Florian soon departed from the Drop to pursue his next mission. He was a full-fledged Thunderbird now, and the Order kept him busy enacting their will to maintain the multiverse. As I said goodbye and thanked him for his spur of inspiration, I hoped I would see him again soon. Oh the tales he could tell.

I quickly sat back down to my zen pillow, serene in the Drop, silent, ready to master the voyager Thunderbird craft, when Kitty called. Technically, the Drop was still attached to the Cheshire and I was in range. She only meant to leave a message. But I’m glad I heard it before departing myself.

“Hi, it’s me,” her recording said. “Hope you’re doing well in your studies. I also hope you come home soon. Our tagging missions have progressively gotten worse. The UU just doesn’t get it. They’re trying to ‘Google Map’ our entire known universe. At this rate, the Cheshire will never be free from its civil service. I’m not trying to add pressure to you, I’m really not. I just don’t see any way out of this. I miss you, Bill.”

That was just the motivation I needed. A sense of urgency sent lightning down my spine as static crackled all about my head now in deep meditation. I focused intently and remembered what Bryan Florian had said just prior to departing, “Hold the five places in your mind.”

Instead of fixating on a point to formulate my destination, I concentrated in concert on the five storied segments in even clock positions about my Drop. I held my own story—the journey toward Thunderbird—in my six position, where the back door lied. Spheres of electromagnetivity hovered above all six of the clock positions, not just under my feet. The six spheres coalesced into an orb of superposition—a super portal, and I leapt up into it. The gravitational forces were almost too powerful to handle, like surfing the megalithic heaviness of a 200-foot wave. But holding the six spheres equally balanced my focus. I rode the 10-storied sea wall through the rift in space-time, until gravitational waters finally calmed and smoothed to cool, flat glass.

I glided to shore and gently stepped on firm land, just shy of the Twelve’s paddock. I left the Drop as a Thunderbird trainee and landed on paddock as a full-fledged voyager. I had finally arrived.

***

FLASH FORWARD: The Twelve show Bill how channeling evokes non-locality. He can be all the places possible, at once. He is always among them. That’s what ‘as above, so below’ means. In channeling, he becomes those places and precipitates them into present existence.

***

The Twelve’s temple was truly the holiest of places I had ever stepped foot or set eyes upon. I was grateful to have returned, since the last time I had departed them, there was no guarantee I’d ever see them again.

It had been quite a long time from my perspective since my last visit. Though the Twelve greeted me as if I had just stepped out for a gallon of milk. Time was sort of irrelevant to eternal beings such as these. To them, everything was always happening with everyone they had ever encountered or would meet. They instantly remembered me, like a family receiving their prodigal son returning from some protracted pilgrimmage. Comfort washed over me from these ominous, but compassionate gods.

“Young Bill, who’s not so young anymore,” Billowed down the Prime Twelve. “What brings you to our altar once again?”

“I have completed my voyager training as a Thunderbird in stepping up to your hearth, Twelve Leader!” I yelled up to his divine pedestal. “I have but one trial remaining that stands between me now and the status of Thunderbird.”

“Ahh, how exciting,” He said. “And how may We be of service?”

“I must learn the ancient art of channeling,” I said. I planned on visiting with these ultra beings for a bit and then returning to the Order to report my voyaging success and receive the next and final trial. I would have left, had Prime not delivered this bit of wisdom to me.

“Channeling, you say!” Prime Twelve’s voice rose in intrigue. “That is but a movement of consciousness. We are all masters of that craft. How might we help you?”

How serendipitous, I thought, that my successful voyaging destination would also provide a natural segue into the next test. Of course the Twelve would know about channeling.

“All that I know,” I yelled up into the clouds that shrouded the Twelve’s godly faces, “is my channeling mantra: ‘as above, so below.'”

With that, the Twelve released a hearty bellow that shook the ground beneath me and left a ringing in my ears.

“Ah, yes! So below, as above, indeed!” Prime echoed, the ripples from His bellow still bouncing about the stone temple. “Channeling is the finest art among multidimensional and multiversal travel. To channel is to become a conduit for all existence at once. As above, so below, because you are becoming what seems far away from oneself. That is until you realize you were always that place, and you always will be.”

“I don’t quite understand, Your Holiness,” I said reluctantly. I did not want to disappoint Him, but I also didn’t want to lie to a superior being.

“That’s OK,” He said, ensconced in His infinite patience. “One word: non-locality.”

‘Non-locality’ echoed in my inner monologue, until an aha moment erupted from my mouth moments later.

“Of course!” I said. “Space, separateness is an illusion. We are all places, all things, all beings at once. We must only acknowledge that and possess the spiritual acuity to tune into specificity.”

“Yes!” He bellowed down again. “It may appear that you traversed impossible distances and stretches of the mind to reach us. But you held us in your heart this entire time. It was only after you achieved the dexterity to hold six worlds as one that you mixed the perfect blend to arrive here…”

Then, we both said in unison, “As above, so below,” but the Twelve leader continued…

“As above, so below, because you are summoning the place, the distant destination into your immediate existence. You are the place, insofar as you believe it.”

Evolution of thought overtook me. I had deeply experienced an epiphany by the Twelve’s shared wisdom.

“I can’t thank you enough!” I said to Them. I wanted to stay, but now armed with the confidence of knowing I could return, I was even more excited to return to the Order. I needed to tell my instructor that I had passed the voyager test. And that I may very well be a Thunderbird channeler too.

“Don’t be a stranger,” Prime Twelve yelled, as I leapt up into my Drop to return to the Order in a flash. “Remember: We are always here; You are always here, and everywhere… so long as you possess the courage and the wisdom to realize it.”

“Until next time,” I said, and vanished from their holy altar. I landed on the front gates of the Thunderbird Equipment Room faster than usual. Perhaps my channeling had already begun. I walked through the gates equipped with the good news to divulge to my instructor. My mind crackled and percolated with new wisdom. I even thought I had a way to free the Cheshire now. I felt closer to a pure Thunderbird than ever before.

***

I hurried down the high-vaulted hallways of the Equipment Room to my instructor’s quarters. I approached the heavy double doors of his study and heard an echoey “Enter” from within.

“I understand your voyage led you to the Twelve,” He said, after I entered His premises.

“Yes,” I said, humbly.

“That is quite a feat to travel such an expanse of time, space and existence. You’re now ready for the final trial: channeling.”

“Yes,” I repeated, but then added, “They taught me a bit about channeling too.”

“They did, did they?” the instructor’s ominous voice reminded me of the Wizard of Oz.

“As above, so below,” I said.

“Show me,” he quickly retorted.

At once, I whisked us both to the epicenter of my Drop. I held all six positions on the even points of the clock face—the garden, the speakeasy, the yacht club, the back door, the infinite baseball diamond, and Shermer’s living room. I held all six places as one. The instructor then rattled off destinations on a whim.

“Fly to an 18th-century Earth where the American Revolution never occurred,” He said. And in an instant, we were there.

“Sail to an Earth in the 21st century that has attained full control of the planet’s energy—a Type 1 civilization.”

Before He could blink, we leaped there and enjoyed the utopia of an Earth version that no longer experienced scarcity in energy nor poverty, nor pollution. We both took deep breaths of the extremely clean air and then I returned us to His Equipment Room quarters.

“Excellent,” He said. “And how were you able to so quickly whisk us there?”

“The Twelve taught me, sir, that we are always these places. We are all places, all the time. It’s just a matter of manifesting them with focus, clarity and a zen mind.”

“Very good,” He said. “But, you’re still not a Thunderbird.”

I was disappointed, but without hesitation I calmly asked, “What else do you require of me?”

“You must teach your crew. You must effectively convey the wisdom you’ve attained throughout these trials to at least one of your crew members.”

“I understand,” I said. I already knew who’d be the prime candidate for such an education: Kitty.

At that, the instructor bid me farewell and sent me back to the Cheshire. I was happy to return. My trials had benefited me greatly, but I missed my crew members. They also needed my help now more than ever, save the time they were almost swallowed by that black hole. The UU were subjecting them to their own series of never-ending trials. And that would have stayed the case, had I not acquired this newfound wisdom from my instructor and experience in the Equipment Room.

I materialized back in my Drop in the middle of the night. All the crew were asleep. I climbed up into my cot in the supply closet. It felt oddly comfortable and familiar. I hadn’t slept there for what felt like years.

The next morning, I attended crew breakfast in the ship’s kitchen and was welcomed by open arms from Kitty, Keith, Jacob, Gabe and all the rest of the crew.

Once the pleasantries subsided, I delivered the good news:

“Your days of UU servitude are numbered,” I said. “I return with the wisdom to liberate the Cheshire once and for all.”

***

I may have mentioned it before in this Thunderbird journal, but I can’t stress enough how intricately, impossibly complex were Danny V’s requests of the Cheshire, per the UU. When I finally returned to the ship after my Order instructor’s expert tutelage, crew morale had reached an all-time low.

I’d sit in quietly on morning bridge meetings where the oppressor V would dole down his demands:

“OK, Cheshire crew, this next project’s mission will require the tagging of several thousand touch points, accurate to over 100 decimals of pi, all surrounding a UU planet who’s requesting we record the events leading up to their culture’s independence,” on Danny V. droned.

The problem was that each succeeding point was contingent upon its predecessor. A woefully soul-sucking linear process was required of the Cheshire. No shortcuts… at least without the aid of a Thunderbird.

One night at dinner, I proposed my channeling technique to the Cap and crew to finally lift us out of this bureaucratic hell.

“Our collective problem is that we’re bound to the droll, linear nature of these pedestrian tasks,” I said. “I think I can lift us out of time—the fourth dimension—into the fifth. From there, we’ll have access to any possible reality. We can reverse engineer V.’s commands at the blink of an eye, in real time, with neither him nor the UU the wiser.”

Without hesitation, the Cap: “Show me.”

I took Her and the entire crew down to my Drop, where we had always launched our extra-dimensional leaps putting Earth in superposition. We all sat in the epicenter, within the zen garden overlooking the waterfall and all clock point places I’ve mentioned several times in this narrative. I first gazed at the Cap and Guillermo’s divine garden, in the 12 position, where they had met in that pivotal moment on their Earth version.

“That’s the first place we’ll hold,” I said. “But the key is not to fixate upon one destination. We need to lift into the 5th dimension. So we’ll have to hold all of these places in our consciousness in one moment.”

“Which places?” Kitty said, eagerly and intrigued, egging me on because I think she already knew the answer, but wasn’t sure about her cosmonaut colleagues.

“The places of all of our origins, that I’ve installed as fixtures at the even clock face places surrounding us all as we speak,” I said. “We need six places to open the seventh door and send someone through its portal to the higher plane, like opening all of the chakras at once.”

“But I only see five places, if you don’t count the back door,” Kitty challenged me. I think I was even starting to lose her in this heady concept, but I pressed on.

“I’m the sixth,” I said. “My story. I come from a different Earth version than all of you.”

“But you don’t know where you come from,” Kitty insisted.

“I know I woke up on the Cheshire, orbiting this version of Earth below, that I’ve now visited countless times, down on the ground. I became awakened here and claim it as my origin. When we hold your five stories all in our consciousnesses, I’ll supply the sixth, as the culmination of my story, right here, right now. As above, so below.”

“It’s worth a shot,” Keith said. He’d been quiet this whole time, since my return, but his rocksteady support was the uptick I needed to convince the rest of the crew and Cap.

“Lead the way, Bill,” Cap said. “You’re the point on this mission.”

“Aye, aye, skipper,” I happily obliged, also relieved that She was on board along with the rest of crew.

If we could pull this off, under the nose of Danny V., we’d finally be free. Free to go on the missions we wanted, without the UU hindering our progress or joy. If you’re reading this now, then that means we succeeded in our clandestine mission.

It went down like this…

***

NEXT UP: Bill accomplishes his Thunderbird feat, sending Kitty off to become an ordained member herself. He summons the crew couples to each hold their respective stories in superposition, as he navigates His sixth. The Twelve as audience are impressed and actualize Earth Herself to reach critical mass and fully precipitate in the movierain. She has become a full-fledged Drop, the Earth. Bill is a Thunderbird. And Kitty is well on her way.

The Twelve grant complete knowledge of the Earth and Her versions in the form of a comprehensive volume. “Focus on your intention of asking, and the page that you open up will contain the answer to your question,” #7 of the Twelve said, handing over the book to Bill. The text, a giant leather-bound anthology can handle even the most prodding, painfully precise of inquiries, so as to prove that the Cheshire crew actually leapt to the UU’s desired destinations and logged those points. When, in fact, they’d simply reference the book. Keith often stays back from Dropping with other crew to field late-breaking demands from Danny V., when he suspects they’re slacking. I mean, they are, but with this infinite book from the Twelve, there’s no way to prove it.

Immediately following the completion of their divine task, we find ourselves in the Shermer tavern once again. Bill has been telling this tale to his storytelling group, with his Cheshire crew and Cap in the wings. The future looks promising, as they set existential sail for their most desired destinations, unfettered by the UU’s corrupt greed and entropic oppression that had plagued them for so long.

Excitement returned to the Cheshire bridge, as they charted course each morning. What a time to be a Thunderbird, with loyal crew and a Captain to boot. Here’s to resilience.

***