The flashlight had a quarter-mile reach and it barely brushed the outer perimeters of what could only be a vast city of stone.
INTERLUDE FOUR
The boy was being cooperative for a change. Even expansive. He’d recently had a new series of vivid dreams since their last session and clearly wanted to talk about them, and of course Dr. Greene wanted to hear every detail. Not because these sessions were billed at four hundred an hour, though that was a factor; no, it was because the boy genuinely fascinated Greene. In his entire professional career, including all of his clinical work, he’d never encountered anyone like Prospero Bell. No one as intelligent and no one with this unique combination of skills and psychosis.
“… and then I came through a door in the ice and I was in this immense city,” the boy said, continuing a long narrative that had begun with a shipwreck and a walk of days across mud flats that gradually turned into an ice sheet. “Huge city with stone buildings made from geometric shapes. Cones and balls and blocks of all kinds. Wild, because some of those stones were bigger than the Great Pyramid. I saw the pyramids, did I tell you? We went to Egypt when I was nine.”
“Yes,” said Greene, “you described that trip with great precision. You have a remarkable eye for detail.”
Prospero nodded, accepting that as a statement rather than a compliment. “This was bigger, and it looked like the stones were carved out of single blocks. They had to be a million tons. And just thinking about that level of technology knocks me out. Humans couldn’t do that, you know. We don’t even know how the pyramids were built, and each of these blocks was as big as a whole pyramid.”
“Did you see any people in this city?” asked Greene.
“People?” echoed the boy. He looked momentarily confused by the question. “You know, I… I’m not sure how to answer that. I don’t know if the word ‘people’ applies. There were citizens, I guess you’d say. Things that lived there. Really strange, very weird.”
“Describe them. Were they like the creatures you sketched?”
“No. They weren’t my people. They were different. A separate race.”
“Were they the Elder Things? You mentioned them before but you haven’t explained what they are.”
Prospero thought about that and began nodding. “I… think so. And maybe the reason I didn’t go into what they are is because I wasn’t sure. Not before last night, anyway. Not before this last dream. You’re right; I think they are the Elder Things.”
“And who exactly are these Elder Things? Are they aliens? Are they gods? What is the name of their race?”
“I don’t know. They’re too old for that. Names don’t matter to beings like that.”
“How can a name not matter? What about identity?”
“They know who they are. I guess that’s all that matters. But… maybe I’m wrong. There are names, I suppose.”
“I thought you said they didn’t need names,” said Greene.
“They don’t,” said Prospero, nodding, his eyes still unfocused, “but people need to call them something, don’t they?”
“Can you explain that to me?”
The boy said nothing for a few moments, clearly struggling with the task of explaining the interior logic of a series of dreams. Greene knew that dreams can make perfect sense and be completely clear in the mind but often could not be clearly expressed because spoken language and freeform thought do not always share the same vocabulary.
Prospero grunted and then his eyes came into very sharp focus. “I once read that the Judeo-Christian version of God as a white man with a beard isn’t based on anything in the Bible. People made that up because they need to identify with whatever they worship. Every religion does that.”
Greene nodded. That had been in one of the books he’d given Prospero to read last year when they were discussing the boy’s complex understanding of his own evolving view of spirituality.
“These beings,” said Prospero, “don’t need names for themselves, okay? But the people who worship them gave them names. Just like people made statues and carved three-D images on walls of gods and demigods and angels and all that. Greeks, Romans, Egyptians, Christians. They all carved those images on walls. What’s that called?”
“Bas-relief?” suggested Greene.
“Right,” he said, and Greene could almost see the word click into place in the boy’s mind. He would never need to ask for the word again. “Statues, too, and icons. All of that.”
“Iconography,” said Greene.
Prospero nodded, filing it away. “People who see spiritual beings like these need to give them form or they can’t think about them. So they paint them and draw pictures of them so they can think about them without going crazy.” Prospero’s hand strayed to his gray hood and touched the twisting tentacles. “Me, too, I guess.”
“Are you saying that the creature you drew is one of these ‘beings’?”
“Yes. No. I mean, it’s not one of the Elder Things, but’s part of that same world. Or… same universe, dimension. It’s hard to explain.”
“But this is something from your imagination.”
“No,” corrected Prospero quickly. “It’s from my dreams.”
“Which amounts to the same thing. It’s a monster.”
“Doc, why do people believe that the things we see in dreams aren’t real?”
“Some of them are,” conceded Greene, “but many dream images are metaphorical in nature. They represent other things. We talked about sexual imagery and—”
“No,” said Prospero firmly. “That’s not what I’m talking about. You’re supposed to be smart, Dr. Greene. Don’t go getting stupid on me now.”
Greene nodded, accepting the rebuke.
“I’m asking you a serious question,” persisted the boy. “But… let me put it another way. And you know I’m talking about the things I’ve been seeing in my dreams. I know they’re real, even if you and my dad don’t believe it. No, don’t lie. Please. I can see it in your face. You think I’m crazy, and maybe I am — by your standards, by human standards — but I know that what I see aren’t dreams, they’re visions. Like race memory for people like me.” He paused. “Let me ask you a different question, okay?”
“Okay,” said Greene.
“You know that I’m really into quantum physics. You know that I understand it. It’s not a hobby and we both know that up here,” he paused and tapped his skull, “I’m a lot older than my age. We know that, right?”
Greene nodded.
“Okay,” said Prospero. “In quantum physics, in superstring theory they talk about how there are more than four dimensions. More than height, width, depth, and time. That’s part of superstring theory, that the universe is much bigger and more complex than even Einstein thought. So, go farther. What if there are an infinite number of dimensions? What if there are an infinite number of realities? Parallel worlds, each one separated by differences however minuscule or massive.”
“An omniverse,” said Greene, nodding again. “It’s an old concept.”
“That’s right,” said Prospero, excited. “You do understand. Cool. Now… what if it’s not a theory? What if that’s true? What if there is, in fact, an infinite number of worlds, and if those worlds are — as some people believe — right next door to us, then imagine what would happen if we could build a doorway, a kind of gate, that would allow us to move back and forth.”