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Hopping
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hopping, yeah.
that's what i've been doing. i'd dearly love to stop, but at the same time i find myself enjoying the unique perspective it gives me. this world, what we call reality, is not the be-all and end-all of existence. each and every time you make a decision, every tiniest thing you do, splits off a new universe. sometimes the differences are unnoticeable, maybe most times. but other times that old saw about the butterfly in tokyo/rain in new york comes into effect. you do something tiny, maybe you turn up the radio a little more than you really needed to, and it alters someone's train of thought, and god alone knows where that can go.....
anyway, this hopping isn't so much visiting these seperate universes as looking over the shoulder of the version of myself that exists there. most times, i merely am seeing through their eyes, hearing through their ears. other times, it's full sensory immersion. i can feel everything they feel, hear and see it all, even smell what they're smelling. the strength of the interaction seems to be governed by the strength of the emotions involved. these episodes seem always to be triggered by moments of high stress, be it emotional, physical, or some combination thereof. and i don't mean mine, but rather that of my alter. as a result, i have experienced things i'd much rather not have, but i have also been lucky enough to lose my virginity at least 8 times.
i have visited a world where almost no one ever sees the sky. where the united states and the greater german reich fought an all-out, no holds barred, nuclear engagement in 1983, just 6 months after i was born. in that world i am, as of today, a graduate student at the university of billings, living fully 1200 feet beneath the ground. my bachelor's degree is in excavation technology, with a strong emphasis on electronic subsystems of tunneling machinery. i am an orphan.
i have been to a world that i believe to have split off from that same one around 1961, when the reich successfully invaded and conquered the united states. i am a lieutenant of the waffen-ss amerika korps, a political soldier with an elite infantry unit. stationed not far from the current location of fort lewis in washington state, i recently fought a small unit action against guerrillas in the rogue river valley. the wehrmacht-provided helicopter gunships showed up late, and the first medevac chopper to come in got swatted out of the sky by a japanese-built rocket-propelled grenade. i lost 11 men, and 1 will never walk again. i was uninjured, and my platoon's action is considered a success at high levels. the knight's cross is not a decoration i would willingly carry for that sort of clusterfuck, but there it is.
a few months back, the powers that be in the pax americensis deployed me to haifa with only a spotter for backup. from the top of a minaret, i took the top off the prime minister of israel's head at 1200 meters. i was spotted by muzzle flash, and barely made it to the stairs before the first rpg struck the tower. when i reached the ground, i dove out the door, only to see a truck-mounted multi-launch rocket system turning my way. i blew the operator's teeth out the back of his skull. my spotter managed to pick me up in a land rover he'd stolen from somewhere, and took me to a prearranged extraction point. we had to climb a rope ladder into a blackhawk helicopter hovering at 25 feet, and barely made it out of the city. 15 miles offshore in the med, i was debriefed in the bowels of an aircraft carrier by a dude with an eagle for insignia. he happened to be my father, but with all his limbs intact. for that one, i was not just along for the ride, but i was even privy to my alter's thoughts. "merry motherfucking christmas" whilst gifting a man with a single bullet seems remarkably like something i might well mutter myself. some things don't change.
not too long ago, i drove my '99 volkswagen jetta from oregon state university to berkeley, california to see my girlfriend. didn't quite make it though. someone blew a bridge on interstate 5. my first aid training was not much use for the poor bastard who rode a semi down into the bottom of the gorge.
apparently, growing up in iceland has had a salutory effect on one of me, as he seems to be doing quite well with his young wife and infant daughter. at least he was, until a car accident killed them both. accidents can happen to pricks who drive drunk, too. at least, i don't think i really meant to smash an occupied car with that 40-ton beam the crane i used to operate at the reykjavik shipyard was carrying.
a while back, i walked through a swamp, wearing camoflage and carrying a rifle. there are several other people with me, spread out in a skirmish line, about 6 meters seperation. i spotted a bottle, some kind of soft drink (dunno what sort, the label was unfamiliar and the bottle was oddly shaped), bobbing in a patch of weeds. i kinda stared at it for a second before realizing that it was bobbing out of synch with the water it was in. i guess the guy underneath it decided i must've spotted him, because he stood up, holding what looked like a FAL, and told me "you on the wrooong sahd of the mississippi, muthafukka."
leastwise, he tried to. about the middle of the word 'fukka' i pulled the trigger and knocked him over backwards with one hell of an exit wound in the back of his head. apparently, i was not the only one similarly accosted at this point, because lots of firing started up off to my right. i dropped to one knee and swiveled that way, popping off a few rounds at a some people wearing the wrong uniform. no idea what happened next, on account of i was back to being boring old me.
an infantry sargeant is me. united states army, stationed in tikrit until about a year ago. got out of town with my platoon on the last starlifter to get off the ground, 13 minutes ahead of 20 megatons of plutonium-powered iranian boom. barely got off the ground, too. waaaay over gross, lots of refugees and other people on board. al-jazeera, msnbc, and cnn had crews in the city right up until the flash, going out live to the whole fucking planet. a man-on-the-street-style interview with an american soldier in baghdad (one of the tikrit survivors) about an hour after the blast yielded this soundbite: "fuck that. i ain't going home until i've pissed on the ashes of tehran."
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