"What was that?" I inquired.
"That was someone who was tired to being here."
"Where did he go?"
"I dunno. But he's not here anymore and he'll never come back." She replied. "There are older people
that know about stuff like that, I'm just waiting for my mom and dad." She paused for a minute looking toward
the horizon.
"You wanna meet someone older who knows about stuff?" She didn't wait for a reply, she just started trotting
down the street, "Follow me!But I still want to go fishing you know." She headed down the street without
me.
I caught up and started with more questions. "So what happened to the people who are alive? Are we in a place
that looks like Chicago, so we have reference points?"
"Nope we're still here, neither of us have ever left."
"Then what happened to all the people? And the traffic? Where is everything?"
"They're still here, you just have to concentrate to see them. Boy, you don't pay attention very well, do
you?" She giggled.
We walked for a good long time, could have been days of regular time, but I never got tired or hungry. Allison
told me all about her parents and her "stupid brother, Mike," whom she really misses. Along the way,
we had seen several blue flashes that looked around and finally dissolved. But Allison refused to talk about them.
She said it was all too confusing and I should ask "the professor" when we get to his house.
We finally reached a house that must have been in Wisconsin. And there he was, working in his garden. Not just
a professor - "The Professor," the guy from "Gilligan's Island. I couldn't resist, "Hey Professor!"
I yelled out.
He looked up and smiled.
We went to his house talked about who and what we are, and what we were doing here. The Professor explained most
people here don't know anything about our current existence, any more that living people know about theirs. We're
just here. If you concentrate you can see the other world, which made the professor believe that we still exist,
but on some alternate universe or dimension, or something.
He showed me the "live" people that were occupying the house that he choose to live in. Allison kept
making things fall down in the house and the occupants would get startled, then she would giggle.
Until the Professor told her to cut it out. He explained how some people become obsessed with communicating with
"the other dimension," and that's all they do. He didn't want Allison to fall into that rut. They've
been friends for a while, I gathered.
