When Lisa first came into my life, I was unfamiliar with the concept of love. It was not that I was a feral beast in the form of a man, but that I found no comfort in encumbering emotions. Alone, I was a fast, agile target and hard to hit. Once attached I lost that defense. Lisa made me vulnerable in a way that I would never have chosen to accept.
Yet, the choice was not mine. As a man I defined myself as a defender. While Lisa was my responsibility, I could cause her no harm. No danger could be allowed to approach Lisa in the time that she was under my protection. Although it was little of a foundation to build a life upon it was also all that I had to offer Lisa.
Lisa's father had not placed her in my care to be rid of her. He wanted to gain me as an extension of Lisa. She would always be his little girl and I would be watched because of it. Loyalty, the one feeling that I could not separate from myself in life, bound me to Lisa. Through Lisa I was bound to her father.
About all that I could tell you of Lisa from our first meeting is that she was female. Now I can tell you that her eyes are the warming hazel color of the fine dark wood giving character and comfort to a sanctuary room of an established home. Her hair is fine as silk and softer than cotton. She has a gentle touch not unlike that of a spring breeze. Being in her presence is like lounging on the beach on a warm summer's day.
The old man had given me the finest jewel in his collection and I thanked him only out of protocol. He knew me as only my creator, aside from him, could know me. I believe that he got his prize from me before I recognized the value of the wage that he had paid to me. Never underestimate the wisdom of the old man. None of us, as a matter of intent, underestimated the old man whom, save for Lisa, none of us was ever permitted to know.
Old Man imported each of us from our former worlds between the ticks of a clock. None of us knew where the nameless place actually existed, if it was a real place at all. It may have been strangest that none of us seemed to care. We were the ideological outcasts of our former worlds, rejected by our former existences almost as much as we rejected those lives. Who we were, all that we had as a culture and an identity, had been taken from us and divided amongst outsiders so that we had left only the scraps that fell from our own tables.
These things came to an end for each of us when Old Man took us in. It is a horrible feeling to be so alone in life that living was little more than playing a role with a bad script. I'd known blame for the passing of time as though I had injured eternity in allowing days to pass into dust without meaning. Long had I grieved their passing, weeping in the darkness of night for a sin that was not mine should it even have been a sin. I recall almost nothing more of where I had been before coming into the nameless place by Old Man's hand.
"Brother Ronald."
I felt a firm grasp on my right hand. The distinguished gentleman in a dark suit greeted me with a handshake, calling me by name. He knew that I did not know him as he did not, in truth, know me. "Pleased to meet you," I responded.
"The clouding in your mind is soon to pass, brother Ronald. In our own times, each of us has known the disorientation that you now feel."
"Where am I?"
When he released my hand, another arm wrapped around mine. "You're holding up the line, Ronny."
"I didn't mean to be impolite."
She grasped my hand with a familiarity that I had never known, leading me through the doorway and into the sanctuary. I walked where she led me as I had no reason to resist her. Her march ceased three rows from the alter and we took a seat together in a pew on the left side of the chapel. We sat together quietly, in the dimly lit room, amidst the hushed chatter of a few dozen voices around us.
When the pastor took his place behind the podium, the heavy wooden door closed with a dull thud. Then the lights came up so that the ceiling was as bright as a midsummer's sky. Aside from the odd brightness of the lighting, I was in an old wooden chapel. It was the kind of mythical place that I had only heard about and never believed in the existence of.
I felt uneasy in my confusion. With Lisa by my side and the comfort of a place where everybody knows everybody, my spirit was at ease as never before. My mind did not take the transition that easily. Everything around me was the subject of a hundred questions. Generally, I was in denial.
Our pastor was an elderly gentlemen in a dark blue suit. Although bleached white from the passing of time, his hair was well kept and there was a youthful fire in his clear eyes. He moved with a healthy ease that I would not have expected from a man of his advanced age. His life had not been bled out of him as mine had been drained from me in the former time. The nameless place was a good place.
"Before we begin today, I would like to welcome brother Ronald to the flock. Please offer him a warm welcome as the day progresses. He and Lisa have been brought together by Old Man and will need all of our help in settling in amongst us."
My mind was as self conscious as my body was at ease with the pastor's kind words. I no longer thought it imprudent and dared to look around the chapel at the rest of the congregation. The nameless place was small so the chapel did not have to be large. Our pastor was not different from one of us in dress and demeanor. It was the first time in my life that the idea of 'Sunday best' had ever taken form as more than mere words.
Lisa and I had the third left pew to ourselves. She wore an ornate, lacy, off white gown not unlike those of the other women in the chapel. Although too decorated for me to accept that it was something that Lisa would have worn daily, the gown was modest in what it revealed and the secrets that it held. Even though I would have no real way of knowing, I would say that she looked comfortable. There were a few rings on her fingers and a silver crucifix on a long chain around her neck. Atop her head, she had a lace covering in her bright, black hair.
After looking around the sanctuary, my eyes finally came back to me. The clothes that I wore were not the same as the ones that I had worn when Old Man had claimed me. I cannot tell you how I had earlier been dressed and I did not really care. Although lighter than the pastor's by more than a few shades, my suit was also blue. Everything that I wore felt appropriate for the solemn occasion to which I was attending. All, that is, except for the soles of my otherwise dressy shoes. My shoes had a rubber sole with a rugged grip. It was as though a pair of distinguished leather shoes had been fused to the top of a pair of hiking boots.
My last discovery was the ring on my own left hand. I was definitely wearing a wedding band and I knew without a doubt that I had never even owned that singular piece of jewelry. The new life that I had been given came with a collection of odd details that I would have to discover in the course of living in my new world. At the time, I was unsure that I had been bound to Lisa. She acted bound to me and the pastor commented that we were paired, however, I was still not sure.
It was not until after the conclusion of the service that I even learned Lisa's name. She is so familiar to me, at this point, that I have used her name in this story as though I had never not known her. That is how it feels to me. There was no time in my life before Lisa was a part of it.
When the service concluded, the lights were dimmed a bit, yet they were left on. We were then free to walk about the sanctuary and fellowship with each other. I didn't even know myself for sure on the first day I was in the nameless place. Lisa remained with me, in the third left pew, while the rest of the congregation moved about in quiet, pleasant conversation.
As Lisa was the only person in earshot of me, I tried to come up with something to say to her. One word would have been the key that opened the door to the future that I was to have in the nameless place. Any word would have done. My mind wondered through the passages of denial, questioning the most inane details of the chapel in the nameless place, when it should have been making that one key. Words came to me, although they could not have come from my clouded mind.
"You don't have to sit here, miss. You can go talk to your friends."
"So can you, Ronny."
"I have no friends here. I do not even know where I am. You wouldn't let me ask."
"This is the sanctuary of the chapel and everybody here is a friend to everybody else."
"Then I am speaking to a friend. I am speaking to you."
Without either a moment's hesitation or looking at me, she smiled. "You're catching on, Ronny."
"If it's not being to bold, what should I call you?"
She turned to face me, looking uncomfortably deep into my eyes. "I'm your wife, Lisa."
"Did you come here in the same way that I did?"
"Yes." She stood up, pulling me onto my feet. " There is only one door."
I turned my hand so that she could see the ring on my finger so there would be no mistake. "Did you get a choice?"
"Don't think that you did not have a choice. All of us did. Old Man knows us better than
any of us is willing to admit."
"Old Man?"
She smiled at me. "Not meaning to brag; Old Man is my father."
"You call your father 'Old Man?'"
"It was the only hard thing that he's ever asked of me."
I smiled back, taking gentle hold of her left hand. "Marrying a complete stranger was easier than calling your father 'Old Man?'"
"Do you believe that you are a complete stranger?"
"I believe that you people do not like to give direct answers."
Lisa guided me from the row in which we had been sitting to the back of the sanctuary where the others were gathered. It was a short walk, so we kept a slow pace to give us time to talk. The nameless place is a good place where only friends are found, however, there are times when intimacy and privacy are desirable. We were newlyweds.
"In time, you will catch on so well that you will understand without asking. It happens to everybody Old Man brings to this place. That is why you were chosen."
"Please forgive my confusion. I do not mean to be a problem."
"There is one thing further that you should know. It's not like I have been here my entire life. Old Man lives beyond the nameless place and that is where I grew up."
"Would you know if anybody here was born in this place?"
"Only the pastor, from what I have heard. Old Man does not talk much about the history of people from the nameless place. Their lives, our lives really, begin here in the nameless place."
"When do I get to meet Old Man?"
Her voice lowered as we came within earshot of the gathered congregation. It seemed that the nameless place was a place of secrets, known to all but discussed by none. "You do not. He never comes into the nameless place."
It was the pastor who first approached us. To his right was the man who had greeted me at the chapel door. Both of them knew that I was uneasy and did their best not to spook me in their approach. They remained where I could see them, making no sudden or choppy moves. When Lisa and I came into range, they turned from their respective chats to face us.
In person, the pastor had a force of life that you could feel at a distance. There are no words to explain it unless you have been there to experience it. The congregation collected around him as drops of rain fall to the Earth and form a puddle. He was what I had wanted to be in my adult years, yet lost faith in the existence of as I grew into a man. More than merely respected by his peers, he felt like the embodiment of respect itself.
I did not feel afraid to speak to him. My mind was clearer than my command of language, although that did not stop me. "That was a good sermon, father."
"A man has but one father and he is in Heaven, brother Ronald. You may call me pastor or, when outside of the chapel, brother Mike."
"It was still a very good sermon, Pastor."
He came to a stop less than two feet in front of me. "A tree is known by the fruit it bears, brother Ronald. A sermon in the chapel is as good as it is lived in the streets beyond."
"I am pleased to stand within a flock with such a wise shepherd."
His eyes drifted a bit, scanning Lisa who stood at my side. It occurred to me only then that the rest of the congregation was watching Lisa. The others did not steal a glance at her from every few moments of time, but all eyes aside from mine were pointed to Lisa. Old Man was her father.
The pastor did not look up to me when he spoke again. "I hope that you will do more than stand amongst us, brother Ronald. You have both come home to us."
Lisa stepped closer to me, wrapping her arm around my waist. She was warm and soft. I turned to her, afraid that a simple touch of my rough and unworthy hands might damage the dream into which I had been thrust. Her head came to rest against my chest and I dared to place my own arm around her. All these things were new to us both.
Something more came to me as my gaze dropped a bit. The man who had greeted me now held something else in his large, masculine hands. His powerful hand was gently wrapped around a small girl at his right side. By all appearances, she was his daughter. My logic could stretch no further to give her any other role in his life.
There were children in the nameless place. I do not mean to imply that there is anything different about the nameless place with respect to children living there, except that the thought had not crossed my mind earlier. Although without name, the nameless place was a real place if only for the people who lived there. Lisa and I were now numbered amongst them.
Our chapel was notably quiet considering the number of children. Most of them seemed tired, ready for a long slumber at the conclusion to a hard day. The greeter's daughter barely held her eyes open. If not for the strong hand of the elder man who I took to be her father, she would have fallen into a lump on the hardwood floor. Through their fatigue, all of the children held to their feet.
Maybe the life granted to the younger man, less washed by the years than the pastor although probably my age in chronology, had been a secret dream that I had allowed no further than the back of my mind. He had a family and I barely held onto Lisa. His place in the world, even in the nameless place, could have been my place. My mind allowed the thought, yet could not accept it. Old Man had more than given Lisa to me. Lisa's father had given me to her. Both of us had further been given to the nameless place.
I needed words to speak to that man. "You have my name, yet I lack knowledge of yours."
"Here I am called Brother Jason," he replied. "Please forgive me for not telling you sooner."
"Did you have another name before you came here?"
He smiled at me. "It seems that I need better care of my words when speaking to you, Brother Ronald."
"Information is hard to come by in these parts. It is a big part of life everywhere else."
"Knowledge is not wisdom, Brother Ronald. Here, wisdom has the greater value and is sought by all."
"This place will take time to get used to, Jason."
His smile faded into memory so slowly that my eyes missed the steps. "Lisa and you will get the next two days to set up housekeeping and get acclimated to life in the nameless place. After that, I will be by to take you to the dome where all of the men work."
"Where do the women work?"
"You are not a woman, Brother Ronald."
"Is it that you do not know or that you are not going to tell me?"
"Ask Lisa."
It was my turn to smile a bit. I allowed my eyes to meet with his. Eyes always inform my opinion and, by the same token, I fear eyes. In the nameless place, I let down my guard. These people knew me so well already that secrecy was pointless. Maybe privacy is all in the mind anyway.
"Are there any other things that you are supposed to tell all new arrivals?"
"Not at this time," he answered. "You have a lifetime so there is no reason to do all your living in one day."
"It has been good speaking with you."
His left hand extended in a gesture of friendship as his right hand still defended his daughter from gravity. I accepted his offer with my own left hand as my right hand was also busy at the time. We did not conflict over who had the stronger grip. He was a stronger man than any other that I had ever known. I'd chosen not to envy, but to respect. Time had been given to me to become more like what I saw in these men of the nameless place.
The heavy door opened and the lights dimmed a bit more than before. People, the ones with kids first, began to file out of the chapel into the world that I had yet to see. It was the place behind me when I had been brought into the nameless place by Old Man. Beyond the door was the real nameless place where Lisa and I had been given our lives. Our fellowship hesitated to break up, always finding another line of mundane things to talk about, although time came for all of us to depart.
"Goodnight, Brother." I have no way of knowing which of my brothers had spoken those words to me.
Like so many times before in the named world, I responded without thought or care. "See You."
Another voice, until there were three in all, called out the same two words. "Goodnight, Brother."
Lisa and I walked cautiously through the front door of the chapel, through the antechamber out onto the front steps of the chapel. The chapel sat on a gentle hill at one end of the nameless place. Open spaces, green and light green, stretched around the chapel as far as the eye could see. Green colors and shades ran as far as the horizon and further still. Not even trees grew tall in the hilly region of the nameless place.
Down the white stone staircase at the front of the chapel, we descended into a small canyon. It was not a natural formation. The level floor of the canyon had been paved with additional white stones. To each side, there were walls of darker stones rising to a height around fifteen feet. Those walls had a few windows and doors hewn into them. At the top of the canyon, grass grew almost to the edges of the cliff and could be seen from the walkway fifteen feet below. We lived below ground, where we could not be seen, in the nameless place.
"Where does the Old Man live?"
Lisa was patient with me. "Beyond the nameless place."
"I meant to ask how you get there from here."
"Do you remember the door that you came through when you arrived?"
My pace slowed while I thought about it. "No."
"That is the way of the place beyond the nameless place."
"I'm not sure that I understand you."
"Do you have to?" Lisa had the wit of the nameless place.
Three houses forward of the stairs from the chapel, there was a road to each side of us. Several houses had been placed in the walls of each road and there were strange, steel doors in the walls at the end of each road. As Lisa walked on, I followed her. She did not turn to either of the roads so I remained on the central path.
My pace quickened enough to catch up with Lisa. "I hope that you know where we live, at least."
It was the first time that I heard her giggle. She did not look behind herself to see me. Neither did she answer me in words that I could make out. If not the way of the nameless place, then trust was Lisa's way. I was always expected to trust Lisa.
"Let me rephrase that, "I said. "I hope that you are going to tell me where we live."
"Sure," she responded. "Rephrase all that you want."
One other feature caught my eye and I was not sure why I had not seen it earlier. A huge, polished silver dome rose into the sky at the end of the main street in the nameless place. It also stood above the canyon where we lived. Another staircase had been cut into the bedrock, rising to the base of the dome. The structure was big enough to have been seen all the way back to the steps in front of the chapel.
Either my eyes or my mind had hidden the dome from view earlier. There were only two structures above the surface of the nameless place and it was not logical that the dome would be hard to see from the chapel. The chapel would have been hard to see from the dome because the dome was many times the size of the old wooden chapel. Of the two, the chapel was the more majestic structure.
Lisa came to a stop when she noticed that my eyes were no longer upon her back. I am not sure how she knew that I had been distracted. It was her choice to let me look the dome over. When I noticed her looking back at me, her eyes were not on the dome. She was not even looking at the chapel.
"We live in the second house on the right," she said. "Just a bit past the houses in the upper district, before the branch streets."
On each side of the main road, there were seven houses past the branching streets. All of the houses looked the same from the outside. Each home had a good sized window on each side of a wooden door. There was little ornamentation in the open spaces of the nameless place. The nameless place was created for function.
"Thank you," I replied.
Lisa came closer to me, placing her hands around my wrists. Rubbing against me, she looked into my eyes. "There is one other thing."
My mind would offer me no clues that I will record here. "What would that be?"
"It's your job to carry me across the threshold into our new home."
"Do we lock our doors around here?"
She pulled my arms around her back. "The door knows you. It will open when you approach it."
So, I did as Lisa had asked me. Right arm behind her back and left arm behind her knees, I lifted Lisa off the ground and walked toward the door of our home. If Lisa had been wrong, then she would have hit the door before I would have. I would never have heard the end of that. But, Lisa had been honest with me and her facts were accurate. The door folded back into the front room, letting me pass with Lisa in my arms.
Lights came on as the room felt my presence. The main room, where I found myself, was every bit of fifteen feet square. Around the room, where the walls met the ceiling, the room was ringed with lights set into the powder-blue ceiling. I could not make out any bright spots in the covers of the lighting panels, so it looked like a 9 inch border of solid light running completely around the room. At the top, the molding on the walls was a four inch reflective panel that enhanced the lighting of the room.
Behind me, the windows let in a little light of their own. The light shown across the room to a bookcase at the northern end of the far wall. At the southern end of the wall there was a doorway leading into an unlit space. From the northern wall to the molding around the doorway, climbing from the floor to the reflective part at the top of the eastern wall, ran the aforementioned bookcase. Somebody had gone through the trouble of stocking the large case with books of all sizes and shapes. Looking across the room from the entry door in the western wall, the only type of book that I could not see in our collection was a paperback. There even appeared to be a row of scrolls in pockets running down the southern end of the bookcase, near the unlit doorway.
A sofa, positioned between two end tables, had been centered on the northern wall. It was dark against the pale green, almost white, wall. In front of that we had a heavy wooden coffee table. At the distance, and with the dark coloration of the wood, I could not make out the carvings which decorated the sides of the table. A single lamp stood on the floor in front of the table. The lamp appeared to be polished brass.
To my left sat a comfortable rocking chair. On my right, the room was bounded by an island that divided the main room from the dining room. The doorway between the two rooms was at the back of the room, beside the unlit doorway. Nothing had been set against the island on the inside of the main room, however, I assumed that there were chairs on the dining room side of the island. I could see into the dining room thanks to a chandelier style ceiling fan.
Lisa surprised me from my near dream with a kiss and I almost dropped her. It seemed like a good time to let her down and she did not complain when I did. Although she didn't say anything, I am sure that she wanted to look around our home as much as I did. She was bolder in her explorations than I was. I did not dare walk further into the place until Lisa did.
"Welcome home, Ronny."
I was not sure how to respond. Words formed in the carrier of my voice and crossed the space between us of their own volition. "Welcome Home, Lisa."
She dashed about, here and there, looking the place over from floor vents to ceiling set lighting panels. There was a kitchen door at the eastern end of the dining room where it made the most sense. Lisa rearranged the flowers in the centerpiece of the table before coming back to me in the main room. In the main room, she walked over to the bookcase and looked over the titles for a moment. Her silence was hard for me to read as satisfaction or mild displeasure at the selection provided to us.
"Let's have a look at the second floor, shall we?"
"This place isn't tall enough for a second floor, Lisa."
She turned to me with a frown, which melted away when she realized that I had been in the nameless place for less than a day. "We don't number our floors upwards in the nameless place."
My head shifted a bit while I thought about that for a moment. If thinking had taken as long as it felt to me, then I would have been embarrassed to admit that I had to think about it. "You mean down?"
"You're quick, Ronny."
"If you would know, how many floors do these places have?"
She turned away from me, starting back toward the unlit doorway. "Usually, there are three. The big houses have up to five."
"How many floors in Old Man's house?"
Her walking stopped suddenly. "More, I should think."
"You do not know?"
"Nobody, aside from Old Man, knows." Then she took a few steps toward the unlit doorway and turned on the light beyond it. She walked slowly so that I would have a chance to keep up with her.
Unwilling to be left behind in the strange house, I finally entered and crossed the room to join Lisa. Directly back, down the now lit hallway, was a closet. To my left there was a door leading into a bathroom. Between the bathroom and the closet, on the same wall as the bathroom, another door let to a stairway. That door was open and the light was already on inside the stairwell.
The stairs went down to a small landing, turning back toward the closet on my right hand side which was parallel to the western wall. We walked down the first stair to the landing, then turned to descend the second stair to the landing on the second floor. Another stair came off of the second landing to run down at least another floor, although we stopped on the second floor. I could not see the landing on the third floor since that landing was beneath us. Given our status in the nameless place, it made sense that the house we had been given had no more than three floors.
Even though Lisa was the daughter of Old Man, we were both newcomers to the nameless place. Neither of us held rank amongst our peers. In our earlier lives, each of us may have held position and authority, however that did not extend to the nameless place. Those times and things were forgotten. There was no reason to give Lisa and I a big, important home in the nameless place.
There was no room between the doorway leading from the stairs to the second floor and the outer western wall on the second floor to place another closet. Directly across the hall from the stairway door, another doorway led into a large bedroom. By all appearances, that was our room. I doubt that we would have been prevented from taking any room that we chose as our own. It just felt right that this room was meant for Lisa and I.
The entire Eastern wall was a closet with two sets of sliding doors. That closet was continuous, running the width of the room, but the doors were set apart on either side of a small dressing table in the center. A small chair sat in front of the dressing table between the two sets of sliding doors of the closet. Mixed clothing, and other things, had already been provided for us. It did not seem strange to me that I already knew the things in the closet that were mine.
Along the west wall, the headboard of the bed ran between two small night stands. In fact, the bed was offset from the north wall only by the width of the night stand. The bed would have been too close to the door if it had been pushed further toward the southern wall. We had almost four feet of walking space between the door and the bed. Less space where the night stand on the northern end of the headboard was.
A good size hardwood dresser had been set against the southern wall between the door and the closet's partition wall. Between the dresser and the closet, we had about three feet of walking space. Toward the bed, we had about two and a half feet to walk around the dresser. The space in front of the dresser was clear to the far wall, from the foot of the bed to the dressing table in front of the closet.
I would say that the dresser itself was every bit of five feet wide. It had an ornately framed mirror at the top. The top row had four drawers and each of the two rows beneath it had two drawers each. Underneath, the dresser was supported on two arches that held the bottom row of drawers about a foot from the carpeted floor.
Overhead lighting was provided by the same system that the main living room had. There were no lamps. It did appear that there were lights set into the mirror on top of the dressing table, although I could not confirm that at the time. The main lights were controlled by a switch in the center of the headboard and another switch closer to the door.
Looking out of place in its simplicity, there was a simple cross on the wall over the headboard. Everything else in the room, from its off-white walls to the carpeted floor, was ornate in its decoration or purely functional in its design. It drew my attention simply because it made no attempt to draw my eyes. There was nothing else like it in the whole house.
Leaving the bedroom, there was another bathroom past the doorway to the stairs. From the looks of the floor plan, I would say that the walls had been erected in the same place from the grassy roof down to the lowest level of the structure. The two bathrooms that I had seen were stacked one on top of the other and against the northern wall. Our kitchen was on the main floor above the second floor bedroom against the southern wall. Even the hallway was in the same place on the first and second floors. Presumably, the same pattern was carried to the third floor and anything beyond that.
Turning left at the bedroom door, down the hall past the stairwell and the bathroom on the right, the hallway ended in three doorways. One doorway was directly at the end of the hall and led into a smaller bedroom. Additional bedrooms had been placed through the doors on either side of the hall, north and south. The smallest bedroom, at the end of the hall, had been set up as a nursery with a crib at the eastern wall where it could easily be seen from the door. Each of the other two rooms had been set up to mirror each other in layout.
The nursery did not have a closet. Along one wall, a series of cabinets with a smooth top provided all the storage for the room. Opposite of that, on the southern wall, we had a small swing and a rocking horse. Small wall lights made sure that the room was never completely dark although turning out the main light, by the switch near the door, darkened the room considerably.
Leaving the nursery, we turned left into the bedroom on the northern wall. That room also had a dim nightlight. Turning on the main light with the switch by the door, we entered the room. An additional light switch was over the headboard of the bed against the northern wall, back against the eastern corner of the room. Toward the bathroom wall, the entire wall was another closet. Again, the door to the closet did not take up the whole wall. If it had been that big, then the door leading into the room would have hit against it.
Maintaining symmetry, the closet door was centered and did not reach to the far northern wall. A dresser, topped by a good sized mirror, sat with its side against the front of the closet across from the entry door. Made of light wood, presumably pine, the furniture was not as ornate as that in the main bedroom. It did, however, appear to all be hand made. Great care went into the construction of the house even as it appeared to have a standardized, cookie cutter layout.
While Lisa looked around the room, my eyes were ensnared by the image in the mirror. It was the first time that I had seen Lisa and I together as the rest of the world saw us. The vision was distorted, in the way that a mirror always distorts perspective, yet it was not unlike a dream even in that quality. I could imagine the two of us in an old family portrait. Together, we looked like roots of an established family.
Lisa's long gown complimented the solid reality of her form. She stood in front of me, just a little bit off toward my left shoulder. I could smell the scent of shampoo in her hair from my place less than a full step behind her. To her reflection, I was a protective background. That is what pleased me the most.
I dared place my hand around her waist to complete the portrait. Turning first to me in her calm surprise, her eyes turned fast toward mine and then slowly to the same thing that I was watching. Tension melted out of her midriff as she allowed herself to lean against me. Then the portrait, shared in our combined vision and unique to neither of us, was complete. We explored no further in the house that had become our home that day.
Night had fallen while we had walked those two floors of our home. It must have been close to dark when the gathering at the church had broken up. Although I have little doubt that you already know of the uneasiness that came next, I am reluctant to put the words of it to the page and be done with it. Lisa was and is more than I should ever take lightly in even the least sense of her. I would hesitate to cause you to do as much and protest in the strongest if you did.
Lisa, my wife in truth and body, was no better known to me in that hour than she is to you at this reading. I have taken no vow to her nor heard her take one in regard to me. What the nameless place knew to be truth in our union was not true in my mind. There was no way for me to be honorable and still to take what was mine. The choice was Lisa's in the end.
Should she have allowed me the choice, then I would have slept that night and each hence in one of the smaller bedrooms. My bride had a will to her that could not be denied. When I walked back toward the stairwell to return to the main floor of the dwelling, she took my hand with more force than I could easily pull free of. It was under her guidance that I returned that night to the main bedding chamber. She closed the door to keep me in.
Never having prayed in earshot of another, it was hard for me to speak aloud to my lord before bed. Those had been the private moments of my former life when I gave voice to that which no other ear upon the mortal world was given to hear. Lisa would not leave my side. It was harder to speak those words of worship that I had not rehearsed than it was to disrobe in the presence of my wife. Exposed, my body has defenses which cannot protect my naked soul.
Do you know the cautious restlessness of the first night when you are not alone in the gentle hours of slumber? Is the night known to you when the warmth of another, your chosen and sole companion in those hours when you are without protection, draws you toward slumber while you feel that the dream must be protected even from your own touch lest it pass into tortured memory? Have you ever hated the night because it comes to an end? Would you give all the hours of the day just to not be alone anymore? These are all questions that I never felt that I would answer in the affirmative.
So passed the first night of my marriage to Lisa. Little of my night knew the comfort of sleep. For most of the dark hours, I sat a silent vigil just watching my distant dream breathe. She was strange to me and yet I felt that I belonged at her side. Something in me had chosen Lisa. Although I spent hours denying it, I knew it to be true.
We knew when the day had come because the lights announced it to us. They came up so slowly that I did not believe my eyes when I first noticed it. When they began to glow, it was gentle as moonlight in a clear sky. Then the lights came up as the dawn of a newborn day. By the time the light matched the sunlight of a cloudless sky, both Lisa and I were clear of head and awake.
Even in the absence of real sleep, I had rested in the night of the nameless place. It may have been that the whole of my life before I came to the nameless place had been as sleep to me and I needed no more for that night. Maybe it was enough for me that Lisa had known the numbing warm embrace of sleep. Or all of life could have been sleep such that I needed not dream of dreaming while in the nameless place.
There was no lock on the bathroom door. It was easy to be in the room with Lisa while I did not think of it. Showering with Lisa was almost natural to me. In my first stroke of wisdom, I chose to leave all things in the hands of our lord and let things be as they were. When I did not try to be in control, I was at home in all parts of the nameless place. The nameless place was home.
I cannot be sure what I had done in my former life, however, sitting around was not part of it. Giving me two days off to get acquainted with my surroundings seemed like a great deal too much time for me and I was uncomfortable with it as soon as breakfast was over. We had only explored two levels of our house, leaving at least one floor unexamined, and that would take us far less than a full day. Lisa did not seem interested in even starting further exploration of the house at that time.
Maybe the whole point was to get used to each other in the first day. Lisa was alien to the thinking part of me but already a necessary part of my life for the rest of me. Even thought I could not recall my former life, I knew that I had never spent time in such close proximity to anybody else. It was people more than the nameless place or boredom that I was uncomfortable with.
We cleaned up after breakfast without saying a word to each other. Instead of uneasy and unfamiliar, the routine already felt comfortably refined as though Lisa and I had lived our entire lives together. It was not just the other people of the nameless place that knew the secrets I sought. Something within me was already a part of the nameless place. I was a resident of the nameless place in all that those words meant.
"What do your people do around here?"
Lisa found no need to face me when she answered. "What do you mean?"
"We have two days to get used to life around here and I see no need of that much time. Is there more to life in the nameless place?"
"We do read quite a bit." Lisa came to my side, placing her head on my right shoulder.
I wrapped my right arm around Lisa with a smile. "I do not recall who I once was, yet I do not believe that I had so much time for leisure in my former life."
"I was thinking that we would go on a picnic tomorrow, after breakfast. You would like to see the grounds around where we live, wouldn't you?"
"That sounds like fun. I do not recall what it is like to go on a picnic."
"Our first day here should probably be getting into the swing of local life in the nameless place."
"How would you go about that, Lisa?"
"Well, Ronny, the whole town is at work right now so we'll spend the morning setting up the house. Later on, I was thinking of looking over the nameless place."
"Kind of getting used to things in circles?"
"How do you mean?"
"We start here and then move outward as we get used to where we are."
"Well, it sounds like a plan, Ronny."
I sighed, but not heavily. It was Lisa, not the nameless place, that I was having the hardest time getting used to and I believe that she knew it. Lisa was far from stupid. That is how things always worked in the nameless place. You know unless you have the absence of mind to ask.
From breakfast, we retired to the main room where I scanned the books in our library. Somebody had put a great deal of time into building the collection for us. Even the books that I do not believe that I would ever read had a comfort in their weight and a warmth to the material of their covers. Some were meant to match my taste and others matched better with Lisa. At least half of our collection seemed matched to both of us and that could not have been an easy task with the sheer size of the collection.
We could have had no less than a thousand assorted books, scrolls and even pamphlets. Each was indexed so that we could find anything that we looked for. Fiction was organized by author and non fiction was aligned by subject. Pamphlets had their own section, as did scrolls.
I almost envied Lisa's comfort in my presence. Her ability to relax was maddening when it should have been the most natural thing in the world to me. It wanted to be the most natural thing in all of creation, stretching even into the nameless place. Almost maddening as I put it because I cannot speak for the thoughts dwelling in Lisa's mind. Nothing about her was a threat to anything that I could not do better for the lack of.
My discomfort lasted through the morning and just a bit past lunch. The feeling burned my energy to exist and I eventually fatigued of supporting it. There is no other way of putting it. I gave in to my new life in the nameless place. Just after lunch in my first full day of residence, I let go of the great weight that I had carried from my former life. There, I had chosen and acted always to be alone.
Lisa led to the door and I followed her through it. All of the nameless place was in the valley between the chapel and the dome. A long road had been cut deep into the ground running from the stairs to the chapel and the stairs rising to the dome. Close to the chapel, a smaller road have been cut just as deeply. It was just as I had seen it in the dying light of the earlier day.
Each of the homes in the valley were externally similar. Once could not be differentiated from another without great skill in the matter. Aside from the unidentified steel doors at each end of the shorter road, every house had the same layout from the roads. The stone pathways on which we walked were well cared for, without grass between the stones or tree roots lifting them from beneath. No living soul seemed required to take care of the living space of the nameless place, and yet it was always in perfect condition.
It began to matter to me what the people of the nameless place did with their days. Until the women began to set up the community meal in the front room of the chapel, we did not see another living soul in the actual town. Not even the children were playing in the fields around the town. Both the main and smaller roads looked deserted while we paced them. Although I wanted to know, I did not want to ask.
When the men arrived, climbing the stairs to the chapel, the pastor came out of the chapel for the blessing. We prayed, ate and stayed together for the next two hours as I reckon time. The children played quietly at one end of the meeting hall and in a small part of the grassy section outside of the chapel where the adults could watch them without going outside. Adults spoke in hushed, friendly tones from the meal onward.
The pastor approached me from behind while I was observing the behavior of my neighbors.
"How are you and Lisa coming along?"
Shock left me no breath to carry my words to his ears.
He placed his hand gently on my right shoulder. "It takes us all some time, Brother. You'll get the hang of it before you know it."
"There are just so many questions begging me for answers, father."
I could feel his frown without looking back to see his face. My memory almost had time to wring an apology out of me before he spoke again. The misuse of the words was not that big a deal to me, at that time. Time has taught me better in the years since.
"There is no innate reason why we must understand, Brother Ronald. Reality doesn't need us to keep it running. Trust in the Lord and you will find that you know all that you really care to."
"I keep hearing that, pastor. My thoughts even seem to say that to me."
"Believe that you chose Lisa as she chose you. In time, you will know that it is true."
"When did she choose me? When did I choose her, brother?"
"Brother Ronald, we are not avoiding the answers to those questions. You do not know because you are not ready to know."
I could not help but turn to face him with those words in my ears. There was something in his eyes that I had to see. Truth is always most exposed in the eyes. "But, the answers to these questions would make it easier for me to adjust to life in the nameless place."
He only smiled to me and walked off. In his eyes I could read warmth and comfort the likes of which I would hope to find in the nameless place. There was no lie in his eyes. Even as he had spoken no words to me, he had said volumes with his smile. None of his unspoken words held the dark shield of dishonesty.
Lisa returned to my side, before long, and we silently watched the other inhabitants of the nameless place. Their comings and goings were easy with a deeper sense of purpose than could be seen. The others were our friends and neighbors. Maybe outside eyes, like those of Old Man, saw us as part of the group. Our distance from the other people of the nameless place was entirely in our own minds.
In the back of my mind, I had an image. I could see our Lord looking down from his throne. He was watching over us as we watched the children playing in the grassy patch just beyond the door to the chapel. It was my hope that we brought a smile to our Lord's face as he watched over us at our own brand of play. We were his children, adopted at the foot of the cross. My mind makes no claim to understand why these thoughts crossed into my mind or why I found such comfort in them. Growing up had never frightened me, but I was comfortable being a child of our Father in Heaven.
Much as it had on the first night, the gathering broke up slowly. Time had little meaning outside of our comings and goings in the nameless place. It was not like there was a set time at which an alarm sent us homeward to bed. Each of us had his own choice, although we acted as though bound to a greater mind than our own. When the exodus began, our departure continued until none of us remained at the chapel.
My second night in the nameless place was different than my first. I thought less of Lisa in time, though more in value. Together, we were warm and comfortable in the darkness that is night in other worlds. No hint of malice was given passage into the nameless place. All was calm, peace reigning supreme in the absence of light. Something great in power, but gentle in mood, watched over us and even the least of us could feel it. We were as babes shielded in a mother's kind embrace.
I remembered that I was tired. The fact that I had not slept the earlier night finally found me. Fatigue came upon me like a stream of warm water washing deceptively over my body. There was no reason for me to resist the promise of renewal in the passing shades of night. Letting go, I followed Lisa through the doors of slumber into the land of dreams.
Stars danced around me. They buzzed my head, rapidly darting to and fro in their own designs. Further buzzing marked their communicating, one with another. Hundreds and more without number spoke in a continuing whine. If I opened my mind, like selecting a single channel from among the multitude, I could almost hear the voices in my head. I knew that the sounds were words, yet I was not ready to listen in. The lights were only for my eyes to see. All the world of my dream was alive with color and motion. Each spot in the volume was as detailed as the whole image.
Then I realized that I too was a star in the pattern. Each of us was as distinct as we were the same. There was no limit to the distinctiveness of the lights in each or in the whole. Even the depth of my mind was, for a time, greater than the whole of my intellect. Ego reduced my perception as understanding filled in the details, selecting a single possibility from all others.
One thing was missing and I sought it. Where was Lisa amongst the stars and constellations? She was a part of me as she was apart from me. I could not feel her in the void. All the stars faded into grayness as I searched for Lisa's light in the vastness. Even my light passed into memory as time went on. Lisa had to be in that place and yet she was not to be seen by my mind.
The dream troubled me in all the time that I spent passing from sleep into the waking hours of daylight. Our lights came up and my eyes opened slowly into the morning. Time had not settled enough for each moment to have the same length as its neighbors. It was like reality had just been cast and had yet to harden firmly into its form. There I found Lisa at last.
"Good Morning, Ronny."
Sleep melted from my mind, running from my head as a river. "Good morning, Lisa. I trust that you slept well?"
Her kiss alone was my answer. It was all the answer that I required of her.
The second full day in the nameless place was just as the first day had been through breakfast. My uneasiness was not as easy to dismiss as I had hoped. It was not as pronounced even as it was still present and as much of an obstacle to my new life as it had been the day before. All the force of my will could not vanquish it by strength alone. Freedom came when I let myself be free of the feeling.
As we had planned, Lisa prepared a picnic lunch for us. She chose to carry the basket herself, giving me the blanket that we would use in the grassy field beyond the village of the nameless place. I draped the blanket over my shoulder where I no longer felt its weight. Arm in arm, Lisa and I walked through the door of our home about an hour past breakfast. The door clamped shut behind us as we turned toward the chapel.
It was a short walk to the stairway leading up to the foot of the chapel. When we reached the top step, Lisa turned to the left and pulled me along with her. There was nothing resembling a reason that she chose that single direction from amongst the number available to us. One direction just had to be chosen. Lisa chose a roughly western direction to go.
We walked on for a long time while the sun rose over our shoulders. The length of our shadows told us the time of day. Behind us, the village of the nameless place faded into the background. As our shadows shrank, the dome became hard to see on the horizon behind us. For all of our walking, the grassy plane beneath our feet never changed into anything else. If a world, then the world of the nameless place was perfectly flat where the village had not been hewn into the bedrock. No hill rose over a few feet, like the hill beneath the chapel.
Our hike was silent. Lisa and I did not speak while we stepped lightly and regularly over the grassy plane beyond where we had been given to live. Even our breathing did not change as the unmarked path beneath our feet stretched to the horizon and beyond. It was a warm, comfortable day for a walk. I felt that I could walk forever.
Backward glances were rare, growing more frequent as we reached the point where we had no discernable shadows. As Lisa stood on my right side, my stolen peeks at the wold behind us were always to the left of me. I am not sure why I felt that I was stealing each glance at the world that we were leaving behind us. After a time, it felt like we would come up on the village in front of us, having trekked the whole circumference of the world. It was a long, silent, uneventful hike over unbroken grasslands.
When our shadows vanished from the land before us, it was time for us to sit to the meal we had carried with us. Lisa stopped first and I knew that the time had come. I stretched the blanket out for us to sit on. Then, Lisa placed the basket in the center of the blanket. Silence was broken as we said grace before opening the basket.
At that point, I felt that it was okay for us to talk. There was no valid reason, no rule known to me, that prevented us from talking the whole way out to our picnic site. We had just chosen not to speak. Lunch just was a good time for us to talk a little. I would not have felt right about keeping silent through the meal.
"Does this place have a name?"
"None that is known to me."
"I've been meaning to ask, Lisa. Why doesn't the nameless place have a name?"
Lisa giggled between a bite of her sandwich and her words. "Oh, Ronny. Why would the nameless place need a name?"
"You have a name, Lisa."
"If I didn't have a name, then what would you call me?"
I took a drink just to give me time to think. "How do we talk about the nameless place without a name?"
She looked up into my eyes. There was a warmth in her hazel eyes that drained the tension from my whole body. "There is only one nameless place to talk of. This is not true of us."
"Maybe I'm being silly, Lisa. I just think that it would make more sense to give the nameless place a name than to just call it the nameless place."
"Old Man is never without a reason, Ronny. If he had more than one nameless place, then each would be named because each would need a name. This is not the case."
"Back in my former world, we name everything."
"When you are ready, then you will understand, Ronny."
"Understanding is not the problem, Lisa. I can see where you are coming from. I've never known anybody who would reason like Old Man."
Lisa turned to get herself a drink. "You come from one of the lesser realities, Ronny. Things are different where you came from because the people were different in your former life."
"Is Old Man God, Lisa?"
The question almost surprised Lisa. She turned her head rapidly to face me, but did not answer until she found the words that she wanted to use. "No, Ronny. Old Man is not like us, but he is far from God."
"What is Old Man like?"
"Old Man is like the nameless place. Like the nameless place, he has no need of a name. There is only one of him."
"I do not understand what you are trying to say to me."
She reached out, across the basket and rasped my left hand. "There are ideas that have no words. The longer that you are in the nameless place, the more like Old Man you will become. Then, you will find the understanding that goes without thinking and comes without words within yourself."
I caressed Lisa's fingertips with my hand. It was good to be with her. That was one of the ideas that has no word and so I understood. But, I came to understand something else in Lisa's presence during our picnic. When we were beyond even sight of all else in the nameless place, I could see Lisa as I could in no other place at no other time.
My feelings of discomfort in getting close to Lisa were dishonest with me. It was not that I feared being close to my Lisa. I would not have traded the fact that I was with Lisa for all the stars of Heaven. The truth of my fear was that having Lisa meant having to face the loss of Lisa. Once I bonded myself to her, the heart in my chest could not bear the thought of Lisa not being with me. Commitment bore the risk of being unequally yoked.
"We should start back soon."
Lisa leaned forward and kissed me, pulling her hand free from my grasp. "It's good to be here with you, Ronny. I wish that today didn't have to end."
"Tomorrow, we become official in the nameless place."
"As much as I wish that we could stay out here, just the two of us, it is good to hear you speak fondly of belonging with the rest of us, Ronny."
I found no words to speak. Lisa knew my heart and my heart was hers as truly as it had ever been mine. We cleaned up and started the long walk back to the village, together. This time, I held Lisa's hand as we walked away from the sun and our shadows lengthened before us. The walk was many times longer than it seemed to be.
We got back just in time for the communal dinner that was common in the nameless place. That seemed a bit odd to me, but I accepted it because it was true. Our walk should have had us out longer than the total time that we were missing from the village of the nameless place. The truth had us back in time to say grace with our neighbors. Maybe, I thought for an instant, time does not flow evenly in the nameless place. Then I thought no more about it.
Brother Jason took his turn to approach me after the meal. He was dignified and came to me from the front so that I could see his approach. His stride was steady and deliberate. Each step was the same length as the step before it. I do not know how he could have such a regimented stride while remaining comfortably relaxed in his walk. About all that I can say is that he had the security of purpose on his side in everything that he did. It was a trait worthy both of envy and of emulation.
He saw me watching him the whole time he walked toward me. Although he did not look directly at me the whole time, I believe that he saw me the whole time. When he was about a single yard from where I had been comfortably seated, he came to a stop. There he waited for me to address him before speaking his piece. His manners were strangely well developed even amongst the inhabitants of the nameless place.
"May I be of service, brother?"
He remained at attention with his weight evenly distributed between his feet. "You have had both days to get used to life in the nameless place, Brother Ronald."
"Please forgive me that I do not recall your name."
His voice remained steady as it was deep. "I am brother Jason. There is nothing to forgive."
I could no longer endure sitting in front of a man who remained on his feet. In as fluid a motion as the ability was given to me to move, I stood up to face him. "I was expecting further instruction about now."
"At the conclusion of breakfast on the morrow, you will be going to the dome at the far end of the village with the rest of the men. You will be trained there in the dome."
"What industry are we involved in, if it is permitted to ask?"
He scratched his head, looking into my eyes without flinching. "We think of ourselves as kind of librarians."
"That is an industry that I would not have expected of this place, although it does kind of make sense."
"Most of your questions will be answered tomorrow. There are many things that you can only learn by seeing in the nameless place."
"I've noticed that about this place, brother."
"How have you been getting along with Lisa?"
"We had a long hike and a picnic today. It seems that we are getting along pretty well."
"That is always good to hear. If you cannot rely on Lisa, then you will have nothing in the nameless place."
"Might I ask what that means, brother Jason?"
It was the first time that I had seen him smile. "We value different things in the nameless place than those valued in the worlds beyond. What you have with Lisa is one of the purest and most valued gifts here."
The feeling that there was always something more to say no matter how much was said remained with me after each conversation in my early days in the nameless place. Brother Jason walked away just as the pastor had the day before. Each left me with questions and the feeling that I already knew the answers. Both had told me that I did not understand only because I was not ready to know. Neither had told me to whom I must prove my readiness.
Parting was the same as always, except that we closed with a short sermon in the grass under the last rays of the fading daylight. It was the first time that I had actually seen the village of the nameless place when it was really dark. Small spots of light made the steps down into the valley easy to see even without the light of a moon. Stones in the pavement glowed a pale green in the fresh darkness. They lighted the way like miniature spotlights illuminating the walkways.
Much thought had gone into the design of the nameless place. Although the lighting kept the walkways clear all the way home, the light did not shine through anybody's windows. You could not even see the walkways from inside of the houses. Each part did what it had to do, whatever we needed it to do.
Stars shone overhead like a collection of jewels cast upon a black carpet. I did not know the patterns of the stars nor the constellations above me. The night was so clear and the stars so bright that I found it heartbreaking not to know the stars by name. Lisa was the only jewel of the nameless place for which I had a name.
Lisa was so fair, walking barely two strides ahead of me, that she seemed to glow in the darkness. She competed with the stars of the night and won the gaze of my eyes over from them. Even in the early chill of the night, it was warm to be in Lisa's presence. Maybe it was worth the risk of loss for me to be with her in the moments of the nameless place.
In the final steps of our walk home, I came closer to Lisa. She drew me in with her mystical presence. I was close enough to smell the flower scent in her dancing hair before we reached the door to our home. We locked arms just as we had when we left home that morning. Lisa carrying the basket and me carrying the blanket, we walked through the open door together.
Few of us know the joys of having a home that is more than an empty shell to dwell within. An empty shell is only a house. To be a home something more is needed. Lisa is what made a house into a home for me. A home is in the belonging and the comfort found in the shell that is only a house without them.
That night's dreams were the turbulent currents of a hurricane passing through my indecisive head. In the night world of my mind, I faced the eventuality of growing old in the nameless place. There I faced the feelings that I had about being a librarian. Children and the heartbreak of loss rounded out my momentary glances of a life half begun in the daylight world. Anything worth living for is worth dying for.
Lisa was up before I was. She was out of bed and just begun preparations to face the first day of structured life in the nameless place before I rolled to my feet at the edge of bed. With a kiss, she handed me my clothes for the newborn day. Her choices in the nameless place were good enough for me and I asked no questions. Where Lisa led, I followed.
Sleep was not hard to shake when I had Lisa to join in the waking world. I went through my morning routine with Lisa as I had on the two earlier days. That day, I was more regimented. My time was not my own for the first time in the nameless place. There were many questions and I asked none of them, even of myself. The morning was spent with Lisa and to her I was devoted.
We cleaned up faster after breakfast. Lisa did not tell me what chore she had been assigned in the nameless place and I kept to my own function for that time. There would be more days in the nameless place and I could seek more on any of those. Old Man expected something from me in exchange for the payment he had tendered. I finally felt that I owned it to him.
The mild chill of the morning air was refreshing. It put me on my feet and kept me there. From the door of our house to the stairs I had never scaled before in the nameless place, the chill drove me onward. There was something in my march with the other men of the nameless place that I found a secret pleasure in.
Lisa did not leave with me. I did not see her leave the house nor get a clue about what she did in the nameless place. Old Man had something for her to do. Of that, I was sure. What Lisa did with her days was none of my concern as I had already been told by my brothers.
Brother Jason stood in the center of the walkway at the foot of the dome and the rest of us collected off to the sides of him. Each of us wore a comfortable suit without a tie or jewelry other than the wedding bands. All of us had wedding bands. Every one of the suits was dark and it suited the coolness of the early day.
In each case, when one of us arrived, it was brother Jason who gave the first greeting. "Good morning, brother Ronald."
I replied without pause for thought. "Good morning, brother."
"Two more have yet to arrive, then we can begin the morning prayer."
There was no reason for me to respond. I would have read a reply to brother Jason's remark as being self absorbed and that is not the image of myself that I wanted to project in the nameless place. It seemed that my place was to the left of Brother Jason. The arrival of the last two closed the circle which united us at the foot of the dome.
Everything in the nameless place was still new to me so nothing was out of place that morning. A morning devotional was in keeping with the spirit of the nameless place. It was not the words that I valued so I will not try to recreate the prayer here. What mattered was the unity of the men of the nameless place. We stood as one before our creator as we began our day's labors.
When the circle broke up into a collection of men, an opening appeared in the dome. I stayed with brother Jason while we walked into the darkness of the dome. The light did not come up when the door locked tight behind us. Our eyes learned to cope with the dimness of the light in the vast emptiness of the dome. Again, as with the walkways of the nameless place, small glowing stones lined the floor to let us see where we were going.
Three gold rings of several hundred feet in diameter were stacked in the middle of the dome. The smallest of them lifted into the air first, coming to rest about fifteen feet above the floor of the dome. Then the middle one rose into the air until it was about the height of a man's shoulders. Lastly, the largest ring came only about three feet from the floor and remained connected to the floor of the dome by some kind of a silvery curtain. Each ring took on the glow of a rainbow when all the rings were in place.
The men spaced out around the rings, each placing his hands, fingers open, on the middle ring. Touching the central ring seemed to open their eyes to something that the rest of us could not see. They stepped over the lowest ring, taking a seat in their assigned spots on the lowest ring. Lines of light began to dance over the inner surface of the dome itself. It looked like small comets working their way through a maze.
"What kind of books do we work with here?"
"We call these the coverless books. Understanding will come to you only when you are ready for it."
I stood on brother Jason's right side in the dome, watching the rings instead of looking to him for guidance. "Can I do this job without understanding it?"
"You will be surprised, brother Ronald. Once you get the hang of it, you will be one of the better librarians. Old Man speaks highly of your skills in this area."
"This may seem like an odd question, brother Jason, but I have to ask. Am I dead?"
He must have giggled at the thought from the sound of it. "No, brother Ronald. And," he continued," every man here starts with that same question."
"Then I should start while I have the courage to start."
"Most men start out by sitting down first. Later, you will find it easier to link to the collection first."
"Link to the collection?"
"When you touch the central ring you will understand that, brother Ronald."
It was never my way to start at the lowest level of a task. I liked to do things the hard way either because I had a superiority complex or because I was a masochist deep down. My first day of work in the nameless place was no different. Sitting down first was the easy way. Instead, I placed both hands on the central ring first.
Brother Jason was expecting my action and was ready for the result. He knew that I could no longer see the lower ring once I came into contact with the central ring. In fact, you cannot see much in the dome after connecting your mind to the collection in the dome. Therefore, my instructor touched my right leg at the height of the lowest ring in the dome. His help led me to take my seat without getting too bruised up.
"Now what do I do?"
He spoke clearly and slowly. "Stop fighting with the collection and let yourself merge with it."
I had not realized that I was fighting to remain independent from the vast mass of raw knowledge in the collection. My senses had merged with the intelligence of the collection but my mind was still outside of it. It was a hard feeling to overcome. All the power of the collection was much greater than my own feeble intellect and I feared being lost inside of the collection. Once linked, I was terrified that I would never be able to get back out again.
"Fear makes us hesitant and blinds us to truth, brother Ronald. The collection is only knowledge and not wisdom. It is by will that you can exist within the collection without becoming part of the collection itself."
"It is not easy, brother Jason."
"I have been where you are, brother Ronald. Trust in the Lord even if not in me and let go."
Fear came in waves and tossed me about like the currents around a waterfall. Each attempt let me deeper into the collection between the waves. Brother Jason was right and the collection was just knowledge that I could use with my mind. Mighty though it was, the collection was mindless. It had no will to break it from indecisive contemplation, binding it to a single purpose.
When I was finally able to let go, I could make out the volumes of the coverless books. They looked to me as stars in the dome. Billions of them danced about with willfull purpose in the air above even the highest of the gold rings. The collection had no mind of its own, but each of the volumes in the collection was a mind unto itself. I spent all of that day watching the volumes to learn their ways.
Our workday ended with brother Jason giving me no further instructions. After lunch in the dome, brother Jason went to his own tasks as controller of the collection. I was left to observe and learn the collection. Without covers, it would not be easy to catalogue or seek out volumes within the collection. One day to learn my way around was not much work to sacrifice in the nameless place. Brother Jason would tell me what we did with the coverless books on the next day.
The work was hard on the mind and I found it tiring. I could not even let myself question what it was that we did with the coverless books of the collection. My mind was not big enough to contain the question while seeking an answer in the vastness of the collection. It felt good to end the day and finally rest.
Fatigue took the rest of the day out of my memory. I believe that we had evening services in addition to the meal, however, I can be sure of nothing. Nobody new approached me that night. Lisa walked me home through the splinters of my waking dream. Aside from the weakness, it was a good feeling.
Maybe the feeling was good because Lisa was at my side and I had her to count on. It had also been my first day of actually doing something with my time in the nameless place. The one thought that I did not allow to the front of my mind was that there could be something in my job that I found profoundly satisfying. Even I was thinking that to myself that I was not yet ready for the truth. I belonged to the nameless place.
I awoke from the grey haze when the lights announced the beginning of the new day. Lisa was still at my side and I dared kiss her for being there. Less than uncomfortable in her presence, I felt that I could not go on in Lisa's absence. The change was profound.
My whole morning was different. We did all the same things and even ate the same thing for breakfast. I, like Lisa before me, had let go and was comfortable as a part of the population of the nameless place. In fact, the morning was so unremarkable in my mind that I cannot distinguish it from any later morning of my life since then.
The walk to the dome was not as cold as it had been on the earlier morning. I doubt that the temperature had really changed. It was the way that I related to the nameless place that had changed. My mind was at ease with each step over the white stone walkway and up the stairs to the place where I met my brothers. And, they finally felt like brothers to me.
Brother Jason greeted each of us at the door just like he had on my first day at the dome. I was the second man there. When the whole group had assembled at the foot of the dome, we had our prayer and then went to work. It felt like I had never done anything else in my entire life. Deep down, I was still uncomfortable with that feeling, although it was getting deeper and weaker as a feeling within me.
That was the end of the familiarity. Once I had entered the dome, I was met by the Pastor. Still wearing a suit, he was more casually dressed in that he did not have a tie on. He pulled me aside, apart from the stream of men entering the building before I even knew that he was there. We stood against the inner wall while Brother Jason got the other men into position.
"Good morning, brother Ronald."
I blinked my eyes clear in the dimming light so that I could see him clearly. "Good morning, Pastor."
"You may call me Brother Mike here. The nameless place, as you will find out over time, is not a place of rigid structure."
"Okay, Brother Mike."
His eyes were never on me and he turned his whole head to face into the center of the dome when the pleasantries of our greetings concluded. "A large job is on the near horizon and Brother Jason will be busy this day."
I tried to find the point in the dome that had Pastor Mike's attention before responding. "Than I suppose I'll be spending the day with you."
"I'm actually here to train you, Brother Ronald. Everything in the nameless place is attached both to the chapel and to this place."
It was hard for me not to turn and face him as though denying my eyes sight of him was denying me understanding of his words. "I would not have expected you to work here, Pastor."
"Let nothing that you do fail to serve the Lord, brother Ronald."
"Amen."
I have my doubts that he took my remark seriously. My words were far too cold to have originated in my heart and bore the impression of reaching no deeper than my mouth and old habits. He would have been well within the rights of honesty to ask. It was his choice not to push me further. Each of us had a lifetime to mature in the nameless place.
"We do many things with the collection of volumes in this room, Brother Ronald. It is far easier to say what we do not do here. Firstly, it is not our job to read the coverless books. Neither do we insert new volumes into the collection. Those tasks are beyond what is given for us to do in the nameless place."
"It might be easier if you were simply to tell me, step by step, what I have to do with the collection."
"It seems that you are granted the gift of wisdom, brother Ronald."
By that time, the dome was full of activity. All of the men were seated on the lower ring in the center of the dome and lights were dancing about the whole volume of the dome's interior. If I had been given time to admire the dancing, colorful balls of light, I would now say that it was beautiful. But, I had been sent to the dome to work there. I followed Pastor Mike's steps.
We walked to the three rings at a place between two men. That place had been left open for me. When I took my seat on the lower ring, the whole group of us would be spaced evenly on the lower ring. Even spacing seemed to have a meaning to the dome, although I do not know if it is artistic, mechanical or just a habit. Combined, we could have formed an electronic circuit or just been balancing out the strain on the ring that we used as a seat.
Pastor Mike did not have me sit down at that time. He raised his left arm in front of me to keep me from touching the center ring and joining the collection. For a time, it seemed, I was to observe what I would not be able to see once I joined the collection. All movement within the rings was by force of will. All that we did within the dome was a matter of spirit superceding flesh.
"No greater love hath a man than to give his own life to save his brother."
"Excuse me?"
"You know how to join with the collection. What you now need to know, brother Ronald, is how to receive instructions. Once you link to the collection, you remain linked until lunch."
"Okay, Pastor. How do I get my instructions?"
"Brother Ronald, have you ever felt the presence of the holy spirit within you?"
My first thought was to lie, but I suppressed that impulse. "Not that I am aware of, Pastor."
"He is within each of us, brother Ronald. However, we allow ourselves to become so obsessed with the numerous trivialities of the lesser world that we lose sight of reality even when we look it in the eye."
"I'm not sure that I follow you, Pastor. We take our orders from the Holy Spirit?"
"Yesterday, you were drained almost completely because you were using your energy within the collection to block out reality. You heard the same instructions that every other man in the collection did. Brother Ronald, all you have to do is learn how to listen and you will hear."
"There is no one so blind as a man who will not see."
"Exactly, brother Ronald. The deepest heart of the nameless place is that, here, you do not ask a question because you do not know, but because you do not want to know. In your case, you seem to need confirmation."
"I keep hearing that, Pastor, but I do not really believe any of you."
"Faith is the only light in which all things can be seen. When you mature, brother Ronald, you will belong in the nameless place as much as any of us. Old Man chose you for what is inside of you."
"Forgive me Pastor, however, I just don't see it. Everybody in this place seems to know more about me than I do. I cannot understand it, but I can feel it everywhere."
"My final word on this is that we use childish words and think childish thoughts when we are children. It is when we grow into men that we start thinking the thoughts of men. Maturity, and understanding, come from within, brother Ronald. Do not think that these are gifts that any of us can just give you."
"I will try, Pastor Mike. That is the best that I can promise you."
"Today, you will just stand about a foot forward of where you are. While you stand there, do not try. Do not even try to try. Stop telling your eyes what to see and your mind what it thinks. Only lies have to make sense, brother Ronald. Reality is as God wills it for no other reason and to no other purpose. Nothing real is beholding to your understanding, your reasoning or owes you anything resembling an explanation."
"You've really never been out of the nameless place, Pastor."
"What makes you say that?"
"Because you sympathize with how hard it is to let go of our former mentality, but you seem to lack sympathy for the difficulty."
"Take a step forward until I stop you, brother Ronald. Close your eyes and let your thoughts wander into the collection. You know how it feels now."
In half and quarter steps, I let my body glide forward toward the rings in the center of the dome. No thought was to enter my mind as I crept forward, although I found it very difficult to let the noise drain from my head. My inner voice was chatty as though silence was analogous to death and it feared such death more than all the rest of me combined. Trust in brother Mike, my Pastor and friend, was hard to maintain.
There is no real measure of the time that it took before I felt brother Mike's hand in the center of my chest, commanding me to stop. I noticed that my shins were then resting gently against the lower ring of the three in the dome. My mind determined that the lower ring must be the control channel and the central ring is the link to the collection. It asked, and I didn't bother to contemplate the question, what the third and final ring floating higher up in the dome could possibly be for. The task at hand was all that I would allow to really matter to me.
After a distorted amount of time, long enough for Pastor Mike's hand to leave my chest and for me to notice it's absence, I did begin to hear a voice. It was far from an ordinary voice in that it seemed to lack both tone and inflection. I would say that the control voice was like the verbal equivalent of words on a printed page. The voice was like the inner voice that you sometimes hear when you are reading silently to yourself. Whatever the voice was, it did not have feeling for the commands that it gave like they were mere readings on a dial being recited.
But the voice was not mechanical either. It had a smooth flow to it like a woodwind instrument tuned and played by an gifted musician. The drone nature of the voice could have been apathy put into sound or encoded in feeling passing through the control ring of the collection. Maybe it was the collection itself speaking, mixing all feeling into a dull blur that had in itself no feeling at all. What the voice did have, however, was authority that could not be denied.
In my mind, it seemed as though the cold voice could command the currents of the wind and the tides to change. It was an understated force in the voice that felt like it could call reality into being, or wish all of creating back into the shapeless void from which it had been created in the first place. Pastor Mike's reference to it as like the Holy Spirit seemed adequate. The voice just seemed to lack the basic caring nature of the Holy Spirit and was, therefore, lesser than even that of an angel.
Coverless, the books lacked appearance, but they had strange, long names that could not be put into words for they would have taken better than a day and a half to pronounce. At first I even tried to listen to the whole of the names given to the coverless books as brother Tim was told to move one volume into place with two others near the center of the collection. By the time brother Jason was commanded to remove one volume from the edges of the collection, I had decided on a less detailed index system for hearing the names. The shortcut was like reading the index number from the spine of a book which had a long, hard to pronounce title. Titles were the only part of the command stream that were not given in the drone voice, but were a feeling that you could picture in your mind and hold only as long as you did not put them down in favor of any other thought. Once set down, no force in the mortal world could pick the titles back up and put them back into your mind.
Everything faded after an indeterminate amount of time and we were given lunch in the grassy field just outside of the dome. Time distorted when you were withing the collection as though the length of a moment depended on how much detail you chose to experience as that moment passed. Any minute could be experienced in every detail and feel longer than a life age on the Earth. Glossed over and a moment could pass in the instant when it began. Half of a day passed, leaving us in the lunch hour, before I even noticed the passing of the first hour.
It is not known to me whom had prepared the midday meal, nor did I ask at the time. None of the men working in the dome would have had the time with the large project just around the bend in time. I had heard all but my name called on the control channel at some point in the early shift. If the women of the nameless place had set up the meal, including the folding table upon which it sat, then it seemed odd that they did not remain around to dine with us. The nameless place valued family enough to want Lisa and I together for the rest of our lives so it made sense that the same was true of all the men working in the dome.
The day had grown warm and lazy while the men of the nameless place labored in the dome. Had the break been too long, we would have drifted off for more than a nap, not going back into the dome to complete our assigned tasks. Old Man must have known our nature and planned the timing of lunch long enough for eating yet not long enough to let us tire in the middle of our day. Brother Jason called the roll and we went back to our labors, leaving the mysterious force outside to put away the table.
I stood my ground until the other men were linked to the collection. My thinking was that Pastor Mike would put me back into position. He never showed up at my post. At first, I wanted to link directly into the collection and begin actually working. It was something that I knew that I could do and I was unsure of the recollection which directed me to just monitor for the full day. Pastor Mike must have had his reason for letting me sweat it out on my own.
In any case, I was not about to stand at the end of the dome waiting in hopes that Pastor Mike would eventually come to guide me into place. I positioned myself about a full pace from the lower ring and slipped toward the ring with slow, even steps. It was easier than I expected. My nerves did not calm down with the doubts in my mind until I was back online in the control channel. Both shins had hit the ring harder when I positioned myself, but I was not really hurt.
Once connected, there was no room in my head for anything except the control voice. The ending of my doubt was a great relief. I was not beyond thinking that Pastor Mike was going to interrupt me for instruction right up until I began receiving the distinct, dull tones of the control voice within my own head. There was comfort in the certainty of the voice. Being linked into the voice, and soon to be entering the collection itself, I had no nagging questions eating at my being.
The next thing that I remember was the end of line signal from the control voice, marking time for me to go home to Lisa. Each ring settled into its place on the floor of the dome. We stood up as the first ring to move, the lowest ring on which we each sat, began to fall away underneath of us. Our eyes were quick to clear enough for us to walk to the wall of the dome before the upper rings came to rest in their respective places. I watched the whole process.
I had been standing, virtually unmoved, for at least four full hours when the end of our labors came. However, my legs were in good shape for the walk from the central rings of the dome out into the fresh air with my brothers. My legs were not even tired from their exertion. All of my body felt alive when I left the dome as the last of us to do so.
Brother Jason remained behind to close up the dome while I started my walk down into the housing canyon to join Lisa. He followed me down a few moments later. I did not turn around to see him, but I could hear his steady, strong footsteps on the paving stones of the canyon floor. His presence behind me registered in my mind almost like the control voice.
Lisa was talking with a few other people at the corner just beyond our house when I got to her. Her ease with her friends in the nameless place almost made me feel like an invader in her community. She reacted to my slow approach as though she could tell the sound of my footsteps distinctly from the footsteps of all other people in the nameless place. The toothless smile on her face did not fade as she turned to see me standing almost center in the canyon, a few feet short of her position.
She took a few steps in my direction, seizing my left hand the moment that it was within range of her grasp. Her strength in pulling me toward her astounded me. I was in her arms almost before I restored my balance. It was her choice to kiss me although we did not speak. We walked in unison over the last yards toward the end of the housing canyon and up the stairs to the foot of the church.
Our meal was exactly like each meal in the earlier days. The menu varied, although it did not change by a great deal. There were neither farms nor stores that I could find in the nameless place. What we were given, presumably by Old Man, must have been what he either liked the most or whatever he considered adequate for our needs. I found no need to complain and I heard no complaint from the others in my fellowship.
After the meal, Brother Jason approached me. I had the feeling that he would talk to me after the meal, even though I have no idea why I felt that he would do so. Lisa remained at my side while Brother Jason came up to me and I felt more comfortable because she was there. Brother Jason smiled a slim smile at the sight of Lisa and I sitting in the grass together.
"Have a good day, brother Ronald?"
Lisa leaned against me and I turned to her before I replied. "I think that I'm getting the hang of it, brother Jason."
He sat down a few feet in front of me. "That is good to hear. You look like your getting more comfortable in your own life, brother Ronald."
"It is not easy to get comfortable in the nameless place, brother Jason."
The muscles in is face relaxed or they would have been drawn into a relaxed smile. He was more at ease than I had seen him in the past, which came almost as a shock to me with the large project coming to the dome. His eyes were soft focused, however, he still had an aura of power to his presence that I could feel through both the air and the ground on which we both sat. "Are you getting used to being part of the nameless place?"
"I feel that I still straddle the world that I came from and this nameless place. Do you recall what it was like to let go of your former life?"
"None of us really had former lives, brother Ronald. Our lives begin and end in the nameless place. Before this, we existed, yet we never actually lived. In this place, each of us makes a difference."
My mind was so clear that it felt like an empty, white haze. I could have seen forever in the clarity, however, in looking into infinity, I had to overlook all the limitless and minuscule details closer to me. "How is it that we really make a difference, brother Jason? Does anybody else even know that we exist?"
"We, each of us, know that God is not because we have seen him but because we see the things that he does. The difference that we make is that nobody else has to do our part in the continual maintenance of this universe."
"Is everything in the nameless place compared to God?"
"What better measure of all things than him for whom all things were made?"
I half grinned at the response that I had somehow expected from brother Jason. "Never a straight answer in the nameless place."
"We don't need answers where questions are an barrier to understanding."
'That is something that I doubt that I shall ever get used to, brother Jason." I stretched my arms upward toward the clear sky before holding Lisa to my side.
Lisa was not as half hearted in her expression of emotion. She enjoyed being at my side just as much as I would not admit to being comfortable in her presence. I could feel her turn to look at me and my eyes drew my face around toward her gaze. It was like sunlight warming my face on a cool morning.
When I turned, just for a moment, brother Jason had already left to return to his own family. All of the citizens of the nameless place were a family, which is how it actually felt to me, however, there is always a time when closer relations call to each of us. My place was with Lisa. The first part of the nameless place that I had really seen, Lisa seemed to be the last part of my new life and world that I would really get used to. I cannot say how she felt about that, although I do believe that I know.
We walked home last amongst our brethren as not to get tangled up in external relations in the nameless place. Lisa was a much faster student than I could ever hope to be. It was more than her being the daughter of Old Man which made her welcome to the spirit of the nameless place. Her eyes were clear to truth that the lesser worlds would not face if they could. In her presence, I was ashamed of my blindness.
The street was clear long before we reached our own door. Nightfall brought a restful chill to the nameless place, but it was not fatigue that retarded our steps. We were relaxing each into the presence of the other, trying to become as one in private as we were in public times and places. All the way home and into bed, it was as though we two were alone in all of creation. I enjoyed that feeling.
Sleep did not enter me, but I flowed out into sleep as a drop joins with a puddle. I let go in the safety of my own bed in my own home in the nameless place. Simple as it seems, even to my own hands and mind, the work that we did in the dome took a great deal out of me. It was a hard day's work. Maybe I felt that I had earned a good night's sleep to go along with it.
The haze and the void of the cloudy locus of unconsciousness parted before me. Part of the fabric of the nighttime world was lighter and formed into ribbons and threads. This parting left the background darker than the emptiness that it represented. Firmament formed from the light united into a tree. It would have been beautiful if my eyes had been permitted the awareness to think about it.
Balls of light ran about through the image. Each came into frame of its own volition, leaving my mind for its own ends. They chattered in a high pitched whine wherever they came together. Then the last of my waking self melted into the vastness of the outer world where I walked in my dreams. I was resting, calm and aware of nothing for that time.
Standing on fresh blacktop, my nose burning with the scent of fresh tar in the air, me feet give thanks for the soles of my shoes. My shoes are getting old and the tread is wearing too thin to keep the heat out. I look down to my old shoes, ready to say good bye as though they had been my trusted, loyal friends for their time. Worn until their tally of days is spent, they were like all the people around me. They were also like me in that each of us in that city of Man would be used up in the machines of industry and then replaced with neither a wink nor a thought.
That was the last day of my old shoes, there shielding my pampered feet from the heat of the city streets. I planned my steps so that I could pick up a new pair of shoes in my lunch hour later that day. It would not leave me long to eat, however, I hadn't been feeling much like eating lunch. The heat of the city was wearing me thin as the soles of the old shoes on my feet.
I did not have to look up when the light changed. There were a hundred feet to either side of me and I only had to follow suit when they moved. Walk when they walk, stop when they stop and I knew that I would come through fine. It was the dance of city life which I had danced all my life.
All that I can say is that it was meant for me to look up at that moment. I was meant to see the young girl playing with her cloth doll on the sidewalk to my right. She was surrounded by people, just as I was, but it was her alone that I was seeing. Even her reflection in the large store window stood out in my eyes. Her image was a feeling to me.
Her age was nothing to me save to say that she was young. Her manner of dress could have easily identified her as a boy when she was a girl in every other way. Details such as these blew away in the wind like so many specs of dust. It was a dream and still something more to me. My feelings were real even if nothing else was. I felt something about the girl.
It was not given for me to know how I knew that her life was in such risk. I had to get to her and that was enough for me. Any other thought was a distraction from the sense of urgency. The requirement that I get to this girl could not be suspended. Even time pulled me toward her.
I dove the last few steps to her feet. It was only after I landed that I noticed the hot metal object deep within the vital tissues of my body. Only after I realized that I had taken a bullet did I feel the shot. Looking up from the broken concrete slab where my tired body rested, I spent the last of my strength to see that the girl was okay.
The girl looked down to me at her feet. She was frozen in terror, unable even to back away from me. However, she did not know that I had been shot. Not knowing that I had taken a bullet for her, it was me that she feared. Bleeding at her feet, I let go of my former life.
On the way out, I passed through constellations of colored spheres. Every solid thing is a product of light alone. Strings of the lights circle around me, chattering in their ways. Coverless books, they are pure volumes seen only as the content of their character.
Gasping for air, I stirred from my sleep. I sat up, throwing off the covers. My mind and body are more worn than when I laid down at Lisa's side for my period of slumber. Several minutes and a drink pass before I can return to sleep by Lisa's side.
There had to be a reason that Lisa did not stir while I awoke from the nightmare, but I was too tired to seek it. Something within me knew the truth, although I was too weak to think it. Nothing in the nameless place is allowed to be without cause or reason. I just was not ready to let myself in on the secret.
My night did not end there but my sleep did. For the remaining hours of the night, I watched over Lisa in her peaceful slumber. The lesser man that I had once been would have envied her the rest that I had been denied. That man was no longer around, having passed out of existence as he was expelled from my mind and my life. I was now a man who valued the comfort of the people he cared most about.
Morning dawned in the nameless place and the lights came up in their meandering way. To my eyes, it was as though Lisa had started to glow and filled the room with the light of her life. She was fast becoming the light of my life. For those first waking moments, I held back unwilling to touch what I was sure was only an illusion. Lisa did not vanish when I brushed aside her flowing hair.
Denied sleep, I was not entirely up to speed for the morning routine. The dream, which I kept for and to myself, upset the essence of my soul. I was conflicted with Lisa because I needed her for comfort almost as much as I needed to protect her to be comfortable. That is why the little girl in my nightmare had upset me so much.
Pastor Mike did not greet me at the dome. If he had come to me, then I would have shared my discomfort just to be rid of it. Brother Jason would have done, however, I did not want to expose my weakness to a man whose strength I idolized. I was hurt because I projected weakness from what I defined as the seat of my spiritual strength. My brothers in the nameless place could not help me with such a deep wound, especially when asking for help reopened the wound.
"Good morning, brother Ronald."
I tried not to let brother Jason see that he had startled me, even though I knew that he saw the truth in my eyes. There are no secrets in the nameless place save those that we keep from ourselves. "Good morning, brother Jason."
"Are you ready for your first day really working with the nameless books?"
"I'll give it my best shot, brother Jason. That's all that I can promise."
He looked around me, counting the men with his eyes. "Let your faith be your strength, brother Ronald. In his image were we made and in his strength are we made strong."
"Amen, brother." The words seemed to flow from my mouth as a part of me and I knew that I really meant what I had said. That surprised me enough to erase my worries for a few hours of the day.
"Today you will link to the collection and the control channel. It is an experience that you never forget, brother Ronald. Old Man is sure that you have it in you or he would not have sent you here."
"Does that mean that there are other nameless places?"
He stopped looking around me and stared directly into my eyes. "If there was more than one nameless place, then they would have names. Lisa told you that."
"I did not mean to upset you, brother."
"This will be a trying experience, brother Ronald. You have to be ready for this or it will crush you like spring frost underfoot. We need you for this project."
"You can count on me, brother Jason."
He did not continue the conversation. His eyes turned from me and he counted the men one last time. Satisfied that we had all arrived, he opened the morning with a benediction and devotional period. Our work with the coverless books was a solemn, spiritual affair, although it did not feel as trying to me as brother Jason made it seem to be. It almost upset me just how much effort he put into getting me ready for my first real day of work.
It wasn't hard to guide me into place with the rest of the man of the nameless place. I was so used to it that I really didn't need to be positioned anymore. My hands knew where they had to go in order to link to the collection of coverless books and I didn't have to look in order to step over the bottom ring. Maybe I was a natural to the type of work that we did in the nameless place. That alone would explain why Old Man had chosen me in my former life.
Ego is a blinding force, so I kept my mind clear during the initiation process. The control voice came online in stages, identifying each man on the lower ring by his excessively long name. Our names as given by the control voice were almost, but not quite, as long as the titles given to the coverless books. None of us was given direct access to the collection until after the control voice called the roll in the symbolic code we used for the names to long to recite in any language. Getting used to the process took more time, in my mind, than the initiation process.
The collection formed in the middle of the dome as a single jewel of limitless sides and colors. It seemed to be a rainbow, rolled up and given solid form for an instant. Then it blasted outward into a disk of lighted points, each moving into position of its own volition. A galaxy of lights swirled outward to the edges of the dome, folding back again toward the center of the rings. Each volume in the collection went to its place matching the balance of the men in the dome.
Then the orders began to come. I knew that brother Jason was in the collection because I heard the voice call to him. Secondly, I heard the voice speak its will to Pastor Mike. The list of names was so long, and some of us so skilled, that names began to repeat on the command channel before the list reached my name at the end. My order was to position a specific, eccentric volume near to the edge of the collection.
Nameless books are not like other volumes. Each has a mind and a will of its own. If you should try to place one on a shelf, which would not be possible given the nature of coverless books, then it would chose its place on the new shelf and may, in fact, leap from your hand to place itself on a completely different shelf. Only the fact that there is no randomness to intelligence allows them to be located in the collection. That is not to say that any single volume in the collection of coverless books is easy to locate.
My target was in a dense collection of brighter, darker lights at the edge of the collection and away from the main body of nameless books in the collection. It was a gift to me from the control voice that I was started out with a volume that was far enough from the center of the collection to be easily located. But, I was only able to locate the volume as part of the collection in that edge of the dome. Isolating the one volume took me a long time, by my understanding of time within the dome. It did no good to try to see the book by looking at the whole cluster of volumes in that part of the collection.
Letting go of my thoughts, I learned that the selected volume felt different from the others in the cluster. The feeling was so strong that I was tempted to take that nameless book to a quiet section of the collection and read from it. Then I felt, maybe at the insistence of the control channel, that the other coverless books were a danger to my target volume. Protecting the book meant placing it where the control voice had commanded. Moving any coverless book in the collection is a challenge all to itself.
I tried to grasp the book, but it was not solid as we know use of that word. It had no cover in which it could be contained for the trip. She resisted my coaxing and forcing alike with a great deal of efficacy. Even for a beginner's task, she was not easy to manipulate.
Our control voice was patient with me and gave me all the time that I needed. I hoped, in the nervous echoes of my mind, that brother Jason would give me a hint or a hand with the coverless book entrusted to my care. On that score, the control voice's silence was a cold denial. Brother Jason trusted in me and Old Man believed in my ability to do as he had required of me.
In the end, after an enormous expenditure of effort, I learned that it was best to show the coverless books what you wished of them and allow them to chose obedience to your commands. The observation makes perfect sense in retrospect even though it took me almost to lunch to realize it the first time. I had my first volume in place just before the lunch break, with no time for the control voice to issue another order to me. My mind was too fatigued to even consider sitting at that point and reading from the pages of the single coverless book for which I was a guardian angel. It took too much work for me to be proud of myself.
Lunch came before I fell asleep in the collection. I needed the rest, if only for an hour. Even I did not take a nap during the lunch break, however, it recharged me somehow. Sunlight in the nameless place was as rejuvenating as either food or water.
I was tempted to tell brother Jason of my first success, but I thought it unwise. It would have taken him seconds to do what it had taken me hours to do. My pride was misplaced, yet it was my pride nonetheless. Mine was a feeling that I could not deny and could feed upon when I went back into the dome for the rest of my working day.
Once again, I got home tired. I will not deny that it was a good feeling. It was as though I had finally earned the faith that Old Man had placed in me when he had given Lisa to me. Almost a dozen volumes in his collection of coverless books were protected by the labor I had done on a single day. Maybe that was worth bragging about at the evening meal. I was just so tired that I did not even speak, that I recall, except to Lisa.
Night fell around me and I was thankful to have a comfortable bed to go home to. Lisa expressed no displeasure with me, as far as I can remember, for being so sleepy. I hope that I did not disrupt her plans for the evening or upset her social interaction with her friends in the nameless place. To do so would have been against the better part of my nature. The best part of my nature was no better than what I owed to Lisa.
It was a good, quiet night to sleep. I had not failed Lisa and her loyalty meant the world to me. We traveled through the night together as though there was no world beyond the two of us. Only the reality of sleep parted us.
Swallowed by the newborn light of the day dawning in the nameless place, outside of the house that I shared with Lisa, I felt that I was standing still and the world around me was moving. At first the lights threatened to wipe my vision to a bright white blankness, but they seemed to elect to fade into a gray fog instead. Maybe there is no whiteness so bright that it blinds all eyes unless there is a darkness for us to know it by. In the nameless place, that darkness had been taken away from me. I do not know if it had been Lisa or Old Man who had taken away the sting of my outer worldly pain.
Only moments passed in my numbness, however, they were all the same limitless longness and unlike those I had come to know in the dome for no other reason. I was suffering without the awareness to know it. My heart had been given over to the nameless place so that nothing in the dream world could ever hurt me again. A smile must have drawn itself onto my face for I felt it in my soul.
Then my eyes opened into the outer world. Somehow, they had always been open and yet I had not been seeing. A face at the far end of the room, familiar and unknown to me, looked to me with great pity. Given a choice, and a mouth with which to etch the words into the wind that was my breath, I would have told her that it is not for the dead that she should grieve. My real life had already begun in the nameless place.
I knew that I was not dead. In the fictional world where I had seen a glimpse of another life that could have been mine, my body still knew the taste of life. There was strength in me that would only be swallowed up by the ever hungering river of time. Long would be my journey back into the dust from which I had been formed. It had already been a long time in that pointless world and every moment of my life had been wasted, save one. It is never a waste of life to endure for another. Least wasted is the moment that gives life to a child.
The face that I knew was all that I carried back with me into the haze. She was somebody whom I had actually met at one point or more. There was a fraction of a memory of the two of us in a room with many others. Yet the place that may once have been hers now belonged to Lisa alone. To my former life, I had already shut the door forsaking even regrets.
Home I thought and there I went. As the sun got its first peek at the dome, our lights began to come up in the room that I shared with Lisa. Another day was beginning in the life that I shared with Lisa. In the last lingering moments of dreaming, I cursed sleep as hateful for depriving me of so much time with Lisa. What I had in dreams was only an illusion perverted from the reality that I shared with Lisa.
I awoke before Lisa climbed from slumber to our part of the nameless place. It was good to lie there, watching her rest. She moved about a bit, fighting to hold the last shards of a shattered dream denied longer life by the coming of the dawn. We, in the nameless place, can feel the arrival of cleansing sunlight to our land.
Our morning ritual was natural to me even when I thought about it. I was even getting used to being so close to Lisa. She drew me to her side as gravity held me to the world beneath my feet. There was something pleasant about being with her that I had missed in the first part of the week. It was not that I was falling in love with her as much as admitting that I had always been in love with her.
Leaving home, I was as light footed as I was light headed. I skipped over the stone walkway to the stairway at the base of the dome. Had I been watching myself more carefully, then I would have been unforgivably self-conscious. It was something that I had not done since childhood and could not even recall having done so then. The very matter that formed me seemed alive with joy.
Nobody reacted to my antics. I will be forever grateful to merciful God that, although seen by most of the nameless place, none of my brothers mentioned what he had seen me doing that morning. It was as though I had been expected to make a fool of myself. Such is the way of the nameless place.
When I got to the dome, leading all but two of my brothers up the stairs at the end of the valley, brother Jason told me that this was the last workday of the week. The next day, Sunday by my outer world reckoning and understood best as such by you, would be a full week since I had arrived in the nameless place. My outer world reckoning was not used to a full day of rest. I took it as a full day with Lisa.
I entered the collection on my own, no longer a novice in the ways of the coverless books. Our control voice called the roll and even advanced me three steps in the ranking of orders. There was no problem moving the first half dozen coverless books about in the collection. At no earlier point had the control voice asked me to remove a volume from the collection and I feared the lesson. Pulling a coverless book from the collection was part of the job and I could not avoid having to do it in the line of duty.
But that was not the first odd thing. Nearing the center of the collection, there was a dense gathering of coverless books. When I was locating my assigned index in the collection, it seemed that one of the coverless books actually made a crude remark to me. The volume was undeniable hostile with me. At no time did I consider damaging even that unworthy volume in Old Man's collection, however, the hostility directed at me was a distraction.
Several other volumes in the cluster shouted at me. Two books came around behind me while I was seeking a lost volume several moments later. I provided a way out just before the volume entrusted to my care came under attack by several other coverless books. The first coverless book to actually pounce at me from the collection convinced me that I was in no danger.
A brighter, reddish light attracted my attention as I moved around a cluster. It was off my left side and seemed to move parallel to me. The volumes were giving me my first concrete evidence that they could see us moving about through the collection. When I was making a wide right turn, the pursuing light shot directly at me. My reflexes were only fast enough to turn so that I could face the inbound light before it collided with me.
It missed me. That is not to say that it was to one side of my presence, but it passed around me as though I was not even there. We of the nameless place link to the collection and move about within it, yet we are never a part of the collection. I wish that somebody had told me that earlier.
At lunch, I approached brother Jason about the ambush.
"Coverless books do not exist in a vacuum, brother Ronald."
I sat down beside him to finish my sandwich while talking. "Are the coverless books always this hostile toward us, brother Jason?"
"Whether the coverless books are hostile or not has little to do with us, brother Ronald. Acting in the collection is like walking down a street. You could meet the love of your life or get beaten to a pulp."
"So the coverless books are like people?"
Brother Jason refilled his drink before continuing. He needed the time to think. "What I mean is that the books act of their own nature. Since evil is within us brother Ronald, there is evil in everything connected with us."
"I'm not following the conflict, brother Jason."
"Here you understand and ask because you wish that you did not."
"Please excuse my inquisitive nature, brother Jason."
He placed his hand on my shoulder for a moment. "Nothing external to the coverless books makes then happy or hostile, brother Ronald. They sense the big job and that just brings out what was always in the collection."
"I expected the big job to be here by now."
"It will be here early in the next week, brother Ronald. We never know exactly when Old Man will give the order, but we know about when it will come to pass."
"Can I be told what the big job is all about?"
"Brother Ronald, if you have to ask, then telling you is a big problem. You already know what we do in the dome and that is all that the big job is about."
"God grant me the wisdom to figure this place out."
"You are wise to ask God's help, brother Ronald."
"Any hints on how long it takes to get in the swing of things around here?"
"You are a good student, brother Ronald. Old Man was right in all that he said of you. Next week, you will be a big help in the large job at hand."
"Lisa told me that Old Man never comes into the nameless place."
"He doesn't have to, brother Ronald. You've never seen the controller either."
With those words, brother Jason finished his drink and stood up. Whatever measure of time tells him when the lunch hour has ended had come to him. Nobody in the nameless place carried or, to my knowledge, even owned a watch. It was another thing natural to the nameless place and alien to me.
One thing remained unsaid that I regretted before I even got linked back into the collection. I had not asked brother Jason, in hopes that he would give such advise, how to remove a volume from the collection. Knowing my brothers as I did, I assumed that I would never have been given an answer that I could work with. That part of the nature of the nameless place has never been comfortable to me.
The first order to remove a coverless book from the collection came a good deal of time after lunch. There is no way of measuring time within the collection or even, to my knowledge, inside of the dome. When the order came, I actually asked the control voice how to remove a coverless book from our collection. No reply came, but the voice paused as though stunned.
I labored over how I was going to remove the volume the entire time I was seeking it out. He was one of the dimmer, steel-blue volumes near a corner at the central blob of the collection. His pages were thinner than I expected for such an old book. The control voice had given me one of the most fragile volumes in the collection as my first removal. Being so late in the day, I knew that I did not have as long to figure out removal as I had taken to learn how to move coverless books around.
Coverless books do not have covers. You know them by the way that they feel when you look at them. Everything is exposed so that you can see so deeply into them as to know them completely on your first sight of them. Each book in Old Man's collection is as unique as a shade of human emotion.
By the same token, each volume is a nebulous blob of colored light. It's pages are like layers of an onion, wrapped around the core as they are written in the passing of time. If they could be touched, then they would be smudged to the point of being rendered unreadable. No contact can be allowed since it would damage the coverless book.
Each volume in the multitude has a heart that can be reached by way of truth and virtue. But, how can you ask a coverless book to kindly exit the collection? It would have been easier for me if I had only known that removal from Old Man's collection was a temporary thing. I wept for the volume that I had been given charge of removing.
Then something really strange happened and the coverless book came toward me. He looked deep into me and I could feel his will probe my exposed soul. I was shocked and the whole collection felt it in some way. It must have been an unpleasant feeling because all of the other volumes in the section of the collection pulled away from us. Only the target volume and I remained in that part of the dome.
"Why does you weep so, sonny boy?"
"You're speaking to me?"
"Aye, that I am. Now tell me your troubles true."
"I have been sent to remove you from the collection. It's bad enough that I don't know how."
"Weep not for me, dear boy. I never feared dying enough to say that I never lived."
"Then you want to go?"
"If my time it is, then lead me free, dear boy."
For a moment, the two of us merged to form a single volume, a dozen lifetimes wide. It was hard to accept that the coverless books could be reached and reasoned with. Those books for which we of the nameless place had been sent as guardians did not fear us as I thought that they would. Deep down, I knew it. I was part of the nameless place.
All the rest of my day, clear through to bedtime, I thought deep thoughts concerning my place in creation. I was not so tired as to pull Lisa from her social schedule at the evening meal, but I was distracted. My mind was working overtime, mostly to keep out the understanding that was flooding into me. Should the nameless place have had a name, then omniscience it might have been.
A true night's rest came as though called for. That is not to say that I did not have any of the strange dreams that night, but to say that they did not upset my sleep. Two of the dreams came to me, as I was then ready to deal further with them. Nothing in the nameless place comes faster than it can be dealt with even as all things must come in their own time and at their own pace.
The dream opens on a court room where I was absent and yet present. I didn't care. To others, in the flow of the life story that I was being shown, it must have mattered greatly, but to me it was just chatter. Real lives are lived, real people both living and dying, while lawyers consider themselves heroes for tossing words at each other. The sounds of a rushing brook or of rainfall nourishing a parched earth held more power than these vacuous talkers could ever know.
Only one detail caught my mind's eye as the pitiful men paced about in their bickering. I knew one face in the courtroom and that was the only face I recognized in the whole scene. She was not known to me as well as I felt her project. It was her face that I had seen in the bed of the man whose living I had sampled earlier. Maybe she meant more to that fictional man than she did to me.
She dreamed his dreams and spoke his words for him. In many ways, she had given him a life that he had never lived. Her feelings were true and deep as they were misguided over the fate of a man whom she was never to know. It was not the man whose thoughts I had thought who she was weeping for.
To look at her, the coldest man on the jury thought back to the mother whom he had lost in childhood. I could somehow smell the perfume from his well worn memory of forgotten youth. His pain manifested in my own chest as though it was a feeling that I had known for myself. In his eyes, the stranger I half knew found comfort that she believed she had with the man that I had been for an instant. He wanted the justice that had been denied to the young, motherless boy whom he had once been.
No hope remained for the defense, even as its chosen champion tossed about overpriced and under weighted words. The case was already lost. Even the man who would live his many last years in a sleep approaching death would not get justice in the court of that day. Truth doesn't matter to the wounded heart.
I let go of the moments and the memories thereof and was gone from the scene. It should, in all measuring, have been the last of the strange dreams for that night, however, my light take on the incident left me enough strength to endure another. Hours longer passed in the nameless place while I recovered the energy that I had expended in the world of make-believe. Then I was ready for another scene in the movie.
At first, the image was hard for me to make out. It was like watching atoms bounce around in a tabletop. People came from far and wide to perform bit parts in the next dream that had been scripted for my viewing. They packed together so tight in the streets that I could not make out where one person ended and the next began. My eyes could not even make out that the living fog was a collection of people.
Cars were overturned and buildings burned. People were trampled underfoot and others killed at the edges of the moving mass. Injuries that I would not have expected from the fighting of a war were paraded before my astonished eyes. It was impossible for me to be dispassionate about the scene. The script had been written to effect me.
It seemed that the world was in panic, fearing that the end was upon the head of Man. Pulling back, into the cloudy skies, I could make out that the fighting was limited to small pockets in some larger cities in a relatively small portion of the world. I would assume, although I did not know and had not been provided with subtitles, that the conflict was limited within a single state. For the dead's sake, it was large enough.
What came as the biggest shock to me was the realization that I was witnessing a kind of celebration. People marked themselves with the seals of peace, then went out and killed their neighbors in the streets. Targets were random and I will grant that nobody was killed by intent. I had never seen such a massive killing by simple incivility. Had I still been one of the people of the outer world beyond the nameless