jeffkooblog

Here’s my sixth installment (of seven) of my Ministry Series:

 

Wandering in a daze, for once unfocused in my quest for the Great Secret, I found myself – for the first time in my life – on the outskirts of Centre City. It had never seriously occurred to me that I could leave the city; but maybe the Truth I sought was not to be found in the cyclopean hives of bureaucracy and commerce. So I left the city on an untraveled road and soon came to a hill. I had read about hills in books: they were for climbing. And so I climbed.

High on the hill was a cave. Caves (I had read) were where hermits and wise men lived. So I entered the shallow cave, only to find a bearded old man in a white robe, sitting in blissful repose. “What do you want, my son?” he asked as I approached him.

“Please, sir . . . what’s the meaning of it all? What’s the Great Secret?”

“Son,” he replied, “you’re a dreamer.” And I fell out of bed.

So the next day I searched the Directory of Directorates, Bureaus, Ministries and Secretariats at the library, and then found my way to the Directorate of Dreams. The waiting room was crowded, so I  took a number then took a seat. After a few hours my number was called and I was directed to a numbered stall within a honeycomb of identical stalls, and sat down before the desk. A bookish, bespectacled young woman sat behind the desk, her hands clasped on her spotless blotter. “Now then, are you here to file a dream, to access a file, or to access an interpretation?”

“You file dreams here? Catalogue them?”

“Where else would you expect dreams to be accounted for, if not here? Somebody has to do it, right?”

“Um, of  course. Well, I suppose I should file my dream first and then . . . maybe an interpretation? Is there a fee?”

“There’s no filing fee unless your dream is an Original. Do you suppose that your dream is . . . an Original?” Her tone was amused.

“I should think so.”

“They all think so, don’t you know. But you’d be surprised how rare a truly original dream is. I think we’ve about got them all by now. So tell me about your . . . original dream.”

“Well, first I dreamed that I was on the outskirts of the city.”

“Uh-huh, sounds like a D37 so far.”

“Er, and then I actually left the city. I was alone on the road.”

“Yes, clearly a D37TQ. Go on.”

“I came to a hill, and when I climbed it I found a cave.”

“Sir, what you had was a D37TQ, subtype RT95 – if there was a wise old man in the cave.”

“But . . . how did you know?”

“It’s all in the archetypes, sir. There is a finite distribution of discrete symbols in the human psyche. Although the permutations theoretically approach the infinite, true Originals are, as I said, very rare. So you asked him what . . . the meaning of life, perhaps?”

“Uh . . . something like that.”

“A subtype RT950, then. And what, pray, did he tell you?”

“That I’m a dreamer.”

“So there you have it.”

“Have what?”

“Well, you certainly won’t be needing an interpretation, now will you? No fee. Will that be all?”

“I suppose so . . . unless . . .”

“Unless what?”

“I don’t suppose you’d happen to know the Great Secret, would you?”

“Wrong agency, sir. Try the Ministry of Mystery. Oh, and would you be a dear and tell the secretary on your way out that I’m going on my lunch break? Good day.”

Leaving me lost in the lurch of my sad, solo search.