Dark Matter

“You can’t know that,” Rachel insisted.

“I do.”

“Tell me about your work, then.”

“I teach medical ethics.”

“You took a leave of absence over a year ago.”

I whipped my head toward her and opened my eyes. “How do you know that?”

“I heard it at the hospital.”

“Who said it?”

“I don’t remember. I overheard it. You’re very well known in the medical community. Physicians at Duke refer to your book all the time. They did at New York Presbyterian, too. So, is it true? Did you take a leave of absence from the medical school?”

“Let’s stick to the dreams, okay? It’s safer for both of us.”

“Safer how?”

I didn’t answer.

By the next week’s appointment, the dreams had changed again.

“I’m looking at the Earth. Suspended in space. It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. Blue and green with swirling white clouds. It’s a living thing, a perfect closed system. I dive through the clouds, a hundred-mile swan dive into deep blue ocean. It’s bursting with life. Giant molecules, multicelled creatures, jellyfish, squid, serpents, sharks. The land, too, is teeming. Covered with jungle. A symphony of green. On the shore, fish flop out of the waves and grow legs. Strange crabs scuttle onto the sand and change into other animals I’ve never seen. Time is running in fast-forward, like evolution run through a projector at a million times natural speed. Dinosaurs morph into birds, rodents into mammals. Primates lose their hair. Ice sheets flatten the jungles and then melt into savannah. Twenty thousand years pass in one breath—”

“Take it slow,” Rachel advised. “You’re getting agitated.”

“How could I be seeing all that?”

“You know the answer. Your mind can create any conceivable image and make it real. That photograph of the earth from space is an icon of modern culture. It moves everyone who sees it, and you must have seen it fifty times since childhood.”

“My mind can create animals I’ve never seen? Realistic-looking animals?”

“Of course. You’ve seen Hieronymus Bosch paintings. And I’ve seen the kind of time-lapse images you’re describing on television. In the old days, Life magazine did things like that in print. ‘The Ascent of Man,’ like that. The question is, why are you seeing these things?”

“That’s what I’m here to find out.”

“Are you present in this surreal landscape?”

“No.”

“What do you feel?”

“I’m still looking for something.”

“What?”

“I don’t know. I’m like a bird scanning the earth and sea for … something.”

“Are you a bird in the dream?”

She sounded hopeful. Birds must mean something in the lexicon of dream interpretation. “No.”

“What are you?”

“Nothing, really. A pair of eyes.”

“An observer.”

“Yes. A disembodied observer. T. J. Eckleburg.”

“Who?”

“Nothing. Something from Scott Fitzgerald.”

“Oh. I remember.” She put the end of her pen in her mouth and bit it. An unusual gesture for her. “Do you have an opinion about why you’re seeing all this?”

“Yes.” I knew my next words would surprise her. “I believe someone is showing it to me.”

Her eyes widened, practically histrionics from Rachel Weiss. “Really?”

“Yes.”

“Who is showing this to you?”

“I have no idea. Why do you think I’m seeing it?”

She moved her head from side to side. I could almost see her neurons firing, processing my words through the filters that education and experience had embedded in her brain. “Evolution is change,” she said. “You’re seeing change sped up to unnatural velocity. Uncontrollable change. I sense this may have something to do with your work.”

You could be right, I thought, but I didn’t say that. I simply moved on. My silence was her only protection. In the end, it didn’t matter, because the theme of evolution died, and what came to dominate my sleeping mind shook me to the core.

There were people in my new dreams. They couldn’t see me, and I only saw flashes of them. It was as though I were watching damaged strips of film cobbled together out of order. A woman walking with a baby on her hip. A man drawing water from a well. A soldier in uniform, carrying a short sword, the gladius I had learned about in Mrs. Whaley’s eighth-grade Latin class. A Roman soldier. That was my first real clue that this was no random series of images, but scenes from a particular era. I saw oxen pulling plows. A young woman selling herself on the street. Men exchanging money. Gold and copper coins with the imperious profile of an emperor upon them. And a name. Tiberius. The name triggered something in my mind, so I checked the Internet. The successor of Augustus, Tiberius was a former commander of legions who spent much of his reign leading military campaigns in Germania. One of the few important events of his rule—seen through the lens of hindsight—was the execution of a Jewish peasant said to have claimed to be king of the Jews.

“Was your father deeply religious?” Rachel asked, upon hearing about these new images.

“No. He was … he looked at the world in a more fundamental way.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“It’s not relevant.”

An exasperated sigh. “Your mother, then?”

“She had faith in something greater than humanity, but she wasn’t big on organized religion.”

“You had no religious indoctrination as a child?”