UC Berkeley physics professor John O’Halleran, PhD read a story one day in the East Bay Times. It was about a local man, Matt Dragon, who believed he had slipped dimensions from another version of Earth.

Dragon was the author who had helped me find Kitty, soon after I had become a Thunderbird. Hot off the heels of the Letterman story’s success, the North Star editor was looking for the next article from this reporter. And to be honest, I had drawn a blank. Reporters will tell you there are a million ways to find a story. Some fall into your lap. You catch wind of others through word-of-mouth of your sources. When all those channels run dry, I took to surfing the movierain—the downpour of all possible worlds precipitating in the multiverse. I let my mind clear, as the Dew whisked by my helmet at the speed of thought. I must have become slightly entangled with the author, Dragon, who had helped me those moons ago, as I felt a slight tug pulling me toward his Earth. There seemed to be something unique to his version of the planet. Dragon wasn’t the only one who had spontaneously stumbled upon inter-dimensional travel.

I dropped down from superposition into Dragon’s Earth. As my feet set in the soil of nearby Berkeley, where Dragon lived, I immediately sensed a story brewing. I quickly located Dragon, in his quaint 2-bedroom on Durant Street, where he caught me up to speed over a cup of coffee.

Dragon told me that O’Halleran read the article three times before calling the local man. The professor wished to invite this unique individual to his weekly support group, on campus, a community of initial strangers. The doctor of physics had been collecting subjects like Dragon himself, he said, who had all experienced similar inter-dimensional phenomena, yet had never met. Nothing tied these unique individuals together, save one common denominator: by various means, they had all either left this Earth version and returned or weren’t from this version to begin with and had one day found themselves here.

After having now met with Dragon and the professor, I concluded there was something very special about this Earth version—it seemed to produce dimensional leapers spontaneously. I had to know how and why this was happening.

Prof. O’Halleran invited me to attend one of his on-campus sessions in Birge Hall, with fellow dimensional leapers. He advised it was probably best not to divulge to them that I was also a dimension-leaping Thunderbird.

“OK, everybody,” O’Halleran addressed his small student body of a half dozen inter-dimensionals, “I’d like you all to welcome Bill, here, who’s a physics colleague of mine. He’s just here to observe.”

O’Halleran stood in front of a huge whiteboard, while his students sat in the first few rows. Dragon and I hung back like a couple of delinquents. We didn’t want to disturb the class.

“Before we get into today’s topic,” he continued, “let’s just go around the room and introduce yourself and how you came to dimensional leaping for our guest here.”

“Well, you all know how I got here,” Dragon broke the ice. “It’s published in the Times.”

“Right,” O’Halleran said. “OK, Janice, would you like to go first?”

Janice was one of O’Halleran’s physics students, perhaps his star pupil. She also appeared to be one of the youngest in the room, and one of the only actual Berkeley students O’Halleran had collected. The others had arrived in the professor’s classroom by other means.

“My name is Janice,” she said. “I decided to enroll in Berkeley’s physics program after, as a young girl, I developed the ability to leap out of this local 3rd-dimensional space. I had to know how this was possible in today’s scientific terms.”

“Great, Janice,” O’Halleran said. “Can you tell Bill how you discovered this profound ability?”

“Sure,” she said. “Ever since like puberty, I’ve been able to astrally leap out of my body. It just happened one afternoon. I was laying on the couch. It was midday. I was nodding off for a nap and I could feel my brain hit those theta wave patterns necessary for sleep. But instead of drifting off to slumber, my energetic body leapt out of my physical shell. Instantly, I knew I could fly. As I floated above the couch, I could see my earthly body below. The next thing I knew, I had permeated through my roof and was flying at high speeds above my town. I suspected, even then, that I could have left this Earth and explored distant realities, but was afraid that I wouldn’t find my way back. Prof. O’Halleran has been working with me on controlling my abilities, and I’ve since visited some interesting realms.”

“Very cool,” I said. “And how did you know that the professor here would be able to help or even understand your predicament?”

“I can answer that,” O’Halleran said. “I published an article in the American Journal of Physics about the human brain’s latent ability to perceive and even leap to other worlds.”

“Yes,” Janice corroborrated her professor. “His account was so close to what I had personally experienced, very much more so than anything in my internet research. I knew I had to meet him.”

“Thank you, Janice,” O’Halleran said. “Next, we have Arnold.”

The professor gestured to a middle-aged man sitting next to Janice.

“Thanks, prof,” Arnold said. “My grades weren’t good enough to attend Berkeley like Janice here. But, like Mr. Dragon, teach found me after some local news coverage. I’m from Marin County. I love to hike and, more importantly, meditate under giant redwoods, up in Muir Woods. When I was 23, I’ll never forget the day I realized the rather large conifers vastly augmented my abilities to channel far-flung frequencies. That day, I walked into one version of Muir Woods and emerged from the forest in an entirely different Earth, albeit similar to my home world. When I finally made it back to my Muir Woods of origin, I contacted the Marin Independent Journal who published a profile on me. My hope was that, if someone who had experienced similar phenomena in the area read it, I could meet them. That’s when Professor O’Halleran reached out to me.”

O’Halleran nodded and added, “Arnold’s profile in the local journal triggered a Google alert I had set up. We’ve been meeting once a week ever since.”

Before the professor could move onto to his next pupil’s introduction, I had already begun to connect the dots.

“Wait,” I said. “Are all of you originally from the Bay Area?”

A resounding “yes” was returned from the room.

“There appears to be a correlation with dimensional leaping and the drastic topographical landscape,” O’Halleran said.

It was as if this Earth version—and particularly the Greater Bay Area—was fine-tuned to naturally produce dimensional leapers. I sensed there was a certain vibe or breeze in the air that cleared the path for these unique individuals to emerge. My curiosity piqued.

O’Halleran introduced the other three, who all had arrived at the doorstep of other dimensions by unique but similar means. Another man, Ziggy was his name, had stumbled upon extra-dimensional leaping hill bombing down Dolores Street in San Francisco.

“As my board picked up speed, I just remember my mind going hella zen,” Ziggy said. “The next thing I know: a white light. And I ollied up into what felt like a higher plane. When I touched back down I quickly realized I had landed in an alternate Earth.”

At this point, four of O’Halleran’s pupils—including the author Dragon—had divulged their techniques. The remaining two students sat in the classroom were a couple, Sven and Jen.

“We’ve always had insane chemistry,” Sven said.

“Sparks flew when we met, and it has only escalated from there,” Jen added.

The couple would go on to explain that their dynamic dialogue seemed to be the culprit for producing a vortex into higher planes.

“We live together,” Sven said. “One night, after dinner, we engaged in our normal nightly conversation. After a glass of wine or two, the subject matter got hella existential. We ping-ponged topics back and forth that probed at the very nature of our being.”

“And an orb of ball lightning formed between us, spontaneously,” Jen said. “We held onto each other and leapt up into the grander plane. When we found our way back to our little Berkeley bungalow, we reached out to O’Halleran, who had placed a Craigslist ad for anyone who had experienced dimensional leaping.”

“I’ve since taken that ad down,” O’Halleran said. “Sven and Jen were the only two legitimate leapers to respond. The rest were a bunch of kooks.”

Then, the focus shifted to the nature of this Earth Herself. Why had Earth_Berkeley created this Goldilocks Zone of inter-dimensional gateways?

The professor saw me after class, once the last student left. Dragon and I hung back for a post-session chat. O’Halleran shared with us his theory that we—the people of Berkeley and the Greater Bay Area—were ensnared in some kind of hyper-dimensional field. His students and Dragon had tapped into it somehow. Upon further investigation of my own, I concurred.

I dropped into O’Halleran’s office the next day to reveal my 5th-dimensional findings (a purview reserved only for the initiated… like Thunderbirds).

“You were right, professor,” I said. “The Earth version appears to be special. It’s set on a 5th-dimensional quadrangle overlapping with other Earths. This planetary concentration has elevated the Bay Area into a semi-superposition, so to speak. The veil is thin, you see. And talented leapers, like your pupils, have found their own ways to tap into this otherworldly activity.”

“Fascinating,” the professor said. “So what now?”

“Keep your weekly meeting with them,” I said. “Continue to coach them as they explore higher dimensions. But I would also advise you keep this taboo practice under wraps. It’s unfortunate that you had to discover the majority of them publicly, via the local periodicals, but I can work a little magic to dispel any unwanted attention that may result from the various coverage.”

“Under wraps?” he said. “My group represents an evolution in humanity. We need to shout to the rooftops that this is possible!”

“I agree with the first part of what you said, and vehemently disagree with the second. The general state of this Earth is not ready for dimensional travel, at least on a large scale. Leaping dimensions is not like accessing the internet, where anyone can log on. No, you need to treat such abilities with extreme caution. Otherwise, you could encounter undesirable ripple effects.”

I could sense the professor comprehending the gravity of what he had uncovered, but I continued to further drive home my point…

“If news that leaping dimensions was possible for the mainstream, we would witness mass drop-offs in commitment to this reality. People would stop showing up for work. Society would ultimately unravel on this Earth.”

“Well, we can’t have that,” O’Halleran said.

“Certainly not,” I said. “This is probably a good time to admit that my purpose for being here is twofold. Yes, I’m here to cover the story of this remarkable Earth for my 5th-dimensional newspaper the North Star. But I was also sent here by the Thunderbird Order to ensure no ripple effect into adjacent realities would result from your otherworldly classroom meetings on this Berkeley campus.”

“I see,” he said.

“We’ll keep an eye on this Earth from afar. Here’s a way to reach me, should your students have any questions on extra-dimensional travel.” I handed the professor a tiny piece of paper with a phone number written on it. “Just call this number and leave a message. I’ll return to your Earth when I receive it.”

---

After I departed Earth_Berkeley, it sort felt like I had been talking out of both sides of my mouth with Prof. O’Halleran. Here I was filing a story about this extraordinary Earth for my 5th-dimensional newspaper (for enlightened beings), while simultaneously telling the terrestrials down on the ground to keep their mouths shut. The subtleties of higher travel required such discretion.

Perhaps that’s why I made Dragon the main character in my story that I filed with the North Star; even if the coverage was technically outside of O’Halleran’s reality, the good professor had enough heat to deal with down on the ground.

I submitted this draft to the editor:

Spontaneous Leaping Occurs on Earth_Berkeley

Thunderbirds are used to reducing ripple effects while leaping dimensions. But on a planetary scale?

That’s what happened when this reporter uncovered an Earth that could produce dimensional leapers organically. In my own dimensional travels, I had become entangled with an author from this version of Earth, which I would later coin “Earth_Berkeley.”

His name is Matt Dragon, and he had been writing about me while I leapt through the movierain multiverse.

The local author Dragon, who had been profiled in the East Bay Times upon returning from our multiversal excursions, as he liked to remind people, had this to say about dimensional leaping, since that’s what his book was about:

“I was writing what I thought was a fictional account of interdimensional travel,” Dragon said, as we sat in his kitchen. “The next thing I know, you, Bill Thunderbird materialized in my study from thin air. The Big Cat appeared in the flesh exactly as I had written you, only a few moments before. It was then that I realized I was writing a work of non-fiction.”

Nearby Berkeley physics professor John O’Halleran then reached out to Dragon, he said, once the professor saw the Times‘ article. O’Halleran had already been meeting weekly with several subjects, like Dragon, on the Cal university campus to discuss and workshop the intricacies of leaping in and out of their local reality.

“I’ve attended several of Professor O’Halleran’s support groups now with the other dimensional leapers,” Dragon said. “Each has found their way to this miraculous practice by methods fascinatingly personal to them. Mine was by writing about it.”

O’Halleran’s dimensional leapers support group still meets regularly, but have been instructed by the Thunderbird Order to keep their sacred research private from the general planetary public.

“Ripple effects on a planetary scale are not something the Order generally allocates the capacity to address,” said a spokesperson for the Thunderbird Order.

The anomaly is fascinating to say the least. This reporter will continue to monitor Earth_Berkeley and O’Halleran’s progress with his pupils. To now know that an Earth version exists capable of spontaneously producing the fundamental ingredients for a dimension-leaping Thunderbird leaves much to the imagination. In studying this 4th-dimensional planet, perhaps we can learn more about our own higher dimesions—5, 6 and beyond.

There was certainly an electricity among the air of Earth_Berkeley, which resonated with a mysterious and inviting vibe. It’s as if the answer to our own existence was blowing in the wind.

Furthermore, in a Thunderbird’s line of work, one occupational hazard is getting wiped from existence. If this has happened to a fellow T-Bird of yours, might I recommend checking if they wound up reincarnated on Earth_Berkeley.

---

This tale emerged from the universe of Big Cat.

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The Crows were a violent faction of the Thunderbird Order. They were among the only Thunderbirds, in fact, who traveled in groups — “a Murder of Crows,” they called them.

Murder was an appropriate moniker for the Crows. They were the toughest, grittiest of all Thunderbirds. Upon completing my voyager training, I elected to concentrate on the channeling aspect of the Thunderbird Order, instead of the enforcement side of our kind. But I was going to have to get in good with these hooligans to cover the story for the North Star.

---

I had just left the editor’s office where he’d issued me this assigment. Upon exiting, I signaled to Kitty, who had accompanied me on this visit to the North Star newspaper, it was time to go.

“What’d he say?” Kitty had been patiently waiting outside to see if I had a new job, after submitting a writing sample to him, based on a recent, brief stay of 42 years down on a version of Earth.

“He liked it,” I said. “He even gave me an assignment.”

“You’re not gonna have to leap blindly into a new body down on the ground again, are you?” Kitty said. I could detect half sarcasm and half concern in the tone of her voice.

I was quick to reassure her.

“He wants me to cover the Crows,” I said.

“What or who are those?” As a trainee, Kitty had not been exposed to all Thunderbird forms yet. I was happy to enlighten her.

“He mentioned that the Thunderbird Order is experimenting with planetary intervention, on particularly militant worlds. He said an Earth version was likely one such candidate. Right when he mentioned ‘militant’ and ‘intervention,’ only one type of Thunderbird came to mind: the Crows.”

“That still doesn’t answer my question,” she said.

“Right. The Crows are a swarm of hornets. They’re the enforcers of our Order. I had encountered them in my own trainee days. They chased me from one end of the multiverse to the other, as I mastered my voyager craft.”

“I thought the Thunderbird were peaceful,” she said. Kitty had become perplexed.

“For the most part, yes. But one can’t ignore Murphy’s Law: if it can happen, it will… especially among a multiverse of all possibility. The Murder of Crows, ‘MoC’ for short, are our security against any threats that could injure an otherwise stable multiverse. There’s such a thing as worlds becoming too peaceful, too susceptible to outside, nefarious antigens. MoC exist, then, as the necessary evil to combat these opposing forces who may prey on unsuspecting worlds.”

“Uh huh, I see,” she said. “So, what now?”

“We’ll have to visit another Dew place—the Equipment Room. We’ll need to reference the Thunderbird logs to see if my hunch is correct. We must locate that particular Earth version the Crows have descended upon. We may also have to brace ourselves for an unwelcome reception. The Crows don’t usually get along with other Thunderbirds.”

Kitty’s eyes lit up at my description of this mysterious faction of her Thunderbird Order. She held a keen attraction to danger, I thought.

“That’s fine, but can we stop off at the Cheshire first? I haven’t eaten all day.”

She also didn’t like surfing the multiverse on an empty stomach.

---

They say from the dawn of time to the modern era on Earth-42, not a day went by where war wasn’t waged on the planet’s surface. This civilization knew no time when it was completely at peace. They were getting close by the mid-2030s, though, which was a few years after I leapt back to the spacecraft Cheshire for good.

The Thunderbird Order summoned the MoC to swoop in and provide the final balm to quell any lingering societal rash once and for all. They were a militant, formidable bunch—the Crows—but that aptitude also availed them abilities to squash beefs quickly before any humid antagonism wafted over neighboring territories, infecting their moods. The MoC Thunderbird faction would be the group to ultimately accomplish peace throughout a planetary version adjacent to Earth-42.

---

Kitty and I left the Equipment Room. After a brief meal back on the Cheshire to avoid any “hanger,” as she called it, from an otherwise agitated and hungry Kitty, we both leapt to Earth-42.

“Is this where we’ll find them?” Kitty said after leaping from the movierain onto terrestrial Earth-42.

“No,” I said, “but my gut tells me the version they’ll attempt to intervene is off an adjacent quadrangle to this Earth version. When I leapt off finally, I had the feeling the planet could approach peace eventually. We can explore possible Earth versions from this ‘-42’ vantage spacetime to pinpoint the specific Earth the Crows have targeted.”

We had re-enterd Earth-42 at precisely my initial exit point. It was roughly the year 2024 and wars still waged. There was an ongoing skirmish in Ukraine. The Gaza Strip had heated up over the last few years too, among another two dozen substantial conflicts that peppered our globe. We fast-forwarded congruent timelines in pursuit of a possible Earth that would eventually achieve peace of its own accord.

Lo and behold, we found one such peaceful Earth in the year 2035, as projected from my Earth-42 launch point. I coined this version “Earth_PeaceProject.”

“If they’ve already achieved peace, what’s the point of intervening?” Kitty said, as we touched down upon this Earth_PeaceProject version.

“Warmongering is baked into the human DNA,” I said. “It’s certainly an accomplishment that this modern human civilization has finally extinguished large-scale offenses across its surface for the first time in its questionable history. But there’s no question of if future conflict will sprout; it’s only a matter of when.”

That’s why the Crows were so crucial to this Earth version’s survival, as a peaceful planet. While they couldn’t have forced peace while sections of the planet still waged war, the Thunderbird Crows could now swoop in as a salve to quell any lingering pangs from a history of violence. They could also delve into the ruminating psychology of the Earth’s collective unconscious of post-traumatic stress that remained. The MoC knew rage better than any other Thunderbird, and knew how to alleviate terrestrial strife, having been there themselves.

“Any minute now,” I said, “the Crows should dip into this dimension to intervene. And we’ll be here to cover it.”

Kitty gazed up to the sky in pregnant anticipation.

“What are you going to say when they arrive?” she said. I hadn’t thought of that yet, having been mainly concerned thus far with locating the MoC among our highly subtle multiverse.

“I never know what these guys will say or do,” I said. “It’s best not to over prepare or rehearse anything. I’ll know what to say when I see them.”

Kitty was satisfied with this response. I could tell she was excited. I was also rather bated in my anticipation, and nervous for the first time since I had become a full-fledged Thunderbird.

A few moments passed, and then we heard the crackle of thunder in the distance.

“That’s them,” I said.

The sky opened and a murder—dozens of Crows—descended down to the ground, from the heightened multiverse reality—the movierain. Their swarm hummed as one organic entity, teeming with each angry hornet Crow contributing his own brand of buzz.

While a Thunderbird body can assume any size or shape retaining Its fine definition—the way a vector design graphic can retain its resolution however large or small—the Crows typically chose a rather broad-shouldered shell to my preferred lean build. They wore helmets like mine too, but they had etched mouth pieces with fierce teeth and angry eyes above them. Having dealt with the rabble of riffraff about the outskirts of the multiverse, the Crows chose to strike fear as a first impression. The nerves I had experienced just prior to their intimidating entrance made sense. Kitty seemed unfazed.

They answered to call signs like “Teeth” and “Jab”—short, punchy monikers that could instill a sense of dread from a single syllable. Heckle and Jeckle were a tag team within the MoC, named after a cartoon duo from the 1940s of many Earth versions, including -42. I knew to steer clear of those two, having seen the cartoon in reruns when I lived down on the ground in a past life.

Their leader was a Thunderbird called “Leviathan,” a giant Crow who commanded respect and your attention, should you find yourself within the vicinity of His dominion.

Thunderbirds can sniff out their own, and Leviathan quickly caught wind that Kitty and I were also occupying Earth_PeaceProject at the same time as them. Once his faction fully entered the Earth space and landed on the ground, Leviathan made his way toward us.

The Chief Thunderbird stood 10 feet tall, towering over Kitty’s and my more slender frames. As He loomed closer, He eclipsed us under his ominous shadow.

“What’s your business here, channeler?” He said. Leviathan was direct and a bit dismissive. He didn’t even look at Kitty.

“We’re here to cover your mission for the North Star, sir,” I said.

“I can’t say I condone this, ‘Big Cat,'” He said Big Cat sarcastically to imply that I hadn’t earned his respect. Of course, he expected mine. And then he threw me a bone. “But let me know if you need to talk to anyone specifically in my MoC. I only ask two things: 1. Stay out of our way; and 2. I get final draft approval before you submit to your editor.”

“Yes, sir,” I said. My many tense conversations with the Captain to this point had prepared me for interacting with the military.

The ‘R’ from “sir” had barely left my lips and the large Leviathan was already gone. The big bird was quick.

In the distance, I heard Heckle and Jeckle mocking me.

“Oh no!” Heckle yelled. “Watch out for Big Cat! He’ll teleport you right outta here, oooOOOOOohh!”

Jeckle chuckled, as they both flew up to join the rest of their MoC. We didn’t have their respect either. I looked to Kitty at my side.

“You sure you want to stay with me while I cover this story? I can take you back to the ship,” I said, but I already knew the answer. I could see the sparkle of possibilty dancing in Kitty’s eyes.

“I want to stay,” she said with a smile.

Yup, Kitty craved danger. To me, it was more of an occupational hazard I normally tried to avoid. But to get this story for the paper, the Big Cat was going to have to become a Crow.

---

Anger and channeling mix about as well as oil and water. Stern were the Crows—not necessarily angry, but the continual exposure to other worlds’ strife could induce rage reactions from the uninitiated. The Crows were weathered for this dirty work; channelers like me were not. In order to locate the rarest, most elusive of worlds, I had to maintain a perfectly pristine zen mind. Not so for the Crows, who proliferated this Earth planet with fleet efficiency. It was truly a privilege to watch them work.

A newly peaced planet was like a throbbing wound warmed over by a few days’ healing. The imflammation coarsed and pulsated to breach new skin and shed more blood. At no other time was a planet more vulnerable to burst into conflict once again. The recently extinguished anger, still smoking, begged to breathe more life, like the bitten piece of flesh inside your mouth, swollen, and ever so ready to be painfully between your teeth.

The Crows had to handle this sensitive moment with the utmost caution (and a little silent strength) to say the least.

It was a sight to watch these warrior poets work.

They deployed in packets, circumnavigating the globe to concentrate on hotbed pockets of potential outbreaks. Their radios kept them connected.

“Attention, Leviathan,” Jab pinged his fearless leader from afar, “we’ve descended down to the New York City streets. We’ve caught wind a few skirmishes about to break. We’re going to investigate and report back.”

*Kssht*

“All good, team leader Jab,” Leviathan responded. The Crows leader had agreed to let us tail him until I could gain a better sense of where their ubiquitous deployments had landed.

Once the MoC’s waves coagulated around all known problem areas, Kitty and I were free to leap between locations. In fact, I could channel all sites simultaneously, so as not to miss any of the action.

We first decided to concentrate on the developing situation on NYC streets. The local organized crime there knew peace would not be good for business. They continued to shake down the citizens in their neighborhoods the only way they knew how.

“I don’t give a rat’s ass about this world peace shit,” said a capo for the family currently running Brooklyn to the bodega owner at the corner of 9th and Roebling Street. “You will continue to pay me every week or you will be counting your teeth on the floor.”

Crows had a sixth sense for violence. At this threat, immediately, Jab’s team swooped to the store front as the street tough exited.

Jab towered over the capo, who himself was a healthy 6’5″, 250 lbs.

“You think you’re a force to reckon with??” Jab’s billowy voice sent shivers through the cowering criminal.

“Wh- Who or what are you?” capo said.

“I’m what you’ll deal with if you lay a finger on that store owner. Your planet has finally achieved worldwide peace. Let’s leave it that way.”

The capo sprinted down the street away from Jab. This Crow had met fire with fire to win the battle.

But the intimidation tactic didn’t stick. The war wasn’t over. Jab and his team tailed the capo culprit for a few days. Sure enough, the miscreant returned with the same evil motives. The bile had burned deep into this ex-con’s bones. Newly achieved planetary peace or not, this certain man’s soul would still err with the inertia to perform ill will.

Once capo entered the storefront, Jab’s team swooped in for the sequel.

“You again?” the capo cooed dryly. He was packing heat this time, which he now brandished and began firing in Jab’s direction.

Bullets were mere mosquitos to Thunderbirds. Jab dropped from hover to the ground with a heavy thud that shook the nearby concrete. He conjured a force field—like the way I form my Drop to leap dimensions—around him and his team. The impenetrable membrane effortlessly deflected the capo’s bullets. Jab then grew, at will, to a staggering 15 feet tall, five feet in width, growling with a guttural roar that vibrated the very chests of everyone within a block radius.

“Seriously, what the fuck are you??” the capo cowered, all out of ammo and his pants full of accidental deffication.

Jab answered like the Almighty: “I am the nightmare who will return to you every time you think of harming another. I see all and hear all and will always meet your misdeeds with exact and terrible force. You have two strikes. You do not want to see three.”

The capo took to running again. We never saw him again, in fact. We heard he was admitted into a mental hospital upstate. Apparently Jab’s entering god mode had shook the connected chap past the point of sanity.

But that’s the measures these Crows had to take, across this Earth during their newfound peace, in all areas where nefarious characters lurked. Evil, ill will was unfortunately baked into some of the usual suspects’ DNA. There was no honor system among them. “No honor among thieves,” as they say.

The Crows remained for generations, until the last bit of bile had been expunged from that Earth’s collective unconscious. The murky, chop of angry waters ceased to a pristine, crystal lake of glass, calm, soothing to the soul, with hardly any inkling of aggression. The MoC and their leader Leviathan gave the signal to this Thunderbird channeler. I rose up above the Earth’s atmosphere, encircling the globe at speeds beyond light to snapshot this peaceful moment in this Earth’s history.

In Leviathan’s words: “You’re here to channel the resurgence of the Heavy Presence, something in the air when you bore into your own Earth-42 in 1982. It’s benevolent and all-encompassing. It inspires new thought. You will perform this subtle art that’s too fine for the coarse Crows.”

I had wondered how the notoriously insular MoC had let me tag along with them.

Leviathan continued: “Bill Thunderbird, the only reason I let you witness our usually clandestine craft was that we required an experienced channeler such as yourself. Now that we’ve wrapped up this world, we had to call on you to put a bow on it—encircling the entire globe to snap an instant of this Earth version’s peaceful moment to be recorded in its local Akashic. That will serve as our re-entry point should anything go awry.”

So I did what I knew best, and channeled that Heavy Presence—a gloriously divine Higgs-Boson field from not so long ago.

That time stamp became the breadcrumb of the first recorded peaceful Earth of the modern era. It got logged in the local Earth Akashic and I wrote a story about it for the North Star. Leviathan approved.

This is what the editor kept of my 800 words, after lopping off a few of the less important bottom paragraphs:

The Crows: A Misunderstood Thunderbird Faction

The “Earth Peace Project” was a success, due to the Murder of Crows—the most militant of Thunderbird classes.

In the first time in its recent history, the Earth_PeaceProject version has sustained peace for more than a decade. After quelling all apparent conflicts down on the ground, the earthlings would have likely succumbed to future strife, had it not been for the Crows’ intervention.

“We flew in swiftly and addressed all potential hotspots with direct counters to keep the peace on this planet,” said Leviathan, the large leader of the Crows. “We’re confident the threat of our return shall hold our effect intact. We’ll soon depart for our next mission.”

Leviathan even let this reporter in on the action. The Big Cat (that’s me) was assigned to snapshot this planet’s peace moment as a breadcrumb for reentry, should the Crows need to return. Ripple effects are certainly a concern for this experimental planetary intervention. The Crows said they’d keep an eye on Earth_PeaceProject from afar.

For now, though, all’s well that ends well. And no more “Crowing” for this Big Cat. Back to channeling.

---

If you liked this short story, you might like the novel Big Cat.

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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

Low down on the Earthly ground one day, the faint hint of a notion surfaced in my thoughts, like a magic 8-ball’s eerie prediction emerging slowly within that little, blue porthole. It said, ‘The self doesn’t exist… at least not the way you’ve been taught. You are not part of the Earth; you are the Earth.’

It felt like the sudden onset of déjà vu because the concept that I was the Earth felt like a memory I had forgotten long ago, perhaps in a past life. I can’t remember what spurred this idea, but I went about my day as normal until the feeling fled. I would have thought nothing of the subtle occurrence, but the innate sense that I wasn’t supposed to be down on this ground returned.

It was a sense that indicated there was more to reality. There was a grand, exponentially more complex scheme hidden behind the ostensible everyday. As Shakespeare had famously said “the world’s a stage,” I certainly felt like one of its players who was waking up to the strings controlling existence from backstage.

My boss, for instance, would have me believe that the work—marketing our stupid products—should be my meaning of life. Her life revolved around the performance of this company. But I could see the ends of these efforts. However well my promotional campaigns performed, the same fact remained—all of our labor merely made old white men richer. The time wasted on these vain endeavors provided my biggest source of inner conflict.

I struggled to hear my true calling.

I would later learn that my metaphysical antenna—the piezoelectric tap into my third eye, the pineal gland—had been damaged early in life. I was exposed to psychological trauma as a child that warped my ability to receive otherworldly signals.

I remembered my mother would say things to me like “You’re not a people person. People aren’t going to like you.” She said this so early in life that I actually believed it for my entire childhood and much of early adulthood.

Harsh words that scrawled across my early subconscious had crippled my ability to let frequencies freely flow into my thoughts. The signs would arrive staticky, only to be ignored.

My suffering was a symptom of this. The universe was trying to tell me something, but I couldn’t interpret Her language. I sought to heal my mind and clear the static.

Step one was extinguishing my short fuse. Anger, frustration. These are secondary emotions that result from some internal conflict. At the time, I was working in a humdrum office, performing pointless work, with people who were clueless to higher Truths. Friction, therefore, occurred at nearly every turn of my everyday existence.

So, I quit.

In order to heal my psyche, I had to sever all sources that contributed to my mental strife. I had a bit of savings that could support me for the time being so that I could achieve the necessary, profound quiet required to receive otherworldly signals. The quiet was key, you see, so that I could make my mind like liquid vinyl and let the faint signals from a divine source trace grooves in an album that would rewrite my DNA. Then, I could hone the signal further.

Meditation became a daily practice. I’d sit in perfect quiet, in the center of my ornately patterned Tibetan rug. I’d breathe in and breathe out.

My mantra: om. This is the sound of the universe.

I strove to hear what Mother Earth—my local universe—was trying to tell me. Every day, I sat for hours, concentrating on my mantra and focusing my energy into an orb that formed 20 feet in diameter around my center of gravity. The electromagnetic sphere that manifested from my psychic energy created a Faraday cage that protected my inner peace, blocking out all external noise.

Ironically, once I was able to silence the cacophony distracting me from focus, Mother Earth would tell me that this perceived distortion was merely misdirected energy. If I could refocus these electromagnetic vectors, I’d leverage their power to break free from Her gravity. In other words, stop resisting and let the energy in.

Soon, a sense of my Drop took shape. The Drop, affixed to the hull of the Cheshire spaceship, hung in a Lagrange point in Earth’s orbit, way up above. I was remembering something that had existed long before my Earthly presence on this current planet. I had to believe that this place existed, not just in my mind; it physically hung way up in space above, beckoning me.

It was this place high up in the sky, yes, but more so it was the people aboard and the feelings they evoked that held my affection. They assumed more and more defined shape as I concentrated. Their hearts beckoned mine. My connections with each were what really opened the inroads back to a place that, down on the ground, seemed impossible to reach.

I let all of these thoughts and feelings drift through my mind, as I separated from the internal monologue narrating an earthly life that grounded me. I was not this voice. I did not exist. I was Mother Earth, from the perception of this simple pedestrian perspective, and ready to elevate. The thoughts cleared and I felt as pure consciousness.

The clean slate of my thought soon transcended silence, into the movierain. The movierain is the torrent of possible worlds that precipitate by the existential surfer gliding through the downpour. The movierain exists everywhere and always, ever ready for its passenger to step up into its field. Each droplet represents another Earth version. Like lightning, I astrally leapt between them.

All the while, my physical body remained sat in the lotus position, in my quiet living room down on Earth (the version that bore me this time). But my astral self soared high above.

I concentrated on my Drop, as countless droplet worlds flew by. This was my impossible destination—as perceived from the ground below—that now seemed attainable flitting through the multiversal movierain intermediary.

I’d practice this meditation nightly. Though the Drop would emerge, as I surfed the movierain, I couldn’t seem to make the leap. I couldn’t fully commit. Something was holding me back. It was an asymptote of perfection—unattainable, but pursued often. Perfection was the red herring of goals—supposedly worthwhile, but difficult to achieve. It was not only difficult; it was impossible, I thought, unfocused. I kept waiting for the perfect moment, when my Drop would appear as clear as day, when all the pieces would fall into place, and I could step up into its divine shell. At last, I would return home.

The reality was, like perfection itself, the perfect moment did not exist. If I were to wait for this elusive event, I’d remain sat on my living room floor until death.

And then I recalled what Mother Earth had hinted to me, when my mind finally cleared to hear Her message. I could leverage the noise, the stressors imposing distraction and discord on my peace of mind. I could redirect their energy to my advantage. My boss’s ill-guided pressure to prioritize her business over my well-being. Colleagues and contemporaries’ piddly goals distracting them and me from the true destination. My own self doubt. These were all perceived as opposing forces. But what if I conducted their electromagnetic torrents reeking havoc on my consciousness down into the points of my inner ankles? What if this energy—perceived as negative—actually produced a positive, white-hot charge in between my feet that ignited ball lightning at my heels.

I imagined this orb of electromagnetic gravity as an energetic ball my astral self could balance upon. I had already surfed the movierain, but that was only the equivalent of a 3-foot ocean wave. The unbridled energy I was now harnessing, between my feet, swelled to the water wall of a 100-foot tsunami. My spirit elevated, escalating quickly. And my Drop appeared more vividly, more rapidly than ever before. It seemed as though I had enough metaphysical propulsion to reach this formerly unattainable ledge.

Like never before, the Drop held steady in my purview. Astrally, I stood on the precipice between the physical ground below and this higher reality above.

I leapt.

Everything went dark—my inner monologue, the movierain, my sense of self and Mother Earth. Pure blackness for a beat filled every crevice of existence.

Another beat.

Innately, I felt the compulsion to open my eyes, yet I had no eyes to open in this elevated state. Still, I attempted the subtle gesture. Eyes opened that weren’t of my Earthly body down on the ground; they were set in some enlightened head. Brilliant light, brighter than anything I had ever experienced down on Earth, filled my entire perspective. I squinted to rack focus on what appeared to be entirely new whereabouts.

Once my brand new eyes adjusted to the light, surroundings began to take shape. I was sat in my Drop, amidst a zen garden with a gentle waterfall pattering nearby. The Drop was a giant orb, 50 feet in diameter. This heavenly place felt familiar, yet I had no memory of it, only my Earthly life from down below.

I had finally reached my destination. And I hoped there was some kind of blueprint of my former life here, in the Drop and on the spaceship Cheshire. I looked behind me, still sat in the lotus position within the zen garden, to see a mahogany desk where a laptop lied. Possibly, it contained intel into my life up here, before descending down to Earth those many decades ago.

As I stood, I felt my new legs—powerful and completely healed from all injuries sustained on Earth below. My entire enlightened body felt like some tightly wrapped carbon fiber wire bundle that could withstand the oppressive gravity of a super massive black hole. I had truly been reborn anew in this Drop, way up high in space.

Now, all I had to do was access the blueprint of this former life. I must reacquaint with my eternal soul, I thought.

---

This short story emanates from the universe of the novel “Big Cat.” If you liked this tale, you might like the book…

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