Bianka said

She was

Skinny and tiny

As a newborn

Bird.”

“Wait a second,” Oversoul Seven said. “I think your tenses are wrong. Even though Lydia died in the twentieth century, and is reborn in the seventeenth, shouldn’t you say, ‘Lydia will be called Tweety,’ because she hasn’t experienced that life yet? or is, ‘Lydia was called Tweety’ correct, because people think that the seventeenth century happened first? Or—”

They both burst out laughing.

Cyprus said, “You’ll just have to wait and see. That is, though all time is simultaneous, I’ll have to wait until writing the book catches up with my experience.”

Prologue Two

(Some time later)

“You are going to write this book, aren’t you?” Oversoul Seven asked, somewhat anxiously.

“In a manner of speaking,” Cyprus said. “I think the first part will be called, ‘The Odyssey of Jeffy-boy, Ram-Ram, and Queen Alice.’”

“Who on Earth are they?” Oversoul Seven asked. “And what do they have to do with Tweety and her new life, and my further education?”

Cyprus smiled. “That’s something you’ll have to learn for yourself. Real education always involves surprises. But pay attention, now. The odyssey of Jeffy-boy, Ram-Ram, and Queen Alice is about to begin. Of course, Jeffy-boy doesn’t realize what’s happening yet.”

Chapter One

Journal of a Surprised Psychologist — (Jeffery W. Blodgett)

These notes contain a record of my … what? Dream activities? Hardly the word for them. No, to be correct, this manuscript is a chronicle of journeys embarked upon, strange as it sounds, when my physical body sleeps. There are several points to be made and I will make them here, with my first long entry. To be honest, I write that last statement with painful acceptance of general limitations that I for one no longer accept. For I know beyond all doubt, as you will see, that there is no past, present, or future in usual terms. Granting that, from now on I’ll keep this journal as up to date as possible, and I have the oddest sensation that something important is about to happen even before I have time to sketch in what has occurred thus far.

Theoretically, these notes could be discovered in the past, even before I write them in my present. For that matter, they could come to light in some reality of which I know nothing. They could even emerge (as I know now) as automatic writing on the part of some stranger who lets down the conscious barriers of his mind; appearing as … psychological apports of a kind. Even as I may appear a wanderer in your dreams. Or you, in mine.