Entry 3

From the Audio Journal of Niles Dantes

November 18^th, 1981

*Begin Recording*

It would appear that I owe more to my time at the bank that I had appreciated. All those years of number crunching helped cultivate a methodical, meticulous approach to problem-solving, one that has proven beneficial in understanding my current dilemma. For the past several days, I have been considering my…experience...trying to make sense of it, to determine its cause. 

Strange though it seems…what am I saying? This entire ordeal is so far beyond the bounds of normalcy that ‘strange’ cannot possibly hope to do it justice...I believe the experience to be tied to my writing. The last thing that transpired before it began was my writing of the phrase The clothes and food of children are plain and simple. That in and of itself proves nothing, but the location I seem to have been transported to bore a distressing similarity to that phrase. The children there were all nigh identical and consumed identical food…they were plain and simple. Those aspects were accentuated to the point of being terrifying, but plain and simple they were nonetheless.

It stands to reason, then, that my experience would have been different if I wrote something else. I shaped it. Yet it was not as though I found myself transported to what I envisioned. I was attempting to write of innocence, not horrifying homogeny. Warmth and tenderness, not cold lifelessness. Why is this? 

The only clue I possess was my mental scream moments before returning, the one thing I did that seemed to have an effect on that strange world around me. It was not just a scream, but a thought, active and deliberate, unfocused though it was. Could I, through carefully controlled thoughts, have produced other, more desirable results? Moved around? Communicated? If so, could my thoughts not also shape the very nature of the world itself if somehow used in conjunction with writing?

I speak of such things because it strikes me as inevitable that, if my theories indeed be true, I shall eventually be drawn into such a realm again. After all, I cannot very well live out the rest of my days without writing anything at all, now can I? Assuming that to be the case, I must be prepared for such encounters, knowing both when they are most likely to occur and how to best cope with them. The prospect of contending with this for the rest of my life continues to fill me with fear, yet it is now joined by another emotion. I must confess that the possibilities of such experiences under proper control excite me. I could be on the threshold of uncovering some aspect of the human soul, hitherto unknown, with unfathomable power, one that would change the course of history and propel mankind into a new era! There would of course be an enormous amount of fame and fortune bestowed upon the man who discovered this magnificent secret, but that’s hardly important in comparison.

Ah…there I go, getting ahead of myself again. There’s no guarantee of such things, or even triggering further experiences, for that matter. Back to the present.

I have decided that, come morning, I will try to generate another such experience, one under more controlled conditions, in which I will attempt to both shape and navigate the world I find myself in.

*End of Recording*

Please vote for one of the following in the comments section below:

1. Write a revised version of the previous trigger phrase.

2.Experiment with entirely new phrases.