the story: CHAPTER 7

anonymous journal

Listening to OMNI, by Requer — Artist sketch: Listening to OMNI

DIALING IN THE SOUND
April 5, 2041

Getting OMNI to work takes smaller and smaller adjustments. It’s not something to be thought through. You step into the array and you have to feel for the gaps in the sound where the energy goes slack. It’s a meditation.

When the system is balanced the bubble feels springy. It has dimension and when you step inside you feel a lightness shoot through you — moving in all directions at once.

Every time we run OMNI the doorway presents itself. We step through to the Valley of Mercury, just on the edge of another world. Some people make the leap right away, are unafraid to go.

But I still hold on to this world tightly. I keep coming back to the cabin, staring at the ceiling, and waking up when the music stops.

I’m shepherding others like a guide. This cabin is my basecamp — a place to acclimate before a final journey.

HOW TO LET GO
May 19, 2041

There is a version of this story where I wake up in the same room and do the same thing — promising newness for everyone but myself. There’s another version where I simply let go.

I drop the needle on the record and can see myself dissolving into the sound. Listening, breathing slowly, growing brighter with each breath.

Now, I can see myself from outside the cabin. Preparing OMNI, sweeping the room, laying out a blanket, leaving my journal open atop the piano as a record of this story.

I am free to move along the braid of time, stopping to hold moments at will. I have so much tenderness for how tightly and needlessly we cling to things.

Then in an instant, I light upon a new galaxy, then a system, then a world. In a flash I find myself at the edge of a vast green sea, unfurling as a fern, two suns rising over the rim of this soft new planet.

The others are there too, bowing at the arrival of a new day.

I stand up. An army behind me.