Three minutes down the darkest alley you've ever thought about avoiding at all costs, a luminous sign filled the vile, garbage-spattered brick wall. It was sprayed in mind-altering, glow in the inkiness paint, and it featured a face remarkably like the Changeling's, removing the stopper on a vial of something evil, and pouring a drop in a line of opened heads. I gasped when I saw it, as the bell started ringing louder, and louder … Who is it? (Groggy croak from the depths.) Pistil. She's going to the ocean, and needs a life ring. Or a life …. What? Lift. She could use a lift. Wanna come, soldier? You want me or the car? Take the car. I need my sleep. But she wants me. What time? And she's already on her way over. But she isn't. So I wait for her at the hip café, where multi-pierced tattoo oracles smoke chain reaction cigarettes, and fake English down-and-outisms playing overly-complicated card games with baseball hats, or buzzhead hairjobs, with long chains connecting wallet to pocket etc. Big baggy clothing hanging down the tight stomachs and legs, big hair-brained ideas and death-wishes daily. Who wants to live to forty? Lasts as long as you're still five years from the day. Anyone seen a girl named Pistil? Who? Said along the general loins of a threat, like: you better not be wanting her too bad buddy, 'cause she's me-git it when I want it girl. Dreamer. You get it when she wants in, and not a minute before. Men are so stupid, really. So anyway, I waited an hour. Then left. 678. The emergency code on the pager. Work's calling. You busy? We're swamped. A heap of trouble. Get here as soon as you possibly can. We edited stories about he upcoming digital Christmas, and the left-handed woman who had the two halves of her brain surgically severed. (She could speak perfectly, but could no longer write.) Not to mention the anniversary of the computer, which regarded itself warmly, looking back to the 18,000 vacuum tube update of the Mark II, which coined the term bug when a Grace Murray Hopper mounted a smashed moth found between two of the innumerable electrical contacts, in the logbook. Henceforth, downtime for the cantankerous machine was affectionately called debugging. This was all news to me. I gave the bio on Burroughs a second go-over, and underlined the part where he allegedly alluded to his two decade-plus morphine habit being his key to sound health. Is this true!? And bad underlines back to the sub-editor. Or did somebody make it up? While a renown medical text prepared by a suspected war-crimes Nazi is in the moral purgatory of never being used again (though it contributes to the saving of lives) ….. Jeeze. Viva la-coffee! Answered by a bunch of baggy-eyed ascents towards new piles of copy filling the gaps where the old went out. As if that wasn't enough, two armed men broke into blah blah, and shot the sister, while the twins watched, etc., and they are now tingling with excitement for discovering that the cortex of neglected children is 20% smaller on average than the control group, and too much violence can lead to over cortisol production which precedes these larger societal problems we might be able to pin on stress response i.e. elevated body temperature heart rate, and blood pressure. (In an acronym: PTSD) but I didn't read far enough to get the letters themselves, because the first two paragraphs stunk. Rewrite. Next! Quiet! I'm tryinta concentrate! Which meant he was working on a science article, with Lord son of someone from history mentioned along with a lot of unintelligible chemical signals. Lemme seeit. He throws us an acid look. I defy any of you to make sense of this shit. (He was a sociology major, and slipped through school using big words in crafty say-nothing ways). I riffled his pages. Well for one thing (bozo), you've mixed a sortie on soccer balls' allegory to molecular abacus research, with a newly-discovered glutamate receptor frontier for psychopharmacologists. See what I mean!? That isn't even a word! Yes it is! I heard it recently. Oh, git out! I did so. In San Francisco. I read on, weighing his miming lightly. Neuroscience is poised to create new medication, the likes of which has never been seen before. There will be a revolution in designer and psychiatric drugs, that will utilize the discoveries of over a hundred different receptor proteins. He was certainly ampped about it. I'll take this one off your hands …. Be my friggin' guest. …. But you have to count the Buckyballs crashing on the ribbed copper sheet. He puts his face to his desk, and voices a worrisome sigh.

In the aftermath of the great copy edit, I dine in a particularly gras Mexican joint, and warm my hands on a hot Toddy. The drink was so out to lunch on the menu, I had to have it. Your red beanz and rize Senoire. Didn't sound exceedingly Mexican either, but the plate was plentiful and good, and the solace was its salsa, at a barely sub-nuclear consistency that made my eyes water at six inches. Then, Pistil walks in. Like I'd asked her here or something. How did you …. ? I choke out, in between waves of red chile inferno. Your car. It's an eyesore. I nod, and reach for my drink. That won't help. she points out. I know this, but am too desperate to be so rational. Hot stuff, here. (Like I don't know the sky is blue.) I prescribe tequilla for a well-rounded meal of rebeans-n-rize. She plays on the waitress' funny Spanish. Been here a lot? (My voice at an absolute whisper.) Every time I go, I go twice. And I know exactly when, and what she means. One time in, and one time out. Hey Pistil, I'd love to speak intelligently about some Alfred Hoffman acid-hit-per-day apple doctor keep-away, but I'm afraid I'm lost in the genetic wilderness of no more Atlantic salmon, nested inexplicably with perilous disease for Key West reefs, and a pronghorn's 60 mph speed attributed to prehistoric ghosts' allegories of what does that say about US? I mean, if they're being chased by cheetah-like bears and gaping toothed tigers, still exhibiting highly evolved traits to protect them from non-existent enemies, how could we, (poor stupid humans that we are) exhibit anything but retroactive behaviors? The implications make Changelings' world that much real-er. You know this, don't-yo? Sure you do. It's all written somewhere, and sooner or later I'll be forced to six cuppa-coffee edit it. They'll save my inner cheek cells in a DNA bank, just in case the information needs to be revived someday - that brain-in-a-jar philosopher's nightmare come true, when we figure out how to access the pertinent memories we continually lose track of in day to day life.

But instead, I say: Hoyu-been?

And the mechanical moth in the wind tunnel spits vortex smoke from its wing tips, and the earth's core spins faster than anyone suspected, (erupting magnetic jets of frisky molten metal deciding when to flip), as extinct long-legged hyenas (up in Changeling's unchanging world) ponder the 400X Niagara Falls Black Sea cataract, and dream about North America, while some wine-soaked lout contrives the whole Noh-ha's Ark fiasco in a 2 mph stroll from the rising tide. "What have I been doing? Oh, not much." I manage to respond. Oh succulence. I'm full as pork barrel festering with scientists solving the intractable . "Just keeping pace with social mores." "What's that mean?" I din't know. I didn't think that far, before I said it. The world whirled slowly in my brain, rat claws scratching at the corners of my convulsing universe…. "What?" The themes were getting more and more concrete-too heavy to hang on to. "Sorry, you lost me for a moment." Flashback. The cryogenic dreamer, hurtling through space to another world, imperceptibly wakes. Oh; that was all a fabrication. Life on earth. The caws of crows-the entheogenic conference, Pistil, and all the outer bullshit. My terminally clogged drain. The lot. Things get hazy, and there's a scurrying at the edge of somewhere else… "I realize this a lot… but it's hard to articulate." Fishing. Hoping listener has a inking of sublime. "You know? There's this feeling I get sometimes." "For instance?" "That we're all rats in a giant eccentricity of cause and effect." "You mean, we're in a test tube?" "More or less. I feel lost in an unknown script I'm in the immediate process of reading." "And acting out?" "It is hard to separate the two." As the looming dark intergalactic projectile streaked to its irrationally distant destination; come again? "I know what you mean. In fact, I have a proposal." Yea? Something to do with time too remote from past or present-future for comment? Why don't we each walk around the building, independently." As if the man was watching us. White powder, from a very small bag. Five hundred dollars worth, he mused. Fits and coughs. No. First one like this, then; like this. Hold it. Look at the sky. Seea? And I figured we'd shot a third of it, fore and aft. "Difficult to…" as if that wasn't obvious. "Seems like a lot of fuss." "Oh'yea but you'll see why, won't you now?" As I did. Did I ever. "Ohma-gawd!" Subtle, isn't it? But it isn't either. And it lacked the violence, and still possessed the fury… "I've never seen colors like this!" "Nor will you again. Ever." Which should have made me depressed, but in the circumstances, it makes them far more vivid. "I believe you." "Then shut your eyes." "How can I?!" "You se the problem. Now examine that impulse to keep them open. What do you think you'll be missing?" He told me the drug's fast-acting. Profundity can't last long, or it kills you. Be aware for every moment of its infinity. "Appreciate the ductility if you can. Examine the plascit…" Something. He's trailing off. The sharp taste of burnt plastic singed my mouth. "Now close them." I did. I think.

DMT is a strong chemical to introduce into a tranquilly-throbbing bloodstream. Especially when it's squirted in, through a sharp short needle. "You've got to smoke some first, to understand." Like hell. All I truly indicated, in my sophist stupor, was my utter detachment from the web of reality, we tend to exhibit as here and now. I mean, we were somewhere else entirely. Some phantom dragon's lair, studded with the most inconceivable jewels anyone's ever bothered dreaming. It was so exquisite, I was sobbing, looking deeper and needlessly deeper into the crux… Into the molecular reality of the beauty, unfolding skywards. He barked. My hair stood straight on end. "Broke through again, did ya?" and there the fibrillating personage was, decked with weird fuzzy vibes of hallucinogenic followers. "YOU!" I coughed, as the colors swirled into that 3-D soup between this world, and that one. The emerging sunlight was marvelous. All fraught with colors non-drug eyes miss completely. "Wow." I ask you: What else is there to say? "Wow-ee." I profoundly stumble, once again. "This shit's… s-rong."

And the colors danced frenetically through my mind, which was more or less, allowed to see clarity. I could talk, and reason, with some absolute sense of who I was. "Di-you know he'd be there?" "No." as in, who are you talking about? Which I ignored, liking conspiracy better. "Your friend in there; he told me to turn you on." Which could have been just about anyone, short of the CIA (but maybe them too!) in the far outskirts of a mind that didn't even care anymore. "Can you be-leeve these colors?!" like an accusation. Like I'll maim him if the answer's no. What a mad substance. So hard to get high, so short-acting, and expensive. Three times slime equals something profound, hidden as escape. What is it people get, to work this hard, for a handful of minutes? After all, this instinct… to go there… It comes from something deep inside us, you know? I'll less high already; the field of vision blurs with drunken dancers, part-opaque with the brain's relentless struggle for complete domination. "Can we do that again?" "It doesn't work well… tailgating." And I know he took a bigger dose, and that his mind is less concerned with running things. His speech isn't struggling. It shuts off when it's done informing my relentless questioning.

The session ended with me none-the-wiser. If anything, I was more disoriented. Changeling's everything. Omniscient omnipresence, as manifest through all the bewildering versions of entheogenic revelry. He died on the stuff, so he could ride it's fourth dimensional wave back into the Earth ethos. Son of a bitch. Who does he think he is, polluting the Jungian airwaves? Such chicanery should go punished by the international psychic community. Or I should perhaps say, intergalactic. In any case, no source of reason tithed me into the next series of things just about to happen. (Whatever they'd be.) And that was the state of things… The way brain was working in its liquid cranial vat. All here and there simultaneously, slurping right and left, as I shook me head to clear it. "The freaky dude's right out there, waiting for us to drop in, by dropping out and turning on (bless his Leary soul). Those 60's gurus could have been preprogrammed to this plot, thirty years ago? Nahh. Or is it possible? I manage to grasp its biblical significance. Prophet? Son of someone first? Love triangle with Elvis and Aliens, seeks to take his children home? Yaw-way, the big cheese, sends Jose down for a look-see, and has mime sent back. Chance of it. Possible. Manage to make the leap of faith, this is bigger than one person? Why not? And what does changeling mean, anyway? Why… do they keep calling him that? And more importantly, why do I? Book: change·ling (ch³nj"l¹ng) n. 1. A child secretly exchanged for another. 2. Archaic. A changeable, fickle person. 3. Archaic. A person of deficient intelligence. So which one? They assume the latter, in their conscious paradigm. Who knows what the government thinks. They probably assume it's some emerging superpower technology hocus-pocusing the pants off of us dumb, top-dog Americans. They call him changeling, because they're sure he's a confederate so some other agenda/plot/intrigue. Which made me think of the craziest thing. Totally off the wall. And most probably, drug inspired. I should go to the grave. His gravestone. I should place my hand on it, and see what I feel. Like the geomancers. Or, better yet, I should bring somebody with me who knows that shit, inside and out. It was the flimsiest excuse for a road trip that ever existed, and probably was intended to get my ass out of this pack of weirdoes' lair, before I incurred some serious genetic damage. Pulse still rocketing, I drug myself back to the palace, and listened to the buzz.

I'm reminded of familiar territory. The oracle's been internalized, not forcefully, by big brother's antics, but by sincere diurnal yearning. The "upgrades", as they're so eagerly awaited-for, have been set into our skulls in the form of neural mods. You can order just about anything, in any level of sophistication, which constantly changes, because the whole private sector is more or less, completely engrossed with the patterning of desirable behaviors into process, the computers can render into cells, pre-programmed to behave in various ways. And it doesn't seem that out of line, as I grapple with the last version of the search engine that's suppose to make my complicated life easier. I have to upgrade the internal RAM, to make it easier. This is an expensive, and rather complex simplification, requiring a dozen phone calls, and a prolonged search for an itty-bitty screwdriver. And it works only because I've added six or seven other things, to let it communicate with the barrage of data-bits that still, to my consternation, slam against each other like carnival bumper cars, giving the driver (me) a prolapsed whiplash. "These clunky things are the prototypes of wet-wired thinking. They'll integrate some whatchamacallit soon, and let us mod the machines, which will in turn, give it a half-century of fine-tuning, mod us." Babbling. Making myself feel better, swearing silently to a mass of digital circuitry. And it occurs off the cuff, that the cognitive voice recognition, the V.R. suits, and the retinal-track cursors, are the last thought's seeds. We're in the stone age of computing still. We think it's all so glorious, and in ten years, this high-tech will be nothing more than rusty erector sets, stashed in old folks attics. Which doesn't make my gyrations seem any less futile. Ring. "Hello?" "How's it going?" "I can cake-walk this shit for about an hour, before the anti-gravity boots give out, and I sail right in through the frosting. I'm there now, floundering." "Sounds drastic. What if I pushed your deadline back?" "You can do that?!" "With a bulldozer, and a few beers." "Quite." I slapped the keys as he talked. "The Iron Maiden?" "Your call." "Make it so." Task main shut down YES wait till program… etc. Off switch is on, and the machine defiantly glows its last splash screen, mocking my best laid plans of liquid discord-salve, in another place and time. So you leave me no choice, Ty. (Ty, we call the anthropomorphic melee of computer scientists' plot against mutually exclusive church and state sorts of separations.) Ty, I'm afraid your a bad box of hardware. I'm going to have to pull your plug. "Goddamn cantankerous @#!!~*^&…" Vapid accusations still the air, co-processing a creepy feeling, there is no this machine, and me anymore. The rational side of me is reaching down, about to punish electron orbital ether, while the human part raves, one step short of smashing this high-impact plastic cache of expensive silicon, to irreparable bits. But the know-better spiritual third of the tempestuous mind-body triad, serenely kicks the looped cord, so it rockets from the wall (all black around the edges, from some prior AC altercation). And next thing I know, the bar is reflecting me in its Guinness mirror, while the tab is rung, and the pot-bellied musicians grope the blaring feedback bebop P.A.s, trying to make sense from the two house pints of liquor spaghetti, connecting their unhappy amps to the cat-gut strings. "WHAT DO YOU THINK?" She shouts above the head-splitting feedback. "I DON'T KNOW, I CAN'T THINK MUCH OF ANYTHING RIGHT NOW." as she's looking better than ever, and I find myself sleepy, and revved up at he same time. "WHAT'S…." just as the music resumes, and people look at her. "I mean, what's next?" a touch more winsome, and quiet than she needs to be. Is there a next? Part of me asks, silently. My place? I say it without doing so. And it's such a good idea, it's a very bad idea. She nods. I nod. It's a lovely script.

They want you clued in. Who? The military. You must be joking. The bed's still wet with our sweat. Is that who sent me here? Sarcastic-me thinks. First the Feds, now the buzz-tops. We saw you at the conference. No need to play ignorant. Of course they were watching. I tried no truth, that superseded the nice smooth feel of her shin. I ah; Broken sentence, fishing for the right words. I know what you must think, she fills in. But it wasn't planned like this. I only meant to meet you there, have a drink, and fire off the question. I raise my eyebrows, though she can't see them. Is it a question? Of course it is. You are under no obligation, as a civilian, to do anything against your will. Which sounded like military rhetoric, if I've ever heard it. I'm still a civilian, when I'm tearing open the draft notice, aren't I? Yes. And you're unofficially allowed not to go. By heading to Canada? She squirms, to vie and arm back to life. Canada's not so bad. It's better than dying.

I imagine a million versions of me, grappling for quantum superiority. Kill the enemy. One is asking who that is, while another is busy jabbing a mannequin with a bayonet. A faceless proprietor of some ethnic uniform. Whichever one isn't in favored-nation fad. I'm sort of here, and DMT there, all at once. Well, what do you say? What do I get out of it? Always the shmoozer, you were. And I bite my tongue again. Always the one… Not to follow orders, you mean. He gets a feel of it, weighing the barrel-mounted knife… Madness. I'm in two movies at once. The cat in the quantum physics bag is alive, and summarily dead, whether or not the Schroder capsule of poison is broken. The probability wave has collapsed, and immediately collapsed again. It's shot right past the space we ordinarily inhabit.

Let's just say… We know wheres and whys you probably don't. We meaning you? Perhaps. She's teasing me. And you'll share them? We might. And for that, I continue to endanger my life? As you know it, she confessed, or… as you knew it. (Clincher. She sucked me in, with that one.) You don't think the military is no good at gathering sneaky, sensitive data? That's a double-negative. You writers… ! (Fake exasperation.) Okay. I'm game enough to hear the terms. But you'll promise the Generals and Feds won't quibble for my affections? They're the same people, but if it makes you feel any better, we're after different things. Are you?! It was Gettysburg, and getting thicker. This is an extra-special intrigue to ensnare me? A loverly body to make dribble all over myself. Information too ambiguously pregnant for a media-rat like me to obversely umber-look? It's a story, if that's what you mean. Whether or not it's Newsworthy, is up for grabs. I had a good notion to jump out of bed, and run for the door.

Of course, I didn't.

The whole episode only deepened the pit I'd eventually fall in. It was a pressingly depressing state of affairs. No one else on the planet, I was sure of it, had the bad guys, the good guys, the counter intelligence spies, a cult, various disembodied entities, another sphere of reality completely, the military, the pharmaceutically enlightened, a cult of crazies, and a pack-o entheogenic researchers after their ass. And telling the difference as you went… that asked a lot of the fool they were hounding. Man. I sat down, and folded my lap in my hands. Buddha-style. Reverse Buddha style. Then I see the rat. The adolescent graduate you puled out, to the rooster brain I keep between my legs. Pistil, in all her diaphanous-skirted legacy. "Yes?" "You don't seem overjoyed to see me." "That's because my life is ruined. And I'm trying to pretend its your fault." "But you know better." "Barely." As I slung my head a little lower, and let my weight slink into my hands. "Was your life that good?" "At what point? Before or after Pistil?" "Whatever." I contemplated its koan. "Is it now, you mean?" "Tell my body when you stop thinking so much, by sitting up straight." Which was totally out of context for her. "I mean, was it ever?" I was bored more often, before. That I'd openly admit. "Is being bored fun?" as if she read my mind. (I tried to look nonplused.) "Sometimes. Just for the sake of itself." "You don't really believe it. That's you rational mind talking." (And why shouldn't it?!) "Come on. Stop being such a spoiled sport. Nobody said excitement was going to be safe." "Yea. But is it a good idea to hand yourself over to people (like yourself) who seem to have your demise in mind?" She thinks that's very amusing. It's a nice, tinkling laugh. "That's that." "What do you mean?" And she walks away. Like my whole life's a disaster, you know? "Hey! Wait a minute!" But she doesn't (who does she think she is?), and I'm forced to run after her-leaving my funk momentary stranded. Where's that body now!? Like depression's tied to my cells, only when it wants to be. Skipping a little: Oh mee-oh-my… I love the way that girl walks, don't I? The randyness never hesitating. It probably jumped up before I did.

Adventure. Next stop.

"Man, you think all sorts of shit when you're in there."

"Like what?"

"Like your whole world is an atom, and each atom is a whole world, and all the cells in your body have some kind of conchusness, you don't really get (most of the time), and they're thinking all kinds of thoughts, all together, and apart, cominnicatin' with lots of other microscopic life forms. Stuff like that."

"Fascinating."

It was a big black box, filled with squishy things.

"Who's design is this?" (knowing all along).

"Mine."

"Wow. How'd you come up with it?"

"'He' told me. What kind of answer is that?"

"As if you didn't understand." Pistil accused. "Stop playing to dunces, and they'll stop treating you like one." Which seemed entirely wide with vision. Okay, okay…

"In other words, I have to take the impossible for granted?"

"No; you have to listen to it, when it tells your 'better judgment' something crass."

"Like fuck you, it happened this way?"

"It's more subtle and demure."

"Oh, my love, believe whatever you want to."

"That's better; now tell me about the man you kindly wrote off a moment or two ago."

"First version, or second?"

"Both."

1. Man. Fucked up. Yo! Anybody in there? Too much acid, DMT and science fiction novels. Confuses GOD with schizophrenic rumblings for dark confined spaces.
2. On to something, teed into the Changeling's vibe, birdie, ball in the hole, reconstructing the base, (however curtained and crude) of the space between the worlds. Projecting himself past its barrier, without drugs (he claims) and attempting to teach others his tricks.

"Very good Who's winding up, and who's getting hit?"

"We're continuing the ball analogy?"

"It's on your mind a lot."

"You evil girl. Is it that obvious?"

"Hard to miss an ocean liner."

(Unless you're playing golf.)

She slips her dress up, and runs her hand on her thigh.

"Is that version three?"

She liked that. I'd answered from another place entirely.

But to tell the truth, nothing really came of it. She's a first-rate tease. I have to hand it to the girl… I managed to slave a day's wage into my depleted bank account; that's something. Without her barbs, I would have bought a bottle of Maddog, and slabbered the jutting-jaw drunkenness of the other street rejects. Instead, I dedicate my lost state to Pioneer 10, loafing before official retirement, gathering energy for the next mission-a million years and ten stars away. I copied the official NASA picture, and laid text next to the twenty-five year old chunk of high-tech museum ware. Incredible, space frolicking exploronauts could be that old. How long have we been at this shit? Long enough to know a trillion comets course beyond the curtain of our solar system. A trillion. In one little solar system's back yard. Damned Air and Space press releases. They're all threaded to other ones. What's this? 65 million years ago, satellites have discovered, confirmed by… Oh, and this is current news? Some mountain of interstellar rock hit the Gulf of Mexico, vaporizing untold matter into airborne debris, that may have rained all over the Earth for weeks. Bummer, dinosaurs. Line : Seabed hides blatant signs of mayhem and destruction. Pretty good. I'd read it. (This is a crazy job I have.) "What do you think of this? Kinetic weapon slated as satellite killer." "How'd you get that story?" "I grabbed it out of the slate of yet-to-dos. Kind'a goes with the other stuff I'm doing." "Yea. It's good post-cold war stuff." 1985 test blasted a defunct satellite into 285 traceable pieces of garbage. "Sounds better than this shit! I never was one for the medical stories." "What is it?" "Scientists grind up mediaeval bones to test ancient cholesterol levels." "Haven't' they got anything better to do?" "Yea. Make space missiles you strap to the belly of a jet fighter." "Touché." It was endless. Electric eyeless Amazon fish that eat each other's replaceable tails, subatomic photon logic-gate abacus supercomputers, and protected Geese have to be shot, for turning the tundra to slum. Young Goslings Waddle 40 miles, Looking for Food to Exploit. Hardly. It wouldn't even fit on the page. Sure sign I need a break.

Cold out today.

"One of those big gooey rolls, and a coffee, please."

"Three bucks."

The world seems strange these days. Everything is happening faster, but nothing seems to be happening. The lady behind the counter is marking time, and majoring in something I have no concept of. There's an invisible veil between us, and she can't see it, and I can't see mine, because it's so close to our callous faces. It's a good… metaphor, that. Veils. Black and white ones, full of lacy patterns we can't focus on. They hide us from the outside world's infuriating glances. They soft-focus reality, making it more palatable. "Thanks." I toss the bills on the table, all sticky with sugar residue. Yes sir. The veils are keeping us from the reality of the Changeling's universe. She returns to her magazine-outlines of moviestars' glamorous lives. She probably leaves the stuff I edit in the pile of papers, the want ads and grocery flyers end in. Unread. Who in their right mind cares if Immanuel Kant's buried in Königsberg Cathedral. Who is the guy, anyway? I mean, he's hardly a recent soap star. So what if groundhogs lower their body temperature to 40 degrees when they hibernate? Archeologists discover humans thrived in icy Siberia 260,000 years before they should have, and people still need their gooey sugar rolls with a large cup for spill-proof caffeine. Who's going to supply their need with substance? Not me. I'm a consumer. I'm providing the goo-wiz literature people read for something to do while they swallow. I'll fry on a hot cast-iron pan, when people like her get too hungry. Hungry for belly food, not mind waves. Time's up? I'm on a conversion revival campaign. I want people to care that eleven objects six to eight feet wide hit the upper atmosphere per year, and produce one kiloton nuclear blasts. I want them to know a 20 foot asteroid annually slams the upper atmosphere into a Hiroshima-style reaction. In 1964 there was an 80 foot one megaton blowout, and a couple years ago the Marshall Islands saw a 50 footer, that was brighter than the sun. Why though. I never really cared before. It's like I've been brainwashed, suddenly.

The thought made cold sweat drip from my armpit.

Here's a pile of copy. What's….

The thing I gravitate to? What makes me want to edit it?

There are intractable problems even the highest-power computers would not be able to solve.

Yeah. Good one.

It would take more time to sluice their solution from the sea of possibilities, than the universe is currently expected to exist.

What is it about that?

Don't know.

Quantum computers-examining all the thresholds of different states, simultaneously. Or nearly so.

Work speeds towards developing the perfect single-electron transistor. 80 worldwide groups are vying to get there first. Quantum possibilities. Like that… Place I was-Everything happening at once. All the different cultures… Like the early Siberians, with the overly-sophisticated spears. Who were they? More, too… Her preoccupation with "sub-threshold mental illness". Her theories on our dead (or apparently so) quarry. Why is that so fascinating? Because… Huh. We could all be suffering from some kind of disabling effect. We could all be looking through the veil of something, but because all of us are (Or most of us. The rest are in institutions, living under bridges, etc.), we're labeling the veil's distorting effect as normal. It's intriguing. I sit before the high-speed T line (soon to be satellite link), and search the keywords.

The Harvard Medical School reports a "shadow syndrome", that could demonstrate three or four indicators of a disorder usually defined by eight, or ten key assessments. A person with shadow syndrome may have moderate to extreme difficulty coping with the whole of life's continuum. Professor Robert J. Neiman, administrator of a

That's an interesting choice of words. Continuum.

"Throughout medical history, rare forms of illness, in their subtle forms, become the gross effects of far more ubiquitous conditions, with time."

Neiman's right, there.

What if we're all suffering slowly, forming a collective veil, from this ongoing kinetic illusion? Or perhaps I should coin the term, allusion. Mutual multi-dependency on preserving the silence, the veil manifests… You know? It's a science fiction theme. Nutso. But what if?

I'm not making any sense.

"And those suffering from the various shadow illnesses, far from being aware of their shortcomings, are unlikely to think anything is wrong enough with them, to actively seek treatment."

'Enough.'

'Actively.'

Every word is jumping out at me.

"You look tired."

My junior editor observed.

Bully! I'm supercharged. (My first response.)

But maybe I am? Why not assume it's true?

"Do I?"

"No doubt. You know, I can handle the rest of this. Why not knock off?"

He's so nice! Why would I have denied it?

(Because the veil isn't pleased. It's not under the ulterior motives, that keep you from lifting it.)

And the dead silence that followed, weighed on that Neiman quote.

You'd think they were interested enough, to let me know they cared I didn't know, they'd ransacked my place. Boolian logic, and the government. Two sore subjects in my mind. There was a thin artifice of clean-up (but I suppose people didn't join the military to be subtle), "Sorry about the mess dear, I borrowed the key by mistake. Higher ups, you know? They just don't rest until all the stoners are un-coverted." Stones are uncovered. Which seemed to mean: Necessary evil. Before we'll deal, you have to be searched. I didn't even mind, in a way. How much more trouble could I be in? I mean, what's the Frreaks and the Feds gonna add to the brass? The phone rang, and I answered it, slick with confidence that didn't timber my voice. "Awh, hollo?" Like, do I live here, or what? "You know who we are." (Rhetoric minus the question mark.) Fine. I'm sure I do. I'll just sit here the whole day long with the high-impact plastic jammed against my ear, till you remind me. "And we know what you're doing." This is a very silly conversation. I'm sitting here, listening to you. Is the semi-cheeky response, but I dick with fractal universes silently, in my better moments. "So listen up."

I'm nothing but ears, asshole.

Ring. Not again.

"What?" Meet me at the bridge.

To jump off? No fool, under it.

A nocturnal diatriber, hankering for more. And if you know what's good for you…

Owww. Threats at last. Should I ring you back if I'm late? Just kidding. Nascent trouble-squared.

It's even worse than that. (I irked him, with my lasse-fare.) How could it be worse than everything? I mean, the entire program's a id-deologe's nightmare. Fifty directions at once, chasing the sunset at six hundred miles an hour, seeking eternal stars-to-sun gradient… Looking for the man. That's who we want, isn't it? Yea. But the sucker's dead. Or so it seems. Yea. I was thinking; that tool you used… What tool? The drug, or whatever it was. How'd you know about that!? We read your diary of course. Fortunately for you, you're altogether the most impossible speller, and disjointed writer, a investigator would ever want to deal with. So the cryptologists are stumped. No, more like, disgusted. Well, I'll tell you: there seem to be innumerable ways to get there. Meaning what? I'll tell you. You already said that. Well, I'm still thinking about it. Think on this.

He laid it on me.

"You gotta be kidding."

"Wish we were."

It goes like this… You already said that. I shot right back. Yea. I know what I'm about to say, I just don't want to sound too crazy doing it. (And I thought I was cudgeled with this shit. At least I'd had the drugs to loosen me up some. He was going cold turkey.) Wait. Let's slow down, shall we? Io is doing what? Not Io, Europa. That's another of Jupiter's moons, right? Sure enough. Six miles of ice, and some kind of volcano underneath. Signals, you say? Sine waves gone mad. Some kind of magnetic aberration? Who can say? Except that… Prophesy, of some kind. Where did you find it? The manuscript? Nothing so spectacular. Tear sheet, then? Nope. More electronic than that. A wide world web deal? Wrong again. It was a computer disk we found at the scene of one of your old hangouts. Which gave a spine tingling tremor. So… Yea; we been watching you from the beginning, more or less. What did it say? Nothing a computer wiz, or a mathematician couldn't decipher. And I suppose you employ plenty of both.

More than you know.

He was right off his rocker. Something about DNA chip research finding a correlation with micro-alge blooms in the everglades, and the breakthrough in ground-based optical astronomy. I didn't get the gist of it, I'm afraid. Which worries me a lot, because he expects me to make sense of it. Hold on a minute-hydrogen spewing into space means what? And where did you say you found the computer disk? On the… Oh. The "tribunal" left it. An they just called me. What a coincidence. We know what your shifty mind is up to. Yea. You bet it is. As if yours hasn't been there too, rooting around. I'm on everyone's side, and not one simultaneously. I'm a bona-fide security concern for everyone involved.

Now, slow way down.

You're telling me the people who (say they) saw my main man that night, are one foot in the psych ward? On cloud nine, and down in the dumps every hour. Ping ponging back and forth. Have you interviewed them? Do we seem like morons to you? Of course we have. And? That information is a bargaining chip, you understand? (And my apartment hadn't been strip-searched yet.) So what's so amazing abou-tit? They're having the same dreams. Are they together? No. We separated them, for their own safety. Like, different rooms? No. Different states. Look; what do you need from me? I'll tell you what I've cessed out. Will you? I imagine the truth may contain some incrimination evidence, on your part. Do you know this for a fact, or are you extrapolating, based on our past history? Both. How much of each? Woo-I tell-you taht? (Her most adorable southern bellism.) Maybe. If you're betting a chip. So ante up, sucker. First, I need a promise in writing. That's not like you. I'm not like me, lately. What? That whatever I disclose can't be used against me, or any of the persons I specify as my main confidential informants. I've heard it all. Do you really think I'll be able to make that fly? If not you, than who would? What keeps you from trying to protect your hit-girl? Who's that? Don't play dumb. (Hit girl?!)

Obviously, you don't know a great deal about her, do you?

He said a lot of words, without saying anything specific.

A lot to think about though. An algorithm describing the wave-form intercepted from the geological event, spewing ancient hydrogen into space. Then something about stars, and how an infinite amount of light from an endless universe would make the night sky bright as a sun, but the dark inverse of the version we see has black points of "light", as our limited concepts might describe it, and the incineration of matter into hydrogen fuel… which… or, the incineration of hydrogen, in… umm: It's got much to do with the planet under six miles of ice, and little to do with the currently accepted theories most scientists employ, at this juncture of Newtonian, and quantum-based physical descriptions of reality. Which made me wag my head. Reality. Where why and how. With this business, you don't even know what to ask.

The stars infinite light

the stars infinite blackness

the balance between

"We four of the one, have discovered…" That's how it took us. He's a Christ-figure, and they consider themselves apostles. What followed, of course, was a didactic roundabout of computer-silliness. A bunch of ones and zeros. Are you sure this shit isn't just a corrupted file? I mean, how did you figure out it related to the iceball spinning round Jupiter? Don't you think it could have something to do with the Pool tiles mosaic in Laura Dern's next mansion, and the man on the moon's choice of cheese wedges as well? I'm just a little bit suspicious about how you 'experts' made the correlation. Here, his hand gestured. Now read this. Who wrote it?

Guess.

If the cyber-highways are monuments, Bill Gates has etched

himself into the psyche of the stone, everyone chisels. He is the

illusione most citizens aspire to be. Position: Power, money,

connections. Limitations: Superficially, none. He is the prototype

demographic of ultimate "success", and yet, he is controlled. He

is the vehicle of higher acts of control, as it appears, in this world,

he controls the destinies of others, below him. He is "sane", for not

reconnecting to his past, and recognizing this reality. He is lost.

It is of little matter. He is the cog of the ultimate machine.

(We will assemble it, from his detris. He manufactured the raw products,

we will employ.) We will recreate ourselves, at his shore.

Insanity is nice. It is forgiving. It is the air I am creating,

creating waves. They wash at my feet, and I wiggle the tie they

want me to wear, as if it were my feet, and it's checkerboard pattern,

my toes. I, as I knew I, have crashed so many times on the beach of my

making, I have lost the sense of what it is, and what has the feeling

of sensing it. And here I am isolation, and God. I am the one slaying

the dragons past generations' spawning, created, standing idiotically

at these shores. Evolution silences the yearning its own existence

cries for. It is dead, and a stagnating proclivity to deny the whole

of universal existence. Look at the moon of Jupiter.

I am the anti-"reality" virus.

Guess.

I sure didn't have to guess too hard.

"Our friend?"

"God, you're a psychic!"

"I pride myself on my grasp of the obvious."

But I still didn't see how the dots connected.

"There was a bit-mapped image of a checkerboard, with the king in peril, attached to your 'corrupt' ones and zeros file."

"How… something."

Weird. Hat with a twisted gyroscope, guiding the brain.

(Meaningful silence.)

"We expect some answers from you. Soon."

Or else what!? I never bothered to ask.

(A creativity sucks, when its one your body's grilled on.)

"I'll tell you what…"

"About when?"

"Three. Watch me from across the street or something."

"No problem. We're good at this."

I'll bet you are.

I needed a review. The sucker's alluding to life in the deep dark depths of an ice-clogged ocean, his henchmen know all about everything I'm doing, but they haven't bothered to add me to the cosmic collective trying go back into the planetary realty we're still inhabiting. Pistil's a licensed killer, and the government thinks its a big enough deal, to suck an unreliable sod like me into the equation, because all the last bodies to see the Changeling and his fire-branded death accomplice are about to stop toeing the line, and whack off for another world entirely, delirious on simultaneous dreams. Awwwah. Who knows? And then there's the complication with the woman I'm suppose to be broken up with to consider. What's her take on this? And how am I endangering her life… Is it too self-aggrandizing to think that's rudely-true? I still know more than I should, with less reason to put it together than anyone thinks I should have, so that makes me… an asshole. A fly in the ointment everybody is going to watch wiggling, to see if it will get away. Delirious. I'm making all of this up. It's my private insanity, like the Main Man splashed all over those dumbshits linking hydrogen to ghosts. I'm here for everybody's little rat-maze amusement, making a dolt of myself, bumping towards some rodent-pellet reward, bending my whiskers around corners, etc. This had all the makings of a frantic cosmic crackpot's worst-scrambled dream,

that somehow makes us act it out. Which suddenly makes me think of something.

What's this?

Nothing.

Liar.

Who's Damon?

I don't know. What are you reading?

Some story.

I can see that.

Tell me what this thing is.

You first.

"Two bush boys, snorting like pigs at the trough, belch and shovel soup spoons of corned beef hash into their snaggle-toothed, gaping yawns. One downs the last of his Bud, slams the can on the fake wood table, and rocks to the back legs of his nuevo-oriental chair, rubbing his bulge appreciatively.

'Damn'd specail done-done me in.

flipping his baseball cap the right way around. The other fellow winces, pushes his plate back, and bellows for pie. You can see some sort of brace, for broken ribs or something, girdling his chest, as he ups his shirt to scratch.

The waitress drops my plate in front of my face as she whisks by, with condiments for the other table of hungry farmers. A white wonder bread turkey sandwich with processed cheese slices snoozing in a bed of Kraft mayo, a side of sodium-enriched cream of God knows what soup, cellophaned soda crackers, and… this was the odd part. A slice of canned spiced crabapple. It seemed too small town to be true. That's what I'm reading. So what's this piece of paper all wadded up on the floor? Anne Nieson. who's Damon?"

"Anne Nieson is a person working for me."

"That doesn't tell me too much, now does it? I thought we were suppose to be sharing information?"

"That doesn't include kicking over the friggin' garbage pail, then looting it for info!"

"Can I help it if you thought I was a naïve fool?"

"I never thought that!"

I turned the page of my book.

"'You drove over that pass?! That road's a cob!'

'Yea. We went fishing, but only got squa-fish. Shit.'

'Guessahgottagettemoutathere anyway.'"

"What the hell are you reading me?"

"A novel about people living in a dinky Eastern Oregon town."

"Any particular reason you're so engrossed in it?"

"Place is called Athena."

"Like that Greek God?"

"The very."

I was getting cheeky with the sluts.

Like some kind of scratchy acid flashback. The whole scene played across yours truly, while he attempted to read Pallas Athena's entry in the encyclopedia. I shook my head, lost my balance, and crashed into the nearby sofa/loveseat, book still in hand. Well, you shouldn't be surprised, it's been short in coming, but the neurological damage from all this drug-taking has finally caught up with you. Which was nothing but a hipper mother than I ever had, scolding me for experimentation. Athena's name was written

on the outside of the envelope they pulled the Changeling's verbiage from. And who's Damon? Is there a book about Athena, Oregon? And other scrambled questions. Just to cover all the nonsense clues, I call my friend and ask him. You know a place called Athena? Sure. Been there twice. Nice enough dead little town. Got some fine houses. Is that all? What do you want, a full census? I didn't know what I wanted. Is there anything a little… strange there? Strange, like how? I thanked him. It was going nowhere. Back to the book. Athena, also known as Pallas Athena, was a conveyor of peace and war, sprung from the forehead of Zeus. She was a goddess of wisdom, a virgin armored figure who protected cities, supported arts, whose temple was the Parthenon… blah-blah. These are just loose ends, right? Well, there is a pretty cool old gas station there, all painted brick and stuff. Boarded up, but it looks even better that way. I took a picture of it, I've still got in my hallway.

Neison must be Neiman. Mr. Neiman, the Haa-vrd man. My subconscious is spitting out stuff, hoping one fact with merit will bump into and other one, and take each other's license plate numbers. Shadow syndrome professor meets unknown employee on cob roads, in a novel somewhere obscure, where squished bees make yellow fuzzy paint on the arm of a convertible driver who's obsessing on a broken down gas station. Wow. Like Nevada's incredibly blue skies framing stark emptiness. Like winding, un-center-striped pavement, buckled with heat, snaking cool rivers' banks of synchronistic nonsense. So I call my new-old sex friend, and ask her: "Isn't there a military installation near Athens Oregon?" To which she mumbles something sleep-ridden, and unintelligible. "If we're working together, I'm going to need some clues strong-armed into being." But she shakes head to clear the nicotine-depravation, and asks: "Huh?!"

"I'm running into all kinds of stuff, and I don't have to tell you I'm altogether indisposed to check every whacked-out lead out myself."

"Oh."

Pre-coffee brain tends to engage slowly, if at all.

"So there's this gas station, see? Apparently you can't miss it."

She's a lot short of incredulous, but closer to it than I was.

"I figure this whole thing so far is completely insane, so we have to get on its wavelength."

"Does that mean I take my orders from you now?"

"Might be the first time, too."

Which was meant as a joke, I'm afraid to say.

This is good. I'll feel better knowing these para-Gestapo forces breathing down my neck are being kept busy on ontological errands. Now, to throw the Feds some meat… I suppose I'll have to get some first. I stare out the glass sheet, slightly reflecting my waitress, smoking a long, feminine ciggie, kind of reading the want ads, in her official chiffon outfit. If only life was so easy? And perhaps she could look at me and say, if only life was so exciting! She sucks long and hard on her low-tar stick, trying to drag what little cancerous shit there was, deep into her lungs. That's a girl. Find your rush, where ever it lays. I need a beeper. I decide out loud. And a cell phone.

I've got people to order around.

No sooner had I signed the contract, gotten and sent out my phone number, than the damned thing rang.

"Hello?"

"It was one of those ubiquitous, very cute Mormon-brick box houses that were built too well to fall down- right off Main street in Escalante!"

"Hold on partner. A: Who is that you're talking about, and more importantly, who is it that's talking? B: …(But I was too embarrassed to say it. Does it cost me money when you call in, or only when I call out?) Never mind the B."

"We found the stuff in the garage."

"What stuff?!"

"Didn't my superior call you already?"

"Better sooner than never."

"That's odd. Then how did I get this number?"

"Bet I'd like to know more than you."

And so on. Dealing with these people is like wearing rose colored glasses through Bryce Canyon National Park. All those melting Pleistocene ice cream castles in too bright an orange to be true. You're gasping with the magnitude of it, forgetting the sky isn't really that polarized, nor the dirt that red. But you've forgotten the glasses are on.

"I'm sorry, we'll get this cleared up pronto."

He used it kind of funny. People don't say 'pronto' like that anymore.

"Hello?"

I assume this is somebody else.

Click. The phone rings back. Is this the best you can do? All those satellites and spy gizmos, a million billion dollars worth of junk under the ground and up in the air, and you bozos can't complete a single phone call?! But I control my urge to overthrow the government at the precise moment a man with a bit of bravado begins to weave me a yarn. We found a box with a ton of moth-chomped clothing, a .22 caliber pistol, and a plastic bag of photos."

"In the garage, I take it?"

"I assumed you'd gotten that part already."

My God, but these people working off the public coffers, could actually work fast!

"Pardon me, I just didn't think it was possible to be so all over it, in such a short time."

"This is national security we're dealing with."

Tight coiled fingers around the guns the Soviets no longer threaten, all amped up, and no wars to fight, I mean, why not? Give them something to adrenalinize!

"We found a box with a string tied around it, a few sheets of blank typing paper, and a novel cover that had an address scratched on the back. We're currently tracking that down, and sorting through the stuff scattered about the basement of the Brick house, as referenced by the picture."

What is this, martial law? How are they getting access to the buildings?

"Apparently, the man you alerted us to, may be the killer's father."

Excuse me? Did I alert you to a man? "I see…"

As if I know what's going on. It's an authoritative move on my part.

"So we interviewed the Golden Loop Café's old boys' club…" and he sniggered a little there, for some impossibly remote, and twisted reason, "…asked around the neighborhood some…"

I'm getting the impression I threw a lit match on a gasoline spill.

I begin daydreaming the Café's clientel-

Gaunt, rain-thin ranchers with big, muscular hands cradling cups of black coffee, citing observations the Greeks, and Egyptians before them made about the subsequent generations. He's blathering on, and handing me to somebody else, while retirees on Harley Davidsons scoff at retirees in motor homes, right outside. He's not impressed, I can tell. I ask him something not terribly obvious, as if I asked a one-armed vet with a scary old WW2 prosthesis in front of the seen-better-days VFW Post giving it a fresh south-paw stab of paint, What day's the parade? And he looks at me, like What country you from boy? It's a July Fourth Pardy, ain't it? But he's a professional, and tries to hide the sneer of his telephone disdain. So. His faddr.

Pine Ridge Bar, Lamoille, Nevada

Kooky guy; lived up there most of the winter. Had an old beat-up snow machine from the late 50s he'd come down on, buy some goods, get drunk, then disappear again. Rangers finally cleared him out.

Why do you reckon he chose that valley?

You ever been there?

No. Road's closed.

You'd better take a deep breath before you go.

How come?

You'll never believe you're in Nevada.

19 miles from Jarbridge, Northern Nevada

Sure, I seen him. He used to live at the shack, right before the big hodoos.

The whole place is full of hoodoos. How did you finger some as big?

You're not from here, are ya?

Does it look like I am?

Cuz if you were…

What?

You'd know just what I'm talking about. It's the ones the medicine men useda go to, ta die, er get their God's words.

So this is a sacred valley?

Mr., can't you tell?! My sister's dumb as a post, and did she ever go through here at less than 60 miles-per-hour? Ah think not. Scared sheetless of the place, she is. She knows what's gon-on here.

Sure is pretty to be that evil.

Who said it's evil?

What'd he do here?

Hellif I know. What's anyone doin-here? That's the pertinent question.

I had to look up Hoodoos in the dictionary.

There was a few more interviews with equally surly informants, one from the cinder block café in Athena, and another from an old-timer in Escalante. The old geezer ran the young punk Fedboy ragged, reciting offbeat, disconnected stories that promised to go somewhere, and didn't. I had to alugh. (It's a thing you do when people who don't tink your sense-o humor's too good, so you cover up by clearin' yur throat, and coughin', and sniggerin' a little HAHa all at the same time.)

They choppered us to the Southwest to look around, and brainstorm the next ludicrous scenes for the movie. One fool showed me a topo of the Paunsaugunt Plateau region, and decided I needed a geology lesson.

"Bryce Canyon's deformation, uplift, differential erosion and ancient sedimentation, all rolled into one. It's all because the Cretaceous Seaway that picked up residence from the Gulf of Mexico, and dumped itself here. All these old lewd Cretaceous layers cavorting with the young nubile tertiary layers, produced the animistic religious sincerity we still feel in the rocks today. That giant swath of mid-American ocean sprawl eventually dried up, went limestone, and gave us a big-ass freshwater basin. This carving of wind, liquid and time exposes layers of dead 60 million years old life. They're our Kodachrome moments, class."

Teacher? Yes?

Is it true Socrates thought fossils were alive, but were moving too slowly for us to see, and understand?

Through solid rock?

I was being cheeky, but the thought slammed into me.

I called the Feds.

"He said all the things that ever lived here, still live there."

"That's a lot of things."

"It's a big place, believe me."

I'm some kind of laboratory-tested monkey, staring at himself in the mirror, while researchers try to determine if the neon green tuft of primate hair sprouting from the head of the subject, alters his perceptions of self. I'm a case study in complexity theory, where the instructions necessary to provide a result, are more convoluted, and asymmetrical than the result itself. And that's where it began to get weird. Even the Feds were investigating outer space.

"One of our watched officers…"

"You mean, one that saw the boy with the corneal?"

"Yes, one who actually spoke with him. He keeps suffering through this reoccurring nightmare he explains, in rather excruciating detail, every morning."

"Go on."

I was sure he was reticent to draw some far-fetched connectedness.

"Well; he says he is present at a Tibetan monastery, where a neurolinguistic cultural anthropologist…"

"Jesus. That's a hell of a job title."

"Yea. I wasn't even sure what it was. Had to look it up."

The guy is suddenly like an X-file closet junkie, spilling his hunched-up hunches.

"Anyway, this guy was a chemist too,"

"Real janitorial type, huh?"

He ignores me.

"…back in the thirties, having won all sorts of awards and honorary degrees, and somehow, he gets his hands on a manuscript, or maybe, some kind of sacred book written in an odd Tibetan dialect."

"I'm wondering why all this detail is important."

"Because we looked the man up. He really loved to leave his life strewn around."

Whatever that meant.

"Jason P. ..."

I got a shooting pain through my left temple.

"What's wrong?"

"I'm not sure. Suddenly acquired a head ache. Go on."

"Interesting."

I tried to concentrate on what he had to say. Last known whereabouts Kunnan Province, China. Rumored to possess a very rare, exceedingly old text of a sect of monks that worshipped miracles, by practicing obscure magical arts, seeded from pro-pagan wanderers several thousand years before Buddha's name was household wisdom. Something like that. And this man was attempting to decipher it. Attempting more than that, it appeared. But the crux of it, was the lunatic's dream. In it, the monks were amazed by this white man who fought to learn their tongue, and wanted to think theory from fact. The fact he arrived with one of their missing artifacts made him a divine guest, they were all too happy to demonstrate their beliefs to. They were unattached to the outcomes, from a point of view they amassed in centuries of centuries of meditation, and experiment. The acts of magic were useful, in that they mocked the gravity of earthly situations, making the observers, and practitioners, more aware of realms beyond.

"What happened to the sect? Can you find any remnants of it?"

"We tried. Its rumored location was a ground-zero for one of Mao's anti-history strikes."

"In other words, he bombed the dharmic shit out of it?"

"Back to the stone age. Survivors were rounded up, and stashed in some horrible Gulag."

"Where they succumb to disease and manhandling, no doubt?"

"Apparently… and here's another anomaly. They disappeared. There's a record of an official visiting the camp, and finding nothing."

"'Nothing'. Like no camp at all?"

"We're not sure."

'You have to realize, these records were being smuggled out at a very tense time in the country's history.' He was all over the map. I didn't know who was more out to lunch all of a sudden; me, or him, for looking so strainingly-straight, and being so otherwise.

"What happened to the joker?"

"In real life?"

"Whatever."

"Officially disappeared. Thought lost in a climbing accident. Unofficially, according to our dream-correspondent…"

He made it to Tibet, by latching onto a nomadic yak herding clan, who took him for a manifest god from the confusion of the Bardal. Through a quick tongue, a grasp of the ontology of the culture, and a dogged determination, he followed a serious mendicant, making his way to the border of the plateau, where the monks' fortress stood. He showed the book, and was immediately taken inside. One by one, they illumined the miracles the man had painstakingly translated. Then, one evening of the last day of the dream, he called for an old, obscure rite. For a second or two, the assembled monks looked at one another, then slowly filed out of the room. All the monks but the oldest one, who beckoned him to the alter. It was a huge room, held aloft with beams of inestimable age-darkened with the yak-tallow of too many prayer candles to count, burning twenty four hours a day. Behind him, was something akin to a cross. He climbed upon it, slippers off-to his utter amazement-and was directed to place bother feet on the stoop, that rattily clung to the black onyx foot of the trinity. The old man sung a few lines of song sodden with disuse, and reached to a small wooden box, removing a candle. He lit it, placed it beneath Dr. Damon's feet, and the man burst into the most primeval, eerie flames the officer ever says he's seen. And then he was gone.

"Crucified, you think?"

"Apparently not. Jason talks to him. He asked to be sent to the other realm, between this one, and the Bardals of the hereafter. Unfortunately, the good doctor misunderstood the crux of the miracle. The place no longer existed. Since people stopped going there, the routes between the worlds had clustered, and wound down. There was no return from the land of milk and honey, where all your earthly-wished things came true. You could leave the tell-tails of portents, and look back in vain, but never cross the rift you burned your way through, to taste life, as we know it, again."

"What in the world made you follow this up?"

"Just a hunch."

"Was this hunch on company time?"

"My whole life's on company time."

Sobering thought.

He detects my judgment.

"As if you're in some different boat."

Too sobering a touché, thank you.

(Did it ever occur to you the most adept manipulator of reality, is the one who believes his or her own lies? Anyone else is detectable, through a vibe of decreased self-confidence.)

"Are you sure about this?"

"I'm not sure about anything. I'm just grasping at the straws showing through the tapestry, like you are."

I didn't know what to make of it. Christianity as a religious derivation of Changelinghood? Avalon, Egypt, and an obscure Tibetan concentration camp the last-known vectors out, body and all, to the drug-visited relativities? The cross and the chemical intoxicant as the vehicle to the revolution, to the heaven, where the angels have been cast out, and want to take their land back, and be in favor, where God has usurped their claim on the blue organic world, where God as religion is Science, that leaves no chinks in its variegate armor, for solutions from the hereafter to slip causally through. I'm dealing with a Jason P. Damon, trying to slice open the belly of the protector, by killing the old and dying adherents to the laws that make gears trundle forward, into more eager, and flexible generations. He, and untold others water the notion they'll get access to the place they aren't allowed to go. Like demons trying on the idea, of taking over heaven. The apocalypse… the second coming. Woe's be the man and woman. They have fallen from heaven. They want to get there, as bad as the heaven-sent, want to get back.

The Buddhists probably had this all figured out, quite a bit after the cavemen, and perhaps, the monkeys before them.

"Oh yea. He said the monks left the room, so none of them would be sucked along for the ride."

"Did it ever say somebody went with the doctor, on his quest to Tibet?"

"You're assuming he went to Tibet, but yes… I'll follow that up."

The Feds weren't half-bad.

Later Dialogue:

In a few years, they'll be clandestinely searching the heavens for stars,

with orbiting planets... They'll be LOOKING at the planets, you get it?

Trying to chemically determine the origins, or possibility of life

as we know it. They'll bill the high-tech gismos to the curse of determining

where gravity starts, and other as-yet undescribed effects leave off, or what the universe weighs, etc.,

but don't be deceived. The ground based revolution in telescope acuity is coming from a higher intent than pure, unadulterated science.

What do you mean?

Consider the possibilities. And he forges into quantum superIMpositions (as if I know all about them), where the definite limbo of every place an electron could

occupy, isn't clouded by the act of measurement, where terrestrial observers shackle the infinite stream of

possible solutions to a logistical (and thus time-related) problem... there would be no pure quantum crystallization, or decoherence, in which one or

more states of history could simultaneously, or even KINETICALLY, at one place and time.

This is like virtual versions of history?

More than that, this is verifiable states in an uncertainty field.

This is the place where logic gates no longer give any predictable results.

I know enough to know, this is bad for computers.

Not necessarily. It's only bad for how we THINK computers should behave.

You mean... They could evolve, on their own?

Why not? They could be evolving right now, and only showing us the kind of predictable

results, one of many possibilities from the quantum haze would verify.

The one we inhabit?

The one we think we inhabit.

I'm beginning to get the drift. Mr. Madness out there, ostracized from the planet's buzz of activity,

isn't knocking in the right way, on the right door yet?

And not only that, he MIGHT be. And what we see, is all our groove of perception

has the ability of fluxing.

It was the cat and mouse of the North Atlantic, where Q-ships, ponderous-looking cargo scowls, laden with easy-gunned booty, had hidden, high-octane guns that swiveled into firing position, before the U-boats could dive. And then the Germans got wise. They disguised carefully built wolves in sheep's, fleecy neutral-nation flag clothing. They called these imposters commerce raiders, intent on sinking, or privatizing cargoes with a destroyer's arsenal of weaponry packed in their innocuous, long-haul packages. The British Navy went nearly mad trying to track them down, as the camelions left a wake of merchant destruction round the world's oceans. Damned Germans. I thought of the micro-helicopter, hovering over a penny. Always made the best guns and gizmos.

Yea. What was it you 'ere getting at there?

Meanwhile, science reevaluates the concept of LIFE, searching the netherworlds of space for frozen-surfaced planets, living rocks, and nuclear-heated organisms. They want to drill to the bottom of Antarctica, down however many miles to the huge primeval lake lurking beneath icy Russian turf. They want bigger and better telescopes. They want to kindle intersections with other scientific pursuits, generating more interest (which equals money) for otherworldly exposés. They want to prove, for some anti-diluvian reason., that life is ubiquitous throughout the sapphire-black of space. Well. Here it is.

I switched on fully, killing the harrowing thoughts, I didn't have the slightest idea what this man was blathering about.

"They're infecting our very water of thought. They're creating a cross-wire to down the master Rb protein, which keeps cells from going hog-wild, replicating at will. They want to genetically engineer flagpole proteins to minimize overt warfare, while contaminating others, to incite the self-destruct mechanisms inherent in the smallest organized structures of the body. They want the cells that won't accept the change in reality, the collision of worlds would bring; they want these cells to disassociate temporarily, until the structures they support die."

"Very metaphorical. But what do you suggest?"

"You think this is metaphor?! I thought you understood the gravity for what it is. You can not separate biology from the effects of space and time."

"I shy at the thought, bodies would sort of blow up, or self-destruct."

"Why? Is it any worse than getting hit by shrapnel in a war?"

He was a hard son of a bitch.

"What we need to find, is a riposte to prevent the irrational flick of the self-destruct switch… For I'm sorry to say, we're probably too old to survive ontological collisions with chaos. And it sounds like where you've been, is more chock-full of chaos, than most of our feeble peers could entrain."

What do you think? His eyes said it clearly. But I was elsewhere by then, obsessing on the man on the cross, in Tibet, and elsewhere. I was Sadu on his perch of rock, his scrap-bowl full of rice-chaff.

"Tell me what you think we should do."

Brother Speed wound his hog around the sixth corner, in a serious leaned-out car-weave. In front of him lay a dying dog, struck from behind, as is typical of cars racing to cross the railroad tracks before the locomotive cuts them off. He will impact it, and slide under the demolished semi, jackknifed near the side of the road. At that ersatz moment, nine federal marshals unexhume the cadavers of the men who began the ruckus, ten months earlier. No conclusions would be drawn.

"Find an antidote, obviously."

(Why didn't I think of that?)

"And for that, we may need some bodies."

"Anyone in particular?"

"Guess."

He leaves me to my machinations.

Session one, none the wiser for it. Next stop, room 101: Men with no sense of human compassion

"You want to know how sect-conscious we are? Take a look at this video clip."

And he displays a zoomed laptop screen.

It sputters to life.

The view from a orange-crested cockatoo looked down a clear runway of vice, to men planning the next international entheobotanical collusion of chemically-warped minds. I listened to the parabolic mic's satellite uplink. It would be in Mexico, near the sacred site of certain mushroom cults.

I suppose you've got a few feet of tape on me, too?

A festival of sins.

I'm being flayed. But it's a mutual briar patch of briefing and debriefing.

"What was Sgt… Mackey?"

"That's him."

"What was his dishonorable discharge all about?"

These days, that wouldn't be so dishonorable!

It's sick. They were butchered. They fought an army fifteen times larger, and held them off - because it was the end. Indeed, why fight for less than everything? And then they traitor him like that. Shit. Makes me think of The King, slumped over his shroud of Turin comic book.

They were visibly embarrassed.

Did he by chance, have one arm?

Why yes. How sneaky of you.

What do you mean?

We're surprised you evaded our die-hard surveillance experts, and saw him.

I sidled with ignorance.

Come on. You didn't just dream him up!

Didn't I?

These men are far too literal. I told them so. They didn't kid around enough.

Lighten up! Even national defense is screwed if it can't go out on a liberal limb, and snag a laugh every now and again. It wanted a representative to second it.

They let me go, flustered with a tornado for a CPU.

That's when the car got x-rayed with hot lead. My poor wirehair neighbor jumped inside, as I legged it inside, motor running, to grab a sheet of paper. I heard a loud popping from the front of the house, and ran out, convinced the car has rolled into some immovable objects with the dog's frantic help. They purred their snub-nosed machine guns into the beast, and killed the dog to boot. So thy holy ass was choppered out of town. All the way to Grand Junction Colorado. Don't ask me why. Apparently, there was a task force scheming more crazy plans nearby. So I walked the River trail at sunset, and counted by imaginary blessings, sucking it in, and sniffing the fresh rain evaporating in the upper atmosphere, mixing with deliciously thick Russian Olive pollen. Bunnies jumped, wide eyed, ten feet in front of my shagged steps, birds streaked overhead, and gnats spiraled their perfect columns. It was the most relaxing moment I'd had to endure, in too long to remember. I guess the tribunal was finally out to get me. Well, there was nothing to complain about. Free food, board and peoplewatching galore. I saw one man every day, who walked around in nothing but a Speedo. He was always happy and singing, as if he found the tab of perfect acid, that never let you down. I window-waved from the corner bagel joint, and wondered if he'd have to go too. He waves back enthusiastically, like I'm a long-lost friend, and continues up the street, bouncing his tan, thin beachbody to some unknown beat. Nope. He'll leave when the time is right, and not a nibble sooner. Fort Mason firehouse was a long way from this place, and yet-there was verifiable elements floating around, if I could just put my finger on them.

Lou called a week later, said this chick is trying to get a hold of me. "You aren't giving out any whereabouts, are you?" I trusted him, more or less.

"Yea, right. Give out an area code, and some mobile telephone digits. That's real pinpoint evidence." He was miffed. There was shit going down, and he didn't know boo about it. The Feds are whipping the air up, needing my personal whatever, and no story's in the making. He's a shmooze major, when he thinks somebody's got something he needs to know (which equals, everybody, via the written word). "You working on any leads down there?"

"More like, over there."

"Yea. Over."

Down is anything less North than the California border.

"Oh, for sure. This town's got statues all over main street with the artist's name, and a little price plaque on them. I think it's the prototype for a new series of Athens, and Florences. Art for the outdoors' masses."

"Very funny. I mean real stories."

"Since when isn't art real? Isn't writing, and producing a newspaper, art?"

I can hear the sandy roll of his eyes in their sockets. I let his stew roil an extra six or seven seconds.

"Don't worry. You'll get some kind of friggin' story out of it, but you may be afraid to print it."

His jovial manner returns. He loves the thought of stories too hot to print. The agony of deciding whether or not to do it, makes his day. I remember writing one about a local man who ate some radioactive medical waste, and then spent a fortune on prostitutes and low-lives' sleaze to infect, or sterilize God's unchosen ones. It would have been business as usual, except his wife was the head of the anti-abortion league, and the little muckraking-bio we shelled some cash from the slush fund for, showed her falsified, fertilized roe removed from uterus under D&C local, one year to the day previously at one of their picketed joints- paid for (and this was the good part) from the account of a man apparently unassociated to the nuclear wacko. She probably felt so guilty, lying that profoundly, and being such a hypocrite, she left a mile-long trail. And the man was a senator's aide, to a man Lou profoundly respected. It was an agonizing decision to pull the copy, I'm sure. He undoubtedly waited till the last minute, jut to make the pain that much sweeter.

"And hey, sent me some work, will you? I've got to take my mind off this stuff. It's drinking me to drive."

"You mean driving you to drink?"

"Nah. That's already happened."

"So they got some good bars there?"

"Weird ones, if that's good."

"Weird is best."

Newspaper people are a strange breed of human-beingness. I hung up, and dreamed that Crater Lake broke. Instead of water, it was full of menacing Indian spirits. They poured down in an ethnologic tidal wave, and massacred the whites who killed their way of life.

Can I sit at your table?

I swept my arm to the chair.

Can I tell you a story? It's a bit like a proverb, but some claim it really 'appened, about seven years ago. Or maybe it was nine. I lose track. There was this spirit-now don't laugh! Lots of people know about it. (He must have thought I was pretty naïve, substantiating such a trivial fact.) And its name was Anzi. Which, little known to many, was short for Anastazi, the ancient people of the Southwest. (Sounded good so far. I nodded encouragingly.) He was one of those pre-Indian creed of cliff-dwellers, who stuck around. (The story of the Tibetan Gringo rises from the annals.) Or got stuck here? I offered. Perhaps; I'm not personally connected with it. Him- or whatever it is. (This guy's so crazy, he knows exactly where to go with me.) I'm from the veteran's hospital, you see? And they don't like me talking to strangers much, 'bout this stuff. But you seemed okay. (Escaped?) (Dangerous?) Go on. I'm all ears. Thank you. So I was going to this big meeting in the desert, where all the people would get a chance to talk to Anzi, when it happened. What happened? The car crashed. Oh. I see… (The path is becoming treacherous.) And who was in the car? The girl. She was the one Anzi spoke through. One of them, anyway. Maybe say, the best one. (Out of meds. Too many meds?) But it had to happen. How come? I was told later, when I got in the theater, that plays in the back of my head. Nothing to worry about; it's my little way of saying I get there, and things happen. It isn't really a place, except it is. (Holy shit! This guy goes there?) Who told you? Not the Anzi! He's a bad fellow. It's like this: The girl had this voice when she thought, that disturbed this man's- Spirit's… we should really get this straight, just to talk more freely. Let's call him spirit, shall we? O-offered-I, to grease the metaphors' railway. Yes. Spirit is good. And he kept pacing, and not being able to meditate of his concerns when she thought of him. I think it was like rain on a tin roof. So he gives her hell. A lot of it… and this is the strange part: Because this being, or spirit, isn't it? Because he, it's so… (the pronouns are driving me crazy) smart, it badmouths her, and she says she's getting wisdom. Cuss-she is (was that a joke?). Cuss-she hears all the (no) wise energy coming between and through the worst kind of insults. He as such a holy spirit, coming from this other place… That you go to? I lead. No. I can't go there, but maybe, it comes to me… And this other place offered a lot of things we don't have here, which spill out whenever you lay out flat, and let the theater play. (I was trying to keep this linear. It squiggled like a writhe of snakes.) So the car crashed… (Bringing it back to circle.) And you didn't get to talk to her? No.

And he gets silent.

"What can you tell me about Anzi?"

"Who?"

"Some gathering in the desert seven to nine years ago, in Nevada, I think. Maybe Northern California. It had a car crash associated to it. Maybe."

"Sounds pretty definite."

"See what's out there."

He loved shit like that, I could tell.

About this time, sitting in the Mesa Drug Store, blinded by the dingy, but too-bright canary yellow hand-brushed booth, I began to realize I was enjoying myself. This was the cat's meow. The phone is still warm with my hand holding the receiver to gab with somebody we, as peon citizens, usually fear. Not only am I gabbing, I'm ordering him around! More or less. And just to prove the point, a waitress brings me a piece of birthday cake, all white and fluffy with frosting. "What number?" "Twenty three." "It's a great age." As if every one isn't, or is, depending on your orientation. Haggard, toothless baseball-capped regulars gummed their presents in this throwback to some singularity of preserved, 1938-style lunch-counters. The place wasn't restored, kind patrons, it never deteriorated quite to needing that word. It was encased in a mysterious non-entropy cloud, that only cleared occasionally. This was the real McCoy, run down the way it was in 1939. No dust in the corners, means it isn't the article. Pall Mall smoke must have preserved it, I decided later. And thinks I: That phone couldn't be ringing for me.

But naysayers miss important calls.

Hellowa?

Got your info.

No way!

Ten minutes. Not bad, eh?

I didn't think you had my two dollar cheeseburger number.

Thought you'd appreciate it better, hearing it while you eat. Or what ever you're doing.

Having a birthday party.

Spank 'er for me, will you?

It's a guy.

Liar.

What!! You got this place wired?!

No… I just figured… you having that girl after you back home… what's her name? Calling your boss and all… Pistil, isn't it?

This conversation was giving me the friggin' creeps.

Yea, well I've decided I'd rather stay ignorant about some things you know.

I've got her number, if you want it.

You're kidding.

Would I? She just called your home five minutes ago.

And that's tapped, naturally.

Naturally. Who do you take us for? Private eyes? Those guys are our rejects.

Okay, fine. I'll take it.

Trade you. Tell me how you got that tidbit you fed me.

Fed you. Like that. Very good.

Because you may have hit some pay dirt.

Small bills, tens and fifties.

You dreamer. Hitting the lucky number can be your epitaph, in this game.

Yeas-don't remind me. I was just thinking I was having some fun.

Please; be our guest!

I liked this fellow. At least he had a sense of humor.

The birthday girl brought me a second piece, sitting at the phone.

Tell them to come on by! She said enthusiastically. More the meeerrier.

Is that her?

Yea. In drag. I'll tell you-I got this information from a loonie tune, who came up and started to talk. He's a veteran's hospital patient.

In Grand Junction?

The very.

What made you call me? I mean, about what he said.

Just a hunch.

It was a good one. Did you get the guy's name?

No, but I may see him again. Unless the guards tracked him down.

Tell me what he looks like, and I'll do the phone work.

Sounds good.

I returned to my seat, and listened to the last few chicken-fried-steak customers discuss the cons they know, and who dated them. The waitress, at tender twenty-three, had four local boys. One was three strikes you're out, as of last Monday night. I watch a kid run full speed down the ancient linoleum floor, and do the biggest face-plant you've ever seen. Mom watched, from over her mountain plate of fried onion rings. What a place! My secretaries are taking care of business. How wonderful. They're better at it than I am, anyway. I only pretend to be as official as they are, to scam some info. The buzzing in m pocket makes me stand up and swat my pants. Sheepishly, I remove the cell phone, and deploy its small antenna. "Phone call." I mine into the machine, much to the toothless wonders' shaking of heads. Ah, yea? Ready? So the agent… He calls back, and reads me his journal. Wait; whose journal? Oh. What'd it say? "To feel well, all I have to do is shut my eyes. I then see the love dance on my eyelids. Sometimes it makes me cry enlightenment, other times just tears. I love to feel them all. I hate feeling them all." Who's them? Who do you think? So we sent an agent there. And what happened? Our pirate had a letter, laid under the mattress of his bed. For good luck? Maybe dirty dreams-who knows. "…Dirty feeling of influence. Money, car, bills, credit, house, job - details -details - details - there is nothing here but details. I see no change and feel the intimidation of not trying to fit the agenda. The intimidation influence is hollow - the utter stagnation of human change - of human evolution, makes me feel sick. I am a part of this? I think not." Who wrote it? He did. No kidding! Is there more? He sounded more like an idiot savant, in the trial information. Who do you think it was meant for? What he said? I don't get you. He said what the people expected to hear. And they believed it, huh? That's usually the way it works. Here, let me read you a New York Times article he crossed some words out on, and oddly enough, added others. "At one level of understanding, thought can be imagined as little points of electric charge…" Why did you say, oddly enough? Do you want to hear this, or not? Yes. Then pipe down for a minute. "…that orbit the center of being. But this image hardly represents the true character of thought, which, chameleon-like, interacts with its environment and manifests either as 'a reality' or a dream. Thoughts are components of existence, free to move on their own through atmospheric conductors, or empty virtual space." And it's odd because he whited-out the typing he didn't like, and typed over it. On the original newspaper clipping? No, on the copy he made of it. Apparently his typewriter had big font, and he had to get the enlargement just right. How did you trace it to him? Date, post-office, and fingerprints. What about the Anzi thing? It was a big rustle in the paranormal community. The car this lady had inexplicably crashed while speeding to the appointed place in the desert. What's "appointed" mean? Where she was told to have the congress. Which is a cult rally? Depends on your point of view. (Indeed. I was an honorary cult member, and His Grace never even gave me a line to sign on.) Can you find more on it? Oh jeeze. You mean the vagaries of this woman? Yea. Call me back. And I de-flipped the instrument, suddenly aware I didn't know what the lottery win won me.

Cover blown, I walked out of the place. We were zeroing in on Lake Erie, in hot pursuit of a single marked water molecule. Likely candidates were everywhere, upping our forlorn hopes, which were dashed on the rocks of other, less fertile grounds. Like outer space, or molted feathers. Bubbling lava proved to be a bust, right before this find. Which makes me wonder if the fractal nature of every problem-especially one so interdenomi-mentional, might play in every direction we look. I've thought this before, haven't I? Some article I slogged through-

Examine the Fractal nature of scientific observation. Sand dunes look the same from up high, or down low, peering closely-(I've seen the ones frozen in time, the colored sand stones in the nearby valleys) And self-organized criticality-when things reach states of imminent change; the landslide effects take place. (Wasn't it called the sand pile theory of reality?) Critical systems initiate critical states. Jiggling atomic lattice structures, repelling and attracting peaks and valleys : Oscillations-can you apply it to reality evolution? (Is there a critical situation of no tangible life?)

God, brine pork packed in a barrel, and locked in some Upton Sinclair science novel. How do I remember this historical slop? No wonder there's no room for phone calls. I'm going to call the observatories and tell them, start scanning the heavens for life that doesn't exist; and whole new definitions will be needed for the word, etc., before they hang up on yet another groundbreaking idea. The damned phone rings again, and I jump three feet off the pavement. If a basketball recruiter had been there to see it, I'd have a million dollar contract (and a bell wired into my brain, the coach could activate for rebounds). What!? Don't be so testy. You wanted me to call you. Okay, sorry. Our man says he wants to talk to you. The agent? No, the loonie-tune. Except, he's not that loonie. Sure seemed like it to me. That's probably because you don't know bery-manny nuclear physists. And you're right there. But he got a few too many isotopes somewhere, didn't he? You be the judge. He'll walk wherever you want to chat. How about… (what's the man's name? Did I ask that yet?) What's the name of that bagel place on North? You tell me. Well, there's a bagel place on North and tenth. About. Have him meet me there. Now? Sure. Why not?

I found it easily. You could hear the drums pounding from three blocks away.

"Hey, what's up?"

"Bongo night. Join in man!!"

"I don't have a skin."

"Here, use mine."

Friendly fellow. Were did all these alternative-looking freaks come from? This seemed like such a straight town. Nice choice for a conversation with a physicist. We'll study the spatial acoustics of atmospheric, virtual sombambulent macro-bubbles, using African drum language. My voice will last all of two minutes, shouting over this melee. The beat deteriorated into random bangs, thumps and bops, as the inevitable organized, danceable threshold passed. To my utter amazement, the physist ( I still didn't believe it) was sitting right next to me. He was the virtuoso on the plastic chicken eggs, filled with beads. I neatly put my jaw down to my chin, and read his T-Shirt. NATURE ABHORS A VACUUM unless her living room is dirty. Is yours? was all I thought to say. The twister had Dorothy's house, and the wicked witch in it, who was riding an ICBM missile.

"Ah, pleased to meet you again."

"Likewise. You should try a toka. You'd be good on one."

I knew so little about drumming, I thought he was talking about a bong. Or maybe I know more than I think. The room emptied out when the sweet sticky smell of marijuana permeated the air, coming in the front door. He notes the assembly around the hardware cloth table, and the scraping of iron on backhoe-scratched pavement. As if reading my mind:

"Butter on bread; dope on skins. Can't have one with out the other."

We shake hands,

drum some more, and get down to business. I had a blister on my finger the size of a quarter, and the rest to the digits were bruised. "You slowin' down!" he shouts.

"'Fore I bleed all over the drum." I whine.

"Cool. We'll go outside."

Where I tell him my fractal theory.

"You been talkin' to the man?" he wants to know.

"Not while I'm awake."

He puts his hand to his chin, and tries to start a fire, stroking it.

"Guess not."

And we sat there six or seven minutes.

"Talk to ya-soon."

He high-fives the air right over my head, walks to a heavily-laden mountainbike, flips the noisy kick-stand up, and pedals off into the night.

When I told the agent what happened, he didn't give the slightest hint what he thought.

Undoubtedly, all these people think I'm nuts, but they put up with me, in the way Scotland yard puts up with a psychic who has better-than-average luck finding bodies. Anything that gets the job done. That's the military's motto. Someone higher up has decided this is important, so you're required to pipe down and follow orders. To the absolute letter. This leaves little room for doubts and skeptics to fuddle complex interactions. The Feds are so-damned loyal, they actually try to believe whatever's presented (in the name of national security). Phone.

"We will be having a meeting at oh-six hundred hours tomorrow morning, and you'll be expected to attend."

"It's a mite early, don't you think?"

Said to a man who habitually rises at five, it's not early at all.

"No."

Curt. Not much room for debate.

"I don't have an alarm clock, so send a cruise missile in, if I don't appear by fifteen-to."

I knew that would get him. Having to play mother to the civilian freak.

"We'll call you at four-thirty, just to be sure."

"Love you too."

Backfired, big time. I wasn't making any lifetime friends with the brash. The chuckle right before he hung up, dug a little. I am full of consequences, and not any fun right now.

"Hello? Hey, I was wondering if I could borrow a car."

I feel like a teenager, bordering on a big restriction.

"For who?"

"Myself. Who else?"

That was a dumb question.

"I'd like to go see a national park, if that's all right."

"Which one?"

"Canyonlands."

I was lying. I really wanted to see the Arches, and the National Monument down below it, who's name I've forgotten. It was so far away, I thought they'd give it a veto.

"I'll check, and call you back."

I was hoping the other side to the fence would be less hyper about the morning meeting. If necessary, I'd drive all night to get there in time. Besides, the Feds had better cars.

"Oh, and see if you can get me something with some ground clearance."

"No problem."

He was pretty nice, really.

I sat there while my driving minutes click off. And there's a knock at the door. "Agent Kuller, at your service. Your speeshal service, if you know what I mean, wink-wink." This is a joke right? You're a newspaper reporter, posing as a man with the government. He senses my taken-abackness. "They didn't tell you?!" I was unsure where to put that exclamation, under the category of hardy-harr joke, or genuine concern. "No. Do they ever?" Well, I suppose it isn't really their business to tell anybody anything they don't absolutely have to know, etc., so neither of us should be surprised." Which was about as true as true could be, for this coyote. "Pleased to meet you." I offer him my genuine hand.

It was hard to believe this man worked for the security division of the United States Government. He was bristling with highly-colored anecdotes from dubiously-legal sources, had a pony tail tucking from his collar seclusion, and smiled so mischievously, you had the impression he was a civilian, investigating the shady sides of the government, and wanted to let me know which side was up. "McCane's the name. But call me Jackie." I couldn't contain my curiosity any longer.

"Jackie, how did they let someone as real as you into this monkey house?"

"Ah son, that is a story in itself. We'll dig into it, by and by, but first we need to know something."

"What?"

"Where'r we driving?"

So he's my chauffeur!

"Assume 'we', as you're taking me somewhere?"

"More or less. Wherever you want to go."

I should have known better. Them trusting me with one of their shiny new 4WD fleet cars? No way. I was a known user of hallucinogenic drugs. Who cavorted, and stick-and-carroted with the National Security Enemy. Etc.

"Arches."

"Bully. That's on the schedule."

"So, I get to knock about a bit, and you'll drive me back-as long as it's on the schedule. That's the less of wherever I want to go?" I was hot for no particular reason. I guess the incarceration was getting to me, even if it was for my own good.

"Did I lay out less before more? Stop worrying! We'll just go for a little drive, and see how it goes."

There's been a security breech, and they thought it better if you where elsewhere tonight. He said, about half an hour later. And they thought it better, if you were out tooling around. So I told my real desires. Arches is nice. No doubtabout it. But there's a lot of other stuff too. A whole lot. Mind if I smoke? He whips out a baggie full of Cuban cigars. Looks at me, and raised eyebrows said, want one?

"Looks like Montecristos. What are they, Dominican Republic?"

"Nah. Nuthing but the Cubans."

"Aren't those a little bit illegal at the moment?"

"Shhh!!"

He looks around comically. "The FDA might hear you. Want one?"

It was about sixty bucks worth of cigar. Maybe more. "We got plenty of time. You can pull an all-nighter, right?" Like it's some kind of college test. "I figure we can breeze through Natural Bridges, and head down to Hovanweep, maybe even take in Mesa Verde on the way. You ever been to Sedona?" I was too busy trying to figure out his butane flame-thrower lighter, and jeweled cigar snipper to answer. "Nice place. Not the town; but what's around it. You know, the first time I went there as a kid, only twenty nine years ago (goddamn time's flyin'!), there was only thirty ranchers living there. Hole in the fucking wall, dirt road going in-and-out the other side." He said it sexually, rocking his head like an East Indian would. "Good hiking, but a little too far. You're a lucky fella, full moon and all tonight-me so well-rested, and ready to drive the tires bald." I finally managed to engage the end of the tobacco stick, to cherry.

"Whoo-boy! Tastely."

"Tastely. That's good; I'll have to remember it."

We were screaming down highway 141, with Spanish opera cranked, and the windows rolled down. "Bad-assed road, hah? It ain't faster, but it sure is prettier."

He used to live in Jamaica, where he had 'a mite of a habit'. Got cleaned up through about sixteen different programs and a hundred people screaming at me, though. Ah-it was time to leave anyway. Jamaica used to be paradise back then. I remember running out of gas in the middle of the jungle one night, and these two local boys appear out of nowhere, talking that shit, knowing I needed some help. Maan, we pushinyou, akkay? And they labored the car six miles, where I gave them both a beer, cuz that's all I had, and they wouldn't take any money, and that was that. Nowadays, they'd pull the gold right out of your teeth, and leave you for dead. (He asked me where I came from, and I ladled him the strongest stew I could think of.) Well. Looks like you and me have been around some. (Which opened the spigot wider.) "I think I get it. They wanted somebody who'd been right through the middle of the shit, and pulled himself out the other side. They wanted somebody who wouldn't be tempted, but knew it through and through." Very good. Very brash observer. But I was a plotter, and ploy-maker, as well. I knew a lot of hither and thither, all the field dressings on the wounds, and women who'd wound you deeper, if they only had a second chance. I was like the friends in Clockwork Orange. Top dogs, who were too dangerous to let out. "So they made them cops?" Yes mister. And because I was worldly, and educated in the European arts, and speaking a bit of Latin and pidgin, they had to make me more than a bobby. "What are you?" Can't tell. It's sector-1 secret, I don't even know. "So… they let you do things like have long hair, and smile through smuggled Cuban cigar smoke?" As long as I dint-flaunt it; I get the proverbial blind-eye, you know? Like the jet-jocks who buzz the tower, and get a hundred fifty mile and hour speeding ticket on their motorcycles. Slap on the palm. (He settled back into the cushybucket seat.) I smoke Cubans, because they were a present. I get presents like this, because I like to smoke Cubans. It's a symbiotic math equation. Castro's a bit of a man among men I know, if you catch my drift, and nobody with an ounce of common geopolitical sense is going to wrench that diplomacy, by making me give things back. (This guy could be a general, for all I know.)

Tell me about his…

And we're into my life, before I knew what happened. Is this the de-briefing tactics they used? Open you up with disarming, anti-government straight-man information, so you felt free to spill your guts? I spun the inquisition back to him.

What got you started in the business?

Well-I tell you. I'm not completely sure. If somebody told me what I'd be doing now, when I opened my first joint, I would have punched them.

What was that?

(He's in a meditation, navigating the canyon corners, and adjusting the equilizer to de-shrill the female star.) Me and a couple of frinds started this bar in Chicago. Or bought one out, to be certain. It was a rough as hell neighborhood, and the Chinese owner finally had to call it quits. We kept it just lame and sleazy enough, but retrofitted it with classy deco stuff, and good mood lighting. It caught on fast. The place was famous for hobnobbing with heroin dealers, ad execs and mob members. Real eclectic crowd. (I'd say!) He laughs; a light of memory goes on. That was after the episode.

Tell me about it.

Check that feature out!

Awesome. This whole place is a fairy land.

Well oneday, the door busts in, and a six foot seven tall Monseir pulls a utterly huge handgun, paints with air in front of him with it, and yells: I LIKE TO DRINK, FIGHT, AND FUCK BOYS! I was all of twenty at the time, and my partners weren't much older. Then he shot straight into the center of the bar, right square-perfect where the bathroom was, one cheesy wall away. And I happened to know the mayor's son was in there. I saw brains oozing down the wall, and blood pouring out of my asshole.

He had me gripped. Then what happened?!

Oh, we poured the jerk a drink, and spiked it with something rotten. Hoped to hell he's thirstier than horny. Turns out, the bullet just missed the kid. Popped in under the mirror, right where his head would have been, if he hadn't a-been hunkered down, reading a dirty mag on the honeypot. Personally, I think he was jerking off in the sink. I had this shit a codger gave me, in case there was any automatic weapons pining for action. He claimed it would take someone down in about three minutes. After that, I relied more heavily on protection. The mayor's son hooked me up with a bouncer. A tough as nails Mauri-type, who moonlighted for a major Don. When he was a fixture, we didn't have any problems. That joker just looked at you wrong, and you peed your pants.

Did you sell the place, or what?

Yea. Pain and suffering. The bouncer talked me into having a wedding party there, for some important friends of his. Christ! The photographer nearly went mad.

Huh?

He couldn't take any pictures of anyone.

Why not?

They were all the main underground men. The mob bosses, who ran Chicago, and other infiltrated cities. The guy was a living wreck towards the wind-down, without a family shot to present.

And you?

The place got too hot. I sold out to the syndicate, for a decent price on a restaurant.

So you became a restauranteer?

Oh, you might be able to say that.

Which I later discovered, was the understatement of the month.

What did me in?

A box of fifty 35 year old Dunhill-Montecristo Cubans, with a thin paper warning inside. Not to be sold for less than twenty cents a piece. They were Monsterous! (Epic isn't a big enough word.) Those babies smoked like a bar of the finest Swiss chocolate. I was enraptured for a week, and then they were finished. Life's like that. he adds, almost ceremoniously. But we had a falling out later. I was filed under DRUNK at a swanky party, and stood up (goush, I know) to announce my intent to pass out some famously-good cigars to whomever was interested. I grabbed my baggy of stogies, and whipped them onto the table, only to realize it was the wrong baggy. Local bud. Bad show, old man. Everybody had the urbane sense to instantly ignore me, and let humiliation settle in. That Louie the fifteenth really fucked with my head. But I suppose it better, for a thousand bucks a bottle.

Time had flown

We shot right past the gas station, though the gauge said E.

Twin tanks. No worries. Mate.

No-worries man. I fessed up. I spilled. I shot the problem, and carved it up. I disemboweled its family, and quartered all the in-laws, just to be sure the friggin' problem was covered.

That's no mean problem, you've got there.

Didn't they tell you about me?

They don't tell me anything I dint need to know. Think I'm different than you?

Which clicked. He'd be more sudden, and useful, thinking his own way, touring a problem. That was his skill in life. They'd only give him a skeleton, and let McCain's savvy, fill in the rest. Perhaps in a new way, they hadn't yet considered.

You think this process is tied with something else? Something… historical?

Yes. Quite frankly, we are in the middle of a revolution, and it's the result of a lot of repression of things, that were once common knowledge. Tell me about the girl. I'm afraid I gushed a lengthy spiel of hypotheses. He as listener, was silent for longer that active listeners should be.

"Whereas, a number of natural bridges situated in Southeastern Utah, having heights more lofty and spans far greater than any heretoforeknown to exist, are of the greatest scientific interest, and it appears that the public interests would be promoted by preserving these extraordinary examples of stream erosion… I, Theodore Roosevelt, President of the United States of America, … do hereby set aside (this area) as the Natural Bridges National Monument…" in April, the year :1908. As a presidential proclamation, with out any congressional approval necessary. I was reading this act of war against rape and poison stupidity, sort-a getting teary-eyed, when somebody struck me. Not physically, though it felt like that too. It was just this guy, slouched against the desk where the harried ranger tried out her six-semester college German on a barrage of high-speed tourist questions. "Nice saying. I remember when you never heard anything but English in national parks." Jackie said, as two totally unrelated statements. "Roosevelt was one heck of a visionary; I don't care whatever else history leveled at him." Hey, (I bump him) check that guy out. All done with eyebrows. What? He seems to say. Another dippy tourist. But I lend some credible nostril flares to the interaction, and he takes a closer look.

Cebachrome. Way back when. Shouts rather impudently in my ear.

Toll road through …. Where was I going? Stalking Indian food, full of Juniper cakes, and rabbit sticks…

Land happy, warm under my softly-padding feet. Deer silent in the setting twilight, wind still, smell hovering around my sage-brushed form. Wagon in the distance, breaking rocks-sky angry, darkens with rain. White people; they are from some other place.

Hundred-mile runner, peyote Mexicans.

Plants produce toxins insects store up, to make them toxic to predators.

"Hey! You okay?"

Dandy. I just traipsed back a hundred fifty years, only to be stuck back in a Park's man-made info hut.

"Tell me what happened."

"That guy…"

But it was difficult to put into words. There's an old wagon toll road somewhere around Grand Junction, I think, and … That guy there, was driving the wagon that killed me. (He is probably as serious as serious could be, given that atmospheric statement.) And it has something to do with storing up psychic anger, in all the people who've been done wrong, by this world we've created.

"Since when?"

"Since our coming here, I think."

"Earth, or this part of North America?"

Very interesting. The man seems suddenly uncomfortable, and moves off. I don't think he had any idea what took place, and what's more…

"I think this has happened in the last three hundred years. At least, in this part of the planet's history." I'm clicking. This is a regional strangulation-Europe went far before this desert land did.

"Mind filling me in a midge-more on what you have?"

I have an unpredictable case of very profound visions. I get pieces of jigsaw puzzles, then suddenly, with obtuse warning, they stun me with symmetry. As I try to explain, he nods his experienced head.

"I hear you."

Was all he needed to say.

Broken arm, Brother Speed… Arm wrestling. SNAP! I felt it, a-breaking, you know?

It had some thing to do with Fuzzy Logic. Tertiary codifying… I can't quite remember. Screeching tires-had some connection…

What else was there?

A park ranger, who was standing between them, holding the knot of knuckles they made.

Tell me about her.

Pretty. Seemed to know them both. Blond hair.

How do you know she was a ranger?

I din't know. But you just know, yaknow? Maybe she had a badge on, or something like that.

Can you describe the other fellow?

The biker-guy?

No, the person whose arm he broke.

Young. Weird and quiet. I'm pretty sure he was wearing a military uniform.

Any name?

Don-know.

Thank you very much, Mr. Kikason. You've been very helpfu

East of Cameron, Jackie looked in the rear view mirror, when he thought I was snoozing. He wore theater makeup of worry, and watched a dark sedan carefully, which I spied through the side view mirror. "What!?" I said abruptly, making my chauffeur jump. "Jesus! I thought you were sleeping." "You worried some other branch of the military is tailing you?" Which seemed to make him uncomfortable, just for an instant. "Yea. I get all the premium assignments, and the other fellas'r jealous." Which made me laugh a little. And get suspicious. "Where we going now?" "Wupatki" "Where?" "Another national monument. Relax; you'll like it."

It was degenerating, for some unknown reason.

"In 1064, or five, the Sinagua, a people named to 'lack of, or without water' noticed a mountain was exploding." Priests by the sacred blowhole, where spirits entered and departed the earth, gathered in the ceremonial amphitheater below the large pueblo. They were profoundly at a loss, to figure out what happened, for no training had been imparted for discussing matters of dysfunctional sprits' annoyance during loud, un-meditative catastrophes. One man, known for his prowess throwing sticks at small furry animals inhabiting the endless arid plain, spoke openly: "I have been in discussion with the offending spirits, and they warned me this would happen." "Why didn't you tell this to the village?!" the older priest said. "Because the same spirit told me, you didn't want to hear it." he unabashedly replied, without due reverence. An ambassador from nearby Wukoki was particularly taken with this lad, and the depth of truth he'd just spoken. As the first ash began drifting down upon his steeling gray hairs, the leader yelled for peace to speak. "I have seen and heard. We are not first, not without humility, knowing or with wide wisdom from the past. We have thrived; and now this has happened. What dies that doesn't live; the things that came before us, and go on again, after we're gone? I have seen this man speak from the soul of a boy, and bow to him. Henceforth, at Wukoki, he shall be the one who sees the honest, from the fakirs." Or something like that. Later, we called them the Anasazi. (What I didn't' tell him was, that boy, and our changeling, were one in the same.) His cell phone rang, and I asked how many hours we had left before the meeting. "Meeting's been pushed back. Security breech, as such. We aren't due till Oh-three hundred, the next day."

He asked many times, as we walked the moonlit rounds, what I saw, and felt. What I felt, was Jackie is an abducting confederate from the bewildering array of agencies vying for information, on what could easily be construed as a patent Armageddon, or some-such coming biblical nonsense. "Say Jackie… why bother with all this sham? You must know more than I do, and could get his information faster, at less personal expense, than driving my ass over creation. He parlayed. "Oh sir, you did me a disservice there! I am only a humble fishing line. You are the hook."

And about three hours later, it occurred to me. I can pump him for important facts, covertly, just as he attempts to wring them from me. Before I jump ship, or try to. Because, if I don't , I must be somewhat expendable, sooner and later, guns piling lead into Fido, and my worthless car, etc. God knows what evil drugs and fingernail-pulling routines they've voodoo'd up for yours truly! I'd been sweating it for almost an hour, wondering how many times he'd seem good-cop, and how many bad. Bad weighed heavily, if you need some empirical statistics.

I reviewed my mental

Notes:

First Landmass Pangea; split into Laurasis and Gondwanaland

He sucked a thick black viscosity up the left nostril - mahot cochon plant

should have been right - different effects, different nostrils, though subtly-so.

Nature's shenanigans: Gongora orchid intoxicates bees with its nectar, so the poor insect falls into the labia of the flower, and fertilizes it. What about it? Something to do with being…

Afraid of what we are - the silencing of the individuality - the blending with the one that keeps us afloat, or… Collective enterprise: Ants that fungi-farm, producing antibiotics that live on the feces… like

Zen warriors - plants… with untold millennium of proactive learning - millions of years of chemical, and germ warfare - "Mother" nature - and that's only the apparent… Only the "physical" side of things

Plants, like humans, produce toxins insects (souls?) store up, to make them toxic to predators.

Furher analogy? Then there's the… Healing Tones and songs. Audio therapy.

Memory and Smell connections…

The Kid died to this reality. That means what?

Sgt. Mackey

Had an International truck, and a dishonorable discharge

Ranger Sally

Missing Person; reappears as Virgin Mary mania.

The Courtroom "Wild Associations" were 'wild' because…

My brain was going haywire.

I wanted to relax.

To purr in the Formica corner, with a warm bowl of milk.

Where was this cataract coming from?

My skull was burning with care-less facts…

with Organic fields, and covalent oscillations--- with the 8hz frequency of our Earth's geomagnetic field.

Same as human brain. It was afire with Biophotons--- the jiggling of molecules' randomness, callously following order. With Ethnopharmacologic Search for Psychoactive Drugs, or Hallucinogens in Native American Shamanism and Modern Life.

And What About It?

Natural Attraction.

"Leviathan (God) + gravitylove = The ineffable flux of supra-Neutonian laws + the core (causal) explanations we all embrace." Wha-the hell does changeling manage to get to, with that nonsense?

A Wrinkling of the earth: Analogous to…

synthetic aperture radar interferometry, maps Lilliputian changes in Earth's structures. Stress lines.

Note: Brain needs some stress, to fold its cortex into space-conscious geometry it exhibits.

Daydreams are images in between dreaming and waking states. Watch their images.

For what, though? Night dreaming covalence?

Crater Lake. The crater is leaking. Its dam is breaking.

The sunken ex-Mt. Mazama is a gigantic anomoly. Pioneers traipsed its shadows for fifty years and never found it. Why is that? It rarely freezes over, sounds in at 2000 feet, is 7,700 years of age and held intense supernatural power for Native Americans, who were utterly-forbidden to gaze at it. Only shamen were deemed worthy, or strong enough to survey its deep blue, high altitude perch. Blue is the color of truth. Strangely, Crater Lake held no fish until whites introduced them.

Symbols: Tarantula

From the Italian cult, that pretexting a good, healthy spider bite, to wild abandon.

Where do I go from here? Imaginary maps… Windstars - seeing air, on old charts, like the dreamtime… Seeing paths, ages old, through singing songs. Basically,

A Static Rational Reality is a farce. It is… "The script" - the, or… my normal reaction to things.

The realization of this is a reality re-action.

Scythians. So what?

The unbeatable brigand fire-worshipers. Never poured water on fire, or let it burn out.

Their graves were blessed with fire torches. Marijuana was thrown on glowing stones in small enclosed places. and poured golden treasures onto the unburied dead, the fuel for endless looters, excavating mysteries with bulldozers where Greek wine poured from vanquished victims' skulls, and scalp-sewn cloaks warmed hot bodies clad in mail. Mind over matter: It is rumored, or at least, carved in stone not far from the Black Sea, a Scythian sent an arrow 570 yards with one superhuman pull.

So. The mind burns with its fevered activity, and the Scythians let it go.

They didn't try to douse it with water. Way to Golem yourself.

Water: Emoting. And "Emotions don't change with words."

Sum it up!

Harmonic levels of existence.

Other forms of life have, and are evolving and disappearing constantly. The world I snot as it would seem. We have yet to let it get out of control enough, to break down the units of its measurement, which can only measure themselves. Intellectual terms of "coincidence" mutate to non-thinking realizations… becoming folklore, where they can not be assimilated into a "higher" principle/precept.

And this it is, theory and life all mixed up, creating…

Flashback:

She said I had it all wrong. I was the frat boy down to see the ruckus, drunk and high on acid, shouting profound quips of himself in "Show us your tits!", jumping up and down on a too-new pickup truck with ten of his brothers in arms. I was closed and bolted, rigid and set - a dirt road to a poor granite garden, barred with a yellow caution gate, and rusty barbed wire wound around it. No Trespassing! you say, all over you. Your heart's-slocked away, out of sight and mind. Buried under this morass… this end moraine of logic and rational conditionalizing. It's Contrition!

It's a Red Tide, this business… it's a relfection of us.

The mysterious killer. Pfiesteria piscida invades all the world's water, producing toxic poison, dissolving fish and killing humans. It's aggravated by fertilizer (food) and sewage (waste), and is horribly difficult to isolate as it meta-evolves its way through one of 24 different life cycles, depending on conditions present. They (we) are currently threatening worldwide coastal fisheries with increased incidences, and no end of burgeoning in sight. - Ten pages further, that guy, and the coastal world news brief, followed by a little light fishing industry reading. The Cichlid fish - evolved a whole different species in a mere 20 generations. That's what's happening here. We've underestimated the pace of human re-evolution. Scientists are rocked by the discoveries pointing to a complex ecologically diverse bio-system in a mere 12,000 years. And that was tailgated by the ad for fish pre-freezers, whatever they were. It was a torrent of facts and partitions falling down. The chaos was randomly organizing, into thick cerebral folds.

I didn't know where we were, or where we were going anymore. Life was clouded with the need to sleep, but instead, I stared at the glossy sheet of Pepsi Stuff™ I could possess, by acumen, and sheer monopoly of imaginary points, (somewhat like US dollars) towards this media-hyped star-studded air-brushed Am-Dream sports super-hero want-its catalogue. So I shakily filled out the order blank, that would put me on every known mailing list in the solar system, to win the race car Indy day with boy-wonder OM, in my personal pit pass fantasy of a lifetime promo event, connived by the slickest ad guys to ever walk the earth. I did it, knowing full well it was a brainwashing event, a single stamp paid for.

"What are you doing?"

"Having a triple latté of reality."

He was kidnapping me. There was no point pretending anything else was happening.

"Where are we?"

"Fry Canyon."

As if my question was perfectly timed to evanesce with a lone building, lit by some measly bulbs.

"I always stop here for grub. Hungry?"

It wasn't much. But strongholds of Americana rarely are. We'd been driving for an hour, at eighty miles and hour, and I'd seen nothing but ruined foundations, a hundred years old.

I moved my sleepy legs, shaking the pins and needles out my pant cuffs.

"What's good?"

"The milk shakes."

"What else?"

"The fact this place used to have 3000 people living here, sold more beer two years running than any other place in Utah, had a post office, a teeming school, mines galore, and is still on the maps as a town."

"Wow."

I'd suddenly forgotten I was a captive.

"And a lot of the Monkey Wrench Gang hung out 'roud here. You ever read Edward Abbey?"

"Sure. The ranger at Arches, who didn't like sunglasses."

"That's him. He's a bit of a fold legend in these parts."

"Bad, or good?"

"Depends. What's Butch Cassidy?"

"Just a legend, I guess. Time seems to overlook a few murders and robberies, if a person had charisma."

"And that, my friend, is an important fact to reconsider."

I waited for the unspoken recruitment lecture."

"And what might that mean?"

"It mean, de ends justified da means. Wouldn't you agree?"

But I had to think about it, over a strawberry vanilla shake, with chocolate sprinkles on top.

"Let me read you something." He announced, sucking his thick shake down to its sweaty stainless steel bottom.

"What?"

"Just listen."

He sorts the filing cards of his memory, to arrive at a dog-eared, well-thumbed reference.

"Space Conscousness: The separation of death, the love of life."

He was reading it as a beat poet might, high on something very San-Francisco like, in a smoky coffeeshop on Haight Street. "…In the midst of experience; Lost. Emotions out of control. Always have been; on the edge. Fixated: (the high) depression. The de-structuring of experience becomes destruction. Until: understanding, knowledge and experience…are one. Infinity. Feeling and emotion are indifferent. They are elastic with experience, for life. Conscious: energy in its simplest form-light and gravity-Reflect to make it matter…(make it conscious.) Gravity; is the light of art; the evolution of; feeling SPACE.

(The evolution solution. Do you-feel it?)"

"Heavy. Stream of consciousness stuff. Feel like I'd have t-hear it a dozen times; to gather its message; you know?"

I played the semi-loquacious semicolons, and slurped my shake violently, like I'd never heard of charm school.

"Oh, I reckon you got it all right."

Said like a threat, mottled with amusement.

Wait-I gotta pee.

Shake got your bladder?

Pull over there, will ya?

The hole in the rock?

The very.

I was prepossessed with making a telephone call, alerting the good-ole US-gov to my whereabouts.

Perceptive of you. Or your bladder, that is.

Why?

I was going to sop up some kulture here anyway.

He said culture like a German would.

It looked like a cheese ball Indian Jewelry stand, carved into a red cliff bedecked with a three story sign, painted directly on the rock. How did that happen. Don't they need some kind of environmental impact statement to do that shit? I was wondering, praying for a phone in the men's room. Okay we're on highway 191. Anyone who lives here must know the place. No phone. No jewelry. Kitsch everywhere. John Wayne on sawed-off pine rounds, liberally dosed with shiny schlock. Tinkling rock wind chimes, shot glass for every state, and a side door, to a strange Elvis Presley world. "Tour's only two-fifty. You interested?"

When Albert died in 1957, the home was far from complete. His widow lived here till 1974, polishing the work they began together, into what you see here. Something about the place makes you sad. Doesn't it? Jackie whispered. I nod, fighting a tear welling on the vertigo of mine eyes. It took him twelve years to remove the 50,000 feet of rock, with hand chisels and dynamite, you now walk through. It was his lifelong dream. When Gladys passed away, she was buried next to him, in the rock alcove you can visit after the tour ends. At which point, the dam bust. A fat tear walked completely down my face, and I didn't bother to brush it wayside. The young tour operator, probably a grandchild of the original makers, saw it, like she'd seen it a million times already. She gave me a sad little smile.

These people put so much energy into this! Then he died.

What was it all for?

I fixated on the paintings he did.

Something about this place reminded me…

Let's go, shall we?

Now where?

He was going to stick me with a vial of something, and take me out?

Moab. Mountainbike capital.

We going…

Sure are.

I'd meant to say, mountain biking.

But it was getting dark again, and I was tired as a god spelled backwards.

I know the place, all right.

He sure did.

I'd been to Moab before. We stayed in the peeling-paint rooms of the Sunset, where you imagined sticky, uranium-miner sex in the heydays of cold-war processing. It was claustrophobic, hot as hell, and the air conditioner made monstrous noise, without producing any noticeable cold. But you kept it on all night, hoping. We'd been passing through on an all-nighter, the beer got the best of.

Never, had I imagined change on this scale. The place was booming again.

We stayed in the centerline hotel, where each room was a micro-weird environment. He lavishly forked out the fifty bucks for my mineshaft (or was it a cabin?), and procured the adobe Southwest setup for himself. This is my big chance, I thought. Just a few hours of shut eye, then I'm blasting.

The bed, was way too comfortable. A bang on the door tore me from sleep.

"Hungry?"

"Should I be?"

"When's the last time you ate?"

"(I couldn't remember.) Milkshake?"

"Two syllables. Good for you."

So he dragged me to the Poplar, a burnt-down rebuilt boardinghouse, bar, church feed-store, and bawdy house, from the late eighteen hundreds. Best Pizza around, he promised. And then-n-there, I forgot about getting away, for a while.

"You're not really working for them, are you?"

It was a ridiculous statement. Them could have been anyone.

"What gives you that idea?"

Honesty has a three pint of full suspension ale way about it.

"Just a madcap hunch, you know?"

"Another pint?"

"Why the hell not?"

We wrecked the pizza. There wasn't so much as a crust left over. We were on the deck, and I was under the spell of grunts and groans coming from pay by the hour beds, while parishioners bowed their heads in prayer, one adobe story below.

"Tomorrow, I think we should go."

I played with tea-toddling, thinking that one through. Go to the other dimension? Die? Go back to Grand Junction? Leave the country, or take a mountain bike ride? He coined the ultimate open-ended response to my question.

"I thought we had to be back?"

"Plans have changed again."

Not that it surprised me. The man seemed to be invulnerable to the effects of micro-brew beer. I'm not sure which surprised me less. Pint four made the world a little woozy, and five made it blur. It was one of those perceptive drunks, that made you appreciate being under a field of stars, where it was perfectly warm, when somebody else is picking up the bill, which is growing ever-larger, on a nice outdoor deck.

"Okay."

A mountain bike would be a good time to get away.

What's wrong?

Complete computer shutdown.

How'd that happen?

Some new version of the C-maz D virus.

Members of the family-owned CompuCare were hacking furiously in DOS, still streaked with the red earth of a jeep adventure they'd been unceremoniously airlifted out of. Their little shop, strewn with the carcasses of ancient 286 history, was epicentral for debugging the nasty, BIOS-crashing germ. It was a local infection that had showed up a month before; had the furious, defense-department nerds by the jockstraps and panty-hose, infecting everything in sight. The family was slow and systematic, answering phone calls, and stepping out to chat while the mega-generals chewed their lips, the government trucks idled, and the twin-Pentium co-processed viral-vac, scanned the network hard drives, ripped out, and delivered under armed-guard protest, to the humble ma-pa storefront.

"Nope, can't do. Got all our important stuff here."

"We'll truck it over."

"You don't understand. It's a mess. We'd never find anything if you organized it."

One look confirmed the grade-III bureaucrats' worst fears. The place was a sci-fi nightmare of circuit boards, papers, telephone book doodles mixed with lines of code, grubby manuals, and deli wrappers, smeared with mayonnaise. It would take too much time to sort it out, and security-clear the outcome. Better to go to them, and risk data being copied. And for god sakes, get that newspaperman on the line!

He was serious.

I wake with the hangover of the year, as he's tearing the tags off some bike shorts.

You ready?

For what? Losing my dinner?

Riding! Take a medium, right?

How'd-ja know?

Checked your underwear tag.

While I was sleeping?!

You know what time it is?

Now, or when I manage to get up?

What's the difference?

I hated the answer.

Where we going?

Poison spider.

Oh. Great.

So it's a hundred degrees, and my first water bottle on the rented full suspension (hangover coincidence) bike is empty on mile three, and I'm greedily thinking lusty human 80-something percent water thoughts climbing this jeep road from hell, when the phone rings. It was excellent timing, as the egg Benedict breakfast was rising.

Is that you?

I ask my muscle-bound tormentor.

But he's on it already… grabbed the thing like a modern-day gunslinger, and flipped the plastic guard open. YEA?! When? Okay. We're an hour away.

(From where?)

Let's move. We gotta hit the portal soon.

Where's that?

Right on front of us.

This dude scared the shit out of me.

I cough up chunks of high-altitude stressed lungs, and he lights up a cigar, puffing merrily.

…And it's a bitch.

Any lickin' it?

The seat sweat its too-many-doughnut bottom.

Not sure. We'll have to boot it up and try.

How did this place even operate? The officious bean-counter wondered. They didn't have to reference manuals they colluded to find, they had to find the pages that had fallen out of them in some god-forsaken corner, between large workbenches. Everything took forever; yet, in a baffling manner, it seemed to get done. He became more fascinated, afraid to stand up, and display his large wet ass.

What about that reporter?!

Another massive, powdered sugar man broke the professional tension.

Haven't you reached him yet?!

Yes sir, a younger chump deferred. He'll be an hour, yet.

An HOUR!

That's what our man said.

I want him on the line RIGHT NOW!

yESSir.

It'd be your shoe phone, this time.

(the ringing didn't seem to emanate from his belt pouch this time.

Ignore it. It's an alarm.

Radiation or something? Lemme guess, we're rifling down an old uranium-hauling road.

Yelled, paused, and yelled, as obstacles approached. The jeep track was battering me to pieces, but I was holding my own now. Portal's ahead! He grins, and drops his cigar.

Yea. Whatever.

No good sir, they aren't answering.

Well get another medic in there, and administer something stronger.

Beg your pardon sir, but that might be the whole problem in the first place.

This is the portal??!

What? Didn't you know?

Know what?

You thought it was a dimensional garret into some other reality?

He was clearly enjoying this.

I hadn't the foggiest.

Well, meet thy maker's best, or should I say, most evil attempt at, a mountain bike trail.

I glanced over its edge.

Do we need ropes, or a helicopter?

Nah. Nothing like that. Just balls. Big ones.

Yau're-serious? This thing's a vertical cliff!

Only to a friggin' amateur.

(Which I wasn't' going to fess up to.)

Okay, you first.

This is where I'd turn around.

We gotta do something! This whole thing's falling apart.

Why are you so fixated on that stupid reporter? Bucket of lucky guesses-that's all the guy is.

You got any better, more rational experts?

Yea; and not really.

What's that suppose to mean?

Not really a person, and yea. Maybe.

Who is it?

A defector.

I was terrified. Naturally, he didn't let me go last. I was skidding both wheels, asking Mary how many hails I'd have to give her to rescue a poor stupid sod heading towards a sheer cliff. Relax. Don't stiffen up. This may hurt… Where's that coming from? "I'm fucking up!!" I yell to my hindsight… "Ease off the front brake! Let the wheel turn again-throw your weight way back… as everything went lovely, and slow. I thought about the town-the one they took me to, two years before Butch Cassedy robbed the Telluride bank. The old Veteran told me about it, like this town… it was a wild place. My daddy's daddy told us, place was open twenty four hours a day, seven days a week. And when they slacked off, they'd rope off main street, and howl like wild dogs… racing horses back and forth for fun. So I;m still sliding, remembering these things I couldn't remember this man ever telling me, impassionately peering over the abyss…

Sir, they're coming around.

And then everything stopped. I was a good three feet from the life-sapping edge, balanced on the cantilevered bike like a circus clown. I had no sensation above my feet, and couldn't really move.

What's that in the background?

Using the freien, snucn in to the base.\\

Tried to poainson the staff with a mustard gass canister?

I can't make it out. Doesn't make a snigger of sense. Are they in the other world still?

Who knows where they are.

It was odd, hanging there on the friggin brink of the hot frying pan.

'You okay?' The thought seared through me, coming from Jackie.

Yea. Peachy.

Hold on…

(To what!?)

Who's that talking?

I'm at the Sunday night bathtub, and it's past my bedtime. They promised to let me watch the Wonderful World of Color if I took my weekly bath without protest. Fat Chance.

It's always a struggle.

But here's the crux of it.

Good Book. Quote spins through the air, and lands on my handlebars.

Read it twoX, and tell me what you think.

"We refuse to acknowledge the existence of an avant-garde because it threatens our citadel.

Really, the fear is silly: what is good will survive.

The iambics of Yeats and Frost withstood the free verse dogmatists;

the free verse of William Carlos Williams survived the iambic thirties and forties.

Maybe our real fear is that we are no good at all."

Donald Hall

Is it?

Well?

Profound. I'll give him that.

It's all laureate stuff, fraught with tombs and syllables.

I silently disagress.

It's a new word.

You can do that, here.

And here is?

It's in sight.

Never left, in other words./thoughts?

You haven't invented then yet.

Am I?…

Where ever you want to be.

I'll invent then…

Why do you think everyone calls him Changeling?

Not sure.

Very true./false.

I'm getting the hand of sleight?

Watch one possibility:\circumstance:

I sail off the cliff.

Jackie smiled the sinister, frozen smile I'd been waiting for.

I make the corner.

You're the master. You're the slave.

Get it now?

Now.\then/here.

Close.

I think we're up and running.

No faults?

Not so far.

Bring them back, then.

Yes sir.