Time Flying Read Online Free PDF Page B

seconds before clicking the "add to shopping cart" button. I went through the couple of steps necessary to order the book and in a few minutes the book was on it’s way and would probably beat me home to San Diego.
    I closed my laptop and looked around at the now busy coffee shop. It was almost 10am, and I realized I needed to get a few last details cleaned up before I packed up the car, turned it over to the auto-transport company and got on an airplane for San Diego on Wednesday. Dumping the laptop case in the back seat, I climbed in the car, turned the key in the ignition, and pulled out of the parking space.
    The shopping center my most frequented Starbucks is in sits on a busy state highway, at a traffic-light controlled intersection with another highway. The second highway Ts into the shopping center, so leaving the center is a simple matter of driving out on a green light straight onto the highway, which I always did to go back to my apartment. When the light turned green, the car ahead of me pulled forward and I followed. Neither of us observed the black Hummer approaching from the left, its driver preoccupied with her cell phone. The Volvo in front of me got off scot free, but I wasn’t so lucky. The Hummer hit me broadside at about 40 miles per hour, the police would later determine, striking my Chrysler Pacifica on the left side, even with the back passenger door. I don’t remember anything but an explosive avalanche of noise, and the extremely brief sensation I was on the wildest-ass merry-go-round in the world, everything spinning, trying to find something to hold on to.
    After that, I have a vague recollection of music playing. I can’t recall the tune, or if there were even any words. Just the faintest hint of music.
     
    I woke slowly, groggily, like clawing my way out of a vat of tar. The environment, dark and humid, smelled heavily of vegetation, so I figured I was outdoors. I curled my fingers, the grass and a peaty soil giving way beneath my hands. I pushed myself away from the ground, sat up and looked around. Tropical plants, a very real jungle surrounded me and absolutely no sound intruded, save any noise I made. I realized that I this was one of the most comfortable places I’d ever been. I wore a pair of light, almost white shorts with Keen sandals and had my favorite olive-green RL t-shirt on.
    A sudden realization and memory of the crash surfaced and the blood rushed to my head. Oh shit. I’m dead, and apparently in Hawaii, I said to myself with no small measure of irony. I guess if anyplace on earth was designed to represent heaven, Hawaii would be at the top of the list. I stood and walked around and found the clearing I inhabited discovering it to be circular, bounded by the thick, impenetrable jungle to the outside, with some sort of pit in the middle. Between the pit and the jungle stretched 40 to 50 feet of a clearing, made up of a smooth and lush carpet of grass. Daylight filtered through the jungle canopy, but not enough of a view of the sky revealed the time of day.
    At some point in the next few minutes, I somehow came to the realization that this was all a hallucination. Everything seemed real enough, sure, but there was something …artificial about the setting. If that wasn’t enough, adding to the sense of unreal, I remember what I did next like yesterday, even though I can’t explain the thought process.
    I climbed to my feet, walked straight across the grass-carpeted clearing separating jungle from the hole, and stood for a second at the edge of what I can only describe as an abyss. I spread my arms out to the sides and let myself fall forward into a dive into something  I couldn’t  even begin to see. Again, I’m not sure what compelled me to do this, or what set of skills I called upon, because I’m a passable swimmer, but no kind of diver at all. I’m pretty sure the dive was Olympic medal quality though, and continued for what seemed like minutes, until I hit, my