbird and Her team’s touching down to your relative spacetime. What did the Big Cat book evoke?”
I took a moment to clear my mind, placing myself back in the lower frequency of the 3rd dimension. “I felt privileged to be part of the Sun-Earth-Moon trinity,” I said. “My own solar system felt like a microcosm for the whole. Almost like we, as humans, were meant to live down there and create, expressing what it means to be alive. We’re like a mirror reflecting back to the galaxy’s central black hole. And when you witness a solar eclipse from Earth, all three celestial bodies are present as one. I remember thinking, ‘I am the Earth. I am the Sun and the Moon. I am the black hole that this trinity reflects back via the purview of a solar eclipse. Their precise shapes, sizes, relative distances and motions were tuned finer than a Steinway grand piano on concert night. Then, my mind-body-soul seemed to drift up from the 3rd dimension, through the 4th into the 5th. It was at that moment that an Alcubierre bubble formed in my living room and Kitty dropped in.”
“Fascinating,” Benny said, and then turned to his team. “Plug that intel into the ham radio’s interface—the Sun/Earth/Moon trinity as a black hole reflection. The Earth_42 solar system could be a portal itself.”
The technician translated my anecdotal evidence into language decipherable by their console…
MILKY WAY GALAXY’S SUPER MASSIVE BLACK HOLE — MWG SMBH: State your nature.
SUN-EARTH-MOON — SEM: We are a three-body system (a lone star solar system, surrounded by a planet with one moon). When standing on the Earth planet, one can witness a total solar eclipse. In this moment, one understands they are the Sun, the Earth and the Moon—all three of which in this exact moment resemble their central black hole. That means, we as three bodies are also one black hole. Flung out hundreds of light years away on your spiral galaxy’s arm, we are also our central, super massive black hole, as evidenced by this ecliptic event.
SMBH: Affirmative. We grant full gravity access to manipulate spacetime.
From the moment when the ham radio scientists entangled the Earth’s solar system with Her central galactic black hole, we earned full manifesting capabilities bestowed by our greater gravity. From thereon, gravity, personified in the super massive black hole, considered Gardanners Its messenger.
The black hole was our console. And we learned to play the studio.
Sparks flew out of the magical machine. The room began to shake. In fact, the whole building was moving. Beams of light erupted from the ham radio shooting straight to the sky. The entire pyramid we were in became like a light beam blasting a brilliant laser. I looked out the window to see similar beams igniting all over town.
“What’s happening?” I said.
“Eureka!” Benny said. “We’ve cracked the ceiling! Bryan, your invaluable intel has broke wide the celestial gates that sit just above the 7th dimension. Those beams you’re seeing all over town are souls that were on the precipice of ascending. Our ham radio’s fresh connection has now released them to these higher planes!”
I could barely hear the doctor’s explanation, as tones rang wild in my ears. But I tried to maintain conversation amidst the melee.
“Yes, I feel like, in embodying the black hole, I had become one with my separateness. I was light. I was a void. I was both the observer and the observed. My entire being felt like a vehicle for ascending higher dimensions.”
The electrostatic that had stood my neck hair on end when Kitty picked me up from the 3rd dimension returned, except now I was in the 7th dimension, in Gardanne. Brilliant, impossibly bright light filled my sight. Was one of these beams selecting me now? I thought.
And then, a complete anamnesis occurred at the core of my soul. I remained in the city labs of Gardanne with the other scientists, but felt altogether different, enlightened, a full-fledged being now.
“I am not Bryan Florian,” I said, and my helmet Bueller dropped from above my crown onto my head. It was a vanta black bullet of a dome, with light up eyes and a painted on white beak to resemble a bird of prey. The little dorsal feather at the top tuned into Akashic frequencies. “Not anymore, at least. I am the Thunderbird Big Cat. We are the frequency of the black hole. We are the black hole which can manifest any energy or matter imaginable. We are, therefore, what we believe. Think wisely, with the knowledge of your unfettered, creative capabilities. And ask yourself, ‘What would I do with pure potential?’ Personally, I’m thankful to be in the company of so many fellow creators, in the city of Gardanne. Now that we’re here—and we know it—let’s create together, and see what comes to be.”
“Big Cat!” Benny said. “Kitty and I had a hunch it was you, but we had to be sure.”
“Kitty’s here??” I said, my full Thunderbird life returning in full force. When I had descended down to Earth_42, she had left to complete her Thunderbird training. I had engaged in deeper and deeper solo dimensional leaps, without the safety net of her tether. And now, resubmerged from amnesia as Bryan Florian on terrestrial Earth, I was trying to calculate how long it had been since I’d seen her.
“Yes,” Benny said. “She returned several months ago. You had been gone for years. We were concerned we had lost you to obscurity. But Her first order of business as a full-fledged Thunderbird—She had been gone nearly three years, Gardanne Time—was to locate you. She isolated a few soul signatures down on terrestrial Earths that showed promise.”
“It’s coming back to me now,” I said, as Big Cat, no longer Bryan Florian. “I knew it would be risky to take such a deep dive, especially without my partner, Kitty. But I had to resonate with the separation. Now I’ve remembered I’m both the black hole and the star, light and dark, a nonduality who knows He’s both the observer—the subject—and the observed—the object—simultaneously. I am the wave reverberating between the two boundaries. I am the boundaries. In retrospect, I love the forgetting, for in undergoing the experience I have come to better understand myself and the consciousness of all those I’ve connected.”
“We are certainly grateful, sir,” he said. “After years without either Kitty or Big Cat, Gardanne finally feels complete once again. I can’t wait to phone Her to deliver the good news.”
“I think She already knows,” I said, reigniting my telepathic connection with Her, now also a full-fledged Thunderbird. “I’m going to leap to Her now.”
I let the scientists finish recording their findings from this successful experiment. I leapt up into the center of the lab space, ignited an enveloping, electromagnetic orb around my vanta black Thunderbird body and leapt up into Gardanne’s stratosphere.
As I surfed the hyper ether, I connected with Kitty Thunderbird.
Thank you for rescuing me, I said to Her telepathically.
Bill! My Big Cat! I knew it was you in that Bryan Florian body, She said.
Should we meet at home?
Yeah, I’ll be there in a moment.
I dropped back into Gardanne, landing in my backyard zen garden. I streamed inside and met Kitty in the living room. We embraced in as big a hug as I could remember in all my lifetimes.
“Congratulations!” I said. “You’re a full Thunderbird now.”
“And you just broke the Gardanne ceiling into higher dimensions!” She said, tears now dripping down Her face. “I’m so happy we’re both back.”
“Me too,” I said, my eyes welling up, as well. “I know I promised you I wouldn’t take such long leaps untethered ever again. But you were gone, training to get full-fledged. I couldn’t locate you and the Gardanne R&DM scientists needed an experienced soul to resonate with such low frequencies and rise above them once again. Boots on the ground was the only way to collect the necessary intel.”
“I know,” She said. “And I’m full-fledged now. So the whole thing is moot. I’m confident that either of us now could locate the other one, however far-flung into oblivion their solo leaps may plummet.”
“You’re a Thunderbird now,” I said, and then smiling, “I foresee us taking mostly tethered leaps from now on.”
“That too,” She said, smiling as wide as me.
“We have much to celebrate.”
“Yes, what now?”
“I think we need to put on a concert in the tabernacle,” I said. “Just prior to my last long leap down to Earth_42, I had been practicing with the band Cymatic. They’d perform their music inside the dome. I’d leap into lower Earths, broadcasting my POV signal back to Gardanne and projecting it onto the dome’s inner ceiling. Cymatic’s sounds would guide my multiverse surfing.”
“Maybe that could be our first tethered leap as full-fledged Thunderbirds,” She said.
“The first of many.” We were still hugging.
“OK, we’re here, broadcasting live from the tabernacle,” said Larry King, on his Gardanne-wide radio show, Larry King Forever. “In just a few moments, we’ll celebrate the much anticipated return of the Big Cat, who will put on a dimension-leaping display along with his band accompaniment, Cymatic.”
A few nights after my complete ananmesis into Big Cat Bill Thunderbird, transcending my former terrestrial existence as Bryan Florian, all of Gardanne was in high spirits. Kitty and I decided to put on a show at the tabernacle to celebrate the occasion.
The tabernacle, sitting at the nucleus of all Gardanne, was a versatile stage. It could act as an amphitheatre, blocking off a section of the circular venue. At full potential, we’d open her up to the complete round, with the stage dead center. Seats surrounded that for a full 360 degrees. For dimension-leaping demonstrations, we’d project the pilot’s view onto the inner dome ceiling. The audience would sit back, soaking in the rich roof display like a laser show at the planetarium, while the band played just off to the left of center stage.
The show began at promptly 8 p.m., Gardanne Time. Kitty walked onto the empty platform, as the last of the live audience members found their seats.
“OK, everyone,” She said, addressing the crowd from the lone mic on stage, “we haven’t seen this fellow for a little while. Without further adieu, I’d like to introduce Gardanne’s own Big Cat!”
The crowd erupted with uproarious applause, hollering and whistles, all to indicate my warm acceptance back into the 7th-dimensional city state. In true Thunderbird fashion, I materialized out of thin air, as a 10-foot diameter electromagnetic bubble, instead of entering from stage left or the tiny elevator that allowed most performers to appear from the lower levels of backstage. I landed standing right next to my partner in leaping, Kitty. I was adorned in full vanta black body wearing my bullet-like Thunderbird helmet Bueller. Greater Gardanne was still unaware of my true identity in Bill Thunderbird. To them, I was just another daft punk.
“Thank you, Kitty,” I said, taking the mic. “Ladies and Gentlemen, give it up for Gardanne’s latest Thunderbird, Kitty!”
The crowd refocused their applause toward Her.
“OK, now,” I said. “Let’s get this show going. But first, we need a band right?”
I leapt back up into my Alcubierre bubble, disappearing for a moment. I projected the inner view from my helmet Bueller onto the inner arched dome of the tabernacle. The audience saw what I saw, surfing through the movierain. I landed on a planet in the Earth_CityFlat sector, where the band Cymatic was on a smoke break outside a Manhattan Village venue where they had just played a gig.
“Hey, Kal!” I said, now materialized fully on this Earth, walking toward the bandmates hanging out in the alley. “Kal Brasil! You guys want to play another gig tonight?”
Kal, unphased, took a long drag from his cigarette, then looked at me from the sides of his eyes.
“Sure,” he said. “Where at?”
“Gardanne,” I said, as I reignited my electromagnetic orb enveloping my entire personal space and extending to include the three bandmates. “Hop on and we’ll sail to the 7th dimension.”
Next, the audience would have seen what we saw inside the Drop of my electromagnetic reverberating bubble surfing the multiverse movierain. Then, the tabernacle of Gardanne broke into view. We—the band and I—descended down from the sky, through the tabernacle’s roof and back on stage, where I had just left. The crowd cheered at Cymatic’s arrival along with my return. The band members promptly assumed their usual performing positions, taking up their instruments that had already been set up on the stage. By this point, Kitty had found her seat in the front row.
“Please welcome Cymatic!” I said into the mic. “OK, we’re gonna jam a little for you folks.”
Tommy clicked his drumsticks three times to kick off their first song. Electric sound exploded out of the speakers, while Kal took over the mic.
“We’re Cymatic,” Kal said. “And this Thunderbird here is Big Cat. We’re gonna go for a little walk now.”
As the band continued to play one of their rock hits, I leapt back up into my electromagnetic orb and popped into the movierain, this time solo. My POV flooded the inside tabernacle’s curved ceiling for the audience’s viewing pleasure. As melodic rock harmonies rang on, this is what they saw:
A slow pan up to a cottage door.
The door opened to a quiet, pub scene.
A few patrons quietly drank in the dim light.
Then I erupted through the bar’s ceiling back into the sky.
I swept over a basketball court in a city park, where a few ballers played pick-up.
I continued the swoop, now through a forest.
Greenery flooded the view, passing by vines and tree trunks and leaves.
Then black. We were transported to outer space, with Earth a glowing, blue orb below.
I descended swiftly back down to the ground, firing through the atmosphere.
City skylines, oceans, countrysides, deserts, mountains, and the rooftops in suburbs all sifted by the view as I skimmed the Earth’s surface.
Then, I slowed it down.
I quietly approach a brick city building, entering through the main ground entrance.
I ascended the steps, into a broadcast studio.
I entered a local disc jockey’s on-air room, as we saw him announcing over the hot mic.
He waved.
Without overt dimensional leaping, I shook the entire soundproof room.
Vibrations blurred the entire premises.
When the waves steadied, the audience and I found ourselves in a swanky club, standing by a roaring fireplace in some classy city establishment.
Old men sat, staring, smoking their stogies and sipping brandy.
I received a gentle nod from their distinguished visages.
Black.
Torrential downpour. We were surfing the movierain once again.
Then, the audience saw themselves. I had dropped back onstage at the tabernacle, stepping down from my Alcubierre orb as its electromagnetivity dissipated.
Cymatic wrapped their playing. I seized the mic.
“Give it up for Cymatic,” I said to the crowd, who roared at the extra-dimensional display they had just witnessed. “OK, now I’d like to invite someone up here on stage.”
I locked eyes with Kitty sitting in the front row.
Let’s do a tethered leap for the audience I said to Her telepathically.
OK, She said.
Kitty ascended the stage, bowed to the crowd. The band went into their second number.
“This is one of Kitty and my favorite songs,” I said, holding Her close. “These two Thunderbirds are going to both leap up into the movierain.”
Kitty had now donned Her official T-bird helmet. We both leapt up into a merged electro orb, and popped into the multiverse movierain simultaneously, bound by our gravity.
The display inside the tabernacle’s dome now displayed both of our perspectives leaping between worlds’ droplet events. The surfing was more steady this time. Cymatic’s song would lead my intuition to choose one path. Immediately, Kitty would complement that selection with Her own additions. And the double-helixed display feeding from both of our Thunderbird POVs broadcast back to the tabernacle like so:
We popped into some zen garden in Japan.
We sailed, intertwined over the arched bridges, brooks, Japanese maples and pines.
The greenery then morphed into an Amazonian jungle.
We darted down the trunk of a large Kapok tree, until we reached the foot where Guillermo was quietly meditating and communing with his plant brethren.
We launched back up into the stratosphere of this Earth, until only water—the mighty Pacific Ocean—was below.
We sailed over white caps and blue waves.
A giant hand holding a trident emerged from the water’s surface.
It was Poseidon. He waved.
We landed on an island paradise, where indigenous peoples performed a ritual dance around a fire.
We concentrated our collective view on the central fire, which transmuted into a kitchen broiler.
Now we were in some hip city restaurant, and flew out the front door, out onto the city street…
Our tethered leap continued like this for a few more bars from Cymatic’s song. Then, we leapt back to stage to a standing ovation. Gardanne embraced Her two Thunderbirds.
The resultant feed from this live session supplied much needed source content for Gardanne’s artists, ever in search of meaning and fodder for expression, amidst a world far beyond their terrestrial Earths of origin.
Later reviews in the Register would interview those in attendance that night. The uninterrupted consciousness flow that We—Kitty and I—and the band produced inspired unprecedented creativity among the city state’s artistic community. That, combined with the recent existential ceiling breakthrough at the city lab’s ham radio console ushered in a vibrant renaissance for Gardanne. For a sustained period, the entire city beamed brilliantly into upper echelons higher than Gardanne’s 7th dimension, as the whole place and Her residents took shape independently of Kitty or my (the founders) influence. Gardanne took such defined shape among the 7th dimension, in fact, that it caught the eye of those archons, who’d rather harvest humans souls for their own nefarious nourishment. The unwanted attention was a good bellwether that our drastically increased bandwidth had achieved critical mass. As a necessary response, we alerted Leviathan and His Crows to keep an eye out for any archon interference.
As Kitty and I drove back in our ’66 Shelby Mustang, over the river bridge back to our neighborhood Gardanne Heights, luminescent pillars of light beamed from city buildings on the skyline. The aurora borealis–like effect were the phosphorescent trails left by souls ascending, from Gardanne into the 9th dimension. From that night on, Gardanne became a vibrant weigh station for souls passing through from lower Earths into upper echelons above our own resident 7th-dimensional spacetime. No more having to turn people away. The pearly flood gates had been blasted wide open. Souls could stay as long as they wanted. And some reached ascension in only a few days. We always held more long-term citizens—3,000 or so—but saw multitudes more, on their way to heightened consciousness. The regulars—those that substantiated themselves as semipermanent Gardanners—became known as the locals, while countless more were just passing through. All were welcome.
The locals—the true Gardanners—formed a cohesive unit over the generations. We honed our own frequency that embraced the ever changing landscape of what was possible. We produced new shows, new music, new forms of expression right here, in our little corner of the 7th-dimension. We even recruited sometimes from the lower Earths, to complement and further fine-tune our well-oiled machine that was the city state Gardanne. We all knew there were higher realities hanging just above our blown-open ceiling (by the ham radio wizards). But we were content creating and living on our golden five-point star of an ethereal place, a city in the sky above 12 Earths, staking out an infinity of happening on our shared premises that could somehow last forever, but also, god-willing, could reach its climax. A beautiful paradox. Maybe someday we’d transcend this good ole days factory, but for now, we were happy enjoying each other’s company.
We—Kitty and I—became the radio lens tuning frequencies to the desired activity around Gardanne. We’d meet with Dr. Benny at the pub most afternoons, as both a rendezvous point and launch pad into the minutia.
Most days, I’d glance at Kitty in the mirror of the pub. We’d lock eyes and begin to communicate telepathically. We’d sit on either side of Dr. Benny, whom we had invited for lunch.
One day early in the process, “Have you heard from any of the groups that have ascended yet?” I said.
“No, no,” he said.
“We’ve been mainly concerned with the conditions that would have prompted those spontaneous collective enlightenments.”
I’m going to remote swoop into the musical practice spaces uptown, I said to Kitty.
I’ll check a few of the forest temples, She said back, as the doctor rifled through his unorganized, tattered documents containing notes on potential Gardanne cliques that could yield consciousness-expanding pay dirt.
“How goes the channeling?” he said, not sure whom he was asking, perhaps either Kitty or me, or both. He never looked up from his accordion briefcase that held his poorly kept intel.
“We’re currently looking into the more collaborative areas of our city state,” I said. “Right now, I’m surveying some of the local bands practicing. Kitty’s monitoring the forest communities, who are known to gather for collective, spiritual mind melds.”
The pub dinned with luncheon clamor. It was a packed house. To respect the patrons’ privacy, I purposely avoided tuning into any of their mealtime conversations. Just noting the interpersonal dynamics of each was fodder enough to fuel our investigation into the promising relationships currently blossoming on Gardanne. Given the right set of circumstances and the intentions of all involved, any one of these connections had the potential to transcend our current plane.
That was ultimately the goal for every citizen, whether they ascended individually or among a group of likeminded soul mates. I was in no rush to rise. Neither was Kitty.
If ever either of Us ascend She said, I hope We can find our way back to Gardanne. Tuning into these harmonic relationships is too much fun to give up.
I smiled and nodded back to Her in the big, silver mirror over the bar.
We even got to the point, after we’d leave the pub and the good doctor, at channeling cliques that were a person or two shy of completing their harmony. That fed our roster of hopefuls for the Register‘s scouting report, where we’d take field trips down to Earths below to recruit would-be Gardanners. These candidates may not have ever found their people down on the ground, but maybe they could thrive up here, in the 7th dimension Gardanne, with their long lost teammates, as the missing link that sparked inspiration for their receiving group. It was at that point that channeling became more about finding the harmony in relationships, rather than tuning the individual. And there were so many Gardanners who made beautiful music together.
One evening, while sitting bar at the pub, we channeled Nick Swardson, who was downtown, way up at the swanky penthouse bar. Our remote viewing indicated he was holding court amidst the neon lights illuminating the beverage dispensing surface, while sipping vodka sodas. He had attracted a jovial crowd around him. We decided to swoop in from across the river.
Kitty was a full-fledged Thunderbird now. That meant, She was the only other Gardanner (besides moi) that could step through the pub’s back door and instantly leap to the penthouse bar downtown. We excused Ourselves from Dr. Benny, who was enveloped in whatever Jack the bartendar had playing on the TV overhead. Benny uttered half goodbyes to Us, and We were off clandestinely traversing Gardanne’s expanses at the step through Our space-bending back door neatly tucked away in the rear of the pub.
//
“Good crowd tonight,” I said to Nick, pulling up a stool next to him, now up in the penthouse moments later. Kitty slid into the stool on my other side.
“Yeah, I’ve been here for three hours,” he said. “I’ve been waiting for Norm this entire time! He was supposed to be here two hours and 59 minutes ago.”
“Seems like you’ve made the most of it,” Kitty said, leaning around my silhouette to make his eye contact.
“We were supposed to watch this Gnomes game together,” he gestured to the TV hanging over the bar. “Now it’s already the ninth inning and no Norm.” He swigged his drink dry to spite his truent friend.
“When Norm finally does arrive,” I consoled him, “we can clue him into all the things he’s missed.”
“Fuck, YEAH!” Nick said. “I don’t even care anymore. I’ve been having a blast regardless.” He puffed out his chest, protruded his jaw and then spoke in a low, gutteral tone furrowing his brow. “Maybe we’ll even bump into Bert.” He was imitating his drinking buddy Bert now. “I was in Rolling Stone.”
A makeshift, semicircle audience had formed around Nick. Kitty and I were lucky to have pulled up front row seats for the bar theatre. During a lull in his spot-on impressions, I had to ask him.
“Nick, how did you get here? You were still alive on Earth_42, last time I checked,” I said.
“I don’t quite know,” he said. “I was on a flight to the Florida Keys. Next thing I know, we get swept up in a cyclone, fling out to the Bermuda Triangle,” as he said fling, he whistled through his teeth. “Then, I washed ashore on Gardanne city beach.”
“Well, you’ve really made the most of it,” I said. “The fun cloud seems to loom ever present above your aura.”
“Spanks!” Nick hated compliments. “I don’t know. I just like a good time and seem to gravitate toward people who think the same. Where THE FUCK is Norm??”
“Maybe we should call him,” Kitty said.
Nick got the landline from behind the bar and began dialing Norm Macdonald’s number.
“It’s ringing,” he said. Norm must have picked up after a few rings. “You’re doing your laundryy??”
That’s a lie, I said to Kitty telepathically. No one had to do laundry in Gardanne. Norm was clearly stalling.
“OK, Nick,” I said. “We’ll check back in later.”
Kitty and I slipped back through Our secret back door that connected the penthouse bar downtown with our own neighborhood pub on the other side of the world.
“Before we sit down with Dr. Benny again,” Kitty said, “let’s visit Mother Gardanne, in the forest. I’d love to know what She thinks about all this heightened dimensional activity about Our city state.”
We turned back through the mystical door’s threshold on the pub side, but this time We leapt over the river, and through the woods, to Mother Gardanne’s house We went. We were traveling at the speed of thought, adjusting frequencies within Our shared Alcubierre bubble that slid between Gardanne’s spacetime. We sailed by Mr. Cumulus’ house, who also lived in the woods. We whisked through thickets of giant oaks and maples, over clearings, under treehouses, until We arrived at a clearing that contained a lush garden. Mother Gardanne’s garden rivaled no other, including the fertile patch Kitty and I cultivated on our own property. We walked up Her front yard’s winding path and knocked on a mahogany arched door, with the golden, triple-goddess knocker that hung at eye level on the portal’s wood.
The door swung open of its own accord. Mother Gardanne was sat in the back of Her bungalow, We could see through the place adorned in plants, trinkets and other accuitrement appropriate for a grandmother.
“Bill! Kitty! Welcome in!” Mother Gardanne said. “I was wondering when you’d stop by.”
Mother Gardanne had been appointed the spirit of our 7th-dimensional city state. Kitty and I were still the founders, but the lower Earths’ spirits—Gaia, Father Nature, etc.—had convened after our world’s inception to nominate a resident spirit. She emodied the heart and soul of our place. Gardanners’ feelings, thoughts, wishes and other non-sequiturs flooded through Her veins always.
“Congratulations on the ceiling breakthrough!” She said. We had made our way to the back directly in front of Her now. “Have a seat.”
We sat on the plush pillows before Her. Her room was filled with the aroma of welcoming flora that instantly instilled a sense of home.
“Thank you, Mother Gardanne,” Kitty said. “We were hoping you could help us make sense of the heightened activity. We’re experiencing groups’ and individuals’ ascensions at record rates.”
“Yes!” She said. “Gardanners are connecting, collaborating and creating in higher vibrations. What can I help you understand?”
“Hi, Mother Gardanne. The ham radio scientists are curious about the conditions immediately preceding these ascensions,” I said. “We’ve been leaping around the local premises just now to catch one of these bottled lightnings in action.”
“Let me see what the trees are telling me,” She said. “I’ll also require the rest of my coven. Let me call them.”
Calling for Mother Gardanne was different than Nick Swardson dialing from the bar phone. She simply closed Her eyes and hummed for a moment. The next thing We knew, three knocks rapped at Her door. And in walked Her two sister witches. The combined power of their formidable triumverate connecting to the land’s trees could channel to a degree that Kitty and I had never seen.
After brief pleasantries, the three witches—Mother Gardanne at their helm—took to chanting. The sweet aroma of the room became robust in depth, taking on heavier notes of complexity. Kitty and I sat in the middle of the coven’s triangle, focusing earnestly on Our intent to find cliques primed for ascension. The air was electric amidst this expert witchy seance. Magic crackled, as plasma lines between those three natural sorceresses ignited. The three rose feet above the floor, hovering utterly of their own collective volition. A bubble not unlike Kitty’s and my Alcubierre orb formed at the vertices of these three witches chanting. The electricity reached a critical point, until the room was consumed in blinding light. Then, dark. The aroma of the room returned to its light, sweet scent. The women were gone. Mother Gardanne was gone.
“I think the coven ascended,” Kitty said. We were now the only two in the room, as papers and other personal effects settled to the ground from the magical bedlam that had ensued moments earlier.
“I wish I knew what those trees said to them,” I said. “Looks like we’re back to channeling this clique activity ourselves.”
“Maybe Nick has had some luck with Norm by now,” Kitty said.
I remote viewed back to the penthouse bar, while still sitting in Mother Gardanne’s living room. Nick was back on the phone.
“Did you put the laundry in after I told you I was down here?” Nick said, presumably to Norm on the other end.
“We’re still waiting for Norm,” I said. “Let’s check back in with Dr. Benny at the pub. He’s probably wondering where we are.”
Kitty agreed. At least we didn’t have to return empty-handed, having just witnessed a coven of three witches, mid-seance, ascend to higher realms right before our eyes. This was invaluable intel.
“Have you conducted trend analysis? Any burgeoning startups? What are the known hangouts around town?” Benny said, upon our return to the pub. He was full of ideas. We agreed to entertain them all, but also had to admit that this process could take longer than expected. It was, in fact, very unexpected when one of these group ascensions of Gardanne would occur. Proof enough was Mother Gardanne’s coven, who weren’t even attempting such existential feats. They were merely conversing with the trees and had stumbled upon perfect union.
Eventually, the heightened ascension activity plateaued. We had established several criteria that seemed to correlate with groups collectively enlightening into upper dimensions, but still couldn’t capture lightning in a bottle ourselves. We couldn’t predict where the lightning would strike next, which was still striking more frequently, mind you. Some souls spent mere days in Gardanne. They were just passing through, as the aurora beams beat brilliantly through skyline peaks. But we reached a stasis where the more permanent population could galvinize a sustaining community that felt like home.
The perfectly level respite was quite a relief. Gardanne was a town Herself, who needed Her citizens. Too many souls flying off the handle that was our lovely land slice in the 7th dimension would render our fine city state desolate. The townsfolk were their place, Gardanne. And She loved her Gardanners. This was a symbiosis We needed to maintain for about 3,000 or so semi-permanent residents.
The lack of visibility into upper dimensions urged us, even in peacetime, to continue investigating how we could communicate with those former citizens and visitors who had transcended. We began conducting scouting missions down to the lower Earths to recruit potential Gardanners who could complete some bands up here that were good, but not quite cliquing to divine degrees. That’s how Cymatic finally found their drummer. Soon after, they played what would become, spontaneously, their final Gardanne show, at the Parabola (or anywhere else around here, for that matter).
We knew We had found the right guy when, a few weeks later while conducting a Gardanne Register pitch meeting, my Arts & Entertainment editor pitched a new ascension story about Cymatic’s miraculous sublimation at their show the prior night. She was in attendance to cover the event and had witnessed their collective transcendence on stage from the front row.
Her firsthand account of the concert may carry more weight if, before that, you read the scouting report published in the Register regarding Cymatic’s new drummer…
Scouting Report for Week of the Dragon
EARTH, CityFlat — We may have found a drummer for Gardanne’s local rock band Cymatic. He’s been banging his buckets down in Earth_CityFlat all along.
Cymatic, whom you may remember played at the tabernacle’s sphere celebration for Big Cat’s return, are a great band. No question. But they had suffered the loss of several drummers in months past, due to the fated bandmates’ succumbing to lower-vibrational tendencies that ultimately sunk them into a lower Earth for reincarnation.
Well, now an ascension’s in order… at least from the 3rd, to the 7th dimension, in Gardanne. The following is Our leap log for submitting this nomination of a mortal into higher frequency living, in our city state:
- We came up on the subject playing with his garage band at the Paradise Rock Club, in Boston, Mass. This was on the Earth version of the CityFlat variety.
- Subject (Dangerous Dave on the Drums) presented that he embodied the necessary constitution, as he performed on stage.
- Subject showed potential for meeting the remaining criteria, upon meeting and playing with the rest of the band.
We approached Dangerous Dave right after the show in the green room to make our case.
“Dave!” I said. “Great set. We may have a gig for you.”
“Who are you?”
“I’m Big Cat. We’re from a dimension that sits a few tiers above this existential plane. There’s a band up there we think you’d be great for.”
“The 7th dimension?” he said.
“Yeah, how’d you know?”
“I’ve had dreams the last couple of nights that someone from your world may pay a visit. Yeah, sure, I’ll play with your band.”
Dave proved to be one of our easiest recruits. It was astonishing how little questions he had about our electromagnetic orb that erupted from nothing and ensconced our premises in the green room. We—Kitty, myself and Dave—hopped up into the bubble’s gravity. We popped out of that 3rd-dimensional Earth, surfed through the movierain at the speed of thought, and within moments, we landed on Gardanne’s grassy knoll in the 7th dimension.
“Thank god I did all that acid,” Dave said, as we surfed through the torrent of possibility between worlds. “This was also in my dream.”
After elevating in consciousness, the gate to Gardanne appeared in a drop at 12 o’clock. We popped into the higher reality and landed in our backyard, but agreed to drive Dave to the city musical practice spaces to meet Cymatic and rehearse.
You already know they hit it off.
Fast-forward to the day after Cymatic sublimed to the 9th dimension. My Register staff and I were all sat in the pitch meeting. The art editor was about to detail the rock ‘n’ rollers’ ascension.
“The air crackled with static electricity as the three Cymatic band members took the stage and their instruments,” Elaine, the arts editor said. “A few moments later, the whole of the crowd realized who was about to play and a hush quieted the room. All that we could hear were residual crackles foreshadowing the electronic sound display we were all about to experience.
“Kal, their lead singer, kept it short and sweet speaking into the mic, ‘We’re Cymatic. We’re gonna play a few songs for you tonight.’
“The crowd errupted into cheers, but then quickly returned to quiet for everyone’s listening pleasure. With Dangerous Dave at the drums,” Elaine’s eyes darted around the ceiling, as she searched her mind for the most authentic account of what she had witnessed, “the band was in such harmony. Kal’s guitar rang a sheet of electric sound over the crowd that cast like a blanket. Their sound was explosive. It shook the marrow in my bones. Anyway, they played a few of their hits and then Kal said ‘We’re gonna play something we just wrote for you now.’ The dripping bass, mixed with melifluous guitar chords and paced by Dave’s excellent and perfect percussion lifted the entire crowd. Orbs formed in the immediate space around the stage. It’s as if the music they were creating on the spot opened windows into adjacent worlds that resonated with Cymatic’s complex tones. A giant electromagnetic bubble made of the symphonic multitude of frequencies enveloped them. Kal hit an impeccable high note on his Stratocaster and then the bubble collapsed around the entire band. They leapt up into a higher dimension, as the stage cleared, leaving only residual electric sparks and a few gravity waves in their wake. There was a heavy beat of silence, but the crowd soon resolved that this dramatic exit was all part of the show. Cymatic had left the building, had left Gardanne and was presumably soaring through the 8th dimension at this point. But back in the Parabola Theatre, the crowd stood in ovation of what they had just witnessed.”
Elaine had been explaining her account from the front of the conference room, but now had to sit down. She had just relived the divinity witnessed the night prior.
“I’m so glad you were there, Elaine,” I said. “Not only will this make a great story for the paper, the ham radio scientists will certainly benefit from this invaluable intel.”
“I’ll get you a thousand words by tomorrow,” she said.
“Are we worried too many groups are leaving Gardanne?” the news desk editor inquired.
“No,” I said. “The increased ascension activity has actually allowed for an influx of incoming citizens from the lower Earths. And we’ve sustained enough regulars who should stick around long enough to keep the city state feeling like home.”
Gardanne was more alive than ever, as citizens ascended all around. Magic was in the air. We had witnessed Mother Gardanne’s coven enlighten under their collective spell. Cymatic transcended by way of their perfect sound. And I wondered if Nick had ever met with Norm. That comedic duo’s dynamic certainly possessed the potential to also elevate out of the city state. I checked in on Nick and Norm a few days after we ran the Cymatic story.
I caught them one day. They had finally managed to rendezvous at the penthouse bar atop city Gardanne. Their meeting pinged a psychic thread in me, wherever I was at that moment, and I leapt immediately to the bar. I walked through the penthouse’s backdoor as Bill, though it was my Big Cat identity that had instantly transported me there. I still had to keep the alter egos separate. Plus, a Big Cat appearance would have caused too much distraction at the bar. I elected to sit quietly, inconspicuously as Bill Thunderbird, at the bar as Norm walked in.
“I was just about to leave,” Nick said, as Norm strolled in adorned in his finest pair of sweatpants.
“What? I thought we were gonna hang out and watch the game!” retorted Norm.
“Yeah, that was FIVE hours ago!”
A similar semicircle to the one when Nick had been waiting for Norm the last time they agreed to hang out, formed around the two comedians conversing.
“I thought we were watching the Gnomes game!” Norm persisted, unphased by Nick’s perturbation. The audience these two had now created charged the room with energy, supplying gravitas to the comics’ discourse.
“Yeah, but now I’m loaded,” Nick said, buzzed but not slurring his words.
“C’mon, Nicky,” Norm said. “I had to do my laundry. Give grace to this old chunk a coal.”
“Who the fuck says that?! What is an ‘old chunk of coal’?”
“Say, you want to hear a joke?” Norm raised his voice at this proposition. A few murmurs from the semicircle crowd piped up to encourage him to proceed.
The joke took 20 minutes.
“What is the moral of that story?” Nick said, wishing he could get the last half hour of his life back.
“Uh, I guess, don’t mess with Uncle Terry when he gets to drinkin’.”
The impromptu audience had been laughing throughout Norm’s story. Nick loved it too, but pretended he was annoyed. The laughter erupted at Norm’s last retort, shaking the penthouse bar’s walls. The light-up bar vibrated, reverberating the wine glasses atop to turn them into Tibetan singing bowls. The whole room had become light. In fact, Nick Swardson and Norm Macdonald’s visible shells lit up into rainbow light bodies.
And then, they were gone, evaporated from their barstools. They had transcended the 7th dimension together. The crowd cheered at this most triumphant of theatrical and existential exits.
The whole phenomena reminded me of Elaine’s Cymatic experience. The Gardanne Register now had three distinct accounts of ascension for a series we had coined “Spheres of Intrigue.” Soon, there became too many to count or report. Gardanne had entered Her golden era.
Kitty and I and greater Gardanne ran this joyful period for what seemed like eons. We were free to leap solo or tethered together. I’d dip down to visit my 3rd-dimensional plants on terrestrial Earths. So would She.
We both held our Gardanne positions in between interdimensional travel, but learned to delegate duties more and more. I leaned heavier on my staff, as editor-in-chief of the Gardanne Register. Kitty divvied the responsibility in the soul sanctuary among Her specialized personnel properly suited to heal souls on the cusp between reincarnation and the opportunity for lighter realms, like Our own oasis amidst the 7th dimension. We had more room than ever as ascension to even higher echelons opened the soul superhighway wide for life to pass through.
We enjoyed this bliss for so long, We almost forgot of our own lofty goal—as experienced Thunderbirds—joining efforts to ascend into the 9th dimension. We had practiced tethered leaping to such a fine-tuned degree, We considered what collective transcendental meditation might accomplish. The tactic seemed to work for those former Gardanne collectives—the barbershop quartet, the coven, Cymatic and Nick & Norm came to mind—who, together, achieved a sustained harmony that lifted them to the next level. Their combined chord struck a specific frequency we could channel from lower depths (at least that was the theory among ham radio scientists).
Kitty decided to put the hypothesis to practice. One morning, She said to me, “What if we applied our tethered dimensional leaping techniques to collaborative meditation? What if we entangled our unique soul signatures under deep concentration? Let’s concentrate on Our own connection, rather than try to channel others that have ascended.”
“Worth a shot,” I said.
We sat knees-to-knees one night, in the backyard zen garden, clearing our minds, cleansing our dual souls to lift above the subtle ether in Gardanne’s misty evening dew. Our dual zen formation, facing each other, touching knees, resembled a pyramid.
The meditation session felt like no other I had experienced. Telepathically, I could tell Kitty felt the same. Our respective intentions expanded upward, through our crowns, and intertwined like double-helixed DNA. We had entangled Our light bodies, now rising high above Gardanne. We were floating on the wings of all the other local ascensions. We broke into the movierain as a singular beam. We no longer had to communicate telepathically; We just knew what the other intended to do. We were each other at this most intimate of transcendental moments. Since neither of Us had ever reached such existential echelons, We knew to suppress any intended destinations. Those would ultimately drag Us down to some prior known reality. We kept Our minds, which were now one consciousness, clear, empty. We sublimed as a singular, rainbow light body. Then, We became nothingness. It was like dying, but in the nicest, most profound way possible, as if We had become the concept of harmony Herself. We spanned subtler and subtler substrate forms still. We were on the bleeding edge of Our now unified existence. Every moment that passed was completely unlike anything We had experienced in any of Our prior timelines.
A beat.
Blankness. Pure nothingness soon became… something. It was an impossible, imposing, all-encompassing and overwhelming beauty. I don’t think either of Us indiviually could have handled it—the Beauty. But We had combined to become some evolved being that could absorb such majesty. The premises was inexplicable by linguistic standards, but what We can break down for this journal here is that the audibly unintelligible reality soon took a shape that lower dimensionals would call a threshold.
They were the steps to the High Thunderbird Leader’s altar. Kitty and I, as One, had arrived at what Thunderbirds considered God. We continued Our ascension and walked through His Holiness’ doorway. We spoke as One.
The Thunderbird Leader beamed brilliantly. To look directly at Him was like staring into the Sun, but Kitty and I could bare the Big Bertha bandwidth; We had combined into a gestalt greater than the two of Us individually.
His voice was like a song.
“Ah, my children Thunderbirds,” He said, wafting down harmonious notes. His vocal chords must have been strings from a golden harp. “Do you wish to ask me anything?”
“Yes, High Leader,” We said. “We are honored to be in the presence of Your grace. We’ve traveled great distances of thought and feeling to reach you. As full-fledged Thunderbirds, We built a city state in the 7th dimension, called Gardanne. Do you have any advice for Us on how to lead such a place?”
“World building is not for the faint of heart,” He said. “But I’ve been watching you from up here. Once imbued with the power to create reality out of nothing, the possibilities are quite endless. We were all wondering up here what you’d do with that privilege. We were pleased, as the first Sun rose over Gardanne. To adequately answer your question, I’ll respond with a qualifying inquiry. What sort of place would you like to lead?”
The entirety of Our time on the city state flashed in Our combinded minds, now One logos.
“It’s an oasis from reincarnation,” We said. “We’ve mounted the place as a respite for those souls, nearly complete in their 3rd-dimensional journeys, but wavering on where to go next. Before Gardanne, these unfortunate souls would just descend back down into this churn, wiped of their former life’s memory by the next rebirth. We want Gardanne to provide a weigh station between these souls’ physical lives so that they can collaboratively create, make art expressing what it means to be human, and ultimately, move onto the next existential plane when they’re ready, infinite as these upper echelons may be. We are in the business of expanding consciousness, Sir—freeing souls from the reincarnation mill, creating a peaceful space where they can explore what it means to be alive, and enlightening those who are content to move onto the next plane.”
“Ahhh,” He chuckled, “quite lofty goals! Might I suggest baby steps?”
“Baby steps?”
“Yes! Gazing too far down the path can cause one to lose sight of the here and now. Expanding consciousness is a noble endeavor, mind you, but keep it to what you can manage at that time. Slow is smooth, and smooth is fast.”
“We think We know what You’re saying,” We said, after a contemplative moment. “We’re going to concentrate right now on becoming better Gardanners.”
“It is granted.”
At that, the brilliant light of the High Thunderbird Leader built to an amplitude even Our combined bandwidth couldn’t contain. Then, We were descending in the movierain from the 9th dimension, through the 8th. Our singularity became two again.
Do you see Gardanne? I said to Kitty on the descent.
It’s murky here, She said, tough to make out.
Wait, did you hear that?
We heard a faint voice from below, beckoning, “We call you now to return.”
Then, Gardanne appeared, as a glowing, five-point star. It reminded me of the North Star newspaper, whom had been named as such for their endless pursuit of Truth. From that revelatory moment, Gardanne felt like Our own North Star, that We’d cultivate towards Truth.
We re-entered the 7th dimension, in the local spacetime of Gardanne. We hovered, not yet fully materialized, in the backyard of our Craftsman, precisely where We had lifted off. But the Craftsman was gone. Gardanne looked completely different, like much time had passed. And, in Our place where We had sat zen to blast off into the 9th dimension and meet the Thunderbird Leader, now stood a tiny, stone pyramid, but sculpted to resemble two human figures meditating.
They looked exactly like Kitty and me.
If you’ve read the novel Big Cat, this short story picks up right where the book left off. If you haven’t yet read that book, I encourage you to do so. This short story will appear as the first part in Big Cat‘s sequel, hitting bookstands soon.
delodell.com 