Connecting the Dots (eBook)

Jeremy Newman (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2017 | 1. Auflage
272 Seiten
Bookbaby (Verlag)
978-1-5439-0927-2 (ISBN)

Thanks in part to a unique ability, Thomas Shaw always knows the right thing to say. Almost always in control of any situation, he is suddenly faced with a scenario that he didn't foresee. When all goes wrong and his life gets flipped upside down, Thomas must find the path that reconnects his past so that he may fulfill his destiny. In this humorous, yet unrelenting story of a group of people who set out to change the world, Thomas remains the focal point. Through a series of life-altering events and unforgettable spiritual experiences, he finds himself in a conversation with God. Acting on knowledge gained from that talk, Thomas goes on to alter the history of mankind. Then, after his second discussion with God in the dimension he helped create, Thomas' world, along with the reader's, gets flipped upside down once again.

Early childhood had been anything but normal for Thomas Shaw thanks to being born without the ability to feel or express emotion. Following a major brain surgery when he was still just a toddler, this little boy was finally given the chance to be like everyone else. After meeting Sunshine Hadel on the first day at her new school, the pair instantly form a bond that is stronger than most. The two of them start a band that becomes an instant success, but before they really get off the ground something terrible happens that causes their dream to come crumbling down. Thomas attempts to move on by picking up his life and moving to another state with his soulmate Natalie, but the band is never too far from his mind. Following a whirlwind of life-altering events and then an intense ceremony of self-reflection where he converses with God, Thomas organizes a reunion with Sunshine. Together, they bring the band back and set out on a year-long concert tour that helps inspire the masses to change the world. Along with the help from a symbol and an Oath to Humanity, Thomas and his friends spark a Revolution that spreads across the entire world. With their goals achieved and their lives seemingly in balance, the band gets together for one last meeting. By combining their energy, they are able to recreate a realm that mankind had lost access to long ago. While in this dimension, Thomas is summoned by God once more and is forced to face the most difficult test of his life. This time, he must do it alone.

PROLOGUE

Sometime in May, 1987.

He awoke from a dream. In fact, to be literal, Thomas Shaw awoke from a dream within a dream. No, it wasn’t any of that crazy Inception nonsense. This little boy was in a medically induced coma, put on by strong anesthesia that was causing extreme lucid dreaming.

In what I call his base-state of consciousness, Thomas was himself.

That is to say, he was a wide-eyed, outgoing, and rather intelligent four-year-old boy. He is able to control his surroundings, such as his shoes, his clothes, even his location. He remembers nothing of truly being awake, or of his life before this dream state. Thomas believes that he is in the real world.

There are other people walking around in Thomas’ consciousness. Instead of having faces though, every single person he meets has a translucent, almost holographic spot where their mouth, nose, and eyes should have been. Since this state of consciousness was all that Thomas knew however, he didn’t even think twice about the translucent spots.

Many peoples’ spots were brightly colored, with intricate patterns of unidentifiable shapes that shifted from one instant to the next. Others were much darker, and when looking at them, it was as if he was looking into the heart of a raging thunderstorm.

While in his base-state of consciousness, Thomas would basically wander through crowds of people with spots as their face. Most of these people completely ignored Thomas, but some would casually walk up to him and grab his hand. Others would frantically run up to him and put an ice cold hand on the top of his head. Almost immediately after being touched, whether on the hand or the head, he would become transfixed on the other person’s face, and then drift off... somewhere else.

This next state of being was known to Thomas as his elevated level of consciousness. After losing himself in the spot of the individual who touched him, he would travel through what seemed to be a wormhole. He would then wake up in a fantasy world where he was a different age every time, living in different circumstances. The strangest thing of all was that when he woke up in the body of his older self, it seemed to him that he had been living in that body for its entire life. Only when he returned to his base-state did he remember what his true situation was.

During his most recent excursion from what he thought was reality, Thomas was 58 years old and married to an extremely loud, angry, and abusive woman with the kind of dull, gray hair that looked like sidewalk cement. He was working as an Area Manager for a national pizza chain. He ran one of the most successful regions in the entire company, was vastly popular among his colleagues, had fantastic benefits and was paid more than enough for his needs. Thomas was also absolutely miserable for every minute of his life.

On the outside, Thomas was able to represent a normal, happy guy. Inside, he was drowning in depression. He would go to work, suffer through the same mundane routine of his daily life, then come home to his angry wife and stare at her dull, gray hair and her dull, gray face while she blabbed on about herself. (He didn’t know what to make of it, but while he was dreaming, the spots that covered the faces of other people were no longer different in any way. They were all the same size, shape, and color. An ambient gray.)

These visions went on for an indeterminate period of time, then suddenly he was awake again, back in his base-state of consciousness. Thomas awoke on a small rock in the middle of a vast body of water. He couldn’t see beyond 100 feet in any direction due to a very dense wall of fog, but he knew there would not be a glimpse of any land, even with a crystal clear sky. He knew this place well. He could still feel the ice cold spot on the top of his head left by the person who had touched him.

Although he knew he could be off of his island prison in the blink of an eye, Thomas decided to just relax and examine what he had just been through. He’d had many dreams that he could remember, but he could not think of one where he had been so miserable. It felt so realistic it was close to overwhelming, almost as if it was a glimpse into his actual future. If that was the case, he decided he would be able to avoid that future based on the decisions he made while he was still young. But how would I know what decisions to make and when? he thought.

Thomas came to the conclusion that his future was not set in stone, and there would be critical points in his life where he would have to choose one path or the other. There was no way for him to know which path would lead where, so he decided to keep his eyes open to all opportunities and hopefully, he could avoid the future he had just experienced.

After he had thought through the entire dream multiple times and analyzed every emotion he felt, he decided to get back to civilization. Thomas closed his eyes and envisioned the same building in the heart of the city that he always did. When he opened his eyes, he was staring at a dull yellow ceiling in a cramped room that smelled like dust. He took a shallow breath and rose to his feet. He walked over to the lone window in the room and peered outside.

What Thomas saw nearly took his breath away, as it had every time he looked. His particular building seemed to be in the dead center of a giant and spectacular city which had a constant flow of movement everywhere he looked. There were people streaming in and out of buildings, and down sidewalks and alleys. Thomas only knew they were people because he had been down there, amongst them.

As staggering as the city was, it had no real beauty. The only magnificence to it was the mountain residing just outside the city’s edge. It rose up from the horizon to cover the city and all its buildings in shadow. For Thomas, in his base-state of consciousness, the sun never moved from just behind that mountain, causing the peak to have an immaculate glow surrounding it. Any time he stared out the window Thomas would concentrate on the glow of the mountain, rather than the dark and depressing shadows of the city. He could not explain why, but he knew that somehow he had to get to the other side of that mountain.

He closed the drapes to the window but before the light from outside was completely cut off, it caught something in the corner of the room that Thomas had not noticed before. A mirror. He walked over and picked the mirror up and wiped off the thick layer of dust. Immediately after seeing his reflection Thomas took a step back and had to scrape his chin off the floor. Seeing his face, complete with a nose, mouth, and pair of eyes was not only a jaw-dropping experience, but it had actually stirred some vague memories. In fact, all he could remember clearly was that he knew that face. It was as if he always knew he looked that way, but being surrounded by people with spots as faces caused that knowledge to be suppressed in the depths of his brain.

This was the first time that Thomas truly realized that there were big pieces of his memory missing. Spurred by the sight of his own likeness, he began to remember bits and pieces from what seemed to be a previous life. He had a visual flash of a big white house with green shutters and four large Aspen trees in the front yard. Then, as that vision faded, another replaced it of a woman with deep brown eyes and hair to match. She smiled at him, then faded away as quickly as she appeared. A small tear trickled down his cheek and onto his lips, which he didn’t realize until he tasted the salty flavor. Next, Thomas was throwing a baseball with a man in a yard behind the white house, and he noticed that he and the man were laughing. Thomas knew immediately that this place, wherever it was, was where he belonged. Again the vision drifted away.

Thomas spent some time reviewing the information coming back to him. He felt deep emotions inside when he thought about the man and woman from his visions, and he knew that they were a meaningful part of his life. He just could not remember why. He was so confused. The house he saw and the yard he was playing catch in didn’t look like anything he remembered seeing in the city before. The houses here were all smashed together so you couldn’t even squeeze between them, and they were all painted in shades of brown and gray. The same color as the surrounding buildings and the sun starved landscape outside the city.

In his vision, he and the man were playing in a lush, exquisitely green yard with a fence separating them from their neighbors. The scenery looked like a completely different planet from where he was now. The beauty of the bright blue sky, and the crisp green of the grass; Thomas had no idea that colors like that existed. He was so confused. He couldn’t stop thinking about how that man and woman had a face just like his. Maybe that’s why the mirror sparked these memories, he thought to himself. Thomas decided he was going to find a way back to them. He had no idea how, but he knew it had something to do with the mountain.

Thomas began his normal routine that he stuck to when returning from a dream, but this time he was going to try something different. He went down to the first floor of the building and observed the steady stream of people flowing in and out of the revolving front doors. Thomas stood in the middle of the small lobby and watched for someone wearing a peculiar coat, the same person he looked for every time. The coat was one of few he had seen that was multi-colored and had bright red buttons,...

Erscheint lt. Verlag	17.8.2017
Sprache	englisch
Themenwelt	Literatur ► Comic / Humor / Manga
ISBN-10	1-5439-0927-2 / 1543909272
ISBN-13	978-1-5439-0927-2 / 9781543909272

Haben Sie eine Frage zum Produkt?

EPUB (Ohne DRM)
Größe: 406 KB

Digital Rights Management: ohne DRM
Dieses eBook enthält kein DRM oder Kopierschutz. Eine Weitergabe an Dritte ist jedoch rechtlich nicht zulässig, weil Sie beim Kauf nur die Rechte an der persönlichen Nutzung erwerben.

Dateiformat: EPUB (Electronic Publication)
EPUB ist ein offener Standard für eBooks und eignet sich besonders zur Darstellung von Belletristik und Sachbüchern. Der Fließtext wird dynamisch an die Display- und Schriftgröße angepasst. Auch für mobile Lesegeräte ist EPUB daher gut geeignet.

Systemvoraussetzungen:
PC/Mac: Mit einem PC oder Mac können Sie dieses eBook lesen. Sie benötigen dafür die kostenlose Software Adobe Digital Editions.
eReader: Dieses eBook kann mit (fast) allen eBook-Readern gelesen werden. Mit dem amazon-Kindle ist es aber nicht kompatibel.
Smartphone/Tablet: Egal ob Apple oder Android, dieses eBook können Sie lesen. Sie benötigen dafür eine kostenlose App.
Geräteliste und zusätzliche Hinweise

Buying eBooks from abroad
For tax law reasons we can sell eBooks just within Germany and Switzerland. Regrettably we cannot fulfill eBook-orders from other countries.