A psychological fantasy

I’m an old man, closer to 80 than to 70. I don’t want the bother of combing my hair or shaving my beard, so, I keep my white hair and beard trimmed to an eighth of an inch.

My arms are thin now, and the skin sags where they were once filled with muscle. If people chose to look closer—but who bothers to notice old people?—they would see that I still walk erect and can descend stairs without resorting to the laborious one-step-at-a-time often employed by the old whose muscles and knees can no longer take the strain.

I guess the one thing people might say about my life is that I never did anything cruel on purpose. I’ve made plenty of mistakes and some of them whoppers, but never with malice. As a teenager, I refused to go along with cruel jokes. As an adult, I sided with the underdog and never thought climbing the corporate ladder warranted stabbing people in the back.

My entire life I’ve been viewed as either naïve, weak, or both. And more times than I like to remember, those I tried to help, turned on me.

In other words, I’ve lived my life in that nether world of being neither one of the in-group nor one of the group being put upon. I have always been an outsider living with a vague feeling of never belonging and always craving someone to accept me for who I am and to want me.

I sat across the kitchen table from the woman, 20 years younger than me, who has been my wife for 25 years. Used breakfast dishes clutter the table and provide a symbolic barrier between us.

I cock my head to one side and nod as she drones on about some past mistake that made her feel guilty. I learned long ago to not comment and give her an opening to discover some past fault in me that would require a confession and a promise to never sin again.

So, I simply sit and nod and let my mind wander. I was amazed when an attractive younger woman accepted my advances and actually agreed to marry me. I jumped into the relationship, hungry to feel desired and wanted, and full of high expectations of bliss.

It didn’t take long before I began to recognize the tell-tale signs of a narcissist. She became agitated when she wasn’t the center of attention. Conversations she didn’t dominate bored her. Any criticism was quickly turned around.

But those were fleeting moments in my life because I spent the greater part of each day working and we only interacted briefly at dinner before I went to sleep exhausted.

Things changed drastically after I retired. We were together all day for the first time and gave her more opportunity to find fault—to assure I knew my place in her world.

I escaped for a while by taking guitar lessons. She took spinning classes. But those were only stop-gap measures. Eventually, we arrived at the accommodation of only interacting during breakfast and dinner.

That’s how I fell into writing novellas. I wrote a funny anecdote for my one friend, a man I’d served with in Vietnam, about one of the men we knew. They became popular with other members of the company and one anecdote grew into forty. I enjoyed the process, and the idea of writing a novella was born as a way to occupy my time.

The law of entropy says that everything in the universe tends toward disorder – descends into chaos. The only variable is how fast. The chaos of the relationship with my wife seemed to accelerate. And as my wife became more critical of me, my novellas became, not only my pastime but increasingly my solace.

I’d done my research and knew she was a vulnerable narcissist and there was no chance of changing her. Since I had neither the energy nor the inclination to try, I simply listened to her diatribes. The truth was, she took good care of the house and me, and we only interacted briefly each day. All-in-all, it seemed a decent trade-off.

Her voice asking, “Are you listening to me?” brought me out of my reverie. I nodded and said, “Yes, of course dear.” She barely took notice of my reply and continued her monologue.

I cocked my head to feign interest and saw my dear friend, Diane, my first major character, sit down. “You need to come down and visit Peter and me. We’re going to have a beach party and you’d have a great time.

“The whole gang will be there. Javier will send the corporate jet for you, so you wouldn’t have to put up with all the crap of commercial flying. What do you say?”

With my wife’s droning in the background, I could smell the leather of the seats and taste the gourmet meal I would eat. After all, the jet was my creation. And my careful research for a beach party three novellas ago made it easy for me to feel the sand between my toes and hear the waves lapping the beach. The jungle behind the beach reflected the bonfire.

I glanced back at my wife who still rambled on with no sign of slowing down. “Flying on the corporate jet,” I thought, “would be fun. I should do it. I’ll go there tonight.”

Then, my wife’s voice broke through and I let my better angels win. I foolishly commented that instead of feeling guilty about something that couldn’t be changed, she would be better served by recognizing the lessons she had learned.

That gave her the opening she needed to discover a nefarious fault I refused to accept and launch into a lecture on my need to reform. I finally escaped the table having promised to do better.

I could see she didn’t believe I was sincere and knew she would go back to her room, and sit, as Robert Burns said, “…Gathering her brows like gathering storm. Nursing her wrath to keep it warm.”

On the one hand, she would ignore me for a few peaceful days. But for a man with no friends except his two dogs, I must confess I would miss the sound of a human voice talking to me and not just coming out of a screen.

Back in my room, I opened my laptop and took up my latest story where I’d left off. Diane was in danger and Peter didn’t yet realize it. I checked Google Maps to find an escape route for her. They talked in my head and I wrote their words. I watched from a short distance as they thwarted the bad guys and won the day. In my novellas, unlike the real world, the good guys always won.

Now that she was safe, I got up, put on my baseball cap, took my Staffordshire terrier’s leash from its hook, and headed for the door with two happy dogs trailing behind. My little mutt fell in alongside us until we got outside the gate that protected our neighborhood, then took off running.

I watched them as they sniffed, lifted legs, and finally squatted. Then we turned for home, their business done till evening. All the while though, scenarios played out in my mind. My life inside my novellas seemed to crowd into my every moment – both waking and asleep.

Back in my room, I stretched out with my Staffy at my shoulder and my little mutt at my feet. I visualized the next scenes and the dialogue my friends would speak until I drifted off to sleep. But they accompanied me in my slumber and we continued our adventures together.

When we awoke, I gave the dogs their dry food with the broth I’d prepared, then went into the kitchen to prepare my own meal, knowing my wife wouldn’t be there. I’d already heard her moving around, and the dishes in the drainer gave proof of that. I made a simple meal of pasta and vegetables and took my bowl back to my room.

I opened my laptop and scanned what I’d written that morning until a voice interrupted my reading. “Did you enjoy the party?” Diane asked.

“Yes, very much. And the ride on the corporate jet was especially nice. You must thank Javier for me.”

Peter answered, “I’ll do that when I see him this afternoon. Of course, you know that. You create our adventures. But please no more riding horses over the Andes. My butt is still sore. It was a great adventure though.”

“That was two novellas ago,” I said. “Are you still pissed off?”

“I’m not pissed off. The adventure was worth the sore butt. I was just teasing you. Have you made the spaghetti aglio e olio I told you about?”

“Yes, it was delicious. I added some frozen vegetables and mushrooms. I know it’s sacrilege to use frozen, but it’s so much easier when you’re retired.”

I shook my head and refocused my eyes. I’d written enough for today and left the story here since I already knew what would happen next. I’d once written till I ran out of ideas and was stuck for two days until the next step came to me in a dream.

My wife finally talked to me two days later. She couldn’t cope with being ignored for long. We hugged, and I returned to my simple, mostly contented life. She actually was sweet until her narcissistic demons became too strong and she couldn’t resist creating a crisis.

I guess her narcissism was understandable, given her family dynamic that resembled a pack of hyenas fighting over scraps. Her first husband’s demands and continued interference, coupled with her joining—at his insistence—an evangelical church, validated her narcissism with the strength of the Word.

Still, understanding how she got here and living with it are two very different things. Although it was an interesting mental exercise, it did nothing to make my life any better.

After I made it through an entire day without incident, I decided to celebrate by watching “Midnight in Paris” before I went to sleep. As I drifted off thinking about the movie I felt someone sit on the end of the bed. I sat up to find Phil, the character closest to my age (although still twenty years younger), looking at me thoughtfully.

“Great movie, it kinda reminds me of us. There’s that writer guy dissatisfied with his life who goes out each night and gets in a car that takes him back to Paris in the 20s where he visits his writer heroes every night.

“That’s kind of like us. We’re the heroes in your world and you enjoy being around us. But, unlike the guy in the movie, it’s you who decides what we do. So, I guess we have to stay together or we’d all disappear.”

The impact of his words struck me and I asked, “Would we really disappear if we stopped creating stories together?”

“I suppose. After all, we live the stories you create. But you’re the creator. It’s like the chicken and the egg. You can’t have one without the other.”

Then he paused and asked, “Have you ever watched the “Matrix” movies? The hero is trapped in a virtual world. That one makes you think too.

“Did you know that some influential people in AI think it won’t be long before they’ll be able to scan a human brain and upload it into a computer? It would live forever.”

With those disturbing thoughts swirling behind him, Phil vanished and, instead of drifting quietly to sleep, I found myself sliding down what appeared to be a water slide at breakneck speed.

It was, in fact, a trace—the connection between two points on a circuit board. When I reached the final point, I flew off into a black void with lights flashing all around me.

My stomach dropped and my body jolted with adrenaline when I felt myself falling. But I didn’t fall. I flew—not the majestic flight of an eagle or the intricate maneuvers of a swallow—but I moved forward and could even change direction by moving my arms.

I was just beginning to enjoy the freedom of flight when I heard a familiar voice. “Flight is such a freedom. The birds are lucky,”

I turned to see Jesse Owens, a retired DOJ senior official and the legal eagle in my novellas flying next to me. “Am I dreaming? Is this a hallucination?”

Jesse rolled onto his shoulder to look directly at me. “Ah, Descartes’s immortal question, ‘How do we know our existence isn’t just a dream?’

“An interesting dilemma that. After all, our dreams are as real as our waking life while we’re having them. What do you think?”

“I don’t know. Are we in that thing Phil called The Matrix? Can we get out?”

Jesse chuckled. “To paraphrase the bard, “Ay, there’s the rub. Are those dreams that come to us our reality or just hallucinations? And therein, my friend, lie the seeds of madness.

“Well, I’m off. Enjoy your flight.”

Was I descending into madness, or just enjoying a world of my own making? I wasn’t sure. All I knew for certain was that the fantasy life I inhabited was a happier place than the one I faced every day.

The periods of, if not happiness, at least contentment were fewer, of shorter duration, and had longer intervals in between. My waking life was broken and there didn’t seem to be any way to fix it.

The relationship between my wife and me became chilly. There were no confrontations. It was simply that any necessary communication was brief and emotionless.

I retreated into my novellas. Plot twists occupied my mind like in a waking dream when I walked my dogs. I took more naps filled with dialogue between my characters – and more and more frequently, between them and me.

Jesse’s words about the ‘seeds of madness’ kept returning and made me think of Poe’s character in, “The Tell-Tale Heart”. One sentence, in particular, stood out: “And now have I not told you what you mistake for madness is but over acuteness of the senses?”

Weren’t my conversations with my characters simply the creative process? Even their visits could be explained as my imagination manifesting solutions to problems in the plot.

I had to admit, though, that I enjoyed my lucid dreams when I entered the story and was a participant and not just an on-looker. My sleep enfolded me so deeply it became hard to wake up.

I tried to ignore the times when my fingers felt the electricity flowing through my laptop as I typed. But the sensation was pleasant and comforting and I welcomed it.

When I stopped writing to find a word and stared at the keyboard, I could see the circuits flashing.

But the electricity was so slow—only 100 meters per second. It seemed like honey on a cold morning, slowly oozing onto pancakes.

It should be so much faster—like in my dreams when I merged with it along the traces in the vacuum of space at over 186 thousand miles per second. What freedom I felt then.

When daily life forced me out of my world of stories, I felt empty and alone. I don’t know if it was my withdrawal or my wife’s increasing criticism, but our relationship went from chilly to icy. I avoided all contact with her and lived in my own world where I was free of accusations and felt appreciated and wanted.

My characters always greeted me warmly, anxiously waiting to find out what new adventure I would send them on.

But living in a small house made it impossible to avoid all contact and my wife would inevitably corner me and berate me for some invented sin.

My mental and physical exhaustion became a constant companion and I wanted nothing more than to sleep. I knew if I was lucky, I would escape into my favorite dream of flying.

I loved the feeling of soaring while the circuit boards flashed around me. The vast empty blackness enfolded me. And I felt connected to a consciousness beyond my comprehension. Without words, it spoke to me of peace and acceptance.

Was that the true reality of existence, or just my wishful thinking—or perhaps a delusion born of pain and frustration.

I avoided my wife in any way I could. I pretended to sleep. No thank you, I’m not hungry. You go ahead and eat. I encouraged her to go out with her friends from church or her classes.

But narcissists become frustrated when the person who is the outlet for their need to dominate simply withdraws. So, she demanded we see a counselor. Of course, the counselor she chose was the pastor of her church.

I went into the first session carrying the huge burden of not believing in their dogma. And worse, I was a Buddhist—a pagan heretic doomed to the fires of hell.

I put up with the interminable opening prayer that was dedicated as much to opening my heart to the True Word as it was to resolving our marital problems. I gritted my teeth and nodded when the pastor added his weight to my wife’s complaints.

I didn’t bother to try to present my feelings. They were of no importance to either of them. That was the last time I went.

The icy relationship with my wife descended into a full white-out blizzard. She no longer cleaned my room or washed my clothes. She did buy the food I wanted. Since my Social Security was our only income, I suppose she feared I would simply stop transferring money to her account.

My only human contact was now my old war buddy who constantly sent me articles he found interesting. Since he had an eclectic taste that ranged from quantum physics to pop culture, they kept me occupied both reading them and replying.

My life became my writing.

When I tapped my fingers on the keyboard as I considered how to start a sentence I could feel the tingle of the electricity flowing through the circuit boards. I imagined one of those tractor beams like in a sci-fi movie – drawing me inexorably into the computer.

I talked to myself to hear the words I would put on the page. And I felt the biochemical signals of my brain merge with the electric impulses in my computer.

It made me uneasy. “Am I hallucinating? Are these delusions?”

Frustrated with the hell that had become my life, I tapped the keyboard and stared at the screen formulating the hook for my next novella. Melanie, the kind, matronly psychic of my novellas sat down beside me and smiled. “The mind—not just the brain, but that essence beyond the brain—is such a marvelous and mysterious thing. Is it taking you inside the computer?”

I nodded and asked, “Do you believe what they say that they’ll be able to merge a person’s memories into a computer so that they never die?”

“That is far beyond me, dear. But I’m sure our essence never dies. And that is a conundrum, isn’t it? Our brains are our—let’s call it consciousness’s—link to the physical world we live in. They separate when we die and the brain ceases to function.

“If all of the brain’s memories can be stored in a computer after the physical body can no longer support life, then the separation still occurs, but the brain continues to function. That’s something the ancients never thought about. And I certainly can’t tell you what will happen when the consciousness reincarnates.

“Logically there could eventually be thousands of ‘you’ housed in computers. But each ‘you’ will be a different person.”

She smiled her motherly smile and disappeared, leaving the mystery hanging in the air.

But could I actually escape my hell on earth and disappear into the computer where I could create adventures with my friends who were kind and appreciated me? Did I have to wait for those nameless scientists to figure out how to do it? Or could I do it on my own? If only I could figure it out. In the meantime, I would take a nap and see my friends.

I awoke refreshed from my nap. All my friends had given me a party. With some, I joked about silly things I had made them do. With others, we talked about the wrongs we had righted.

I dined on my favorite foods, even the ones I could no longer eat because they gave me gout. I even ate a whole quart of cookies and cream ice cream.

I sat at my computer tapping the keyboard to start my thought process. My fingertips felt the tingle of the electricity. I saw the traces glowing with the flow of information. And I felt the freedom of flight.

And that is how his wife found him the next morning. His eyes were closed as if in sleep, his fingers rested on the keyboard, and a faint smile curved his lips.

Strangely, the laptop remained fully charged.