RodMer Short Story Package LL The Klane Shift
by Rod Anderson	for on-line reading now in your browser

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Here is Short Story Package LL -- a short story by Rod Anderson.

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This short story was written in 1985 and slightly revised in 2002. I never got around to submitting it to a litmag for publication. As you will see, the basic hypothesis concerns levels of consciousness more extensive (perhaps infinitely so) than our normal so-called 'sleeping' and 'waking' states.

Approximately 4,100 words

I'm writing this as an old man. Never mind my name. That doesn't matter. I probably have another name at other levels. Most people do. Klane alone seemed to be able to shift around keeping the same name. And, of course, Trina.

Yes, I knew the famous Klane. Joseph Elliott Klane., PhD, LLD, CC, Nobel Laureate -- though to all of us his name was simply that one simple monosyllable: "Klane". Klane and I were undergraduates together. In the 'waking state', that is. But no doubt you would have assumed as much even without that last sentence. Still, since the invention of the Klane Shift, one can never be too sure.

And as for Trina? Trina, whose name appears so frequently in Klane's famous treatises? Perhaps you thought she was an imaginary figure, a figure of metaphysical speech -- or at least some distant acquaintance idealized by Klane, projected into the realm of myth from some glancing encounter, like Dante's Beatrice. Nothing could be further from the truth. Those of us who were Klane's classmates know better. This was not a case of reality spirited away into dream but of dream incarnated into reality. Or so we thought at the time.

For it is said that one day many years ago when Klane was still a student, and long before he had become the great man and laureate he was to be, Trina came to him in a dream. The great inventor's friends disagree on exactly when and how she appeared but certainly appear she did. For afterwards, though some years later, we all got to see a lot of her.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. How did it start? Klane's brother, who ought to have known better, said it happened one autumn night in a drunken stupor following a college party. As if the future discoverer of the Klane Shift would ever have needed drink to stimulate his intellectual powers! Others said it was one spring day during an early morning bout of REM sleep strangely deficient in the customary alpha waves. Klane himself refused to discuss the incident. But I have talked to Trina, Trina with the dancing green eyes, and while she never said so directly, I could tell, by a slight movement of her mouth or the precise angle at which she inclined her golden head or how she suddenly sprinkled the air with petals of laughter at my questions, that I alone have correctly guessed the secret.

This is how I think it happened. It was neither spring nor autumn - nor even a snow-filled winter (such as we used to have in those days). It was midsummer and exceedingly hot. Klane was sitting in a wooden rowboat drifting about on Silver Lake, where we students often passed the holidays. He was drifting in the current and gazing, or so I imagine, at the sky. As if he had no serious business ever to attend to: no quark containment theory to disprove, no hyper-neutrinos to discover, no Klane Shift to invent. And after a time he must have fallen asleep and been 'pushed' down into a dream.

In Klane's dream we may suppose there were exotic flowers - flowers with a scent stronger than any that our present-day laboratories can produce -- perhaps a little like antique lilies. Red and golden humming birds hovered in the thick air, their strange, elongated mouths poking into a hundred fragrant flutes, but lightly, like the tickle of silken needles on soft skin. It was then, I believe, that Trina of the dancing eyes, Trina for whom I have longed in vain all my life, wearing her red and golden dress, and laughing quietly, first appeared.

"You needn't wake up, Klane," she said. "I prefer to talk to you in your dream." The great inventor had not yet devised his Shift technique. He still believed in dreams. That is, he thought dreams were a normal involuntary occurrence. An uncontrollable accompaniment by the subconscious of certain recurring stages of sleep. We all thought so at that time.

"I shall walk with you, Trina," he said. How he knew her name I never discovered. "And you will help me solve some puzzles which have been resisting me." Perhaps he was thinking of something like Kekulé's dream discovery of the benzene ring.

"Which puzzles, Klane?"

"Just some technical puzzles."

"Stubborn Klane! Examples, please." And her laughter cascaded about the garden of his dream, nourishing flowers, birds, and Klane alike.

"Well if you must know, perhaps we shall talk of light holes, the pseudo-universe, and time's arrow."

"But Klane, these are not puzzles!" she laughed.

"We shall talk about them anyway -- so that I may listen to the silver music of your voice. And then I shall wake up."

And so they walked hand in hand and discussed all manner of subjects I don't understand. Nor care to. My field of specialization lies elsewhere - despite my interest in the Shift. And all the time Trina kept repeating, "You needn't wake up, Klane. Wait a while."

But Klane grew impatient. As I suppose we all do sooner or later. "If you are as beautiful, Trina, as I am dreaming you to be, then I choose to wake up and see you in real life." At the words 'real life' I can only imagine that Trina must have filled his ears once again with her flute-like laughter. And then Klane woke up.

There Trina sat perched in the brightly varnished bow of his rowboat, smiling quietly. Klane must have looked at the myriad reflections of her red and golden dress flickering like dreams on the surface of the water, then looked back up at her. "I've never met you before, have I?" But Trina didn't answer. She watched a thin white cloud pass by and trailed her fingers in the smooth water. Perhaps Klane rowed for a few minutes and then paused. "I'm intoxicated by this golden moment -- and by you, Trina," he said. Trina didn't answer.

Instead I imagine she lifted her hand slowly from the water, letting the last few droplets fall gently onto her reflected dress. Then she must have turned her face, suddenly serious, toward his. "Now try this thought: that I have always loved the puzzled look in your eyes at this very moment. Your cautious conclusions. Your wildly incautious curiosity. And, Klane, yes even this stubbornness of yours. For, you know, I would have preferred to stay in your dream."

Klane returned late that afternoon. I myself saw him pulling the rowboat up onto the pebbly beach, his tan slacks damp at the cuffs where he'd waded the last few feet ashore. He was alone. Of that I am absolutely sure. But his eyes had a strange gloss which worried me. I knew something had happened. His other classmates noticed nothing and scoffed at my (what they called) 'over-heated imaginings'. Later, of course, when Klane was famous, they all said oh yes, now, they remembered exactly how it had started -- one winter, or one spring.

Five years passed before Trina's second appearance. Some say it was sooner but I am convinced they were misled -- who knows, perhaps intentionally. No, it was definitely five years because I remember we had both just begun our doctorates. By this time Klane had married Pengri, a simple, down-to-earth computer assembler whom Klane, in my opinion, should never have gone out with in the first place. But Klane was absent-minded about such things. One day, for instance, he came to lead a seminar on lepton symmetry without his trousers. He'd simply overlooked them. So it happened with Pengri. She was a neighbour. One day Klane arrived in church looking slightly puzzled and found he was about to marry her. I think he knew then - but was too gracious to back out. He's been a conscientious husband, I'm told.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Shortly after the marriage, Trina appeared for the second time. Klane, let us suppose, was sitting on one of those black iron park benches gazing at the sunset. The sun pushed below the horizon. Orange streaks rocketed upwards from its vanishing point. Then, as sometimes happens if you concentrate in the omega state, it popped back up and started to push again towards the horizon, but this time sliding along on more of an angle. Trina strolled casually up to the park bench.

Klane looked up and frowned slightly. "We've got to stop meeting like this, you know."

"We're not meeting, Klane. We've always been together."

"But I'm married now," he added. "Pengri is very dear to me -- in her simple way. I don't need you in my dreams. I'm content not knowing you."

"But Klane, you do know me. You know me very well. You've always known me."

"You're not real," said Klane.

"Real? Who is ever completely real?" laughed Trina. "Once I made a Lenten promise to be real for forty days. But I didn't last beyond ten. It was just too exhausting pretending to be real all the time."

"Were you pretending, though?" asked Klane, puzzled. "Were you?" And he searched those dream-like eyes of hers, his pulse quickening, as mine does now in the retelling.

It was at that moment, I believe, that the great man first glimpsed the possibility of Shifting. At any rate, he began to dream of Trina all the time and to control in minute detail the progress of those dreams. He often told me about them. And as for Trina, she began to come to our parties at the graduate school. And it was during that time that I was stupid enough to fall in love with her. Stupid because I knew it was hopeless. And yet I permitted myself to hope. She never came, oddly, with Klane. But with one of us. Just as well, because Klane always had that lame-brain Pengri in tow.

Once Trina came with me. She just called up one day and said she wanted me to take her to the party that Saturday. For three days I thought of nothing else. The two of us together finally. Her luxuriant laughter spiraling over our two bodies like a concealing vine. Of course, I had had countless philosophical discussions with her. But she was almost impossible to comprehend. And how can you keep your mind on philosophy when you're infatuated with a smile and those green eyes?

Saturday came. In my most private dream I was going to tell Trina of my love. That evening I picked her up at a strange apartment building I hadn't remembered seeing before. But this didn't surprise me. Trina was always changing her address. She just kept popping up in new places. That was her style. Some people found it annoying. To me it was intriguing. Part of her mysterious charm.

Again she had on her red and golden dress. I'd never seen her in anything else. Of course, Klane perhaps had been initiated into more intimate and elusive mysteries -- but certainly none of the rest of us.

Trina was as gay and laughing as ever. And, at the same time, sad - on my account, I believe. And frustratingly kind. How I would have preferred her anger!

"Yes, we shall always be close," she said. "Close friends." Her hand on my shoulder was affectionate -- but also purposeful in keeping me at the proper distance. And then it became clear to me what had long since been evident to the others, and indeed known by me subconsciously, and no doubt obvious to you as well. Trina had come to the party on Klane's account, not mine. The next day I left.

After that I lost track of Klane and Trina for many years. I was working on the west coast. Klane, I heard, was doing post-doctorate studies somewhere in the east. I ached terribly for Trina and I missed the challenge of Klane's intellect. But teaching and research kept me mercifully busy.

And then one day the Klane Shift hit the newspapers - not just the science section but the front page. One leading psychiatrist got his own front page coverage by exposing it, he said, as utter nonsense. But two others appeared on the television channels we had in those days hailing the Shift as a brilliant discovery, not inconsistent, by the way, with the direction of their own research. The first (the exposer) then recanted, conceding that the Shift did perhaps have some theoretical validity, but arguing that the underlying theory could hardly be said to be new. Others, however, trumpeted its newness in the learned journals and this newness was of critical importance for Klane's career, since in those days (strangely, now looking back) novelty counted above all else.

One astronomer hailed it as the psychic equivalent of the red shift! Which, of course, it was not. A weekly tabloid speculated on the practical uses to which the invention could be adapted, given enough money and technological know-how. Several investors talked about forming a new company to exploit the Klane Shift. Interviewers competed furiously for Klane's time. But Klane as usual said nothing. Just pulled on his chin, as if stroking an imaginary beard, and said, "It's all in my paper. I really can't explain it in one sentence."

The sensation, as I recall, died down in about two weeks and the world returned to the Environment Summit, the U.S. Open, election riding boundaries, and other important matters.

But a few of us began experimenting with Shifting in our laboratories - if you can call what we had in those days laboratories. I myself learned to Shift through three states at will -- though only after ten years of repeated failures.

Most people, of course, have heard of the Klane Shift but haven't an inkling of its meaning. I like to visualize it as a stack of plates in one of those old cafeterias being pushed down when another plate is placed on top, so that all but the uppermost sleep in their leaden inertia hidden beneath the surface, each waiting its turn to pop up when a customer removes its superior. Pushing down is like entering a dream. Popping up is like waking. Of course, a downwards shift, a push down, had always been easy. Simply falling asleep. But shifting up was much harder. The cybernetic freaks had labelled it 'popping' by analogy to stack operations in computer programming -- though personally I still find the cafeteria plate-stacks easer to visualize.

But, whatever its name, popping was definitely harder. Most of us had occasionally experienced the odd sensation of intentionally popping out of a dream into our normal, so-called 'waking state'. But popping up to higher levels was something else. Many tried it without success. Some of the earlier reports began to be discredited and, after a few years, despite Klane's Nobel Prize, the invention was quietly classified onto the back shelves as one of those arcane oddities of modern science, like quantum evaporation and the alleged thirteen string dimensions, that might or might not be true, and that, in any case, the woman in the street just did not have to take too seriously.

But some of us still did -- and kept trying. As I just said, for ten years of repeated failures. Countless times I would have given up had I not had such faith in Klane's intellect -- faith in his intellect and a suspicion that Trina had helped him with her intuitive wisdom, the source of which had always mystified me. In fact, it was precisely when I was struggling with the upwards shift in that tenth year that I again met Trina. Or rather she met me. She simply walked into my laboratory in her nonchalant way late one Thursday evening when I was working late.

"You needn't wake up," she said.

"But I am awake," I replied.

"That's fine," she said. "You needn't wake up." And she laughed. "Your friend Klane is obsessed with waking up. It's better not to try so hard."

"And how is Klane?" I'd heard odd controversies about him but hadn't seen him for years. "You still see him, of course?" I asked, adjusting my glasses. Trina didn't answer. Of course, to my continuing anguish, I already knew the answer.

"You still love him, don't you," I continued accusingly. "Klane with his brilliant mind, with his worldwide fame, and with you." I felt very alone. Trina still didn't answer. She was sitting on the edge of the lab stool, her elbow resting on a stack of my report binders. Her eyes were as green as I had always remembered. And in the middle of that greenness I could see a small reflection of myself looking sadly at her. And in the eye-glasses which this small, sad reflection was wearing, I could see yet a further tiny reflection of something or someone. It was Klane. He was smiling at me and beckoning with his hand. Or was he beckoning to Trina? Or maybe to both of us. My mind was spinning. And suddenly I realized I'd popped. And there was Klane walking beside me, in an open field, his hand on my shoulder, and Trina laughing at both of us.

"One's as stubborn as the other," she said, and her laughter splashed over us like a summer shower. Except that we were in full sun, in a crystalline meadow, the reflected sunlight playing on her golden hair. And I suddenly saw that my laboratory of an instant ago had merely been an imaginary reflection. A reflection I had dreamed about from time to time but which had no more reality than the illusion that the sky is round. Or than the apparent phenomenon of multiple sunsets.

"You see, it is possible after all," said Klane. "Come, I shall show you something." We walked across the crystal plain to a small house made of mirrors. He opened the door -- it seemed by making a quick sideways motion with his eyes. "Come in," he said. "This is our home." And he put his arm around Trina. A thousand of Klane's arms, a thousand Trinas tightly held, and a thousand solitary images of myself ricocheted off those mirrored walls.

"Then you've left Pengri?" I asked.

Klane looked surprised. "No, you don't understand. In the next level of sleep down (what Pengri calls the 'waking state') I'm married to her, poor girl. Well it won't go on forever, fortunately. I try to do well by her, and perhaps I do. She's a good person. As for here, this level -- here, I live with Trina."

"And at higher levels?" I asked, though I sensed what the answer would be.

"Of course I can't know that. You who've read all my work must certainly realize that that's impossible to know." He laughed. "The Klane on this level can remember (if he trains his memory) the Klanes at the lower levels. As you remember a dream -- if you work at it. But he can't possibly know the Klanes at higher levels. Though they know him. It's enough that he knows how to pop to nine higher levels at will."

"Nine? Nine is fantastic!" I gasped. Klane's intellectual stamina never ceased to astound me. I paused. "But how many levels are there?"

"Oh, who cares!" interrupted Trina. "You and Klane waste too much time looking at structure -- as if any of that mattered in the end. Do the best you can where you are. Shifting levels won't solve anything."

I looked at Trina and I tried to understand. But other things were too strong a distraction. How many years I'd lived asleep -- only half-remembering the mystery of those eyes and the strange, ancient keys in which their laughter rang.

Klane looked up towards the crystal ceiling. "How many levels? An infinite number, I suspect," he continued. "I think my lower self, one level down, is just about to make that discovery."

"Then we'll never escape out of this endless stack of dream states!" I cried.

"No, I suppose not," said Klane, picking a few octahedral crystals out of his trouser cuffs. At the time I believed him.

I didn't see Klane again for forty years. Then one day I heard from a mutual friend that he was dying of cancer. I flew to the country to which he'd retired and went directly to the hospital where the great man lay. Pengri was at his bedside, looking old and gray and defeated. But I felt no sympathy for her. She had never been right for Klane. Such was my smallness, my meanness of spirit. Besides, I was in almost constant pain myself - making a charitable thought an unattainable luxury. Klane smiled when I entered the room. "A higher Klane is dreaming my death," he said and laughed.

I reached out and held his hand. "Klane!" That was all I could say.

He smiled at me, keeping hold of my hand. "Every day there is something new to learn. This will be my first involuntary pop."

Pengri was sobbing. "I hate it when he talks crazy things like this." Privately she whispered to me, "He's not himself, you know. The doctors say the cancer cells have spread to his brain." But Klane smiled at me and shook his pale head slowly.

A nurse came into the room, adjusted the electronic setting of the intravenous flow, then turned her green eyes toward us.

"Oh God," moaned Pengri. "They send a new nurse every day!"

The object of this complaint bowed to Pengri, then turned and half smiled at me. But my eyes filled with tears. Partly because I am old and my eyes are always watering anyway. Partly because I had never expected to see Trina again.

And partly because I too must pop to another level soon. And while I have been there many times it has done me absolutely no good. For, of course, I cannot remember in that direction. For all I know I am on my deathbed in the next level up and in the level above that and so on. Ready to do an infinite number of simultaneous pops that will send me cascading through the universe in a shower of cosmic sparks to some distant corner. To sit there alone with my pains - forever removed from those dancing green eyes. Or maybe time marches more slowly at the higher levels and I'm still young there. But all the same, it's only a matter of degree, isn't it? Eventually, the time -- all the times -- must run out. And Trina will never be mine.

~    ~    ~    ~    ~    ~    ~    ~    ~    ~    ~    ~    ~    ~    ~    ~    ~    ~    ~    ~    ~    ~    ~    ~    ~    ~    ~    ~    ~    ~    

What you've just heard is a lie. I'm not an old man. In truth I'm quite young. I'm a young man remembering his dream of the old man. How could the old man from what he calls the 'waking state' have known the crystalline field full of sun and Klane's house of mirrors one level up? Of course he could not! I see you understand why it had to be a lie - or at least, shall we say, a fiction. And of course, as will be obvious, the old man's 'waking state' corresponds to what you and I would call a dream world. For when I pushed back down into that dream-world, there he was, still in his laboratory, rubbing his silly eyes, knowing that he'd popped and returned, but knowing nothing else. I remember he looked at his report binders where Trina's elbow had been resting, running his hands along the surface as if feeling for the slightest indentation. But she was no longer there.

How I detest that old man! That stupid old man with his pains and his watery eyes! He understands nothing. How can he -- when he's merely a reflection? He wasted his whole life trying to shift. Whereas I know finally that this shifting business is pointless -- as Trina always said. One might as well do what good one can here as elsewhere. All levels are unreal. At least, I know that intellectually. But, oh Trina, part of me can't give it up -- can't give you up. The old man still dreams inside me -- and for that I will never forgive him. Because we have nothing in common, he and I. Absolutely nothing.

Except -- except the thing that matters most. That matters above all else. Which is that at whatever level we seek, pushing down or popping up -- popping up through layers and layers of dream-like waters reaching for the sun -- however far we go, at whatever level we stop for breath, or decompression, at whatever level we search for the flashing scales of her laughter, we shall find nothing. For now I know for certain -- that Trina will never be ours, Trina will never be ours, Trina will never be . . .

		.......................Copyright  © Rod Anderson 1985-2002

Unpublished