WISPS by Aggressively Inquisitive

We are moving so quickly, busily, our souls blur, becoming sheer and insubstantial even to ourselves.  So busy that we can’t remember what solid stillness feels like.   We’re turning to a task before our spirits have released our attention from the task that’s still slipping from our fingers.  We get stretched – becoming spider webs stretched between activities.  Our consciousness lies watchful in the upper corner of our jumbled web, waiting to pounce and consume the tasty parts of our days.  

Days whisk by, our hands barely feeling the hot air brushing over our skin from the moments skittering out of our way.  We become thinner and wanner, almost invisible in our spinning until we hit something that makes us stop.  We reach towards this new thing as if it is just another passing activity.  It suddenly becomes heavy and we’re unable to set it down so quickly.  The dawdling over it allows our stretched parts to shrink back and slowly we become solid again.  Parts stretched out relearn their place in the calm body of ourselves and we remember luxury and indulgence again.  We become fat and juicy as we allow ourselves to linger in the decadence of pure time and focus.  No more sheer curtains of ourselves.  In those moments, we are solid and sure – not a wisp subject to the will of the wind. 

This time we must be pulled away.  We don’t reach eagerly toward the next task; we strain to maintain the hold on what we have right now.  And as we feel the day move forward again, we stretch to keep contact as long as possible.  When the connection snaps, we turn forward once again to our busy lives – but now solid and sure.  We are calmer knowing we can return; knowing there is a place where our souls can catch up and we can be still. 

We move off, quickly, leaving the beginnings of the trail of ourselves. 

When a Door Opens...

Peter stood silently in stunned disbelief as he stared at the travelers scurrying past him. His analytical mind, education and research in physics and relativity allowed him to maintain a calm exterior. He did go unnoticed, but nervous perspiration beaded on his forehead and ran down his neck, darkening the button down collar of his blue oxford shirt.

He wanted to smile, to break out in a wide grin and shout out about his discovery. Peter restrained himself, partially because he didn’t want to draw attention to himself and be thought a fool. As seconds past, his mind raced with the implications this knowledge would have on of the lives of everyone on our planet, and the possible sinister uses of his now-proven theory.

Peter Brockman was a precocious and gifted child with a thirst for knowledge and an imagination unbounded by reality. He graduated high school at 12, MIT with a Masters Degree in Physics at 16 and had two PhD’s by 21. He was the golden boy of science, and could have named his price with any of a hundred international companies, but those price tags came with limitations on the direction of his research. He chose instead a small privately, but extravagantly funded research institute that was interested in supporting his research.

Many great scientists, even Einstein, had theorized about what he had now proven. They had great minds, but not the unbounded imagination that drove Peter. That imagination had allowed him to look beyond the limitations of current scientific knowledge. That imagination had always steered him towards the positive ramifications of his theories. But now, in a few horrifying seconds, his mind saw something else.

When you are an elite student, attend the most exclusive and challenging schools, and are bombarded with attention, you live a sheltered life. The ugly realities of the world are filtered. Greed, poverty and evil are at best distant concepts. Suddenly, these negative realities came flooding in and overwhelmed his consciousness.

The glasses he wore were connected to Blackberry-sized nuclear power source, which in and of itself was a scientific breakthrough. That power energized nano-particles embedded in the glasses which bent the virtual interwoven fabric of light, time and space that surrounds all of us, all of the time.

You see, Peter had opened a window. A window that offered a view into a parallel universe. A universe full of people, places and things that existed in the same space as our own people, places and things, only in a different dimension. Peter watched as ghost-like people from the other universe walked through the people and things of his universe. These people seemed to be wheeling luggage and standing at kiosks. Just like those around him.

His mind raced as he realized that if a window could be opened, so could a door. Did there exist another copy of us on the other side? What would happen if he passed through that door and met his counterpart? What if people and things were the same, but there were diseases or some unspeakable evils that crossed from one side to another? What would happen if his discovery fell into the wrong hands, and terrorists or megalomaniacs were able to marshal the forces of the other side?


Several weeks later, a plane slowly banked over coast of New Jersey. It was a routine Homeland Security flyover of cargo ships just off the coast and in New York Harbor. The plane contained extremely sensitive radioactivity detectors – to defend against a nuclear device being smuggled into the country by terrorists.

Air Force Sgt. Devin Johnson was startled by the equipment’s warning buzzer; another false alarm he thought. He contacted the plane’s Captain, who called in the Coast Guard to investigate. What they found was a small unoccupied motor boat, belonging to a Peter Brockman. There was only a small trace of radioactivity on the boat, but their instruments were picking up strong signals from somewhere in the nearby waters. Divers were called in.

FBI agents raided Peter’s home and research lab. They found evidence of destroyed files, blank computer drives, and a hastily written note that simply said a few goodbyes, I’m sorries, and a sentence that said simply, “I have to lock this door forever”.

Later that day, divers found Peter beneath 500 feet of water under the Verrazano Narrows Bridge, chained to a concrete-filled large container. His body was highly radioactive. The divers also found the remains of what appeared to be a melted cell phone. The glasses were never found.