CHAPTER 28 - Living in the matrix
“LET ME THINK ABOUTit. We still have to talk about what kind of marriage we would have. There’s much to discuss and decide.”
“I agree. There are also things you need to know about me.”
He seemed so solemn that a shiver of apprehension ran through her. She had sensed secrets and darkness around Dale. Would he reveal them to her? What could be so terrible about him that he looked so grim and determined? And what would she do when she found out what tormented him? She was almost afraid to find out.
“Ok, I will see you at dinner then.” She replied uneasily.
After that eventful breakfast, she took a walk through the gardens to think and clear her head. Of all the things she should consider, she had not thought marriage would be one of them.
The idea was insane. She had only known Dale for a couple of weeks. They were from, literally, different worlds.
She didn’t belong here.
Oh, she had learned to appreciate his world. After the initial shock of being unexpectedly transported in time, she had begun to enjoy her time here. It was easy to do when Dale provided such a lavish lifestyle and there were so many wonderful things to see and learn. Even so, she was very aware that she didn’t want to stay here permanently. She was visiting, doing touristy things. That’s the way she saw it in her mind.
Of course, she had rationally contemplated the idea that she might not get back, since she didn’t have the means to do so, but in her heart she knew this was all temporary. She didn’t know how or when, but she felt this visit would one day end. How could it not? She didn’t even understand how she had ended up here. What was it that had caused this? Aliens? Angels? Magic? Or maybe she had just really crashed and gotten massive brain damage and was right now lying in a coma in a British hospital and this was all an illusion.
Was this all a dream? She remembered the movie Inception, which she had watched years ago. It was a complicated movie, and she didn’t remember the details, but she kind of recalled that time was warped in the dream world, and people did things in their dreams, and the dream world seemed real to where they could live a lifetime in the dream and not even know they were dreaming. Of course, the movie was a fantasy, but so was time travel.
How about the Matrix? In a different way, it also posed the idea of the mind creating the world while the body lay asleep and unresponsive.
Her heart started to beat faster. What if the key to this mystery lay not in external circumstances, but in her mind? Was this really just an illusion?
She gasped. If all this was an illusion, then Dale was also a figment of her imagination, created probably out of the deep yearning of her heart to find a good man to love her. The truth was that if she had consciously tried to come up with her ideal of the perfect man, it wouldn’t be much different from Dale. He was incredibly handsome, kind, smart, rich and powerful, and his kiss melted her bones... In short, he was her every fantasy.
She had reached the gazebo at the far end of the gardens. The structure stood on top of a raised slope and allowed fantastic three hundred and sixty degrees views of the landscape. She went inside and sat on one of the stone benches facing the gardens and the house.
How could she tell if this was an illusion? She tried to remember. In Inception, the mind was able to bend the surrounding reality. Could she do that if she tried? She concentrated on the house. Tried to make it change form in her mind. Nothing happened.
She touched the stone bench on which she sat, tried to open all her senses to the world around her. To see if she could detect the slightest incongruity, to see if she could unravel the dream, as you could pick a loose thread and unravel a fabric. But everything seemed solid and real. Oh, she was getting nowhere and would drive herself mad with all these theories. Still, she couldn’t entirely dismiss the idea.
She tried another tack. She consciously thought about Dale. Closing her eyes, she conjured his image and tried to imagine him in her modern world, going about life the way she usually did. Driving cars, going to the supermarket, to movie theaters, traveling by plane, doing the myriad other things that made up life in her time.
The idea was incongruous at first, but the more she imagined it, the more real it became. And the more appealing. Did that mean she could shape reality as she pleased just by imagining it? In her time, many subscribed to a belief in manifestation, although it probably wasn’t quite what she was doing.
How could she know if the world around her was real or not? How could she test it? What about that philosopher she had studied in college? Descartes, was it? The one that doubted everything and posed the famous theory of “I think, therefore I am.” That was a way to prove one’s own existence, but not that of the world around you.
