Episode 3

I was suddenly completely awake. I had been sleeping. A deep total sleep, oblivious to to the passage of time and my surroundings. It can be hard to get know what’s going on jarred out of a sleep like that. I was outside, it was very dark and something had woken me up. I was wrapped up tight and warm, perhaps in a sleeping bag, but I could feel the cold of the air on my nose and cheeks. With a breath in the cold air burned my lungs. Was I back on the mountain, or was that just a dream? It seemed a long time ago, very far away. I gradually became aware of starlight filtering through tree branches above. I was not in a tent or under a tarp or in any other form of shelter. The sky looked clear, no signs of clouds. That must have been the reason I was sleeping out, but clear skies always mean cold nights.

I thought about walking through the snow for a second and then the thought was replaced with a face. The girl from the balcony. Short hair, freckles, cute but not pretty. Short in stature and skinny, but a larger presence. Not meek. Someone who looked at you while you talked, didn’t avoid eye contact. Not afraid to express her opinion, but not worried about being right. The though of her still brought a tingle on each breath. My heart beat quickened at first at then relaxed. I wondered if I loved her, in another life. I wondered what sort of life she had? Was she jumping from existence to existence like I was? Or did she have a linear life? That was the name I had come up with for the way living should be. One single life, from being born to death, in a nice neat linear fashion. Her life could not be like mine, but I don’t think that mine was like this when I was talking to her. There was a sense of permanence, of being in the right place, a sense of home. Feelings that I always seemed to have memories of, but could never touch anymore.

As my mind wandered her face gradually slipped away. The dreamy feeling that of forgetting something important, but not being able to remember why it was. The passage of time can be deceptive. A second can seem to last for minutes and a year mere months. When involved in an intense prolonged activity or lost deep in thought warps in perception of time occur. Something that happened yesterday can feel distant while memories from years ago much more immediate. How long had I been laying there? I wondered what time it was and found myself bringing my left wrist towards my face, taping a button on the watch that I was apparently wearing and illuminating the face. An analog watch, but a modern one. Separate dials for the days of the week and the month. A complicated dial for figuring out times in other time zones. An hour hand and minute hand, but no second hand. Although my body was perfectly accustomed to checking this watch to tell the time, my mind is very bad at reading them. Had I grown up in a single body and used only a digital watch? Had I even grown up? I knew that this way I was living was not normal, but had no memory of what my normal life had been and yet I had a strong feeling of what normal was. I must have had a different experience where my ability to think was formed. I knew language, but not how I learned it. I knew how to think critically and analyze situations, but not details specific to my situation. Was I a soul more than a mind? Someone who had lived their life and was now acting in behalf of people who were too afraid to die one their own? It would explain why I always seemed to show up in a new body just before it died. On a line to a death I knew was coming, but found impossible to avoid.

Focusing on the watch again I saw that it was around four in the morning. Depending on season it might start getting light soon. Or it could stay dark for several more hours. The clock showed June on the month dial. It was almost time for the solitace. If I were in the northern hemisphere it would be the lightest time of the year. The maximum amount of light in the day. In Northern Alaska or near the pole the sun might never set. It would be opposite if I were South of the Equator and near the equator season would hardly matter at all. I tried to decide whether it was summer or winter. It was cold, but I could be at a high elevation elevation. Thin cold mountain air can be indistinguishable from winter air in the lower lands. I tried to recognize starts in the sky. Perhaps I could recognize a constellation. I knew that the Southern skies are different than those in the North. I couldn’t make out the shapes of the stars well enough through the trees and could not even remember if I was interested in astronomy or not. Would I know which stars I was looking at even if I could see them clearly? I decided that it would be simpler to wait until morning to find out. I tried to turn off my mind and go to sleep. No luck.

This was unusual, still time. I felt like I was in a sensory deprivation chamber. There was so little input to my senses compared to the city I had jump been in. There were few sounds, mild smells. The smell of a forest is subtle. A hint of pine and earth. A slight smell of decomposing needles. No loud smells like in the city. No Indian curry, no car exhaust, no dumpsters in the alleys. The lack of light can be startling. In the city you can always see. There are street lights, car lights, store fronts, everywhere you look a million light bulbs. You can close your blinds, add curtains, but a little light always slips in. And that does not include the lights on the inside. The alarm clock, the computer, the charging cellphone. Each with a tiny diode emitting a tiny amount of light. The total effect is that you can almost read with the sum of the light. The stars provide enough light to make out large shapes, especially when you look up and see things back lit. But the ground is almost impossible to see. Nothing has color. Everything is black.

No place to go, nothing to do. No way to check out my immediate surroundings. If I had a flashlight, I had no idea where it was. Nothing to do but wait and think. This would be an ideal time to consider my situation. There would be no distractions. No full body urges to find its fate. My heart jumped, I heard snap, maybe a twig. Something was off. It was not a normal night time noise. My ears strained to hear the sound again. I held my breathe. My heart was beating in my hears loud and rhythmical, there was a soft breeze in the tree tops high above, maybe the sounds of water in the distances, my tense shallow breath. Was there anything that sounded amiss? No birds this time a night, too cold for the insects, there might be a rodent on a scurried search for food. Then I heard it. A blast of air as if a locomotive were releasing steam. Something with powerful lungs. Something large. Something close.