The Image
George was late coming home from work and traffic was really heavy but was moving very fast on the freeway.
As he drove, he saw two trucks trying to change lanes at the same time. Suddenly they struck each other and there was a
huge crash and explosion. The explosion rolled and he could feel the heat coming!
For a moment, George looked and saw that edges of the scene seem to curl back and only blackness was in view.
But as the force of the explosion diminished, the scene again became solid.
However as George looked around, he was far past the scene of the accident and couldn’t even see it in the rear view mirror.
George drove on home dazed and confused.
He’d been heading right into a tremendously intense explosion and came out far beyond it in normal traffic.
The explosion was to become knows as the “xplosion.”
At home he popped open a beer and turned on the tube.
The local station was showing footage of the huge pile up and the tremendous damage done by the explosion of the fuel
tanker.
Four city blocks were leveled and 43 people were killed.
George couldn’t figure out how he could have been right behind the tankers that exploded and come out far beyond the
effects of the xpulsion.
There didn’t seem to be any explanation.
Several days passed and George didn’t seem to be able to get back to normal.
Something seemed to keep pulling him back to the explosion.
At night he would dream the explosion over and over. What kept coming up in the dreams were the edges curling up and
then he was on unobstructed freeway.
George was getting exhausted and was being unable to concentrate on his work.
He was a freelance write for a local magazine and all he could think of was the mystery of driving into a huge explosion and
coming out far beyond the disaster area.
He decided he needed to investigate this.
Just the decision fired him up with energy and revitalized him. He felt alive again.
He took out his pad and outlined a rough plan.
First, he decided he would drive down to the area of the explosion. That was the end of the outline that he could think of right
now. But at least he could do this.
He grabbed his scratch pad and digital camera. He sometimes liked to draw and sometimes, he just took pictures.
George went down stairs and entered the garage through the living room door exit.
His Ford sedan fired up reluctantly. He really needed to stop saving every penny and splurge on something new and fun to
drive. But that would have to wait until he solved this mystery.
He headed to the freeway and rapidly drove towards the area of the 210 freeway that was in ruins on both sides.
The xplusion had not damaged the solid concrete of the freeway but had leveled everything on both sides and damaged
much more beyond.
George slowed as he approached the area of the explosion. He didn’t see anything beyond wreckage.
This was disappointing as he didn’t have any other ideas.
He drove beyond the area and decided he should just turn around and go home.
He exited the freeway and got back on heading north.
As he approached the area of the explosion, it all started to come back to him.
He saw the two trucks as if they were right in front of him now and then the explosion. He even felt the heat on his face.
He saw the scene and again, saw the edges curling back like burning newspaper and blackness in the middle.
But the image was gone and he was still driving down the 210 just leaving the area of ruin.
As he drove, he realized that the scene curling back was what had kept the whole matter alive in his life.
There are not scenes or edges to curl back in an intense explosion.
He thought about this all the way home and felt he was about to figure it out but it kept slipping away like the memory that’s
just on the tip of your tongue.
Every time he got close to it, it would vanish.
When he got home, he fixed a stake and salad. He opened a cold beer and ate slowly. The memory kept nagging at him. The
answer was so obvious that it was invisible.
He went to bed early and had difficulty going to sleep.
During the night, it came to him. It wasn’t the edges! It was the blackness in the middle of the explosion that was what kept
drawing his attention. It was the lack of anything. That’s why it seemed to be disappearing. There was nothing there.
When he woke, the memory of the blackness was all consuming.
He realized that in the explosion, he had driven from the freeway into blackness and came out far beyond the xplosion.
So this meant that the freeway was in or beyond the blackness.
This excited him. Now he wrote down step 2 on his outline. He was going to go back again and revisit the scene again.
He hurriedly dressed and drove down the freeway. He passed the scene and exited like he had done yesterday.
He started north slowly and as he approached the scene it started to come back.
This time, he pulled over to examine the scene.
The edges were in fact pulled back and blackness exposed.
He peered into the blackness and realized it wasn’t really black!
George suddenly felt his pulse accelerate and the limits to his space expanded to nearly infinity.
In the blackness was the universe!
His body was starting to tremble and acting like it would run from something dangerous. But there was no danger, only vast
space and anything you would want to see.
George looked around and realized the blackness spread beyond the edged of the xplosion and that if you looked beyond
the normal view, the blackness was behind everything.
In every direction, it was obvious that there was blackness if you looked through the obvious scene.
He couldn’t find his car. He couldn’t find his body. As he looked around, he could see the universe but didn’t know where
earth was and he’d put a lot of work into growing that body.
Damn, now he couldn’t find the thing!
This gave him a bit of a scare as the universe is so large and he seemed to be at least as large as it was. The small loss of a
carcass was not much to worry about. Besides, somewhere, he could still feel the heart beating and the lungs working…
Realizing this, he decided to examine the universe at large.
It was amazing what he could see. He could see the other nearby island universes. He found earth and could see his home.
He even could see his car parked on the freeway with his body apparently dozing there.
It was exhilarating and refreshing.
Having found his body and understanding the blackness, George felt very comfortable rejoining his body.
George thought, “I’ve solved the mystery of the xplosion.”
It wasn’t the “xplosion” it was me. I saw through the disaster and put body and car beyond it.
Looking from far beyond it all, it was easy to see how a slight shift in viewpoint could move one very tiny vehicle with an even
tinier body to spot a slight distance away. It was nothing.
So now he understood.
He rejoined the kitten weak body and realized he should stay a bit away from it so it didn’t overly influence his welfare.
Live is grand and he could see an unlimited future.
The End.
Next story is named STORM GODS. Click here to enjoy.
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