Descending the Flint Hills: Prologue
A Disrupted Honeymoon
My life didn’t exactly flash before my eyes, but I did spend a quick moment reflecting on how I managed to find myself staring at the muzzle of a gun—one that had already killed three people. My journey was, to say the least, peculiar and anything but a straight line.
Three months earlier I was happily teaching sixth-grade English as Brandi Sheridan in Lincoln, Nebraska. It wasn’t exactly my dream job, having once aspired to the glamor of Hollywood stardom. Failing that, my backup was computer engineer at one of the big tech companies like Apple or Microsoft. Neither dream was realized for that sixth-grade English teacher. However, both continued to haunt my nighttime slumber and as well as my waking hours.
Those dreams were joined by other thoughts, visions, and memories percolating around my head. Most were barely perceptible, like a gnat buzzing in my subconscious, never rising to the level requiring confrontation. They were about people I never met and… well… lives I never lived.
That all changed three months earlier when I was on my way to school intending to entice middle school students into reading and understanding Hamlet. On that Wednesday morning in early October I was compelled to forego my teaching career and drive south. I didn’t know why and I didn’t know where.
Confusion and uncertainty slowly gave way to a moderate degree of clarity the closer I came to my eventual destination—Wichita, Kanas. I found myself drawn to two like-minded fellows helping a misplaced young woman and her friend, Gina and Dwight, find their way home.
Ironically, both like-minded men, at least in my dreams, were professors at a college I had never heard of in the middle of the Flint Hills. Granted, in those dreams I was living in Los Angeles pursing a doctorate in information technology by day and working as a purveyor of sexual services by night. One of the men, Thaddeus York, was congenial, albeit quirky. His companion, Nolan Roberts, stirred feelings in me unlike anything I had previously known—in real life or my dreams.
The two men at the end of my impromptu journey were not exactly manifestations of my dreams. The new Thaddeus York was a better dresser and not quite as quirky. The new Nolan Roberts was a self-centered country-western musician, who elevated annoyance to a pinnacle.
I came to realize that meeting these other versions of the two Flint Hills academicians was far from random chance. We were connected in ways that none of us understood—at that time. Although Nolan and I failed to help the misplaced pair, we discovered that death, that is, having one’s body vaporized, was not necessarily the end of existence. In fact, it was somewhat liberating, allowing each of us to fully embrace our other versions from other realities. In particular, my LA version—failed actress, pleasure consultant, computer nerd—was no longer a vague dream. Her memories became mine. It was as if that Brandi Sheridan was lost in the nether world of the multiverse. I sensed that her timeline had ceased, that she was searching for an anchor… me.
Nolan, Thaddeus, and I were like minded because we shared a collective conscious called Ralviinyloct, drawn together in yet another reality to help Ralviinyloct reassemble its consciousness. In the course of that particular adventure, Nolan and I went from our ephemeral, bodiless state to flesh and blood, corporeal existence. I don’t know how or why, but I suspected either Ralviinyloct or his self-proclaimed friend, Canoby Markloy, was responsible.
Unfortunately, once Nolan and I resumed a physical presence it was in a world already occupied by another Nolan Roberts and another Brandi Sheridan. The other Brandi was living my dream in LA as pleasure consultant and PhD candidate. Another Nolan was a world famous musician, songwriter, and leader of the Vacant Skulls.
It posed quite the dilemma. We had no choice but to assume new names and identifies—Lexi Taylor and Danny Franklin. In this new reality, Danny was not only the beloved nephew of Thaddeus York he was also my newlywed husband.
In theory, we were on our honeymoon visiting dear Uncle Thaddeus, meaning I was more than a bit annoyed to have a gun pointed at my face. Apparently the killer was about to add me to the list of dead bodies that included of Danny, Uncle Thad, and Evan Garrett. And unlike our earlier existence, I had no reason to think any of us would return as incorporeal entities.
