CHARACTERS

I did a lot of remote field work while based in Perth which suited me. I liked being away and being in the bush. I met Rebecca soon after and we started dating and became lovers. Rebecca introduced me to dream interpretation and mythology and despite our different paths since then, we are still friends.

I first met Effie in a dream in the 1970’s and you can read all about our journey of discovery together in Allan Sankirtan’s first book, Dreams within Dreams.

We met each other for real in 1980, in the Botanic Gardens in Sydney and apart from short periods away for work, we have been together ever since. You can read about our meeting in the second book, Fields of Summer Dreams. Our common adventures, in this, and many parallel and alternate realities, form the major theme of the Dreaming Series. We both feel privileged to be part of Mr. Sankirtan’s extended family.

At the time Effie and I moved in together, I started a course in civil engineering. After a long career serving the community in various capacities, I now specialise in floodplain management.

My major interest, apart from my engineering, is mythology, historical research, dream interpretation, sacred mathematics and the symbolism of glyphs and pictographs. My historical interests led me to a study of star lore and ancient astrology practices. My clients regard me as a very gifted astrologer.

I first met Aidan in a beautiful garden we were exploring in our dream. I had fallen and hurt my ankle and he stopped to help me. He is such a romantic and I think I fell in love with him there and then. He proposed to me while we were having breakfast on the balcony after we had spent the night together in a luxury hotel. You can read all about our first meeting in Allan Sankirtan’s first book, Dreams within Dreams.

We met each other for real in the Botanic Gardens in Sydney. It was Valentines Day, 1980 and you can read all about our adventures together in Allan Sankirtan’s second novel, Fields of Summer Dreams. At the time, my life was in crisis. My infant son, Daniel, was in hospital, gravely ill and not expected to survive. You’ll have to read the book to discover my reaction when Aidan asked me to marry him for real.

Aidan changed my life and if it wasn’t for the fact that he challenged me to think about life in a completely different way, I wouldn’t still be alive so to speak...well as alive as any of us can ever be. He is the love of my life and we do everything together that we possibly can.

In his second book, Allan Sankirtan introduced Aidan and I to William and Rachel, who live in the 19th Century. Rachel challenged us to find a way to travel through time meet them in her reality. I am really looking forward to interacting with the two of them in Alan Sankirtan’s third book.

Una and Hans disappeared with my father’s new portable genetic scanner. However, it must have been faulty because when I used it to scan Una and Hans, it reported ancient prototype genetic material and went into error mode. If anyone knows where they are, please send me a message and let me know because I’d like to go home for my birthday celebrations. But if I go without Hans and Una, my career will be shot.

I’ve met some interesting people in Sector M, especially my namesake, Lieutenant William Fischer. He may be related somehow but I am not sure how. He’s a navigator, and I suspect, a spy. He could also be a pirate because I found him on an unmapped tropical island trying to bury a treasure chest.

I also came across him in Kings Cross, in Sydney, not far from a hideaway used by Hans, which means he has mastered time travelnd all may be linked to recent cases of aerospace piracy.

I also want to find my friend, Sophie who was banished to the early colony in Australiana in Sector M. She foolishly defied authorities and began speaking publicly about her dreams. She had found an old manuscript written by a 20th Century philosopher named Allan Sankirtan and I would like to talk to him about The Dreaming and our fundamental rights.

I met Aidan and Effie in the second book of the series. Effie is quite a looker and she said Aidan talked about the The Dreaming and about fundamental rights all the time. He calls me the Space Cadet and I don’t think he likes me. This is an interesting development but he denies all knowledge of Una, Hans, The Captain, or this Sankirtan fellow. I am sure he is lying and knows more than he’s telling. I can’t wait to interrogate them all and crack this case wide open.

Just the other day, we met a sailor named William. He was definitely not in the right place. He’s from the 19th Century (by your time convention). He was shipwrecked and washed ashore on an unmapped tropical island. The award winning author, Allan Sankirtan, wrote about him, his adventures and his missing journals. They sound more like nightmares to me. I can’t understand why anyone wants to sail the ocean in those fragile wooden ships. I much prefer my latest inventions which fly faster than the speed of thought.

Neither can I explain why the Space Cadet keeps turning up in William’s reality. I think there’s something flawed about his new guidance and navigation system. He keeps showing up in different places at the same time, and in the same place at different times. There’s another lost soul. No focus whatsoever, just like my favourite student, Aidan. Una says that that the Flight Sergeant wants to arrest me for stealing the scanner, but hey, it’s not my fault he put it down and turned his back. I’ll return it to him when I finally work out what’s wrong with it.

I met Aidan and Effie wandering around, lost and confused in Una’s sacred Garden. They were near my favourite place, the Zen Pool. And he calls himself a surveyor-- whoever heard of a surveyor who keeps losing his direction and getting lost-- he wouldn’t know north from south if I didn’t help him. He can never focus on one reality at a time either. He’s always flitting off looking for the girl of his dreams-- the one caught up in a huge flood, or otherwise, looking for William’s lost journals.

I keep telling Aidan and Effie that all the answers are here, in The Library, but do they listen? No. They just want to do their own thing and follow their own dreams. Dreamers, that’s what they are. All of them. And they’ll just have to sort it out for themselves. That’s what’s written in the rules and when Allan Sankirtan sorts it all out, he said he was going to write them all down, to make them more accessible and easier to understand.

In recent times, I have been looking after the herb gardens and the plant database, and linking it according to the genetic patterns to the library catalogue. Hans was talking about training extra staff to help with it all, but he is not sure exactly what changes he wants to make to the existing system yet. I think it is time for Hans and I to consider semi-retirement, so we can travel more. There are so many interesting places to visit.

Mostly, I like entertaining young dreamers, like Aidan and Effie, and William and Rachel, when they take the time to visit us. They are so refreshing and so full of hopes and new dreams. And they have so much potential. The so-called future is secure in their hands, I am sure.

A few days ago now, well maybe longer, we took a quick trip to the future to see what possibilities there were there. They have a lot of fancy gadgets, but the pace of life there is very, very fast. Too much flitting around for my liking. I think I prefer a simpler rustic lifestyle. Something a slower and more relaxed.

In Allan Sankirtan’s books, I read that William has been exploring islands in the South Pacific. Maybe he could take us all on a voyage of discovery. And if Allan Sankirtan gets a little more focus in his life, you may be able to read more about our future adventures together. Well, the so-called future that is. After all, The Dreaming is eternally new and freshly created every moment of existence.

I’m a naval officer and a man of principle. My promise is my word. I went to sea when I was seven and I’ve sailed two and a half times around the world. I’ve also been shipwrecked a few too many times. This sailing business is getting far too dangerous. And to make matters worse, I still haven’t learned to swim. Mr. Sankirtan said he would get Aidan to teach me, but that might not happen because we live in totally different time periods and Aidan still hasn’t learned to time travel. Maybe the Space Cadet can bring him to my reality. Aidan said he doesn’t trust him because, “It’s too complicated and much too fast for me.”

On my last voyage, I sailed as a British “observer” on a French voyage of discovery. Complicated business. Even the British thought I was a spy. It doesn’t matter what you say, or do, nobody in authority trusts you. In reality, I just needed a comfortable and cheap way of getting to the new colony at Botany Bay so I could find the girl from my recurring dreams.

I dreamed of meeting Rachel there. In my dream she was being washed down a flooded river. You can read different parts of my story in Mr. Sankirtan’s novels, especially the third novel of his dreaming series. I look forward to exploring his so-called future, and interacting with you all, when we all meet in the Crystal City of his dreams.

At the age of five, I was helped by the local people when I cut my foot gathering shell fish. I moved between the town and the local native villages until I was about fifteen when the Major took me to a farm on the Hawkesbury River to work. But I was free born and I’m not anyone’s slave, so I ran away and started living with a decent man who had earned his ticket-of-leave.

We had an adopted son, an orphan from the streets of Sydney Town. When the big flood came in 1806, our hut was washed away. I hung on to the iron ring attached to the barn door, but I lost my partner and our little boy to the flooded river.

I met the Capt’n (William) during the flood. You can read all about the drama of the flood when William rescued me and I rescued him. It’s all in Mr. Sankirtan’s new book, We Share a Dream. He says that such disasters, and how we react to them, shape our character, our future, and the collective future of the world.

Thank you for the opportunity to tell my story, Mr. Sankirtan and for bringing the Capt’n into my life. And thank you for introducing us both to Aidan and Effie. Without their help in our dreams, we would never have survived.