Free A Brief Moment in TIme by Jeane Watier Page B

to only the tangible and the concrete.”
    “Good point,” Retro responded. “But what do you mean about the future being complicated?”
    “Something happened to me. It’s kind of out there,” Gavin admitted. “I had an experience that felt totally real. I was interacting with people, having conversations, feeling things. Let’s just say all my senses were involved. I’m not sure if it was a dream or an out-of-body experience or if I stepped into some sort of alternate reality, but I woke up to find that none of it had really happened.
    “Right after that, some of the things I dreamed about started happening. I experienced one full day that felt like the movie Groundhog Day . I knew what was going to happen and what people were going to say. Then things started to alter slightly. Each day after that was more removed from the original version.
    “What I noticed right away was that when something familiar happened, I could react the way I had in my dream and predict the outcome, or I could deviate from the dream, change the variables, and the outcome would be totally different. It didn’t take long—a couple of weeks—till I’d altered things enough that nothing was predictable anymore.”
    “Holy shit! No wonder you’re so messed up!” Retro exclaimed. “Just kidding, buddy. That’s out there all right. I envy you, though; I’d love to experience those kinds of things.”
    Gavin felt relieved to admit some of the strange occurrences to another person, albeit this person might be a figment of his imagination, too. Whoever he was, real or imagined, it felt good to have a friend.
    Gavin headed back to his cell. He enjoyed his time on the computer, but it was severely limited. His whole life was severely limited for that matter. Yet what he was learning told him that none of the limitation was real, that it was just an experience he’d created.
    ‘Reality’ was definitely an illusive concept. It could be nothing or it could be everything; it could be whatever a person assigned it to be.
    Having read Don Miguel Ruiz’s books, Gavin resonated with the author’s analogy of a movie theater. It helped him make some sense of the term. Reality was like his own personal movie theatre. In any given moment, the things that were happening were like a movie showing on a giant screen, and he was the observer. However, his movie was just one of many that were playing around him. Others were sitting in their own theater, viewing their own version of life, and it was possible to get tripped up if he tried to see what other people were watching. Gavin believed that his focus determined which movie he watched, and even more important, his thoughts dictated the outcome of the movie itself.
    He liked the analogy because Kate had taught him that he had control over what he chose to think about. And the idea of a private movie theatre was similar to the personal space Kate had the men create in their guided meditations.
    He smiled as Kate came to mind. She did often, now, and he welcomed her into his thoughts. She had yet to do a guided meditation in their individual sessions. Gavin was tempted to suggest it, but he so enjoyed their conversations and sensed that she did as well.
    Besides, he’d practiced the meditations in his cell at night until he could imagine Kate’s voice guiding him and joining him in his adventures. He talked to her, too. He asked her questions and received answers. And more often than not, the information he received was the topic of conversation in their next session.

    He truly wished that he could talk to the physical Kate and explain what was going on between them, or at least try to explain it. He felt he owed her that. He wondered if at any level she felt the connection between them, if she experienced any of the things he did but was unable, because of their situations, to admit it.

 
    Chapter 10
     
    KATHRYN WAS EXCITED to share the news with Gavin. Because of her recommendation to the