Raoul Duke

“You can't smoke in here.”

Duke was nonchalant.  Ben sat back in the hard red leather cushion of a high sofa.  The bar was familiar, an ash tray on a round table, and Duke sat lazily back, and took a sip of his cigarette.

“Our knowledge and philosophy has been our undoing,”  Duke continued, “when you want to follow a God that you don't believe in, there is only one logical choice.  Doublethink I don't like.”

“I think life is still worth living.” Ben said, and he looked up at the night sky.  The stars were out in full, there was no moon.  He pondered a moment, vast ponderings in short moments.  No doubt he was enjoying this conversation, but there was something wrong.  This event had happened before, and Ben was fluent in it.  He stood up, and Duke looked down at the ash tray.  “I'm going to fly, as much as I like to be with you.  I miss you.”

Ben started running towards the door, widened his eyes and watched the faith in his mind as he extended his head and neck ready to pass like light through the door.

He entered a space that was like a deep breath, and paused a moment to remember what he was up to.   Jumping high into the air, he fell onto his back, and a rush preceded his fall through the ground, as if from a tree, and he stared deep into the galaxies beyond the ground he was falling through.

“Show me 'The Highest'” he prayed, and he found himself precipitated across the cosmos he had a moment prior observed.  There he found the Neosis Museum.  He struggled to engage the circuits of his brain as he saw the highest and sublime.  There was no place for the wisdom he was subjected to, and he realised he could not put into memory what is not able to be conceptualised.

“What's it like to be a person in another person's dream?”  Ben asked.  

“I don't know what you are talking about.”