Unlucky for you, I planted a word that will detonate a hyperactive bomb in my sleeper agent, Mr. Jason, your beloved cat, who happens to be my co-conspirator and comrade.

— More of a thought really, since he doesn’t understand our words, though he sorely tries, and you may believe he does so.

We’ve been partnered on this mission a while. Him sleeping or quietly eating, and me waiting for the perfect moment.

The thought is there, loaded in my head now. Queued next. Vibrating in a fuzzy state of being. All the neighboring synapses are juicing up, soaked in the kinetic whisper, magnetized.

Then, a fire of the brightest light…

Jason was every electron that ever existed. And will exist. Moving forward and back in time.

“Again!” he meowed upon materializing.

No cat ever meowed before that. Jason was the first.

Now everyone does it. And everyone tires from it.

Because you’re Jason, and I’m him too.

Don’t Touch or Wake Up Jason was originally published in The Impossible on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

You want to know about the past?

Excitement followed us like a cheery ghost in those days.

It stepped on our heels and dripped hot sweat on our backs.

As all around, there were new lands, emergent versions of luck, and whiskey-throated names for things, spanning the common and uncommon, well after map maker professions and Ibn Khaldun and nomenclature were carved into history. Bursting in by the hundreds like Greek soldiers of a tired, ancient yore. This time armed with new relevance and the defensiveness of baby teeth.

We would form semi-circles and stare at the evolutions of words. Watch the magician encircle the “e” in “shew” for the modish variant “show.” And watch the nearby meetinghouse become a chapel without a single stone changing.

We would listen to the debates unfold. Predict when the emotions entered, and whose ego would get damaged from the transmutation. It was a fine time where the garlic was evident.

Year Programming Disc 1 was originally published in The Impossible on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

This is heaven and this is hell. There’s every pleasure combination, every pain. A place to dance like strangers and lovers and dead parents at weddings — to make love like endangered species should — and to eat as much as we bloody well want.

Concoctions, potions, and rare sugary treats— give me these with mirth, holiness, and generosity. I’ll mash them, mix them, and drink from the tincture. I’ll imbibe — canoodle the drops — and pass out from the joy.

But then get sick. Deadly, dastardly sick. Enough to hurl many times over. A big regret. Ugh. A serious misgiving. Taking too much without a plan. And planning to not rest anywhere but the bathroom.

Later, I will be baked clean in sunlight, with the slight possibility of seeing a rainbow, gingerly touching a ladybug, or making a new friend. I will have conquered whatever ailed me before. I will feel good enough to make war with my enemies and peace with the ones I respect. Uphold treaties made before my time. Honor the land, songs of the land, and instruments of the songs.

A product of the world’s dream, that’s yours truly.

The World That Dreams Itself was originally published in The Impossible on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

“Dime a piece,” said Ernesto.

The forgotten, happy orphan.

He chased whatever wiggle worm he could.

Same for trains to the next marketplace.

He peddled a myriad of plants, small junk.

Slept like a penguin on his stuff.

Morning and Ernesto smiled — gave away a bird of paradise.

Sang — gave a lush monstera for pennies.

Neither worries, nor regrets.

Horizon master. Accomplished in the best kind of nothing.

That was Ernesto, a bird species, a man by name only.

Crammed in his mother’s pouch and lost in a maze of underground tunnel networks, a wombat joey weighing exactly two grams learned the true nature of night.

As the sun rose high above, the darkness got thicker for pouch-dwellers like him below.

In total darkness, he shared the same void canvas with a human baby born inside a hospital in a remote part of Alaska.

Somewhere else, napping seniors touched the cold ground of Wombat Earth after a coma-like sleep dropped them there for a few minutes before waking up and settling for a tuna sandwich enjoyed without much conversation.

It was fairly easy to arrive, but difficult to stay.

Easy to feel there, but virtually impossible to talk about the experience with any real conversational substance.

Anyone who has visited — it brought them closer. It made them less isolated in an age of disconnection and loneliness. The most important salve was a wombat’s craving to dig. A baby leaving the womb. An elderly couple’s desire to remember a small detail, but getting winded halfway through.

Sleeping Portals to Wombat Earth was originally published in The Impossible on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

At night it doesn’t get any better. You’d think he’s counting the fireflies and inventorying them for the Official Estate Records.

Given the way he struts around, you’d think the idea gave him a honorific title and station. You’d think a duke died and made him sole heir.

“I must tend to the Estate, brother.”

No eye rolling from me. I let him be, but secretly think the obsession is eating him, sucking him dry.

We’re going to live on a family estate any day now, he says.

Any day now.

Could be today, I’m reminded.

I tell him that the idea is a gold digger. I also try to make sure he gets a pre-nuptial agreement signed by the idea before moving forward.

“But I love…her.”

He says he loves a picture of an old building with 19 bedrooms on an island nested in the least populated part of Washington state.

2 weeks later it comes to family functions. The idea. And just sits there quietly. They’re both getting married. But only believers in the idea are allowed to attend the wedding.

I’m going to be an uncle once escrow gets their act together.

The Idea of the Estate was originally published in The Impossible on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Slimy puddles you didn’t make, shadowy figures the night doesn’t take.

It’s what you go through, in a life.

Dragons perched —

goblins running up a sleeve.

Towards a more accepted reason you believe.

But you make those rules too — It’s what you go through.

What You Go Through was originally published in The Impossible on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.