Ground Control is Major Tom

Plutarch stood dumbfounded by the sheer impossibility of it all. Petrified trees, and petrified cars and petrified ramen noodles suspended between petrified bowls and petrified chopsticks held by petrified hands. It was some sort of cruel snapshot, as brief and invasive as a loud streak of lightning through windows in a stormy night.

Petrification was only skin deep, because something deep within made him move. Now he was a ghost in Pompeii. He felt guilty to see see all the people frozen in ignorant bliss, one placing an olive into another's mouth here, another shading his gaze from the sun there, elongated shadows whose bodies would soon be burning. He was the ultimate voyeur. Yet he was here. Against all logic and skirting any sensical scenario, he was here. Of course, he didn't believe he was here. He just gave breath to the idea in his head. If he was certain of anything, he was certain of his doubt.

Plutarch searched the deepest parts of his memory for any kind of precedent that could shed light on his fate and current circumstance.

"Pluto's Cave," he remembered. A smile played on his face. He began to laugh at the spectacle. The more he payed attention to his surroundings the more bizarre they seemed to act. Everything suddenly took the shape of a torus. Thousands and thousands of many-sized donut-shaped fields of energy occupied his field of vision. And somehow he knew that each one represented a thing. And that everything mattered. "Because everything is matter, and language is a spell," he thought.

He tried shaking his head to get out of the reverie. It was too late. Since the dream began, as soon as he crossed the flesh portal, he was part of this world. The illusion will always take hold. If only the old would listen to the young. If only men would fly on the knowledge that they always knew how.

"You took DMT."

Plutarch heard the words but he couldn't quite make out the meaning of them.

"You took... DMT."

All at once, the weight of understanding shook Plutarch out of his dream into the more present one. He began to collect himself and again become accustomed to the subtle man-made drone of the electromagnetic frequencies surrounding him.

"It's only supposed to last five minutes, stop writing," the other person there said.

"Why are you writing what I'm saying," the person there yelled hysterically, "what the fuck is this?!" he emphatically asked.

Both people there, realizing they were yellowing pages, shrieked incessantly until their cries became dust. They yellowed more with the rest of them, never heard and never known, sandwiched between two dark thick covers. The black notebook that wrote, was never taught how to read.