1: Time-Cave Guides

1912 postcard; portals salvaged from 1906 quake

I find myself in a fantasy novel by Patricia McKillip. I start out spelunking--which I haven't done seriously in years--in a cavern at the foot of a small volcano; the cave is rumored to be a spacetime portal. The place is no big secret; the entrance is a literal portal--in fact a Victorian portico--porch, steps, neoclassical pillars.

Yet I find a strange organization is using the caverns as its Secret Headquarters--a la Batman.

And then the dream resets and repeats! Only... each spelunking expedition finds a different organization. And they didn't take over from the previous bunch; it's always been theirs. Alternate histories!

Even the cave's details vary; always there, always big and complex, but slightly different seepage led to different chambers, flowstone curtains, stalagmites. Subtly alternate worlds.

There's just one constant: cave-guides! Kids from a big family of child prodigies. Siblings as young as four! They monitor the Secret Organization and their Plans of Conquest. I admire the kids' courage and brains, and I hope to meet some of their big sisters. If the rest of their tribe is anything like these little ones...

2: Bamboo Thug

Now for a change the caverns have not a secret lair but a big mall. Fountains and cafes much like Japantown in San Francisco--just add stalagmites. Here, the Organization isn't secret at all; it's a school teaching how to navigate such alternate-world dreams. For an underworld organization literally set in the underworld, it's pleasant enough.

Until I stumble on a young man beating a boy with a 2-meter bamboo pole. Sloppily. Misses him, hits ME. OW! Hit hard. I'll have big bruises.

Angry, I grab the end so he can't whack either of us again. Wait for him to apologize for clobbering a stranger and maybe try to explain why he's beating both of us...

Not a word! Just tries to jerk his weapon free. I hang on. The guy tries to fight me! While I distract him, the kid runs off.

I twist him round, get him in a chokehold using the pole. Don't cut off his air, but hold him tight from behind. He fights on!

I growl "I won't let you go till you swear not to hit..." Trail off as I realize I'm not sure who-all he hits or why. Decide to leave it open ended. No matter; he won't swear.

So I hang on and demand explicity "Swear not to hit ANYONE." Too broad? Tough! I'm out of patience with him.

Takes him forever to realize I mean it, and swear.

I let him go. Walk round the upper floor of the complex with him, as he vents uncontrollably, trying to justify his rage. Okay, he has faced a cycle of violence--they believe in corporal punishment here. Once a teacher even broke his arm and never faced any punishment--never even apologized. So now this guy beats his apprentice, hits strangers in passing... and spouts excuses.

Oh, and he plans to cheat on his exams! Turns out this shamanic complex is dominated by Catholics. He's in their training program, yet "their beliefs are stupid and I don't know them and I don't want to."

I'm a pagan, but even I know basic Catholic terms & doctrine. How can he not, with them all around us here? Why cheat? The test isn't hard and you only have to know their tenets, not believe them.

What's with this clown?

3: The Old Time-Traveler's Flat

Still in the caverns. I'm on a roof by a skylight (yes, I know, no sky to light it. I didn't add it on.) By it, half on it, a big long-haired cat sleeps. Wait... I know this cat. It was the very first cat the Dragonfly People ever saw! I've read their account, as their Intrepid Explorer approached the strange and fearsome beast, and petted it.

And lo, it purred.

There's also a furry elephant small as a dog, bristling with long pins stuck in it like a voodoo doll. Pink pins. The Explorer--now present--pets it too. Doesn't hurt his hand--all the pointy ends face in, not out. So... won't they hurt the miniphant? Apparently not. It likes being petted. Too.

And lo, it purred.

4: Cretacious or Victorian?

I respelunk--what a great word!--and find a third alternate world--new flowstone, new occupants. The cave never seems to run out of alternatives. I see no pattern to what we find; we never get the same one twice.

But up till today, they've only been crosstime differences--other forks with the same date. Now, though, we find we're millions of years back in time. We're not the first humans to come here; it's still a secret headquarters. But this time the gang's quite scary.

It's not all grim news. Outside, we meet sentient, feathered dinosaurs... adorable!

Literally. I'm attracted to one. Want to pet her. More than pet.

Will she purr?

I follow them through the dark back-caverns. Run into a tough woman who looks a bit like my old boss Judy, but she's way, way grumpier. A Human Expedition Leader ready to make those Hard Decisions A True Leader Must Make.

Don't want to pet her. Purr or no purr.

She leads us up and out... to our own time? I hope.

Out of the Portal into a fern-forest! Uh-oh. Did the dinosaur era follow us up from the caves? The cave-time always faded before--we emerged into my native time--but it looks like we're trapped in the past!

Then one kid spots a glimpse of a house... a Victorian! Not the Mesozoic, then. Just a century off, out of millions of years--a trivial error, really. Except that now everyone we knew is unborn.

Oh. There goes a modern bus. This isn't a century ago--those Victorians are just a century old. Never mind, then! We're in the fern-groves of modern Golden Gate Park.

Not time-shifted, just... timeless.

Well, that wasn't much of a plot! Trailing off... wait, am I complaining that I got back home alive?

Time-Cave Guides

• Patricia McKillip: her fantasies avoid archaisms but also modern slang, slipping the reader into a mythic present through style alone. Just as the caves seem seem timeless--or rather all times at once.
• Portals of the Past: a Victorian doorway salvaged from the 1906 San Francisco quake and fire, standing eerily for the last century on the shore of Lloyd Lake, near that prehistoric-looking fern forest. Whenever I pass, I imagine stepping through into other times, and I'm not alone; Lisa Mason's Summer of Love assumes it's a working time-portal.
• Child prodigies find secret hideout in caverns with a parallel-world portal:
  1. Louise and Jillian in Wen Spencer's Wood Sprites, one of my favorite books. Under its science-fiction skin it's a fierce critique of the world's elites--financial and political--calling them sociopaths we need to fight not endure (or worse, emulate).
  2. Just before I posted this dream, I realized these precocious cave-sprites echoed a much earlier dream--1994's Razi and the Holy Wino of Shasta. Decades before I read Wen Spencer's books! So whatever they mean, they have deep roots.

Bamboo Thug

• Needn't believe Church dogma, but you better know it: Joseph Henrich, in The Weirdest People in the World, shows that idealism, trust of strangers, democratic government, and even honest tax-paying are the fruits of early Catholic family policies obsessed with ending polygamy, weakening warlords and breaking up their clans. An outrageous thesis, but he makes a strong case with hard numbers: years of Church domination then correlate with healthier democracy now. Catholicism wasn't unique; Meiji Japan launched a crash program to squelch its clans & warlords too.
• Bruised arm, brutality: predictive! Two days later, I get my first Covid shot. Get a big bruise and then quite ill for days--a strong systemic reaction.

  Holo, the flirtatious wolf goddess in 'Spice & Wolf' Fan art by Rokkaku (on Deviantart.com)

• Chokehold: California just banned police chokeholds. I support the ban, but my dreams always like to show me the other side of a dispute. Here I find out firsthand why cops might use a chokehold to subdue the persistently violent. Trouble is, if you allow it, bad cops use it to kill the nonviolent.

• All these references to time travel--running into the future, not just the past: is the dream flagging it's about the future? I confess this was only speculation right after the dream; but two days later, after I got that shot and bruised up and ached all over just as in the dream, I had to add this afternote.
• Who's the time-traveler, then? Dreaming itself.
• Mini-elephant with flat-headed pins sticking out: Hello, Covid-19! Such a friendly virus. It likes to be petted. Maybe it'll purr.

Cretacious or Victorian?

• Feathered girl: the folklorist Dian, in the manga Spice & Wolf. Lawrence the spice merchant consults Dian about his flirtatious friend Holo the wolf-goddess. Is Horo just teasing him or is she serious? He is, but fears to wreck their friendship. Dian says "Nature gods and humans can mate, even have children." Later, Horo tells him Dian is a nature goddess herself--a giant bird disguised as human!

I have been feeling like a time traveler, as I watch Covid replay the 1918 flu pandemic in pathetic detail--then too, people rioted and refused to wear masks or shelter at home, though it was clear this saved lives. (Read America's Forgotten Pandemic by Alfred Crosby. And the best book on this era's botched response is The Premonition by Michael Lewis--he shows it wasn't just partisan denial. Leaders from Trump to Fauci to Gavin Newsom were all equally blind to the hazards of exponential growth. A county health officer, Charity Dean, risked her career to confront Newsom and force lockdowns and masks.) Nothing new! A century ago antimaskers stretched that pandemic to three years too. Extra millions died.

I thought we escaped Extinction Grotto only to find we're stuck a century in the barbaric past... because we are.

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