Reality is Relative

Word Count: 3,972


A man is sitting in a bar and looks up from his drink to see Death standing in the doorway. Surprised and shocked, the man jumps up and yells, “No! It’s not my time!” He runs for the back door and goes as far and as fast as he can from that place. Days later, exhausted, he enters a different town. He’s extremely thirsty and goes to first building he sees to beg for water. Who should open the door, but Death. The man is bewildered and says, “First, I was shocked to see you back at the bar. I just knew it wasn’t my time. But now, how could you have possibly have found me here? I was so careful to be sure that I left no trail and that one was following me.” Death replies, “I was surprised to see you at the bar too, but that’s because my appointment with you has always been here, today.”

* * *

One day a Scorpion comes to the edge of a pond. He wants to get to the other side, but knows it will take him far too long to walk around. So, he calls out to a Frog in the water, “Hey, Frog, will give me a ride across the pond?” Frog replies, “I’m sorry, but I can’t. If I let you near me, you’ll sting and kill me.” To which Scorpion says, “No, I won’t. You’ll be doing me a huge favor and I’ll owe you. Please won’t you give me ride?” Frog finally agrees and swims to the shore. True to his word, Scorpion doesn’t sting him and climbs onto Frog’s back. Off they go across the pond. Halfway across the pond, Scorpion stings Frog. Frog cries out, “Why did you do that? You’ve gone and killed us both!” As Frog goes numb and they start to sink, Scorpion replies, “I’m sorry, but… it’s my nature.”

* * *

My Uncle used to tell me stories like that all the time. He was a firm believer in things like fate. People are, he used to say, exactly who they are. Like Scorpion, they may pretend to be something different for a little bit, but, in the end, they will always be who they always were. Some, he’d say, would spend all their time and energy trying to outrun their destiny. They’d drive themselves relentlessly only to find out, at the very end, that it was a hopeless endeavor. Your fate and your nature are what they are. He used to say, the very worst thing a person can do is to deny their true self. Life, he’d say, is about coming to terms with who and what you are and going with it. For some people, it’s easy. For others, it’s very difficult.

The greatest sin, in my Uncle’s eyes, was try and make yourself into something you’re not. If you were meant to be saint, then be a saint. Do good works. Don’t tell lies or steal or anything like that. It doesn’t matter if everyone else tells lies, even just little white lies, the saint shouldn’t. A saint who turns to lies or other sins, is a person who will be truly damned. The same for a criminal. If you’re meant to be devious and con people or you find that you enjoy hurting others, then that’s what you should do. To deny yourself the things you enjoy most is an affront to the cosmos.

Odd things to tell a small child, no? Some of my earliest memories are of him sitting next to my bed, whispering these little stories, parables, and thoughts to a sleepy eyed child. Most, I think got stories read to them. Not me, not when Uncle was in town.

I used to think it was odd that he’d whisper. It wasn’t until later I realized he was being quiet so that Father wouldn’t hear what he was saying. Father had to know what was being said, but the agreement seems to have been as long as he didn’t actually hear it, he’d allow it. I can vaguely recall Father and Uncle arguing. I never knew about what, but I knew it had to do with me. There was always a sort of tension when Uncle would visit. Sometimes it would be just one a week and others a two or three days in a row. He’d be gone for a month and then suddenly back. Never any rhyme or reason to the visits. Never any indication of where he’d go. I, of course, was too young to ask. It was simply how Uncle was.

These days, I wonder if he was really my Uncle. He certainly didn’t look like Father. They certain didn’t seem close. It was more, Father tolerated him as a necessary evil. That while Father didn’t exactly approve, he allowed Uncle to visit. Which, I suppose, means Father really did approve and did want him to tell me things he told me. I can better understand the dynamic now. Back then, I really didn’t think too much about it. It’s simply the way life was. That’s probably the greatest thing about children. It doesn’t much matter what life is like, to them, it’s just the way things are. Children can be understanding and accepting of things that strike adults as so bizarre. It’s not until they get older that they realize things could be different – better or worse. At least, that’s how it was for me. I need to be careful generalizing. My life has been quite a bit different than most.

Things really didn’t start to confuse me and then make sense until Father died. It was that very day, when I came back from the hospital. I was standing in his living room. My mind wrestling with the thoughts and emotions that come with realizing this was the first time I’d be in his home and he wouldn’t ever be here again. My eyes tearing as all the firsts I’d be experiencing started to dawn on me. This feeling of being overwhelmed as I thought about trying to go through all of his things. That his live would, in essence, be reduced to a collection of things I wanted to keep and things I didn’t want to keep.

I’m not sure how long I stood there. I just couldn’t decide what to do. Where to start. If I even wanted to start at all. I was pulled from this depressive introspection by a knock at the door. It was, of course, Uncle. I hadn’t seen him years. He and Father had had a huge fight and Uncle didn’t come around anymore. But now, here he was. I started to tell him that Father wasn’t here, but I couldn’t quite find the words. It would have been another first, the first time I’d tell someone Father wouldn’t ever be here. He cut me off, pushing past me, saying, “I know. I’m sorry.”

“How could you know?”

He considered me for a while, before replying, “Knowing things is just what I do. That and more will soon, I hope, make more sense to you. But, for now, just accept that I know what’s happened to your father.”

Even though it had been years, I knew how Uncle was. One didn’t try to push him off or anything like that, one just let him do or say what he wanted. You just went with the flow. I closed my eyes and tried to clear my mind so I could better deal with him, “If you know. Then why are you here? Is there something you want?”

“I’m here to talk to you. There are things you need to know. Things, I think, you should have known long ago.”

“Things? What are you talking about? Gobblygook like you use to tell me as a child?”

He had this way of considering you. His head would cock to one side and his eyes would narrow. His face blank, but you could just see in his eyes that his mind was churning, deciding just what course of action would be best.

“I had to walk a fine like back then. There was a delicate balance of what I could say and what I couldn’t. Your poor father, caught in the middle. Caught between a promise made and how to best deal with the reality of the situation. As much as I disagreed with the path he choose, it was him being true to himself. A promise, once he made it, wouldn’t ever be broken. You know that. In fact, you’re the only case I can think of where he ever even tried to bend.”

Shaking my head, not following what he was trying to tell me at all, “Listen, I just can’t deal with whatever you have right now. I’ve just come from the hospital. He’s dead. I need to sit. To think. To deal with what’s happened. Not, whatever it is you’re cryptically trying to tell me.”

“I wish things were different. I do. But, the sooner we talk, I mean really talk, the better you will be. It’s like your father used to say, ‘reality is relative’. What’s real, what reality is like, depends on what you know and understand. Show movie or a car or flying plane to people who grew up in the remote Amazon jungle and they’d think it was magic. How else could they understand it?”

With growing exasperation, I flopped onto the sofa, “Just say it all then. I know you won’t go until you have, so get on with it.”

“I suppose that’s the gist of what I have to say, what’s real depends upon what you know and accept. There are people who are adamant that the moon landings didn’t happen. That’s just not part of reality for them. Others believe in one god or another. Jesus died and rose from the dead is fact to some and fiction to others. Reality is, indeed, relative.”

“And, you’re here to… what? Adjust my perception of reality?”

“Exactly. I’m here to tell you all things you should have known long, long ago.”

“And why wasn’t I told then?”

“When your parents first met, they promised each other that anything and everything would be done to keep you out of things. They swore to change your fate. A loft goal. An impossible goal. Or, at least, one not yet attainable. Perhaps it’s possible to do, who’s to say?”

“Just say it. What’s the big secret?”

“It’s not quite that simple. Not like I can just hand you a pamphlet. How nice would that be? But no, it’s not. But you want it in a nutshell? The short, short version is that you’re like one of those people in the Amazon. I’m going to show you things and tell you things that you’ll say are impossible or magic. Most, nearly all, other people would agree with you. Just like long, long ago, people thought that world was flat. Or so, people like to say today.

Did you ever hear it said that all the legends and myths of old are based on a kernel of truth? People thought for years and years that Troy from Greek stories was a fictional place. Until, one day, someone found Troy. Suddenly, what else in that story was true? Was there really a Helen? An Achilles? The Trojan Horse? All of which exaggerated in some fashion. Surely there was a warrior who was simply better than all the rest. There’s always a ‘best’, isn’t there? He turned, over the ages, into Achilles. A lovely woman kings fought over, of course. She became Helen. Did they exist at the same time, well, we’ll never know. But the kernel for each of them is surely true.”

“You’re losing me.”

“I’m sorry. I’m still sorting out in my head how to best explain things and I’m rambling. My point is that things you think are pure myth are not. There’s a kernel of truth in every fairy tale and monster.”

“So witches, fairies, demons, angels, vampires and such are all real?”

“Basically, yes. Not as the stories say, but the kernel of truth is there for all of them.”

“Right, so that’s what you want me to know? To accept? That there’s really a creature who lives on blood, has no reflection, can’t go out in the sun, can fly, and.. what else? Oh, right, can’t stand garlic.”

“Some of that is true and some not. Just like Achilles is a myth based on one or more great warriors, none of them were truly dipped in the river Styx and only vulnerable at the heae. But could there have been a great warrior who was shot in the heel with an arrow and then, while unable to walk since that all important tendon was ruptured, was killed in some other way.

“But, there are vampires?”

“Everyone loves to use them as an example. Yes, vampires are real. Not quite like the myths, but real nonetheless. Can they fly? No. Will the sun fry them to dust? No. Do they have reflections? Yes. Do they hate garlic? I suppose some do. Perhaps it really is toxic to them like it is to cats. I don’t really know about that one.”

“But, they do live on blood?”

“No, not they don’t. Think about what blood is. Think about long ago when the myth was created. Blood is like a person’s life isn’t it? Drain a person of blood and you’ve trained him or her of life. But, today, we’d not really relate blood to life the same way. We have more complex ideas what it means to drain life from a person. We think of things like a basic energy force. Ideas like karma, chi, and a soul are what we use today. Steal someone’s soul and you steal his life force. Something like that anyway.

“So vampires suck your soul not blood?”

“They feed off the energy of people. Have you ever been around someone who just made you tired? Who just seemed to, if you’ll pardon the expression, suck the life out of you?”

“Yes, but you can’t tell me that’s vampire.”

“Think of it this way, there billions of people, right? Each one different from the next. Some, like twins, are very similar and others very much not. Imagine if there was a database that had all the characteristics of everyone. Every physical tidbit and every mental nuance. Every everything quantified in one way or another. For any criteria from height to intelligence, however you choose to define that, to strength to speed at grasping new ideas, you could rank and compare people. Everything is on a scale, a continuum. Right?

You could plot out everyone by height. Most, the vast majority, would fall near whatever the average is. At the extremes, there’d be a tallest and a smallest. As you go away from the extremes, more and more people would be found. As you go nearer the extremes, fewer and fewer. Perhaps it’d be like the classic bell curve. Got it?”

“Sure, most people near the average, which is why it’s the average and few outliers.”

“Someone who’s much taller than the average, you might call a giant, right?”

“Sure, but that’s this got to do with vampires?”

“The ability, for lack of a better term, to do what vampires do is the same as any other criteria. It’s quite rare to find someone who’s a true outlier, as you call them. Lots of people are tall, but only the truly tallest would get called a giant. Same with vampires. There are many people who can sort of feed off others. You know them, you’ve met them. They are like the athlete who feels most alive when the stadium is cheering. Or the singer who wants the rush of the crowd roaring. You wouldn’t call them a vampire, but they do feed off the energy, the emotions of others. They are simply tall, but not a giant.”

“So you’re saying the average singer is a vampire?”

“Yes, is that really so hard to believe? Doesn’t it make more sense, considering how genetics and such work, that people are made up a countless facets? A giant is only someone truly unusually tall. But there are lots of people who are tall or even just a bit above average. Doesn’t the average person get more happy or excited when those around are happy or excited? To one degree or another, everyone feeds off the emotion and energy of who they are around. As the saying goes, misery loves company. It’s only the true outlier who fits the bill as a vampire. The person who has to feed off the energy of another. The person who can actively and intentionally drain energy and life from another. That’s a vampire. Just like there’s only ever a true handful of tall giants, there’s only ever a handful of vampires. Just the nature of being an outlier.”

“And turning someone into a vampire? How does that happen?”

“It doesn’t. A person is born with the ability or isn’t. Some can learn how to do it better, well if they realize they can do it at all. So it’s possible for a person to be born not really a vampire, but increase their ability and become one. Just like you could become faster or stronger or smarter.”

“So you are saying all the monsters and terrors of the night are, in some way real?”

“Not just monsters, but pretty much anything you’d call supernatural is based in some kernel of truth. Some bit of reality, just not exactly the way the story goes.”

“What about a werewolf?”

“Not bitten by a wolf and they don’t physically transform. A werewolf is one who simply can’t control his or her emotions. In particular anger. They simply grow into a rage on occasion. They can’t help or control it. As much as they’d like to, they can’t. They, metaphorically speaking, turn into a beast and wreck whatever they are near. Hurt whoever they are near, be it a loved one or a stranger. It happens, to a much lesser degree, to everyone. The true werewolf is one who’s prone to fits of extreme, uncontrollable rage.”

“Right. What about witches and wizards?”

“I told you about them long ago. I don’t know if you recall, do you? Do you remember me telling you what magic was?”

“No, I remember some of what you said. Things about Death following the guy and the Scorpion and Frog, but not about magic.”

“It was your father finding out I told you about magic that set off the final argument that we had. I crossed the line. But, we can talk of that later. Magic is a funny thing. Think about things like gravity and magnets. Science has these theories on how gravity works. They can write pretty equations to describe the effect of gravity, but no one really knows how it works. It’s this mysterious force that acts at distance. Theories tend to go toward there being more dimensions than the ones we live in, the three spatial ones and time. Gravity, the thinking goes, is the result objects existing in these other, extra, dimensions. Mind-boggling stuff to ponder. Just like trying to explain to some two dimensional being what ‘up’ is.

Magic is like gravity. Only, it’s the result of focusing your will to make something happen without actually physically making it happen. The ability to focus your will in such a way that you can make something move without touching it or burst into flames or simply appear out of thin air. Just how far can one go with magic? I don’t know. Could one fly? Teleport? Make something vaporize? I’ve met people who can do amazing things, but not to that level. Is it possible? I guess if one falls far enough from the average, anything is possible. Perhaps Merlin or some other wizard or witch of legend was real. Perhaps there was a witch who could fly.”

“So the simple way to say all this is that to one degree or another, all the fantastic things are, in one way or another, real. Right? Why are you telling me all this? Are you trying to say I’m some sort of outlier? Or Father was? Or you are?”

“Yes to all three. I told you at the start of this, I know things. I see glimpses of the future. I get ideas that pop into my head. Sort of like alerts when things happen. I can feel danger coming or have a warm fuzzy feeling just before something good. Precognition most people call it.”

“What about me? Father?”

“The two of you were the same. Did you ever notice in school, say at recess, whatever team you were picked to be on usually won? Perhaps not always and you were never the star, but your team won.”

“I guess.”

“You bring make other people, for lack of a better term, better. Your teammates played to the best of their ability, more often than not. In a group project, the idea person had better ideas. The writer wrote better. Things just seemed to work, to click. People don’t know why, but they want to be in your group. It wasn’t that you were the smartest or anything like that, but they somehow innately knew being in a group with you would work out for the best.

If I were to close my eyes right now and focus, I’d see my visions clearer. I’d see more. I’d be able to better choose what I see. With you, I could win the lottery time and time again. I could see my own death. I could do so many things. If you had been working at it since you were a child, you could control it. I mean you could focus your ability and truly boost mine or you could decide not to help me. As it is now, you can’t control it and so sometimes you’d boost me and others you wouldn’t.

Your gift is rare. Very rare. Coveted by some many. There are people who are good, very good, at finding things. They are looking for you. It’s to your advantage that you never developed your skill at the moment. You’re harder to find. A smaller signature, if you will. Make no mistake about it, there are those who want you. If they find you, they’ll force you and use you to their advantage. To go back to the vampire, an outlier who control that skill could use you to literally drain the life from someone – to kill just by being near the target. I already told you what you could do for me.”

“Now you have me terrified.”

“Good. You need to be scared.”

“You have real choice to make. You can either come with me and I’ll do what I can to help you. You can either try to develop your skill or I can try to help hide you. Or you can stay on your own and hope that no one ever finds you. I’m sorry, but you don’t have much time. Some, yes, but not much.”

“How do I know you’re not just going to use me, to force me?”

“I suppose you don’t. But, if I wanted to do that, would I have been trying to explain all of this to you?”

“Are you really my uncle?”

“You know that answer, always have I think, I am not. I’m am – I was, a friend of your parents. Sort of an uncle by familiarity. How about this, sleep on it tonight?”