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The flying surfaces, the rush of air over them when I nearly touched his wings, became a suction, dragged my set of wings suddenly into the Travel Air’s. They flew together all at once melted there, a foot of the wings, colors pulsing.
“Nice,” he said. “This world, there’s no such thing as a midair collision, do you notice? You can go ahead, it’s spirits and minds, no laws of space and time here. None you can’t break.” He smiled. “You don’t want to do this on Earth, OK?”
Reckless, I came closer, not a word spoken. My propeller spun into his wings. No rainbow-burst of fabric and wood flying into the sky. No loss of control of my plane into his. Two separate airplanes, half of them in one place.
When I slid back into clear air, my wings and his were untouched. It was not two airplanes here, but the idea of two airplanes, each one perfect, untouched by the destruction that mortals insisted when airplanes touched each other, or hit buildings, or the earth itself. You could fly your airplane through a mountain, in the after-life world, if you wanted.
Was it the same for us, too. When we’re the idea of perfect expressions of love, are we untouched by collisions or accidents or disease?
“Oh,” I said. “No hospitals here.”
He could have said, “Nope.” He didn’t. “We have hospitals. Hospitals are thought-forms, dreams, for people who believe in death-by-sickness.”
What a strange idea, I thought. I felt that anyone, dying out of illness, would instantly feel well when they left the world of mortals. I did, in my coma.
The two airplanes were safe. I was so used to the feeling, if I dare touch another machine in the air, we’re dead! Not at all. We blend a bit, nobody’s hurt.
He turned away, a steep left bank, and I pushed the power up and matched my wings’ angle of bank to his.
“An idea, an expression of love, can’t be destroyed,” he said. “Why wasn’t Puff hurt? You’ll see. Her spirit’s untouched, even when her body, in Earth-time, is wreckage.”
I’ll see it? My future? Good news! I thought it all, keeping the Fleet up with him, easing the bank down to level flight as he did, touching back the power. What a pleasure it is, flying with him!
“You’re a perfect expression of perfect Love, here and now,” he said. “Believe it first, understand it next, your material body is healed.”
“And doctors say the reason for healing is their craft,” I said, “their surgeries, their medicines!”
“Sometimes they do. Sometimes they realize their own love, their own beliefs do their healings.”
My body was locked in a bed in that grey concrete place in my lifelong belief of space and time. Yet we flew now over a land as beautiful as Earth’s.
What a teacher, Shimoda was. Change my mind, teach me to fly my spirit-self over the beautiful lands of spirit… I’m already healed.
“I’m not your only teacher,” he said.
“Oh? Tell me another.”
His airplane dropped over the fields, soaring over the slopes of color. “You tell me. Every life you imagined, every one you’ve written, they’re not fiction. You saw their spirit, writing, and when you saw, they came alive in your world. And those teachers will ever be with you.”
“All my characters?”
“All yours and others that you loved.”
“Bethany Ferret, Boa, Cheyenne, Stormy?”
“More.”
“Jonathan Seagull?” I said. “Tink? My little Idea Fairy?”
“Of course. And Fletcher, and Connie Shak Lin and the Little Prince, Nevil Shute and Antoine de Saint-Exupery, Ray Bradbury. Think of them, ask for them, and the belief of an image will appear for you. And they’ll surprise you. You know that.”
Yes. Secretly. I talk with my beloved authors. “Nevil Shute and Antoine de Saint-Exupery,” I said, “my friend Ray Bradbury, they’re not fictional.”
“Let me guess,” he said. “They’re living within you, aren’t they? Same as you live in a few of your own readers. Do you think that you have only one life, tied with your idea of a body?”
“Oh, come on. You’re kidding me.”
“Am I? You’re fictional, too, Richard, even though you’re having a dream of life that seems non-fiction.” He laughed. “Same as, you will forgive me, same as my own fictional life.”
