Read Journal Entry #1 HERE; Read Journal Entry #2 HERE
I wish I could tell you that after the dream everything suddenly made sense. It didn’t. If anything, things became even more confusing. For days, I couldn’t stop thinking about what I had seen: a world where The Beatles never broke up, music that somehow felt both familiar and completely alien (not that I got to hear any of it before waking up), and then that final image—the one I couldn’t shake no matter how hard I tried.
The Glass Onion.
Even now, writing those words feels strange. I didn’t know what it was. I didn’t know why I had seen it. I only knew that something inside me refused to let it go. Then came the coordinates. They surfaced in fragments at first, like half-remembered song lyrics floating just out of reach. Numbers. Patterns. Bits and pieces that kept returning until they finally locked into place. And somehow… I knew they meant something. I just didn’t expect them to lead us here.
The entrance to the cave wasn’t dramatic. No glowing doorway, crackling dimensional portal or giant sign reading This way to cosmic revelations. Nope, just rock mixed with shadow. And an opening in the Earth that seemed to swallow light. Standing there, just beyond its entrance, even I had to admit that it looked unsettling — not that my fear level is a barometer for anyone else. But there I was, Michael Greco, Media Geek, student of pop culture, soon to be “fearless” explorer of alternate realities, suddenly very aware of the fact that caves in movies almost never lead to anything good — I actually half-expected a giant boulder to start chasing us.
Naturally, that’s when Eileen spoke, nearly causing me to shit myself. “Michael,” she asked, more than a trace of uneasiness in her voice, “do we really have to go keep going?”
I glanced over at her. Even in the dim light, I could see the expression on her face — the familiar combination of skepticism, concern and the unspoken question she had probably been asking herself since all of this began: How exactly did I get dragged into this? Before I could answer, Roddy chimed in. “Not that I’m concerned for any of you, but she may not be wrong.”
That earned a rare nod from Timmy, who was unusually quiet, triggering a basic truth: when Timmy Tribble stops talking, you pay attention. I nonetheless took a breath and looked back at the cave entrance. “I don’t think we have much of a choice…” There wasn’t exactly a rising chorus of agreement.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned about moments of genuine tension, it’s that they rarely survive long when Fleischer is around. We had barely taken in the darkness ahead of us when he stepped forward, chest out and wearing the kind of expression that suggested he was about to save the day—or accidentally level a city block trying (he’d done it before). Tilting his head toward the darkness, he casually announced that he could light the whole place up with his hot eyes.
Roddy didn’t miss a beat. He gave Fleischer a sidelong look and asked, with complete seriousness, if that plan included incinerating the rest of us in the process. Fleischer, his eyes having gained a red glow to them, smiled thinly. “No, Roddy” he said. “Just you.” Despite knowing the costumed clown before him was joking, the chimp nonetheless took a step backwards.
Eileen let out a sigh that somehow communicated exhaustion, disbelief and acceptance all at once. The truth is, this sort of exchange is the norm for us. Fleischer genuinely wants to help. He’s brave, loyal and absolutely fearless. Unfortunately, he also has an alarming history of solving problems by exchanging them for brand-new ones. Collateral damage isn’t something he ignores so much as fails to notice, hence Roddy’s concern over the proposed cremation.
Since I had no interest in becoming a cautionary tale involving overheated cave walls and superhero overconfidence, I reached into my bag and pulled out what I had brought for exactly this situation: a torch. Not a flashlight.
Without missing a beat, a thin beam of pure heat shot from Fleischer’s eyes, instantly igniting the torch… and nothing else. “Hey,” he said triumphantly, surprising himself in the process as his eyes went back to normal, “I did it.” He turned to Roddy. “And nobody died.”
“Day’s young,” he shrugged, earning a soft chuckle from the others.
Eileen stared at me the second the torch came to life, her expression hovering somewhere between confusion and amusement. She asked, with admirable restraint, if I had seriously packed an actual torch for this expedition. I told her I was going for ambience.
With warm firelight pushing back against the darkness, we started deeper into the cave. The jokes faded behind us as the silence grew heavier, and before long I became aware of something even more unsettling: the cave should have sounded alive. There should have been water dripping somewhere, wind moving through narrow passageways, stone shifting under unseen pressure.
Instead, there was nothing. No movement. No sound. No life. Just the crackle of the torch and the echo of our footsteps. And the deeper we went, the stronger the feeling became—not fear exactly, but something stranger. A sense of recognition mixed with dread. It settled in my chest so heavily that I actually slowed without realizing it. I had felt this before. In the dream.
I stopped so abruptly that Eileen nearly walked into me. She immediately asked what was wrong, but for a moment I couldn’t answer. My attention was fixed on something just ahead of us—something so faint at first I thought I might be imagining it.
Light.
Not firelight or daylight. Something colder, softer and almost artificial. A pale glow was bleeding into the darkness from farther down the passage. I could feel my pulse quickening. I knew this. The realization hit me so suddenly it sent a chill through my entire body. I had seen this before. The silence. The tunnel. The light ahead. All of it. Every impossible detail.
I turned to Eileen, probably looking somewhere between terrified and exhilarated. “This is it.”
Her expression tightened. “What’s it?”
I looked from her and gestured to the glow ahead. “This place. I’ve seen this place before.”
Roddy frowned, Timmy’s eyes widened behind his goggles and even Fleischer didn’t interrupt. For once. Eileen studied me carefully. “In the dream?”
I nodded.
That earned me a long look. And then, because Eileen has an almost supernatural ability to keep me grounded no matter how bizarre things become, she folded her arms and asked, “Just so we’re clear on this: I’m lying next to you every night and you’re dreaming about mysterious caves, glowing objects and coordinates?”
I shrugged weakly. “Sometimes I dream I’m Captain America.”
Her eyebrow went up immediately. “Not much better, dude.”
I pointed at her. “And you’re Peggy Carter.”
“Ooh, nice save,” she smirked.
I wish I could say the moment lightened the tension. It didn’t, because by then we had reached the end of the tunnel.
The passage opened into a chamber unlike anything I could have imagined and the dream hadn’t gone quite this far. The glow we had followed filled the space with a cold blue-white light, illuminating stone walls that seemed untouched by time. And there, sitting in the middle of the chamber like it had been waiting for us all along, was something so absurdly familiar and utterly impossible that my brain struggled to process it.
A television set. Old. Boxy. Silent. Its screen glowed with a cold, impossible light, our images reflected on it. And floating above it was the object that promised to change everything.
The Glass Onion.
To be continued
Read the comic strip version of Media Geek & The Glass Onion HERE.