Decker #44

Tut, Coxli and Decker had all awakened famished, so they headed for the cafeteria. Decker thought Cletus into a light coma; he didn't need to be part of the morning's discussion. "Okay, so this is really bugging me," Decker spewed crumbs as he munched a breakfast sandwich remarkably similar to those he'd gotten at drive-up windows in a different life. "This whole thing," he waved his sandwich around to indicate the parameters of the "whole thing", "all of it... was coming apart at the seams last time I was here. All the, um, realities were swapping bits like a cosmic flea market, or a Roman orgy, or something. But it's all back in shape now. I just have to think myself to a place, and there it is. I can even populate the place with people, though they seem a little two-dimensional. Coxli can do it, too. But I left Lizzie, that agent of the whatever-blah-blah- ministry-of-doom spy service, in an abandoned beachfront hotel up on Cradsell 4. She can't do it. And I can't 'think' her away, or bring her anywhere... does that make her 'real'? I can't make you or Coxli disappear, either, and I tried to bring Aida once, with no success... by the way, where is Aida?" "Aida resides, er, temporarily, with Gudren, her adoptive mother," Tut replied. "As to the seeming paradox of our current situation, I can only hypothesize. I have attempted to visit a number of loci in your absence, and can only seem to engage with those that you have seen. This leads me to believe that you are somehow the key to what remains of the temporo-spatial web. It is possible, I suppose, that the temporal matrices you have interacted with remain integral because you hold an image of them in your mind. It also occurs to me that the synthesis of your 3 personalities may be the source of power that allows such a feat. I recall reading of some studies involving the melding of personalities... the available intellectual energies multiplied exponentially with each added psyche." "Yeah, hmmm... I do still have the Degren memories, not sure about the Furge ones..." "Additionally," Tut continued, "it seems that the juxtaposition of simultaneous ingestion of certain cactus alkaloids may have been instrumental in breaching timespace and melding your personalities. It also occurs to me that it was Furge, not Degren, with whom your psychedelic experience synchronized... one wonders why the conscious aspects of Degren manifested so much more overtly...as you say, Decker, 'hmmm'..." "Wait... ummm... so Degren plays front and center in my mind, but I think I read somewhere that the subconscious mind is like ten times as big as the conscious one... could that be where Furge is hiding out?" "I have been cogitating on this very notion, with the aid of some controlled doses of river water," Tut said. "It is my further speculation, having had little in the way of revelation from these, er 'journeys', that we will have to procure some of the substance that you and Furge ingested. With that, we might find the area of your subconscious minds that produced these conditions." "Where are we going to get peyote? I bought it from a friend of a friend out in the Scottsdale suburbs, so we're not likely to score any more that way!" "I have been perusing literature of that regard. In your reality sphere, we would need to travel to southern Texas to locate it in its natural habitat. It can be found a little closer to the portal in Degren's timespace locus, though it is a much rarer plant there." "So if we still want to try to change things back to the way they were, we have to go on a camping trip to southern Texas, and then another peyote trip?" "It is my working hypothesis that there's no likely mode to undo the course of events that brought us to this eventuality. However, given a more thorough exploration and evaluation of the phenomenon, we might be able to make more prudent alterations." "So why don't I just imagine us up some 'yote buttons, right here and now?" "They would probably only have the effect that the river water does. It would be unlikely that anything generated consciously is going to manifest unconsciously. We'll have to go to where your subconscious has been at work, in your deep memory of your home world. Or, as many philosophers and scientists have speculated, in reality." "So we'd probably have better luck in Texas?" "Debatable. The rarity of the alkaloid-producing fauna in Furge's subconscious may balance out the likelihood of your conscious mind adulterating the reality of your home existence. I'd venture to speculate that pursuing the possibilities in Furge's world, where much more of the memory is subconscious, has a slightly higher probability of producing efficacious results". "Well... I guess I'm not as disappointed as I should be about losing my, um, reality... but I am still curious. It ain't every tripper that gets to be a freakin' superhero, right? Might as well take responsibility for my powers. Don Juan, here I come!"