Beyond This Is That

            Bathwater warm ocean washed over my feet as the shells rattled against one another.  The sun was setting over the water to the west and reflecting all the way south.  It resembled the Florida Keys with the palm trees and shells clanking around.  To the north side of the sun was the Rocky Mountain range of Vale, Colorado as the sun went down.  I could see the sloped snow range as the twinkling light reflected off every flake. 

            My heart pounded faster to the north with the mountains than the south with the ocean.  I could see myself sitting on the porch of the Chateau in Vale while I was sitting on the beach.  I could see the shells of the beach on my feet in the sand from the rail of Vale.  Could this be?

            As the sun went down, the light brightened in my eyes with the haze and glare.  My eyes raced back and forth furiously.  I could feel a cold hand on my face and echoes of a voice in the distance.

            “Michael!”  The voice was growing louder and louder in my head.  It was starting in the back and moving forward.  “Michael!”  It was a woman’s voice getting stronger.  “Michael, can you hear me?!”

            Managing to focus intently on the voice, I pulled it from the back of my mind to the front.  “Yes.  Yes, I hear you,” my meager voice rattled with a horse tone.

            The hand on my cheek gave me a solid slap and my eyes popped open.  Wide awake, I shook my head and all the images raced and scrambled in my mind.

            “Damn, woman!  I’m good.  I’m good,” irritated I pushed the hand away.  A nurse stood over me with a grin on her face.

            “We thought we lost you,” she looked down at me.

            “Lost me?”  That didn’t make sense.  Actually, nothing really made sense.  What day was it?  How long had I been out?

            “Yeah.  You were clinically dead for fifteen minutes.  We’ve never seen anything like it before.  Actually, ‘we’ve never seen anything like it’ has become your nickname around here,” she giggled as she said it. 

            “How long have I been out?”  Seemed like a good question to ask at the time. 

            She looked down sympathetically.  “About ten hours.  The sun just set!”

            My mind raced.  Could it be?  Was I just watching the sun set in different parts of the country while I was in this hospital room?  Nothing made any sense.  My heart beat in two different rhythms as it raced with anxiety. 

            Picking my hand up, I could feel the tubes tugging as it touched my face.  Looking at the top, I twisted it around to the palm.  It seemed to be right here right now.  Feeling myself in the hospital bed, I couldn’t see myself around the room anywhere as I looked.

            “She’s down getting some food, honey,” the nurse chimed in as I looked around from one side to the other.  Sydney.  Sydney was who she meant, but I wasn’t really listening.

            “What did you mean I’m the ‘we’ve never seen anything like it’ person?”  It wasn’t really what she said that made me think about it.  It was just the way she said it, like I was some kind of medical experiment gone right.

            She picked up the chart hanging off the end of my bed and set it on my lap.  I guess she thought I could read it and understand.  Strangely enough it was more that she knew I could.

            Sitting up as if nothing was wrong with me, I picked up the aluminum chart.  No last name was listed.  It simply said ‘Michael’ at the top of the chart.  Quickly realizing it had about twenty pages attached to it, I started reading the notes. Doctor’s handwriting not being the best, I made my way through it.  The Emergency Room notes were first.

            ’20 year old male.  6 feet 2 inches.  195 pounds.  Seems to be in a state of shock or a coma.  Does not respond to external stimuli.  Tried knee reaction, dilation of pupils with light and stern scrape of foot.  Heart beating irregularly as if two different beats. ‘

            The rest of the first page was just more testing of the same type.  Some external stimulus trying to get a reaction from my body.  Nothing seemed to work.  I flipped the paper over. 

            ‘CAT Scan:  Brain activity in areas of the brain never listed before.  All brain activity in a strange mechanical type rhythm but also sporadic.  Activity spikes every 5 minutes to the second, showing 99% brain activity.

            NOTE:  I’ve never seen or even read about this anywhere before.  Need to consult specialists.  Scans to be sent out for further evaluation.  Recommend EEG.’

            Interesting.  I could see how that would arouse some strange looks in the lunch room between doctors and nurses.  Nothing seemed to be normal with any of the doctor’s notes.  More details about the oddity that was my brain went on and on.  I flipped to the third page.  I was also seeing my hospital bill rise with the turn of each page.  I started to wish I was in Canada with their health care system.

            ‘EKG:  Heart has two distinct heartbeats.  Both seem to be separate from one another.  Both beats are strong and could be the normal heartbeats of two distinct healthy males.  The fact that it is coming from one person is confusing.  The second beat coming from the left side of heart is stronger than the right.  Light blue discoloration through chest over left side of heart. ‘

            A picture of what the nurse had said was becoming clear.  Another page and a half was dedicated to this bizarre heart beating and the need for more tests along with as many three letter acronym as they could throw into a report.  I skimmed over the pages picking up everything on the pages.  Next.

            ‘EEG: Not much to say.  The activity in the brain is like the CAT Scan.  It’s so constant we can’t make out anything going on.  It resembles a person having a continuous seizure in some ways.  We have nothing to compare this to.  These will need to go out for other opinions. ‘

            The more I read the more confusing it became.  I was starting to wonder if something else made more sense.  Possible broken equipment or my body putting off some type of magnetic pulse messing with all the equipment.  Maybe I was electrically poisoned by the alarm clock in Sydney’s room.  Sydney!

            “Did Sydney say when she would be back?”  I wasn’t panicked, but I was a bit nervous about her reading this.  Knowing her she would take this as me having some rare disease I was dying from.

            Sydney and I had met eight months before on campus.  What campus doesn’t matter.  I was giving a lecture on Physics and ran into her while taking a walk through the campus with my shoes off and my suit pant legs rolled up.  She was a breath of fresh air for someone always stuck in a lab or on some type of lecture tour or in a board room.  She ran up to me as if she had known me forever and was taken with my unique style.  Her crystal blue eyes had me hypnotized right from the start.  It took me a long time to figure out why.

            “No.  She said she needed some food.  I told her I would stick around until she got back.”  The nurse came over and looked at some of the lights on the machines. 

            “So, what does all of this mean?  Am I some kind of oddity of nature?”  I knew the answer but I thought it would break the ice. 

            “Yes, actually!”  She must have been about 30 years old with the energy of an 18 year old.  “This place is buzzing!  Since they sent out the scans the phones have been ringing off the hook.  Last thing I heard was they had doctors flying in from all over the world to get a look at everything.”  She sounded very excited about all of it, but the last little bit was making me anxious. 

            “Ah.  So, I get to be the new guinea pig,” already starting to think of how to get out of the hospital without being seen. 

            “Let me put it this way, your CAT Scan says you are using the part of your brain that controls Telekinesis.”  Her eyes were the size of bowling balls.

            “Telekinesis?!”  I chuckled.  “Yeah, right.  I could see maybe using more of my brain than a lot of people.  I graduated college at 17 for Christ’s sake.  But some kind of Psychic crap like that?  I don’t think so,” playing it off the best I knew how which was to make jokes.  “If I could I would know about it and be in Vegas every day.”  She laughed with a snorting noise.

            Flipping the chart to the end of the bed, I put my head back.  Being in that bed wasn’t good.  It was a very short period of time before the government showed up.  I had done enough with the government to know what they were and weren’t monitoring out in the world.  This would raise a huge flag in Washington, D.C, Maryland and Virginia.

            “Can you do me a favor?” with a weak voice playing up what I needed. 

            “Sure.  What do you need, hun?”  She was just aching to help the new local celebrity patient.

            “Can you run down to the cafeteria and see if you can get Sydney for me?  I really, really need her right now.  I can’t sleep without her next to me,” lying, but it sounded mushy which usually worked on women.

            “Oh, that is so cute!  Of course I will.”  She swiftly walked to the door of the room with her pink scrubs swishing between her legs, and left.

            Ripping the tubes out of my left arm, I went to rip them out of my right when the tubes and wires popped out on their own.  Oddly enough the tape fell off with them.  Not thinking a thing of it, I pulled all the pads off my chest and head and got out of bed.  I felt really fresh and energetic.  Ten hours of sleep will do that to a person or that was the thought.

            Across the room I opened the closet to find what I knew was there, my clothes.  Throwing them on quickly, I stood by the door.  I didn’t have to pull the door open to crack it, it was already cracked.  Looking out to the hallway, a security guard was sitting outside the door.  I was already a prisoner, though I’m sure the spin would have been that the guard was to protect me from all the visitors who would be tipped off by medical staff.

            Spinning around, the door shut.  Another one of those ‘odd’ moments.  Starting I was thinking of the hospital’s test results, along with what happened in Sydney’s apartment and started to wonder….What if?

            Walking over to the bed, I sat at the edge just like in Sydney’s room.  Thinking about being outside the front of the building, nothing happened.  My eyes were shut as my mind pictured the front of the building and concentrating as hard as I could.  Picturing the entrance to the ER with the drive up turnabout and the ambulance outside, nothing happened. 

            Discouraged, I got up and walked to the window.  From the 8^th floor of the building overlooking the parking lot of the main part of the hospital, it was night and the air was dark all around the shining lights of the building.  The entrance to the ER was on the left.  I wanted so badly to be there, outside the walls of this lab I was in.  Thinking about all the tests I was sure they would do on me, I smiled picturing myself walking away from the building with a smug grin disappearing into the night. 

            A haze formed in my vision and a burst of light.  In the half of a blink of an eye I was outside the ER looking up at the window where I was standing looking down at myself.  I could see from both perspectives just like in the apartment earlier.  This time I needed to do something different.

            My heart was beating two different rhythms again and speeding up with each passing moment.  There had to be some way to choose.  Thinking about how I got down into the lot and it dawned on me in a flash of brilliance.  Simply turning around and looking across the parking lot into the darkness, my smile grew.  Walking heading for the street, there was a tugging and pulling and then in a flash of haze and burning light I was face down in the parking lot next to a car.  My heart slowed with each second as did the sounds around me. 

            Rolling, I looked up at the window I was just in and there was no one there.  It was real, it had happened.  I was outside the Hospital and in one body.  Sitting up on the pavement, I leaned my back against the car next to me. 

            To my right was a car that seemed to be stopped as it was pulling into the turnabout of the ER entrance with its lights on.  There was a driver and someone in the back seat of the four-door.  Remembering the room and how Sydney moved extremely slowly for so long, I waited and watched for several minutes as the car crept forward ever so slightly.  My new ability had me caught in-between time as time almost stopped.  Either that or I was hallucinating from a bunch of drugs the doctor’s had given me.  The idea of the former fit better. 

            Climbing to my feet and running off to the main road it was quickly realized, I could have been walking and would have been moving faster than any human on the planet.  Mind you, not everyone or everything on the planet was human. 

            After a mile or so I was standing at a four way intersection looking at the cars moving yet stopped.  Standing there for a moment, picturing the cars moving through the intersection at normal speed, my eyes were shut tightly as I held the vision in my mind.  Slowly there was the distant sound of the wind blowing and the tumbling of car tires on pavement.  The sounds grew louder and closer to me.  Finally, my skin could feel the air off the cars blowing by me.  When I opened my eyes the traffic was moving at a normal pace and life was back to regular speed.  It felt incredible to see it all happen.

            I didn’t know what was happening to me or the world, but this was an amazing spectacle.  Just the thought of stopping time and moving around in it or, like at the hospital, through it was something reserved for movies.

            Sticking out my hand without realizing that a Yellow Cab was coming toward me, hopped into the car saying my address to the driver.  As we sped off toward my apartment I looked down at my left hand.  It was twitching again.  My eyes started to twitch back and forth frantically.  Haze was starting to fog my vision.

            “No!” putting my hands over my face and shook my head.

            “Excuse me, sir,” the driver said in some sort of an accent I didn’t make out right away, Australian maybe.  “You don’t want to go to that address?”  South African, that was it.

            “Sorry.  I was talking to myself,” looking at his face in the review mirror.  He nodded and focused on the road following the route to my apartment.  The haze was gone.  Still sitting in the back seat of the cab, there didn’t seem to be another me anywhere else adding overlaying images to my focused mind.

            As we pulled up to the curb of my apartment building I threw a $50 at him and told him to keep it while jumping out of the car.  Rushing into the lobby of the 20 story high-rise, I made my way to the elevator trying not to be seen. 

            It was only a matter of time before someone came to my apartment looking for me.  Best case it would only be the Hospital.  Worst case it would be the Government.  This kind of news always travels fast through the groups of people listening for it.  I knew enough about the government and the systems they ran to know they would have flagged me as someone of interest about five seconds after the first scan left the hospital.  It was all tracked, tagged and filed in a system.  Those e-mails would have been posted in every FBI, CIA, NSA, and every ‘you fill in the acronym’ government agency on the planet.  As soon as it was known I was missing the flag would go from ‘watch’ to ‘find and detain’. 

            Swiftly I moved down the hallway of my 14^th floor apartment just out of the elevators.  Fumbling for my keys as I reached the door, but the door swung open on its own.  Stopping in front of it, I was sure someone had beaten me there, standing on the other side of the door.  Placing my car key through the gap between my index and middle finger creating a weapon, I leapt into the room with my hand cocked back.  Surprisingly, no one was there.  How did the door open?

            Slamming the door shut, I locked the deadbolt.  As if that would stop the people coming for me.  Under my bed I grabbed my suitcase.  I threw clothes from the dresser to the open bag and then from the closet.  In the second drawer of my nightstand I emptied out all the contents into a backpack.  This drawer was reserved for my knives and my Glock along with all the ammo.  Grabbing the handgun, I loaded three of the clips with rounds.  Jamming one of the magazines in the gun, I pulled back the slide to hear a round slot into the chamber.  Moving into the kitchen I tucked the gun in the waist of my pants to the right of my spine. 

            At the kitchen bar I sat on a stool for a moment trying to catch my breath.  Looking around the room frantically searching for some sign of people having been there, nothing seemed out of place.  My mind was racing with all that happened.  Then the haze started to fog my vision.  Twitching, I raised my left hand and blinked.

            “No, goddamnit!”  It was too late and not at the same time.  The haze cleared, but something didn’t feel right.  Out of the corner of my eye I could see movement by the door.  Spinning, I could see something on the wall next to the table I set my keys down on. 

            My heart raced in two separate patterns.  The shock of what was coming out of the wall was making me dizzy and feel sick.  Right above my keys was an arm from the elbow to the hand.  It was moving exactly the same as how I was moving my hand in front of me. 

            This wasn’t like before.  I wasn’t looking from the other side of the wall.  I didn’t see me from the other side or the wall in front of my face.  Tragically it was different. 

            Moving my left arm up and down, I watched the one coming out of the wall do the same.  This was my arm.  But how could it be?  How was it possible?  Opening my hand, I reached down for the keys.  Feeling my hand wrap around the keys, I lifted them off the table.  Nothing was in my hand, the one in front of me, but I could feel the keys. 

            Waiting for a ‘Surprise’ that would never come, I just stared at the arm holding the keys for a few moments.  Absolutely amazed by what I was seeing, a thought crossed my mind.  Was it possible that I could bring the keys back from that side of the room? 

            Pulling the arm in front of me back, I watched the one in the wall disappear.  As it phased into the wall the keys were in the hand in front of me.  As if holding something infected with the Hanta virus, I dropped them to the floor and stood up.

            “Oh my god!  What the hell is happening to me,” whispering to myself in the darkness of my apartment.  The only light was from the street and buildings outside my windows.

             It was right then I realized just how much trouble I was in.  If anyone ever knew about this I would be probed for the rest of my life. 

            I went to the kitchen faucet and put the stopper in the drain.  Then I turned on the hot water and dumped soap in it along with an entire salt shaker. 

            Sprinting as fast as I could to the bedroom, I picked up the backpack with the weapons in it.  At this point the bag of clothes would be too much to carry around.  Throwing off my running shoes, I slipped on the black tactical boots in my closet.  Grabbing a Columbia jacket and racing back to the windows of my living room, whipping out my cell phone, I punched on the key pad and hit send.

            I had to go away.  Far away.  It didn’t matter where, it only mattered that I wasn’t anywhere anyone knew me. 

            On the other side of the door to the apartment I heard what was inevitable.  Footsteps were crowding around the door.  Tossing my cell in the sink, I had already decided how to leave and was making peace with it.  It didn’t feel good to know what I could do.

            Staring out the window into the distance I pictured the place I wanted to go in my mind’s eye.  That place in the back of your head that is so deep it feels real.  The haze clouded my vision and my eyes and left hand twitched.  Just as a crackling of wood started and then started to slow down, I forced myself to look back, back to the place I just left.  I could see back to the room as time came to an absurd crawl.  Back in the room I walked to the door as splinters shattered all over into the air.  Reaching up, I grabbed one of them.  I could move it around as if it were just a splinter of wood.  Throwing it at the opening of the door, it slowed as soon as it left my hand like it was in water.

            In the doorway I could see two men coming through dressed in black suits with guns drawn.  Reaching my head out the door I could see at least six others in the hallway.  All of them were armed as well.  I threw the bag higher on my shoulder. 

            Thinking for a second and wanting to know what I was dealing with, I reached into the inside suit jacket pocket of the first man through the door.  I pulled out an identification wallet used by the government agencies.  ‘FBI’ this one read.  I stuck the ID of Jason Brown in my back pocket and moved back to the window where I was focused on me where I went. 

            Seeing it in my head, I was there and only there.