If you are anything like me, you’re possessed with what I’ll call a certain sense of grandeur. Go on, admit it. Don’t be shy. There’s nothing wrong with having one. You are all gifted up, but with nowhere to go. Am I right?
Greatness lies within you, just as soon as you coax it out. You could save the world if you wished, if you only knew how. All your life you’ve racked your brain for the 'right' thing to do, the one cause to be involved with. Not this, not that—you’ve avoid everything that doesn’t completely fit the bill. You have an infinite number of options.
Checking through to choose the best has meant that you’ve had to reject most of them. Extraneous activity has felt like an indulgence. Deep down, listening to music or working on your fitness—even developing relationships—has most likely felt like a waste of time—not a good prescription for happiness. You bear a cross: the need to delve for deeper meaning.
You know in your bones that you’ve something to do, something unique, and you’re quite prepared to make the sacrifice required. You’ve lost patience with your peers and the fussy little hobgoblins of their existence. You’re after the bigger picture, and you can almost sense it. It’s out there on the edge of your periphery, at the tip of your tongue.
Go on, say it. Everyone loves a good conspiracy. The broader it reaches and the deeper it penetrates, the juicier is its taste. And the best one of all is the one that contains the total. It consumes us. It fools us. We cannot break free if we tried. It is an integral part of life’s fabric. Without it, life as we know it could not go on. If we were freed from it, we’d most likely be lost.
A good conspiracy quivers at the edge of belief. That is what makes it so tantalizing and titillating. Surely it could not be true, but it might be. It might just conceivably be true. I can almost allow myself to believe it. It intrigues us. It teases us. Oh, if only if it were true. Just imagine!
To make our conspiracy even more delicious, I’ll introduce another element to the above scenario by means of a riddle. What do you get when you cross E.T. and The Truman Show? What you get is a secret task.
Your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to locate ‘The Other’. It’s to get back into touch with (or meet for the first time; it's a moot point) some really important individual. We share a very close tie of an unknown nature.
But I, or s/he, or even both of us have been brainwashed (as per the above). The knowledge of our relationship has been scrubbed. The grand conspiracy has worked to separate us. (By the way, I’ll use the name Theo from now on—from THE Other—and refer to Theo in the second person singular to avoid having to dither between ‘he’ and ‘she’.)
It has hidden Theo. Maybe you’ve morphed you into an unrecognizable form. I don’t know what you look like, or even if you’re human! I don’t know where you are, or when you live. But somehow through some means or another I must reach you and convince you of our plight.
How’s that for a premise? Rod Serling would have loved it!
I refer to this as a mission because Theo could be anywhere in the world. For all I know, you may be living in another time period also. I hope you don’t live in the past, because how could I you reach backwards in time? But if you occupy the future, then clearly the best way forward is to plant this book for you to find.
Another difficulty is that we wouldn’t necessarily recognize one another on sight. We’re both in mufti. How would we get around that one? I, at least, have the benefit of knowing that there is a person to be on the lookout for. I’ve got my eyes primed. But you don’t necessarily know that there’s even a game on. Your lenses—your overview of the situation—may not be so clear.
Still, I can make a stab at Theo’s characteristics, feelings, perceptions, attitudes and mental orientation. I must trust that you are fortunate enough to live in a relatively open society, one in which differences are at least tolerated, and where it is possible to harbor variant thoughts (as long as you keep them to yourself). Those around you probably follow a conventional religion, and you might also, in spite of the fact that you’re not one-hundred-percent convinced. But Theo is the type of person who goes along with the flow. I warrant that you’re not the sort of person who makes waves.
That being so, I figure my best course of action is to send Theo a message-in-a-bottle. Not only must I spell it out clearly, but I can’t waste any time. An added complication is that things are not static. As the search goes on (and as I write) Theo and I are moving around. Every day we wake up in different bodies.
What a predicament! Is our situation hopeless? Come back and find out—same time, same place, next week.
