Time Ends with the Music

enough already, let’s bring this circus to a close

He glanced at his wrist and remembered that he no longer wore a wristwatch since buying a smartphone. Anyway, he had plenty of time—36 hours. He had been told that he would have an important role in ending the world by then but he had no idea how such a finale was to be achieved. It worried him.

“Walter, what’s on your mind? You’re zoning out.”

Sorry, Doc. Walter said. Just remembering I had something to do.

“Something urgent?”

I have time. Sorry. Stuff just pops up time-to-time.

“Will you discuss it with me? Perhaps I can help.”

No, no, Doc. Just trivial stuff.

“OK, we can close for now. Are you keeping that journal? It would be useful for our sessions.”

Yeah, Doc, I’ve just started. Inside Walter winced. He knew he couldn’t write anything down—it was pointless for him to keep records. I’ll bring it in next visit, he said. He didn’t worry about the lie because the world will be finished well before their scheduled meeting.

“Walter, see you next week. Be sure to have some fun over the weekend, relax. Any parties, get-togethers?”

Going out with some friends, Walter lied. He quickly rose, grabbed his back-pack and headed for the door. See you next week, he said.

On the street he was immersed in an argument with Qualia who was taking him to task for procrastinating.

Walter shook his head violently, vehemently denying Qualia’s criticism. No! He shouted. What am I supposed to do? I haven’t a clue.

Passers-by, startled by Walter’s outburst, crossed the street, nervously glancing at him.

Calming himself, Walter said, I can’t just do something I don’t know how to do. I need information, guidance, ideas …

“Look,” said Qualia, “You know damn-well what to do but you’re feigning ignorance. Stop whining. This isn’t a game.”

Fedorol added, “Qualia is right. It’s infantile for you to complain. You were assigned and that’s all there is to it.”

I never wanted to be part of this, Walter shouted, provoking more alarmed looks from pedestrians. He hurried to his apartment building and ran up three flights to get to his room. He slammed the door behind him and was immediately shaken by pounding. He looked through the peephole and a strange, angry, bearded face stared back. “Open up, Walter, right now!”

As Walter unlatched, the strange man pushed into his apartment, crossed to the couch and demanded, “Walter, sit down!”

As Walter lowered himself to the couch, the Man firmly stated, “You are no longer to speak to Qualia and Fedorol.”

But why? Walter was confused. We’ve been friends since I was 12.

“They might be friends but they’re tricksters. They’re playing you for their amusement. Time is too short and there is much to be done.”

But. Who are you? How do you know Qualia and Fedorol?

“We are all in the Continuum but I am a Controller and you are an Instrument. Qualia and Fedorol are just Presences, making mischief. My name is Jellicoe, Albrit Jellicoe and you are to follow my lead.”

Instrument? What do you mean, instrument? Qualia says I’m master of my fate.

“Nonsense. No such thing. You are an Instrument and like any instrument you are to be controlled and used by a Player.”

Used? How? I’m supposed to do something very important. I’ve been ordered …

“You’re an Instrument, Walter. A violin is a lump of wood and strings until a musician picks it up and plays it.”

Are you going to play me? What do I do when played?

“No, I’m the Controller, the conductor. I will assemble the billion-or-so Instruments and Players to achieve the results ordered by the Council. You will report for your assignment to your Master Player, Dr. Malbec.”

My therapist? He knows everything?

“Almost. He will assign you to a Choral Group and place you into a Section.”

When? How am I to prepare?

“Soon enough. You have already been prepared.” Jellicoe abruptly rose, crossed to the door and left.

“Sorry” said Qualia. “He’s right, we’re distracting you. You’re too important to have your attention diverted.”

I don’t understand. How can I be distracted from what? We are friends. What does Jellicoe mean by mischief?

“We were envious that you were chosen,” said Fedorol, “and we began teasing you. We knew that we would no longer be friends.”

“That soon, you would ascend to a plane in the Continuum beyond our reach,” added Qualia.

In the ensuing silence Walter sensed their presence evaporating. Soon he was alone.

The following morning Walter was awakened by a knocking at his door. He opened it to Dr. Coriesco Malbec, his long-time psychotherapist. “It is time, Walter, I will take you to your position.” As always, Malbec’s demeanor was accommodating, affable as he took Walter’s hand.

I still don’t understand, you were supposed to be helping me. I feel that I’m being used, that I’m being manipulated, that you don’t care what happens to me so long as I do what you say.

“Every physician uses their patients—to learn and to help as best they can. It was important for me to discover those hidden resonances and auras that you emit into the human substratum.”

What does that mean?

“Walter, you are a vast reservoir of resentments, disappointments, pain, aspirations, loss, discovery, failure, insight, talents, inchoate creativity, disfunction—all the composted debris of the human condition. I see in you the core elements of an opus extending throughout history, harboring the quintessential melody to be sung in the great chorale.”

Chorale? How? I’ve been a failure all my life! I’ve achieved nothing! Why are you being so grandiose when all you want is to use me as a thing, the nothing that I am! What are you going to do, chop me up into little pieces? I’ve been scorned, ignored, kicked around all my life. I’m a nothing! I don’t exist!

“But you do, Walter, that’s the thing. In spite of all the wounds, insults and betrayals, you do exist. You continue to live, to hope, to stagger forward. That is what has connected you to the Continuum. That is what has made you an instrument.”

One Instrument among billions? Who will hear? What difference will one Instrument make?

“The Chorale that emanates from the Continuum will be made up of a billion suffering, triumphant, exhausted, enduring Instruments from which the rhythms, colors, odors, spectral outbursts and spiritual emanations will flood the Cosmos to determine the continuation or demise of humanity.”

We will be singing for our survival?

“Extinction of our species, Walter, is not simply dependent on the Cosmos overwhelming our capacities of adaptation—our ability to recover from the multivariate burdens threatening our existence—but on our will to endure. I have reached into your depths to discover where those capacities reside and to release them into the orchestral environment.”

What? A heavenly chorus serenading the judges of humankind? Who are these magistrates? What gives them the power to determine the fate of our species?

“The universe houses many species and judgement will not proclaim life or death. Judgement will only define the beginning of the end or continuation. The judges are picked by lottery from the universal consciousness that is the Continuum, the Unus Mundus.”

Lottery? What gives them the wisdom? The fate of humankind is a lottery?

“Yes. Wisdom is not cultivated in a select few but arises from the mass consciousness of the universe. It is time, Walter.”

The Master Player and the Instrument approach a quilted recliner and as Walter lies down the recliner embraces him. The Master Player sits in a simple chair adjacent to the recliner and whispers into the Instrument’s ear.

“Now, remember, Walter, our first session.”

And Walter remembers, the image of his angry father shouting as his mother runs out of the room blooms before him. A mournful cry rises from Walter, tremulous, shrouded in a muddy reddish cloud, a corruption accompanied by dissonant shrieks of a thousand strings on a towering lyre, muffled thunder as a great wind swirls the billowing veil into a menacing tower. Elsewhere in the endless auditorium in a hesitation tempo and counterpoint, other cries meld in a rhythm and a meandering crescendo emerges, both terrible and compelling. The sounds echo and slowly fade, the colors muted, the sound descends into a single beat. The hidden audience sighs, a soft cry.

The image of a fractured home shudders and dissolves. Walter sees friends, especially a young girl, laughing and playing on a grass slope under a warm sun. The sound is of Spring and joy, of warm colors radiating to illuminate a vast amphitheater of laughter and play. A gentle pulsating rhythm rises and a rich serenade, an harmonic sculpture engulfs the setting. Then a small dissonance interrupts the harmonies as four young men intrude on the scene. “What you want, nigger!” shouts one of the men and he points at the image of the young Walter. “Get that trash out of here!” cries another. The sky blackens and the serenade descends in scale and a crushing phalanx of thunderous drums beat in discordant syncopation and intensity. The colors darken to a coagulated impasto; a foul, congealing mass.

Suddenly, Walter is dressed in camouflage fatigues. He is walking warily following a stream at the edge of a forest, holding an assault rifle, a grenade launcher slung on his back. A mortar round lands 10 meters to the front of the column and the men reflexively fall to the ground. “Get up!” Walter shouts. “Get to the tree line.” The music is ominous but not alarming, the colors muted, the sky clouded, the smell of lilac, not the hated smell of jungle damp, sharp acrid cordite or pungent sulfurous high explosives. “You’re dreaming Walter. You’re home.” Walter opens his eyes. Charlotte is beside him in bed, stroking his forehead. “Yeah, I know, says Walter as he turns closing his eyes to face the wall. A bluish-green miasma rises like mist to accompany the soft chords of melancholy as a chilled breeze disperses the mist into silence.

There are few students sitting in the lecture hall, listening to a young teaching assistant drone disinterestedly about the chemical synthesis of aldehydes. Walter hears the strains of Prokofiev’s March of the Knights in “Romeo and Juliet.” But not the rich composite tones of the bass and cello strings riffing off the insistent violins, but a tinny admix of strained, uncertain notes. “Aldehydes are synthesized in organic chemistry primarily by the controlled oxidation of primary alcohols, reduction of carboxylic acid derivatives, or cleavage of alkenes,” she mumbles as if reading from a text. Suddenly the rapid brass fanfares of “Entrance of the Gladiators” by Julius Fučík fills the air with the colors of the circus. Walter rises with the music, throws his books onto the floor, and dances up the aisle to the exit chased by an invisible rainbow of ultraviolet and infrared.

It is Monk. Or is it Brubeck? Sonny Rollins? Byrd? Walter is grooving, eyes tightly closed, hands unmoving on the table, his right foot drumming. He feels Charlotte take his hand. How is it that “Round Midnight” melds so beautifully with “Take Five” and the piano and Desmond’s sax sound so right together? It is a moment so sweet, so agonizingly perfect that the sound is a razor slicing into his heart. The pain is exquisite, soon to be gone, the moment lost to imperfect memory. Never to be repeated. He can only hope for other memories.

“That’s it,” Qualia declares. “See, Malbec?” There must be other memories. The Continuum knows. The Chorale is over! Life goes on!