The Rotunda

Week 9

When I came to, I was curled up on a marble floor. It felt as if I had woken up from a really long night of drinking. My eyes were slow to open and were watery. My body was stiff, and my head aching. My muscles weren’t responding to my commands in a way that I was used to. I was slow to sit up. My muscles! It was almost as if they had shrunken in the dryer. I started to laugh at the idea that I had possibly been compressed in some way. Was I feeling the effects of that yoga class I took five days ago, today?

And then, RUMBLE! CRASH! I was standing now in an antechamber of some kind; a rotunda. Ornate picture frames hanging all around me. All of them crashing down to the floor during this most severe trembling from… the Earth? Within? Outside? The CRASH almost broke my eardrums and the RUMBLE almost snapped my knees.

“Where am I?” I whimpered.

When the trembling and bombardment had ceased, the frames that had crashed to the floor all began to levitate back to their original position. That had definitely got my attention and I began to fantasize that what I was witnessing was all a dream. I was lucidly in control. Though, if this was a dream, it would have been a most ghastly one.

In each and every picture frame that surrounded the rotunda, were still photographs of me! Each photograph illustrated a scene in which I was enslaved and all-consumed by my phone.

In the first image, framed in what looked like solid gold, was a picture of me sitting on the toilet in the bathroom scrolling into oblivion. Disgusting!

The next one showed me scrolling on my phone while driving! And then stopped at a red light and being “that guy” that is too late on the draw to accelerate when the light turned green. Infuriating!

The next one showed me slack jawed and bored scrolling when I knew I had only just a little bit of time to get some work done. Celebrity news was eating me alive. Was I drooling? I stepped a little closer. I was drooling. Infantile!

All around me where reminders that I had chosen my Master, and that there was no longer any question as to who/what the puppeteer of my life was. I had always attempted to justify that spending so much time consuming story-lines was only staying informed and being a part of a civilization. But in this rotunda, I saw in all 33 picture stills surrounding me, evidence that it was much more than that. It was Slavery. I was a Slave.

I curled back up onto the freezing marble and wept like a punished petulant child. I cried for all of my trials and all of my attempts at purging my Master. I wept for all of the time spent worrying and stressing about what would become of my future and the future of the “country” that I lived in. I wept for my Self and my vulnerabilities.

Slowly the coned ceiling of the rotunda began to slide open. A moon roof? Finally, I was going to be able to see the environment that I had found my Self in? Was I in a park? Rome? Where was I?

Through the glass above was David J. Berg. Staring right down into the chamber that I was crying in. His head was massive and it was looking directly at me, but he didn’t seem to see me. A Giant! Then came, THE THUMB. As it approached the glass above, I ran to look for cover. There was no where to hide anymore. THE THUMB came crashing down and swiped up, and up again, and then down. The rotunda crashed, and twisted, and buckled, and boomed! I was being tossed left, to right, up, and then down! No wonder I was sore. This happens a lot, I admitted. I took notice of my Self through the glass and up above. My eyes were bulging out of their sockets, my jaw slackened, my soul dead.

“GET OFF OF YOUR PHONE DAVID! HELLO! DO YOU HEAR ME! YOU’RE KILLING ME IN HERE! PUT THE FUCKING THING DOWN!”

As soon as THE THUMB made it’s final contact, all of the pictures on the wall came crashing down. It was over.

“Did you see this one over here?” An inviting voice beckoned from the opposite side of the marble dome. “This is one is of you scrolling through your phone while crossing a street! Completely idiotic! You can do better than that, David!”

My heart leapt with hope and happiness. I had recognized the clarity of tone in that voice.

“Dante?” I cried.

AHND