Glitch iiib?

When I pause to think about it, this disturbance, for I know not what else to label it, has been happening periodically for quite sometime throughout my adult life. The first time I can recall? I was sitting in a Medieval Literature class back in my undergrad days. Things momentarily got indescribably weird.

Not majorly weird. Just slightly off weird. Disturbing weird in a manner where you really wanted to demand an explanation for what you were experiencing so as to reassure you that you were safe from harm. The disturbance was really vague way that you could not pinpoint. It was like there was a ripple in the fabric of reality. As in ”something doesn’t feel quite right.”

But it was also not explicably wrong either.  It was not as though aliens poured out of an ancient worm hole from another dimension and engorged themselves upon the students in the class.  Or like several of us fell ill or suddenly possessed by an entity or rendered comatose. Nothing occurred that one could clearly pinpoint or articulate with precise detail.

No, it was just a minor, vague, unsettled moment in which something disturbing was momentarily felt by several of us within the classroom.

The closest inference I can call upon to describe the experience to the uninitiated is to ask one to recall how one momentarily feels when an earthquake begins. Things move during an earthquake. You move. But the movement is from such an indeterminant location and behaves in such unexpected manner that it confuses your senses. You doubt what you are experiencing. It is easy to do. You may think to yourself “I cannot identify the experience. Perhaps this, whatever it is, is not occurring.”   

If others are nearby you will nervously look to them for validation that they too are experiencing something that is amiss. And you hope to see them looking for your validation as well as it would be a sure sign that you are both experiencing a moment of shared distress.

And that is how I felt when this initial disturbance occurred during an otherwise uneventful class in Medieval literature. I do not recollect the exact piece we were discussing. I vaguely recall it being Le’Morte d’Arthur by Thomas Mallory. But that is as likely to be wishful thinking. As such we will strike that from the record as I have no independent sources that can confirm this as anything other than myth.

One moment the professor was pontificating on this or that. The next moment everything stopped. Something subtle and indescribable occurred and the posture of several of us, myself included, shifted with a subtle tension. It was a ripple. A tear. A hesitation. A silent pop.  

The professor paused. I looked at him. He looked startled. I felt he ought to look startled as I also felt whatever startled him and I would describe how I felt as startled. Though I was not looking at them directly, my peripheral senses felt a similar indescribable tension vibrating from a few other students.  

Then the Professor slightly gasped, and half uttered, a startled sounding “What?” He looked slightly distressed, as though he is suddenly unsure of his surroundings. As though, perhaps, he was suddenly aware that he was not where he once thought he was.

He looked at a few of us who appeared to share his same subtle distress.  I shrug when he looks at me, even though I too feel that there is an unsettled ripple in the air.  I do not recall the specific reaction of others.  

Though I felt like asking “What is this disturbance we are feeling?”, I said nothing because I could not articulate with any coherence what it was that we were experiencing.  I concluded the closest I could come to asking a coherent question about this incident would be to ask “Does anyone feel weird?” But I immediately censored myself from asking such as I felt I would sound feeble and daft. Due to the utterly foreign nature of the disturbance, we were unable to discuss anything about what was occurring.

The moment rapidly passed. Within seconds the class resumed without further incident.

It was the oddest thing. But since I had never experienced such a thing before,I simply shelved it as an interesting incident that was likely entirely misunderstood by myself.

I experienced nothing similar to this for several years.

Unfortunately these things now occur with a higher degree of frequency.