Husk and I

Conversation with Vietnam War Veteran

The mind often wanders into other dimensions higher than 3. Yet we train our minds to stay real and within the limitations of time and space. Tesseract… it’s such a cool name, isn’t it?

The Vietnam vet is only 26 yrs old. He’s confined to a psychiatric hospital. I’m inside the hospital waiting for him to speak. StarTalk is playing on TV with host Neil DeGrasse Tyson. What follows are notes from that meeting:

He put me here. That dude. 

Was a soldier just like you… or was I, I… can’t remember that well? Memory is such a bitch.

Was called on a mission to appear at a location in the countryside to face a foe “neither known nor perceivable by mankind.”

When I arrived near the location, no one else was there but slain bodies on ground. I proceeded with caution. Again, no one around… but only a humongous boulder present at exact coordinates I was supposed to be.

I crouched and approached the boulder in stealth. Nothing happened, so I decided to peak behind the boulder. 

Then suddenly I was back in the mansion I’d lived in as a teenager, sitting in the living room where tea and snacks were present on table.

A strange-looking dude was sitting in a chair. I tried to perceive him with my own eyes but couldn’t quite make out his frame. Just an incomprehensible blur of a dude. Ya know what I mean?

“I am the harbinger of what is to come. Sit and do as I please,” he said. 

As he spoke, his figure became slightly more intelligible as parts of his body faded in and out depending on the pitch of his voice. Dude almost seemed like a hybrid between dragon, man, and computer code? That make any sense?

Parts of his body flickered and flashed, like electrons that vanish in a high school science simulation, when I tried to locate them. 

Then I just kind of got a hold of my sanity, and tried to leave the place, in fear he might do to me what happened to the many corpses outside. 

I mean, for sure, the dude had an air of unimpeded power and authority… in that spot at least. He was obviously capable of creating that environment from accessing my memories.

I said “My mission is to deal with a threat neither known nor perceivable by the human mind. Are you that entity? If you are, I’m not stupid so I lay down my arms and surrender. Just don’t you murder me like my comrades outside. Let me go and I’ll return to my regular life, abandoning my mission.”

Then he said, “I gave you a reason to come here. You are no soldier nor are there any fallen comrades outside. It was you who imagined a petty story to compensate for your lack of self-worth.”

He continued, “Reminisce and you shall remember that you were lured here by a woman who said she would show you something. Your need to find something to keep your mind from thoughts of ending it all made you follow her, no matter where she would lead you.”

Come to think of it, he was right. I was no soldier nor was there any mission. Think I just imagined it.

Any way, the dude monster or whatever continued, “You will also know that you cannot leave this house of yours, as any attempt to do so will lead you right back to where you started. You know in your mind that this is true.” 

I thought of it and he was right. 

“Your life is forfeited and you shall remain here for eternity.
Never to age nor become ill but merely be the caretaker of the essence that shall become me at some future time. Think of it, and you will know this to be absolutely true.”

So I said, “What? What the heck is this place and who are you, really?”

He answered, “I am all too powerful for you to comprehend. And as for where you are, you are inside a tesseract. The husk of you outside, or, more correctly, your ‘physical body’ outside, will carry the tesseract at all times, protecting it, but never able to show nor describe it to another. But your essence will be in here inside the tesseract—able to perceive all that your husk outside perceives but your existence itself, relationships, memories of you by others, etc., will have been expunged from minds and of society.
Evidence of your existence up to now will be made unrecognizable.”

“Wait a minute. Just….”

And then I found myself outside again crouching next to that huge boulder, but no bodies were found on the ground. The mind can be a real bitch, you know?

And no house nor strange entity was there as far as I could see. I mean, I was in ‘Nam, so naturally there really wasn’t anything close to where I was for a short while. As I walked the countryside toward civilization, ran into a woman whom I somehow recognized. 

I asked her, “Miss, do you remember me? I think I followed you to that boulder half a mile back there.” 

She answered, “Yes, you did. Did you take enough pictures? Hope they turn out nice! Gotta go, bye!”

I noticed the busted camera on my neck. Memory is such a bitch. Once I reached the city, I tried calling friends but the numbers were all wrong. Nobody except that woman on the bike would recognize me as the person I was.

Even so, she thought I was a photographer?

Thankfully, my apartment back in Ohio was still intact. I tried to recall my parents’ phone number but couldn’t. 

I even tried to recall things by looking at photos taken from childhood but upon opening the box of photos, all pictures I had were cut into unrecognizable little pieces. 

“Shit, I remember doing this before I set out for the countryside this morning.”

Come to think of it, I was sick and suffering from terminal illness. Enough so that I had pondered ending my life. 

Yet somehow now I’m not sick at all. Healthy as a god, in fact. 

But my mind is trapped inside a tesseract, interacting with the world through this husk extension outside the tesseract.

“Trapped for eternity? What the fuck?”

I longed to escape it, even if it meant that I would become terminally ill again. 

So I went to seek out the one person who might understand this conundrum… and maybe offer me advice: Neil DeGrasse Tyson. 

I tracked him down, got his address, finally followed him onto the elevator as he was returning home. 

After having explained myself and my circumstance, he invited me to coffee at a nearby diner. 

I talked for another 30 minutes or so and the cops showed up. 

He called me a psycho stalker.