Chapter 4: Progressing Backward

Frank Li began walking around in Jacky's yard trying to know what grass felt like, I guess. But I don't know that. He is just a character in a novel by Jacky when he grew up to be John F Carver the author of Sojourn. Therein Frank was the main character who incidentally was a whole lot like his writer accurately as his writer can recall him to have been. He wasn't even there, ever. But somehow their lives have become intertwined as they attempt to help real people overcome their insanity.

But just maybe Frank Li was remembering what Jacky and Gregg had said there, the things they had seen and it was like having a home once and remembering it, for he came back there when no one was around again and again and he seemed to enjoy it there immensely. And I began to hope his own memory might come back to him just in an entirely new light.

One time he was there and John was older now. They had started calling Jacky, John that autumn when he started to school at Central Elementary School just a few blocks away. And he was just standing in the backyard which was on the east and included an old, rundown, garage with the dog, a Chesapeake, Irish Setter, mix tied to it with a log chain. Then we, Frank Li and I, heard his thoughts as he remembered coming home from school that afternoon.

He was walking on a cement sidewalk that had lines in it to keep it from buckling so much when the frost came out of the ground beneath it. John had heard it would break his mother's back if he stepped on them cracks, so he always tried not to step on even one them. But he always failed eventually and felt guilty, for he didn't want his mom to break her back. If he loved anyone he loved his mom. And he was doing that when suddenly some high school boys rushed by him, one on each side not paying any attention to him or the cracks in the sidewalk at all.

He remembered staring at them in awe realizing that one day years and years away he would be a high school boy and probably would walk that very sidewalk on his way home from high school. It seemed a revelation to him and he tried in vain to imagine what it would be like to be so big and walk so fast as he watched the boys walk on ahead of him talking as if they didn't have a care in the world. And he wondered if they lived in their minds like he did when they were his age.

“Did they?” he whispered to Them and instantly realized they did some, but not as much. Then he asked Them to show him what it would be like to be like them walking home from high school. And he suddenly felt much larger than he had been and realized he was making much larger steps but not moving his legs and feet much faster at all.

“Hey!” he said to Them, “That was really neat. Thank you,” sensing they were pleased with him just before he almost fell because he tried to miss a crack in the sidewalk. But he had almost lost his balance because while being distracted he had not been paying attention to what he was doing. So he looked up and said, “Thanks!” sarcastically as had it been Their fault. But realizing almost immediately it had nothing to do with Them but him, he apologized to T)hem and asked Them not to hold it against him, knowing They would indeed forgive him.

But what if something happened to his mom. Could she forgive him? Could he forgive himself? “Thank you,” he said to Them realizing They had used it to teach him that not everyone is like Them that they might forgive him so easily, not even him. And for a moment his mind turned to the fact his family had lost two children in a house fire before he was even born when they had lived up in Northome. And his dad was still mad at God because of it. And it scared him to think something could happen that would cause a split between him and Them too.

What if he did something wrong and it caused that very thing to happen to himself when was older? He had to be careful. Maybe developing a habit of not stepping on cracks could hurt himself when he was older. He hoped he would find a solution to having to do it by then. But after all that time it might be much harder to quit, like picking his nose had gotten away from him and he couldn't stop doing it even in public though he always felt guilty for doing it.

Maybe who he would be someday would hate him for all the stuff he was doing to him now? The thought made him sad and guilty for he knew what he did now would only make it harder on himself then. He had to talk to himself then and find out how it turned out and let him know he never intended to hurt him at least, so he wouldn't hate his younger self, John as he was, back in 1957.

Then John asked Them to let him talk to himself in the future. But nothing happened. And he wasn't there yet so how could he talk to someone who wasn't even there yet? They must not permit such things or won't help even a six year old to nothing. He couldn't really do it without out Them he knew that much.

But he didn't leave it alone as he passed two little toddlers playing on the sidewalk and noticed how they stared up at him and he didn't remember what it was like or what he had thought at a time like that, for it had never occurred to him when he was that young. And it cemented it in his mind. He would find away to do it on his own.

And then he looked off to the east and said to himself in the future somewhere, “I'm sorry if I caused you any problems or injured you in anyway. And when you remember I said that you will remember all of this. And I will have spoken to you then all the way across all these years. Even if you can't talk to me, because I don't exist any longer at least I can talk to you and imagine what it is like to be you listening to me. I couldn't help but do it. Forgive me if it causes you any problems at all, okay? I mean, it's a little like forgiving yourself for doing it. Ain't it?”

Then in his heart of hearts he knew it did cause his future self problems. But he had done it. And his head hurt. He had caused himself to have a headache for concentrating so hard. It seemed to him that using his brain beyond what it was ordinarily capable of always did that to him. And he was addicted; addicted to thinking beyond his brain's ability to know and as a tool to use to know things no one else seemed to know and it allowed him to believe he could live in a fourth dimension at the same time he lived and understood what was in the third dimension, the second dimension and the first dimension. Now all he had to do was learn how to express it and find a way to share it. But for the time being he thought he would just have to be content to being a kid playing in the next dimension. Of course he had no way to express that or even know what it was he was actually doing.

Then Frank Li said, “If he was doing that then, what is he up to with us now?”

“Don't you know?” I asked Frank, “It's bittersweet to him what he did all his life without regard for how insane people thought he was. And I sense he is sorry if it causes any of us, even his readers any discomfort, even if nothing but a headache. Most of the time he didn't even live here. And at times he was just like us, a tool to explore the next dimension with, a dimension where they know Them personally.”

“Do you think it's safe being here in his book let alone reading what he is writing?” Frank Li asked.

“We don't really have a choice being mere characters of his and someday they will have to think like he does. They either live out there where his mind was for so long and those who know Them are. If he's right we had best start looking at everything as an object lesson from Them to help us know what is out there. How else can our minds evolve beyond the current limitations of our brains ability to to vainly interpret what is actually around us just like the second dimension led those who think he's insane on their way to understanding the three dimensional world instead of planets and stuff we probably don't need to even try to reach and take the chance people like the Europeans who came to America and devastated the Native's world are out there.

They are the truly insane. Someone out there with a three dimensional mind will doubtlessly be more powerful and even they must know there is no guarantee they won't be more like their Devil than the God they turned their backs on. They've been going backward for centuries. You would think they would have woke up when they bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The fools created peace for a few years at the expense of leaving the world in an atomic nightmare as they continue on towards an end to their kind well before it had to come. They head back toward where they never existed to go where they don't exist any longer and call that progress!”

“Now that's insane!” Frank Li said.

“He is bringing what theorists call the fourth dimension to us,” I said, “He saw the Light coming back to us from there. Pray to Them with your three dimensional mind if you have to. As for me. I'm content to be fictional that they might even understand the world with a three dimensional mind. Our writer has no followers to talk to, but he has chosen to live where his Brother, Jesus Christ lives and he's just a man like me and you would be if we were real Frank Li, trying one more time to convince people he's not insane.

They don't have to be like the animals. They can at least interact with the three dimensional world around them at the mercy of an enemy from the fourth dimension he calls the Nemesis who will lose it and be thrown down to the third dimension where he belongs. But he is trying to encourage them to live in the fourth dimension, believing those in this dimension only caused him so much trouble because they were backward and even killed their King from the fourth dimension even Jesus of Nazareth a mere body even the Jews rejected as if he were the Devil though he loved everyone he met but the Devil, the rest of the devils and the demons as well as those on earth that behave as if they were one of that evil cult already.

Didn't even he say the ones who never heard of him could have interpreting the world correctly? That's all his brother, John F Carver did with Their help and mutual love. Do we have to forgive him for loving us? Can we forgive him for loving and being loved by Them? They won't put up with us forever, you know?”