What is déjà vu? Is it a feeling or an experience? If it’s a feeling, then is it a good feeling or bad one? If it is an experience, then why is it that it can’t be recorded? Can you pinpoint, exactly, what makes a situation so familiar? Why can’t you recreate the feeling by doing the same thing twice? Is it possible to relive a future event? ... Is déjà vu even real?
These were the questions that Nathan struggled to answer ever since he was a teenager. He had déjà vu so often that his life felt like it was playing itself backwards. He found it strange that, as common as déjà vu was, no one had ever found any substantial answers as to why it happens. Another strange occurrence was how commonly everyone learns to ignore it when it occurs.
He attempted to make a record of all the dreams and daydreams he encountered, but the occurrences were so frequent and the descriptions were so ambiguous that the whole thing became ridiculous. His notebook was filled with entries like, “June 15th: I had a dream of sitting at the kitchen table, reading my tablet, and eating a bowl of ‘Incredible Berry Bits’ cereal.” Granted, the events weren’t significant, but they brought on feelings that were: sensations of conviction, humility, and revelation. Nathan’s search for an explanation of déjà vu eventually faded with his adolescence. Like many young people, he found comfort in an apathetic attitude towards life.
Nathan was twenty-four, yet he still looked like a teenager. He wore plastic thick brown-rimmed glasses. He was a bit on the scrawny side and believed wearing baggy clothes concealed his skinny frame, which it didn’t; instead it made him look like a fourth-grader who hadn’t grown into his clothes.
His brother, on the other hand, never experienced déjà vu, nor could he relate to it. Peter, like most older-brothers, communicated with physical force, compelling Nathan to forget the subject altogether.
As a child, Nathan would scream, “OW, PETER! STOP PUNCHING ME!”
Peter spoke with his teeth clenched together, “Shut up about your stupid dreams already. People are gonna lock you up for sounding crazy. Nobody knows the future. Who cares, anyway? Just let it go.” Peter punched his little brother every time he mentioned it, administering hundreds of bruises over years to Nathan, for his incessant questions and rants about his premonitions. Neither of them could have expected that those dreams were warning them of the grim future that they were living in now. Sitting in the bunker, Nathan had to confront the subject of déjà vu all over again, trying to piece together how his family knew that all this would happen.
A few years before the eruption, Uncle Harken bought this property from a miner after the coal industry turned belly-up. The major oil companies invested in extracting natural gas, and then flooded the market with a cheaper energy than coal. Coalmines were shut down and replaced by underground shale fracturing, or as they called it, “fracking.”
Consequently, the land was cheap and secluded. Uncle Harken, along with other family friends, built several cabins on top of the old mining property. They became a community of people who wanted to escape from the unnecessary pressures of the world, abandoning the consumerism of corporate America, and leaving society to its own pointless politics. But even before they all moved out there, they were already a very close-knit group of people. These were the people who watched each other’s children grow up; Peter and Nathan played with their kids and slept over at their houses.
Nathan’s parents were the last ones to have their cabin built and then move onto the property. It was always their intention to eventually quit their jobs and settle down, however they didn’t anticipate that their retirement would end so abruptly. On the day of the volcano blast, Nathan’s parents invited everyone to come over for a house warming party. Their house was full of their old friends, along with their children; turning the party into a reunion. Their last moments were in celebration of a new home, an ending that Nathan thought to be poetic.
He imagined what it must have been like for them. “Were they really taken away?” he thought to himself. A memory crawled its way to the front of Nathan’s mind. He remembered being told earlier about what the last moment of his parent’s lives would be like.
~ Two years before the blast ~
Nathan spent some time with his Uncle Harken at his property, several months before they built the new cabin that his parents would move into. At the time, Nathan felt disconnected from society like a stranded shipwreck survivor. Out of boredom he built a fire and watched the wood burn. He was disappointed by having to resort to such a primitive form of entertainment. Yet he was mesmerized by how the wood burned, not thinking about anything except the bright embers and the way the flames danced in the fire. Suddenly a sensation of déjà vu rushed upon Nathan. He had seen the flames dance in that exact same pattern before; even that smell of the burning pine needles was exactly as he remembered. A feeling of imminent doom came upon him. The fire emitted such warmth, yet chills scattered throughout the surface of Nathan’s body.
His uncle Nick interrupted the sensation. “Good idea Nathan; it’s a great night for a campfire. But I wish we had some s’mores.” Uncle Nick had been friends with Nathan’s father since they were children. He was a fun-loving guy that Nathan saw a lot of throughout his life, so much so that he referred to him as a relative. Uncle Nick joined Nathan and sat next to him by the fire.
Nathan was disturbed by what he just experienced, so he thought to ask, “Hey Uncle Nick, do you ever get déjà vu?”
“Uh okay? I kinda wanted to talk about how awesome s’mores are, but we can have this conversation too. Yeah, of course I get déjà vu. Doesn’t everybody?”
“Peter doesn’t. He doesn’t think it’s real.”
“Oh it’s real. I log it in my journal. Sometimes I’ll have dreams at night or I’ll be daydreaming about something, and then BAM! I’ll get hit with a vision or something. It may take a while, but sure enough it happens the exact way as I wrote; sometimes it won’t happen until a few months or even years later. But that’s why I write ‘em down so I won’t forget.”
Uncle Nick’s words gave Nathan relief. He was excited to hear from somebody who could relate. “I used to do that too! But no one would ever believe me because my descriptions were so vague,” said Nathan.
Uncle Nick chuckled. “Keeping a record isn’t for you to prove anything to people. It’s meant just for you. I wrote a journal entry last year of how I saw myself sitting on the toilet in an unfamiliar bathroom, but it was stocked with my favorite toilet paper. The weird part was that I got this overwhelming feeling of how much my wife loved me. Weird, right?”
“Yeah, that’s weird ... and possibly perverted.”
“Of course it seems that way, but these things are experiences especially meant for me. Lemme explain.” Uncle Nick had a huge smile on face, as he held himself back from laughing. “Six months ago, when your Aunt Vanessa and I moved out here, I was sitting on the toilet in the bathroom of our new cabin. I looked over and noticed that your Auntie was thoughtful enough to bring my favorite toilet paper out here. She’s the only one in the world who knows how particular I am about my toilet paper, and she brought it even though I forgot. That’s how much my wife loves me.”
“Okay, that’s not so perverted. That’s actually pretty amazing,” said Nathan. He still had chills on his skin from that déjà vu he just experienced, so he asked, “Have you had any that were scary?”
“Well I wouldn’t say that it was ‘scary,’ but it was definitely intimidating. I consider it a pleasant vision because it gave me a feeling of peace. Actually, this was the first dream that pushed me to start writing in the first place. It happened around the same time you were born. That was a long time ago, but it was so vivid that I can remember it exactly as I did back then. I remember being in a cabin by the woods. Your mom and dad were there along with a bunch of our friends. Something drew me to the porch window. I called your dad over to check it out. Then we stood looking at a hill side that was full of trees. All of a sudden, starting from the top of the hill, all the trees began bending over. They folded down the hill like a wave of dominos. Then I heard a very loud noise. It was like a very long low note from a tuba or a trombone, but it was a forceful sound, like having a semi-truck speed by your face while blowing its horn ...” Uncle Nick stopped to throw more sticks into the fire.
Nathan stared at Uncle Nick waiting for him to finish the story, but he just continued to fiddle with the firewood. Nathan waited to make eye contact with Uncle Nick and asked, “And then what?”
“What?” said Uncle Nick.
“What happened next?”
“Nothing happened next. That’s it. The sound was so loud it woke me up. I was sure that it must have been a real semi-truck driving by the house, blowing its horn, but your Aunt Vanessa swears that it was quiet that night. It was the first time I ever had a dream that didn’t feel like a dream. Another weird thing is that the hill side on the East looks a lot like the one in my dream. But I’m sure it’s just a coincidence because we don’t have any cabins here with a porch facing that direction.” ~
__________
Chills raced across Nathan’s skin. The feeling was all too familiar to him; he felt these same exact chills before. Nathan quickly stood up and slapped himself in the face. The sudden action caught everyone’s attention in the bunker. He walked over to his brother and asked, “Was Mom and Dad’s new cabin facing the hillside towards East?”
“Yeah, Dad said it was the only place left on the property to put it.”
“I noticed Dad’s face had glass shards in it when he died. Did anyone else have glass shards in their face?”
“I don’t remember. Uncle Nick probably did since he was standing with Dad when the shockwave came through.”
That was the confirmation Nathan was looking for. His eyes opened wide and shook his head in disbelief.
“Hey what’s going on inside of your head?” asked Peter.
“You were right Peter! Our parents didn’t die. They were taken away. Uncle Nick told me this was gonna happen two years ago.”
“Yeah, you’re like the only one who didn’t think so. The rest of us were there. We heard it happen.”
“You heard ‘what’ happen?” asked Nathan.
Rufus answered Nathan, “We heard the trumpets.”
Nathan was dumbfounded; a fairytale that he heard as a child in “Sunday School” actually came true. He asked himself, “How did I miss it? How come I didn’t understand earlier? ... Why didn’t I believe?”
~ Nathan thought back to his conversation with Uncle Nick ~
Uncle Nick laid the truth out for Nathan that same night in front of the fire. “If you setup a scenario where you could reenact the same thing twice, would it give you a feeling of déjà vu?” asked Uncle Nick.
“No. I’ve already tried it; it doesn’t work.”
“Exactly! Because it’s not a reenacted situation, it’s a specific moment that you’ve experienced before. You know, deep inside your gut, that the feeling of déjà vu is unique and not simply a coincidence. It has something to do with how we perceive time.”
Nathan sarcastically asked, “Okay, so are you saying we’re time travelers or something?”
“Well let’s not jump to one conclusion yet. Time travel is one explanation, although it does sound kind of silly. But I’ll entertain ‘your’ idea of time travel.”
“I said it sarcastically. It’s not ‘my’ idea. I brought it up to show how stupid it was and-”
“-Nope; you said it; it’s your idea; you’re the stupid one now,” said Uncle Nick in a childish tone. It was his way of bringing levity to a serious conversation. “Anyway, back to your stupid ‘idea’ of time travel. Do you think it’s possible for us to live long enough to see the human race invent a machine that can travel through time?”
“I won’t say that it’s impossible,” said Nathan. “But you never know.”
“Well if we do live long enough to see a time machine, then it is possible that our ‘future selves’ could send us back snapshots of the future and then call it déjà vu.”
“Actually, that’s not as stupid as I thought.”
“Except that the term ‘déjà vu’ has been around way for a couple hundred years now. And people who experienced déjà vu back then didn’t live long enough to see a time machine.” Uncle Nick pantomimed an impression of a dead person operating a time machine, and then laughed out loud. “It’s hard to say that déjà vu comes from a time machine.”
“Okay so if it’s not a time machine, then what is it?”
“Well think about it. What else can it be? What else can possibly have the power to control time and send us mental messages?”
“Aliens?” answered Nathan
Uncle Nick laughed out loud again. “Actually, I was thinking of ‘God’ instead.”
“Seriously Uncle Nick?” Nathan wore a skeptical face. “Do you really think my answer is any crazier than yours? God is just as much of a myth as aliens are.”
“You make a good point. It could be aliens. I can’t know for sure. It’s just that we have a limited amount of resources that talk about aliens, and even less that talk about them having the power to control time. Now almost every major religion talks about God seeing the future, and they’ve been saying that for thousands of years. Of course there’s no way to prove it, but there’s more evidence to research about God than there is about aliens or time machines.”
“Okay, you make a good point too.”
“Nathan, do you even believe that there is a God?”
“C’mon, how am I supposed believe in something that is ‘conveniently’ impossible to detect? We’ve got five senses and God cannot be felt by any of them, and we’re just supposed to believe He’s out there somewhere. Doesn’t that sound a bit ridiculous?”
“Lemme pose a scenario for you. What would you say if I told you that there’s a story floating around your head, about worm poop that will help make vegetables grow? You can’t hear it or detect it with any of your senses, but it’s there?”
“You know what I would say: You’re crazy.”
“Yeah, I don’t doubt that I’m crazy,” admitted Uncle Nick. “And your Aunt Vanessa will confirm it. But does being crazy make my statement untrue?”
“Of course it does.”
Uncle Nick pulled out his pocket FM radio and adjusted it to the national public radio station. The station was airing a documentary on night crawler worms that produce special compost for home gardens. “I was listening to this before I came out here. Your five senses can’t detect radio waves, but that doesn’t mean that they don’t exist. And just because you call someone ‘crazy’ doesn’t make what they have to say untrue.”
Nathan’s face froze like a child watching a magic show.
Uncle Nick elaborated further. “You know that it was the Greeks believed that everything was composed of atoms, but it wasn’t until centuries later when we invented a microscope that could actually see atoms and prove that they exist. What if, a hundred years from now, we invent a device that can detect God?” Uncle Nick paused to let that thought soak into Nathan’s head, and then he continued, “And what if that God, as described in Bible, was really offering us eternal life? Do you think you could really wait a hundred years to find out?” ~
__________
The bunker was still damp and the group worked to clean up and make sure that everything was still working properly. They had to be extra careful now. Clothes and blankets had to be dried thoroughly.
In a confined space, mundane inconveniences like mildew could easily become health-threatening problems. There was a small low powered laundry dryer in the back corner. The guys took turns peddling the stationary bicycle to ensure that there was enough power for the generators. Peter found cots in the storage closet and handed them out. The girls hung up the extra blankets on a string, dividing the bunker in half, so as to give themselves enough privacy to change their clothes.
They worked silently; there were no conversations, only a few exchanges in order to accomplish the tasks at hand. None of them were ready to talk about their lives being turned upside down. The cots were laid out with pillows and blankets on top of them. They were ready for bed. Peter turned out all the lights except one, in case anyone had to get up during the night. They all lay down with their eyes closed, but no one was actually sleeping.
The youngest of the girls, Vivian who was fourteen, broke the silence and whispered, “Nathan ... Nathan are you awake?”
The cots were lined up parallel to each other and spaced very close. Nathan opened his eyes to see his cousin Rufus lying a few inches from his face, wide awake. “I don’t think anyone is asleep, Vivian. What’s wrong?”
“How long do you think we’ll have to stay in here?”
“I don’t know ... until it’s safe to go back outside, I guess. The ash will have to settle first.”
“And then what?”
“I don’t know. We’ll figure it out. We’re all together and safe now. That’s the most important thing we should thinking about.”
Vivian was silent. Nathan thought his answer was good enough to pacify her, but after a minute she asked, “Do you think God hates us?”
Nathan didn’t have the answer to that question either, but he didn’t want to keep telling her “I don’t know.” There was no point in him trying to make light of the situation. They were all trapped inside a hole in the ground after just losing their parents. Nothing he could say would change that. Nathan chose to be honest. He said, “Actually it wasn’t until today that I realized that God is real. And I don’t know him well enough to say how He feels about us. But there’s gotta be a reason why He kept us all alive.”
Rufus made eye contact with Nathan and confessed, “I don’t know God that well either.”
“Me too,” said Cadence from the other side of the bunker.
Then everyone went around and shared the same sentiments, like some kind of support group. They say that the first step to recovery is admitting that you have a problem. None of them caused this natural disaster, but those in the bunker took full responsibility for not taking the time to find answers about God. They had relied on money, human ingenuity, and technology to give them the lives they wanted. They trusted that computers and pharmaceuticals could solve any problem that came their way. But what invention could have saved them from this? Computers and pharmaceuticals didn’t replace God, but rather they made the world forget that He existed. Unfortunately for them, God was finished with dropping subtle reminders. Survivors were scattered inside caves and shelters around the world forced to confront the subject of God.
“I want to make things right with God,” said Vivian.
“We all do, Vivian,” said Nathan.
Nathan closed his eyes in an attempt to get some sleep. His ears were sensitive to the sounds in the bunker: the low rumble of the dryer tumbling, the sporadic squeaks of the cots as people shifted in their sleep, and the faint ticks of the analog clock on the wall. Nathan focused on that ticking of the second hand, “tick, tick, tick,” like a metronome, hypnotizing him into a trance. He dozed off and his mind wandered into a memory when his life was “normal.”
~ Six months after Nathan graduated from college ~
Nathan was living with his parents in their suburban house a mile outside the city. He started his mornings with reluctance to get out of bed, because he dreaded having to face the "real world." He lay with his face buried in his pillow wondering how his time in college passed by so fast. The more he thought about it, the more he resented his college experience. He had devoted four years of his life and his parent’s money to graduate into the next level of his adulthood: unemployment. Nathan’s dad wouldn’t let him sleep in during the week. He yelled at him and threatened to put him on the street if he didn’t wake up. Nathan groomed himself and got dressed even though he had nowhere to go to. He came downstairs for some breakfast and pulled out his tablet to check his email for any job offers.
“What the heck? This is the eighth job that has rejected me because of 'lack of experience.' I bet it's because I didn't type in a microchip number on the application. Dad, I need to get chipped if I wanna real job.”
“Are you sure it’s because of the chip and not the lack of experience?” asked his dad, skeptically.
“Definitely. When my friend, Ted, got his chip he immediately started getting job offers. They make it impossible to get by without a chip now.”
“Your mom and I don't have microchips in our wrists, and we have jobs.”
Nathan immediately disqualified his father’s point. “That's different. You guys are old, and you own your own business. But nowadays you gotta get a chip to have a career. I mean, how else am I supposed to get health insurance?”
“You're only twenty-two. What do you need health insurance for? We have our own family doctor, we eat healthy, and we exercise. What do you think is going to happen to you?”
Nathan concluded that there was too much of an age gap between him and his dad. “This is just how the world works, Dad. I know you're old-fashioned, but you and mom are eventually gonna have to catch up with society.”
“Is it old fashioned to only buy something you can afford? Because you’re not getting any money from me to have that thing implanted in you.”
“You can get it done for free now. And it's got a lower APR than my credit card. But I may need you to co-sign for me though.”
“Why did I pay for your college, huh? If you want to get yourself in debt, then you’re first going to start by paying your mother and me back for that education. I’m paying all the bills right now and your mom does all your cooking and laundry. What’s missing from your life that you think a microchip is going to fulfill?”
“Fine fine fine. Way to guilt-trip me, Dad. I'll wait until I can afford to be on my own. But you're making it that much harder for me to get a real job.”
“Any job that pays you ‘real’ money is a 'real' job. Why don't you work for me?”
“Why did you pay for my college, Dad?” said Nathan. “If you just wanted me to work for you, I could’ve done that right after high school. I need something with career progression. I’ll never get to be my own man if I’m living off of you. This is your house and your car. I want to be able to have my own stuff.”
“Life isn’t about your possessions or accomplishments. I really hope you’ll understand that someday. Life has a purpose. I mean really ... Are you going to make your existence about money and buying stuff?” His dad didn’t want to stick around to hear a thoughtless answer, so he immediately slipped out the door before Nathan could give an egotistical response.
Nathan sat at the kitchen table looking down at his bowl of “Incredible Berry Bits” cereal. He was left behind by his parents and was alone to think about his future. He asked himself, “Why do I exist?” But before he could explore that question, a loud beeping coming from outside distracted his attention away. He looked out a window to see if there was a garbage truck backing up, but then Nathan remembered where he actually was.
Nathan opened his eyes and reached over to silence the beeping alarm clock. Then he got up from his cot and turned on the lights in the bunker. Everyone woke up with reluctance to face the “real world.”