Free I Will Rise by Michael Louis Calvillo Page B

quickly, smooth, tingly and I feel incredible. I take a giant breath and cold air surges in, tickling the undersides of my new skin. My brain swims with a zillion thoughts. If I didn’t know any better, I would swear I was g od.
    “Almost.” Annabelle appears, same consuming eyes, same outfit, and a new slogan emblazoned across her T-shirt. It reads World Without End . She comes close and runs a finger over my bare chest. I can’t help but notice I am completely naked (as impressive below the waist as above). Strangely, I feel no shame. Assuming a strong stance, I puff out my chest and glower with pride over my perfection.
    “Easy. Flesh repulses, remember?” Annabelle crosses her arms over her chest and looks me up and down. Talk about perfection. She looks fucking incredible. Pure perfection. Dream fuzzy, but crystal clear, she barely looks real; she looks as if she has been airbrushed. Zero flaws. Familiar. Where have I seen her before?
    “Right,” I answer. Flesh repulses. But maybe not. What a difference a good body makes. For the first time I feel…sexy?
    “Unfortunately it’s a little late for that.” Annabelle reaches around and gives my bare butt a hard slap. “You’re dead, Charles. This body doesn’t belong to you. We were getting nowhere in the blue and I had to do something to ground you. This body is here to help you focus.”
    I am about to ask her who she is, where I’ve seen her and why does she look so recognizable, but I don’t like her slapping my rear as if it were a side of beef, so instead I grumble, “What the fuck is going on?”
    “Okay. Stop thinking. No more tangents or worries or distractions. I am going to lay it all out for you and I don’t want any more interruptions. Got it?”
    “But—”
    Annabelle raises a hand. “Just listen. It’s going to get a little complicated. You might not be able to understand everything I am about to tell you. Don’t get frustrated. Just give it time to settle. You ready?”
    I shrug.
    She begins to speak and I can’t help but get frustrated because nothing makes sense. At first. But as I listen and give myself over, Annabelle turns to a sweet purple cloud and flitters into my head via my left ear. Spreading and settling over my brain, she explains herself without the use of clumsy, inefficient words.
    Here is a flawed, labored abstraction of what she had to say:
    I am a dream.
    I am g od.
    I am time and space.
    I am Annabelle.
    I am Officer Lumpy and Paunch.
    I am everything.
    I am the only one who can save our world.
    In a nutshell: the earth chose me. My hand, that odd collection of nerves, that gimp-fuckup bastard, is the key to our salvation. It is the nucleus at the center of all organa. It is not only the destroyer of my life; it is to be the destroyer of all humanity.
    Needless to say, all of this makes me smile. I don’t believe it, but it’s nice to hear just the same. I am important. I am salvation. Nice.
    Annabelle continues on.
    Let me preface what comes next by saying that I am an idiot. There is so much I don’t know it’s ridiculous and when Annabelle tells me nothing is real, I am inclined to believe her because I have nothing in my brains with which to refute her claims.
    So then, nothing is real. Nothing. My beloved g od, your beloved car, houses, children, nothing. Everything in our world is a projection, a manifestation manifested by another. We are nothing more than terrestrial dreams. Things work like this: something unknowable sleeps and dreams our planet into existence. Our planet sleeps and dreams us into existence. When we sleep we dream our universe and when our universe sleeps it dreams yet another world into being. The cycle is virtually endless. There is a beginning and an end somewhere, but they are beyond our comprehension, buried under the weight of a million dreaming worlds.
    According to Annabelle, this is the structure of existence. Assuming I believe her—and I do—within this structure there are