"ENCOUNTERS"

An ordinary man walks into an ordinary backwoods bar to listen to the evening’s entertainment. He works with one of the band members from work, Glen, who is the drummer in this acoustic rock band. Noticing some friends of his, he walks over to a corner of the bar where empty beer cases are stacked high against an old smoke stained wall that has not been attended to since the previous century. They were sitting on bar stools that looked like ragged stowaways from the 1970’s with their ripped vinyl covers and protruding foam cushions. After saying hello, he takes a moment to survey the scene.

In the center of the common room, there is a pool table empty and abandoned with about five feet of space, surrounding it on all sides. Towards the back of the room is a busy bar attended by drunken bar tenders. Off to their right is a side room where the band has been cramped.

There are four band members, drummer bass, guitar/mandolin/banjo, and harmonica all of who took turns singing. Off to the left are the bathrooms and a small table. All the people here within are nondescript and exactly what you would expect in a backwoods white trash bar, until someone quite unexpected walked in.

In the duration of this ordinary man’s life he had slowly learned that at times he could mistake people for someone else. For some years he became cautious so as not to make the fool of himself. But more recently he had been noticing that these look-alikes also behaved alike and had similar personalities. They were not the same people, he knew that, because they would be of different ages and be in different locations at the same time. It always made sense to write it off as coincidence until a little while back when he had this bizarre dream.

He dreamed that all people had "souls" or "spirits" that were of intangible cosmic energy somewhere beyond our perception, perhaps the stars in the sky. These "spirits" were connected to us with fine beams of cosmic energy that incurred interference as it passed through our life-giving atmosphere. This interference blocked all communications except in dream like states. He accepted this vision as a novel idea until he had the realization that these "cosmic souls" may be limited. So when our population took a huge upward spike after the inventions of farming, sanitation, and modern medicine, they had to do something to keep up. Therefore they must have developed multiple threads to earth simultaneously. Meaning the person he was seeing now could have the same "soul" as the one he knew from his past.

Finally it all made sense why he was seeing his friend from Georgia, but 30 years older and walking into a bar in New York State. This is all so bizarre, I have to sit down and have a beer!