Excerpt: Drops of Ether

From Chapter 1:
Future peoples of Earth: This is the story of creativity and how it was lost for you. You may be asking yourself or me what creativity is or was, and it saddens me deeply that you must be hearing it from me, a dog.

From Chapter 7:
When I heard that sound, I got so scared, I ran down to the St. Ives' basement and hid behind David's old recliner, in the corner, where no one would see me. I hid down there all night and even peed back there. David and Emily weren't mad at me. They were ecstatic. The thunder had happened right above our back yard. And it wasn't thunder. And that stuff that fell wasn't a star, it was what Jeff Shifflett called Ether.

From Chapter 8:
"But seriously," David said. "Maybe you should be in a band, ever think of that? Really follow your passion. Your real passion, a real thing, not something you thought you might have heard of. And listen, I know you don't believe me, but if you stick with your passion long enough, one day, you'll be a master. We're all going to be masters, I guarantee it. I know something you don't know." Thinking he had said to much, he added, “Physics.”

From Chapter 14:
Oliver looked disappointed. "Do you play anything?"

"I used to play bari sax," Ronald said.

"Hold on one moment," said Oliver. He left the white room through a bead curtain made out of mardi gras beads. He came back moments later with a flute that he assembled on his way in. "Can you play this? And if you're going to say no, can you try any way? I love performing to live music."

Ronald pursed his lips the way he did whenever he blew into the top of a bottle and blew into the flute. To his surprised, a warm tone came out of it. He tried a scale using saxophone fingerings, and it worked, perfectly. Ronald felt like he had played the flute a thousand times before.

"Yes, yes, like that," said Oliver, and he did a move that Ronald could hardly perceive. It wasn't that it was too quick, it was too new. There was an legend that I found in my Internet research that said the native Americans did not realize that they were in danger when they saw the pilgrims arriving on the shore because they didn't recognize ships on that scale. That conundrum always bothered me a little. Because, even if they didn't know that they were looking at gigantic ships, didn't they wonder what those big brown things floating in the water were? Wouldn't they have been even more terrified not knowing? Wouldn't it at least have looked like a blur.

And that's what Oliver was to Ronald. Blur after blur, feet off the ground, feet on the ground, hands above head, head below feet, he moved so swiftly and confidently and in a way that Ronald couldn't even understand. But Ronald was also in his own zone. He wasn't even playing a real song any more, he was just finding random melodies and hooks, and hitting them hard. He didn't know if he was conducting the professor or vice versa.

Finally, Ronald ran out of breath. Plain and simple.

Oliver knelt in front of him. "Tired?"

"Yes," Ronald said. "Can I have some water?"

From Chapter 17:
Ronald told Jeff about his own experiences with the Ether in the last couple of months. He told him it was too exhausting to just track down and that anyone who might have access to it would never want to share. He said it had lost him his one true love, and had cost him an education. If the Ether was his destiny, it would come to him, eventually.

Jeff Shifflett opened up his telescope.

"Son," he said. "It just has." He set the telescope and aimed it at the sky. He focused the lens carefully and backed away.

Ronald stepped up to the telescope and peered through. He saw what looked like a field of random stars.

“What am I looking for?”

“There's like a hole up there,” Jeff said.

Ronald's eye finally found it. It looked like a tear in the knee of a pair of jeans. Thin, gray wispy tendrils waved slowly around the edge of the hole.

“Holy shit,” Ronald said. “Sorry...”

“No, you're right. It's amazing. You know, when you're livin out in the Arizona desert, doing a lot of drugs, hanging out with a bunch of wannabe philosophers, and having two to three vision quests a week, you start to forget which ideas you really believe in. And I knew the Ethosphere was real, man, that one just made too much sense to be merely the product of a drug trip. That's why I found you, and gave it to you.”

“Yeah thanks,” Ronald said. “You also gave me a pretty incomplete life, Jeff.”

“Are you kidding? Were you just looking up at the real life Ethosphere through that telescope or what.”

“Yeah, I was, but--” Ronald choked up. “I've been really messed up because of it.”

“Sometimes you have to suffer for the things you love. That's what I was doing out there in Arizona. That's what you've been doing your whole life for that big ol' hole up there.”

“I was, you're right. I'm sorry, this is just so weird right now. But thank you, I guess.”

“You're welcome, man. And check it out,” said Jeff, putting his arm around Ronald, “We find out how to get our hands on that stuff and we're set for life. For a complete life.”

Ronald sighed as he often did, not realizing how bad it sounded to the person he was talking to.