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Secrets Of The Universe
It was safe to say that when Frank was a teenager he was a bit different from other teenagers.
He had no friends. He played no sports. He wasn’t in a band. He didn’t watch TV. Instead, one of young Frank’s favorite things to do was to drop acid and utilize its elusive puzzle solving aspects in an attempt to try and figure things out.
At first Frank would trip out with a pair of headphones on and try to decipher hidden messages in his favorite songs. But it wasn’t long before Frank decided he and his LSD had bigger fish to fry. By the time Frank was 17 he was trying to crack the big one: The Meaning of Life.
One overcast day he woke up early in the morning and decided he would have another crack at it.
Still living at the legendary Old Yellow House in south Sacramento, Frank had called it a wrap early on his school career in favor of staying out of society as much as he could and altering his senses. But his parents, god bless them both, unaware of Frank’s unorthodox hobby, had assigned him a daily task that came in two parts. The first part was the transporting of his younger siblings, Max and Julia, to school in the a.m.. The second part was picking them up in the p.m. and returning them safely home.
So today Frank got dressed and it was out the door for the morning commute. His pants pockets contained three items: driver’s license, car keys… and a small plastic bag encasing four doses of blotter acid.
Not quite the breakfast of champions but, Frank hoped, the breakfast of puzzle solvers.
As he warmed up the car and waited for his brother and sister to get in, he removed two of the doses from the bag and dropped them in his mouth.
By the time he had completed the transporting of his siblings to their respective schools and was headed back toward home, the acid was kicking in. It was going to be a good day, Frank could feel it.
A puzzle solving day.
Sometime later Frank was back at home.
He had the place to himself, just the way he liked. The two hits of acid were in full swing, but he wasn’t getting anywhere in his speculations on life and the universe. Nothing came to him, just the usual cartoonish hallucinogen effects.
It occurred to Frank that he’d been doing a lot of acid lately. It was as though he was too used to it to really appreciate the peculiar twists it put on reality.
So around noon Frank decided he would up the ante. He removed the other two doses from his pocket and dropped them in his mouth.
As he waited for them to kick in he stared out the window at the passing traffic, making sure his parents couldn’t surprise him by perhaps cutting out of work early for the day. If he saw one of their cars pull up, he would get into bed and pretend to take a nap. It was hard to talk right on acid.
When Frank felt the renewed kick of doses three and four, he noticed a bizarre thing. It seemed that when he blinked his eyes the red numbers on his digital clock skipped ahead two or three minutes, as though a chunk of time had passed in an instant.
Blink blink.
He’d have to keep a close eye on that clock. His brother and sister would have a lot to say if their ride home materialized an hour late.
So Frank tried not to blink. But this was hopeless. The acid made his eyes feel like heated marbles, and he had to blink.
He realized that with each blink, not only would time skip ahead but he would also forget what he was just thinking about. Blinking and forgetting.
Blink blink.
Before Frank could get in the zone and figure out what life was all about, the clock insisted it was time to leave and pick up his siblings.
Frustrated, Frank headed for the door. He got halfway there when an idea struck: he could up the ante even further.
He blinked, and was suddenly back in the bedroom holding his lime green bong in one hand and a bag of weed in the other. Only problem was, Frank had no time to smoke any weed. In fact, he should have left fifteen minutes ago. He would just have to roll the windows of the car down and smoke on the way.
Blink.
Forget about that because now he was turning the key in the car’s ignition.
Blink.
Forget about that because now he was rolling up the street, hands gripping the wheel a little tighter than usual.
Blink.
Forget about that because now he was stopped at a red light. Driving sure felt funny. Felt like a roller coaster.
He deduced that this new trick of blinking and forgetting might be rather dangerous while driving. It was like resetting the Nintendo over and over… or like forgetting where you were for a moment.
Fortunately for Frank, he had made this exact drive hundreds of times, so it was quite easy.
Still, he peeled his eyes wide open and made them stay that way.
At the next red light it occurred to Frank that he meant to up the ante. So he loaded a chunk of weed into the bong.
And so, that’s how it happened that one day during Frank’s 17th loop around the sun he was flying northbound up Watt Avenue on four hits of acid, smoking a bong, steering the car with his knees and trying not to blink and forget.
This memory of flying up a hallucination-filled Watt Avenue would stay with Frank for many years after. It was the crucial events which followed this moment that would slip into a fog as the THC met with the LSD in his brain. The combination of these two drugs multiplied each other exponentially.
Frank crossed the American River via the Watt Avenue bridge. He set the bong aside, all done with it. He approached Fair Oaks Boulevard and flipped on the turn signal. As he braked for the red he accidentally blinked, and the next moment was zipping up Fair Oaks at a good clip.
Just east of Watt Avenue there was a long section of Fair Oaks lined with many mature trees on both sides of the road. These trees arched out over the road, blotting out the sky and creating a thick canopy of green overhead.
As Frank approached this strand of trees the exponential factor of mixing drugs took hold with sudden force. He finally found himself in that zone which had eluded him all day.
Only thing was, Frank didn’t stop at the zone long enough to solve anything. No, when the exponential factor took hold Frank went shuttling out beyond the zone, beyond the stratosphere, beyond the ionosphere.
The arching canopy of tree branches appeared to be a massive green-hued tunnel Frank was entering, some kind of wormhole or perhaps even a portal. He saw the circle of steering wheel directly in front of him and saw his hands gripping the wheel.
But his peripheral was gone.
Frank peered ahead into the long green tunnel.
The asphalt and the green tree-ceiling kept coming, and Frank realized something. He was flying through a green tunnel… traveling a tunnel…
Blinking and resetting and traveling a tunnel…
He made two or three strange mental connections and… and….
And Frank’s eyes grew as wide as they could possibly go.
He had it.
He actually had it.
The meaning of life.
Moving along at 45 miles per hour, Frank’s jaw dropped as he beheld the absolute meaning of life encased in a simple concise definition of the universe. It was all there, where life came from, where it went afterward, why it existed to begin with… all contained neatly and entirely in one single drop of crystal clear knowledge.
Frank understood it perfectly.
“Hah!” he shouted.
Finally!
It all made sense!
He would tell everyone!
“Oh my God!!” He yelled as he flew through the green tunnel.
Of Frank’s two siblings it was Julia whose school let out first. He was almost there now, and Frank would tell her everything. Julia was to be the second person on the planet to know and understand. She too would be stunned, amazed by the undeniable truth of this brand new revelation.
“Just wait till you hear this, Julia!!” he shouted as he zipped through a left-hand turn onto Eastern Avenue.
Dilated eyes heavily bloodshot and with a look of utter amazement on his young features, tunnel vision, hallucinations and psychedelic combinations, Frank steered the car into the parking lot of Julia’s school.
There she was!!
Right over there!!
Julia walked up to the car, opened the door and got in.
“Julia!!”
“Why are you so LATE?”
“Julia!!”
“What?”
“Listen!!”
“Okay….”
“You aren’t gonna believe this!!”
“WHAT?”
“Everything! It’s…. ”
“Everything what?”
“Everything!! It’s…. it’s….”
“Are you okay?”
“Everything…. the whole entire….it’s…”
But it was too late.
You see, Frank had blinked.
And had already forgotten.