Conduit

Author's note: Some of the beings in this story communicate via high level symbols, mathematical jokes, and other esoteric forms. All anthropomorphisms are entirely mine, and should not be construed as accurate.

I went in. 

DMT is really hard to talk about. How can you explain the unexplainable? The experience is entirely other-dimensional and often non-verbal. A lot of times, it's telepathy. There's no time, no physicality. Everything we know as humans is grounded in our own reality. So we're forced to explain things as best we can, using terms that are for the most part inapplicable. If we should even be discussing them at all. But what the heck. I'll give it a shot.

I took the third hit, the breakthrough hit, and the room began to transform. Color intensified as if someone had cranked the gain on a television set. The edges of everything became more sharply defined. The world suddenly became more detailed. And dirty-looking. But that's pretty common on psychedelics.

Then everything resolved to polygons. This is what made begin to take simulation theory seriously. Later events only solidified these initial impressions.

My own pet theory in regard to that is that we're not necessarily in a digital simulation. I suspect the universe might be a sort of organic internet, and DMT hacks our own analog computers, our brains, removing the blinders that keep us from seeing the whole of reality.

Digital and analog are just concepts that constrain our thinking, as is the concept of simulations themselves. All I know is that there's more to reality than we can perceive, or even conceive.

So, after the images intensified, things began to change. The ceiling and walls took on the qualities of jewels and precious metals. The utilitarian berber carpet started to look more like an intricate Persian rug. A magic carpet, even.

The trip might have ended there. Beautiful, compelling. But ultimately superficial. By then, I was immobilized with wonder. Luckily, I had a plan. My beautiful and loving girlfriend was there as my babysitter. When she saw me drop the pipe, she administered the last hit to me herself. A pretty big one at that.

I closed my eyes and saw the chrysanthemum. 

God, it's beautiful. It's a mandala of geometric shapes in every possible color. Sort of like the world's biggest kaleidoscope, but far more complex. I could stare at it for hours. But it represents the membrane you must pass through. I had become a creature of pure thought. I took as much of it in as I could and plunged forward.

I heard the crinkling. It sounds like the world as we know it being discarded as a frustrated writer would throw away a bad draft. Then I experienced something akin to light speed, and I was in the cathedral. It makes the chrysanthemum look like a finger-painted portrait by comparison. Breathtaking. Not that you breathe on the other side.

We call it the cathedral, but it's also bizarre. It's sort of a bazaar as well. Like a trans-dimensional Grand Central Station. Sort of a domed structure, impossibly huge, and made of, well, stained glass is the closest thing I can use to describe it, but more than mere glass.

Something entered me.

Not physically, of course. I had no body. But in the same sense that I had passed through a doorway, I had become one myself. I wasn't alarmed. Just another aspect of the experience. In all of my journeys, I have never experienced the least amount of malevolence. Not that it never happens, of course.

When I felt this entity enter me, I heard it say, “I'm going in.”

The sensation was brief, and not somewhat disturbing. I got the distinct impression that I was being used as a gateway or a portal in the same sense that DMT acted as one for me.

No big deal. I'm used to a certain amount of curiosity when I arrive. I've felt things enter me, and worse. Sometimes they make...changes. Very casually, much as you or I would adjust a painting or a vase of flowers. In fact, I credit these others with helping me to quit smoking.

So I paid this no more attention than a giant waterslide would its riders. There was too much going on at one time, anyway. Which is a funny concept. Time, I mean. When you're there, you're acutely aware that time as a concept is meaningless. Time dissolves into the ever-present now.

At the same, uh, time (see how hard it is to discard that concept?), the clock in your head ticks on as always. You're in the most wondrous place in the universe, and you keep thinking, “How much time do I have left? Four more minutes? Five?”

It's a very incongruous thought process. I try not to sully that place with emotions, particularly negative ones, but I can't break my connection with time entirely. Can you even imagine a place without time or dimensions? I suspect you can't.

In a bigger sense, all the time is there, and more than our three or four dimensions, as well. As I've said, it's hard to explain. I get the impression that that's what the DMT elves do there, among other things. They manipulate time. Or, rather, they manipulate objects within time, often leading to what we consider coincidences.

I think they do this out of some sense of purpose we can't discern. At the same time, they appear to love what they do. When I encounter their work back on Earth, I can't help but grin at the thought of some magical inter-dimensional elf placing some item in my path so as to create an amusing situation.

It's a long way to go for a joke, which is why I suspect there is more to it than there appears to be upon cursory examination. I do wish I understood their purposes. For whatever reason, questions of that nature are discouraged, there.

“You are,” they often say. “Be, do.”

Which should be enough for most people. For travelers such as myself, it's a little suspicious and unnerving. I mean, here I am in the presence of these other-worldly beings with access to more knowledge than we can hope to comprehend, and they discourage asking questions. It's sort of an affront to them that you would spend your visit interrogating them instead of just being there and experiencing it. So I'm patient. I'm pretty sure I'll have all the answers eventually.

The dimensionality is also hard to grasp. There are directions, forward, up, etc. but there is no real fixed point of reference. We all seem to gather on the same plane, often vaguely humanoid, upright in the same direction, out of convenience. Etiquette, even.

I've been there enough to know it's really more akin to cyberspace. I just don't seem to have the same amount of control they do. There's no doubt to me that they could assume any angle or elevation they chose to. More than that, I'm also pretty sure that they can chose whatever appearance they want. Everything you encounter is sentient.

So after that thing that passed through me or whatever happened, I saw my buddies. The brothers, I call them. Each of my eight visits, save for one, included an encounter with them. They're artists, really. You might even call them hipsters.

Unlike the elves, they don't see to have a strong sense of purpose. That's probably a faulty perception on my part. But they behave a bit like traveling entertainers. I'd say minstrels, but they don't sing. Cosmic jugglers is the most apt description I can come up with. In appearance, they remind me of characters from a Rene Magritte painting.

The show me the most amazing things, as casually as you or I would point out something mundane. Even so, I get the sense that they realize they are blowing my mind. And they constantly try and one-up each other.

One would say (think), “Watch this,” and toss the arc of a rainbow from palm to palm.

“Watch this,” the other would say, and our little solar system would orbit his head.

“Watch this,” and in his palm, a thunderstorm.

The ultimate moment for me was when one of them crumpled up three-dimension reality like a piece of paper and tossed it over his shoulder. Even his companion seemed impressed with that move.

I started to hear the rushing sound that indicated I would be leaving soon. My two performance art buddies tipped their hats to me as a farewell.

As always, I hated to go. Not that I had a choice. I didn't feel sad, as such. I carry that sense of wonder with me always. I also know that I'll be back. Via DMT, but I'm also convinced that it's the afterlife as promised by various religions. And it's better than we can imagine.

What made me write this, though, is what happened at the last few moments before I returned home.

I felt the entity whose presence I had detected earlier, this time moving in the opposite direction. Their voices faded out as I left, but I heard them talking to each other.

“What was it like?”

“Only three dimensions. Linear time. Fixed reference points. Physicality.”

“That's crazy.”

“It was...”