Commentary 16

81. Back to the adventure. I liked this point that Joe is trying to solve at least two adventures at once. In both instances, we have four characters interacting with their surrounding world, which is both familiar and different at the same time. Hostile characters in each round it all out.

The phrase 'Be the Witness', is an interesting one from Levenson, who got it from older sources. But it fits that as you get to a perfect peace within yourself, you'd cease to worry about the world around you.

And this scene is over-dramatic, and over-acted. It really is more one of those Indiana Jones adventures, after all. But it's fun.

But overlong compared to other sections. I simply didn't have a good point to break it up. Things turn out well for our main characters.

82. This is where Joe now cognizes that dreams are simply created. And you see what the Prefect saw on his screens as Joe tells each of these his discovered secret.

When Roger finally accepts this, he is able to reprogram the scene around them and move directly to a backdoor - interestingly labelled 'Maintenence'.

Which leads them to the white room.

83. And the control room burns with noe one in it. The Prefect's world crashing and burning.

84. Our main characters confront the Prefect, who is adamantly holding onto his own ideas of control and revenge. So Joe says they are going to fix things, completely even-handedly, not out of any sort of reaction to conditions around him.

85. Roger and Sue wind up in the cartoon Farm and are perfectly happy. They learn the secret to showing up there, as Cat tells them. Roger's quote is interesting, "Life is a dream and dreams are dreamed by dreamers."

86. The operating room shows up, with the Prefect getting the physical attention he needs. He's out of it now.

87. It's the nurse in the recovery room who explains to the Prefect and us exactly what happened. He's got to heal and it's going to take time. But he's been having bad dreams, so in this one he is sedated so he can rest.

88. Final scene, almost. A bookstore. Our four main characters are all settled in their new lives as couples, quite happy with everything going on now. The Prefect has moved into some sort of semi-retirement, teaching programmers ethics courses as some sort of amends for all he's been doing. Roger and Sue are harvesting all that dream world data to pull out the workable truths it was built on. And they got married, maybe even by Father George. Helen and Joe are living their lives together, though it's not known what they do.

89. Joe meets himself in the library - and tells him that he's always known that this data was readily accessible. And moves into a peace beyond description, which is another New Testament allusion (peace that passes all understanding) as to becoming enlightened.

90. Helen and Joe wind up in the cartoon Farm world. Cat gives the final lesson - Life is as good as you can imagine it to be. And we leave them making out in that field, much as Dog and Cat did.

The Prequel:

I wrote this in a mad dash one day, as I was short of the 50K quota by a bit in order to have a short novel. But the plot had finished and everything had wrapped up. The pacing was good and I didn't want to have to re-write sections just to add another 8K words in there. So I left the story for a few days and came back inspired one day, then put everything else aside to write it out.

The idea is to take one of those under-developed characters and look over life from their viewpoint. Doreen seemed fascinating enough to explore, so her story bubbled to the surface. If this ever comes back again, I'll have plenty more material with each of these characters (well, probably not the Prefect - but nothing's impossible.)

Now the style is different, since we aren't jumping in and out of scenes all the way through. But it also explores a wealth of other ideas.

91. Doreen is on a flight to a remote valley in South America (we know that destination by now). And it started with her dreams...

92. The dream is being in that canyon and facing the wall of water. But she knows they started when someone sent her a piece of jewelry. A black and white stone set in a gold and platinum wire setting, similar to Joe's, only with a leather thong as a necklace. Here she trims the leather thong, but later finds it was back to it's original length. She replaces that thong with a silver chain, only to find the silver inexplicably corrodes and breaks.

93. When she returns that evening, with a few too many under her belt, she winds up in the toilet and takes it out - only its back on the thong again. It's always comfortable to wear and she decides to go to sleep. Waking in the middle of the night after having that dream, she realizes that she got dressed during the middle of the night and doesn't remember doing it. As she goes back to sleep, she then gets another version of the dream. This time, she is meditating naked in front of the figure and doesn't care when the flood hits - she is completely calm and waits there until the waters recede and the sun comes out. She seems to feel the statue is friendly toward her.

All this raises a very different scenario than our earlier section. Now you are seeing someone under the influence of this jewelry - which influences her dreams, but drives her to action. Still, a call to adventure as above. Yes, there are veiled sexual overtones to this to keep it interesting. But the heroine is still just trying to understand her environment rather than conquer it or escape its control.

94. More to these affects of the jewelry - no hangover.  Here, she concludes she needs to visit the spot this came from, however, it's not going to be that easy.

95. Her life becomes devoted to getting ready for the trip and in finding what she could about the amulet.

Finally, she gets a lead about an obscure person who lived in an old lighthouse in a shrunken, back-water town.

Now this one really surprised me the way it came out. We kind of backed into this, describing the town before we get to the character - along the line of the actual researcher, instead of some fiction writer. While not in the first person, our following her is more along the lines of a modern "reality" show.

The grammar of these sentences is abrupt, like taken from notes during the conversation.

Her dreams that night were bizarre, but forecast what she is about to encounter. Again, we are dealing with dreams here, so the license to use them is broad - as this is a precursor to an entire novelella about them. Even the dream about falling returns.

Now this book she reads really doesn't show up again. It gives us a partial background of the valley she will be visiting. Were this going to be longer, I'd have had her interview Father George to find out about this, but again, the story ended too early. It does introduce an unnamed character who could have a book just on his travels through Europe and Colonial America's - but its better just to use the broad strokes here.

And the following discussion about the valley are interesting - since one argument against eternal life is overpopulation, yet the standards of living here are quite high, which is our modern equivalent of birth control.

96. I don't know if you walk a quarter mile daily. I do, just in caring for my cattle - usually 3 or 4 times that, twice a day. So when she parks her car nearly a quarter-mile from the lighthouse, you can say it's walking several end-to-end football fields to get there.

When we get to the lighthouse, it's notable that the door doesn't squeak and is completely adjusted to simply stay in the position you leave it in. As well, this is almost extreme simplicity and tidyness within. Invited to climb a long spiral staircase after already walking that distance was good reason for her to be out of breath - but as well, she's been working out, hasn't she?

Here's the interesting part - he knew she was coming. (And women seem to always blush when honestly complemented in this story.)

(A sidebar - both of their names are a play on words. And I didn't spot that Jack ends up being an old friend of Joe until I finished this, interstingly.)

He warns her to send that amulet off to another relative right away, and repeats it - which sets the stage. He's to be her mentor, but is trying to dissuade her from the adventure that waits. The series of questions he asks her are designed to push that point home - that she is being controlled by an unknown and mysterious force.

By his talk, she assumes that he has one. And here is where it gets sticky. He is trying to get rid of the very person - perhaps the only one - who can help him with his own problem. Is this reverse psychology, or humane concern?

Again, we come into the description of precisely-fitted masonry as Joe described in the hospital Garden. This is actually a tie-in to some of the South American ruins, where the temple stones are so set that a knife can't even be fit in between them centuries later.

97. And his possession of the lighthouse on top of the stone is another hereditary tale. The supernatural shows up and continues from here. First a family Bible that he can't get rid of.

An interesting point here is that he mentions inspiration as different from research. If you review the library sections in Joe's story above, you'll find some interesting connections here.

More supernatural stories, which lead to conversing with ghosts. And the dream connection is revealed.

These ideas about ghosts run differently than others - that if they tell their whole tale, then they will leave - but the idea of bribes is more familiar - such as tributes and sacrifices.

98. With all these stories and being told she is the solution to his jinx, Doreen is doubtful.

Jack tells her to go ahead and leave - but she 'knows in her heart' that she shouldn't. So when he rattles off a shopping list of what to get and where, she just buys it. Now you start seeing here that Jack is a completely efficient type of person, with no wasted motion. And when he decides something, he just does it with no question or hesitation. (See Napoleon Hill's "Think and Grow Rich" or "Law of Success" about this.)

99. Getting the stuff doesn't take much space. The chocolate donuts are there because women love chocolate and men like donuts. Perfect match. Now again, we have some uncanny prescience on Jack's part. He's got a table set for two, and even cooked two steak dinners instead of one.

The home-grown salad is another touch - as well as how to properly prepare food. Most people don't live from the land any more, but we have a decent-sized garden and I love fresh vegetables from it.

And of course ghosts announce themselves with a loud thud outside the building...

100. Jack's hands are full of what? Ice cream and donuts. Doreen has to do all the heavy lifting - but that was the way it had to be all along, didn't it. Doreen doesn't trust that the amulet will keep her warm on the outside of an old lighthouse, so she nabs the jacket.

Jack is giving the ghosts a bit of a hard time, saying that they don't knock over open bottles of wine, and now don't open packages well. Sheesh.

And I don't know why Doreen is eating ice cream when she's already chilled.  Evidently hungry, though. Just dug in and finished it off before the ghosts arrived.

Here's where the door element comes in - ghosts make it squeak on purpose.

101. These two are quite Victorian. So Jack's offer to have a smoke while the girls talked was straight out of the old habits of the time.

Hermione and Doreen have some very direct talking. But it was the amulet which really sold the deal. How Jack figured out what Hermione said means perhaps that he was just around the curve, listening - so he got through to Lucien earlier. Or he's more telepathic than he lets on.

102. Again, this is old school manners at work, plus a bit of coquetry on Doreen's part. Men will be men, even if they've been dead for a few centuries.

Now we still don't know how these ghosts are bound to protect that secret. But again, the presence of the amulet gives them pause.

Duke sealed the deal, but Doreen got the upper hand. Note, the two lower hands (Leroy's and Sam's) are known as "dead man's hands". Four kings would connote royalty - or even the Four Horsemen. But Doreen wins.

103. Since all the ghosts apparently agreed, the room goes dark, the amulets glow, and Doreen is simply able to pick up the buried amulet from the hole Jack started. And they are both near-duplicates.

At this point, we know there are three of these, when you add in Joe's above. However, as a prequel, this raises even more questions, since neither Doreen or Jack had the amulets in their possession when Joe interacted with them.

Doreen recruits Jack to go to South America with her, and he typically leaves the house as neat as a pin and even blows out the pilot light on the stove - as well as turning out all the lights in the lighthouse.

We don't know if he already had the duffel bag packed - given the above, it is probable that he could have. Or he might just be that efficient to pack one in a couple of minutes.

Doreen is driving, as usual.