Chapter 27: Oneironaut - A Dream of Waking Life

Auditorium lights sprayed Matt’s eyes with blinding fluorescence as Souvik and Fernanda walked on either side of him, making sure he didn’t fall over. It had only happened a couple times, but if he had one more really major fall, the doctors probably wouldn't trust Matt on his own anymore. His friends knew that, so they made sure to take special care of him.

The light mixing with the sunlight in the outside lobby made the immediate space around Matt sparkle like diamonds at the periphery of his vision, and the cherry fabric of the auditorium seats directly in front of him practically glowed. Matt squinted his eyes behind his new prescription sunglasses and breathed deep, letting the voice of some distant speaker wax lyrical in the background of his awareness.

Damn it, he scolded himself inwardly, aware that this was all his fault. The doctors at the local institute said it would get easier, but the light sensitivity and the bouts of paralyzing confusion seemed to only be getting worse. Worst of all, he had the feeling that he’d forgotten something important. His mom told him that he’d always had that feeling ever since he was young. She was right, but now it felt all-consuming.

I forgot something incredibly important, Matt told himself, knowing how stupid it sounded. If it were so important, someone in my life would have told me about it, Matt considered, but he still couldn’t shake this feeling churning in the deepest layers of his being.

Fernanda tugged gently at Matt’s left hand. Normally he tried to avoid letting others see his birth defect, let alone touch it. But this was Fernanda, his oldest friend. She didn’t care about his two missing fingers even though the stumps embarrassed Matt to no end.

“You okay?” Fernanda checked with motherly concern.

Matt nodded, not wanting to be a bother. He forced himself forward, pushing away his self-loathing. When they arrived at a row of seats, Souvik shuffled in first, looking back every couple seconds at Matt as if to make sure he wouldn’t topple over.

Taking their seats in their usual position in the row closest to the exit door, Matt relished the inviting warmth of being able to rest his legs. The walk from his dorm to the auditorium was the most activity he’d engaged in since the accident.

It wasn’t an accident, Matt corrected himself with a painful wince. I just fucked up the dose. But an accident was how the doctors referred to it. An intravenous cocktail of 2C-B, heroin, and DMT mixed with homemade saline had put Matt in a coma for three weeks with two weeks of rehab after that. Five weeks total. In terms of how he and his psychonautical friends partied and traversed the mind, five weeks might as well be an infinite number of lifetimes and experiences.

Matt forced his mind away from thoughts of the hospital and the drugs he still considered going back to. He looked toward the stage and focused his mind on the words of the young man concluding his presentation. Splashed across the projector screen in bold crimson letters was the title of the presentation: The Very Real Possibility of Cosmic Consciousness.

Definitely up my alley, Matt noted, and he was reminded how lucky he was to have friends that seemed to genuinely care about his interests.

“So, like I said at the beginning of my presentation, you zoom out far enough,” the overly excited young man with a shock of orange hair cooed on stage, “and the whole universe looks like a neural network. Everything and everyone, even you, could just be the dream of a cosmic god. Thank you.”

The man smiled and began walking off stage as the audience of mostly young undergraduates offered him a short burst of applause followed by a flurry of disruptive conversation from audience members inspired to share their own theories on the nature of reality with their friends and neighbors.

“Okay, okay,” a balding man in his fifties said from the first row, and he jumped to his feet and walked to the steps of the stage. He quickly shook the previous speaker’s hand and smiled excitedly at him as they passed each other.

“Okay, okay,” the man said again, this time through the microphone. The high-pitched feedback sent a shiver down Matt’s spine, forcing him to grit his teeth.

“You’ll all have time to ponder the great mysteries of the universe after the presentations are through,” he chuckled, clearly happy that so many young minds were eager to contemplate such deep and unanswerable mysteries. “Our next speaker,” the man said quite loudly, and the audience hushed itself to silence. “Our next speaker is probably the reason most of you are here today.”

A cacophony of excitement roared in patchwork blazes from the audience as if it constituted a singular living being. The man on stage lifted his hands, bringing the audience back to a state of relative calm, though the anticipation in the air was still electrifying.

“This is it,” Souvik whispered to Matt, and he hit his knee in excitement. “We got here right on time, bro.”

The man on stage continued. “He has dedicated his life to making contributions to numerous sciences and other various fields of study, but he is most known in the public sphere for his seminars on the nature of consciousness and reality. Ladies and gentlemen, I won’t make you wait any longer. I present to you, Doctor Chike Okonma.”

The crowd roared and cheered with ecstatic expectation, and even Matt felt a twinge of excitement despite feeling as though he’d been suffering through the worst hangover of his life for the past month. The ceiling lights dimmed, and a pair of spotlights blanketed the stage with an ochre hue. Matt was relieved he was able to take off his sunglasses.

Okonma, Matt mouthed, and the name seemed to hold supernatural energy. He spent a sizable portion of his childhood reading Okonma’s writing – books on psychology and biology and cosmology and even science fiction. Okonma seemed to be able to probe any subject from any field with careful expertise, and there didn’t seem to be anything Okonma didn’t find infinitely interesting and worthy of being pondered. In fact, Okonma was the reason Matt had become a lucid dreamer at such a young age.

The crowd was still cheering as they waited for Okonma to take the stage.

Why waste a third of your life asleep when you could be living whole lives inside your mind? Matt recited in his mind. Okonma’s words had been in Matt’s head practically his entire life. Even though this seminar was the closest Matt had ever come to being in this legend’s presence, Okonma was like a best friend to Matt. Okonma’s writing helped Matt out of many bouts of depression, and he often credited the man as being the reason he was still alive.

“Thank you,” Matt said, utterly grateful that his friends had bought him tickets to this speech and had even been willing to skip the rest of the speakers so that Matt could get some extra sleep that day. Ever since the accident, it seemed like he could never get enough sleep, no matter how many pills he used. He could sleep for two days straight and still feel dead tired.

“Of course, bro,” Souvik said. “We got you.”

Fernanda squeezed Matt’s knee in quiet support. It felt exceptionally comforting to have them in his life.

Matt glanced at the tattoo on his forearm and read: Awake/Asleep. The tattoo was a reality check; as long as it looked normal, he probably wasn’t in a dream. Still needing a second reality check, he glanced at his hands again and was finally convinced that he wasn’t dreaming. He felt a sudden pang of horror at being reminded of lucid dreaming. He hadn’t told his friends, but he’d been scared to try lucid dreaming ever since he overdosed.

Why does it fill me with such fear now? Matt wondered, and he couldn’t shake the feeling that he should do a third reality check just in case.

All of a sudden, the crowd jumped to their feet in a flurry of shouts and whoops as a frail, world-worn man stepped carefully, six inches at a time, toward the microphone. His skin was a dark ebony, and he wore a blue button-up suit with pens in the chest pocket. The balding man ran to help Okonma, but the old man waved him away with a pleasant thank you issued from his lips.

As Okonma stepped beneath the spotlights, he attempted to survey the crowd through strained eye lids, but it was clear he could only see shadows from where he stood. Matt gawked at the way this man clung to life despite his body barely hanging on.

He’s so close to death, Matt thought in horror, but he felt bad for judging the man based on his age.

“How do you know this is real?” Okonma bellowed into the microphone, vibrating every atom in the room with thundering command.

Hushed whispers scurried about the audience, then returned to silence.

“What if I were to ask you to prove that you are real – that you are more than just, as the previous young man said, the dream of some greater entity? God, as he so succinctly put it.”

Okonma paused, allowing the crowd to discuss among themselves. Matt felt a shiver ascend his spine from its base. Then a tingling pins-and-needles feeling in his chest forced him to grab his solar plexus and grit his teeth.

“Matt!” Fernanda whispered, gripping his forearm. Souvik was too engrossed in Okonma’s speech to notice him.

The feeling subsided, and though Matt waved her away with a forced smile, Fernanda seemed to see right through him.

“We should leave,” she offered compassionately.

“I’m fine,” Matt whispered back, causing Souvik to glance back at him. Seeming satisfied that Matt was all right, Souvik immediately turned back to the old man in excitement.

“Is everyone here familiar with Chuang Tzu’s butterfly dream?” Okonma continued, leaving Fernanda shaking her head in worry at Matt as she forced her eyes back to Okonma.

“Yes, it’s a very famous story,” Okonma said, seeing that most people in the audience were familiar with it. “For those unfamiliar, Chuang Tzu was a Chinese philosopher some two thousand years ago who wrote about his dream of being a butterfly. When he woke from the dream, he wasn’t sure if he was a butterfly that had woken to become a man, or a man who had dreamed of being a butterfly. You see, in the dream, he didn’t know about Chuang Tzu the philosopher. He was just a butterfly fluttering about existence.” Okonma smiled and flapped his hands as if they were a butterfly’s wings. The crowd chuckled, but Matt could only gulp at the deadly serious nature of what Okonma was proposing.

“There is no way to collect tangible, undeniable evidence of either proposition. Take it a step further – maybe neither is true. Maybe the philosopher is someone else entirely who is dreaming of being a philosopher who dreams of being a butterfly. How many times could this chain continue? Forever? Contemplating such a thing could drive you mad,” Okonma said, falling into a rhythmic speaker’s groove now. “But that’s what drives our minds. This urge to understand. This need to validate our reality as real. This hunger to know if the very word real even holds any inherent meaning when it comes to the nature of existence.”

The pins and needles flickered across Matt’s chest again, but this time he braced himself, not wanting to worry his friends.

It’ll pass, he told himself, breathing deeply to calm his nerves.

“But the truth is we can never prove the realness of reality. To a lucid dreamer like me, reality is no more objectively real than a dream. They both exist. The only difference is that reality has limitations. The experience of being, of self and other, of existing – all that is still identical.”

A surge of energy at Matt’s solar plexus nearly made him jump, but he gripped his legs and forced himself to remain seated.

Okonma scanned the audience absentmindedly and seemed to stop for a moment as his eyes crossed over Matt.

Can he tell something’s wrong with me? Matt wondered, aware now that he should probably leave since the feeling in his chest was only growing more intense.

No, it’s not that, Matt realized. It was like he recognized me. Matt shook his head at his thoughts and told himself Okonma probably couldn’t even see the first row, let alone the last.

“Treating everything as a dream liberates. As long as you give reality to dreams, you are their slave,” Okonma said, his tone suddenly filled with grave seriousness. “That’s a quote by Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, an Indian guru I’m very fond of.”

Okonma lowered his head suddenly and grabbed his chest at his solar plexus. The crowd gasped, but Okonma lifted his hand to calm them and smiled.

“You know,” he said with a faraway stare, his voice distant, almost as if he were lost in multiple lifetimes of memories. “If you could dream anything for all eternity, eventually you’d dream this. Eventually you’d be right back where you started,” the old man said, clearly more to himself than the audience.

Without warning, Matt and Okonma clutched their chests in unison, and Matt couldn’t help yelping at the sudden surge of energy. Half of the crowd looked back at Matt to see what the shouting was about, and the other half stood with worry, wondering if the old man might be having a heart attack.

“Matt!” Souvik shrieked at Matt’s yelp.

“I told you it was too soon,” Fernanda seethed at Souvik, and Souvik nodded, defeated by her point. They practically lifted Matt out of his seat, and the three of them shuffled toward the exit door, Matt still clutching at the energy swimming in his chest. On stage, Okonma assured everyone that he was fine, and as Matt and his friends opened the exit door, a large portion of the crowd looked back to see who could possibly have the audacity to leave just as this legendary speaker nearly died on stage.

Matt felt terribly embarrassed, and as he glanced back at his childhood idol, he saw that the old man was watching him leave with a forlorn stare.

“He must think I’m an asshole,” Matt told his friends once they were in the lobby. The energy in his chest was quickly subsiding, and Matt felt stupid for making a scene. At the very least, the light didn’t appear to be bothering his eyes as much, and he didn't feel like he needed to put the glasses back on right away.

I’ll get better in time, Matt assured himself, wondering if he had experienced an anxiety attack.

“What’s wrong, bro?” Souvik checked as Fernanda eyed Matt with grave concern.

“I don’t know,” Matt admitted. “I’m just out of it,” he said, unable to stop thinking about how he and Okonma had grabbed their chests in the same place at the same time.

Did he feel that too? Matt wondered.

“I just feel like I forgot something,” Matt told them for the first time. “Something incredibly important.”

They nodded with patience and Fernanda said, “We all feel that way sometimes, Matt. I get it. It’s like there’s something just out of reach of your mind. It’s like that tip of the tongue feeling, only bigger.”

Matt nodded hollowly. “Yeah,” he agreed, not wanting to concern them. He felt terrible that they were missing the show, especially since they’d paid for it. “You guys go back in,” he said, attempting to mask the severity of his feelings. “I just need some air.”

They both shook their heads fervently.

“No way, bro,” Souvik began, “you –”

“I just need to be alone,” Matt interrupted. “Just for a bit. I’ll be right outside. I won’t go anywhere. Promise.”

The crowd roared in laughter from within the auditorium.

“Promise?” Fernanda repeated.

“Promise,” Matt assured her.

Fernanda and Souvik nodded, reluctantly allowing him to have his way. He let them return to the auditorium, then turned and left the building, walking outside onto the campus quad.

It was around eleven o'clock in the morning on a weekday, so there weren’t many people on the quad’s manicured grass. There were a few students lounging against the iconic black bell tower at the center of the grass, but other than that, it was pretty empty.

A pair of white herons with velvet black legs meandered across the grass, apparently searching for something to eat.

Is that what you’re searching for? Matt wondered pleadingly about the herons and the natural world that he and they were both a part of. Or is it something deeper for you too?

A spark of the tingling feeling danced across Matt’s chest, and he wished beyond all else to understand how it was possible for him to know that he had forgotten something of such profound importance without knowing what it was he forgot in the first place.

The campus darkened suddenly as the sun was occluded by a particularly gigantic cumulus cloud. The cloud’s edges radiated gold and ochre brilliance, allowing a few sunrays here and there to reach the surface. A pair of butterflies fluttered in a dance of sunlight near the bell tower, and Matt followed their flight to a young, petite Asian woman in the process of packing her books and belongings into her backpack as she prepared to leave. She was barefoot and wore a black denim jacket over a purple sports bra that left part of her midriff open. As she turned, Matt saw that one side of her head was shaved close to the skin while the other side flowed freely with dark black hair down to her shoulder.

Matt gasped as the energy in his chest surged with excitement.

This feeling…it’s…her? he gawked, unsure why he would feel so excited about this young woman in particular. She looked to be a couple years younger than Matt, maybe a freshman or sophomore. But he had never seen her before. She was beautiful, certainly, but he could say that about a lot of women. Still, his heart fluttered and his solar plexus gushed with tingling energy, forcing him to walk toward her.

Yes…that feeling, he realized as he walked across the grass, the black bell tower looming over him. It’s her, he knew. She’s what I’m searching for. It’s not a thing I yearn for, it’s a person. It’s a woman. It’s her! he knew with total, wonderful certainty.

He smiled for the first time in weeks, and it felt as though a braided cord of fate connected him to this woman he had never seen in his life.

“Hey!” Matt called out to her, and as she turned, the sun escaped from behind the clouds, fully illuminating her face. She smiled at him, her cherry lips an inviting warmth and her black eyes as deep and full as ripe, sprawling orchards. A diamond stud in her right nostril and three diamond studs lining the top of her left eyebrow glimmered with radiant sunlight, making her literally shine.

“Hey,” she said back, chuckling at Matt’s excitement. “You okay?”

“What’s your name?” Matt said, his eyes and tone full of a sudden desperation that caught the woman off guard.

Her smile turned to nervousness, and she furrowed her eyebrows at him. “My name’s May. Do I know you?”

May, Matt repeated in his mind, searching it desperately for meaning. May, he repeated, demanding his mind to make this feeling make sense.

“I’m sorry,” he told her, tears filling his eyes now as he realized how strange and awkward he was being toward her. The energy in his chest dwindled suddenly to a flicker, and Matt knew he had made a mistake. “Sorry,” he repeated, his lips quivering now at the prospect of his confused emotions. “I didn’t mean to make you nervous.”

She tightened the straps on her backpack, but then she smiled and said, “It’s all right.” She closed the gap between them and placed her gentle hand on his quivering shoulder. “I wish I could help you, but I have to get to my next class.”

Clearly she knew that something was eating away at Matt’s insides, but how could she ever fathom the endless depths of despair and confusion clawing deep within Matt’s mind like starving animals calling out in the darkness for help that will never come.

“Thanks,” Matt managed, wishing along with her that she could help him.

But it’s not her, Matt admitted to himself forlornly. Though the energy in his chest was now just a faint whisper, it was still there – still pulsing and pleading with him to locate a shadow in darkness.

“See ya,” she offered serenely, then added with seeming genuine compassion, “I’m sure everything will be all right.”

Matt stared after her as she walked away, and with each of her steps, the feeling in his chest subsided, finally turning to a distant numbness as she crossed the street.

It’s not her, he knew, and he felt his exhaustion catch up to him. He wanted to just go home and go to sleep. He considered that maybe he would have better luck searching in his dreams. Or maybe with another DMT cocktail, Matt weighed, though he knew it would probably be a long time before he did that again. I might not wake up next time I push so far, he reminded himself gravely.

The woman got on a bus, and as the bus drove away, it revealed a line of graffiti on a brick wall: Endless is the maze.

Matt chuckled sorrowfully to himself. This maze of being. Is there any way out of this?

Of course, no answer came, and Matt knew that there probably was no answer.

“Yo!” Souvik shouted at a distance. Matt turned to see Fernanda and Souvik jogging over to him from across the quad, and only then did he realize how far away from the auditorium he was.

As Matt stood under the tower and watched them run toward him from across the grass, he felt the intense feeling of déjà vu, and it filled him with unexplainable misery.

“I knew we’d have to keep an eye on you,” Fernanda said with tangible concern as they closed the gap. “What are you doing?” she asked, looking around for why Matt might have walked so far away.

“Just went for a walk,” Matt lied, unsure how he could possibly explain to them what he was enduring.

They seemed to recognize that Matt was out of sorts. Souvik nodded, put his hand on Matt’s shoulder, and said, “It’s just going to take time, bro. And look,” he began, hesitating momentarily, but he forced himself to continue with something he had clearly wanted to say for quite some time. “If it wasn’t you this happened to, it would have been me or Fernanda. We all pushed things too far.”

Fernanda and Souvik eyed him, seeming to gauge how he might respond to the idea that their psychonautical escapades via drug consumption constituted a problem rather than a way of life.

Matt nodded, barely hearing his words.

Souvik took Matt’s nod as thorough agreement. He patted Matt on the shoulder and said, “Good. And besides, this gives us more time to actually do what we initially planned to do in college. Who knows, maybe we’ll make a game that gets big!”

Matt smiled and nodded along with Souvik’s proposition, but it was just to placate him. Matt knew that until the feeling consuming his every thought went away, he would never be able to stop searching for the nameless, faceless woman he knew he needed to find. He imagined himself going back to class and even programming a game or two alongside Souvik during university. He envisioned himself getting a nine-to-five programming job and sitting behind a computer screen for the rest of his life. He knew he could do it. He knew he had to do it. Life had to continue. But all the while he would be searching – in waking life and in his dreams.

I’ll be searching until my dying breath for something I might never find, Matt lamented, and he knew that his present despair was but a shallow valley beneath mountains of clawing anguish that would eventually overtake the whole of his mind.

“You okay?” Fernanda checked with Matt as Souvik typed on his phone.

Matt stared into her eyes, and though he knew she was his best friend, she felt like a stranger to him. The whole world felt like a stranger.

“Matt?” Fernanda repeated, growing increasingly concerned as Matt gazed about frantically, looking as though he were in an open-eyed REM state.

Is any of this real? Matt wondered, Fernanda’s voice barely a whisper in what might as well be an infinite distance between them. Matt checked his hands, but they looked normal. He glanced at his tattoo, but it was fine. He tried breathing through his closed mouth, but he was unable.

This is real, Matt told himself. And so is that feeling – that yearning.

A flutter of wings made Matt twist his neck, and he saw the pair of herons lift off and fly toward the auditorium.

Searching for something, Matt thought as their black legs slipped behind the buildings and out of sight.

“What is it, Matt?” Fernanda asked, her voice strained as if she might cry.

I don’t know, Matt answered inwardly. It’s like I’m searching for someone that isn’t here and never was.

Matt looked up and forced himself to smile.

“I’ll be all right,” he told Fernanda to pacify her worry. “Let’s go do some coding,” he said so that Souvik could hear him. Souvik winked at Matt, then went back to whatever was occupying his attention on his phone.

Fernanda nodded, but Matt knew that she and Souvik would always keep an eye on him. No matter how much time went by or what circumstances might separate them in life, he knew, at least, that their connection was indomitable – that they were people he would never forget or have to search for.

I’ll be all right, Matt tried to assure himself, but he didn’t believe it.

Billowing clouds rolled in front of the sun, darkening the world as the sky took on a uniform white hue.

Who are you? Matt pleaded to know from this woman whose name and face he was incapable of conjuring in his mind.

She is all that matters, Matt concluded futilely, and he knew the question would creep and permeate through his thoughts like nightmare black ink into pure white paper for the rest of his life.

I HAVE A HEROIC FAVOR TO ASK YOU!!!

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- E. S. Fein