Jacob and Gabe told a pretty tall tale to the tavern on their first Wednesday night, to mixed reviews. It didn’t quite dazzle their audience. So they resolved to try something better…

***

“Bill! What if we found Bryan Florian on the 5th-dimensional plane?” Jake inquired with excitement. “He’s likely bounding around the Akashic of Earth we surfed to arrive at Shermer.”

Jacob had to share his stroke of genius with their dimension leaping leader, me.

“That’s certainly a possibility,” I said. Although it was a little out of my wheelhouse at that present juncture. But that was no reason to burst Jacob’s bubble.

And so that’s how we set out to retrieve one Bryan Florian, via our own curated leaping methods, to bring back to the Shermer Tavern so that he could explain how he disappeared. I’ll get into how we retrieved him, in a moment, but first I want to give you a sneak peek of what he revealed. It will likely keep you reading…

Bryan Florian (upon his retrieval): “I had kept a written log of my stories. Nightly writing sessions bled into my meditations. And when I finally lifted to enlightenment, it didn’t occur on my zen pillow, it happened while I was writing one of these stories,” Florian recounted of his first leap.

“Bill, you have a Drop, correct?” he continued. “Well, mine contains my writing desk from my house here in Shermer. It was my window into the Earth’s ancient Akashic. I arranged random statements collected from cool magazine quotes, newspaper articles, any piece of copy that intrigued me. One night, I put together a few non sequitur statements that sounded like lyrics. I once heard that David Bowie practiced something similar from random clippings to write songs. Anyway, the random assortment of words tapped a nearby black hole that led me up and out of this reality. I’ve been leaping ever since, once I figured out how to do it.”

But let’s backtrack a bit…

The first night we left to Shermer marked a series of dimension leaping milestones. First, it was the inaugural leap of four people at once. Secondly, we leapt lucidly, not blessed with the luxury of dreaming. Thirdly, we reached a precise destination. Oh, and the guys we met down at the tavern were cool too. We quickly made it a Wednesday night tradition to return every week.

Unfortunately, Jacob and Gabriel were supposed to be our ringers, but they bombed the first night. We almost weren’t invited back. It would later turn out that they may have misled Kitty and me on their collective ability to spin a good Bryan Florian yarn.

Picture a pub full of people, eagerly hanging on Jacob’s every word, with Gabe supplying background vocals. The leap went smoothly. We landed on a hill just outside of town and walked down to the square, where the bar is. We entered like desperados from across the desert, virtual unknowns and possibly outlaws, until a few of the men recognized Jacob and Gabe. They swiftly whisked us to the back, where the storytelling this Wednesday night had already commenced. And they ushered Jacob, into the center of the circle to offer his theory upon the whereabouts of one Bryan Florian.

“Gents! Gents! Pipe down!” the group’s ringleader corralled their rowdy attention. “Jacob here says he holds the definitive tale on Bryan Florian. Shall we hear it??”

All the gents, in unison, sloshing their mugs with bravado: “Yes!”

Jacob, blushed by the sudden spotlight: “Bryan Florian, the mild-mannered man we all loved, disappeared one night, never to return…”

“Woo!” we heard errant encouragement from the local crowd, or possibly mocking. Jacob plowed along.

“Mr. Florian had been researching methods of leaping out of this dimension,” Jacob continued. “He knew, that if he could accomplish such a singular, solitary feat, no one would know of his whereabouts. And he was okay with that.”

“What?” we then heard a few stirs of confusion from the crowd.

“What is a ‘dimensional leap,'” one storytelling Shermer member inquired. It seemed as though the local yokels hadn’t quite had the opportunity to ponder hyperreality.

“Yeah, whatta you talkin’ about?” chimed another regular.

“No! That’s really what happened to Bryan,” Jacob insisted.

“Boo!” the jeers now occurred in unison.

“That’s not what happened to Bryan!” the ringleader finally weighed in. “Florian didn’t go anywhere too exotic like that. Nah, he hijacked Northwest Orient Airlines Flight 305, never to be heard from again!”

Laughs erupted out of the ringleader’s posse.

“Under the alias of D.B. Cooper!” the ringleader delivered his punchline, to more laughter.

On this world, there was apparently an infamous hijacker who took control of the aforementioned flight and disappeared somewhere around Portland, Oregon, in 1971. Jacob knew the story.

“No! I’m telling you guys! Bryan found a way out of this world!” Jacob implored his fading audience.

I intervened.

“Jacob, I don’t think these guys are buyin’ it,” I said. “Gentlemen! We appreciate your inclusion of our little group to this hallowed weekly tradition. Jacob here just has a wild imagination.”

Jacob relinquished the floor, and the Wednesday night storytelling session went on as it usually ran each week, while the Cheshire crew did its best to blend in. We must have somewhat redeemed ourselves, after Jacob’s “wild” rantings; we were invited back the following week. Although Jacob’s ego had not completely recovered. He and Gabe wouldn’t return until we had found Bryan Florian.

***

NEXT UP: Jacob doesn’t want to make the same mistake twice, disappointing the boys down at the local tavern each Wednesday.

“Bill, what if we use our dimensional leaps as inspiration for Wednesday night stories?” Jacob was always thinking.

“Yeah, we could record our jumps, like how the Cheshire logs events,” Gabe added.

“Hell,” I said. “What else we gonna talk about?”

***