1

John O’Keefe

1978/88
 2

XENOGENESIS

We are in a place now, Bekin

where the constellations are forever changing. We can make
nothing of what we see out of the window. Our computers are
updating the latest configurations, but they’re always
behind. All we have is a growing pile of maps.
See you in the synthesizer, Brother
Ustad Isa

MORNING. Rain. Me under my rubber fishing poncho. Just

graying November. Fog all around me.

I pulled the poncho down a bit and peered out. Shadows

in flat gray light. Not a sound but the light hiss of rain.
 3

I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes and discovered I had a

quart-sized hangover. I ducked under my poncho. I was
squatting over a dead fire. I lifted my numb posterior.
Beneath it was a thin black hard bound notebook with
crumpled pages. I reached between my legs and pulled it up
onto the dull light. It read:

TRANSLATION OF SHELLY’S POEM “TO A SKYLARK”

by Capt. Charles Shredder

I reached up to wipe my hair off and realized that it

was singed. I must have been bending over the fire. I
straightened out a page and leaned into the damp light:

m
Shrimp boats are a comin’
their sails are in sight.
Shrimp boats are a comin’,
there’s dancin’ tonight.

The words began to run down the page. A chain of

dreams broke in. Me and some Japanese girl between a bunch
of ancient Egyptians, flowers arched over our heads, to our
right a huge scarab beetle on its back, hieroglyphs on its
belly and me reading them, “Mysterium Coniunctionis, win-
blem in the ass-cream, you-me, you-me.” Then I dipped into
her most delicious, soft-lipped sauce, and right there in
front of “God” and everybody we “did it.”
The burned area beneath my ass was filling up with
water. I gathered my junk in my arms and stood. I heard the
tinkling of glass. I looked down and made a low, startled
moan and did a sort of lumbering jig. A metal thing slid
down my pants leg. It looked like a ruptured bug. Pieces of
 4

thin, broken mirror glass trickled down after it. I bent

down and examined it. It was a shattered thermos. I touched
my forehead. There was a dull pain and the peeled-plaster
texture of dried blood. I looked down at my hands. My palms
were seared. I put them out in the rain, the pain gradually
dawning. “I’ve been asleep.”
I pulled my pants off and shook them out in the rain.
I slipped the black notebook under my arm and searched my
pockets for articles. There was a cigarette case, twenty-
five dollars, some tobacco powder and lint. I tried to pull
the cigarette case apart but my hands were too sore and
stiff.
Dawn was beginning to break. I was in an open field.
There were picnic tables and five or six simple wooden
structures. On a far end was a swing set and a squat jungle
gym. Redwoods circled around me, snagging bits of fog. I
was in Northern California.

I began to walk.

An hour passed and the light slowly became brighter. I

was getting soaked. Water was dripping off my nose. No way
out, like a mugger caught on a train. The trees broke, and
rolling, intensely green hills took their place. I followed
the road down a hill past a tribe of bleating, yellow-assed
sheep. No signs, no sun, perhaps traveling east, godwit
between my ears, shredded like secret unwanted paper. I was
beginning to remember things I AM IN A DARK PART OF A DARK
CITY. THERE ARE NO TREES, ONLY SMOKE STACKS AND WHEELS AND
ROLLS OF WIRE. THE GRASS IS SCORCHED AND THERE IS THE
CONSTANT SOUND OF WHISTLES AND HUMMING WIRES, EMBEDDED IN
GLASS AND THE SMELL OF BURNING RUBBER. HUDDLED FIGURES ARE
 5

DUG INTO THEIR CLOTHES, COVERING THEIR MOUTHS AND EARS TO

FILTER THE AIR AND BLOCK OUT THE SOUND. A “BUD” SIGN IS
DARTING MAUVE SIGNALS THROUGH THE FOG AND FALLING ASH. THE
AIR IS FILLED WITH THE HUGE OVAL FART OF PIGMENT PLANTS AND
METAL MIXERS. I AM SOMEWHERE IN THAT CITY, AMONG THOSE
EMPTY BUILDINGS. I HAVE CRAWLED OUT FROM UNDER BROKEN SHEET
ROCK IN THE JUST FADING LIGHT. THERE IS A PEA SANDWICH AND
A QUART THERMOS AT MY SIDE. I AM WAITING FOR SOMEONE TO LET
ME LOOSE.

I heard a truck in the distance. I was sure it was a

truck but perhaps it was a river. It was pouring. Water was

running down a temporary spout on the hood of my poncho.

Yes, I could hear it, the low gurgle of a “58” Chevy Chief.

One of its headlights was out. A civilian.

The truck stopped. The door opened. Someone leaned out

into the rain and waved at me. I felt a cold trickle

rundown my back. I shook my head and peered out into the

rain. I flexed the fingers of my right hand and gently drew

them into a fist. I heard myself distinctly thinking,

“Approach figure, pull hood over singed hair, lick cakey

substance from around mouth, test voice, clear phlegm,

grunt and smile.”

“Hop in.”
 6

He was a youngish looking guy with curly, strawberry

blond hair. It stuck out from under his cowboy hat like

little tufts of cotton candy. I watched with awe as my eyes

captured and scanned his image. He was six feet tall and

weighed one hundred and eighty pounds. He had good strong

bones and was fairly muscular. He had a narrow nose

(probably Welsh/Scotch; good in a tussle). His face was

ovoid with pallid skin and a few floating freckles. There

were tell-tale worry lines around his eyes. He had

obviously just had a blow up with someone and was fighting

a guilty spell. I could tell by the enlarged veins in his

eyes he wasn’t getting enough sleep. He was smoking dope to

compensate for it. His lips were dry (probably wasn’t

getting enough citrus. His reflexes would be just a little

premature). His hands were grimy from automobile oil. He

hadn’t washed them for a long time (a space-out cat, a man

who couldn’t follow through). His fingernails were bitten

(probably picked his nose too, i.e., a titty-sucker at

heart, who kept it together to please his mama). His

breathing rate too, was accelerated. Definitely not from

the strain of opening the door. His eyes were set and his

pupils, constricted. It was evident he had come to

apprehend me and was working alone.

 7

As I climbed in and smiled at him, he moved over a

little too much to his side too soon. His hands, also,

grabbed too quickly for the steering wheel. His neck was

stiff and his chin was slightly tilted and locked. He was

obviously an amateur.

“It’s pretty wet out there.”

“Sure is,” I answered.

He put the truck in gear and began driving. The rain

was beating harder.

“I don’t think I’ve seen you around here before,” he

said, not taking his eyes from the road.

“No, no, just visiting.” My voice was gurgley, my own

breathing patterns, unfamiliar. I settled back into the

ratty seat and let the comfort settle in.

“Visiting? Maybe I know them.”

“No, no, I’m just up here.”

“Up here, huh?”

There it was, that tell-tale grate of antagonism.

“Well, actually, I was just looking around.”

“Oh, yeah? Well, as you can see, this time of year

there isn’t much to look at, unless you like water."

I smiled at him and relaxed the cartilage around my

Adam’s apple.

“Yes, you can say that again.”

 8

He kept his eyes on the road.

“You know, a lot of people have been trying to move up

here lately. You weren’t thinking about anything like that,

were you?”

I noticed that the flesh around his eyes was just

beginning to whiten. I braced myself and scanned the road.

The place was perfect for an ambush. I settled back in the

seat and relaxed a little more.

“Oh no, nothing like that,” I said.

He shook his head and breathed a sigh. It was all very

theatrical.

“Oh, that’s good to hear,” he said, his eyes still on

the road, “because I’ll tell you, there just isn’t any more

room. We get all kinds of people up here inquiring about

property and I just tell them there isn’t any. The place is

just all sewed up. And what with all the stuff going on

down South, we get a lot of strange people creeping around.

Say, was that you out there in the A.W. Campground?”

I gave him a little smile.

“Yes, it probably was,” I said.

He chuckled.

“Boy, you sure did look funny, dancing around with

your pants off. What were you doing?”

I gave him a slightly embarrassed look.

 9

“Oh,” I said, “I was just shaking the dirt out.”

He smiled faintly and looked back to the road.

“Boy, you sure did look funny. I said to myself,

‘Where in the hell did that guy come from? It’s just like

he came out of the blue.’ I could see you getting wet. So,

I said to myself, ‘Boy, that guy needs a ride.’”

I looked at him and smiled.

“Well, that was really nice of you.”

He waited a polite pause.

“So, where are you from?” he asked.

I looked at him and gave a droopy shrug and stammered.

“You know, I’m really not quite sure. From overseas, I

think.”

“Not quite sure, huh? It looks like you’ve Come New.”

The term escaped me.

“Come what” I asked, giving him a kind of lollipop

smile. I could feel his macho beginning to bristle. He

shook his head, letting just a whiff of impatience leak.

“You don’t have to be embarrassed about it. We’re all

Coming.”

He practically leered at me.

“You Narked yet?”

“Not into it.”

 10

He was an easy touch but I had to get more out of him

in case I accidentally killed him. Besides, he might be a

sleeper. I had to play him out.

“Look, I’m a little messed up right now. I just need a

place to rest and get myself together.”

He shook his head again, this time with a kind of

cowboy irritation and clicked his tongue.

“Where the fuck you been, on Mars?”

I gave him a kind of pleading glance.

“I guess I do sort of feel like I have been on Mars.”

He slowed the truck down a bit and turned to me. I

looked out on the road and checked it again, then turned

back to face him. The skin around his eyes was really

becoming tight now. There was a certain amount of fatigue

in it but there was also a bit of bluster.

“Listen, I’m going to tell you something straight,” he

said, “We’ve got enough problems as it is without you

military types wandering around in shell shock. I’ll tell

you right now, I have nothing against the Military. I’m

just not into fights that aren’t my own. Plainly and

simply, sir, I want you out of here. Your kind are nothing

but trouble. We want to keep a little place for ourselves

up here as long as we can. I have some neighbors up the

road a bit. I’m going to drive there. They’ll help me

 11

decide how to get you out. I don’t want any Frankensteins

coming after you.”

My eyes widened and I let my face flatten with fear. I

looked at him with a kind of pre-school awe and pointed a

trembling finger toward the road.

“Up there?” I said, leaving a little worry line in my

forehead. “Really, I don’t want to cause any trouble. I

just want to get a place where I can dry off and get a bite

to eat.”

He grinned at me. I had seen that grin a thousand

times before, that bully-boy sadistic leer.

“You’re quite a wimp for a big boy,” he said,

sneering.

“Please, I have to rest. I’ve been under a lot of

stress.”

“Ole soldier boy has lost his nerve, has he? I can’t

believe it. You struttin’ around in your boots, kicking

people’s brains out, fucking their wives and mothers.

Blowing their faces off with your cum still dripping out of

their cunts. What am I supposed to have, some kind of pity

for you? Big horse like you. You must have been some big

top zombie. Some brass boy’s bull-dog, right? Probably

fucked you in the ass while you barked.”

Suddenly I had a very pleasant realization.

 12

“Yes,” I said, “I am a soldier.”

“You’re fucking deactivated, aren’t you? Really,

you’re one of those zombies I heard about. A fuckin’ real

fucking Frankenstein.”

“Maybe you’re right, I just don’t know.”

I really didn’t know.

He smiled at me, reached out toward my face and

snapped his fingers.

“God, you didn’t even blink.”

As he shook his head and turned toward the road I

reached over and grasped the steering wheel, placed my foot

over his and pressed down on the accelerator beneath it.

The truck began to pick up speed. He tried to pull the

steering wheel from my grip but couldn’t budge it.

“Please,” I said, “please drive me to a town where I

can get a bite to eat and a night’s sleep.”

I smiled at him as he frantically tried to wrest the

steering wheel from my grip.

“I could really use your help.”

He looked at me, his eyes widening.

“You’re not deactivated, are you?”

I gazed at him, momentarily stunned. Then it hit me.

“No!” I cried ecstatically.

I looked out on the road.

 13

“We’d better slow down. There’s a sharp curve up

ahead,” I said.

I scooted over next to him and put my arm around his

shoulder and held him close to me. I put my cheek against

his. The warmth of his flesh felt good. I lifted my foot

from his and the truck began to slow. We drove this way for

a mile or so then I maneuvered it over to the side of the

road and brought it to a stop.

“I’m in a bit of a fix,” I whispered in his ear. "I

know I’m in Northern California but I don’t know why. If

you could just drive me to a place where I could catch a

bit of rest I’ll be out of here by morning, I’m sure.”

I could feel his breath against my ear. MACHINERY IS

RUMBLING BEHIND MY EYES. SHEET LIGHTENING IS FLASHING OVER

BALDING HILLS. BELOW THEM, IN A DESERTED CITY, I AM SLOWLY

CREEPING ON MY HANDS AND KNEES ACROSS A FLOOR COVERED WITH

CRUMBLED BRICKS. THERE IS A CHAIN HANGING IN THE DARKNESS.

I CAN FEEL THE SYNTHESIZER ABOVE ME PREPARING TO SIGNAL

AGAIN. MY BODY AND MY MIND ARE SCREAMING FOR IT TO STOP. A

COLD CHAIN IS SUDDENLY IN MY HANDS. I AM HANGING FROM IT.

IT’S TEARING THE SKIN FROM MY PALMS. MY MOUTH IS FULL OF

BUBBLES. I CAN’T BREATHE. MY EYELIDS ARE CLAMPED OVER MY

EYES AND TEARS ARE BURSTING FROM THEM LIKE HOT JELLY. “OPEN

YOU BITCH! OPEN YOU BITCH!” I AM SCREAMING.

 14

There was a grunting and gasping near my right ear.

Something soft and hot was wiggling in my arms. It felt so

good to hold it. To hold onto something alive and warm. It

was wonderful.

“Please, let go,” it said, “can’t breathe.”

“Breathe? Breathe? Who needs to breathe? Where I come

from, we don’t’ breathe.”

The warm thing squirmed and undulated deliciously in

my arms.”

“Please, let go. Please.”

“You’ve got to help me,” I heard myself saying.

There were tears rolling down my cheeks. I was

homesick and irretrievably lost.

“Just tell me where I am! Just tell me where I am!” I

was shouting.

“I will. I will, just let go!”

The thing in my arms was beginning to go limp. I

didn’t like the way it felt. It seemed to be turning into

meat. I felt his whiskers grating against my face. I

released my hold. I was weeping piteously. I held his face

between my hands and looked into his eyes.

What’s your name?” I asked.

He stared at me with shock threatened eyes. His face

was white, except where my whiskers had burned it. He was

 15

gasping and half gagging. His hands were clasped around

mine as I held his face.

“Madrone,” he managed to gurgle. It almost sounded

French Canadian the way he said it. I began to laugh.

I released him and fell back against the seat.

“You’re a real card, Madrone. Did your mother give you

that name?”

“No, it’s the name I gave myself after I moved up

here.”

“How did you know I was in the Military?”

“Well, you’re dressed in a uniform, aren’t you?”

I looked down at my pants through the half open

poncho. I was dressed in army green.

“Where are you from?” I asked.

“Sandusky.”

“Sandusky? Isn’t that in the Middle West?”

It felt good to be talking to someone.

“Yes. Don’t get violent, okay?”

He stuck his head out of the window and let the rain

revive him. I watched his chest curiously inflate and

deflate. I looked down at my own chest and to my half

disgust, I watched it doing the same thing.

“Do you always breathe like that?” I asked.

 16

“No, only after someone has almost squeezed my guts

out of my asshole.”

I laughed. What a heroic little meat bag he was. He

pulled his head back in and gazed at me in bewilderment.

“Jesus Christ, you’re a strong mother fucker.”

“Big Macs.” I said, “Can you get me to a motel? I

really need to get cleaned up and dried off. I won’t be

sticking around. I just need to get myself oriented.”

“You can say that again. Yeah, there’s a little place

not too far from here. Old lady Shelby runs it, her and her

crazy drunk husband. He’ll give you a run for your money. I

don’t know if she’s renting anymore. Everything’s pretty

much closed up now, what with everybody going up North.”

“That’s where I’m going,” I said. It came out of my

mouth before I could stop it. But yes, that was certainly

where I was going.

“Yeah, you and a billion others.”

“A billion others?”

“At least. Not that any of them ever make it. Very few

of them make it.”

“Where are they going?”

“To Qxneon.”

“What’s Qxneon?”
 17

“A city. The last city. No one really knows about it.

No one has ever come back. It’s just simply the last place

to go. I’m not in a hurry to get there. I’ve never really

left Sandusky. Look at me. Can you believe that I was an

attorney for an insurance company? Used to go on picnics

and eat hot dogs and go to little league games and watch

T.V.”

I could see his eyes moistening.

“But ever since the Coming,” he continued, “nothing’s

been the same. Hit Sandusky real hard. We moved up here

about two years ago to the best of my knowledge. You know

how time slips by. Well, one day I brought out a ball and

bat. Carried them with me from Sandusky. I expected my kids

to be jumping for joy. But do you know what happened? They

didn’t even know what they were for. Pine Cone, that’s my

son, (he used to be called Tommy) he said that he vaguely

remembered that they were used in a game, but he just

couldn’t understand games anymore. I knew then, that he had

started Coming too. Sometimes I think we’ve always been

Coming and we just didn’t notice it. Maybe that’s just

being cynical. Maybe there really was another time. You

know, when we believed in god and that kind of stuff.

Anyway, it’s Coming more and more every day. Hell, look at

you, you Came right out of the blue. That kind of stuff’s
 18

been happening all the time. Ever since she flew the coop.

Don’t you miss her?”

“Who?”

“MAMA.”

“MAMA?”

“Yes.”

I knew then the guy had bottomed out, too much good

weed, too long with the lens cap off.

“She’s on her way North too. All we’ve got left down

here are her echoes. And they’re making everything smear.

We’re getting more and more strange visitors, popping out

of nowhere. It’s coming in like a wall.”

“What’s coming in like a wall?”

“New Coming."

I leaned closer to him.

“What’s New Coming?”

Madrone’s mouth oozed open as a semi-sweet, eggy smell

issued up from his jeans.

“Please, mister, I don’t know what it means. Ask

somebody else. We’ve just got a few days left. I’ll let you

have the truck. It’s the only thing we own. Just drive away

and get out of here and don’t bring any more of them

through the hole with you.”

He jumped out of the truck and backed away.

 19

“Listen,” I said, “I don’t want your truck. I’m not

going to hurt you. I just want a little information.”

But Madrone was gone. I sighed and turned the key and

began to drive.

“Sandusky? Where the fuck is Sandusky?”

1890. Cracked asphalt. A wall of false front buildings

on one side of the road, on the other, a fifty-foot drop

into a residential district of three and five room salmon

pink and chlorine aqua-green houses, trellises with dried

amber morning glory vines, lowball card room with cafe in

the front. Two gasoline stations, closed and anti-Arab

graffiti on the walls. I stopped the truck and headed for

the office. It seemed to be at the end of a long row of

cabins. The signs of ancient tourist trading were still in

evidence, an old junk store, an arrow pointing to a certain

mysterious configuration of trees, and a redwood burl

shoppe with a string of abandoned motel structures running

behind it. I knocked on the door marked “office.”

A woman with gray chiffon hair addressed me

myopically. I fidgeted in my pocket and pulled out the

twenty. She plucked it from my fingers and inspected it.

“How many nights?”

“Two.”
 20

“You got anything smaller?”

“Of course,” I said, smiling at her inanely, and

pulled out the five.

“That ain’t enough for one.”

“Do you think you could use it?” I muttered.

She gave me a long stare as if I had been standing

there forever.

“You from down South?”

I don’t know why, but I knew exactly what to do. I

spread my poncho full wing and stood there.

She smiled.

“A soldier? Well, why didn’t you tell me in the first

place? My Teddy was a soldier. In the Navy actually. He’s

my husband. Come on.”

She conducted me along a row of crumbling cottages.

“We don’t get many soldiers up this way, Captain. Most

of them have been lying low. You know, my husband was a

twenty-year man, that is, before he took to the bottle.

What with New Coming and all there wasn’t much for a

soldier boy to do. And after the war in California, well,

soldiers aren’t too popular anymore.”

She showed me the driest compartment.

 21

“The place is kind of leaky but it’s drier than the

outside. I’ll go to the house and see if I can find

something for you to eat.”

She stopped and looked at me sweetly.

“By the way, my name is Mrs. Shelby.”

She gave me a lantern and left. A few minutes later

she returned with a few pieces of cold chicken and left me

alone.

I emptied the several buckets of rain water from the

leaking room and replaced them. I made my bed. I knew how

to do it very well. I had been somebody. I had known

something. I unbuttoned my shirt and dropped down onto the

bed. I was exhausted, my bones ached. I felt like I had

traveled a long distance.

New Coming? New Coming? What was New Coming?

Obviously, a complete breakdown of civil structure. Had we

lost the war in California? Had the Military gone

underground?

I closed my eyes and began to drift.

NIGHT PATROL, THIRTY OF US MOVING ACROSS THE THUNDER.

LOOSERS PROBABLY SPREAD OUT UNDERCOVER IN THE MOUNTAINS,

STRANDED WITHOUT AMO OR PETROLEUM. THE AUDITOR, HIDING IN

THE CANYON JUST OUTSIDE NAVATO, CLOTTED WITH HIS OWN

 22

RETREATING CLERICS. “WE’VE GOT YOUR NUMBER, SHREDDER.” HIS

VOICE CRACKLES THROUGH THE ELECTRICITY. "I KNOW IT’S ONLY

HIS PRAYER FLAG WAVING. WE ZERO IN ON HIS FREQUENCY, AND

WITH OUR REMAINING SHELLS, SEND HIM TO OBLIVION. THEN WE

DISPERSE, SOME OF US GO TO THE CITIES, OTHER’S SCATTER INTO

THE COASTAL MOUNTAINS. A MIRROR PARABOLA, A SCRIM IS

COVERING ME, GOING DEEP GREEN. I HEAR A VOICE “CAPTAIN

SHREDDER,” IT IS SAYING, “GRENAL RAD APPRECIATES THE ACTION

AT NAVATO. UNFORTUNATELY, THE AUDITOR ESCAPED EVEN THOUGH

HIS LOOSERS WERE DEVOURED. OUR CONTINGENT IS ALMOST

COMPLETELY RED-BREASTED. IT LOOKS LIKE YOU’RE ON YOUR OWN

FOR NOW. WE WILL KEEP YOU POSTED AND WILL SEND YOU MONEY.

IF YOU FIND YOURSELF IN STRANGE PLACES, JUST ACT NORMALLY.

EVERYDAY THE FRONT IS SHIFTING. THERE IS MUCH WORK TO DO.

CONFUSION IS THE PASSWORD.” I FELT A DEEP STIRRING AND AN

ACCOMPANYING WHIR, THEN THE TWIST AND VERTIGO AND FALLING

INTO...THE LAST THOUGHT I HAD WAS...”SANDUSKY.”

I awoke in a field of heat. The soft beige curtains

occasionally billowing, revealed the cold winter’s light. I

swung my eyes around the room. Everything was dry and

sealed. My brass double-edge was ridged with day old foam,

my uniform lay neatly draped over a chair. The crumpled

 23

twenty and the cigarette case lay on top of the black

notebook on a small light stand near the bed. I picked up

the cigarette case and held it aloft. If I remembered

right, there should be a pack of Camels in it with two

cigarettes left and that Dromedary and the village in the

background wrapping mysteriously all around the pack. I

remembered a sailor telling me about it. “ If you’re on the

run and trying to hide, I’ll tell you a place to go.” He

then peeled the seam of the pack back a bit, and revealed a

hidden section of a building. “You go in there,” he said,

smiling. I pulled on the two halves of the cigarette case

but it wouldn’t separate. I tossed it on the twin bed

across from me.

I lay back with my hands behind my head thinking of

the jungle and the desert in their more pleasant,

unmolested moments. Then I reached over for the black

notebook.

TRANSLATION OF SHELLY’S ODE TO A SKYLARK

Right now you re so engrossed in your point of arrival
that you don’t notice it, but later, when you become
less coincidence-bound, you will see that we are always
very near. Now that you are aware of Shredder we can
start having some fun. The problem for us right now
lies in nomenclature. What is s p a c e? It seems to be
nothing and yet they keep referring to it as if it were
something. Is it anything like “stalemate?” We also
understand that there is a finite frequency veneer. Is
this T I M E? Is TIME, like SPACE, something, and yet
unrecognized? Time certainly behaves like an animal. It
 24

seems malleable, creating flesh by incarnating matter.

What do they do with it, eat it? It’s shifty. You have
“one-moment” where you sit tight and focus on it and
before you know it, it has slipped away. Then there is
the enclosing approach of “no-space” time out there (in
space?) where either everything is occurring all at
once (is that nothing?), or something so totally crazy
is happening that there’s no word for it, no back up
concept, nothing but reaction; fear, expectation,
disgust, nausea, rage, impossible to equate madness,
enlightenment. But tell me, if nothing is said to exist
for these creatures after a certain Time, why is “it”
said to exist now?” How is it that they die? Do they
really die? Or do their cells instead, upchuck the
whatever-it-is-about-them-that-said-to-be-alive at the
moment of death, like fleas shot from an electrified
dog? Do they then occupy another Time and Space? By the
way, what are ghosts? You can see we are undergoing an
echo complex. It must be a gas for you.
Your behavior in the Emeryville warehouse touched
us deeply. We are sorry about your hands. We thought
you could easily climb the chain and get to the
Synthesizer. Since you couldn’t get to it we sent it to
you. It is this black notebook.
Now that you are Shredder we begin the process of
Entitizing the Ontos. An alien is in you Shredder. You
don’t know who it is and it doesn’t know who you are.
It is trying to become itself, to surface out of the
malaise of skin and reality, and become manifest. We
are on the other side of that skin, your skin,
Shredder. We will be assimilating everything that
emerges from it. As it succeeds we will understand more
of what it is to be human. The more we assimilate what
is human the closer we will come to the alien in you.
It depends on how well the alien in you does and how
well we do to translate what it is casting off. This
alien inside of you can’t be seen right now but as it
catches on it will become visible. It must first eat
through all that is alien to itself, i.e. all that is
human in Shredder. This alien is called Bekin.
Already with you there reading what we’ve sent
you we can feel a most invigorating out pour of
mathematical objects,
one...two...three...four...five...six...seven...eight..
.what comes after “eight?” Only joking. We thank you,
Bekin, for your sacrifice. As you become him, we become
them.
--Entitize the Ontos!--
 25

“What thou are weknownot

what is mostlikethee?
From rainbow clouds there flow not
drops so bright to see
as from thy presence showers
a rain of melody.”

See you in the Synthesizer, brother,

Ustad Isa.

P.S.
We’ve shifted you to Sandusky.

Another drunken night. It was my own handwriting but I

didn’t remember writing it. “We’ve shifted you to

Sandusky.” I jumped out of bed and went to the window and

peered out. There was snow all over the place! There were

cars driving on the highway. A road sign said Highway 4.

Where had Northern California gone? I looked about the

motel room. How long had I been here? Had I been here in

the first place and only dreamed that I had been in

California? It had to be the Military. Shifted at night by

cargo plane. Perhaps there was “work” to be done here. It

was not for me to question. Yes, I probably had a job here.

Yes, that was it. I was on the front line where New was

Coming thickest. All of the rest of the stuff in the black

notebook was probably code. I’d work on it later.

I took a glorious shower, shaved and put on my

uniform. My singed hair was actually just an overgrown

 26

military shortcut, blond curls and six feet eight. “Good

enough”, I jacked out of my mouth and went into the snowy

Sandusky air.

I walked to the Highway to 4 TRUCK STOP, cutting the

blizzard with the sleeve of my poncho. The air was full of

snow and clotted traffic. The wind bit at my face, my

eyelids watered and frosted, at times sticking together. I

put my tongue against a signal coming from my mouth, “pain

in the teeth.” I tasted the metal in my back molars.

“Eggs,” I thought, “that’s what I’ll eat.” I pushed open

the glass door in front of me.

The blizzard was washed away by a flood of armament.

Metal weapons crossing china, ambient chubby tubs of

sibilance and sloshing white noise, “Punk-CHING!, rough-er-

a-rouge-er-a, SHICKSHICK.” I memorized a vacant stool at

the end of the counter and shuffled among the milling feet

toward it.

“S’use me, big fella.”

I found his face looking up at mine, shuddering with

mock amiability, his pink flesh squinting, and his watery

eyes floating beneath the bill of his baseball cap. The

rest of his men moved past my shoulder like shadows. I

crinkled my neck to the right and slid through the

 27

evaporating body heat into a nearby booth and looked at the

menu.

EGGES AND BACON

EGGS AND HASHBROWNS
EGGES AND STEAK
EGGES AND CAKES
EGGS AND EGGS

The woman was at my elbow in a flurry of stale towels,

slopping and clattering the tools of her trade in her arms.

SWIP!

She was gone and back again holding her note pad, its

pages fluttering in the warring steel.

“Suds-Suds?”

“Toast.”

“Wiffit?”

I glanced at the booths around me.

“Egges,” I said.

“Coffin?”

“Yeah.”

She was gone.

I looked up. I knew two guys were watching me. I could

feel them smile that awful “gimmie-gimmie” smile. My hands

began to sweat. “Perhaps I should leave,” I thought, “No, I

need the food.” Yes, I would wait. I turned my head in

their direction. They had just glanced away. I turned back

 28

to my empty hands. The woman was at my side again, this

time with a beaker of thin gas. “P’TINK’FLANK-VANG!” knife,

fork, spoon! I tried to clear my throat and swung my chin

out over a knot of phlegm. My unspread thumb knocked into

the coffee, spilling some of it on the table top. A high

whine came out of my left eye socket and I sent my eyeball

up to sooth it. Slowly, I turned to my assailants. They

were openly grinning at me. Then something very strange

happened. I seemed to divide and unzip. Something reached

out from my opened body and stretched across space. It

spoke to something silent and secret in my would-be

assailants. ”Do you know who you are playing with?” it

said. “Go to sleep. I want to look at you.” I watched as

its hands pushed their skulls together. I felt their brains

between my fingers like queasy oatmeal. There in the middle

of the restaurant I watched it pull out their internal

organs and examine them. Gay ribbons and bags of jelly. It

read eons from their guts, bubble-eyed rabbits and stone-

gazed lizards, glaciers, grating scree from the young

planet’s skin. They had evolved by stacking templates of

chemical code on their dead, abandoned bodies. A brutal

manifesto, this germ that spawned them, a wayward, fickle

lover, their creator, embracing the ever old. No wonder

there was such violence and meanness in these men. I

 29

watched it drag their eviscerated bodies through the

crowded room and throw them into the snow. Then it returned

to me, this thing. It walked inside of me and disappeared.

I went to the bathroom and took a fat shit, washed my hands

and returned to the booth. The glazed-eyed over-easies were

cooling on my platter, dressed with toast. Numbly, I

stuffed them over my chin, into my mouth and rotated my jaw

around them, my left eye lodged in the socket, my right

eye, watering. I took the coffee mug in both ands and

slurked it down. My enemies sat with their backs to me.

They had forgotten I existed. I got up and followed the

woman to the machine. I paid her and returned to the motel

overcome with fatigue.

It was so good to sleep, to lie down and close my

eyes. My eyes, full and heavy with fat, purple veins, a

knife blade up the back of my neck, tipped with ovum,

medulla oblongata. Go to sleep. Ramona of Dreams with her

soft lapoestrus fragrance, bending over me. “Let’s take the

phone off the hook and shut out the whole wide world.” I

wrapped my arms around the pillow, snuggled my face into

its soft interior and drifted...these strange beings with

rabbit eyes, stuffed down into holes...WALLS AND BUILDINGS

WITH THICK GERMAN ACCENTS, CROWDING, CLAMBERING IN THE

 30

CLAMMY BOMB HEAT. OIL MERCHANTS WITHY HEADS TUCKED UNDER

OBSERVATION BUNKERS. THEIR AUTOMOBILES CRACKING INTO

SHRAPNEL, LA BELL HEAT.

“THAT ONE’S GONE. AND THAT ONE. DIFFICULT TO SAVOR,

CAPTAIN. CAN’T YOU DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT? I BLINK AND THEN

THERE’S JUST A PILE OF RUBBISH. CAN’T YOU TELL THEM TO SLOW

IT DOWN A BIT? THEY’RE BLOWING THEM UP BEFORE I CAN EVEN

SEE THEM DIE.”

“WELL, I DON’T KNOW IF I CAN DO ANYTHING ABOUT THAT,

SIR,” I’M SAYING.

“LISTEN YOU, WE BOUGHT THOSE BOMBS AND WE WANT TO SEE

THEM BLOW PEOPLE UP.”

“WELL, ACTUALLY, SIR, I DON’T THINK WE HAVE THAT MUCH

CHOICE. YOU SEE, I THINK WE’RE LOSING THE BATTLE.”

HE TURNS HIS HOOKED NOSE AWAY FROM ME AND PEERS

THROUGH THE SLIT IN THE BUNKER WITH ANXIETY REFRESHED EYES.

“THAT’S IMPOSSIBLE,” HE IS SAYING INCREDULOUSLY. “WE

PAID FOR IT.”

“SO DID THE PEOPLE ON THE OTHER SIDE.”

JUST THEN A SERIES OF LAND TO AIR MISSILES EXPLODE

NEAR US, TURNING THE AIR INTO AN ANIMAL. HE OPENS HIS MOUTH

AND THROWS HIS HANDS OVER HIS EARS AS IF TRYING TO MAKE

MORE ROOM FOR HIS JAWS SO HE CAN BITE THE ANIMAL. THE

ANIMAL IS THE AIR TURNED RABID. IT IS DEATH. HE CAN TASTE

 31

IT. HE CAN FEEL IT INSIDE OF HIS BODY. IT MAY BITE HIM

BACK.

I TURN TO HIM, GRINNING.

“IT’S WHAT YOU PAID FOR, SIR. YOU BOUGHT A BATTLE, AND

NOW, BY GOD, YOU’RE HAVING ONE. ONE HELL OF A WHOPPER, I

MIGHT ADD.”

A TRILPLET OF EXPLOSIONS CRACKS THE AIR OPEN. THE ARAB

SEEMS TO BE OVER-LOADED. HIS FACE IS FLUSHED. I CAN SEE HIS

LIFE FLASHING BEFORE HIS EYES. HE SEES IT TOO, AND HE KNOWS

WH AT IT MEANS. IT IS LIFE’S LAST NEWSREEL. HE IS SHAKING

HIS HEAD, TRYING TO STOP IT FROM PLAYING BUT HE CAN’T. HE

IS SO NEAR REALITY THAT HE CAN FEEL ITS SKIN. MORE

EXPLOSIONS. AND NOW HIS EYES ARE WIDENING. HE’S GETTING

OFF. I THINK HE’S GETTING OFF.

“GET ME OUT OF HERE, CAPTAIN, I PAID 2 MILLION DOLLARS

A MINUTE FOR A BATTLE, NOT MY EXECUTION.”

THE SIDE OF THE BUNKER BLOWS AWAY.

“GEEZ, SIR,” I AM SAYING, “I MUST HAVE MISUNDERSTOOD.

ARE YOU SURE THIS ISN’T WHAT YOU ORDERED? LISTEN, IF IT

GETS YOU OFF, YOU’D BETTER BE GETTING INTO IT.”

“WHAT DO YOU MEAN, CAPTAIN?”

“GET ON WITH IT, SIR, GET ON WITH IT.”

FIRE BOMBS AND PULVARIZERS EXPLODE AROUND US.

 32

“REALLY SIR, THERE’S NO WAY OUT,” I AM SAYING. “I

DON'T THINK WE’RE GOING TO MAKE IT. YOU MIGHT AS WELL GO

WITH IT.”

HE LOOKS AT ME, TERROR AND LUST MINGLING IN HIS EYES.

I CAN SEE HE UNDERSTANDS.

“GO FOR IT,” I SAY.

HE STANDS SHAKING LIKE A LITTLE WET ANIMAL. HIS HANDS

SLIDE DOWN HIS BODY. HE DROPS HIS JELLABA AND STANDS THERE

NAKED, LOOKING AT ME. MY OWN COCK BEGINS TO HARDEN. BOMBS

BLOW THE END OF THE BUNKER AWAY. HE SITS AND BEGINS TO BEAT

OFF AS MORE BOMBS BLOW UP BEHIND US.

“I THINK YOU’D BETTER HURRY, SIR.”

HE LOOKS AT ME, EYES ABLAZE AS I RAISE MY AUTOMATIC AT

HIM.

“I DON’T THINK WE HAVE ENOUGH TIME, SIR.”

JUST THEN, AS THE WHITE CURDLED CREAM SPURTS OVER HIS

HANDS, I PULL THE TRIGGER, AND THE BOMBS HIT.

THE DOOR IS GLOWING RED IN THE DARKNESS. I MEET FIRE

WITH FIRE AS BLOOD PUMPS THROUGH MY ASS.

THEY GIVE ME A HERO’S RIDE “HOME.” THERE ARE CHILDREN

WAVING AT ME WITH LITTLE BLACK GUNS, SUN-MOLDED. THEY

UNLOAD ME INTO A WHEEL CHAIR WHILE ALMOST KNOCKING OVER A

WELL-DRESSED MAN, HOLDING AN APPLAUSE SIGN.

 33

“A GOOD SOLDIER IS HARD TO COME BY CAPITAN SHREDDER

AND YOU ARE THE BEST. WE WOULDN’T WANT TO LOSE YOU,

ESPECIALLY NOW, THE WAY THINGS ARE. WHAT YOU DID IN THE

DERRICKS IN OTHER TIMES WOULD BE CONSIDERED TREASONOUS,

ESPECIALLY THE SHOOTING OF A SHIEK. BUT WE’RE GOING TO LET

IT PASS. YOU’VE BEEN AWAY FROM HOME FOR QUITE AWHILE.

THINGS HAVE CHANGED. EVEN THE DATE. IT’S SIMPLY CALLED "NEW

COMING," CHARLIE. JUST THAT. EVERYTHING’S GONE TO HELL. I’M

REALLY SORRY, BUT WE DO NEED YOU. WE’RE ALL A LITTLE CRAZY.

EVEN I CAN’T SEEM TO KEEP THINGS STRAIGHT. NO FRAME-WORK,

YOU UNDERSTAND? DON’T WORRY ABOUT IT NOW. JUST REST.”

A SOFT VESTED OFFICER WITH SMOKEY BRREATH PUTS

SOMETHING WAXY IN MY MOUTH.

“NURSE, LET THE MAN DOWN. GIVE HIM THE MAMMERIES. WE

STILL NEED TOUCHING. STRETCH HIS FEET OUT. PUT YOUR MOUTH

ON HIS. BREATHE INTO HIM. CLOSE YOUR EYES, CHUCK, WE’RE NOT

GOING TO FUCK YOUR MIND.”

Dear Capt. Shredder,

We have just been notified that you are on
sabbatical from the Service and have surmised that
since you have been under stress, payment due for
your second night’s lodging has slipped your mind.
We do not wish to disturb you, so if you would
please deposit remittance for last night’s bill
AND this night’s (if you intend to say the night)
in the slot under the night window, we will not
charge you for the time you stayed after eleven
a.m. which is our actual check out time. We do
 34

hope that you are feeling better and wish to let

you know that we, all of us, are with you.
Love,
Allen and Joyce Tenders
(Managers of the Rumblehouse Motel)

I chucked the letter to the floor and cracked the

blind. I had been asleep for over twenty-four hours. I

seemed to be going through a thick Morris Code of

consciousness and dreaming. My sense of time was all but

shattered. It was as if I were on a kind of involuntary

binge. Obviously, I had to get in contact with my

superiors. I needed money. I had to find out what the plan

was.

The Manager’s apartment was dark. I went to the

bathroom and pulled the window open. A hideous clay ditch

bordered the back of the motel. I bashed open the aluminum

screen and pulled my enormous body through the window and

crawled out into the early morning light.

The highway was completely empty. Early morning

Sandusky was dark, not even the stirring of a commuter bus.

I walked past an empty barber shop and looked at the clock.

6 a.m. It was early and yet there should have been the

Industrialists moving in quick, random lines over the

sidewalks, waiting with steaming mouths for the buses to

come, one by one like endless links in a garbage colored

 35

centipede. But there were none. The streets lights were on

but they were dim, as if ignited by some deep subterranean

battery. I felt conspicuous waking the empty streets.

Perhaps it was a set up. What was Coming New anyway?

Perhaps I was Coming New. Perhaps I was an inherent enemy.

I ducked down into one of the more residential areas

just off the highway. The houses were neat and clean and

dark. The grass was perfectly clipped and trimmed. The

sidewalks stretched out in unbroken lines. Lanes ran

through the trees in long green tunnels. Everything was

pre-dawn suburbia. All of the cars, mostly compacts, sat in

showcase files along the streets as if the houses were put

there to decorate them. They looked like modest little bill

folds, more like credit cards perhaps. Children’s tricycle,

toys, shoe-box size, day glow orange and green trucks and

vans, gray, plastic air planes with turrets, white rockets

and space shuttles, lunar landers with long black legs and

little red wagons neatly parked in diagonals on the sides

of the crows nest. All glowed with an iridescent neatness

like rainbow colored peach slices. It reeked of memory like

a huge orphanage bedroom.

I turned down another side street. The houses

accumulated, even neater, even more perfect. All the living

room bay window curtains were drawn. Even the leaves moved
 36

in the same direction, shifting the dappled morning light

theatrically like a stage light gobo. As I headed deeper

into the heart of it, the maze grew thicker and the sound

of the accumulating mocking birds was becoming deafening.

Everywhere I looked the houses and lanes pushed out at me,

thicker and thicker, smelling of baby’s breath and flour. I

was overcome with desire to vomit roses, when it struck me

that this just wasn’t right on several counts. First of

all, it was dead winter and there shouldn’t be any flowers

and leaves. Second, to the best of my knowledge there

should be at least a few early-risers. Everyone couldn’t

still be asleep. But for all the myriad identical cottages

there wasn’t a sound. It was dead still. Thirdly, and this

bothered me the most, there was no sun. I had been walking

this street for more than an hour and the light hadn’t

changed. The shadows didn’t move. There was a constant

bathroom warmth. It was as if everything was in a huge room

and I was approaching some kind of illuminated center. It

could see the sky glowing brighter just ahead of me. At my

back the sky was twilight going into darkness.

I headed toward the light. The temperature got warmer

and the atmosphere became almost honey-colored with a kind

of sweet amber. The air thundered with the combined weight

of bird song and leaf rustle. The houses were so thick now
 37

that there was absolutely no space. Roof stuck out of roof,

bay window out of bay window. The sidewalks and lanes

criss-crossed each other and intertwined like coils of DNA.

Somehow, I walked through them, becoming thin at times,

twisting and bending at others. The world seemed to be

smearing, and yet at a terrible cluttered standstill. I

moved through it as one would move through a liquid mirror.

Gradually, space began to reopen. The trees were

getting larger, draping far aloft. I recognized them! They

were great elms. I had not seen elms since my childhood

before the great Dutch elm’s disease had taken them. They

blocked out the light with their thick graceful trunks,

reaching up like vaulting hydra. Far above the black

underbellies of the highest limbs, the top leaves shimmered

in the light. Below them, dark bungalows in camp-rich

colors jutted out of the bushes and lessor maples. Their

windows reflected the mottled light with bubble-skin

fragility. Big yards with soft brown dirt and clumps of

grass hovered in the constant twilight. Robins were

calling. In the lesser trees, ropes and tire swings hung.

There were tree houses in the lower branches of the elms,

little red flags and feather ornaments decorated the sides

of their windows. There was a sweet smell of mid-summer’s

evening. There was the scent of hot dogs in the air.

 38

The sidewalks gave way to a single black-top road. It

twisted among the houses, which were getting sparser now,

being replaced by large old Victorians with fresh paint,

and doilied and drawn sitting-room window curtains. The

light had taken on a pearly texture, brilliant and diffuse.

The light side of ledges were dusted with gold. The huge

elms were getting fewer and rolling hills with gnarled oak

began to appear. All but a few birds were singing now. The

source of the light seemed very near, just over the next

set of hills. Strangely enough, I didn’t feel at all tired.

It was as if I hadn’t gone anywhere at all. It was as if I

had stepped through a little hole and time had become

corporeal, revealing itself not in distance covered, or

light emerging, but in manifestation going deeper and

deeper into itself. Farm houses, each more perfect than the

one before it, sprang out of the hills. Beautiful,

perfectly trimmed lawns lapped down to my feet. Croquet

mallets and beach balls lay scattered tastefully about.

Ivory white silos and little white houses, sweet houses

with delicate gingerbread trim and fragile pillars, blue

houses with dormers, and peaks and chimney caps. Large

houses with shutters and double hung windows, stoops and

eaves and overhangs. All perfectly placed. All with

gorgeous views. The air smelled of clover and honey. It was

 39

lonely and beautiful and I remembered it all. It had

happened to me. I had been in every one of them. That was

Mother House. And that was Father House. I had been in that

house in 1930. In that one in ‘36’. Over there, in that

dark green Victorian, I had lived as a House Widow, looking

out on the other houses from my oculus window in 1912. And

it had been the same then. The 1950’s pink and white ranch

styles had been there. These were the pure houses, the ones

nearest the Center, near the Absolute House which was the

source of the illumination. Somehow, I knew this, I knew it

for certain. All of the houses were there. They had escaped

into another zone, into a little whorl where nothing where

no one could destroy their spirits. They had entered into a

little pocket of the forgotten, the ghosts of houses, now

demolished, or papered over, or decomposed beneath stucco.

The little ugly houses and shacks, midgets and dwarfs,

pencil-nosed and over-engineered, the too Pekinese, the “my

blue heavens.” They all grew from the center of the

Absolute House which was now below me in a valley. It

blazed with Disney radiance. It was a simple structure with

a child-like design, four walls, and inverted V peak, one

door and one window, paper white with bright clear windows

and gold trimmed white curtains. It was not only the house

itself that radiated the light and comfort, it was the

 40

landscape around it, the yard, the picket fence, the

single, straight strip of concrete that led to its door,

the pea-green grass, the lollipop yellow tulips and

lipstick red roses, the toy blue morning glories, the

frosty whey dandelion heads and the trees, the white oak

and heavenly poplar, the Absolute Tree Swing. All exploded

with mnemonic ether. It was unbearable. My chest was

congested with a saccharine nostalgia which increased in

proportion to my nearness to the House. There was no where

to go back to. I could never make it back through the

infinite suburban maze. No, I would be trapped there,

mummified forever, walking the flowering tree-lined

streets. And there was nothing on the other side of the

Absolute House. All sidewalks led to that front door. As I

neared it, I felt the Absolute House become aware of me and

it pulled me to it with a hunger so intense that I began to

dehydrate with emotion. I was weeping with emptiness and

loneliness and hopelessness for the infinity of the House.

I was sweating from fear and anger of the House. I was

salivating from the ecstasy of the yearning for the House.

I was urinating and cumming, at the same time I was

shitting. I was raining as I reached for the simple brass

doorknob of the House and I felt the House’s skin. I turned

the doorknob, eyes swimming, I pulled the door and a

 41

creaking rose from it like the swoon of a hundred and one

Monivani’s passing out, reaching out for me with 1950’s

girlie arms. I was becoming hysterical. My teeth were

chattering as I felt a gust of wind and snow hit my face.

I was once again on the sidewalks of Sandusky in

winter, doubled up on the ground against a store front

window. In the distance a Greyhound bus was turning out

onto the empty highway.

* * * *

“Miss your bus, soldier?”

A police officer was standing over me. He reached out

to me and I attempted to reach back but my arm wouldn’t

move. I continued to sink to the cold cement. I was

paralyzed.

“Nothing to worry about. You’re just out on a Nark. It

will pass in a few moments.”

He took his coat off and wrapped it around me. I could

see the cop although my eyes were closed! It was as if I

was dreaming him. He was there, and very real, but in my

head, as if by his voice and general displacement of mass,

my mind had constructed a mock-up of him, a generalized

one, but accurate. I tried to open my eyes but it was

impossible.
 42

“It’s called Narcolepsy. Displacement of the R.E.M.S.

Don’t worry about it. It will pass. It’s hit the whole

town. I’ve got it too, but so do the criminals so it sort

of evens out. That’s why you don’t see many people out on

the street right now. Most of them are like you, narked

out. Especially with it being cold and all, they’re afraid

to go out in case they have a Nark and freeze to death.”

I could hear him absolutely clearly. I could actually

see his image even though my eyelids were paralyzed shut.

He leaned down to me.

“Since you’re down right now, I might as well give you

a little frisk. Just routine, you understand. What’s this?

A cigarette case? Granal Rad, huh? You must be one of those

special forces types. Let’s see what you got in it. Can’t

get the sucker open. Probably a time lock, huh? Well, we’ll

just keep it around at the station till we can get a look

inside of it. What’ this we got here now, a diary? Boy, you

sure got bad handwriting. Looks like you don’t got any

i.d., except for those double bars on your collar, Captain.

Now, we have to have i.d. don’t you see, just to keep track

of all the stiffs.”

He found his joke incredibly funny.

“Looks like you’re coming around.”

Indeed, I was beginning to feel my limbs.

 43

“Now don’t get too worked up when you come out and

find that you’re handcuffed because it’s not a dream, it’s

really real.”

This too, he found very funny. I was beginning to feel

the cuffs around my wrists. My hands were behind my back. I

was very cold. Gradually my eyelids were returning and

slowly I opened them.

A gang of cops was standing over me, guns drawn. Four

patrol cars were parked on the empty streets with lights

flashing. There was the terrifying sound of police radios.

“Don’t move too fast, Captain, we know you’re a

specialist.”

My voice was slurring. My limbs poured around me as I

summoned them for support. The big cop (he was larger than

I had dreamed him) reached down and lifted me to my feet.

Finally, what I had been trying to say came out.

“Wah...what’s the charge, officer?”

“Anonymity, sir, anonymity.”

“Captain Charles Shredder, Grenal Rad. I’m on

Sabbatical.

There I had said it, my own name for the first time.

But why didn’t it ring any bells?

“Lying on the streets isn’t a good place to spend it,

Captain.”
 44

“As you said, I’ve been out on a Nark,” I answered.

“Yes, but that didn’t stop you from stealing a truck

in California and trying to avoid paying your motel bill.”

“Very good work, officer. Shall I follow you?”

“After you, Captain.”

He mumbled a few orders to the others. They went ahead

to the patrol cars and opened the doors. One was for me.

The other was to allow Joyce and Allen Tenders to step out.

“Yes, that’s him, officer. Big handsome fellow, isn’t

he?”

“Yes, if you like that sort,” Allen Tenders said,

frowning at me.

“I guess that will just about do it then,” the officer

said.

The Tenders smiled sheepishly and climbed back into

the car.

“It was nice having you, Captain Shredder,” Joyce said

with a slightly coy smile. She waved as the patrol car

drove away.

“This way, Captain.” The cop led me to the open car. I

ducked down to get in but there was already somebody in it.

“Madrone? What the fuck are you doing here?”

His face was paper white. He looked at me with blood

shot, glaring eyes.

 45

“It’s all your fault, you mother fucker.”

“Know each other, do you?” the cop said, chuckling.

I ducked under the roof and tumbled into the back

seat, aided by the two officers at my side.

“Have a nice chat,” one of the cops said as he closed

the door behind me.

“How the hell did you get here?” I asked.

“They extradited me.”

“For what?”

“For leaving.”

“They can’t extradite you for leaving.”

“They can if it’s Coming New.”

“I’ll Come New in your face if you don’t start giving

me some straight shit.”

I moved towards him.

“Why the fuck are you always beating up on me?” he

screamed.

“You have a point,” I said and settled back against

the seat. “Anyway, I couldn’t do a very good job on you

with my hands like this. Look, honestly, fill me in a bit.

What the fuck’s going on?”

“Why do you keep asking me? I don’t fucking know any

more than you do. What the hell are you doing in Sandusky?”
 46

“I really don’t know. I just woke up here. In fact, I

forgot about you until just now.”

“I wish you hadn’t remembered.”

“Where are they taking us?”

“To the station, I presume.”

“I don’t know if I want to go.”

“I don’t think you have much of a choice.”

“We always have a little choice,” I said, looking at

the backs of the officer’s heads. “The only thing stopping

me really is how to get out of here. How in the hell did

you get out of here?”

“I just drove out. But things were different then. The

Nark wasn’t so bad.”

“How the fuck did they trace me to you?”

“I really don’t know,” Madrone said, “a bunch of

Sandusky cops showed up at my front door in California.

They just drove up and hauled me in. They didn’t even ask

me my name. My wife and kids were just standing by the door

looking at me. Didn’t even get a chance to wave goodbye.

They squealed their tires and drove me away. Said I missed

the last five years census. Can you believe that? Said that

I was an illegal alien. Fuck, you want to know who I think

the real alien is? It’s you. That’s what I think. I knew

you were trouble. But I had to go do it, I had to step on

 47

in there like a big shot. And, of course, what did I draw?

The fucking Frankenstein Brigade.” Madrone looked out the

window, “You know, this is going to sound really crazy, but

I’ve missed the place.”

“That’s not surprising,” I said, looking out the

window. “You always miss the place you first sequenced.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

“I don’t know,” I said and I really didn’t.

“God, you are a weird mother,” Madrone said.

“Yes, I probably am,” I answered, looking at him. “But

what I really want to know is how did you get out the first

time? I don’t think it’s possible. I tried to take a side

street, to keep low, you know? You have no idea what I ran

into.”

“I think I do,” Madrone said, meeting my eyes, “it’s

called New Coming.”

“What is New Coming?”

“It’s just,” Madrone looked at the street, at the

cops, at me, “this. Everything’s Coming New. I’m not Coming

it New. The government’s not Coming it New. Business and

Advertising are not Coming it New. Not the Military either.

It’s coming out of the bones, out of the air, out of the

world, out of time, like the ice age, you know? But it’s

not ice, it’s the stuff itself; the trees, the buildings,
 48

the birds, the way they fit together, the way eyes see

them, the things, in what order and from what angle they

are seen; but more, the sense that they, the objects of the

world, are, have been, looking back at us since, since the

beginning of time. That they could,” he paused and looked

at me wide-eyed, “just...blink and we would be on the other

side of experience, the WE would conspire against us. And

do you know what? I think it’s happened. The glue is gone.

The objects have become alive. What kept them in their

place is gone. Now everything, each individual thing has a

mind of its own, even our cells. You don’t know what your

neighbor could change into, what you, yourself could

become. I think that’s what New Coming is.

“How did you get out of here the first time?”

“I just drove out. The Nark was just beginning to set

in. People didn’t notice it. What I really mean, I guess,

is that for some reason they just ignored it. We just

adapted to it. That’s also a part of New Coming, you just

take it in stride. When some one was buying something and

he dropped over the clerk waited on other customers until

he woke up. It bothered people, but there was nothing they

could do about it. They did their best to maintain. That’s

the way it’s always been in Sandusky. The people are brave

and hardy. Soon they started acting like they didn’t notice
 49

it. But I couldn’t do that. It really started bugging me.

But not them, they just got busier. There didn’t seem to be

any lack of anything. Accident insurance was booming. Our

company was besieged with life insurance suits. We got

faster tools to do our work. And as more of them started

dropping, we became increasingly precise. Everybody did.

Three censuses were taken in one year. Everyone was worried

about people disappearing. Then we made this law that

everybody had to phone into the Court House computer every

day and check in with their local voice detector. Well, one

morning I woke up and realized that it would not be long

before they would be putting up road blocks. So, I gathered

my family and got in the station wagon and drove out. Left

everything behind. Traded the wagon for the Chevy...and

then I met you.”

“And what is this Nark business?” I said, ignoring his

distress.

“What do you mean?”

“Do you have it?”

“I haven’t gone down yet that I know of.”

“I think I have.”

“How do you know?”

“Houses.”
 50

“Houses?”

“I dreamed of houses. Tell me, what’s keeping these

cops on their feet?”

“Nothing, to the best of my knowledge. That’s why

they’re using so many of them, I guess, to back each other

up.”

“What are they going to do with you?”

Madrone laughed and shook his head.

“Well, they’ll probably lock me up for the rest of my

life.”

“For being an illegal alien?”

“No, for being arrested. Look at those guys,” he

nodded his head in the direction of the cops in the front

seat, “What’s to say they’re going to remember I’m in the

slammer? Look at the one driving. Does he look like he

graduated from the Police Academy?”

I looked up front through the steel mesh at the

arresting officer. He was unshaven and his hair was long. I

turned to Madrone.

“He looks like he just came out of a bar.”

“He probably did.”

I looked behind me. There were at least five patrol

cars.
 51

“They’ve always been big on Prevention. It’s Rehab and

Placement that suffers.” Madrone said, grinning at me.

“Are you going to press charges for that Truck?” I

asked.

Madrone looked at me maliciously for a second and then

cracked up. Just at that moment my arresting officer

dropped over in the front seat. The cop driving turned to

him.

“Hey, Mike, you okay?”

Mike was not to be seen, only his officer’s blue,

shifting about on the seat like wool jelly. Mike’s voice

was slurring something about his wife sucking burritos in

Mexico. The driver pulled over to the curb and stopped. The

other cars stopped also. Radios blasting and guns drawn,

they approached the squad car.

“Allen get this guy out of here. I’m kind of nervous,

myself. I think I might get hit too. You take over the

wheel,” the cop driving said.

The cop got out and Allen slid into the driver’s seat.

The rest of the cops got back into their cars and we were

off again.

Allen looked back at us.

“You guys won’t think things are so funny once we get

you to jail,” he said.

 52

The patrol car sped down Main street. For the most

part the stores were dark. A few here and there sported

lights and I could vaguely see figures moving around behind

the glass. There was Sears and Woolworth’s, Mac Donald’s,

the old big grand-daddies keeping together the fading

remains of the roving entrepreneur. But now they too, like

the Military, were dark. Even the information mongers and

dot cummers were silent. Even the computer outlets seemed

to be on the Nark. No one was speaking Businessese.

I felt something heavy hit my shoulder. Madrone’s face

was next to my ear. He was whispering something to his

children about sun spots and their relation to the color of

cow’s eyes. He was dead out on his first Nark. I pushed him

to his side of the car and addressed the officer.

“How you doing up there, Sarg?”

“Don’t try to dispsy-doodle me, Shredder. I’m not a

sergeant, not yet, anyway. I’d be cool if I were you.”

“What do you mean, Sarg?”

“We know that you just got out of the Bin, for one

thing. You ain’t safe, ain’t safe at all.”

“I ain’t done nuthin’, honest, officer,” I said in my

best “by golly” voice.

“Listen, smart ass, this is the first decent job I’ve

had and I’m gonna make sure I keep it as long as I can. I’m
 53

gonna tell you something, since things got worse for

everybody else, they’ve gotten better for me. Man, if

things keep going this way, I might even become president.

Do you know why? Because I been in this town since it

started and I ain’t ever Narked once, not once. I’m the

only one I know who hasn’t. I figure I must be one of those

that’s immune. There’s always some that are immune. Keeps

it all going. You understand? I read about it in the

library. It’s about fucking time too. I’m tired of licking

your fucking assholes. Hey, maybe I’m the only one, too. I

mean, male, man. I’m gonna eat your woman up. I’m gonna be

the daddy. I’m gonna be the one who sits at the head of the

table, sleeping in the fucking ‘master bedroom.’ I’m gonna

be the Bull. All of the babies are gonna look like me.”

“I think maybe I’ve seen her.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Your mama.”

“Don’t you say nuthin’ about my mama.”

“No, no, no, man, I’m talking about your meat, your

muffin, your mush, your mama. She’s five foot ten with

forty-inch boobs and long legs. A fine blond, if you know

what I mean. Something like you, a superior type, something

to give the new breed good bones.”

 54

“What are you doing, trying to have my ass, Shredder?

I ain’t as stupid as I look. I know what I know. I ain’t

Narked and I ain’t goin’ to.”

“Hey, hey, I ain’t knocking you. I’m just applying for

a job when you are king.”

“Yeah, like what? Licking the shit out of my

underwear?”

“If that’s your thing. But I don’t make a bad body

guard.”

“Not any more, fuck face. I don’t care how much war

time you got, you’re a Narko now, you ain’t no good to

anybody.”

Just then Mike, the fallen cop, began to revive. His

wool ruffled and his greasy hair emerged from behind the

seat.

“Jesus Christ, what a fucking nightmare!”

His eye caught mine.

“Oh, fuck, I forgot all about you.”

He propped himself up, yawned and scratched his arms.

“Jesus Christ, I wish I could get some sleep,” he

said.

"You haven’t been talking to him, have you?”

“No, nuthin’ much,” Allen answered.

 55

“Don’t say nuthin’ to him, you understand? He’s a

tricky son of a bitch. He’s right out of the Bin. They

probably wired his brain up or something.”

“I’m a bomb! I’m a bomb!” I squealed.

“Shut the fuck up!” Mike, the officer said.

We rode on in silence. Madrone was still out in his

corner. I had this queasy, bluesy feeling. Everything

around me seemed slightly blurred, except when I tried to

focus. Then it would clear up, only to blur again. I had to

constantly shift my focus to maintain any clarity. The blur

would move away, uncloud and then cloud up again. Sometimes

there were moments when the clouding was thicker and

resisted prodding. Then I would feel on the verge of black

out.

“Seems like we’re pretty far from the station,

officer.”

“Just shut-up, we’re almost there.” One of them said.

I could feel the Black Out throbbing on the periphery

of my vision.

“Listen,” I said, “I really think I should make a few

things clear about myself.”

I didn’t hear his reply, the Nark was rolling out of

nowhere through the center of my eyes. I began to hear

drumming on tin cans and the twang of rubber bands and

 56

someone broadcasting in a long meandering drawl. Then the

sounds began to break into the center of my head. Light was

pouring in. I was falling. I think I heard the officers

giggling but perhaps they were singing:

“Walk along the river bank

It’s such a sunny day,
Thinking about the things
I would like to say.
I don’t know why I love you
Don’t know why I do
But I still love you.”

The swoons, the warm light of their presence, really

there, singing with their real voices, the voices inside of

their voices, singing...

“Oh God, Nashville, I love you

Your cheap whisky and your
Old, old, old fashioned women.”

There must have been a thousand of us standing there

with our throats charged, spinning the molecular structure

of the high arching beams, a hundred feet above our heads.

Sound, and warm rays of amber and gold and icy spangles,

skiddled and tossed luminescent fibers on all of the walls!

I watched the singers open and close their mouths and

remembered the high school girls chorus and how they did it

the same way, slowly, stringing webs of milk with their

tongues, their teeth all shiny...

“Come, they told me

pa rum-pa-pa-pum...”
 57

their knees hidden beneath their plaid skirts, their tart,

restless yams tucked in neat, crisp down between their

smooth puffy thighs, so awake and so hungry; now screaming,

shrieking, splashing sound from their mouths like exploding

bottles of cream. Oh, god, I love to sing, oh god, I love

to sing, Oh, good, gracious, gulping god, how I love it...!

I woke up to Madrone’s laughter. He was just ahead of

me, his hands handcuffed behind his neck. I could see him

over the top of my head. Two hefty police officers were

dragging me back by the feet. Madrone looked crazy that

way, upside down, laughing in a kind of random, scratchy

way, his voice never quite leaving his throat, kind of now-

he-was-beginning-to-think-things-were-kind-of-funny.

I kept my body relaxed so I wouldn’t startle the

officers who were huffing and puffing, red-faced, trying to

act professional as they dragged me toward the precinct. I

could smell taco sauce and beer on their breath. Madrone

was crooning something about knee-high marijuana sprouts

and his kids learning to kill hot dogs with baseball bats.

It was very pathetic. I knew he wouldn’t make it back “up

there.” And somehow, I had been responsible for it.

 58

The officers dragged me down an incline. Then we

entered the station. I had never seen so many cops. Some of

them, in fact, didn’t fit their uniforms. Big baggy cuffs

hung around their ankles. Many of them were Asian and

Central American. They wondered around energetically making

“whoopee” sounds as if they were playing extras for a T.V.

movie. They clicked their radios on and off. They seemed to

be crowding around prisoners who were standing on little

risers. Numbers were being shouted and money exchanged. I

could see they needed organization. They were doing the

best they could, all of them. What they needed was an

Advisor. If they had been my recruits, I could have made

soldiers out of them. Most of the patterns were there, the

amateurish inter-bashing, the shouting and the excess

energy. That at least wasn’t Coming New, just the sequence

was frazzled, like it was tired and over-used, like the end

of the world was drawing its essence out.

The officers stopped dragging me and let my feet fall

to the floor. I pretended to be out. Allen approached the

desk sergeant, a fat, Irish guy with a cigar in his mouth.

It all looked like the Keystone Cops in brown tone.

“Shut up!” Allen screamed at Madrone, who was just at

that moment going into a kind of scat. “Can you believe

that guy? He renamed himself. Calls himself, “Madrone.” You

 59

know the type. The rosie-assed, commie baboons trying “to

get it together” in the last moments, “The fuckin’ sugar-

shit victomettes.” He’s Narkin’ so bad his brains is gonna

start comin’ out of his ears. Now that guy, “Allen

continued, pointing at me, “he’s a real weirdo, some top

dog in the Military. I think they’re throwing him out with

the trash. He’s just got out of the Bin. Look at that

uniform. That’s the Headshore. He must have been a big shot

in his time. One Prussian mother-fucker for sure, but I

don’t think there is much left of him anymore. I say, give

him to the dogs. Put him in the cooed side and let the

bitches freeze his balls.”

“That’s all fine and good for you to say, but what if

he wakes up and begins to eat through the walls?”

“Listen, Sergeant, I’m telling you, this Jack ain’t

gonna do nothing. He’s completely shot. Man, the cat’s

strung all the way out. He’s completely shot. He couldn’t

even get it up to pay his motel bill. Now does that sound

like “Top Security” to you? Nom man, this ape is on his way

out. I’ve got his number. I’ll bet you he’s awake right now

listening to this.”

“Okay,” the Desk Sergeant said, “let’s try him, but

one condition, if the Military gets a beat on him and comes

to me, I’m going to send them to you.”

 60

“It’s a deal,” Allen said, grinning. “If they were

interested in him, they’d have him by now.”

“Don’t get all beefed up, greaser,” the sergeant said,

biting down on his cigar, I’ve got it on paper saying that

you killed your sister after she fucked your stepfather. I

got it further, that he made you suck his cock when you

were nine and you liked it. Don’t think I’ll let you off if

this Frankenstein gets loose. The paper we got on the dude

says he’s to stay put. If he gets out YOUR ass is gonna

burn.”

The cops around the desk began laughing. Allen bit his

lip and glared at me.

“Don’t worry about it, Sergeant. I’ll take it on, and

by the way, I’ve got a few goods on you.”

“Don’t get hysterical, Gonzales,” the Sergeant said,

with undisguised mockery, “I ain’t no racist. I want you to

treat this boy special. You got it?”

“I got it,” Allen said. There was anger in his voice.

“Now, I’m gonna mark you on that,” the Sergeant said,

bearing down, it’s down on the record. Even if I get blown

away, you’re gonna take the rap.”

“I told you,” Allen said, “I got this man tagged.”

“Then what’s your bet? Will he get out, will he die,

or will he stay?”
 61

“Wow, we’ve got a heavy dealer.” The Sergeant said,

grinning at Allen Gonzales. “All right, big man, what’s

your wager? I’ll start you off with five hundred.”

“Five hundred?”

“That’s right. Or don’t you have it?”

“I got it. I got it.”

“Then put it on the table.”

“I don’t have it with me.”

The fat Sergeant grinned and looked around the room.

“He doesn’t have it. Well, how about your next three

pay checks? That is, if you last that long?”

“It’s a deal.”

“Does anybody else want in on this?” the Sergeant

said, surveying the now silent troops. “Five hundred says

this gorilla makes it out of the women’s dorm by night

fall?”

There was a chorus of “Yeahs” from the gang of cops.

The desk Sergeant shuffled his shoulders in place like

a buzzard and looked down at me.

“Okay, boys, place your bets.”

There was a harangue as the cops did their number,

rushing up to the desk, throwing their money at the

Sergeant.
 62

I hunkered down in my poncho, abandoned in the flurry

of hopefuls. Madrone was beginning to wail. Tears were

running down his face.

The desk Sergeant cried above the din.

“What’s the bet on the cry baby here?”

A series of shouts followed. Must bet that Madrone

wouldn’t live through the night, others wagered that he’d

die in his cell inside of a year. After the bets were

placed the Sergeant called for order.

“Let’s get them where they belong. You, Gonzales, take

the big one.“

He pointed to a Filipino in a cop suit that was too

large for him.

“He’s going cooed,” the Sergeant said.

I felt my arms and legs pleasantly rise, as the

officers lifted me from the concrete floor. Madrone was

being swarmed and lifted by his elbows. He was born away by

crowds of frantic policemen. Allen, my custodian, bent

close to my ear.

“Don’t think you’ll get away, Shredder, cuz you won’t.

When those chicks get done with you, you’ll be fried

gravy.”

About twenty cops followed Allen and the Filipino as

they dragged me down the hall. My legs were like useless

 63

thick ribbons. I kept falling on top of them. The noise

began to evaporate as the cops dropped out and the hall

wore on and on, deeper into the building. We seemed to be

on a long ramp way which ran down like a gray empty vein.

Finally, there were just two of them, Allen and the

Filipino. I was beginning to gain my legs. Allen was

breathing heavily, not so much from fatigue as from the

lack of air. It did seem that the air wasn’t right. It was

thicker than air should be and it had less of the

breathable stuff. The Filipino didn’t seem to notice it. He

smiled at Allen as if he was sort of soft on him and at the

same time wanted to mug him very much. His fingers never

dug into my flesh. As we descended, the incline of the ramp

grew steeper, forcing us to jog with the gravity. I think I

started giggling.

“Let’s hurry up and get him down there,” Allen said,

huffing. He was having a hard time. I could see his anxiety

surfacing.

“What’s the matter, man, you scared?” My Filipino

consort said in that frightened animal, subway sense. I

could tell it bugged and intimidated Allen, who shot a

macho warning glance at the scary little gook.

“What you gonna do?” the Filipino lad said, grinning

at Allen, “You gonna Nark out and leave me alone with him?”
 64

I knew it rankled Allen to no end to answer the lad,

but he did.

“I ain’t never Narked.”

“Oh, come on, man, everybody’s Narked. What, you

something special?”

Allen didn’t answer, he just grabbed my arm tighter

and started jogging faster.

His tormentor continued, looking at him with a series

of well-timed, servile smiles.

“Boy, I wouldn’t want to be left alone with this guy,

would you?”

“I can take care of myself.”

“Hey, I bet you can. My name’s Ronnie.”

We were all most running down the ramp.

“I’ll bet your name’s Ronnie. Come on, let’s get this

ugly motherfucker in,” Allen said.

“Hey man, what’s wrong. You’re lookin’ spooky. What

you gonna do, Nark out?”

We were running down the ramp then.

“Eat my chimney, you fucking little slant. I told you

I ain’t never Narked.”

The little dark kid was really smiling now with a gaga

creepiness. He was hardly out of breath.

Allen was visibly flustered.

 65

“Where in the fuck is that goddamned cell 64?” he

whined.

“Man, you really must be on the Nark, we haven’t

hardly gone nowhere.”

“Don’t try to fuck my mind, you little nigger. I know

damn well this ramp is going on too long.”

“No, no, no, man,” Ronnie said, good naturedly, as we

ran down the ramp. “We hardly been anywhere.”

Allen was really frightened. He didn’t give a shit if

some slope thought he was yellow.

“You take him the rest of the way if you like it so

much, mother.”

“Not me, man, I’m with you.”

Allen let go of my arm and bolted up the ramp. Ronnie

let go of me too and started after Allen, who was a good

twenty yards and counting. It was obvious though, that

Ronnie was going to catch up with him. Their footsteps

disappeared into the silence.

I looked up the empty ramp. It was dark. The air was

scarce and musty. I continued down the ramp on my own. It

definitely looked safer down here. Things were rapidly

closing up above the surface. It was quiet here. There was

something subterranean and ancient about it, something

before New Coming, an elemental, incipient darkness.

 66

Ironically, the ramp ended only a few yards later. I

walked down a long, dimly lit corridor. The walls were gray

and narrow. There were no cobwebs, no indication of either

fungal or bacterial growth. My footsteps left long

nostalgic echoes. There was something reminiscent of

torture chambers, mausoleums, pyramids (real old

mausoleums) interrogation rooms (kinds of torture

chambers), long halls of ancient universities (kinds of

ghosts of mausoleum ghosts). There was just the faintest

trace of institutional detergent and the semi-sweet smell

of the captured. I didn’t see any cells. There was only a

long hall which seemed to go on forever. It was vaguely

illuminated by equidistant 15-watt bulbs that stretched

eerily into the distance. The walls were a dingy custard

beige, the floor, a sky gray.

“Cut it, Charlie.”

A woman’s voice came out of the gloom.

“You didn’t hear nuthin’. You’re always hearing

things. You’re such a stupid cunt. Oh, stop weeping, you

insipid garbage bag. Why don’t you loose some fucking

weight if you feel so bad? You’re such a fucking cow, I

can’t believe it. Don’t tell me someone’s coming. I’ve got

mother-fucking ears, you know. You just want me to open the

fucking door so you can look outside again. There’s nothing

 67

outside, bitch, nothing but a fucking hall. But you know

all about it, don’t you?”

The woman’s voice went on and on. It was mean,

subversive, accusing, hysterical, knife-edged. The voice

was getting louder and down the hall I saw a pale

rectangular patch of light on the floor ahead of me.

“Okay, okay, I’ll do it if you’ll promise me to shut

up and go to bed.”

I heard footsteps. A door opened. A woman stepped out

and looked at me.

“Well, lookie here, we got a bitch,” the woman said.

A long transparent female with a head that reminded me

of a burgundy glass and pale blue water-bag eyes appeared

over her shoulder.

“Isn’t she just adorable? Tell her to step in.”

The shorter woman brushed her short cropped, greasy

hair back (even though it already was back) and moved

suddenly very near me. She twisted her head in a strange,

indescribable way, as if she were pulling something from

the center of my face with a cork-screw attached to her

forehead. She sniffed at me.

“She’s sober.”

The big pale blue one gave me another once-over.

 68

“We’ll take care of that,” she said and went back into

the room.

The smaller one turned and went back into the room

also.

“Close it,” she said as she walked away, leaving me

standing there in the hallway with the open door.

I stepped in and closed the door. The watery one was

nowhere in sight and the short cropped one was just

disappearing around the corner.

I was standing in a large kitchen. It reminded me of

one of those Methodist basements church kitchens. There

were large pots and pans, a thirty-cake grill, and four big

troughs for the dirties. On one wall was a poster:

WHY “Y” IT?

EVERY SERVICEMAN KNOWS

JUST ASK ONE!

It was probably left over from the days when the place

just jostled with you with young kids and teens of the

Executive Branch. It was obvious that they had combined the

“Y” with the jail, or converted it into a holding area. I

heard the chromey tinkle of ice in a glass and

instinctively headed in that direction. I rounded the

corner where the short-haired, oily one had disappeared and

 69

found myself once again facing a long corridor. There was

the smell of smoke and musty books. There were big pictures

on the wall, but I couldn’t make them out in the darkness.

I passed a door. It had a froasted glass window which

glowed like an old coal.

CLASSICS DEPT

was written on

it. I could make out a few posters. They were designed by

an early revolutionary group, cartoon figures with plump

red cheeks and hungry eyes. there was a huge red star which

left after-images. In the darkness I heard a voice. I was

sure it was my imagination, but I heard it saying

“EVERYTHING HERE IS JUST WHAT IT IS, DON’T GET CAUGHT

LOOKING TOO LONG AT ANY ONE THING. REMEMBER, THE CWARGIN’S

ARE NOT INDIVIDUALS, NOR ARE THEY A GROUP. DON’T BE FREAKED

BY THE WORDS YOU ARE HEARING, NOR THE PHYSICAL LAWS THAT

ARE BRINGING THEM TO YOU, BUT LET A LITTLE OF EVERYTHING

IN, FOR YOU ARE INDEED IN AN UNTROUBLED IMMORTALITY.

REMEMBER THE FIELDS OF TALKITE AND THE LOVERS OF MANY SEXES

BENEATH THE UNEVOLUTIONAL ATMOSPHERE OF CWARGIA, IN THE

CHOSEN DARKNESS AND BLADES OF ELIXIR, ENTWINED WITH THE

WARM BLUE FIRES, DOTTING FIELD AFTER FIELD IN NIGHT FROM UP

 70

HIGH, EVEN PAST THE FLYING SHIPS, A PLANET AGLOW WITH

AFFECTION.”

“I know there’s dog shit out there.”

“You think there’s dog shit out there.”

“I know there is dog shit!”

“Oh, shut up.!”

There was sobbing. I think it came from the big watery

one. I heard, I’m sure, I heard her big wet feet slop up

the stairs pathetically. Then the shorter one, calling

after her.

“You bleached-out, sulky, cunt-faced bitch!”

There was the sound of ice swirling in a glass. I

hurried up the slightly inclined floor toward the sound.

“Sit down, honey. Take the Queen’s oil out of your

joints,” the short one said.

She eyed me a little anxiously through boozy eye-

whites like a dinosaur hiding in a bird and bobbed her

head.

“Bring your little snot-trumpet into the light where

Millie can see it.”

She looked like a greasy thirteen-year-old, sitting

there on the tight-skinned couch. She pointed at a pack of

cigarettes and I took one. She gazed up at me with sudden

 71

gazelle eyes and with a discharge of smoke, invited me to

sit down.

“Take off your coat, soldier.

Suddenly, I felt very comfortable and warm. I sat

down.

She laid back and spread a curtain of smoke in a quick

succession of puffs. I realized then, that in addition to

all of New Coming madness, I was horny as hell. I wanted to

see her legs, to see the sharp contours that must surely be

there, but I could see nothing. I turned my head toward my

fag, remembering the way the room blurred in a horizontal

line as I did. Bent over the soft tobacco filled tube, I

heard her say,

“Listen, honey, get yourself out of here. I don’t want

to wipe your ass up off the bathroom floor after my mad

sister gets done with you tonight. And believe me, I don’t

give a rat’s ass about your future. I just don’t want to go

through her inevitable, god-awful crying about how her old

Tennessee William’s family had to move out of the South,

and how men just aren’t the same up North. She always goes

into it after she destroys some macho creep’s tiny

personality. She inevitably passes out and wakes up in the

middle of the night, screaming, “Millie! Millie! My god! My

 72

god! What have you driven me too?” So just, you know,

trundle on out of here.” Then, electrically, “Get out!”

Suddenly I felt my face fill with blood.

“She’s not your sister!” I shouted.

“You’re bleeding, honey. What do you think I am? Some

sleazy motel whore?” She said softly, her upper lip just

hinting a snarl.

“FUCK OFF!” I found myself nightmarishly screaming.

She didn’t bat an eye. She put her yellow fingers

before her corrugated lips and sent her sour breath up at

me.

“Shhh, don’t make too much noise,” she said, her eyes

watering eyes in the smoke, “Let’s go to the Gameroom, I’ll

look more beautiful there.”

I gazed at her sleek, muscular legs and sense her

unspeakable aroma. It drove at me like a hammer.

I was able to say, “I really don’t need it.”

As if in answer, she was asleep.

I got up and began pacing around the room. Things were

going too fast. There was all kinds of information here but

it was just coming on too quickly and with too much

intensity. I had a past. It was both familiar and yet it

seemed like it belonged to a stranger. It was very

difficult to focus. It was as if I had injured some vital

 73

organ of perception, as if I had sprained my mind. Perhaps

this was what Madrone had meant by “Coming New.” I closed

my eyes and took a soft, slow breath.

“Soldier boy,” I heard her say, the big watery one.

She was leaning out from a piece of architecture I had

over-looked, an arch over a steep flight of stairs.

“Come on up stairs and let Millie sleep.”

I found myself in a room full of purple fleur-de-lis.

She was sitting at a dresser, brushing her hair in the

mirror lie an Elvis Presley ingenue. One leg was crossed

over the other. She was wearing bright, candy-colored

lipstick.

“What are you in for, honey?” she said in a gum-chewy

voice.

“I’m not quite sure.”

“Isn’t that adorable? How do you like the facilities?”

“I’d rather be outside.”

“Would you? I wouldn’t. There isn’t much left up

there. It’s not so terribly bad down here, you’ll see, but

it’s seeping in.”

“What’s seeping in?”

“I don’t know,” she said, rubbing her lips together to

spread her lipstick. “Some say it’s a virus, some say it’s

a black hole, others say it’s a kind of trough before the

 74

great onrush of cultural transformation. There are some who

think that we have reached our neurological limit, that we

can’t go any further as a species, that we’re beginning to

break down into our basic elements. You know, rot.”

“What do you think it is, my little papoose?” I said,

leaning toward her to catch a whiff of her perfume.

“Oh, isn’t that sweet? What do I think it is?” She

said, dotting her lips with Kleenex, “I think it is an

invasion.”

“A what?”

“An invasion, handsome, by aliens, or AN alien.” She

said, flashing her crystalline, red-rimmed ivories at me in

the mirror. “Everybody thinks aliens are just like us, only

another color and differently arranged. Isn’t that silly?

Newtonian, don’t you think? Why should an alien be anything

like us? Why shouldn’t its very presence alter our reality?

I don’t mean influenza, I mean Disenchantment of Comfort;

the breaking down of the walls that separate us, the

alien’s and ours, so that our realities leak into each

other. Why couldn’t this alien, by its very presence, cause

an intense interference pattern on a subatomic level? Knock

the Probability Fog around a bit, cause a psycho-physical

chain reaction?”
 75

She put the hairbrush down and turned to me. Her hair

was a lustrous gold.

“I have a theory,” she said, “Say there are these

aliens. They’re so alien that they aren’t even in the same

dimension. I don’t know how they even perceive our

existence, but say, they do. Say also, that they share

perhaps one of our hungers and because of this hunger they

send one of their kind among us. Call it an Entity. Now how

would such an alien entity be able to understand creatures

like us? By becoming one of us, right? I don’t know how

they’d do it, some instant genetic skin-maker or something

and BAM there he is, an alien psychonaut standing in our

world.”

“It’s a pretty far-fetched idea, but I think I’ve

heard it before.”

“Yes, but that isn’t the whole story,” she said,

giving her golden tassels a shake, “You see, this alien

doesn’t know it’s an alien anymore. It thinks it’s a man.

It won’t know it’s an alien until it eats through all

that’s human about it. Isn’t that creepy? It’s got to eat

its way through itself into our world and who tastes and

digests every bite it takes? Why its alien brethren on the

other side of our dimension, and everything it eats they

understand, but it’s not eating meat, it’s eating its soul,
 76

for in our dimension (a dimension of entropy) to get

something, you’ve got to give something.”

“And in this case?” I said, admiring pale shining

eyes.

“It forfeits its own alien identity. Every bite it

takes makes it more human and as it under goes this

transformation they measure the differences between them

and ourselves deriving the variables of the other side of

the equation. Now the human experience is apart of their

awareness. Because that’s their pleasure, don’t you see,

that’s their mother fucking pleasure. This entity, from

another dimension, is now going to become a human being and

it is going to be marooned. Ain’t that crazy?”

“Yes, but who would volunteer for such a mission? I

mean, it would be the end of this creature’s identity as it

knew it.”

“Oh, aren’t you cute? What if the knowledge of it’s

“sacrifice” was withheld from it? Oh, wouldn’t that just be

awful?”

“Yes, it would be awful. So, where is this alien?”

“I just wouldn’t have the slightest idea, but maybe I

could make a guess.”

“Go right ahead.”

“Well, maybe it’s right here. Maybe you’re the alien.”

 77

“I ain’t no alien, honey, I can tell you that,” I

said, looking at her with undisguised hunger.

“Oh, aren’t you just the sweetest thing, but really,”

she said, smiling into my open face with a leer, “given the

situation of mutual involuntary participation, the alien

probably wouldn’t even know itself from what it was inter-

reacting with.”

I grinned at her. “I know what I’m inter-reacting

with.” I was feeling a painful pressure in the front of my

pants.

“Yes, but let’s complicate things further.”

“Oh, let’s.”

“What they wouldn’t have foreseen was that by

penetrating our dimension they would irrevocably change it.

What they would come to assimilate as a purely human state

would have, in fact, become deranged, unglued, half-human,

half-alien. What they sought would seek them back. The

animal of the world would be awakened. The alien intrusion

would have freed it. It would cast off its systems. It

would cast off its flesh. It would be loosed upon the

planet and it would seek this alien out.”

“And just what is this “thing” that would be “loosed”?

“Don’t laugh,” she said.

“I won’t.”
 78

“MAMA.”

I laughed, crossing her big fat tits with my eyes.

“MAMA would be mad, “she said, smiling at me. “Do you

understand? She’d be so mad that she’d make things rot. The

world would stink, you could smell it. She’d be drunk and

crazy as Hathor and she wouldn’t care. And if you were the

alien, she’d want your ass, mother fucker. And she wouldn’t

take care of things any more.”

She was talking gobbly-goop. I had seldom experienced

“MAMA” as nurturing. If she was anything, she was a meat-

eating, heartless whore who ate what she fucked. She was

Mister Death’s landlady. Besides, this was all metaphorical

garbage. There wasn’t any MAMA in Nature. There was no

“Nature” for that matter. It was all just jargon, the

rationalization of a bunch of meat bags who were afraid to

face the frank and absolute fact that there was no meaning

to anything.

“I really don’t understand what you’re talking about,”

I said, “May I sit down?”

“Ad astra per aspera,” she said, examining me

distantly as I sat next to her.

I found myself leaning close to her moon-shaped,

shining face. It glistened like fatty pigment on canvas. My

hand reached for her leg and finding it, ran down it like a
 79

rail, into the darkness beneath the coverlets of her slip.

It found the warm pool of her tummy, then followed a path

of hair to the soft crinkled fur of her muff. And there it

read the Braille on the side of her grail. I tittered

silently to myself as I touched her fast breathing animal.

I pushed my finger index finger into its mouth and it

sucked at it with a thin salivation.

“You may want to let this drop from your hands. There

might be an unexpected distastefulness about our gaming.

You might feel like a drama critic trapped at some esoteric

athletic event. What’s your name, by the way?” she asked

me. I could smell an unnamable fragrance.

“Shredder, Captain Charles Shredder. Does it matter?”

“Good God, you sound like a Howard Johnson gigolo.

Where did you get that face?”

She looked at me as if she had just finished an old

cup of coffee.

I suddenly felt inextricably clumsy, like a giant oaf

sniffing shit on the end of his finger. Why was I doing

this? What was I doing?

I averted my eyes, suddenly and utterly ashamed.

“Why you’ve never done it, have you?”

I didn’t know exactly what she meant. I felt a

crumbling, very personal feeling, an embarrassment so

 80

intimate that it buckled me. I doubled up as sudden

moisture poured from my eyes. I literally flung my tears at

her.

“What are you doing?” she shrieked throwing her hands

in front of her face, “Didn’t your mama teach you any

manners?”

I looked down and to my surprise, I saw my fingers

moving rapidly in and out of her soap box. She was tilting

her ass toward me like some big Victorian mare. Her head

was thrown back, her chest staining pink, her lips turning

a dull, deep red and her eyes pivoting rapidly in her head

as if she were watching A very fast video game. At the same

time, I didn’t have the slightest idea what I was doing. I

felt like I was milking a cow.

“Oh, you great big, darling man! Are you getting off?

Is your big, fat cheese maker bloated? Are you going off on

ol’ Charlie’s sleaze bag? That’s my name, you know,

Charlotte, not that you’d give a shit. Are you going to

keep doing this? Are you going to make me cum?”

“Yes,” I struggled, “yes, I’m going to make you cum.”

I continued to thrust my finger in and out of her

until it began to blur. She started pounding me on the face

and shoulder’s. I lifted my eyes up into the blows. She was

kicking my shins. My hand moved faster and she got wetter

 81

and wetter. I could hear her screams. She bit into my chest

and I too screamed. I had heard the scream before a

thousand years ago and a billion light years away.

I fell back, GROWING, THE HUNDREDS OF US WITHIN THE

CONE. REACHER, NEXT TO ME, POUNDING HIS TAPPER INTO THE

BLACK CRYSTALS, CUSHION CAKED WITH THEM, HIS SEEING BAGS

ROLLING AROUND LIKE JELLY STONES. HE IS POINTING HIS FANS

AT ME, LAUGHING. I AM ROLLING BACK AND AIR IS GUSHING OUT

OF ME AND MY VOICE IS BLOWING UP INTO THE DOME. I AM DIVING

AFTER HIM AND PULLING HIM UP BESIDE ME. WE ARE SCREAMING.

“SOWDUSTAND!”

REACHER IS SWELLING. NOW

HE IS FLYING. I’M SWELLING. NOW I’M FLYING. WE ARE HITTING

THE FINER STUFF.

BLESSED INDEED! THE VAPOR THIN AND CONSTANT, THE DOME,

OPALESCENT, SHIMMERING, JUST ABOVE OUR SEEING BAGS, BEHIND

THE BLACK JAGGED SHADOW OF THE RIM.

I AM THRUSTING MY GASTERS INWARD AND PUSHING MY TAPPER

INTO THE FINE GRANULES, NOSING MY CUSHION INTO THEM,

FEELING THE THOUSANDS OF US POUNDING THE COLD STEAM OUT OF

THE PIT, BLACK STREAMS TURNING LIKE A RIVER. IT IS ALL OVER

AGAIN AND I AM ON THE RIM AGAIN.

I AM PULLING MY TAPPER UP OUT OF THE SUCKY LIQUID AND

REACHER HAS HIS FANS ON MY CUSHION.

 82

“MOVE UP!”

HIS SIPHON IS PUSHED UP AGAINST THE END OF MY TAPPER

AND THE CRYSTAL POINTS ARE DIGGING INTO MY DERMIS. HE IS

HITTING MY TAPPER WITH HIS AND WE ARE SEEING THE RIVER OF

CHANGING COLORS. WE ARE RISING AND RUSHING THROUGH THE COOL

GAS TOGETHER.

SHOWSHOWSHOWSHOWSHOWSHOWSHOWSHOWSHOWSHOWSHOWSHOWSHOWSHOWSHO

ALL AROUND US WE ARE DIGGING OUR WAY UP THE CONE AND

WE ARE HEARING OURSELVES CALLING UP TO THOSE WHO ARE

CLIMBING ABOVE US.

SHOWSHOWSHOWSHOWSHOWSHOWSHOWSHOWSHOWSHOWSHOWSHOWSHOWSHOWSHO

WE ARE FAR ENOUGH UP THAT TUMBLERS ARE STARTING TO

REACH US AND BRIDE BOYS ARE TUCKING OVER THEIR GASTERS AND

PALPI, WAITING TO BE RACERS. THE GREAT MOANERS WITH LIVID,

WET CUSHIONS AND CRINKLED SEEING BAGS ARE BITING INTO THE

FINE BLACK GRAIN.

HAY JAW! HAY JAW! HAY JAW! HAY JAW! HAY JAW! HAY JAW!

REACHER IS SLAMMING ME ON THE TAPPER WITH HIS MIT AND

I AM ROLLING. I AM FALLING BACK DOWN INTO THEM. BLACK

RIVERS OF US ARE SPREADING UP THE CONE WHILE ABOVE, THE

BLACK HAIL OF OUR RETURNING FLYERS PLUMMET DOWN INTO THE

WRITHING BALL OF BABIES IN OUR CORE.

REACHER IS GETTING UP AS THE WIND FROM OUR FALL SWIRLS

DOWN AROUND US. HE IS GRABBING ME BY THE CUSHIONS AND MY

 83

MIT IS HITTING THE SIDE OF HIS TAPPER. WE ARE SPINNING AWAY

FROM EACH OTHER. REACHER IS LOOKING AT ME. NOW HE IS

PLUNGING HIS CUSHIONS INTO THE FINE GRAINS. HE IS PULLING

HIMSELF INTO THE BASE OF THE RIM. HE IS READY! NOW HE

SCREAMS AND SHOOTS AWAY. I AM SCRAMBLING UP THE STEEPENING

SLOPE. THE VAPOR IS THICKENING AND SHIMMERING. THERE IS THE

ROAR AND THE INCREDIBLE QUIET I HAD FORGOTTEN. I AM

REMEMBERING HOW MUCH I HAVE BEEN OUT OF BREATH AND HOW MY

TARSIA ARE GETTING LOOSER WITH EVERY CLIMB

THE RIVERS OF US ARE MOVING UP AND THE THOUGHT OF IT

IS DIGGING INTO ME, “I AM NEAR THE RIM.” MY TAPPER TILTS

BACK AND SPILLS OVER WITH MY VOICE AS ALL THAT I AM FLIES

OUT OF THE CONE INTO THE VAPOR AND THE SPACE AND THE

IMMENSE, UNENDING LIGHT.

“Yes, yes, Charlie, yes” I screamed as blood leaked

into my mouth. Then I felt the back of my head crack open.

I awoke to distant screaming. My head was splitting.

There was caked blood on my chin. I could feel a big, ugly

scab. I rubbed the dried blood off and let my eyes gently

focus. An old brick rotunda oscillated above me. A

chandelier hung from it. An outlandish conglomeration of

lights stuck out of it, incandescent bulbs, flame-shaped,

mushroom-shaped, some shaped like ping-pong balls, yellow

bug lights, Christmas tree bulbs, black lights, fluorescent

 84

lights, even a small table lamp made out of a Chianti

bottle stuck out of one of the sockets. They were of

varying intensities, some very bright, other’s very dim. I

closed my eyes and tried to swallow but my throat was too

dry. I rolled to my side and blinked but it made my head

hurt. There were little stinging cuts over my chest, neck

and face. I remembered Charlotte’s nails.

Gradually, my eyes refocused on the room. It was a

peculiar combination of architectures. There was an arched

fireplace made of brick with a black kettle hanging in it.

The walls were a combination of stone and filler cement.

The floor was concrete. There were a few other longish

tables scattered about. It was hard to clear my mind. My

stomach felt delicate and queasy, my eyeballs ached. It was

more like the flu than a concussion. I sucked at the air.

It was thick and sweet and old. It whistled and swirled

through my puckered lips. I felt an encroaching darkness.

My spirit leaped for it, then shrank back as it felt its

unpleasant etheria. I forced my eyes open and struggled to

uncross them, hearing at the same time, the hiss of its

nearness. I forced my mouth open to speak as it neared me.

“Don’t let it get out,” I think I heard my voice say, as

air gushed through my pharyngeal gates. I felt it pass

 85

over, the death swoon, its huge body, tailing back into the

darkness.

I heard screaming. It was a wild sound, a sound meant

to penetrate wide open spaces. I put my hands over my

throbbing ears, but it still penetrated into the very bones

of my skull. Then it went silent. I took a deep breath.

Darkness spun in my head and I could feel a queasy vertigo.

Slowly I took my hands from my ears. I heard organ music, a

kind so thick and rich it made you want to puke corpses,

great breathy avalanches of sound filled with an

overpouring of Motherlove, gobbling obbligati smelling of

digested female ejecta, the kind that men got drunk on in

the jungle when they wanted to see visions. The music

stopped. Laughter followed. Actually, it was more of a kind

of horsy giggling. Then I heard Charlotte’s voice. She was

laughing as she spoke.

“Did you hear what he said to me?”

More laughter followed. Millie had joined in.

“When do you want it?” Millie asked.

“Not yet. Soon,” Charlotte answered.

Then organ music.

I tried to raise my arms but they were bound fast

behind my back. My hands had long since completely gone to

sleep. I craned my neck and looked down at my feet. They

 86

too were bound. I was lying on one of the long tables I had

seen when I first came in. The organ music became louder.

Again, there was that strange penetrating screaming, it was

really an elongated wail. It dug at my guts. Something

about it terrified me. It was alien. That’s what is was,

alien. I twisted my head toward the sound. It was coming

from an old, arched doorway. There was a quarter foil above

the door, I saw a sky-blue glow. The wailing stopped but

the organ music but the organ music continued. Then it too

went silent. Suddenly, the place filled with the smell of

roses. It was a saccharine, ancient smell. It filled my

body and caught in my solar plexus. It was the kind of

feeling I got when I beat off too much. I wanted to rub my

diaphragm and push its foul gas out of me but my hands were

tied. The scent grew stronger. Millie and Charlotte began

talking again. I couldn’t understand what they were saying.

They were speaking in another tongue. “Tongue” was the

right word for it, for that is what it sounded like, tong-

talk. There were a lot of vowels and “l’s” and “r’s.” They

were speaking at the same time, jabbering excitedly, never

pausing to listen. It was as if they could listen and speak

simultaneously. I couldn’t hear, but I could FEEL the

presence of a third party. It was the source of the glow

but it was something else too. It was a real presence. It

 87

exuded a kind of executive staff atmosphere which seeped

under the arched door and filled even my room. Heads were

going to roll and I knew whose head was going first. I felt

it coming toward me, even through the door. It had the

quality of the Archangel Gabrielle, but female, not female,

but feminine, like some long-suffering martyr ghost,

weeping and gesticulating helplessly, thousand petaled

peonies of pastel pink and yellow worms squirming in its

eyes and mouth, supplicating, drooling, weeping

mercilessly.

I stifled a scream and rolled of the edge of the

table. My psyche felt swollen as if it had undergone

extensive surgery. Somehow, my memories were not my own. I

was beginning to suspect that they had never been, that

this very moment in time was synonymous with my condition;

viz., awaiting the inevitable wipe-out, whiling away my

time with innumerable repetitions and couter-focusings,

knowing all the while that nobody was thinking about

anything, that we were just semi-self-conducting rocks

rolled around on a soft asteroid, spit knocked out of a

boxer’s mouth. Egg white splashed in my eyes as the

electricity of our contact overloaded my nervous system. We

crashed, the floor and I, something inside of us trying to

 88

break out of our skins and join. Then we met, the earth’s

soul and mine. We were black.

* * * *

Murmurs

and

voices

and

the

hugging

rain,

the

thoughts

of

mongrel

guns

standing

silent,

avoiding,

just

avoiding

the

jungle’s

rust,

mothers
 89

scattered

with

children

in

profusion,

an

uncle

in

flaming

grass,

blind

man

scooping

hole

in

the

ground

with

his

face.

I am

above
 90

them

shooting

tracers

into

the

stark

afternoon

light.

Flies

are

crawling

on my

arms.

Someone was shaking my head violently. I could feel it

as an abstract message. I prepared myself for the dawn of

pain and released my awareness out through the walls of

shock and took possession of my body. Someone was pulling

my hair, which was no mean feat, considering it was only a

quarter of an inch long. I could smell her smoky breath.

She smelled like an old party. It was Millie.

“Wake up! Wake up”

“I’m awake! I’m awake!” I shouted.

 91

She let go of my hair and bent close to me.

“Shhhhh,” she said, “not so loud, she might hear us.”

Millie’s eyes were glowing and focused. Her retinas

were fused and tiny. Her face was sheet white but strangely

relaxed.

Kid, you have fun with my sister, Captain Shredder?”

“Fun, miss?”

“You pig.”

“Pig mam?”

Millie’s body became rigid. Rolling spasms went

through her briefly. She raised her head up. Something was

coming but I didn’t know what it would be. When it came it

took me totally by surprise. She threw up on me.

It wasn’t like she was doing it because she was sick

or angry. It was more like a form of address. It gushed out

over me in an acid rain. Smoke poured from her mouth,

accompanied by a great sizzling sound. I had the sensation

of burning up in a tavern fire. The murky crap stuck to my

face in gelatinous chunks, topaz glaciers in amber bays,

the smell of fried sour mash and steam.

Something inside me understood. It grabbed my lungs

and sent smoke of twenty-eight years of Camel’s into her

face. A lunger followed the smoke like a silent rubber

asteroid. She stopped moving almost immediately. The woozy

 92

grape-green mucosa wobbled on her face like Hollywood

monster goo. I spoke before she could answer.

“Miss Millie, Miss Millie!” I squealed, “Please,

you’ve got to understand me, I’m just a prisoner like you.”

I began to laugh. Bays of marinated carrotbergs and

bubbles tumbled into my mouth. She leaned down and grabbed

my ears, unaware of what was happening in my stomach. I

threw up in her face. The backwash of the projected fluid

fell back onto me, producing a yet, even more astonishing

of repulsion. A gushed of gravy brown cream gurgled up out

of my mouth in a low, thick boil. This, in turn, produced a

second wave in her and she splashed me with a liquid

mixture of cheese and eggs. She sent the shot with an

accuracy that could only point to intent. Somewhere in my

lowest reserves I found something to send back to her.

We were going into the dry heaves when Miss Charlotte

opened the door and began screaming. Millie flung herself

back from me with a gesture of combined shock and guilt, as

if she had been caught giving head to her best friend’s

husband.

Get out of here, you cow!” Millie hissed at Charlotte,

food flying from her mouth. Charlotte screamed back out the

door. Millie grabbed hold of my ears and pulled my face up

to her.
 93

“She’s a wicked cunt, oh Jesus, is she a wicked cunt.”

She said, grabbing me so tightly by the ears I though they

would come off in her hands. I could sense her squeezy

rapture as her lips spread across her teeth, pressing

against them until they had white streaks. She took my head

and bashed it against hers. She laughed and hissed at the

same time. Her face was livid. I could feel her lips brush

the tip of my nose as she spoke.

“She wants me to have your baby. Can you believe that!

Doesn’t it make you want to throw up?”

She got on top of me and wrapped her arms around my

neck and started licking the vomit from my face, I shifted

and spread my weight to better accommodate her. She pushed

her lips into my neck and pulled her pelvis up to mine. It

was a sweet, sexy gesture. Instinctively, I turned my head

away and exposed more of my neck to her lapping tongue. She

buried her face in my neck and snuggled into it, shifting

her weight into the center of my body. It was a strange,

focusing action on her part and it sprang my alarms. Where

she should have spread her weight over me, she focused it.

She sank into me. It was as if the interior of my body had

turned into some kind of jelly and she had become a wedge,

sinking into my guts, spreading my organs until they would

 94

eventually burst the skin. I felt my air being driven out

of me in a long, slow wheeze.

“Do you know what I used to be?” she said, steering

her weight toward the center of my abdomen, ”I used to be a

cop. Yes, that’s right, I used to be a cop. For eleven

years, I was a cop right here in this town. I had a boy

friend. He worked right down the street. Then I met her. Do

you know how I met her? I don’t know how I met her. I can’t

remember. Can you believe that? I can’t remember.” Millie

raised her head a little and looked into my bulging eyes.

“You stinking piece of shit. I hate you.” She spit into my

face and focused her weight to a finer edge. She cut into

my body like a heavy, dull blade. “It’s the truth,

motherfucker. From then on, I was with this woman night and

day. When the Police department found out about it, they

fired me. My parents went crazy. The minister wouldn’t let

me in the church. Shop keepers ignored me. People wouldn’t

let me sit next to them on the bus. They jeered me on the

street. The whole place went crazy. Finally, they put us

both in jail I Came New with her, do you understand? I Came

New with her and now I can’t uncome. Do you understand? Do

you understand?” She looked down into my swelling face and

grinned. “This is the kind of stuff you understand, isn’t

it?” You’re just like the rest of them. You think we’re
 95

crazy. You think we’re geeks, don’t you? You think we’re

chicken-faced geeks.” She sprang from my body and flew into

the air. It was an incredible sight. Not since the Sisters

of Sardinia had I seen such a bitch. She was suspended at

least a full second before she landed next to me, her teeth

biting into the cartilage of my nose.” You ugly, stinking

motherfucker. Did you hear what I said? I said, you dirty

stinking ugly motherfucker. Do you know what that means,

you son of a bitch? It means she wants me to have your

fucking kid.” She released my nose from her teeth, spread

her arms and let me have a double-whammy on the ears. Stars

sang and I felt Christmas all over again. She began kissing

me passionately on the lips, pushing the mucous membrane of

her cheeks and lips into my mouth. “Here, have some of it

back. What, don’t you know what it tastes like? It tastes

just like you, sucker, it tastes just like you.” She pushed

her tongue in and out of my mouth. There was accompanying

saliva. She moaned and wept. Greater amounts of salvia

poured out of her mouth and into mine. It came down in a

tasteless thin curtain of slightly stick liquid. The mucous

membrane inside her mouth was beginning to swell. At first,

I didn’t believe it but then it became obvious. Her lips

and cheeks were bulging with worm meat. “Don’t you remember

me? I’m the fat dog you finger-fucked in the back seat.”
 96

She giggled and the air coming between our lips made farty

sounds. It was insane and wonderful. I began to laugh.

“I never finger-fucked you,” I managed to say after

pulling my lips free.

“Yes, you did. You put on an English accent and you

told me that you were a race car driver.” She put her lips

against my neck and rubbed me with the front of her teeth.

“And I fell for it. But you didn’t like the smell of my

pussy. It smelled too ripe, didn’t it?” I’m going to tell

you something. It smells down here. It smells to high

heaven. Even the movie management can’t get the air out. It

smells just like the big dive that it is, like the bitchin’

pit that it is and that’s the way I smell, Jocko. That’s

what Millie and Charlotte understand. We’ve learned to make

each other happy in spite of what brought us together. And

they can’t stand that. That’s why they keep throwing all

their macho garbage at us. We get five of six a week like

you. Charlotte things you’re different, but I don’t see it.

You look just like all the rest.

She brought her face close to mine. “You are like all

the rest, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” I said, “I’m exactly like all the rest.”

“Do you know where they are now?”

“No.”
 97

“Neither do I.” She got up and looked around the room.

“You don’t have any cigarettes, do you?”

“I do, as a matter of fact,” I said. “They’re in a

silver cigarette case.”

“Oh, the one marked Grenal Rad?” yes, I’ve tried that

one. It’s locked up. Can’t budge it. What is it, a bomb?

Besides, I’m not supposed to smoke. I’m going to be

pregnant soon. We’re gong to have an evil son. You know,

like the brother of some Egyptian god, some muck-muck Ba

Man. He’ll chase your fucking ass down, Shredder, no matter

where you go, he’ll chase your fucking ass down. You’re

scared of him too, because he’s your bugger-eating shadow.

That’s what she wants me to have. She wants me to have your

peek-a-boo baby. He’ll come after you like a mad killer.

Nothing will stop him. We’re gonna eat up all your nasty

genes and have a killer squad.”

I didn’t bother her with questions, like how she was

planning to control all these variables. What I really

wanted to know was my status. Was I to be killed or used?

Or both? Who was to be the Double Veteran? But first

questions first.

“What’s next?” I asked, starting back a flinch.

“I don’t know. I really don’t know. It’s the only way

to go, don’t you think? Oh, yes, I know something. I’m

 98

going to have your baby. You don’t know what babies are

about. That’s right isn’t it? You don’t know about babies.

You know how to do it but you don’t know what it’s for? You

might as well come in a toilet bowl. Right? You know how to

do it don’t you? You know how to do it? You know where the

place is. Where you wipe your buzzer.”

She had risen above me sometime during the speech but

I couldn’t remember when. I felt “the dropsy’s”. I was

going “off and on” all the time...dot...dash...dot. I

didn’t know if she might be falling down or if I was

passing out. I was just very sleepy. She had been hard on

me. She had been hard on me and I had been hard on her. We

had been chewing on the cartilage and neck gristle of each

other’s souls.

All the words had been merely heenks and honks of the

animals of our curiosity. Now they were falling asleep.

Yes, I think we were going out together.

I thought I saw her shadow darken the air above me I

thought I felt her body hit mine but it was too far away. I

think perhaps the table crumbled but the wall I knew for

sure was falling for I saw it ignite and pulverize. I saw

it open and all of Sandusky shine through. Sandusky in Mid-

Western autumn, football colors and apple-bright eyes. All

Sandusky, milling and moving. Fat and plump and skinny and
 99

short and wavy and dull and creepy and thrilled. Oh, so

many of them. Were they the prize? The prize of power? Was

it really the fun of popping them off that was the reward

for work well done? Yeah, you know, “pop em off,” blast

them in the guts and watch them “pop,” pop goes the weasel,

pop goes the chick who was just too cute for her own good,

pop em good, pop em slow, pop em hard, but pop em, pip em

if you like. All those little people in Sandusky P.M.

light. Aint that just what they’re for, anyway?” Keep em

busy. Keep em fit. Little fat turkeys, little rodents,

little lobster-eyed bugs. Ain’t that why we’re doing it, to

keep them safe? For safe keeping? Protect the people and

beat them until the blood runs out of their eyes, slam them

on the ground and jump on their backs. Interrogate them. To

watch their faces die. Take anything you want, take

anything. That’s what they’re here for. That’s why we keep

them safe.

The chunky paste was swept from my face and

Charlotte’s voice, cool and clear, spoke above me. I could

smell her breath. It smelled like Dentine chewing gum.

“Let Charlotte take care of you, honey.” She said,

smiling gently.

And I did, I let her take care of me.

 100

She wiped me off. She even took off my pants and

washed me “there.” She washed my hair and told me that

everything was gong to be all right. She simpered and cooed

and I knew that she was crazy.

“Gosh,” I said, “I feel like I’m on T.V.”

“It’s the Strange Attracter.” She said, smiling

confidently. “It’s making everything random. Have you ever

sat by a waterfall and wondered why the drops sometimes hit

you and sometimes don’t? It’s the Strange Attracter making

everything random so that they can get all mixed up and

then unmix again into something else. The same thing

happens with the configuration of leaves and trees, or

bubbles in a pot, you can never know exactly what the

configuration will be, the ball on the roulette wheel, the

throw of the dice. It’s all just the shifting of the

Strange Attractor. I know, I just read it in Omni. It’s the

Belousov-Zhabkotinsky Reaction. And in the brain, hon, in

the brain, it’s called SCHIZOPHRENIA! How is it that your

thoughts are in constant flux and yet have an overall

stability? It’s because of deterministic chaos! Isn’t that

interesting? Got to have a little confusion! Isn’t that

neat! Got to have a little chaos to break the overload of

stability to get the motion. The motion of life! What do

you think?
 101

“I think you’re talking about bubbles.”

She laughed. “Yes, bubbles. Bubbles writing about the

lives of bubbles.” She bent close to me, staggering as she

did, her right eye kind of wobbled at me.

“You girls having a good time in there?” I asked,

winking at her.

“We’re having a ball.” She said, staggering. She

plopped her elbows on my chest and whispered in my face.

“Memory? Memory? What does that mean?” she said.

Her breath smelled sweet, there wasn’t the slightest

trace of alcohol.

“What does that mean?” she continued grabbing onto my

shirt collar and swaying. “Does that mean the same thing as

knowing what happened once/ somebody put it down, didn’t

they? They made scratches on something, didn’t they?

Rearranged the rust, didn’t they? Doesn’t it make you feel

like throwing up your soul? It does that to me. But there

is no way to go crazy when everything is crazy right? But

maybe not, maybe I can just let go of it all and PURGE,

purge until I burn the ends of my nerves off. Then it won’t

be so bad, don’t you think? I’ll just be screaming with all

the rest of them. What is it, electricity? Is it

electrically charged red mud? Tell me, tell me truly, you

evil son of a prick.”

 102

“No, it’s just your meter running out of penny time,

Charlotte. It’s strictly nickels and dimes from now on the

dimes go in separate slots. It takes long to get them there

but they’ll do it. They’ll turn on the time. It just takes

more dimes to live, that’s all. You probably didn’t even

notice it, did you?”

“Notice what?”

“How much older you’re getting, Charlie.”

She stood up and cocked herself like a cobra, her face

frowning with distaste.

“You’re a real slosh, aren’t you, Shredder? Do you

think I give a damn about that? I’ve always been an old

cunt, and my mother’s ten times older than me and she’s

still making tail.”

She laughed right in my face. Her breath smelled like

roses, lilacs and burning leaves. I fell in love with her

and I hated her guts. She did look old as fucking hell, but

it didn’t bother her a bit. The wrinkles fairly swatted me

in the face when she swung her head. I looked into her eyes

and fixed into her retinas. Something cool came from them,

distant, present. She wasn’t old, she wasn’t young. She was

just standing there holding a body up with her mind.

“Would you like some breakfast?”

“Yes, I think I really would.”

 103

“Millie and I have come to a little decision about

you.”

“Oh, yeah? What’s that?”

“We’re going to keep you for a while.”

“Should I be happy about that?”

“Be happy.”

She began to untie my hands.

“We’re going to teach you about babies.”

“I know about babies.”

“Do you?”

“Why are you untying me? Aren’t you afraid I might

kill you?”

“You sound like you’re on television.”

“Yes, that’s what I thought.”

She led me down a hall. It felt good to stretch and

move about. It seemed like ages since I had entered Millie

and Charlotte’s cell. It was the same door that the sounds

had come from, but the other side of it wasn’t at all like

I expected it to be. There were just more rooms. They

looked vacated. I thought I could smell just a trace of

antiseptic and ether. The rooms were dimly lit. Many of

them looked freshly painted in bathroom yellow, bus depot

green, or jail ivory. They seemed endless.

 104

“Now you can see why I’m not worried about my safety.”

Charlotte said, “I’m the only one who knows my way out.”

“What is this place?”

“An accumulation of rooms. Some call them Combs. I

have to make constant reconnaissance trips to update it.

It’s not easy, but it’s possible.”

I told Charlotte that I had witnessed a similar

phenomenon on the side streets of Sandusky. I had hoped to

escape attention and had taken a side street only to be

confronted with thousands of similar houses. The place had

an overbearing emotional nature and I soon found myself

lost.

“Things accumulate differently now.” Charlotte said,

“There is not the great diversity of kinds of things that

go into a given random accumulation nowadays. Like seems to

attract like. One is likely to get an accumulation of rooms

and not an accumulation of rooms and shoes and motorcycles.

Rooms attract rooms. It one particular kind of room

resonates like hospital room then it will attract hospital

rooms. The Mathematicians believe that what determines

similarity in dimension, construction and color. What they

have come up with is a strangely animistic premise. The

elements that go into the creation of a room form that

room’s intent. Now this does not only mean the intention or
 105

purpose the builder had in mind but the resultant

intentions of the room itself. Isn’t that hilarious? They

call it the room’s “resonance.” It’s the room’s “resonance’

that determines its similarity and similarity creates

accumulation. These are all delivery rooms or rooms with

close or similar intentions. In Sandusky there are no

babies being born now, nor have there been for several

years. Accumulations such as these began around the same

time as the drop-in birthrate and the beginning of the Nark

out. As disorienting as these states are, scientists were

still effective in devising a plan which would save these

rooms from being scattered into small, widely spaced

Accumulates where they would be useless and untraceable.

They repainted and remodeled them all so that their

similarities would be greater and thus more likely to

accumulate more readily together. They realized that

similarity was not exactly the same as intention, so they

made each room slightly different, Planned Diversification,

they called it. They hoped that a certain amount of

controlled diversity would play a natural [part in the

process of attraction. This way they could attract

different kinds of rooms without getting too many “Weirdo

Combs.” You know, Accumulations whose variables have too

wide a diversity like gymnasium-sized elephant birthing

 106

chambers and wolf dens. Isn’t that hilarious? Scientist’s

worrying about which rooms attracted which? Anyway, they

were successful. They can sort of figure out now where a

Cell or Comb of accumulated rooms is. If they find that

their rooms are disappearing then they figure out pretty

much the kinds of rooms that are going to be taken next and

they paint them and rebuild them with the right similarity

and intention. If they disappear, they trace them down.

Likely, they’ll be in some large Comb some place. Even

though there are no babies being born at this point they

don’t want to lose their rooms. They figure that sooner or

later things are going to stop Coming New (I don’t know

what gives them that idea) and if they can develop some

kind of uniformity of style and structure and color and, of

course, intent, they will be able to either, retrieve their

old, lost rooms or have ones that are similar. You want to

have a room that looks fairly much like the one you lost.

Again, perhaps with a little manipulation, you could

produce an intention where the Combs themselves would build

a super structure, a kind of tower of Babel from the

accumulated rooms. You could make huge hotels or

universities, or perhaps mega-adventure lands with

heliports.
 107

We continued through the hallways with their freshly

painted rooms. They seemed to be so much alike. It was hard

to believe they had come from separate places. I guess

that’s what Charlotte meant by “intention.” She was walking

ahead of me at a good clip. Her eggshell blue nightgown

billowed behind her. I picked up my pace. I could only see

the side of her face. The rooms were moving quickly by us.

I noticed that many of them were dark. Some had little

light emitting diodes that blinked from unseen apparatuses.

There were black and white television sets in some of the

rooms. I couldn’t catch the programs they were playing. In

some of them I thought I saw faces rising up out of the

beds but perhaps it was my own reflection moving across a

mirror. I turned to call up to Charlotte but she was too

far ahead to hear me. She seemed to be whisked a few inches

over the floor. There was no sense of strain or hurriedness

about her. She looked like a holy martyr’s statue rushing

towards some central crypt.

“Charlotte? Charlotte? Wait up” I called to her.

Charlotte disappeared around a corner.

“Very funny, Charlie,” I shouted and came to a stop.

I stood in the hallway surrounded by the silent rooms.

I had been in rooms like this before. What had they called

them, the Bin? New Coming? Was it my imagination? Was it

 108

something that I was causing? Was it real? It was the only

thing happening, at least within the range of my awareness.

Perhaps it had to do with me, perhaps not. That I didn’t

know was very disconcerting. Perhaps I was under some kind

of anesthetic right now. Perhaps I was covered with one of

those surgery room green sheets and someone was boring into

my skull. Perhaps I was being mainlined this tape load of

experience and I didn’t even know it. Yes, that, combined

with some kind of digital scrambler to make sure there

would be a “random?” feeling to the basic variations that

followed some preconfigured experience envelope. In other

words, perhaps I was “out” at that very moment and all this

murky female garbage was only some kind of cerebral

anesthetic. Perhaps I was still in the “Bin.” Perhaps the

Bin was nothing more than this immobilizing confusion. What

did they call it, “Coming New?” Then again, maybe I was

just unplugged. Maybe I had been some kind of military

Frankenstein and now that they were done with me, they had

cut my connection. Or, perhaps they had lost a battle or a

war and I had wandered away in the confusion of retreat.

Yes, they could be looking for me right now.

“Shredder.”

It was Millie. I followed her voice up the hill and

around a corner.
 109

“Shredder, Shredder, hurry up, it’s time.”

Her voice was breathy and excited. I couldn’t believe

it; it was giving me a hard on! I hurried down the hall

toward a door on the right.

“I’m coming, Millie!” I shouted back to her.

I couldn’t believe it; I was shouting back to her like

some kind of “Twenties” leading man.

“Hurry up, hurry up,” she pleaded.

I entered the room on the run.

“Shredder.”

She was lying naked on an examination table, her legs

up in stirrups. She was squirming and wiggling around

hotly. Her eyes were almost black with eye-liner and

mascara, her lips were candy apple red. She looked like a

mock up of some pubescent “Fifties” beach girl.

“Shredder.”

She was really turned on. Another light rose

dramatically on her vagina. I think I heard a swoon of

violins swoop through a near television set. What was so

fascinating about the thing? Why did I want to plunge my

cock in it? It was ridiculous.

“Shredder, Shredder, hurry up, I’m ripe now, oh, God,

I’m ripe. Put it in there and beef me up, fuck face.”

 110

She followed this with an uncanny whirring sound

created by blowing air through her lips. It was

debilitating in its beauty. It cut through my knees and

sent me to the floor. My face fell but a few inches from

her vagina. The labia glistened; some were beaded with

crystalline drops like sap on the edge of a leaf. They were

a peculiar light pink, the color of a faded wild rose, but

stick, very sticky. I felt the temperature rise as I moved

toward the contents. I buried my face into her honey laden

pillow. I burrowed into her folds, deeper and deeper, into

the fresh, musky tunic scent of her regions. I buried my

face deeper in her, perhaps I could pull out of her skin

what I couldn’t get from her mouth. At that moment a small

nodule covered with skin lodged itself momentarily in the

ridge above my upper lip. “Oh, sweet marbles in her bag,” I

thought to myself inanely. Some of the marbles were rough.

Actually, some were more like curds and prickly pieces of

meat. I pulled my face out of her vagina and tried to

examine them more closely but they stuck to my nose. I

pulled some from my nose and they stuck to my fingers like

burned marshmallow, thick, crusty, and dark, blue green. It

was rot. I threw up on her cunt then fell face first down

into it again. It had become a pool of chemical soup.

Crickets tied to electric wires were singing from it. There

 111

was laughter and I felt my head pulled out of the reeking

sauce. Charlotte’s thin, strong fingers dug into the upper

portion of my eye sockets. Charlotte was laughing

viciously, almost theatrically like a cackling victorious

witch. “How do you like this, Shredder? Do you like this?

Isn’t it too much for you? It’s where babies come from.

Come on have a mouthful.” She dumped my face back into

Millie’s seething gash. I couldn’t breathe. Millie’s

vaginal lips covered my entire face past the ears. She

wrapped her thighs around my head. I felt a most peculiar

motion between my legs. Something was being put up my

rectum. Now it was being twisted back and forth. Then it

dawned on me. It wasn’t my rectum. It was my cock. I was

being milked!

I woke up in the semi-darkness of the Original

Kitchen. The black stove pot hung in the fireplace. The

ancient, curved ceiling was still there. So were the walls

with the ancient brick and the filler cement. The longish

tables, I realized were mutated (i.e. foreshortened)

medieval banquet tables. The air was thick and hard to

breathe. I understood now the source of the architecture.

In this case intention predominated similarity. Here the

ancient and the modern were mended. The pseudo-classical

 112

architecture of the courthouse melding with the Disneyesque

torture chambers of the past and the various witch’s huts

and chapels whose ancient intention “resonated” with

modern, institutional design. That was why the air was so

thick. It was old. I also realized I was dressed and

unbound, I felt rested and cleansed. I crawled toward the

door. A dull light seeped from under it. The place was

infinitely quiet. I reached up and turned the door knob.

The door opened.

I was back in the long, dark hallway. I felt the rush

of my abbreviated past. I wondered where Madrone was. I

wondered if perhaps there had been any change above me. If

perhaps there was a little less shifting. Just then I

thought I heard the soft patter of feet coming toward the

door at my back. Charlotte! I was suddenly struck with

absolute terror. I sprinted down the long corridor. At my

back I think I distinctly heard Charlotte’s voice softly

calling my name, “Shredder? Shredder?” I kicked my knees up

and barrel-assed down the long corridor, the hairs on the

back of my neck electrified with fear.

The hallway continued on, ever straight, seemingly

infinite. The overhead light bulbs were becoming sparser,

thinning out as I continued into the darkness until they

seemed to be no less than a hundred yards apart. I finally

 113

stopped and looked down the long corridor. Far down in the

distance a light bulb glowed like a tiny star. Its light

radiated along the walls like a monochromatic sunset,

dimming into blackness. I leaned against the wall and

caught my breath and finally dared to look back. The hall

was empty. A good hundred yards away another light bulb

glowed with an evil amber light. I put my face against the

wall and squeezed my eyes shut against the on-rush of pain,

pain of the escaped, humiliated, matriculated orphan. I put

my cheek against the wall. It was cool and consoling. I

began to weep. Animals that release water out of their

faces. This sense of outrage of being there, of being this

way, of having an end, of beaten, of being beaten, and

fondled, manipulated and terrorized, vapor in ever-shifting

circumstances, sadomasochistic by nature, fearing hiding,

fearing meeting with no escape possible. This was it. This

was not Coming New. This was coming just the same way it

always had come. I was sliding down to the floor, crumbling

with release. My ears ringing some silent air-raid. I was

going to Nark! I threw my body against the wall, hearing

distantly, the air rush of my lungs.

“I’ll kill you if you touch me again,” I screamed. I

thundered to my feet and expanded every tissue and fiber

with my angry will. My body filled the passageway like a

 114

thick door. I expelled the bottled-up air and “hooted.” My

eyes fluttered with courage, inflamed glee. I was a giant

kamikaze.

I charged down the corridor, low and fast like a

fullback, a groan smoldering and oozing its smoke from the

corners of my slightly smiling mouth. I was on total alert.

They had frisked me. They had really had my ass. What pros!

But no more. This had to be the end or the beginning of

freedom. There were no more choices.

The lights had grown even sparser. I ran from island

to island through deepening seas of darkness. Finally,

there were no more lights. I kept running, running my

liberated ass off. I was on a pinhead of light, rushing out

of the void. There were no more walls. There was just

emptiness. I was on a tight rope lane. It was only my

heart’s ever emerging path that I must follow. Then

suddenly it came to an end. I was on a street. It was

raining softly. I pulled the hood of my poncho up and

forged ahead, following the same listless guidance system

that had delivered me from the Police corridors.

The streets were filled with slow moving cars. There

was no horn honking, no impatience, just a polite, constant

speed, as if they were on parade.

 115

The shops and stores were all open. It felt like seven

o’clock on a wet November evening. The streets were full of

people. It was a curious combination of night life and mid-

day, mid-weed traffic congestion. Everyone seemed to be out

on a holiday work day as if in commemoration of like as it

had been in preNew Coming Sandusky. The morning newspaper

was being sold on the corner by an old man who looked like

an ancient Humphrey Bogart in rags. Beside him the evening

edition was in a dispenser. The early morning risers and

first graders mingled with the nighshifters and pimps. The

professors conducted classes while a night game was being

played on the football field. I could see the stadium

lights ahead of me. I could see the classrooms through the

windows. Even the side streets and the alleys were full of

people, but spaced, spaced in a kind of circumstance mass

configuration, moving to some unheard tempo. Mistresses of

butchers and psychiatrists, Asians and street people

bending and popping off the sidewalks, but evening, full of

cozy, lukewarm, atomizer air. I moved through the spaces

left among them. They reacted but only after I had passed.

The sad butcher-wife just starting to smirk, lawyers and

doctors bobbing their accurate eyes, streak-browed

debutante matrons squinting with musical lust. War heroes

 116

fighting with soldiers of headache, “don’t-touch-me-touch-

me-till-I-die,” suspicious and unkind. The checked.

As I moved among them, some of them dropped, and

others, who were still standing, stood over the fallen,

waiting patiently for the Nark-out to pass.

I heard laughter behind me. It was slow and chilling.

I could feel it traveling through the crowd toward me.

I quickened my pace and ducked down an alley. It too,

was filled with people, people that should come out of

allies, new pedestrians leaving their just cooling cars,

secretaries shimming to lunch, nightwatchmen making their

rounds and winos staggering among the business suits and

all at night, after hours, but as if it were high noon.

Their faces tilted toward some invisible sun, some

gravitational star. Gardeners, and cops and thieves. Even

the scum smiled.

“Captain Shredder! Captain Shredder!”

I whirled around, bringing my fist with me in a wide,

arching roundhouse and clipped a grease-smeared waiter in

the jaw. He went down like a dead man. Behind him, his face

all bloody, his hair stuck to his forehead with sweat, was

Allen, the cop, the one who had led me to the subterranean

hell of Millie and Charlotte. He was panting and pale.

 117

Blood was trickling down the side of his mouth. He was

holding an envelope.

“Captain, Grenal Rad told me to give you this.”

He handed me the envelope.

“And these.”

He handed me the cigarette case and the black

notebook.

“What you doing for kicks, Allen?” I said, taking the

articles.

“You have no idea. They beat me and held me down, they

took my tongue in their hands. They gave me electricity.

They made every orifice of my body drool. How can they do

that/ I’m not stopping now. You get me out of here.”

“Go up North,” I said in a surprisingly sincere tone

and I meant it.

“I can’t go anywhere. There is no way to get out.

There are no streets anymore. All the houses are squeezing

together. You can’t dig into the ground deep enough. Do you

understand? The sky has fallen. Look, they’re laughing at

me,” Allen said, tears mixing with his other moistures.

Indeed, the people were laughing at Allen with his

shredded police uniform and his clown’s face made of blood.

“Don’t go anywhere, Allen. Just stay here, right here.

I’ve got to go.”

 118

Allen looked at me, his eyes beginning to gleam as if

they knew that at last he would let them rest. He sat down

in the middle of the crowd. I turned away and headed for

the main thoroughfare. The crowds became moving partial

shadows. I could see them passing on the side of my eyes,

endless Sanduskites, coming New, blessed in the light of

the Absolute House. Sandusky ablaze in the summer, sumacs

burning, cicadas and cheerleaders and cool lips behind the

bleachers. They had the real 4th of July parade. And

Halloween. Hay rides, in dusky, mystic November. They had

all the seasons.

The streets were empty around me. I hadn’t noticed it

but they were empty. I had walked into the dark, downtown

side streets.

The buildings everywhere, immediately closed in. The

streets and lights became gray giants with spears, sullen

animals itching and making me joyful.

“Beyond money,” I shouted. “Yes, beyond love! I don’t

have a thing to say. Everything around me is just fine. I’m

letting it drop from me, everything, even this very dream.”

Far out, in the yet invisible streets, a Black and

White was whistling toward me. I felt a fearful

anticipation, numb as I was. “What is this overall ache? I

think they call it being alive.” I laughed involuntarily to

 119

myself and hopped a little toward the now approaching

police car.

“Hi, Charlie. Out on your accustomed constitutional?

With all the killing going on how do you do it? Do you

realize that there is a virtual undeclared war out there?

Listen, we just keep in the cars and put in our time

anymore and you just get out that old cane of yours and

walk down the ugliest streets in the city just like in the

old day.”

“Just like in the old days,” I chuckled back. “We’re

in the service. I get my monthly and live like an artist.

It’s really better, really, if you’ll but just for a moment

be honest. It’s really better, isn’t it, now out of the

fire and the misery with all these people hiding in our old

places of power?”

I gestured to the great Cone of dark accumulated

public buildings that surrounded us. It was a most

horrendous accumulation of architectures, Romanesque,

Byzantine, Baroque, Renaissance, French and English Gothic,

combined with Modern European and American Colonial (Mac

Donald’s, Kentucky Fried Chicken, and Radio Shack).

He gave me a most agreeable look that sent me

oscillating with nostalgia.

Softly they waved good-night behind the glass.

 120

Coming New.

“It’s nice air raid.” I said.

“Terrific,” the shadows answered.

The Black and White sped off among the buildings. The

night was comfortably cool and clear. There was air to

breathe and space to breathe it in. I opened the envelope

Allen had given me. There was $320 in it and a small note

from Grenal Rad. It red:

CONGRATULATIONS,

YOU HAVE BEEN PROMOTED, MAJOR SHREDDER.

* * * *

When I came home I came home. There was the door and

the key and the rounded diamond with the well-printed

numbers -21- written on it. The way the key fit into the

lock was good. The way it turned to the right and the door

snapped open was good. The darkness and the cigarette smoke

were good. The way the heat split the cold empire night was

good. The way my hand reached for the light switch was

good. The way the switch was so reachable was good. And it

was so good to feel the switch flip the room up into light
 121

(with the good, warm, ruffled bed and the black notebook

and the unopened cigarette case).

“My room. This is my room.”

I closed the door on the possibilities behind me. I

pulled the warming half gallon from under my arm when I sat

down on the chair, I felt a coming up from somewhere down

in me. I grabbed a fold of skin in my midsection. All

right, I was gaining flab. Enacting my condition, the

bottle of itself, plopped against the night stand and the

gradually waddled to STANDSTILL.

I pulled a box of frozen ravioli from my coat and

addressed the now still bottle. “That’s cheap, you

cannibal.” I slammed the box against the wall then opened

it and lifted it over my head. “Cheap, cheap,” I muttered

as the pillow-shaped morsels rolled out of the box and into

my mouth, little animals waiting for my water.

“To be a visionary,” I said, addressing the bottle

with quiet philosophy, “what a joy. If I ever had a father,

and I don’t think I had, he was most surely the brother of

my uncle. That being the case, both were trapped in the now

of be it here. Jesus Christ was not an enemy of bias. After

all, he went hatless in the days of hoods and helmets.

Grant me not the changes you are going through, dad, uncle,
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Jesus, for you see, I’m just a stranger, my fingers

enfoamed with Holy Drive.”

I switched on the television and sank into bed,

cigarette case and notebook floating beside me on the

momentarily turbulent surface. When things settled down, I

heard the commercials. One was for Evil Cards, the kind for

love making children undressing before entering abandoned

refrigerators. As the door begins to close, a teenager

reaches out for them, pack in hand, body entwined in the

wreckage of yellow Dotson. The pack spins up, tossing it’s

hair, and twists, transmuting into a thick, yellow sun,

dripping between the narrowing crack and the children’s

falling, muffled bodies, “E V I L cards...wake-you-up!”

The television flickered then the top of a man’s

balding head emerged through a slowly retreating wide angle

lens. The man looked up, pushing his index finger against

the nose piece of his black horn-rimmed glasses and began

speaking.

.............

......................... .

.......................

.............
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“GOOD EVENING, WELCOME TO “THE GRANAL RAD HOUR,” AS

YOU CAN SEE, WE STILL MAINTAIN CONTROL OF THE GRENAL RAD

TRANSMITTER STATION HERE IN CLEVELAND. CRISES AFTER CRISES

HAS BEEN OVERCOME. YOU MUST, AS FREE CIVILIANS BEGIN TO

THINK IN TERMS OF A SOLUTION. NOT A SOLUTION AS A

STANDSTILL, A CUL DE SAC OF SOME DETERMINISTIC ASIAN RUN

OUT OF NO MIND, NO SOUL, NO BODY, BUT AS FREEDOM. THINK OF

IT AS THE BREAKING DOWN OF A THICK CLOT, THINK OF SOLUTION

IN THE LIQUID SENSE, THINK OF IT IN THE MEDICAL SENSE AS

THE TERMINATION OF A DISEASE, AS A PAYMENT FOR A TRIUMPHANT

LEGAL STRUGGLE. THE TRICK IS ALWAYS A PATH TO THE SOLUTION.

DON’T THINK OF A TRICK AS SOMETHING CHEAP, THINK OF IT AS

AN EFFECTIVE WAY OF GETTING A RESULT, A ROUND OF CARDS

FORMING AT LAST A BOOK OF SIX, SYMBOLIC OF AMBIVALENCE AND

EQUILIBRIUM, THE UNION OF FIRE AND WATER.

“What a pile of fucking hog wash, “I said padding to

the bathroom for a glass.

THIS COMBINED WITH THE SIX DIRECTIONS OF SPACE (TWO

FOR EACH DIMENSION) BREAKING UP AS THE SOLUTION, THE

CESSATION OF STAGNATION, THE REINSTATEMENT OF VIRGINITY,

MOVING TOWARD THE PERFECT DISORDER AND THE BREAKING OF

CYCLIC MOVEMENT TOWARD F L U S H!

 124

“Go fuck a tarot deck,” I said, lighting a cigar. I

had seen this kind of flic before, full of anti-military

garbage and neo-holism. “Slurp on Guinevere.”

THE TRICK IS ALWAYS A PATH,

THE PATH IS THE WAY TO THE SOLUTION,

THE SOLUTION IS THE WAY TO THE TRICK,

THE TRICK IS THE SOLUTION OF THE WAY.

THE MILITARY HAS CONTROLLED US FOR NIE OF FIVE THOUSAND

YEARS. IT’S ONE GREAT FEAR HAS AT LAST BEEN REALIZED,

ANARCHY! ALTHOUGH THERE IS CRIME ON THE STREETS, ALTHOUGH

THERE ARE PEOPLE STARVING, ALTHOUGH CURRENCY IS AMBIGUOUS,

ALTHOUGH BUSINESS AND INDUSTRY HAVE GROUND TO A HALT, THIS

STATION IS ENDURING, PROGRAMMING IS STILL RUNNING ON

SCHEDULE AND WITH IT THE DECLARATION OF PARADOX LIVES! THE

TRICK IS THE SOLUTION TO THE ROAD. THE ROAD IS THE PATH

GROWN DEVILISHLY SIMPLER, THE MAP IS SPREADING IN EVERY

VECTOR BUT THE STARS, THE STARS ARE NOT CLEARING.

TONIGHT, WE CONTINUE WITH THE STORY OF “BEKIN’S RAGE” IN

ITS TRUE UNEDITED SIGNAL, PROPORTED TO BE FROM USTAD ISA,

ALIEN ARCHITECT OF THE TAJ MA HAL AND RECEIVED BY US FROM

SOURCES REFERRED TO ONLY AS THE “GOMADS.” IF YOU REMEMBER,

BEKIN IS AN ONTONAUT THE ALIEN USTAD ISA HAS BEEN SENT TO

RETRIEVE. USTAD HAS NEVER BEEN IN THE SAME DIMENSION WITH

 125

BEKIN AND IS AT THIS VERY MOMENT RUSHING TO THE

TRANSPIRATION POINT 15K ABOVE THE POLAR CAPITAL, QXNEON. IT

WILL BE A FORMIDABLE MOMENT FOR BOTH ALIENS, FOR USTAD HAS

COME TO UNDERSTAND THAT BEKIN HAS PENETRATED THE THIRD

DIMENSION!

BEKIN FINDS HIMSELF APPROACHING THE DOME OF THE MACHINES-

PLAYHOUSE OF THE MILITARY CHILDREN. HE IS SECRETLY MOVING

AMONG THEM AS THEY TURN ON DEMONSTRATION DEVICES. THROUGH

HIS ALIEN EYES HE SEES THE PRISMS OF THEIR AURAS. IT HAS

GROWN DIFFICULT FOR HIM TO DISGUISE HIS OTHER WORLDLINESS.

HE IS BEGINNING TO STUMBLE. A MONITOR HIS SPOTTED HIM. SIX

BLACK EITHER DOMES ARE APPROACHING. BEKIN DUCKS INTO ONE OF

THE EXHIBIT BOXES, A NUMINOUS COMPARTMENT, SOME DEVICE,

PROBABLY, SOME CAPTIVATING PSYCHIC STORM TROOPER TOY. LET

US JOIN HIM NOW.

...I moved toward the damned thing. It looked

like a kind of mockup of a prayer booth,

caricature of a carnie show, a kind of opiate

dream confessional. There was a cluster of holes

in the wall which let the mottled light pass

through. There came a volley of chromosomal pops.

 126

Things were growning very sincere, virtually

solid. An arrow appeared,

then the outline of a form. There was the animal

smell of musk. A face appeared, fragrant oil

dripping from a scruffy beard. His hair was

chopped off with a knife. He had a large aquiline

nose. I think it was Jesus. His eyes picked mine

up like slippery fish. I could hear him

whispering.

“The secret of political, social, and

spiritual domination of your fellows lies in a

concealment that creates the effect of being part

 127

of the natural surroundings, a French word comes

to mind, CAMOUFLAGER. Then there is teeth setting

remorse of guilt. That works very well also. Get

them to think that the very ground they stand on

is merely a social creation and therefore an

illusion. The same goes for the spiritual path;

declare a sense of self, i.e. the ego, to be the

block between the eyes of God, which is yourself

(supposedly); make strange the world of the

senses, degrade them as illusion, efface the

self, produce the vertigo and anxiety, and create

the resulting dependence, then spiritual friend

appears on the scene with a knowing expression of

face, a face which is not an illusion, the face

of God which is only a reflection of your face,

so obvious as to be invisible to what is now

considered your over complex bourgeois nature.

Look, then to the body and bring in the picadors

of alignment, self-expression (these are the

necessary transitional expediencies), use the

word “radical” for deterministic and send the

soul out into the open so as to feel the natural

pain of expulsion , then point out that this pain

is it’s growing awareness. Make statements about

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the “dance of life” and the need for purging, for

useful social activity, tell it to open up it’s

senses and you’ll have it rocking in your hand.”

I bent his chalky fingers back and pushed my

lips into his palm. Frantically, I whispered,

“Not guessing who you are, but awaiting the

answer to this distinct question, I must now

drive home to you the necessity of not waiting

for clarification as to WHO told you this. But

tell ME, do I have time because THEY voted it in?

Is that the accepticle?” I pressed my lips into

his dry skin. “Some one’s getting a good deal out

of this.” I looked up into his face.

“What’s hard? The crystallization of form?

If form is crystallized then it can be shattered.

But I am the form made hard, aren’t I?”

A smile spread across his face. I

tugged at his arm and continued my frantic rant.

“Then YOU let them do it. That’s the

accepticle, isn’t it? They remain in the hard

form, yet invisible. There’s no way I can touch

them. Futility, the balance. Kings arise. The

Lord sits upon the mountain pointing down. The

scenery is great. And I’m down here some where.

 129

Who are the Just? Purge me of my sins! Purge ME!

My guts are falling apart. I feel the edge of the

unnatural. Crystallization of form? The Hearse.

How do you keep your job?”

There was an ache on the left side of my rib

cage. Just then I realized that I had been

carrying it with me for quite a long time.

Perhaps I was imagining it, perhaps I had heart

trouble. Perhaps the ship’s engine was about to

bust a cavity. My heart, indeed, was pounding.

Perhaps my blood pressure was up. I was without

reliable instrumentation. Perhaps I needed sleep.

Perhaps I could engage in “floating.”

There were no grown-ups present. The “kids”

were jumping up and down. They were brushing my

box. None seemed to notice me on my knees with

this stranger in the dark.

I looked up at the oil-beaded face. He wore

a white shirt with a long, skinny, black tie,

which he ran under his belt buckle, a simple

semi-oval, holder-upper. A tight little knot

disappeared into his beard. His pants were

unplaited and stuck to his legs like long flat

burns.
 130

He bent down to me and whispered, “I’m the

guy who came and left and who just got here, the

first born of the dead.”

I smelled tobacco on his breath.

“You’re a real knock-out,” I said, putting

my hand on the left side of my ribcage.

I could feel a genuine ache. I unlaced my

fingers and casually put them on my hips, then

slid them down to my legs sockets and

pressed...nothing. then I pulled my contracted

fingers up farther until I was pressing on the

areas that would, in other cases, have been my

ovaries and felt a pressure and a dull pain.

Lymph nodes were swollen. I immediately felt a

resonate response in the lymph nodes of my

throat. They too were swollen. Yes, perhaps

cancer of the lymph nodes. Somewhere in my mind I

opened a third can of beer.

“Look,” he said, “why don’t you get down on

all fours and give me room. You’re in trouble.

I’m the Spirit.”

The way he said “Spirit” shook me. I wanted

to turn and get out of the hole I suddenly found

myself filling up. Perhaps, indeed, I had been

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spotted and my alien identity, discovered.

Perhaps at this very moment I was in an

Ether Dome and this man confronting me was merely

a hypnagogic private agent trying to pirate my

captive, fluttering, blinded soul. I wanted to

climb out of the funnel and mill around with the

adults. The left side of my chest hurt and I felt

suddenly drunk and unable to focus. “Gotta cool

out,” I said to myself, “something’s eating me

alive.” I looked down at the black hole.

“What is it?” He asked, smiling down at me.

“Up to your neck again?”

I looked at the tips of his shoes. They were

now across from my nose. He laughed softly.

“Do you think you can transcend this with

teleology?”

“That’s a fat one,” I said, a laugh escaping

my body like some strange, smoky jellyfish. “What

I need is some wind to blow the smoke outta

here.”

I heard his voice above me. There were

certain garbled syllables, basically about how

chaotic my life had become, how the constellating

macro-modes had driven my will into dispersion,

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and a lot of language with the number “seven” in

it. I was tired, very tired and there was no way

to get the overwhelming sense of inebriation out

of it. I knew my fate was to die in my bed with a

bottle and a pile of diarrhea, half-eaten by my

pet dachshund after five days of undiscovered

starvation. I could hear my voice slur like some

long alien tongue unaccustomed to speech...

“seven, seven, seven, seven, seven, seven,

seven,” into decrescendo. Then a voice wedged up

from the depths.

“I know your works. They are like a tit-

blown flower against the haze. You have lost your

simple animal viscosity and now are unable to

resist the relative motion within or to slow down

the faster moving layers now rising within you.

Your thoughts have become ambient noise. You look

at doors and see walls instead. You are afraid,

and even more, you have become embarrassed by

death. Your entity sits in stoney ambiguity,

micro-scanning the impossibilities you have

dreamed up, and analyzed. Your occupation has

become preoccupation and you skip into

projections, maladies, catastrophes. You are

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bloated with inhalation. You have no way to spear

up into the ZOOM. You have forgotten your name.

Your feet have become thought clubs. Your windows

have become hard with micro-cosmical congestion.

GET UP! YES, UP! Feel the rush of death upon you

and the hiss of God beneath you: that, my love,

is flight.”

I was enveloped by a nodule of skin. A new

voice vibrated its translucent walls.

“I know your works. You have the name of

being alive, but you’re dead! There are only sons

here.”

I felt myself moving like a turd down a

lubricated gut toward the voice.

“There are no daughters. Your wives have

gone off to conceive with lover’s you have

invented, and at night, you mill about your

woman’s head as if lost in an old man’s bathroom.

You have saved your meat, and now it is rotting,

you have saved your eyes for the last vision, but

won't see it, for your eyes have long since

decomposed in your head. You have denied the

existence of your soul and now you can't find it

to see the last vision. You will stop. You will

 134

be gone for you can’t find a soul to see with.

Your codes, now liberated, will drift unreceived

across the empty desert plains, and you will

shift into the next swell without anyone having

known of your presence.”

I heard the gobbling of a multitude grow

louder. I could feel my descent coming to an end,

a yearling without riders, without grass, without

sunlight. The sound congealed into a dull

thumping. Someone was wrapping on my walls which

had become brittle and thin. The shadow of a fist

darkened at the apex and spread into a long

triangle like the body of a moth. There seemed to

be a white light of great intensity, muted by the

semi-transparent skin that surrounded me. I was

in a kind of crysilis. I heard the voice again.

”Empty it, Showman!”

I presumed the voice meant me. The walls

were suddenly not there. I washed out like a thin

tepid stew. I heard my own voice rapidly

chanting. “Hold fast to what you have no matter

what has transpired even in drunkenness and

humiliation and hell even in the thorn do not

awaken into the doors of Revelation.”

 135

A crowd had gathered around me, I smelled

them, their trapped, hot, perfume. They were

intoning AH and EE in long exhaled tones.

“Get it done and out!” I screamed. “I am

worried about how you are conducting yourselves.

Perhaps you should have some kind of kitchen to

warm yourselves in.”

The sounds gushed out of my mouth with an

utterly foreign resonance, my throat bulged like

a balloon.

“When you get the REAL names of your fathers

you will be astounded. They have begotten you in

sex and no one will remember you in the light of

them.”

There was a thunder of applause and

cheering. “Beautiful! Incredible! Well stroked!

Good God, what an athlete! Heave him in again!”

A rhythmic clapping rose out of the swells

followed by “son of a bitch sonofabitch

sonofabitch!”

I fell away. My chest had stopped hurting

and I watched the shadow of my intoxication drift

up into a fiery dome above it, it’s ether body,

like a porous rock, zoomed out of sight. Deep

 136

within me I felt a soft click and a fluid juiced

out of my mouth in an arch of army colors. I had

gone clean. All around me pastoral music swelled

with spacious luxury in the fading applause. I

realized that my face was jammed up against a

wall.

.
......... .........
.

I flopped on the bed, pulled the glass and bottle to

me and propped a pillow under my head. After a few moments

of silence, a woman’s voice awoke in the television!

“WE CONTINUE NOW WITH BEKIN’S RAGE...”

....... . ........

. .

My face was jammed up against a wall. I knew

that I was underground and that far above me the

kids and adults were playing among the

inventions. I realized also, that my eyeballs

were lodged in my head, and that I was unable to

move. I quelled an impulse to panic and slowly

gathered light into the center of my head, then

sent it down into my body. It didn’t get far. It

 137

was met at the base of my neck by a wall of

tightly wrapped sinews like the guts of a golf

ball. My blood was blocked up in the center of my

trunk and my flesh was pale with oscillation.

“B r e a t h e,” a voice behind me said. I

did and felt release. There was a slight tug as

my face ripped loose from the sharp stones of the

wall, and I hit the floor of the cave like a

bucket of water...

I AM BEKIN

I AM BEKIN

I AM BEKIN

I AM BEKIN

The floor of the cave was smooth and warm. I

looked out from my already opened eyes at a huge

lake.

“You have a beautiful face. Go with it,” a

ubiquitous voice intoned.

A giant boat made of ice floated across the

frosty viridian plane in absolute silence.

The voice came again, like the face of a

fireball going immediately into smoke.

“Don’t be ashamed of what you’re thinking.”

 138

I saw the image of human creatures with

large visible synapse and connecting rods driven

by heavy fly wheels; nineteenth century robots.

There was no wind. It was as quiet as a car

starting up and then another stupor came over me.

I realized that most of my life had been lived in

corners.

The ship floated on waves which moved with a

nauseating regularity as if they were the result

of projected moray patterns. Behind the ship was

a catastrophe of smoke. The word APOCALYPSE came

to mind, then APOSTOLIC, then APOSTATE, and

again, APOSTERIORI, APOSTASY, APOPLEXY,

APOCALYPSE! APOCALYPSE! APOCALYPSE! APOCALYPSE!

“Reach up,” the voice said and I found

I was standing.

“You’re still inside,” I heard it say and

with a thunder clap. The silence exploded and

space broke in. The darkness, I suddenly

realized, was the shadow of an enormous man

dressed in a business suit. The giant was moving

by me at a great speed. Behind him was a

burnished steel sculpture like a blow up of some

microstructure (the point of a pencil, or a

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single iron filing). The base was buried in

silvery concrete which pulsated sub-auditory

signals. The man, who was perhaps thirty feet

tall, turned his monumental face in my direction.

He had huge oversized, syrup-brown eyes which

were dilated and moist. He was crying. Above his

head floated a pallid white jet shaped like a

kidney, woven black gills striated either side of

its body. When I turned to look at the giant

again, he had disappeared.

I turned my focus to nearer objects. About

eighty yards away was a comb of neat little

cubicles.

“It’s for the commuters who didn’t make it

home.”

“Oh,” I answered, then realized that the

cubicles had had sent the thought. All at once, I

found my mouth full of sesame seeds and I was

sent into a chewing motion but the saliva was

late in coming.

“Here it comes,” a tiny voice said in my

ears stereophonically and my mouth gushed with

liquid, melting the sweet nuts.

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“Here comes Yup-Yup,” I heard it say and a

mechanical peristalsis swung into action. Then I

found my mouth empty and clean as if I had just

brushed my teeth.

Slightly embarrassed by all this involuntary

activity, I glanced down to see if I was naked. I

was! Except for the gray velveteen form-fitters

on the soles of my feet and the tiny tasseled

jock embracing my genitals like a glove with

integers marked on each testis.

21

I was stark naked.

“We are buoyed up by spirals of infinitely

precise points of energy not unakin to projected

thought. But, of course, you’re no stranger to

such concepts.”

I turned and to my surprise, found that the

voice was not disembodied. Indeed, the speaker

was a corpulent fan of a man. He was bald except

for a razor thin mustache on his forehead. He had

a wide, lupine gash of a smile. He was also

naked, except for a great tuft of hair which

arched up from his crotch in a big red spout. An

object which looked very much like a bed pan was

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suspended just under his chin by a transparent

scarlet chain.

“I’m one of the Enumerator’s,” he said,

smiling. He laughed, then continued, “I want you

to know that we have had a great tradition here.

It has only been in the last few years, the last

decade, to be exact, that there had been a

decline. But don’t let that give you the

impression that our celebrations have decreased

in intensity. On the contrary, although our

sportsmen seem to pale in the light of celibates

such as yourself, it is the very reality of our

condition that makes our celebrations so intense.

No, in no way has our Lamia taken second place.

In fact, you might say that we have ventured upon

a new phase. Our people have entered a kind of

priesthood.”

A group of fourteen men of various shades

drifted by us in a wedge, their bodies had a

soft, indefinable down, over which floated their

shiny shave, obsidian heads. They smiled and

turned as the passed. As they drifted away, I

heard them singing:

 142

“...over and over and over and over and

over and over and over again...over and over

and over and over and over and over and over

again...

The streets were full of silent people,

standing like porcelain shadows of light blue and

green. I could hear the lake behind me mechanically

pulsating white noise

...noise...shush...shush...shush...shush...

“All the women are gone,” I heard a voice say

and the man next to me answered,

“Yes, like Osiris, gone to spread it

everywhere.”

“But I do see women, “I said.

“No, you only see the images of women.” He

answered. “People have changed. We used to get

together and pound a casket up with a few boards,

friends and family. Now they even have a revulsion

to cremation. The general consumption of drugs has

increased and as I have said, athletic activity has

remained the same, putting a double strain on our

minds and bodies. In general, we are losing contact.

Even today after everything is done, we will all

 143

disappear into our cubicles and do something

horrible to our minds and bodies. Let’s go.”

We moved among the crowd.

CHASIN’ ROUND THE DOME

We disappeared under a great arch and walked

through a dimly lit tunnel. Far in the distance

there was a rumble and the faint odor of livestock.

The Enumerator had his arm around my shoulder and

grinned proudly whenever admirers noticed me.

“He is Bekin, twenty-one, good competitor, come

to get to the top, cute, isn’t he?”

Several gray wrapped individuals bent close to

me.

“Sixth Level, Fifth Level!”

I could smell smoke on them. Spindly hands

touched my body and moved on, murmuring.

“We shall see.”

The din grew very loud as we neared the end of

the tunnel. The stream of spectators began to clot.

I noticed that each in turn stopped by the wall and

seemed to receive something. As we neared this area

the Enumerator pushed me ahead of him, and said,

“After you.”
 144

I realized that there were holes in the wall. I

turned to observe them more closely. Inadvertently,

I put my hand out to brace myself on the rim of the

hole when a figure darted out of the dark opening

and slapped something tepid and mushy in my hand. I

looked down and almost vomited on the spot. In my

hand was an iridescent green tapioca. It smelled

like old fish. I fell back against the Enumerator

who brutally shoved me foreword.

“Don’t try to larder the Devil’s Wings.”

He spat and crammed his face into the stuff in

his hands.

I buckled and the ooze fell on my bare legs.

The crowed moved around me.

“Get up Twenty-one.”

I felt the Enumerator’s big oily hands under my

armpits lifting me up. He clapped me on the back and

sent me foreword.

“A shameful waste of Devil’s wings.” His lips

were rimmed with green bubbling curds.

“Onward to the Dome!”

He laughed and grabbed onto my left buttock.

Bone! Bone! Bone! Bone! Bone! Bone! Bone! Bone! Bone! Bone!
 145

A chant arose from the just visible entrance.

The air was filled with the smell of livestock, and

molten metal. The tunnel gave way to a vast and

enormous rotunda. Tier after tier mounted upward

into the haze. Far above was a pinhole of red light.

The space rolled with a huge ballooney chain of

undulation.

Bone! Bone! Bone! Bone! Bone! Bone! Bone! Bone! Bone! Bone!

I could see people bending down from the

balconies above me. Some were shaking their fists,

others, were clapping their hands and rotating their

chests, and cocking their heads back and forth.

“Sit down, you stupid shit.”

“Have a merry time Gladis Mayonnaise.”

Laughter, then a shower of fishy Devil’s Wings

rained down. I ducked back under the lowest balcony.

A man leaned over the railing so that he looked as

if he was standing on his head.

“Pop your cherry, Kittenworth?” he said,

giggling and clacking his teeth together rapidly.

The ground around my feet was covered with

animal shit. Across from me was a huge field lighted

by a pale blue spot. A rhinoceros was digging his

horn angrily into the dirt and several horses were

 146

running full gait. A brilliant fire bellowed up from

a well where a large shining man was pounding a

thick piece of red-hot metal. Up from him another

hundred yards was another man doing the same thing.

And up from that yet another. In fact, there were

smithies completely circling the bottom of the

rotunda. Some of the bulls charged at the rhino and

several men dressed in leather came running out with

long sticks tipped with metal spikes. The bulls

charged at them.

“Cut ‘em back!” the men shouted.

A big orange balloon fell out of the sky and

burst on the animal’s bodies, sending them to the

ground. The men in leather clapped and beat their

legs and laughed, then started jumping up and down,

bulging out their cheeks, making squawking sounds at

the terrified bulls. The ground began to quake. I

fell back against the wall. The Enumerator was at my

ear whispering frantically.

“Roll your belly. Don’t let the carnage in.

Push it out and breathe in at the same time.”

He took my head in his hands and pushed his

lips between mine and spit a foul fluffy material

 147

into my mouth. I gagged and threw up. There was

cheering around me.

“Purge! Purge! Let it go! Look at him!”

The Enumerator pulled me up from the ground.

“Here come de Judge.”

He squawked and began laughing as the ground

split open and a huge translucent green arrow

appeared. The Enumerator shouted up into a group of

heads bending over the balcony.

“I’m his guardian. Don’t you just love him?”

“Yes, yes,” came the reply.

“Then up we go, my lads,” he said and pushed me

onto a rapidly moving ascending decks.

O..o.o.o..o....o.o.o

...o.o..o..o.o..o..o..

o..o...o.o...o..o.o...

...o.o.o...o..o.o.o...

The television blanked out and the room went with it. I

held my breath and lay stiff and motionless in the darkness. A

pair of shuffling foot steps neared the door.

“Major Shredder?”

Silently, slowly, with effort, I released my breath.

“Yes?” I murmured.
 148

“Rolling black out, fifteen minutes.”

“Is that you, Mrs. Tenders?”

There was no answer. The feet shuffled away.

I lay in the darkness and watched their bodies float by,

all of the people I had killed. It was nothing special, just

something that happened whenever the lights suddenly went out.

Yet, I felt strangely divided. I wasn’t at home with my

visions. There wasn’t the customary boredom and irritation.

Something in me had changed. It wasn’t that I didn’t remember

that kept me from being myself. It was something else, as yet

undefined and unlocated. Call it a potential. A new,

unexpected variable had entered just beneath the skin. I could

almost see its pudgy nose pushing up the epidermis. It seemed

to have a direction all its own. I wasn’t sure if its

directive was the same as the Military’s. Perhaps it wasn’t

that at all. Perhaps it was the prime mover and the (God

forbid) Military was the puppet cover. Good, at least a few of

the old things were intact, my paranoia and adaptability. So,

this was Sandusky? This was Coming New?

I reached across the bed in the darkness. The black

notebook, what was it for? That’s what I had been puzzling

over the night before I got lost among the Houses. Millie and

Charlotte had successfully kept me busy since that time. Yes,

obviously my work had begun. I had lost the first skirmish. Or

 149

had I? I had escaped from the jail, if you could call what I

had done an escape, but I was out, wasn’t I? Or was the Rumble

House Motel just an annex? “Ustad Isa?” Where had I heard that

name before? My fingers found the edge of the black notebook.

“WE WILL KEEP YOU POSTED AND SEND YOU MONEY. EVERYDAY THE

FRONT IS CHANGING. MUCH WORK TO DO, CONFUSION IS THE PASSWORD.

IF YOU FIND YOURSELF IN STRANGE PLACES...WE’VE SHIFTED YOU TO

SANDUSKY.” At least the Military had kept its word, but was it

the Military? Where was the fucking Military? Maybe it was

everywhere. Maybe everything had become the Military. That’s

why I couldn’t see them and maybe that’s why they couldn’t see

me. They were certainly sloppy about it, what with their

Sandusky Keystone Cops routine. What a bunch of slobs. At

least Millie and Charlotte were pros, that was refreshing.

“Bekin?” Who the fuck was Bekin with such a tasteless, murky,

melodramatic scenario, it had to be the Military? If I was to

get out of Sandusky I would have to be “shifted” out. That was

just about the only way you could get out of Sandusky. Just

then the lights and the television came on. I opened the

notebook and laid it in my lap. It was code. It had to be

code. Even this television program. It was probably a private

showing just for me and was streaming from the motel office.

The screen blinked and the voice came on again.

 150

WE NOW CONTINUE WITH “BEKIN’S RAGE.”

I bet you’ll continue with it. “Bekin” was my code name.

I put my hands behind my neck and laid back against the

headboard.” Yes, take me away, take me away,” I said to the

television set...and whatever might be behind it.

.
....... . .......
.

The people around me had cast off their drab

garments. They were gyrating and twisting, looking

like twirling rolls of meat. The Enumerator pushed

me through the roiling crowd to the front of the

balcony where other men dressed like me were

standing. Behind them, their eyes steaming with

tears, faces swollen with emotion, were more fat met

with spewing tufts of brightly colored pubic hair

and finger basins. He lined me up with the young men

and stood behind me.

“This one’s mine, twenty-one,” my Enumerator

said.

“Stand up straight now, Bekin, do your Milkman

proud. This may be my very last day. Mors ego sum

mortis.”
 151

He grabbed my chin and straightened my head

out.

“Push out your belly.”

He slapped me on the ass, then stuck his finger

up my rectum and made a twisting motion. Some how it

made my belly swell with gas. My eyes began to

water.

“Sweet son of a bitch,” he whispered. “Thus, in

this you do your MAMA proud. Will you be the one to

climb to the thrown and open the book?”

I looked into the man’s eyes. The light which

ignited them phased with his face. He glared at me.

“You hunger for it, don’t you?” His great chin

rocked up and down. “Give me hope,” he said bluntly.

“Here’s how to model yourself after a state of being

you think we’ve agreed on.”

A fat old man across from me retracted his

incredibly long lips, pulling them up into his face

like a trunk, then darted out of sight.

Suddenly the whole place swelled into silence

as the multitude simultaneously cleared its throat.

A man on my right shouted into the void.

“Get that stuff down here!”

 152

There was loose coughing and throat clearing.

Then everything went silent.

My eyes started running afresh as the thick

smoke surrounded me. I felt the Enumerator’ breath

on the back of my neck.

“What do you see?” I heard him whisper.

“I don’t see anything.” I whispered back.

“Just keep looking and tell me everything you

see.”

He hadn’t finished the sentence when a deep,

eerie, green glow began to pervade the smoke.

“I see a green glow.”

“That’s Push-Pull.

“What’s that?”

“It is the color of Talkite, the Elixir first

discovered on the planet Qwargia, your planet,

Bekin. It pervades the dreams of many sleepers who

think there is a riddle to life, and just as they

get to the punch line, they see this green light.”

“Now there’s a point of vivid green. It’s

solid, like the tip of an arrow.”

“That’s the letter “A”, as in “a” cow, “a”

lamb, “a” horse, “a” wheel.”

 153

“Now I see a fire, no...no it’s a ball, a ball

of fire!”

At that moment a sulfurous stench grabbed my

lungs and made me gag. My ears began to fill with

thick, cottony, white noise and a black wall welled

up from the center of my eyes. Six red specks flew

out of it in formation and the black of my legs

became ice cold. I was dying. Then I felt my mouth

full of oily saccharine sweet mush and far off in

some high frequency band, I heard a voice.

“You should have eaten your Devil’s Wings, you

stupid shit. That’s the Eskimos. They always fly

like that when you are about to become a black

hole.”

Then the world blasted the darkness away and I

felt the Enumerator’s hand leaving my face.

“The ball of fire was a lion,” he said, “Now

what do you see?”

I couldn’t answer.

“Wake up!” he screamed.

“I see...a...it’s hard to describe, it’s a kind

of amorphous thing covered with what looks to

be...egg yoke...it’s jiggling and staggering...”

 154

I felt an incredible pull from the thing. I

could see the pull, in fact, it was like a black

magnetism.

“That’s an ox.” The Enumerator said.

“There’s a long, a very long thin prong

teetering on a thin wedge. It looks like it’s going

to fall over on a bunch of furry...yes, furry ants

about the size of sheep, except they have dishes,

radar dishes, revolving around on their backs.”

“Those are sheep, you stupid shit! MAMA’S

sheep. They’re carrying antennae to the last city on

earth in order to beat you to the signal that will

return you to your people.”

“It hasn’t fallen over yet.”

“What hasn’t fallen over?”

“The big long prong on the wedge. Oh, I see

why! It’s not resting on the wedge, it’s just

touching it because there are a bunch of little

windmills all along it’s back. Oh no! It’s going to

peck at one of these sheep! Oh, Fuck! It got it!”

“Yeah,” the Enumerator said, almost drooling,

“That’s and Eagle! The wedge is a Dead Man’s

Switch.”
 155

My eyes began to throb as the smoke cleared

away. There was an extremely bright light shooting a

spray of sparks like an acetylene torch. It passed

far overhead, pulling huge shadows after it. I could

hear it sizzling and sputtering. I started to tell

the Enumerator what I was seeing but he put his hand

over my mouth. I could feel his big hard cock

brushing the top of my ass.

A large scaffold appeared from below. A crowd

of diapered men was on it. Men of all ages. Some had

neatly trimmed executive cuts, some looked like

hippies, some like punks, a lot looked like dads and

guys who go to football games. Several white horses

were being lowered onto it. They were suspended by

long thin threads. There were several female

mannequins with bloated re. d, puffy fingers propped

up against an enormous iron throne. Next to each

mannequin was a steaming, neatly folded stack of

spaghetti white towels. As the scaffold passed my

tier a number of males in brightly colored silk

panties jumped on. As they pushed past me the

Enumerator stuck the tip of his dick into my rectum

I jumped onto the scaffold with the others.

 156

“No pussies here,” he whispered in my ear. “Go

ahead, turn around and take a look.”

I turned. The scaffold was full of men holding

placards in front of their chests. There were

pictures, colors, and strange configurations on the

placards, a globe, a lamb, a seven eyed man, a

fifty-cent piece with three clocks in it, a three-

legged leather stool which folded in, up and under

and then turned into a cow’s head. On one placard

there was simply a color, a deep green-blue-green.

The color radiated with “smerzt.” It was like a hole

to somewhere, an entrance become with dimension.

“Knowing that you could have don so much more

if you had cleared the weeds out of your head.” It

said to me wordlessly.

I moved toward the man holding the placard. He

was painted with a glossy red varnish and his penis

was sliced down the center and dangled like a split

frankfurter. He smiled at me and shimmied as I

approached him. He opened his mouth and a most

incredible series of blasts came out of him. He blew

the sounds from a transparent skin spread over his

teeth. He made a little dome of sound around me, a

sound proof sound studio made of sound. I could

 157

actually see the sound building up around me. I

turned and looked through its shimmering wall at the

Enumerator. He was shouting something at me but I

couldn’t hear him he threw his hands up in disgust,

then pointed at me. I looked around me and realized

that all of the placards had turned the same green-

blue-green. The Enumerator’s voice squeezed up in a

little invisible bubble of sound.

“Reach in and open the book,” he said.

I reached toward the green placard. It had

transformed into an infinitely receding horizon.

“Wipe the shit off of his face” Some one

yelled.

I couldn’t breathe. My mouth was full of a foul

sweet mush. I started to crumble as hysteria

overwhelmed me. A moist luxurious hot clean towel

was thrown over my face.

“Are you ready to open the book and look in?”

“Bull shit!” I cackled.

“Yes!” a thousand voices shouted back.

Someone bent close to me.

“Look at her breasts, her knuckles, the way her

mouth turns downward even when she smiles.” Someone

murmured, which sent me into further hysterics.

 158

A series of thunderous jolts shattered my

laughter. The scaffold was quaking.

Smoke rose up around me in a wall. As I

breathed it in, I began jabbering like a garbage

yapping old man, it filled my eyes and lungs. I

spread my legs and a wing with a breathy smell

whisked up between them. I heard a woman’s voice.

“Nothing but attraction, affection, affliction.

You have reached Hecate. Now what do you want? Do

you want a turn? Do you want me to open the door?”

I found myself bending close to the soft ear

and fine perfumed hair of a beautiful wide-eyed

dark-skinned female. Another woman was sitting on my

lap. I had my fingers pinched tightly on her brassy

hard pointed little nipples which protruded from her

otherwise fleshless breast bag. I groaned

involuntarily as I watched my body operate the

little knobs between my thumb and index fingers. I

looked at the face which, although near, seemed

blurred as if seen from far away behind a window.

I watched my nose fall toward the woman’s ear

and stick there. Her head didn’t move. Wind

whispered through my nose. I felt the ends of her

hair sticking up my nasal passages. The other woman

 159

sat there on my lap like living stone with a face

thin and pallid. There were freckles floating on her

anemic, unremarkable features. A most immense stupor

overwhelmed me. I began to teeter. The floor

shuddered as if it were undergoing an earth quake. I

felt ashamed and terrified. I was bleeding. My

stomach felt full of arid, empty electricity. I

wanted to bury my head and fall into the white,

neatly stacked towels before me in that great,

incredible crowd, jostling like puppets of animated

rubber gum, trying to forget that they were being

animated at all. My face kept going crazy as I slid

down into the dark. The tiny point of red light

above me brightened.

Instinctively I knew that I had reached the

third level and felt a swell of pride as I

envisioned the Enumerator below me.

There was a great creaking and screeching. The

huge chain twisted above my head.

There was a woman and there was a knife, there

was a woman and there was a sense of guilt, there

was time and there was a woman and all of the people

that went with it. There was a moment when all

security flew from me like spit knocked out of a -

 160

boxer’s mouth, when everything gathered into having

drinks in a snowy sea-salt cafeteria among the

hills.

“I don’t want to do it,” I cried.

I saw my right empty hand reach out for the

beautiful face. Then I heard my voice scratch the

little air pocket of her ear. My tongue felt the

newly discovered dry lunar surface of her skin. Even

at 35 she had an “old dead way about her.”

“Listen...”

I watched my mouth shape itself into words.

“I don’t want to frighten you with what I’m

going to say, but I want you. I want to dissolve in

you and never wake up. I want to die in you. I want

to rot in your stomach and feed light up into your

eyes so you can see me standing there wanting you

again. I know you have a husband but sneak into the

shadows with me and lift your clothes and bed over

and spread your legs and let me give it to you from

behind. Let me go away and sleep on my cot below

your pin-up with your sweat and perfume on my

chest.”
 161

My tongue was in a hideous slur. I couldn’t

stand the garbage flying out of my mouth! But it

went on and on...

“...give it to me and I’ll cut my prick off!

I’ll do it here in front of your very face or if

your husband likes that kind of stuff, I’ll blow

him. I’ll let him fuck me in the butt and I’ll lick

my shit off of his dick.”

I felt my body trying to rise against the

incredible weight of the woman on my lap. I felt my

head tilt toward my automatic paramour. I could

smell vaginal fluids in her ear. I was rocking and

tottering on my chair. Suddenly the woman on my

pants was rocking back and forth and my fingers were

still violently pulling at her nipple which was

stretched a good half foot from her chest. I

realized that I was screaming and, in the background

as if over a loud speaker I heard,

“BEKIN IS AT THE THIRD LEVEL!!”

There was a huge jolt and my partner and I were

weightless. I was screaming and wailing like an

infant tossed out of his bath water, out of his

MAMA’S arms. I fell and the face of every woman lost

 162

in the corner of my eye moved past me through an

open door leaving a brown heel behind.

I found my face miraculously buried in a stack

of steaming towels divine. I wept in the lap of

MAMA.

“Oh, Jesus God, forgive me! Think of the old

days, just once, think of them, the old days, the

old days, oh, the shame, the waste. Oh, my love, my

darling, perhaps through the waste I can reach you!”

I lifted my face from the towels. Two men were

violently genuflecting. The scaffold rushed upward

past the balconies of solemn spectators.

I felt a fucked, ill-begotten madness. I was

kneeling like a saint before the prostrate bodies of

two mannequins with rough, red, bloated fingers.

Their plastic corpses vibrated obscenely with the

oscillations of the throne which I realized was

nothing but an oversized lead potty.

A fat, balding man with a totesrap slung round

his potbelly padded by me. He stopped and suddenly

glared at me through broken teeth, then fell on his

back and stuffed his finger up between his pasty

yellow loin cloth and screamed.

 163

“Please come back. Please come back, MAMA. We

need you. We all need you. Please come back.”

He began sobbing.

“I am the chemical barrier to the uterus! Oh

God, what a plight! Insemination pales before my

shadowy wall!”

Then he abruptly stopped and popped to his

feet, glaring at me.

“I’m sick of it, aren’t you?”

He walked toward me, staggering as the scaffold

was sent into another series of quakes. When he was

fairly close, I could discern a friendly gleam

behind his red, swollen eyes.

“From Qwargia, aren’t you? Well, third level

may mean only a stepping stone to you, but they, out

there,” he pointed toward the balconies rolling by

us, “are counting on me. I’m a home boy and it’s

been twenty-five years since any of us has reached

so far, a place. Look at him.” He pointed at a man

who had his face crammed between the cheeks of a

white horse’s ass, “He’s from AhAh. He’s survived

fourteen cibations and never got about the third

level. The slimy cunt would drink a bottle of hot

piss to get to the second level and you think you’re

 164

gonna get clear out of here. You’ve got a clean act,

but he plays husbands waiting for wives. That’s

pure,” he crooned.

“Listen,” he continued, “I know the route here

and I don’t know how you got to the third level, but

you’re going beyond yourself.”

The man playing husbands, who had his head

between the cheeks of the white horse suddenly

moaned with an uncanny resonance of a super

ventriloquist.

“The most important force in the world is

MAMA,” He said, weeping. “My bed is empty,” he

moaned.

The horse let a green oval fart.

“Listen, I’ll show you how it’s done,” the fat

bald man said, grabbing his diaper.

“I have been waiting for you the whole night

and I know that you have slept with HIM. You have

wet reality while I have wet dreams, only fantasies

without flesh. I have only dry fantasies.”

He spoke in sync with the man who had liberated

his face from the horse’s ass and now was parading

about the scaffold.

 165

“We are playing with death up here and you want

to go even farther up. Don’t you realize that there

is nothing up there? Be real! What you don’t realize

is that what you don’t see doesn’t exist.”

I had suddenly had enough of this great ass. I

stood up in the shit and the piss and the puke.

“There is one thing that IS happening, Lieber

Fruend,” I said, “we are all rapidly approaching the

second level, you, me and that equestrian over

there.”

The man gazed wildly around. I slowly moved

toward him. His eyes bulged in response.

“Look at science,” he said, “they’ve got all

the numbers and know where to put the decimal

points. They know the speed of sound for they can

give you the numbers. WE are right now, this very

instant reaching for level, two, twa, twie, twein,

tweinen, twegen. But two, but TWO, the most real two

is not merely an expression of quantity, it is an

idea-force with a particular nature all its own!

Just is an echo, a reflection, as in from me to

thee, just as now there are only TWO of us.”

 166

He looked over his shoulder. The man and his

horse were gone. The man glared at me and started

backing up.

“No, not that way,” I shouted at him, “that’s

the way down, THIS is the way up.” I pointed to the

great glowing hole above us.

The man staggered as the scaffold was sent

through a thunderous set of oscillations.

“It’s best, I think, for you to press all four

of your limbs on the floor. Four finds it’s

expression in earth, and in our case, terrestrial

space.”

The man got down on his hands and knees, a

muddy, yellow excrescence, bubbling out between his

legs.

“Two,” I continued, “two is the shadow ominous,

the sexes bucking in the night of moon-sun wavering

warp and weft as eye is to sight and white is to

black. It is SHE, Oose-face, who lives here at level

two with her key and dagger and torch and LATCH!

It’s MAMA I’m taking him to. He’s promised to keep

her here and I’m going to make sure he gets there.”

The man began to slide away like a bean on a

platter as the scaffold was tipped on its side by an

 167

updraft. I leaped up on the great chain and shouted

after him.

“Mater, magni nominis umbra!”

Level Two was the Tipping, the Motion, and One

was the Climbing. I looked up. The glowing hole was

no more than fifty yards above me. I crawled into

one of the chain links and surveyed the scene below.

I watched the scaffold shatter and the hole to

Sandusky close up. I looked at the balconies around

me. They were not empty.

And although I have heard that we die many

times weekly and are reborn in bodies of all

different ages just as many times and that nature

strives constantly to perfect itself, that infinity

is transcendent distance and constant change and

that we as sentient beings must learn to exhale and

flow with the conditions that arise within and

around us, that we, in fact, are those conditions; I

couldn’t reconcile the scene that was spread around

me. There, in all ages and sizes, silent and

absolutely still, were all the women.

I lifted my face from the black notebook. The room was

dark and silent. I must have fallen asleep. I reached for the
 168

television but it wasn’t there. Rain plopped on the floor. I

moved the bucket under it.

* * * *

Something wet was coming from my face. I felt for the

inky texture of blood but found only watery mucous draining

from my nose. I was cold. I was shivering. I looked about me.

I had made it. I was back up North. And I had been witness to

the shift. It was almost as if I had been expecting it. Was

it simply the on and off of some unconscious digital being, a

being without mind, without soul? Fuck the soul. What soul?

Hair in the wind, a door banging on an empty house. Or was it

volitional, intentional, purposeful...Home? Home? The god of

static. Yes, perhaps even static had a mind. Mind? Perhaps

the mind was nothing but static. Static making static. Static

returning static. “Here it is.” “No, it isn’t.” Verminal

static. Celestial static. Static of the ‘Big Bang” curling

its fist again, drawing all of it’s sparks back, back into

its black, shadowless hand. “No, no, Shredder, it is you. You

are the static.”

I got up and threw a blanket over me, my teeth were

chattering. I had to pee. I staggered to the door and threw

it open. The rain was pounding the darkness, splintering and

 169

disintegrating. I stood in the doorway and released my golden

urine into the night.

“It’s all right. What does it all mean, anyway?”

I rubbed my face. It was covered with a week-old beard.

My head was pounding. My lungs were full of mucous. I could

hardly breathe. My stomach ached with a precise discomfort. I

flapped my little trunk at the sparks shattering on the

broken walkway. Northern California. Where would it end?

“Major Shredder! Major Shredder, is that you?”

A ghost with chiffon hair stood at the edge of the light.

I grinned at her with my aching guts and my runny nose,

my chattering teeth, holding my little brave soldier between

my thumb and forefinger like a priest with a confiscated

host.

“Major Shredder, I have a telegram for you.”

“How do you know my name?”

“Why Major, how wouldn’t I know it? We’ve been together

some three months now.”

Multiple bodies. Yes, a body for every eye. They must

know me everywhere. Yes, Shredder, static, static seeping

through the skin.

“What time is it?” I asked.

“Ten thirty.”

Then thirty? That was awful.

 170

“Do you have any wine?” I asked.

“I’m sorry, I don’t, Major, but perhaps you should just

go to sleep. It seems to me that it might do you some good

not to drink for a night. You’ve been hitting it pretty

hard.”

“You don’t say? Well, perhaps you’re right. You know, I’m

cold Mrs. Shelby,” I remembered her name.

“Well, Major, you can come into the house if you like but

my husband’s home and I think he’s pretty drunk. I don’t

think he’d like it that much. Here’s your telegram. I could

bring you another blanket”

“That would be nice, Mrs. Shelby. Your husband’s drunk,

you say?”

“Yes, I’m afraid so.

“What does your husband drink?”

“Why, he drinks whiskey, of course.”

“Oh yes, that’s right. Always has a bottle, right?”

“At least, sir.”

“Well, why don’t you give me the telegram and get me

another blanket, Mrs. Shelby, and I’ll be all right.”

She pulled the telegram from her smock and momentarily I

could see a lip of flesh hanging from her arm pit (to suck

your pendants, Mrs. Shelby, to stretch your bat breasts over

 171

my face and stare at the sun!) I reached out into the rain

and took the telegram.

“Are you sure it’s ten thirty, Mrs. Shelby?”

“Oh, yes, most certainly, Major.”

“But why is it so dark?”

“It’s night, sir.”

“Then, why are we being so formal?”

“Excuse me?”

“Have I kept up with the rent?”

“Oh, yes, sir.”

“Why don’t you visit me more often?”

“I didn’t know you wanted me to, sir.”

“Oh, but I do.”

There came a bawling from the house in the dark. Mrs.

Shelby looked back at the house and then at me.

“I know you got to go and tend to your husband. What is

it like to keep two drunken soldiers?” I asked.

“Would you like to know, sir?”

“Oh, yes.”

“It’s like keeping corpses warm.”

And she laughed. And I laughed like a skeleton under

blankets of meat, all black in a cozy void.

“Why don’t you get me some whiskey, Mrs. Shelby?”

“Oh, I don’t think I can do that.”

 172

“Why not?”

“Because he measures it in the morning. He always has

just two bottles with him. He measures his hangover by how

much is missing from the second bottle.”

“Oh, that’s a good idea.”

Mrs. Shelby turned and looked at the silent house behind

her.

“You’d better go in.”

“Yes.”

She scurried into the night.

I looked down at the yellow telegram.

MAJOR CHARLES SHREDDER.

I tore open the envelope.

MAJOR SHREDDER: HAVE RECEIVED YOUR MESSAGES. WILL RESPOND.

GRENAL RAD.

“Have received your messages, will respond?” What have I

been saying to strangers while I was drunk?

I pulled my neck in out of the night and stood a few feet

from the open doorway listening to the rain. I honestly

couldn’t remember spending any nights in this hut.

I turned and looked into my room--candles and buckets

filling up with water, empty green bottles, a bed of

disorganized wire and horse blankets, a black notebook, not

to mention the cigar butts, Swisher Sweets, Dutch Masters,

 173

Garcia Vegas and the little ones, (Vikings or something like

that) strewn about the room in little rabbit heaps. THE BLACK

NOTEBOOK, like a hymnal or a dictionary, like a book for the

recitation of the names of the dead. Not time to forget. The

black notebook, what did it mean?

As I started for it, I was overcome by a yearning for

whiskey, for hot mouthed oblivion.

I grabbed the notebook from the milk crate and looked at

it. It was one of those German kinds, pages with little blue

lines running vertically and horizontally, forming quarter

inch squares. On the front of it was printed:

LABORATORY NOTEBOOK

-------------------

-------------------

The white of its identification tab was enameled with quick

dried sweat. Except for the ID pad it was black, black with

that fast aging black synthetic paper leather. The edges were

worn and frayed. The spine was torn away as if someone had

been picking at it. The cover was soft and absorbent. There

were creases in its cover. It was beautiful. Like an old

flight book from the “40’s”.

I opened it.
 174

The pages were full of pencil marks like someone drunk

had written in them and later had tried to make them legible.

“I

h
ad

sur
passed

my

I
ha d
ur
s
pp assed m
y
m
o
t
h
e
r

There were wine stains, jug varietals, Chianti, Burgundy,

Chablis, Zinfandel.

“North,” I thought, “I’m going North.”

I closed the black notebook and sat down on the damp

cot. Yes, I remembered the days here. Ten days of rain.

Getting up at dawn with a blood clotting hangover. Walking

over misty roads unable to feel what I knew must be the

coolness of fresh mist. Running to ditches just in time to

pull my pants down and squirt my watery, acid excrement on

the weeds. Fumbling in my pants, walking bow-legged, my

 175

eyes like foreign implants, each bulging with a separate

agony in my swollen head.

“Major Shredder?”

I heard a voice in the wind.

“Major Shredder?”

I pushed my palms into my eyeballs, could see casket

lids snapping.

“Major Shredder?”

Her voice was soft and velvety.

“Major Shredder, I brought you some whisky.”

“Huh?” I turned around and pulled my face up from my

hands and looked at her fuzzy image.

“Mrs. Shelby, how incredibly considerate.”

She handed a full pint flask.

“I thin this was in a place he won’t get to for a few

more months. He buries some. He calls them his “mines.”

My face flushed. I felt a luscious warmth pervade me

as I wrapped my hands around the smooth, firm contours.

“Good God, how can I thank you,” I managed to murmur

afloat the rush of pleasure flooding into me.

“You’ve already thanked me, Major.”

I pushed the bottle into my chest and shouted.

“I’m going up North!”

“Does that mean you’re leaving us soon, Major?”

 176

“Yes, soon.”

“How many days, sir?”

“A few, a few.”

“Five or six?”

“Maybe less, why do you want to know?” I asked, eyeing

her with suspicion.

“Maybe you would like to pay in advance?’

“You’re husband is asleep now, passed out, right?”

“Yes, sir.”

“He won’t know anything until six o’clock in the

morning?”

“That is true, sir. How did you know that?”

“And when he gets up, he’ll jamb himself out of bed.

He’ll be frantic.”

“Yes, sir, how...”

“He’ll shake you in your sheets. He’ll scream into

your face. He’ll blither on about how he can’t seem to get

on the right track. He’ll bury his face in his hands and

ask the pain to go away. He’ll beg your forgiveness. You’ll

agree. He’ll clutch your face painfully in his hands and

pull it close to his. You’ll smell the sour mash preparing

to be puke. He’ll get up and stagger into the kitchen.

He’ll find a beer somewhere behind the pickles. You’ll hear

the pop of the can. You’ll hear a silence. You’ll hear him
 177

shuffle off into the kitchen. You’ll hear him pad back to

the refrigerator. You’ll hear him open it and get another

miraculous beer from behind the pickles. You’ll hear him

open the beer. You’ll hear the gulping and the release of

his breath in a series of belches, three of them. The first

in a long stream like a trombone playing middle C, the next

two skating on a lower octave. Then he’ll come in and sit

on your bed. He’ll get it together. His eyes will

practically be bleeding. His hands will be shaking. He’ll

speak of his discomfort. He’ll talk about his nerves. He

won’t be aware of how delirium tremens set in, how they

feel but he will be having them and you will know them

better than he does. You’ll be living them.”

I bent close to her.

“Don’t ask me to be too specific. He’s going to get

you one of these days no how. Maybe tomorrow for the bottle

you just gave me. Maybe tonight, if he gets a spike up his

ass from some dream.”

I tucked her face in my arm and tickled the ear on the

other side of her head with my breath as I whispered,

“Don’t worry about when I leave. I’ll give you enough money

to make him think I’m going to be here six more weeks.

That’s just enough time for you to get out of here or get

him out of the way. You don’t know how much can change in
 178

six weeks. You don’t know where I’ve been. In any case, I

thank you.”

She looked up at me just for an instant with languid,

empty eyes, like some twenty’s starlet. Then she went hard,

a tree digging its moisture into the roots.

“I don’t think so, Major,” she said. “You’ve got to

understand. This ain’t from my husband. This is from me. He

doesn’t go no where. He doesn’t do nothin’ without me. He

knows it as sure as silence. This whisky is for you. Don’t

think anything about it. It’s just as if I made it myself.

You see, I buy the whiskey. The money, Major, in advance.”

“Your accuracy, Mrs. Shelby, amazes me.”

“Would you like some sausages, eggs and home fries?”

“That takes me “on the road, Mrs. Shelby.”

“I think I’d better get back up there and kiss my baby

good night.”

“You have a baby?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“From that old man?”

She looked at me with an absolutely mad smile.

“What do you think,” she said, “I’m 69 and I’ve never

tasted a man, sir.”

“How can that be possible?”

 179

“Because sir, I’m an idiot, I don’t know what I’m

saying. I don’t know where I am. I’m just a thing. A thing

from God, pasted on the lapel of a giant who entrusted his

soul a thousand years ago to a journeyman named Lazarus and

it was he who rose him right up out of the dead. Every

woman needs a child, sir, especially if it’s her husband.”

She tottered away into the night. The house was

obscured by a bay tree making darkness.

“I’m going up North,” I whispered.

My breath answered the wind.

That night I dreamed.

...Running across the kitchen floor after my dog, a

Doberman, covered with soap suds, I skid and fall, sliding

after it, suds all over the floor, sliding, I hit a bottle

of Chablis, which tips over, the cork flying away, roaches

and mice scurry through the foam, roaches running up the

walls, more bugs come racing out of the bottle, I’m

slapping at them but don’t want to feel their exoskeletons

pop, the mush of roach guts and all those little furry

rodents, so cute with tiny rabid mouths...

Savior of drunkards, drunkard Savior, the flesh eats

itself away from the inside, premature decision of a seven-

 180

year-old child, now the plan is made, the script is laid

out.

--double=bind=double=bind--

Grenal Rad

“Challenge the Major’s Meta-model by operating

directly on his analogical representation of the
world.”
“Watch out, he’s preparing his suicide.”
“How many steps?”
“Four, First, he is drinking too much.
Second, he has no place to go.
Third, he has no home.
Fourth, he is trapped.
“How many has he already taken?”
“All of them.”
“He says he’s heading North.”
“He’ll never make it.”

...........................................................

I am going North. North is where I will find the next step.

...................................
“He’s not really saying anything.”
“Like an angry child, right?’
“Precisely.”
“Nothing surprising.”
“They seldom are.”
.....................

Who are you talking about?

.................
....... “All of them” .......
.................

You pompous, presumptuous assholes.

..................................
“Good, we got a rise out of him.”
“Yes, now, he’s in motion.”
“Watch him follow the steps.”

...............................................
 181

”Put him on the table, turn him around face

down we’ll give it to him in the butt.”
............................................

Get out of here or I’ll kill you!

...............................
“That’s his child speaking.”
“No, I don’t think that’s fear.”
“Good, then he’s half way
through.”
...............................

They’re not running tests on me, are they? How could they?
I’ve known them since...since...when?

.....................................
“You were right, he is in sequence.”
.....................................

Fear. I’m afraid. Yes, I’m afraid.

........................
“Then that is it?”
“Yes, that is fear.”
........................

Yes, that is fear.

........................
“Fear of what, Bekin?”
........................

Fear of Nothing.

.......................
“What does that mean?”
.......................

I don’t know...yet.

..........................................
“There, that’s the last one, withdrawal.”
..........................................

I am...

.............................
 182

“He doesn’t know who he is.”

.............................

I am...

.............................
“He doesn’t know who he is.”
.............................

Bekin.

..............
Who is Bekin?
........................

Static. No
cause, no
effect.
................
Electronic fog?
................

Yes,
everywhere at once,
no where in particular,
but moving...

..........................
“In a certain direction?”
..........................

Yes.

....................................................
“But how can that be, there’s no where to go?”
“And if there were somewhere to go who would want to go
to such a place? Stasis, Bekin, stasis.”
“Yes, you’re talking entropy, brow out, symmetry.”
.....................................................

No, it is Home.

.......
“Home?”
......
 183

A place to rest my head, to stretch out into, to

spread...return...it is return.

..........................................
“Recontraction, Bekin, recontraction, unit.,
pulling fingers into fist.
It’s the same old thing, Scout.”
..........................................

Scout? Don’t you remember? I’m you’re scout. I am Bekin.

....................
“I can’t remember.”
“I can’t either.”
....................

Don’t you remember? We set it up that way. It’s the principle

of the Synthesizer: to receive communication you must become
it.

.............................
“So, you’re saying...?
“...That we’re taking on...”
.............................

Human form.

.............................

I pushed skyward, holding my little box of Home

between my hands.

Bullets! I’m a pot shot! I have no mind! He’s coming at

me, a face one minute, a bloody fist the next! Get me outta

here. Who? Me!

Take me to the edge of town. Good. Walk along the

deserted streets with a fist full of nails. Anybody want to

dance? This building. Here. Creep slowly now across the floor

toward the chain. Softly pull at the weight. God! It won’t

 184

give! Hammer rusting in a puddle of humid air, the sound of

someone dragging a corpse. The window high up there beginning

to shift now. Don’t close the icebox!

The synthesizer is above me. I can feel it through my

whole body, a kind of itching. I can feel it, the full measure

of satisfaction, everyone of them biting into their own meat,

smug nifty little maggots. I can smell the rancid belly flop!

Single thrust of limb, fop! The soft puffy gut lodge of

everyone of you, the sweaty stinky paternal flesh of you.

Wake up Bekin, pull the Synthesizer down and look at it

it. It’s time to call home.

.............................

I woke up. The tv was dead as a cigarette butt. Booze

bottle and stale smoke. Again, the illegible scribbling in the

black notebook. It had that “end of the road” feel. Where had

I been? In the Sandusky jail. No, I was, had been, in Northern

California. Our advance had been thwarted. We had scattered.

And then Coming New and the Shift. I was in the same Sandusky

motel room on the edge of the highway. I had gone nowhere. I

would be dead in three days if I didn’t get my ass out of

Sandusky. I chuckled. Ruth Edding, Leana Horn, Peggy Lee, Sara

Vaughn, Tony Martin, Bing Crosby, Freddie Clarke, Vaugn Monroe

and Frank Sinatra in a choir. In New Coming it could be

possible!
 185

I threw my poncho over me and found a taxi.

“Take me to the Dragon.”

He looked at me oddly and drove me to a bar out side of

town.

“That’s all the farther I’m going buddy.”

“Is it Coming New?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Then I’m sure it is.”

I slammed the door and he drove away, my money still in

my hand. I stopped at the bar and slugged down a couple of

drinks. Three or four hooded figures huddled in the corner,

rolling cigarettes. I threw my poncho hood up and walked

toward them.

“I’m on my way to the Dragon. What’s the shortest way?”

A cracked faced middle-ager pointed his finger up at the

ceiling. I stepped down on his thigh and broke the chair with

him.

“Let’s make a huddle,” I said and bent over them, arms

spread and pulled them down to the table top.

“Don’t make me suck you, brother, I’m new at the game. A

lone soldier. Now give me a corner will you. I need to get out

of here I’m in transition. I want to go North.”

For a while we sat together, I listened to them tell of

the places they had been.

 186

“You can throw your mark at any of them, just smile, know

how to roll and get in. Take an iron bar, not just for their

heads, a lot of them wear helmets, no take it for the windows,

automatic locks. Those babes get hungry out there. Just talk a

lot, they need company. Some of them don’t get out of their

rigs for months, feet ‘em right in the cab, got the RAD,

washed suits, and soft beds, every once in a while, they send

a breeder in. Now you,” He looked at me, “You’ll be prime on

the road. A real catch. If you get a Betsy, let ‘er stroke you

but don’t cab wiff ‘er, she’ll coot you out and claim the law,

which ain’t much these days, but on the road it’s solid. The

road’s been goin’ all through the war. They’re gonna drive the

oil right off the road and that’s the way they want to go

down, so let it be, but don’t get cabbed, if you’re cabbed

you’re cooted, if you’re cooted, you’ll share lice wiff ‘em

until it all goes dry, ‘cuz a cooted Betsy is in for keeps and

she knows it. She’s got everything she needs to keep movin’.

An don’t you believe she ain’t tough, ole Betsy.”

* * * *

NORTH

The fence stretched out into infinity. The roar was

unbearable. The earth quaked and the Rigs passed almost

into invisibility. I kept low out of the big light’s way

 187

and moved along the edge of the fence. The rain began

falling. I crouched at Philippine’s Opening, just like the

boys had told me. The water steamed on the road sending a

thick spray of constant upwash a good twenty yards from the

road. A dark silhouette. That would be a good hook. Stop

and see it, take it in, think dark fearsome thoughts, make

them edgy. I stood on the far curb of the energy shoulder

just in the upward path of the roadspray, letting the water

bathe me in a glycerin cape. It was exhilarating. The Rigs

constantly moving, the deep red cab lights dark above the

brilliant beams the incredible hot shock waves pounding

after them and the decay of their horns like buoys set

afloat on the deep.

I hadn’t been out long when a pin-wheel of lights

signaled a crossing on the energy shoulder. I pulled back

as the great thing rushed passed me and stopped a hundred

yards away. I started to run, but checked myself. I had

been warned. Don’t let Betsy get the edge on you. The Rig

backed. It poured on the juice. I stood my ground. The

trailer passed me and the cab appeared above me. The truck

stopped. It was covered with clouds of steam. Its rumbling

vibrated the concreate.

Pfffffff! The door swung open. Soft music. A white

ladder slid out of the darkness.

 188

“Get in and make it fast.”

The voice came from a big speaker above my head. It

was the Betsy. The Rig began moving even before the door

started to close. I clambered up, the ladder moving beneath

my feet. The Rig lunged forward and I flew against a wall.

The whir of the Dymos crested in. I was on my way.

“Drop it all where you are, Shredder.” Her voice

coming from somewhere in the gloom.

I stretched my hands out in the darkness, walls all

round me, like a closet.

“If you’re gonna ride with me, honey, we all got to be

comfortable. I know you’re in the Military. I don’t want

any weapons in here.”

“How do you know my name?”

“Through the Loki. We all got radios with the cabbies.

I traced you from Philippine’s Hole, to the ride babies to

the Worm and then to the cabby who caught your specks

beneath that poncho of yours. All he had to do was get hold

of that Motel. They got radios too. No one just picks up

and goes these days, not without protection, anyway. People

have been keeping an eye on you. All I had to do was tap

into the circuit. You play fair and I’ll play fair. Come in

with your skin, no hocus pocus, take your clothes off and

we’ll have a chat.”

 189

A slender elevator appeared.

I stripped and put my belongings on the floor. A panel

slid open.

Naked, I stepped into the elevator. The panel slid

closed. The light went out and the elevator sped up the

shaft. There were four windows. I could see levels moving

past. Was it possible that this thing could be so tall?

There were dimly lit hallways with bright compartments full

of boxes and tubes. Finally, I reached the top. The

elevator doors opened and I stepped into a long stainless-

steel corridor. I could feel the rig’s engines throbbing

through the floor.

I walk to the end of the corridor and the door slid

open.

A warm red glow filled the air. I turned to the right

and climbed up a small set of stairs, the red light slowly

grown pink, then mauve as I entered the cabin. The window

of the cabin stretched around me and the road swept up in a

constellation of trailer lights. In the distance there was

a faint smooth hum.

“Down here,” I heard her soft unamplified voice say. I

looked over to my left. She lay among a nest of pillows, a

black knob nestled in her hand.

 190

Her luxurious three hundred plus pounds spread among

the pillows in yellow chiffon. Her flesh, clear and smooth

with a tint of apricot, filled the air with a touch of

sweet musk. She looked up at me with large almond eyes. Her

face was large like a jack-o-lantern, red painted lips and

cherry pink rouge on her cheeks. Her hair was a voluptuous

champagne blond. It was obviously a wig.

“Sit down, Shredder, take the queen oil out of your

joints.”

I sat down on the pillows beside her. We both watched

the window together.

“Where are you going?”

“North,” I said.

“Going to snipe some shrieks, huh?”

“Yes,” I answered grinning, not knowing what the fuck

she was talking about.

“Well, you’re lucky, I’m going all the way to the

top.”

“And where might that be?”

“Why, Qxneon, of course.”

“Looks like this rig is pretty tall,” I said, still

grinning at her.

“One hundred and sixty-four stories,” she said, never

taking her calm eyes from the road.

 191

I looked down. We were about four stories above it.

“That’s quite surprising. I thought we would be much

higher above the road.”

“We are,” she said, “holographic contraction. Welcome

to the Black Tortoise.”

This was just the beginning, the cold, wintry teeth

still lay ahead, and beyond that the unknown city, Qxneon.

It was still moist here, warm; yet the hills had the

resonance of mountains and glaciers, and inside the rig,

the Black Tortoise, I could feel the northern weather. This

cutter had sliced through icy night, through uninhabited

wastes. I looked at the pumpkin headed woman at the wheel,

at her large dark eyes and thick black eye lashes, her full

lips, the blush of color on her cheeks and her huge body.

Her hands were large, as large as mine and knuckley with

tight, weathered skin and thick, short nails. I wondered

what the price of my passage would be. Whips and cigarette

butts, fingernails in the face.

“How many days to the top?” I asked.

“Thirty-two, barring a break down, or an impassable

storm,” she said.

“I wouldn’t have expected it would take so long,” I

said, looking at the road churning under us.

 192

“Oh, yes,” she said, slowly nodding, “at least that

long.”

“I thought it was only a few thousand miles.”

“We ran out of miles years ago. There are no miles on

the Dragon.”

“Dragon?”

“This,” she said, pointing at the road, “this

highway.”

She said no more.

The Dragon swept beneath us. I settled back in my

seat. It was surprisingly comfortable, considering it was

entirely made of metal. I looked about for radios. They

would tip me off as to whether or not she was keeping tabs

on strays that might drift on the Dragon to be picked up

and used for diversion on the long stretches.

“No radios?” I asked, trying to filter all traces of

suspicion from my voice.

“Radios? Yes, I have radios, plenty of them.”

“Can keep up on the locals, right?”

“Got the Loki for that, but the rest of the time I

don’t get local communication.”

“How do you know when the Dragon is stuffed?”

“Omno Static Receiver.”

 193

“A what?”

“Uses omnospheric static for co-ordinates, like large

stars and quasars. I move up the silences and work the rig

through the clots.”

What the fuck was she talking about? I wanted to get a

rise out of this Betsy.

“That’s funny, I don’t see any instrumentation.”

“It’s here. I’m tuning in now.”

I didn’t hear anything.

“So, you run on radio silence through the whole local

yokel scene, huh?”

“I only receive international transmissions, that and

the stuff from the satellites. Oh yes, and the Eskimo

Network for what they’re worth anymore. This is a North

Wind Cutter. It has nothing to do with the lower 48.”

Ah, at last a response! What was it that I sensed in

her voice, pride? Disdain? Even a touch of class? And what

an incredible situation. Here I was in a north bound Wind

Cutter, far more sophisticated than anything I had seen in

the military. International signals? Sandusky was far

behind. The landscape had changed. We were already crossing

into the mountains. I felt a sudden breath of cosmopolitan

air, the pines rushing by revealed their true identities.

They were antennas!

 194

I lowered my head and spoke to her from beneath my eye

brows.

“What do you want?” I asked her in a barely audible

voice.

“A red leech,” she murmured softly without taking her

eyes from the road.

“A what?” I asked.

“Let me tell you the rules of the road,” she said in a

calm, almost reassuring manner.

“Number one, I’m top runner. A Betsy, but I’m not like

those skinny gargoyles that run the lower 48. This is the

Dragon, not highway 4. This is the end of the road. There’s

no room for hanky panky. There’s only time for bitch heat

and mud. When we hit the Stratus Calmus we’re in the belly

of the witch, that is where the Nippon Currents are blowing

hardest. Rain falls so hard that it makes a storm of mud

thrown up by its pounding of the earth. A mud rain with the

force of a shot gun, but this rig will move through.” She

paused dramatically. “And so, will the two of us.

Number two. There’s no stopping destiny. I saw you on

the day of the Cartouche. That may not mean anything to

you, but for me, it is the day my father and mother died in

a Wing, the first rigs to crash through the Nippon barrier

and meet the Knife Fog of the Lower Region. I was born in a
 195

rig. I’ve only touched the earth once in my life, the day

my parents crashed on the North Dragon. That was the day I

was thrown out of the rig and onto the planet. I was found

by Eskimos who recognized what I was, a rig baby, born

Betsy’s going back for more than a hundred years. They

immediately got me off the ground and kept me that way.

They flagged down the nearest rig with a Tel-x signal on

their HLC and I was taken in. The daughter of a Betsy

killed on the road is as pure as you can get it, it is like

being a full breed found in a grocery bag by a stream. I

don’t care who you are. I’m a black cap. You got it, a

flier. I’m the head of the fleet. I’m 82 years old and I

can hear a dime hit the grass a mile away in a hail storm.

Number three, when you’re on this boat you tend the

cargo. What I mean is that there’s work to be done. You

look like you could use something to concentrate on besides

yourself. There’s a bunk on the fortieth level.

I watched her every move. She had not turned from the

window, had not raised her voice. Everything had been calm

and clear.

“Number four, don’t ask me any questions. I’m not

programmed for answers and I don’t want to be. Answers

aren’t useful in this profession. I have cargo but I don’t

know who it is for. I don’t know what it is. I have

 196

instruction on its care. I follow them. I am monitored by

unknown agents who keep me posted.”

I grinned into the surface of the window casting my

reflection onto her face.

“And what about me?”

“No problem. You’re heat. I get heat every year. It’s

supposed to keep me cool. You qualify as my Duce. Don’t

worry about it, Shredder, I don’t cab with just anybody.”

“Are those the rules of the road?”

“Yes.”

“Well, they’re fine by me.”

“Then you’d better go to bed.”

“To bed?”

“Yes, you’ve got a big day tomorrow.”

Tomorrow? I looked at the road. It was black, pitch

black when only a few minutes, thirty at most, it had been

bright daylight. I had hopped on the rig at ten thirty a.m.

“All right, you’ve got your man,” I said, realizing

that she had been watching me in the windshield all the

while.
 197

That night I fell asleep in the dry, metal chambers of

the Black Tortoise to the humming of the North bound

engines.

I dreamed.

“Good, get him up before the Party goes. I’m not

kidding, get your ass out of bed.”

I jerk my head up just before I see the ax falling.

“That’s enough, I don’t want to damage the boxes.”

His hands are dipped in lacquer, his small eyes

squinting at me under his tight blue skin.

“Fill him out with the rest of the air.”

I feel the cabin pressurize, my ears implode, guts of

my head fly out of my mouth. The laser dogs unkneel and

freeze, pointing their swordy tails at me. I plunge at

them. They shatter. I hold my eyes up in my two hands and

focus the light on the walls, my prick is hard. Cold,

silent insensitivity floating through the universe in a

band the size of a room, the edge of the frame, floating

down, I am floating with it. The picture is there but I

can’t se it, I can feel moving forms, ghosts full of

ectoplasmic jelly, ghosts scratching their heads, making

the sound of balloons rubbing together.

“Whose making the rules?” I am crying out.

“What’s coming next?”

 198

I turn my head to the South, ants scurrying about in

the clang of sunlight.

“What are your possibilities?”

“What possibilities?” I shout back at the voice.

My prick is still hard. It is unbearable. I’ve got to

have it. It’s killing me. I’ve got to have it. I don’t want

to got to have it but I’ve got to have it. I twist and rub

it against the wall.

“I’ve got to have something soft to rub this thing

against. I hate it, but I’ve got to blow it out of my

barrel.”

It’s coming, the thundering release. At last! Who is

that? What is this fog? In my belly I’m letting go of the

pain! My hands are catching the hot porridge. What is this

stuff? Oh God! Ustad Isa get me out of here. I want to go

home where I understand things.

Ustad is on the other side. He’s waving at me through

a screen. He’s trying to rub the amber coating off, but

it’s too thick. He’s pounding on the window.

“Bekin! Bekin! Wake up!”

But it is muted by the translucent rubber seal, the

rubber bubble gum coating the floors, the walls, the

windows, the doors, the halls, the stairs, the lobby, the
 199

furniture, the streets, the cars, the parking meters, the

people, the money.

“It’s sealed up,” he’s saying, “I can’t get through.

I’ll send you messages. You can read them at least. It will

still be under wraps, in their currency, but even when

everything is Coming New you can’t stop communication. It’s

everywhere. Watch for me.”

Space gyres, long thin ones, thin as pencil lead,

filled with passengers stretched between each other’s legs,

leaning back on each other’s chests, on the long needle

shaped toboggan, looking out with longing and anticipation,

“going to the stars, we’re going to the stars.”

Take me along, please take me along.

I awoke in a curtain of heat.

“Report to the top, Shredder.”

At first, I didn’t know where the voice was coming

from. It had a thin, reedy, yet somehow penetrating sound.

Then I saw the little silver ear horn at the head of my

bed.

“Be right up, Dearie,” I said, and rolled out of my

silver bunk.

I climbed into the exhaust elevator and was whisked up

into the control cabin.

 200

“Food, Shredder, you’re going to need some food before

you enter the cabin,” the voice said from the little squawk

horn in the elevator.

The wall opposite the door slid open and I entered a

comfortable, middle sized room with a sink and stove, a

KoolShrank, several micro-wave stalls and a cupboard filled

with provisions, cherry sauce, chicken liver, lentils and

dehydrated hot-dogs.

“Help yourself, Major,” the voice said.

“Well, I don’t mind if I do.”

I padded comfortably to the cooking area and fixed

myself a huge breakfast of snail’s fists and gray eggs with

a big cup of black java.

The door slid open and a beam of lead gray light

struck my eyes. The cabin’s huge windows were filled with

the ashen specter of the empty Dragon. A man was sitting in

the Driver’s throne. He was partly bald, puffy-cheeked but

skinny. So, the Betsy had a Duce, a Breeder Boy, but to let

him drive the rig that was thick.

“Take a seat Shredder and I’ll give you a list of

things to do,” he said.

“Sure,” I answered, sliding into the silver seat. I

didn’t like the competition.

 201

“How far have we gone during the night?” I said,

grinning plastically at him.

“You mean how long has it been?”

“I don’t remember meeting you before this.”

“You haven’t.”

“Oh.”

“I take over in the morning. Here, read this.”

He handed me a letter.

“She wrote it last night. It should explain

everything.”

Dear Shredder,

My name is Emily. This morning you met a man. His name

is Ted. He will probably tell you that he and I are

separate entities in different places. That I assure you is

a matter of opinion. It is his perception of the situation.

Mine is quite different. I will give you my version as I am

sure Ted will give you his. Ted and I are a single entity.

In the morning it will look like a man. It will behave and

it will think like the man named Ted. And for all intents

and purposes, it will be Ted, that is, until late in the

afternoon when it once more takes on my form and

personality. Sometime after two a.m. until six a.m. I cease

to exist altogether. I don’t know what this entity was

 202

before it became us. I get the feeling sometimes that the

entity was an old ships captain in a blue suit who got

caught on the Dragon and passed through so many time storms

he refracted with the spirit of the wheel. I’m sure you

know that passing North produces irrevocable changes in the

traveler. Many have passed here since the New Coming, few

have arrived afoot, most came as the Dead and all without

exception, consumed by time’s black fire. While you are

working with us you must develop a highly refined sense of

time. Time is sense perception, the perception of gravity.

Our perception of time is not acute. In other animals it is

far more developed. In a fly, for example, the sense of

time is incomprehensibly intense. A fly knows when and how

it is going to die in the first moment of its life. Time is

the smell of gravity. Gravity is the thought field of the

Planet. It is its personality, its mood. Personality is a

substance. We don’t sense it that way but that doesn’t stop

it from being so. You might say gravity is the substance of

the Planet’s personality. We sense the substance of the

Planet’s personality as time. Time is not uniform. In some

places it is thicker, in some thinner, in some it is

stagnate, in some it’s actually windy. This is all going on

around us but most of the time we only sense it as a shift

in mood, or a particularly serial day, as when almost every

 203

street is filled with red cars, shirts and blouses, or as a

suddenly dangerous environment. These issuances of time

don’t stay in one place. They rove like cattle or clouds

from place to place, gradually evaporating or thinning to

an almost benign state. Though this is not always the case.

Sometimes some of it gets caught in corners or under

shelves or in bedrooms and bathrooms and they become

haunted with old, lost time. Or bodies also issue gravity

personality but we are so small compared with the Planet

that the latter’s gravity pervades us and gradually soaks

through us and we become mixed with the other, the Planet’s

force. We begin to time shift. That’s why we grow old.

That’s why we die. And when we travel where time is

thickest, we cannot be sure what will be created,

remembered, projected. This evening I’ll look like a woman,

in the late hours I will cease to exist as you know me. In

the morning there will be the man before you now. And all

the while, I assure you, the “I” of which “I” speak is

totally unknown to “me,” a staircase generated endlessly in

all directions. The more trips I take to the North, the

more shifting will happen until I am swallowed up by the

Planet’s personality, but don’t be worried about any of

that. Your trip is relatively short. Just do what Ted tells

you to do.
 204

Emily.

I looked up from the letter at Ted.

“Who drives the rig when Emily doesn’t exist?” I

asked.

“The Planet,” he said simply and turned his face

toward the Dragon. “Now here is the list of things I want

you to do.”

* * * *

After a full day of moving anonymous boxes to

amorphous places I rode the elevator up and bid Emily good

night. When I returned to my cabin I found to my pleasure

and amazement a bottle of Canadian Mist, a box of cigars,

and three joints. There was also a kind of television which

I later found was called a RAD (RADIANT AURORAL

DEMODULATOR). It was covered with a thick transparent

polyethylene coating. A thin layer of post Arctic Qxneon

blue ice direct from the fields of the North lay just

I unscrewed the bottle, took a swig and felt the heat

tumble down into my stomach. It was good to be doing

something with my body again. Perhaps I was in another time

stream, on the road heading North toward new beginnings.

Perhaps I would change my name to Bekin. John Bekin, ice

engineer. I lit a cigar and took a dump in the silver

 205

commode, then slid my way back into my little warm room,

feeling just the slightest vibration of the giant rig

wending its way North on the Dragon. I slipped into the

curve of the metal bunk, no pad, no mattress, just design,

a sweet, forgiving curve that nestled me just below the

RAD. I opened the bottle and tasted its warmth, then

switched on the RAD. The screen blinked. The gray glass

became black, then the dimension fell out of it. It looked

as if the screen had dissolved and now there was simply an

empty black space. I reached out to see if the hole was

real but touched the glass of the screen instead. More than

likely there was some all-pervasive holographic explanation

for the thing. Some cute little ringlet of ingenuity. I

longed for the old days of the spear and the rock.

Soundlessly, letters appeared in space six inches from the

screen.

“Good evening, welcome to the Black Tortoise. This is

the Eskimo Network CompPu com. We hope that your trip

through the Channels will be uneventful and all subsequent

transformations confluent with your designs. Your imprint

has triggered a Main Force Reaction which impels us to

communicate your presence to our originators. When we have

completed this communication, we will connect you. In the

 206

meantime, we will run a short introduction and background

of our communication system, The Eskimo Network.

The Eskimo Network erupted a year before new coming

broke the world open. The demise of vacuum tube technology

in the construction of computer systems gave rise to the

Silicon Valley and silicon based semi-conductors which drew

little power and thus little heat. It had been known since

the “Fifties” that metal when cool became super conductive,

permitting an unimpeded flow of electrons through them. As

a result, a technology of super low temperature metals

developed with silicon as the basic material. This with

laser and fiber optics gradually made the use of

electricity obsolete. Light was used instead. Then an

Eskimo exchange student in engineering realized that the

problem of heat accumulations and information entropy could

be solved by an element that he had lived with all of his

life. Ice! Yes, ice was the best conductor of information.

It was better than silicon and lasers and fiber optics.

Better even than liquid nitrogen and blue diamonds (which

were rare and brittle). Ice was the demise of heat. Ice was

cold. It only burned and in the north tundra it never

melted. It was also surmised that ice had an inherent

intelligence all its own, that it like transmitting

information. The North and its native inhabitants had a

 207

boom time. The Silicon Valley of California turned into a

ghost suburbia and then the electro-petrol war broke,

destroying the brittle fabric of the old guard. Meanwhile,

the North became the new technological Mecca. But it wasn’t

so easy to over-run it with imperial glutting of personnel

and machinery. And besides, the Eskimo population had a

natural inclination for artificial intelligence. They had

spent centuries bottled up in ice houses. They were used to

handling cold things. Instruments froze up there. Clumsy

gloves inhibited the hands, no delicate work could be done

with your teeth chattering. Sure, there were buildings

erected on the tundra filled with suntanned California

engineers and native labor but they couldn’t stand up to

the Eskimo who had been softening leather in sub-zero

temperatures with their teeth for more than a thousand

years and the Eskimos knew it. They could take the eternal

night and were immune to cabin fever. They began

constructing the finest ice computers in the world, Radiant

Auroral Demodulator’s or RAD’S, not to mention Radios and

RATS, Radiant Auroral Translevers. The air began to fill

with Eskimo communications. It was as if they had been

waiting ten thousand years for this. It was almost genetic.

In fact, a number of medical journals had devoted entire

issues to the subject of Genetic Latency In Eskimos” ...

 208

Suddenly the words disappeared and the blank screen

returned, flashing a red emergency signal and beeping a

line horn. I jumped from the bunk and ran for the door,

thinking that something might have gone wrong with the rig,

when the beeping stopped and new letters appeared. Even

across the room they were only a few inches from my face.

xxxxxxxxxxxESKIMO BRDCSTNTWRKxxxxxxxxxxxx

life form
life form
go back!
We have run out of date.
C A U T I O N
NEW COMING=GHOSTS AWARE OF YOU
alien force
BEWARE
max craving
max suffering
(stellar mode=drain/burn)
no survivors

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxGHOST PLANETxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

What had I not witnessed, the end of the world?

“What do you mean, “ghost planet?”

xxxxxxxxxxMAMA IS LOOSExxxxxxxxxx

xxx xxx Mediating Ambieater Both Within and Without x xxxxx x

(M.A. X 2 = MAMA)
 209

xx xx destruction of organisms = ambient death trot of life force x x

My worst suspicions were being realized.

“Is MAMA Mother Nature?”

xxx xxx xx xxxx xxx xxx YES x x x xxxx xxx xx xx xx x xx

Just what I needed, they were all fucking stir crazy, even

the Eskimos. It struck me once again, continually surprising me

with my propensity to adapt then fall asleep, even in New

Coming. Perhaps everything was like it had always been. I was

out of sync; a little too slow or a little too fast with the

moment generator, piss hole, ass crack of the Creator-Brain-

Templette-Enzyme. It was the continual renewal of this

realization that propelled me along. Who was I to say there

wasn’t any MAMA? Perhaps the whole world was being run by

Mother Goose. Shit, I had never known who the real leaders

were. There were only the spot wars between players, nothing

meant to disrupt the flow of money and information. I didn’t

know any thing about New Coming except that it existed. I

didn’t even know when it had begun. Why not try again?

“What is New Coming?”

x xxx xxx New Coming xx xxx xx

x xxx xx xx Planet force screaming into Space x xx xx
xx xx xx “I”m loosing my MAMA.” xx xx xx x x
xx xxx xxxx “SEND HELP” x xx xxx xx xx
xxx xxxx xxxx Then came Bekin xx xxx xxx
 210

Everyone seemed to be out of the office. If only I could

remember where it all started. Why couldn’t I remember my

origins? Why all of this secrecy? Or was it just plain

stupidity? No synapse formed, no way to know, just jelly

breaking up with nothing. Planet force? Mother Nature? Why was

it every time anybody got near Mother Nature, or the Great

Mother, or the Matriarchal Order they always spoke in baby

talk? MAMA? “I’m losing my MAMA, send help.”

I put my hands on my belly and grabbed a glob of fat. Yes,

it was true, I was out of shape. I hadn’t realized it and all

ready I was getting to the stupor side of high. I was going to

pass out and wake up at four a.m. when everybody is dying and

wander around in this little steel room until it was time to go

up to the Betsy or whatever was up there. Why did I take all

this in stride? Because that was the way things were. What

choice was there? I laid back and thought about the situation.

The RAD continued to flip its static bars a few inches in front

of my face. I could feel the tell-tale signs of hysteria

mounting. I took a large swig from the bottle.

“Listen, motherfucker, who’s on the other side of this

cord?”

The RAD didn’t change.

It had to be in the language. I had to reach him with my

analytical mind! If I had the right thoughts I could harmonize

 211

with the slant-eyed little bugger on the other side of the

screen. I could get hold of his electric body, his telephone

body and connect with him. What if I connected with him? What

would he do? Would he change me irrevocably? I taped the joint

on my moistened tongue and flipped it in a tray. I reached

tenuously for the bottle. There was only the present, only the

cuticle strength, unwarmed, yet swelling with intuitive

signals.

“Listen,” I said, “Why don’t you think positive? It will

give you signal-synergy. I know you, you know me, we’re just a

couple of guys.”

X XX X XX X XX X BEKIN X XX X XX X XX X
XX X XX X XX GIVE ME THE SIGNAL XX X XX X XX

Bekin? Who was Bekin? I rolled out of the bunk and went to

the black notebook. We had been together a long time, me and

the black notebook and I wasn’t sure if I knew why. Most of my

encounters with it were vague because I was either dead drunk,

dead tired or totally disoriented. I remembered how I would

scrawl in it, trying to keep my pen from swinging in orbs of

oblivion. The need to write something in it was always

unbearable. I would stagger to it with tears in my eyes as if

trying to reach some mother’s all-embracing lap. Sometimes I

would fall into it on the way to a black hole, tracing star

 212

trails in some stuttering time shift, some bare assed neuron

shooting off like a broken wire or a water hose spouting

chaotically, wire heat, electric snake, voice pushing words

against a rubber sheet.

I opened the black notebook. Nothing but scrawling and

wine stains. In fact, I was in the very same place I always was

when I opened the black notebook, drunk, dead drunk. I

staggered back to the bunk and fell toward the comely curve of

steel. I hit the floor instead. There was a strange softness

about the contact. I could feel the hum of the rig. It made me

feel cozy and warm. I looked up from the floor at the bunk. Its

edges looked like scrolls and fluting of some incredible ship,

a ship of death leading dead angels to the island of

dissolution. I reached up and grabbed the edge. My hand

immediately shifted into its contours. I found I could lift

myself up with almost no expenditure of energy and that I had

complete balance, as if it had been sent to me. I pulled myself

up and tumbled onto the bunk. The RAD still blinked its message

in front of my face. I lifted the black notebook up and turned

the stained, weathered pages toward the RAD. The RAD blinked,

then spread a snow of static. Then a bar appeared at the bottom

of the page, actually touching it. It rolled up toward the top

and disappeared. One after another bar after bar rolled up with

increasing speed. I became dizzy. I had to puke but I didn’t

 213

want to dirty the bunk. I laid back and closed my eyes.

Everything was spinning. I lifted my left arm up and rubbed the

numb skin about my face. I could feel my skeleton. Again, I

held the notebook before the RAD’S eye.

The screen spun.

XX BEKIN XX
XX BEKIN XX
XX BEKIN XX
XX BEKIN XX
XX BEKIN XX

Unexplored rolls of static, that’s what the transmission

was about. The emission of static, static which was the

unexplored territory of life. Static! Static! Beloved static!

White space on a map, static breeding like fungus on the

screens of a billion and a half viewers, the unimpaired and the

crippled, the rich (who had left the screen to wend its way

like an entropic darling) and “surely forgotten,” nodding out

in the intrepid heat-furry of indecision.

The RAD fairly gulped the pages spread before it. Then it

went black. Turned off. Went dead. Nothing. I reared up and

grabbed the RAD then fell back onto the bunk. I was sweating.

Mind fucking son of a whore! I grabbed the bottle and slugged

the rest of its contents down. Empty. The bottle was empty! And

I was still conscious. I needed a refill!

“Whose running the goddamned show?” I shouted. I’m not

supposed to see this.”

 214

“Go to sleep, Shredder,” a voice boomed in my ears. Not

really a voice but a pounding thought, as if something had

taken my brain by verbal pincers and hot wired it. But I was

incommunicado. My head was stuck against the steel mattress.

Stars, circles, and wooze charged into my dimension. Static,

corpuscular static, split through every circuit of my brain, a

sickening, sweet, mushy, sentimental static mud, breaking a

bottle of holy water over my head, shattering into a million

meta-messages, dissolving into little sperm-tailed ingots of

squirming information. “No, greater love hath...and before we

go, I would like to ask you to pray for the chapel out-reach

this week.” Formica music, and the music for the dying elderly

and the cancer victims amid visions of duck’s tails wagging to

television sign off meditation music. “Life is a variable

thing, without problems there is no... money and wine,

meant...” crying boo-hoo angles, tiny red dots approaching me.

I watched them, dumbfounded as they rushed at me. They stopped

in formation, then reared back and struck my face.

* * * *

“Shredder, get your ass up here, you’re an hour late.”

I rolled out of the bunk, grabbed my shoes, pulled

them on and dashed up the stairs to the elevator. Then

stopped. Where the fuck did I think I was, in boot camp? I

looked at my clothes. I had slept in them. They were in

 215

shambles. My shirt was buttoned the wrong way. My shoelaces

dangled on the floor. They were scuffed and dirty. I was

dirty. My fingernails were shredded with teeth marks, my

fingers were tar stained, my face was covered with a three-

day old beard. I was a mess, but strangely I didn’t feel

like a mess. No, not at all. I didn’t even have my

customary hang over. I felt clear headed. I could feel a

buzz all over my body. My joints seemed newly oiled. My

nostrils were clear. The light was unimpeded, crystalline.

“Shredder,” the voice blared over the little speaker.

“On the way up, boss,” I squawked back. I felt

terrific! What the hell! The sky is an endless blue cherry!

I’m on my way North! I jumped up and down and then started

to jog in place. I stopped and spit into my hands and

rubbed my face.

The burnished steel doors opened and I stepped out

onto the deck.

“Listen, Shredder, I’m not going to put up with this.

One more late time and your out in the wilderness and

believe me, this is no place to be stranded.”

I grinned back at Ted. “Never again, sir.”

“All right,” Ted said, never taking his eyes from the

road. “Look it, the sensors read a structural weakness on

floor thirty-eight, eight boxes out of line. You’ll have to

 216

pick your way to them. I said “pick” not “dig.” They’re

explosively delicate.”

“No problem, boss. Listen, I want to ask you

something.”

“Make it snappy, you’re already an hour late.”

“Well, first of all I want to thank you and Emily for

the booze and the smoke.”

“Don’t thank me,” he said, “I didn’t have anything to

do with it. If it were left up to me, I’d kick your ass off

this rig.”

“Well, then, thank Emily,” I said, grinning at his fat

head perched on his little body.

“Emily has nothing to do with it. She hates the stuff.

Thank the Night Driver.”

“Who do you mean?”

“There’s only one left, bright boy.”

“You mean...” I stifled a giggle, “the Planet?”

“That’s the one.”

It was just too much.

“Listen, I said, suddenly cold and steely, “I don’t

want to strain your patience.”

“You all ready have.”

I moved closer to him, almost lovingly and put my hand

over the top of his head. It covered it.

 217

“You know, I think we could be friends if we only

tried.” I squeezed his cranium ever so slightly. “You ought

to get to know me better.”

“Don’t fuck around, Beefo, unless you want to die in

this rig.”

I squeezed just a little bit harder.

“You know, I don’t think that bothers me much. I’m due

for a die. How about you?”

I pulled him up out of his seat by his head and held

him aloft. The rig kept moving down the Dragon on its own.

“How about that, it doesn’t need a driver.”

I slammed-dunked him back into the seat.

“Where are we going now, boss?”

He whirled around at me, I immediately had his hand

and the laser in it and squeezed. He let out a squeal and

tumbled forward toward the panel. I grabbed him and lifted

his body entirely from the seat again. I raised him up and

took a good look at him. He had no legs! He looked like an

amputated spider.

“We’re not going anywhere with those things, are we?”

I cooed. I felt great. In fact, I felt youthful, without

cynicism, full of energy and enthusiasm, like my first day

at boot camp. I clamped my hand over his shrieking,

 218

inflamed face. I felt his sticky snot on my head. I pulled

him to me.

“How are you going to go down friend?” I whispered in

his ear. “Are you going to go down brave and silent, or are

you going to squawk?”

He bit my hand. The pain sent me reeling. I was shot

across the cabin. I hit the wall and immediately bounded

back with an ecstatic enthusiasm. I hit him in mid air

before he made contact with the floor. He flew across the

room like a blocking dummy. He hit the wall and slid down

it, raising both of his arms. That’s when I saw them,

Japanese Flare Arms. The ends were just beginning to

smolder. Soon they would explode with roman candles. I dove

to the floor and slid toward him like a base runner and

knocked him against the wall. He reached toward me as I put

my hand over his face. I felt his lips sucking at my palm,

reaching for some air hole, some crack of life in my hand.

I pushed harder. It felt so good.

“Ted, Ted, I’m willing to work for you. Just answer my

questions and I’ll be your dog. I’m a good hand. You’ll

see, if you just give me a chance, I’ll show you.”

His face was beginning to turn blue. His sucking

became languid, almost amorous. Now began the countdown.

This was the third stage, like the second time a hand
 219

emerges from the water in a drowning man’s cartoon. It was

the calm before the storm. I didn’t dare release my little

mouse before the second stage was completed. I bent close

to his ear.

“Come on, old buddy, let’s be friends,” I murmured in

his ear.

Then the second stage set in. His teeth, again,

attached themselves to the palm of my left hand. I pushed

harder, letting by blood seal any further leaks. His arms

shot out like an electrified puppet’s. I was so happy it

was all I could do to keep from jumping up and down on him.

I picked him up and momentarily held him aloft then slammed

him against the wall. Something inside of him caved in, not

like the popping of a balloon, more like a sigh, an

internal rolling with the punch, like a contact dancer

making his finest effort. We slid down the wall together.

He was unhurt. A complete athlete but only outsized. I

admired this man. I sat down across from him, Indian legged

and continued our conversation.

“Listen, Ted, I just want to ask you a few questions.”

“I know your type, Shredder,” he said, hardly out of

breath. “You like the big boy in you until you lose. Then

you crumble and whine and push yourself until you throw

yourself over and then you become afraid and proud.

 220

Someday, you’re gonna leave your own premises, your wide-

eyed wife. You don’t love nobody.”

“You know, I think I totally understand what you’re

saying, but really, it’s beside the point right now.

Listen, last night I tuned into the RAD and got some Eskimo

Broadcasts. I really didn’t understand the transmission. I

wasn’t really clear about what they were talking about.

They were saying something about the world being haunted by

ghosts. What’s up, Doc, are you all ghosts?”

Ted brushed a lock of hair from his face and sighed.

He pulled his arms in, the broken blasters hanging from his

stumps. He shook them off.

“I don’t want this to become a habit, Shredder. I got

a job to do. Next time I’ll be more prepared.”

He pulled himself across the floor and into the

driver’s throne. He executed the actions with simian

efficiency.

“It’s true that this rig is computer driven, but

without me it lacks the spirit. You don’t have Rig spirit.

It won’t go without me. Without me there is no Emily, there

is no Night Driver. I’m not against you, Shredder. I just

want to make this run. It’s just that pedestrians aren’t

used to the currents. They bug up the works. They just

can’t take the time shifts. I knew what it would do to you

 221

the moment Emily took you on. You’re getting younger,

Shredder, but believe me, it’s for reason I want nothing to

do with. The mind of the North is never random. It fixes

form. You’re on your way to something that is going to

smash you. Anyway, Shredder,” he shifted the immense gear,

the rig jolted and accelerated,” I wouldn’t trust any of

the transmissions you’re receiving. They aren’t for anybody

in your time. They are for ghosts, but not the ones

haunting the place at this moment. A time shift happened to

you, that’s all. Last night we passed through the “Leaky

Channel,” named after the History Crimes. It’s nothing to

worry about, only a little confluence. There are no ghosts,

you just passed through a time current, the signals were

refracted. Just go to work and don’t cause any more

problems and stop asking questions. I can’t answer any of

them, no one can. You can’t stop anything. You’ll get

what’s coming to you no matter what you do. Stop acting

like a big baby and get to work. Earn your keep. Nobody

owes you nuthin’. You want to kill my ass. Go ahead. Then

you can sit here and eat your feet off.”

“You got a point, Ted, several of them.”

Ted didn’t answer, his eyes were back on the road.

* * * *
 222

I cleared the boxes and set the eight ones straight. I

felt strong, unused. What an incredible situation. I

climbed to the top of the boxes and looked out on the field

of rectangles. How many times had I been in the belly of a

ship? Submarines, tankers, luxury liners? In the belly of

the whale. I laid back and rested the crook on my neck

against the steel wall. The ever-pervading hum went through

me. I could feel the memories of places I might have been

in other lives, ghost castles, heaps of stone, empty mead

rooms with bones in corners. Places with no glass. I could

remember peculiar places and beings. I even had names for

them and separate little inlets of nostalgia, though I had

never been to any of these places, not even in my

imagination; the fields of Talkite and the space bodies of

my friends, lifted out of the sand heaps through time into

the jungles of the warm planet Qwargia, the humans who were

not alien ants, ball boys, arachnids, scampering toward the

light, the light so close that it burned out the eyes of

the God of science and religion, the space eye, opened,

without shelter, without dignity, slaves to some planet’s

impulses, caught in time, shifting our spirits outward,

even past the boundaries of hope, god of flies, smelling of

electricity.
 223

Then it came to me, this odd realization like

something unimportant but just remembered, I didn’t know

what time it was. With the memory came the longing, fresh,

as if newly formed. I wanted so much to be in some time,

some specific time, to no long drift and adapt. I had lost

it, being back in New Coming, in a and sixty-four story

ship, drifting up an abandoned highway carrying anonymous

cargo to unknown signals.

What was in the boxes?

I jumped down through the successive stairways of

boxes to the floor. My new vigor was burning with

curiosity. Jesus Christ, I felt young! I leapt up on the

top of one of the boxes. They were sealed with computer

tape which would automatically signal the cabin. I quelled

the ripples of my avid body. What did I care what they had

in their boxes? I was going North. That was all that

counted. I didn’t know just why it counted, but it did, it

most certainly did. I had always lived my life releasing my

past like sharks into the ever evaporating distance, not

forgetting them but letting them go, like blood messages to

the eyes. It didn’t really matter what the messages meant.

They always were about the same thing...kill/eat/die. I had

killed many ethnic fathers. I had been beaten, fucked and

drugged by their sons. I had been in love with Loretta

 224

Young. My mother had been divorced, had plastic surgery,

and wound up in a metal hospital throwing up every fifteen

minutes for the last twenty years of her life. My father

had died in a car accident testing out a tune up. Mr.

Straight of the Shores of gitche gumeey, by the lake of

Titty Ca-Ca, poopy, snot-soaked suds and all that carnal

energy going into dust, i.e. Mr. Dead. No brothers and

sisters, except the dogs and bitches of institutional

sleezy Mind Goblins, sex addicts with red pencils checking

questionnaires. It didn’t matter. How could it matter? It

was/is fiction. When would it be real? After the Final

coming? I didn’t remember my mommy and daddy. My mother was

a hare’s pelt rubbed on a sailor’s JackBob one night before

leave in Okinawa, pretty girls with feathers on their pets

swaying, swiveling in the elephant wind, making it with

donkeys and brittle old horses on the way to glue. (BEKIN,

WHO DID YOU THINK YOU WERE? BEKIN WAS THE RABBIT’S PELT,

BEKIN WAS THE BULLET KILLING SOME LITTLE BUNNY’S MOMMY AND

DADDY, BEKIN WAS THE HUNTER’S EYE, AIMING, BEKIN WAS THE

TRIGGER-HAPPY WARRIOR SHOOTING OUT COWS EYES AND WOUNDING

THE DEER.) I had long forgotten the feel of a mother’s

teat, a father’s cuff. No bitterness, just void. My father

was the killer, my mother, the death, my brothers and

sisters were play things of the mindless, meandering star

 225

fields, picking their way through the nettles and thistles

of space-time and black holes (NO, BEKIN, COME TO YOUR

SENSES, IT’S ONLY THE MOVEMENT OF FIELDS THAT BRING STARS

AND THINGS TO YOUR EYES, NOTHING IS SOLID. NEW COMING

WAS/IS THE CONDITION OF THE UNIVERSE AND OF MEN’S MINDS,

SOULS, DELTOIDS, NUTS AND GUMS. THERE ARE NO BROTHERS, NO

SISTERS, NO MOTHERS, NO FATHERS, NO MUGGERS, NO BUMS, NO

QUEERS. THERE IS ONLY BOOZY, WOOZY OOZ.) I felt an ugly

eternal, repellent, boring, tortuous agony as if forever

entropy had already happened and the Steady State lukewarm

equidistant eternity had captured us, all of us, that the

universe had never really happened and that it was/would

always be that way, that I was awake when I should never

have been a witness to this massive dead zone. I coiled up

in a ball and buried my eye sockets in my knee caps, a hot,

steaming blood-like substance pouring from my face. Major

Charles Shredder was weeping, broken by his own chamber

master.

Later that day I went up to the cabin and greeted

Emily who seemed more friendly that Ted toward me. It was

still with a great deal of reserve, but I could tell that

she wanted me there on the Rig with her. I polished the

thrust-drive-turbos and discovered a small porthole where I

 226

watched the light of day come and go. That night I returned

to my cabin to find once again my bottle and drugs. It was

warm and comfortable in the cabin. Something of myself was

present in it. It felt like home, a retreat for the

Wanderer. I slid onto the bunk. The black notebook was

sitting there.

ODE TO A SKYLARK
by
Major Charles Shredder

m.
Shrimp boats are a comin
There sails are in sight.
Shrimp boats are a comin,
There’s dancin tonight.

I thought about what the next lines might be.

Why don’t you hurry, hurry home

Why don’t you hurry, hurry home.

Yes, that was it. “Hurry, hurry HOME.” Moving through

the darkness toward Qxneon, city of the North, celestial

Metropolis of New Coming, high above the windy channels of

time. I cocked the bottle up and took a sniff of its

aromatic contents. My tongue suddenly rebelled. Its back

leapt up out of the dark recesses of my mouth and crashed

into the liquid, at the same time my throat contracted. The

fluid was sent out through my nose, burning and spilling on

 227

the pages of the notebook. My cigar flew from my mouth. I

jumped up out of the bunk, cursing. I picked up the cigar

and the notebook and wiped myself off. I grabbed the bottle

up and sniffed it: pure Canadian distillate. The cigar was

Havana seed. I put the cigar into the ashtray and tilted

the bottle cautiously up. At first there was the

bittersweet old taste then suddenly my was mouth full of

stinging nettles. What was this stuff? This was not going

to do. I stuck my finger tip into the mouth of the bottle

and tasted the thin film. It was most certainly whisky.

Some one was playing a nasty trick here, Tantalus and the

grape, or was it the grain? Who was adding crap to my

juice? No hangover, better service, right? I slammed the

bottle down on the night stand. Besides that, my cigar was

ruined. I picked up another smoke and lit it, waiting for

the sweet, comforting fumes to awaken my sense of well

being but it tasted hideous, as if it was packed with

flies. What the hell was going on here? I broke the

goddamned thing in half and examined it. It looked just

like a cigar. I sniffed it. It smelled like a cigar but it

too must have been treated with some repulsive substance. I

threw the box of cigars against the wall and smashed the

bottle on the table. Immediately the fumes crawled out. My

body convulsed; my stomach turned inside out. I began to

 228

puke. I staggered against the wall, vertigo welling up in

black gushers. I fought the encroaching void and struggled

to my feet. I fell, then crawled to the door. It slid open

and I rolled into the hall. The door shut behind me. I

continued to wretch, dry heaving, water spilling from my

eyes until gradually my head began to clear. I rolled over

on my back for awhile. Dirty behaviorist bastards!

Slowly I rolled on my knees, my stomach gave a final

retching spasm. I got to my feet and headed for the

elevator. I felt a pressing need for some communication.

The door to the elevator was locked. I slammed my fist

against it. Futility. It was going to be a dry night. A dry

night? How long had it been since I had a dry night? I

turned back toward my cabin. I held my breath and threw the

door open, then stepped out of the way. Through the open

door I could see the light of the RAD blinking. The gas, or

whatever it was, was penetrating my skin and entering my

system. I ran to the nearest storage bay door. The fly

wheel was frozen. Slats of total blackness were strobing

into my consciousness. I was going under. I began to hear

the sound of the Tao, the white noise of the angel-ants of

death nibbling at my brain, damming the blood, sucking the

nutrients and the oxygen. The white noise grew louder, my

feet were becoming clubs, a thriving terror was welling up.

 229

I was nearing the big “D” (Death-the Black Hole-the edge of

the Event Horizon) voices of the ancestor’s were closing

in, calling me out

“Bekin/Shredder”

“Bekin/Shredder”

“Bekin/Shredder”

“Bekin/Shredder...”

I knew that within the body of every human was the

same alien force, personality, that which hovered in the

black point of the retina, that which moved the tissue. I

could feel it scream at the body encased zombie meat that

it inhabited.

Then I passed through the wall!

It was as simple as that. I found myself on the outer

side with the door still closed, standing there out of

breath, but breathing, alive, glad to be, thankful for the

simplest automatic action of my body.

I slid down the door, sat on the floor and took a

grateful breath of fresh air. Astral projection, say what?

How do you get a body through a steel door? Out of the body

into the body through the probability fog, fluttering

fingers passing between each other, moths of excitation. I

had read military reports of experiments where such things

were said to have happened, but these were with Orientals,

 230

who were smaller and more prone, due to cultural

influences, to believe in such garbage. I had no idea that

such a thing could happen to a red blooded American perhaps

I should get hysterical more often. It would save me from

picking bullets out of my ass.

The question was, why the fuck were they doing this to

me? I wasn’t causing them any trouble, in fact, I was being

down right helpful. I could be a lot more trouble if I

wanted to be. The dimly lit bay was filled with large

boxes. These were square rather than rectangular as were

the ones on the fortieth floor. Whose shift was it? Oh yes,

Emily’s. I wondered what Emily would do if I was to tear a

bit of that computer tape away and see what was in the

boxes. It was obviously something that was none of my

business. I got up on my wobbly legs and cautiously

stretched. I crossed to the boxes. I ran my fingers down

the taped seams. Of course, they had been aware of me ever

since I came into the bay. The tapes had heat sensors in

them. Right now, the alarms must really be buzzing in the

cockpit. “He’s touching me!” I spit on my finger tips and

rubbed the glassy surface of the tape. “Foreign liquid.

Foreign liquid.” “What am I doing with your boxes, Emily?”

I pulled a hair from my head. I began tapping the tape

lightly with it, tapping here, tapping there, sending

 231

numbers and equations and problems. I didn’t know what I

was sending but it didn’t matter. Some kind of intuitional

director was guiding my hand. Perhaps Emily was reading

this. If I could send you a love letter, sweet Emily.

Dear Emily

Thank you for the booze and the smokes. They just
don’t seem to sit well with me any more. Since I can’t
sleep, I decided to start to educate your computer...

My mind began filling with images and sensations. The

Dragon, the Road...who had built it? And I knew immediately

that it had never been built. It had always been here, even

before the human beings. It had been here before the

Planet. It had been here before the Galaxy. And it just

went North forever, North, up North around and through and

out of the Planet, out into space, steaming with time

channels.

I lifted the hair from the tape. Was I sending or

receiving? I grabbed the box and pulled. It gave easily,

like a big tire. I tilted it back and rolled it into the

center aisle. I jabbed my thumbnail into the tape. It split

easily. I ran it down the seams. Cardboard. That’s all that

was covering it. I could just hear the computer squealing

at the other end. I awaited the blow. Perhaps some

electricity out of nowhere like a daddy’s reproving slap,

perhaps sweet Emily would fry me. It was all in the cards.
 232

I wasn’t the dealer. Nothing new, Major Shredder, “use your

military skills, that’s what you have them for. This is

war!” shit, military skills, what a bunch of crap. I freed

the lid from the three sides of the box and pulled it

carefully back. A black surface floated just below the rim

of the box, a still, pool of black water frozen in time. I

slit the sides of the box and they fell away. A stone, a

black stone, like a big black ice cube, perfectly square,

not smooth, but slightly mottled, obsidian black. Or was

it? I moved closer to it. It was transparent. I walked

around it. The stone went dark. It seemed to seal up as if

it had suddenly changed substance. As I continued my

transit it became transparent again. Then they caught my

eye, the transcriptions chiseled on it.

S
h SCOUT
r . B
Bekin......... . ..........Shredder
d . k
d This is Ustad Isa i
e K n
r e
e
p
Counter u Still lost
in
p Space
t
SENSORS h Radios!
 233

VERY e Radios! We’ll

get you there.
CLOSE Radios!
g
o
QXNEON o
QXNEON AWAITS d
QXNEON
QXNEON QXNEON w o r k

They were talking to me! They were talking to me! They

had my name of them, me and Bekin. Shredder/Bekin. I was

Bekin. I had been somebody or done something that had given

me a name I could only witness. I couldn’t remember being

Bekin. Perhaps it had something to do with the blur and the

fantastic images I could never quite remember how could

that be? And why so many messages in so many places and in

so many ways? Now this stone. Or was it a stone?

I carefully placed my fingers on the black thing’s

surface. It was cold to the touch. Yes, they really were

big black ice cubes, but they weren’t melting and there

didn’t seem to be anything keeping them cold. They seemed

to be emitting the coldness. I pulled the knife I kept

hidden in the back of my belt and chipped away at the

surface, fully expecting to break a piece off or snap my

knife. Instead, it came off in little piles of jelly, as if

in separating it from the stone, I had caused it to change

its substance. The jelly began to melt, turning purple,

 234

then green with red tiger stripes. Finally, it became hot

as if a signal were being passed from it directly into my

nerve endings. My hand was getting the idea that the idiot

it belonged to was not getting the idea quickly enough,

that he was in shock and that if he didn’t get rid of the

stuff it was going to eat his mind up, not his hand. Rather

than throwing it away, I poured it into my other hand and

immediately the same message was received. My hand was to

be hot, was to shake, was to loose its neural structure! I

threw the blob against the cube and it stuck there, going

hard again. I examined it more closely. There were little

wrinkles forming on it. The wrinkles seemed to be forming a

series of patterns, the patterns were becoming words

t
h
a you SHREDDER
n
k

I stepped back from the big black block. It was

literate! Was it some kind of new life form discovered

somewhere in the bowels of the lower Forty-Eight? I stepped

closer to it, turning so that I could split the plane of

incidence (there was a definite polarization going on).

From one angle it was transparent and a dull green glow

issued up from its depths, from another angle it was an

opaque, flat gray. The opaque side actually seemed more

 235

absorbent than dull. There was a soft introverted magnetism

coming from it. It actually hummed. It was nothing I could

distinctly hear, rather it was something inside of me that

hummed back at it. I brushed my hand against its dull

surface. Metal, not cold, not hot, just solid. It only

changed its temperature (actually, the perception of its

temperature) when it was separated from the body of the

cube. The material of the cube itself was very dense and

peculiar as if it had come from the heart of a neutron

star. It seemed just on the edge of our dimension. I put

the tip of the blade against it, intending to lightly

scratch the surface but the blade slipped into it as if

there were no substance to the material. I let go of the

grip and the knife remained stuck there in the stone. I

grabbed the handle and tried to pull the knife free but it

wouldn’t budge. I pushed down on the blade and it slid

through the material without resistance. The knife seemed

to be captive of some deep magnetism.

“So, you’re going to take my only weapon, are you?”

I looked closer at the surface. Again, I could see

words on it as if they had been chiseled there.

invading cwargin planet being

-BEKIN-

unused ideas = psychic ice

 236

“Psychic ice?” Was that what I was looking at? Was my

knife buried in it? Instinctively I reached for the knife

and tried to pull it out but it wouldn’t move. I looked

closer at the surface. The words had changed.

Matriarchal Paleolithic mind

saw all possibilities

no reason to use them

living on a planet that loved her.

Have passed now into planet mind

ghosts breaking out of eggs

sending signals to counterparts.

You saw them, Bekin

(all the women)

in tiers running up the Dome

They are livelier now.

Check it.

Who’s driving the Rig?

You know, a boy, a girl, the PLANET.

All the same now,

matriarchal ghosts making sexes.

All just MAMA splitting up.

Ask the Paleolithic Boys,

they’ll tell you,

 237

“Mama just left the tube hanging out.

In the others she just poked it in.

When we want to talk to her, we

get together,

girls and girls and boys and boys and girls and

boys.

Can’t get away from it somehow.

Still can’t.”

I pulled my head back from the stone. “What a bunch of

crap.” Holographic, psychedelic wheedling. Who was running

the ship? “Matriarchal Mama,” ghost propaganda. I didn’t know

what all this garbage meant but I knew one thing for sure, I

wasn’t safe here. When the world begins to move towards you

it does so without mercy, without failing and on every front.

You meet strangers who think they recognize you. You have

intimate encounters with them even though you don’t want to.

Trucks nearly hit you. Doors slam in your face. Holes open

suddenly in the concrete. You see dead animals on the road.

Birds fly into your windows. The color red keeps popping up

around every corner. Your mind goes on the skids. No, no,

simply too much attention was being paid to me. It meant one

thing. My ticket had come up and it was my turn to be served.

I looked at the transparent surface. If it had worked

once it might work again. I scratched my finger nail into it.

 238

Immediately I felt the icy jelly telling my nerves to get

hot, very hot. In spite of it I scratched...

What
the
fuck going on?
Is

I watched the letters sink into the stone. They no

sooner sank than they were replaced by new letters.

Alien
moving
NORTH

for
re-contact

Is en route--Black Tortoise.
Also, Radios.

Again, I scratched my message into its surface.

“What are the radios?”

The message sank into the cube and new letters appeared.

We the
are RADIOS.

The boxes in the by were the radios. An alien was moving

north at this very moment in order to rendezvous (recontact)

something or someone, accompanied by huge radios made of some

kind of gelatinous metal. Since this thing was in a

conversational mood. I again scratched a question.

“Who is Bekin?”

The answer appeared.

 239

You r Bekin.

Nothing surprising, of course I was Bekin. The notebook

had said it. The Rad had said it. But WHO was Bekin? Bekin

was probably some implant stuck in my brain by the Military

when I was in the Bin. Perhaps I was some essential

component, a live wire, a last gasp transmission to some

annihilating satellite. Expendable, but necessary and on the

loose. The idea was to gradually undermine my identity by a

barrage of alienating situations, each making it more

difficult for me to live with myself. Offering me in the end

the solace of a new identity, Bekin, the alien. Yes, that was

it, the “Blue Monkey” principle. “I’ll let you go free if you

don’t think of a Blue Monkey.” The monkey in this case was,

yes, Bekin.

“Where is the alien going?”

-------Qxneon ......

“Who is he going to recontact?”

-------The S.y.n.t.h.e.s.i.z.e.r.

“What the fuck is the Synthesizer?”

 240

====The===way====HOME====.

Home? All right, take me home. Take me all the way

there. I’ll ride this rig to the Top and just at the last

moment I’ll pop outta here. I don’t care who you clowns are,

no one can contain Chuck Shredder! Again, I felt that

wondrous surface and wrote,

“Let go of the knife.”

The knife fell from the stone.

* * * *

Later that night I returned to my cabin and found that

the toxic fumes had cleared. I threw the bottle and the

cigars, even the dope down the disposal.

“I’m on my way out of here. I can feel something

inside of me buzzing. There’s something up there waiting

for me in Qxneon. I’m on an adventure.”

That night I slept with difficulty. The RAD kept

coming on and going off by itself. Patterns and static,

little dots and lines, explosions, asteroids and little

moons bombarded by meteor showers and comets creating fault

lines and shattering them, gravity pulling them back

together, comets splitting them apart. Zombies in the dark,

pie faced, gaping Cinderella’s. Once or twice it crossed my

 241

mind that all these emissions were actually signals, that

someone was trying to get in touch with me, but I didn’t

really care, I had enough information for one night.

Finally, I slept.

The next few days passed without incident. Neither Ted

nor Emily said anything about the boxes. I was given

various jobs which I completed with ease. At night when I

returned to my cabin there were no drugs and the RAD was

silent. For the first time in my memory I slept in a black,

velvet, perfect void.

It was obvious that my strength was growing. My spirit

was up. I joked with Emily who was gradually unfreezing the

farther North she got. She was beginning to treat me like I

was one of the crew. Even Ted was starting to soften.

Sometimes he would let me stay in the Cockpit with him and

for hours we would sit in silence and watch the Dragon.

The landscape had changed. There were forests of fir

and hemlock. The sky was a crystalline, Himalayan blue. At

times we passed deserted gray shacks with scaly signs and

faded renegade colors. We saw no one, no one at all, not

even any animals, no birds, just trees and sky and

wandering clouds and silence, a silence that penetrated

even the hum of the Rig, a silence clearly earlier than the

heart of man, which made the hum of the Rig all the more
 242

cozy and tenuous, like the shuddering wing of a high flying

jet liner. As the days passed Ted began to loosen up. He

started to talk. He told me about the RAD emissions. They

could not be controlled. They would transmit without

receivers, images and messages appearing spontaneously on

walls, floors, even the windshield. Using the ice RADS

seemed to pull the signals into concentrated areas called

Trojan Points. It was a safety measure. Once in a while

they put on a nice show.

“You see this land here,” he said. “There’s no one out

there. As far as the eye can see, no one, and beyond that

the land is empty, Shredder. Do you know why?”

“Why?”

“You won’t believe me, but it’s true, Shredder, MAMA’S

moved out.”

“What do you mean, “moved out?”

“She’s moved North.”

“Moved North?”

“Yes, to Qxneon.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“Someday I’ll tell you.”

As the days passed my strength began to take on a new

quality. Something in me was giving way to a relentless

yearning. It was as if I were reaching for some long-lost

 243

memory, a first kiss or a crack in the sky. The deep green

black of the forest, the cool crystal sky, the empty road,

the inseparable distance between me and my companions began

to take on an unbearable quality. It was as if my body had

a separate longing, that it was the prisoner of my spirit

and that it might just take off after that for which it

longed leaving me the astounded witness of a mutilation.

Endlessness, that was part of it, the endlessness of

everything, every thought, the endlessness of the yearning

itself, that naive, narcissistic, romantic myopia. It

didn’t realize, this longing, that it would not, could not

be satisfied, ever. It used me, this longing. It pushed

from the inside of my skin toward the body heat of its

object. It was so alien, this object, so autonomous, this

yearning, I didn’t know what it would do with me once it

got there; offer up some gelatinous gray substance and tell

me that this was what it had been yearning for, and then

proceed to convince me that I had directed the whole

operation unconsciously all along? I could see the jeering,

leering faces bending over me with scowls of ultimate

boredom, certain in the knowledge that they were perceiving

the realized potential of any object, being or situation

(including me). Statistic, unforgiving, debasing,

relentless, meaningless peeps into a meaningless galaxy,

 244

galaxies without MAMA. And MAMA? Where had she gone? Gone

up the ass of space? Gone with the Military? Maybe she was

Waf. A nostalgic goo covered everything. Was this what

morning sickness was like?

“Did you guys fix my booze?”

“What are talking about, Shredder?”

“My whisky. I couldn’t drink the stuff. It damned near

killed me. And my butts tasted like shit.”

“No one touched anything, Shredder, no one, but you.”

“What are you trying to say?”

“I’m saying that the stuff was clean.”

“Why do you guys always talk down to me?”

“Oh, come on, Shredder.”

“No, I mean it. Why don’t you talk to me straight? You

don’t think I can take it? Well, I’d like to see you guys

handle yourselves on my turf. Like to see you dodge gunfire

in a jungle full of ticks and spiders, like to see you

climb a mountain in a blizzard, ducking mortar instead of

sitting in the pressurized pit.”

Emily laughed for the first time in my life. She

looked even uglier when she laughed. If a pig could cackle

that’s what it would have sounded like.

“You’re a card, Shredder. You want to talk about

storms? Then look at yourself. This place is driving you

 245

crazy. You’re like a sea sick toddler. Sixteen-time

channels and the big Major is becoming marshmallow soup.

Listen, Shredder, you don’t know anything about storms

until you hit the time channels. This is just a breeze.

Wait until it gets gusty.”

Then the night coming like a big black, hungry bat

thrashing around in my cell, pounding my head against the

metal wall, weeping, yes weeping like I was throwing up. I

might as well have been drunk, staggering and wailing, my

skin itching, wanting to crawl away and be by itself. And

sleep, waking up in a sweat, the RAD flickering, showing

old love stories, and court cases with ancient soupy music

in black and white, but each morning I would wake up, tuck

my chin in and gulp my nightmare down, ready for work, a

sliver smile on the side of my face.

“Greetings, Captain Ted, how’s oblivion?”

“Tuck it in, Shredder, you’re draining all over the

place. You ought to get some sleep, man. There’s not that

much to do this morning.”

“There’s always something to do, Cap.”

“Scared to have a little time on your hands?”

“No problem, Cap. Got my wig on, the baskets empty,

I’m ready to hunt.

 246

“You been eating?”

“You should know.”

“Chucky, you’re really getting paranoid.”

“Don’t call me Chuck.”

“And a little testy.”

I moved toward him. Then the blackness hit.

Three days and three nights I stayed in my cabin in a

laser grog. A total shake down of the system, call it

electro-shock. Teddy had been ready. Just like the doctor

ordered. I was down. All the way.

“Shredder, you okay?” the little squawk horn tooted.

It was Emily. “I got a message for you.”

“A message?”

“Yes, it’s from your mother.”

“From my who?”

“You heard me. It just came over the teletype in a

confidential tear away strip. I can’t open it. If you want

it, you’ll have to come up and get it.”

“Okay, give me a minute though.”

My mother? I didn’t even know who my mother was. Wait

a second...my mother was dead.

Dear Son,

I wouldn’t believe them when they told me you were

coming, but yesterday when they showed me the
 247

ectograph the Driver had taken of you I knew it was

true. I don’t expect you to understand any of this,
but all will be clear by the time you reach us. Qxneon
is a beautiful city. It is so good to be above ground
again. Don’t be afraid, my son.

Love,
Mother.

Blind days of delirium. Was it a haze or an intense

electric plasma? Germ dream of the Death Market, corner

stone of the Wheel, blazing cross in starlight?

SHREDDER: Where are we going Ted? When is it going to end?

TED: Soon.

No one cares. No one really cares and it’s all right.

It’s quite liberating, in fact. Attached to this body,

holding this huge turd between my legs. Ovum and gas.

Chemical complexities. Mirror vision. One way mirror. No

one on the other side.

I walked on the mirrors through bays filled with

radios. I felt their endless chatter. They were talking to

me.

*********************
DON’T GO SHREDDER
DON’T GO SHREDDER
*********************

Cold, glistening radios, black frogs with twisting

green and black spirits hissing syrupy, sweet songs to the

great Mother, little tots, crying for “mommy”.

 248

**********************
BEKIN, WE NEED YOU
BEKIN, WE NEED YOU
**********************

Rusalkas crying for swimmers, Harpies calling out

directions.

x COME HOME x
x COME HOME x
x COME HOME x
COME HOME
x x

That night for the first time in my memory I wrote in

the black notebook stone cold sober.

Hard days. Can feel the hard days. Sometimes think I’m
breaking. No overt torture, invisible. Forest growing
thicker. Air crisper, but inside, smog. Can’t see.
Coming up from the Inside. Unable to break loose.
Sense danger. Received letter said to be from my
“mother” today. Perhaps a message from the Military.
If so, can’t figure out code. Again, could be Time
Channels, but don’t know if there really are any Time
Channels. Could just be a gas or something in the
food. Maybe radiation from the RAD. Perhaps implant in
brain. Ted and Emily could be playing tricks to pass
the “time”. Ecto-graph taken, i.e. somebody took a
picture of my ghost, viz. Ted, cutting me down--
message delivered = astral-burn. Just don’t let the
skin peal. RAD on and off day and night all by itself.
Think I’m understanding something its saying. Perhaps
meaningful hallucination. xxxxxxxxxthe dead are
comeingxxxxxxxxxDon’t like that at all. My corpse, my
nose grown bony with death, mouth gaping, eyeballs
askew. Embarrassing. I’m going to go to sleep.

I slept and I didn’t dream. I just went down.

When I got up. I was overcome by a sense of panic. I

didn’t know if I could stop from caving in. It seemed

like everything was hanging on the line and suddenly,

 249

out of nowhere, my time had come, the time of flagging

will, of nightmare screams frozen in my throat, and a

listless, meandering sense of inevitable defeat, of

just waiting for it to come like a childhood dream

belittled, my head lowered just enough, eyelids heavy,

lips caked, going down in slow motion like a man in

thick water.

TED: Time storms.

What time storm? It doesn’t look any different

out there. There’s not as many trees, but the sky is

still crystal blue, perhaps little lighter, perhaps a

little more haze but not windy, it’s not windy out

there. Still, there aren’t any people and there aren’t

any birds, but there is life. It looks like it might

be colder.

TED: Go down and sleep it off, Shredder.

I don’t know what you mean. There’s nothing to

sleep off. It’s what it is. It can’t be slept off. It

can’t do anything. What do you think it is, anyway? Do

you think it’s some kind of virus? Some kind of

animal? It isn’t. It’s me, do you understand, it’s me!

But I did go down and sleep. I slept fitfully like a

man in a fever. The horrendous arms of delirium

jostling me about. A drunk man with D.T.’s. Never

 250

alone. Always someone in my head occupying and

commenting on my every thought, my every feeling. My

body, grown into confusion, ran after innumerable

emerging/vanishing personalities as they assailed the

lens of my perception. I had been shelled in Korea, I

had my elbow shot off in Nam, my hair vanquished in

Libya, my psyche broiled in Washington, but the

assault upon my person, my inner being in this rig was

nothing like I had experienced before. Even a

completely detained drunk like myself could not (even

in his most suicidal dream traps) have expected more.

I was aware of an alien in me. It scratched on the

inner walls of my epidermis. It clawed to get out.

It’s designs, amorphous. And it was ME. I was inside

that animal.

TED: So, what’s new? You’re talking like a teenager,

Shredder. Get out of my sight.

What are you talking about, Ted? You’re not

saying I’m a bore, are you? I’m Shredder, I could tear

you apart.

TED:(WITH A BORED WAVE OF THE HAND) Go away.

An intrigue! That’s what it was. Trying to get me

to commit suicide. Trying to find the weak individuals

 251

and pulling them apart...by making them doubt...by

refusing to give them support...by taking support away

from them!

EMILY: We move like placenta, Bekin. We are one membrane.

We all are called on to get out of ourselves and recognize

the importance of other beings. We are all called on to

give of our humanity in order to have it. Now that you are

becoming one of us you’ll have to put up with us. Where can

you go? Into one of those forests? You won’t find silence

there. You’ll hear your own brain screaming, that’s what

you’ll hear. You’ll hear it screaming about “thebygonedays”

and you’ll feel the years mount, weighing you down like so

many sullen, gray transparencies. And in the cities you’ll

commit a kind of living suicide, you’ll drink, dope,

pollute yourself until you are dead on your feet. In the

suburbs you’ll squeeze yourself out though toothpaste

tubes. You’ll become as bland as baby vomit.

I didn’t know what they were talking about, but inside

I knew, I knew about places where murmurs were heard in a

white haze, where dancers whirled and gave themselves to

each other. Where private parts were shared. I knew because

I knew. I knew it all. I knew that I had been bred and

raised by jackasses in heat, that I had never appreciated

 252

my fore fa-and-mo-thers ago when they were Yen. My stock

had come from serfs not chieftains. I didn’t have the

genetic capital to beat the odds, except by hate. Which was

fear, later unraveled after the rage had spent itself. I

had no dividends to rest on, no angry uncle to appease, but

like the rest of the poor, I had become alien. I wanted to

be supported. I had become the gangrenous echo of that far

off Victorian civilization that had spawned me. I was a

greased Cadillac, a truck with fins! And I was terrified. I

was afraid, I was afraid that that same temper that had

found itself rent upon others would turn a pale eye on my

person, that in some drunken state I would turn on this

infant ego with a knife or butcher gun, with a slow

irresolute drifting, in the mud land, in the wet cement

basement land, looking out through a little window on a

town reaching for Christ. That I would strike a Deep Vein,

killing everything, even the Bandit in me. And I knew

living on, amidst the guilt and the shame, of having been

alive, of demanding this and that, of dreaming, of desiring

another’s flesh, of listening to their murmurs, of coming

like an unlucky buck in the mists of rutting season, of

keeping even one harem, my exactuality and my wayward does,

of not having, but having dreaming of their diamond

windows, glowing in the dark latter of dreams, walking down

 253

sidewalks in the snow, waiting for mirage in mirage, even

now in the sunset of my cares, little lady, making me safe

even up at fifty. Give me rosy cheeks and a fanned out

bottom. No, no way, not even transensual, not even limbic,

not even acid. Time? Pine trees in the distant blue sky,

fields of amber, telepathic fog, the “knew it in your

dreams” fog over this land and that.

SHREDDER: (WEEPING ON HIS KNEES BEFORE TED) Oh, forgive me!

The riddling fog, the muddying fog, the undulating

“light of day” fog, the “I gave it to you and now you’re

giving it back” fog. Stew seeking widow makers, pinning

light out on the bushes with their tiny cameras.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

BREAK THROUGH

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

And make everything “whole” again for the

Great Mother

or the

Great Father

or the

Elders

or the
 254

Prophets

or the

Keepers

or the

Saints

or the Mountains

or the

Rivers

or the

mud banks

or the

carp upon them

or the

wafers on the water

or the bass beneath its leaps

or the Swiss singers singing its song

or the stars which leapt upon the black magnitude

the unwavering pinions of star shift

and star shine

feeding on the wheat and the straw of breath

killing

themselves

even in their

reborn, new jet longing.

 255

This precise, distemper

breaking into open land.

This inevitable longing,

brought to life by madness.

These empty words

seeing

EVERYTHING.

This

Open

Mind

ever

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

IN THE FACE OF DEATH

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

playing with

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

THE MIND OF GOD

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

kis

sing

like Job.

SHREDDER: I’m going to stop this slot machine. I’m going to

jam it with quarters. Keep it hot enough to kill the

herring coming up river. That’s the truth, Motherfucker

 256

truth

open

truth

EMILY: Go to sleep, Major.

At times there were moments of clarity, when I read

the poems and essays of a Catholic monk who had found

solace in the East. I read his statements and felt his

embrace with nothingness, but my humanity ran from it as if

it were some kind of carnival trash. I read the Depth

Psychologist and the Literary Monolith but found that their

stories left me vague and restless, as if they,

unbeknownst, had slipped the dick up my ass and had shot

off while I swapped Dairy Tales with a Danish Milkman.

TED: (THROUGH A BLURRY OSCILLATOR) Get out of here.

SHREDDER But I can’t

TED: (THROUGH A BLURRY OSCILLATOR) Get your ass out of

here!

SHREDDER: Why are you so intrigued with my ass?

TED: It’s a fetish, Cornwall, now move it out.

SHREDDER: I’m dizzy over dames with you.

TED: Into the shit basket, Shredder and out of the

daylight.
 257

And there was no daylight, only interminable months of

“down time.” Head bent, hair akimbo, caked with grease,

staggering toward the hazy superfluity. The Buck in rut.

* * * *

“Chuck?”

He stood above me ringed with multiple halos, nimbus

rainbows full of crucifixes and riffles, grinning saints,

wailing martyrs.

“Chuck, it’s over.”

Perhaps ten feet, no twelve feet tall, Gyromaster,

wielding a toy bazooka made out of bubble gum, or was that

his skin?

“Okay, Charlie, up on your feet.”

Yes, he was reaching down through the starry sky, but

there weren’t stars, only vacuum space, combustible,

teetering, ivory, unwelcome but beckoning.

“What do you want, General, I’m a wounded man.”

“No, you’re not, Chuck. You made it through.”

Or was it a ghost, not the Holy ghost as in “Capital

Ghost?”

“You don’t know me. Get your hands down. Get that

light out of my eyes. You don’t have to torture me to get

the info., I’m unemployed, except by my God.”

Or was it my God?
 258

I could feel his strong arms lifting me up out of the

hamper, my bottom was wet and there was drool on my lower

mouth, my eyes were streaming and swollen, two bubo

blisters slightly burned from kissing angle’s feet.

“Chuck, it’s Ted.”

Ted? Not the spider gimp? Impossible, he was fitted to

his chair. What are you talking about, Ted? It’s always

been like this and it will be this way for...

I felt a cliché of water, cold water, tap, rancid,

fuel water, the kind you keep in a tank away from all light

and air, water that knew nothing of Mother Mud.

“Enough preambling, Shredder, wake up.”

He...was...bending over me. I could see his worm

pallid, poreless flesh like baby fluid near my skin. Is

this waking up?

“Yes, it is, Major. The storm’s over. The first set,

anyway. We’re in the eye now.”

The eye. The eye. The eye. Then I felt heat enter my

mouth, clog in my throat, reroute into my nose and spill

out on my face in a combination of taste and pain. What was

that? Soup? Broth? Bullion, but bitter and tart and at the

same time, sweet?

“What is that stuff?”

“It’s tomato soup and snot, Chuck.”

 259

“And what?” I gurgled, tossed my head, and sent a

spray like a boxer caught by a right hook.

“Whose snot?”

“Yours, Chuck. It would be better if you sat up.”

I sat up, like a monarch in old English, sparrows

breaking out of my brain in a circumstantial flight of

elocution.

“What is this, an operation?”

But I was sitting up. There was no doubt about it. It

was Ted sitting across from me, legs intact and a most

strange expression on his face: a smile.

“You’ve done well, little buddy. Welcome to the Plane

of Ka’Ba.”

Was that European?

I leaned over the bed and spit up some unnamable

fluid, then rolled over on my back and looked at him. He

sat comfortably propped up against the wall at the foot of

the bunk.

“You’re going to have to clean that up, you know,” he

said, still smiling.

“How did you get down here?”

“There are ways.”

“And you have legs.”

“So to speak.”
 260

My eyes began to clear. Little pieces of Ted strobed

in as my vision returned, that and an incipient headache.

“Where did you say we are?”

“the Plane of Ka’Ba, the eye of the Northern Route.

You should take a look at yourself.”

He held up a mirror and I saw a face staring into

mine. It was blond bearded. Two clear sky-blue eyes peered

out from it. It was the face of an old man, a white old

ghost. I bent closer and examined the image. No, the face

was not that of an old man. Quite the contrary, it was the

face of a youngster with baby hair flowing from its skin,

my skin. It was me! I ran my fingers over my face. I felt

the top of my head and again there was the same silken

touch. My hair was shoulder length.

“How do you like it, Shredder?”

“I’m beautiful!”

I reached down between my legs and yes, there it was,

my little soldier...I was still a boy. Truly, a boy. For my

organ ached like a three-month crap waiting to come out

into a gold toilet bowl.

“You’re quite a sight, Major, beautiful, desirable.

You managed well, there must be much untapped in you. You

should have tried harder to enjoy your boyhood, but now

here in the time channels all is repaired, and you have the
 261

youth you left behind. Even now at, what is it, Charlie,

forty-eight?”

No, it wasn’t forty-eight was it? I had never thought

of myself as anything but prime.

“You are prime, Shredder, beautiful, like a young

Jesus.”

“Young who?”

“Child of time, a sweet boy.” He reached for me with

husky breath, wheezing, the faint smell of Sen-Sen and old

barbershops. He wrapped his arms around me. I instinctively

held my breath and turned away.

“I’m not going to kiss you, sweetheart, I’m only

adjusting your pillow. Work your winsome limbs, Shredder,

I’ll meet you on top. We’re in for a celebration.”

“Celebration?”

“Yes, the celebration of Ka’Ba. This is my 140th.”

“And Emily?”

“I don’t know. Perhaps she’s turned into a dog, a

bitch in heat. Anyway, you’ll find out this evening. I’m

going to wash up now. We’ll dine together before Terminix.”

“What’s the Terminix?”

“The time when I leave the chair.”

“You mean when you switch shifts?”

“Yes, in a manner of speaking.”

 262

“How far are we?”

“Mid morning, going into noon. I’m famished. I haven’t

eaten since we started the trip. Now I can get a bite

before we hit the second 40.”

“The second 40?”

“The upper and last of the time channels, the North

40.”

“You mean, there’s more to come?”

“There’s always more to come.”

“Don’t get cute, Ted, you know what I mean. Is there

more hell?”

“No, not hell, Shredder, high. High up in the North

the channels bring you high, high winds and high, clear,

crystal skies, and clear thoughts, philosophy, mathematics,

Mozart, old fugues revisited, retouched with water music

and the tinkle of leaves and pine needles, the symphony of

glacier movement, the North, Chuck, we’re in the North! So

make it snappy, I’m hungry, and you’ve got some partying to

do.”

He was gone. My clothes had been replaced by a blue

robe with miniature school bells and little wooden handles

attached to the hem by an intricate pig-tail weave, three

strands of blue, white and black. I dashed about my cell

for something more fitting but there was nothing. I pushed

 263

against the door of my cabin but it wouldn’t move. I sat on

the bed and buried my face in my hands. I felt good. I

couldn’t explain it, but I felt terrific. But how as I

supposed to leave naked? There was nothing left to put on

and wait for my orders.

As if in answer, the squawk horn came to life.

“You should wash up, Major.”

A sudden door slid open in one of the walls and a

small shower stall was revealed.

“It’s all right, no gas, Major, just clean hot water.”

My muscle tone was still sharp. In spite of all the

down time, my strength and tone were in top shape as if I

had been working out every day. As I entered the shower

stall, I felt an instant of disquiet and suspicion.

Immediately the door slid shut behind me and a cloud of

perfumed steam filled the compartment. My pours opened and

fairly retched forth their contents. I felt the dregs

leave, gushing out of me in a swift, thin ooze. I breathed

in and felt the moisture reach into my lungs, swilling two

deep funnels into the black bags, swirling little miniature

duplicates into the root of each cilia. I gagged, and for a

moment couldn’t breathe out. I gasped and more steam and

air rushed in. I felt on the verge of black out and began

to bend over, when, with a sudden release, a huge wad of

 264

old respiratory material dislodged itself from my chest.

The biggest lunger I had ever seen flung itself from my

body as steam shot up and washed it away mid-fight. My

knees gave and I fell, ass first to the floor. A hot vapor

shot up between my legs and entered my rectum in a quick,

wet, ghostly finger. My bowels opened, leaving only the

faintest whiff of biology as the considerable contents were

whisked away. Two perfumed jets burst up under my arms. I

giggled as two more tiny, precise jets entered my nose,

making me snort. They penetrated my head to the tiniest

sineal cavity. I saw orange, then blue as a gushing head

ache came and vanished. Two thin oil streamers entered my

ears and evaporated in my head. I fell back, ravished as a

warm gelatinous thumb of fluid covered my genitals,

followed by a blast of steam. Then a thick, tepid rain

fell, covering my hair. Another rain swooped up from the

floor with such force that it lifted me into the air and

held me in suspension. Gradually the force of water

subsided and I was gently lowered to the bottom of the

stall. I got up, glistening and pristine. A hot, sweet wind

began to whirl around me and suddenly I was dry. The door

slid open and I returned, transformed, to my cabin.

“Come on in, Chuck.”

 265

Ted sat with his back to me. As usual he was facing

the road but he wasn’t sitting in the driver’s throne. He

sat at a small table. A seat was next to it. The land had

changed. The trees had given way to vast open country. The

terrain was pottery yellow. Here and there were brief

patches of scrub grass. The sky hung low with silver gray

cloud blades running into the dusky horizon. Here and there

were black clumps that shifted and flaked and divided.

“What are those things, Ted?”

“Ravens.”

“Ravens?”

“Yeah, they’re a little bit confused. Come and sit by

me.”

I had never seen Ted in such a mood. His face had

completely changed. The hard lines had softened. His gray

skin had become pink and his eyes, his eyes had changed

color. They were purple! He motioned me to the little fully

seat next to him. “The North, Chuck, the North is

wonderful. Look out there. You can’t see them yet, but

there are huge mountains out there and soon we will be

crossing into them. When we do, we will be entering the

last bridge to Qxneon.”

“Are there going to be any more time storms?”

 266

“Yes, but don’t let that worry you, right now. Right

now we are on the Plane of Ka’Ba. Let me tell you some

thing, Shredder, what you are witnessing is a one-time

thing. Not even I have ever seen it. Look out there. What

do you see?”

“An empty plain.”

“Exactly. And what is empty about it?”

“I don’t know. There aren’t any trees. There are

ravens moving around in flocks. I don’t see any of them

flying. The sky is gray, the clouds are amorphous. The view

is hazy.”

“Very good. I’m going to tell you something. You can

watch those birds forever and they will never leave the

ground. The clouds will never change. The air will always

be hazy. The land will always be empty. Do you know why?”

I looked at Ted.

“Yes, yes,” I answered, “because MAMA has taken off.

She’s left those birds in a daze. Half of their being is

discharged, half of it glows with the echo of her leaving,

but she is gone.”

Ted looked at me aghast.

“How do you know these things?”

“Everyone’s been telling me since I got here and I

don’t have the slightest idea what the fuck it all means.
 267

It makes sense but it’s absurd. What is it, some kind of

code?”

“Don’t confuse the map with the real thing, Chuck” Ted

said. “Everything you’re experiencing is real. The problem

is that it is all that you know and it’s always so near, so

immediate.”

“But it all sounds so fucking stupid. “MAMA”, it

sounds like a margarine ad. There isn’t any such thing as a

single real living, female entity called MAMA. That’s

childish.”

“I like your spirit, Chuck, so I’ll tell you

everything I know and you can work from there.”

“Well, it’s about fucking time.”

“It is code and it isn’t.”

“Oh, you’re making things so clear.”

“I didn’t say I would make things clear. I said that I

would tell you everything I know. Just because you don’t

know something doesn’t mean that it’s not real. Likewise,

just because you don’t believe that it exists doesn’t mean

that it doesn’t exist. Things that you don’t understand are

simply what they are, things you don’t understand. So,

let’s begin from there. All these things have to do with

the dimension of perception itself. It’s like the

proverbial bug sitting on top of a bigger bug realizing for

 268

the first time that mind, any mind, its mind, cannot be

hurt and yet knows that it has been hurt and yet knows that

it has been hurt because it mistakenly thought that it

could be hurt. To be or not to be was not the question. Or

to die, that it never was born so understand, if the

language is a little offensive it’s just because we’re

dealing with very shifty concepts. Concepts that touch the

language of our ancient, tormented universe. Concepts that

we must begin to embrace, Shredder, if we’re to touch the

heart of meaning which is so elusive and so desired by

humans and yet exists in their cells like unread Rosette

Stones. So, bear with me.

“The Earth, the Planet appears to be located in space.

That’s the first problem. What is space? Space is what the

Planet, the Earth is falling through, not floating in.

Space is a miracle, space cannot be, space is the creation

of objects in motion, or conversely, objects are the

creation of space running into itself. but where is “self”

in space? Why everywhere space is and space is just about

everywhere, except where objects are. Space and objects are

the hounds and jackals of the third dimension. In the forth

dimension they’re called “Elsesome.” But in the third

dimension they are living, conscious beings, all objects.

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Even your shit stares back at you. And why is that,

Shredder?”

“I don’t have the slightest idea, Ted.”

“Because consciousness is merely the sensation of

falling. It’s the yearning of matter for the center. This

is experienced in the third dimension as Gravity.

Everything has a center, because things are not falling

“down,” they’re falling “in”. And although each “thing” is

experienced as having a separate center, in reality they

all have only one center, the same center, no matter where

they are in space, because in the Center there is no space.

Do you know what the center really is, Shredder?”

“Tell me, Ted.”

“The Center is Home. That’s what you’re looking for,

Shredder. When you’re fucking, Chuck, you’re seeking the

center of a woman. The Center is the mouth of god, pretty

Jesus boy. Now this is very crazy, my friend, but bear with

me. Because Center is the destination of all the falling

objects there is THIS and there is THAT. That which has

fallen into the Center and that which hasn’t fallen into

the Center, the living and the dead. Well, because there is

THIS and THAT there is MAMA and the PLANETS. A good name

for a musical group, which, in fact, it is, up in Qxneon,

MAMA is the bio wave, the life zone, the tide pool, the
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green-eyed girl with bone white hair. MAMA is the strong

reality inside of matter, so strong that it creates and

recreates itself, so strong that it desires itself, so

strong that it gets greedy and craves THINGS for itself,

radios, tires, land. That’s life, Chuck. Life is MAMA FORCE

or MAMA. It’s just a spirit, a feeling about things. There

are many MAMAS. MAMAS have no bodies. But they need bodies

to work with, they need to tie the knot around the lesions

in matter. What I mean is that bodies need to be bound when

they’re in “3-D”, otherwise nasty things happen. But you

see, this doesn’t happen, because MAMAS, like Planets, have

Centers. So, you have the center of the stuff, MAMA, and

the meeting of dimension. Dimensions meet in animated

matter, you and me and the birds. MAMAS and Planets are not

just forces, they are creations of the mind, not capital

mind, not lower case, just mind, that latter day potential

within each meaningless moment’s reflection, reflection

within reflection, combination and interference,

coagulation, and reticulation, shores and tides of it, it

that makes anything IT the IT maker It, the Run Away and

the Brain Machine People, you, me, the Devil, all of us and

everything, we’re partials in a single all encompassing

white Hiss. Now of that Hiss I know nothing. Neither do I

know why everything is the way it is. But I do know one

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thing for sure, something has happened here between MAMA

and The Planet and it’s not good. Somehow something has

gone amuck, for the presently residing MAMA has gone

bonkers. She wants out. Do you understand me? I really

don’t expect you to understand, but the MAMA of this Planet

wants to leave. This is not good. This is not good for

anyone concerned.”

“How did this happen?”

“I don’t know. Some kind of catastrophe that no one is

aware of. It just happened one day. Perhaps it was war,

pollution, perhaps it was simple disregard, a loss of basic

contact, animal hubris, the losses of the blood current of

the world. Then again, she may have just gone sour on the

place or just didn’t get along with the Planet. In any case

Shredder, she’s trying to get loose. Those radios down

there, they’re transmitters, they’re going to send her

away. She’s gathered all the world’s ghost with her.

They’ll probably go too. You’re part of an historic

project, Charles, the Building of the Synthesizer.

I looked at Ted. Where had I heard that word before?

“Did you intend to take me there all along?”

“What do you mean?”

“Was I planned into the trip?”

He laughed.
 272

“No, Chuck, you’re just an inadvertent rider, a

refugee from New Coming. Like millions of others, you’re

heading for the last city. You’ll have to look into

yourself for the answer as to why you’re with us.”

For some reason I didn’t believe him. I knew I was a

part of their plans. It was too synchronous. The

Synthesizer; the key was the Synthesizer. That would have

to wait until we neared the now fabled city. Ghosts, MAMA

on the run. It was all code. With time I would break it.

Ted turned to me and looked at me with eggy, melting

eyes. He reached out and took my hand.

“Chuck, I’ve grown quite fond of you. I doubted you at

first but you’ve handled yourself admirably. During the

storms you’ve been a great help to Emily and me.”

I laughed. “A great help? I’ve been barfing my brains

out the whole trip.”

He laughed softly, “Is that all you remember?”

“Was there anything else?”

“A lot, my dear friend.”

I couldn’t believe this guy.

“You were out of your mind, practically out of your

body, time was streaming through you, intervening in your

metabolism, changing the firing sequence of your neurons,

creating and destroying echo/doubles. You were split and

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mutated. Yes, part of you screamed and wailed and behaved

like a three-year-old, but part of you, unfortunately the

part you don’t remember mopped the halls and kept the

radios moist, changed the engine Pillars and Throw Springs,

directed the Gurney Maps and deciphered Eskimo

transmissions. After a full day of work, you didn’t stop.

No, you studied, taped and re-taped the Eskimo

transmissions, certain that they were telling us something.

You learned their language and their concepts of time and

space and when you were done you not only intercepted and

translated them, you returned signals, signals that

answered! Do you understand the significance of that? No

one had done that before. It has even been theorized that

the Eskimos had all died out and that they were sending

automatic transmissions from the Polar ice cap, signals

with no one at the other end. The Eskimos have not been

seen for many years now. It was not known if they still

existed or whether they have taken on new form. You

facilitated our journey when we almost succumbed to the

time storms. No Shredder, you’ve done remarkably well. You

have more than earned your keep, you’ve become a part of us

and because of that I’m allowing you to watch my

Transpiration.”

“What are you talking about?”

 274

“Have you ever wondered what goes on up here when I

leave and Emily comes?”

“Yeah, almost every “day”.

“It’s a very vulnerable time, a time of the greatest

intimacy. It is a thing that I have never seen myself, that

no one I know has ever seen that I know of. I have no power

during that time. If you wanted to, you take over the Rig,

supplant both Emily and me and become what few ever become,

a Betsy, a Driver. You and all of the various sides of you

would take our place and we would be lost. You would be

immortal chuck, for you could drive the Dragon for

eternity.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Because I trust you and Emily loves you.”

“Emily what?”

“Please don’t echo me. Yes, Emily is in love with you.

You could become her Breeder but I don’t think that is your

fate. I think there is someone waiting for you up there in

Qxneon. I think you have a mission, otherwise, you wouldn’t

have become what you are now, a young, beautiful Lord. No,

actually I’m doing this for myself. I want to share

something with you, and this is the most I can share. When

Emily comes, she is going to make love with you. We both

will. You will give us some of your seed, some of your

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alien seed, Bekin/Shredder and we will have something to

remember you by before you pass on.”

“Why do you call me Bekin? Who is this Bekin?”

“I really don’t know. It is something I don’t

understand, something that you, shredder, don’t understand,

but something that you know, something the Eskimos know,

something the Radios know, something far beyond us all. Now

let us drink some Tool Water.”

At that moment a small jar floated down to us. The top

turned by itself and a green/black fluid raised out of it

and lifted into space, a sphere of liquid floating in zero

gravity.

“Open your mouth, Major Shredder, here’s to Ka’Ba.”

I opened my mouth and so did Ted. He took hold of both

of my hands. Two lines of fluid emerged from the sphere

like the horns of a snail and twisted in long, thin,

graceful funnels. They moved toward our mouths. I was

suddenly overcome with desire. I wanted the fluid, I wanted

it like a hungry, craven cock wanted soft, hot pussy. I

wanted to suck it and milk it. I wanted Ted. I wanted to

suck his cock and swallow his balls, I wanted his sperm in

my mouth, I wanted to digest a part of him, to make a part

of him and make it a part of my muscle and blood. The

tentacles stretched toward us languidly. Saliva was

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collecting in my mouth. I could hear the thing humming.

Yes, the living fluid was singing the most beautiful song,

a song of an ancient race which had lived without

organization, without rules, without society, without

competition, a song of pure love. Gently, the whirling

fluid entered my mouth without touching my lips. It softly

touched my tongue and immediately I began to melt into it.

It sang to all my senses. Its taste was sound, sound

without atmosphere, without ears, sound beyond my senses,

senses which informed my senses. If there was an elixir of

life, an ambrosial broth, this was it. I saw Ted’s body

bare of flesh, a clean white beautiful skeleton, a miracle

of architecture, perhaps the most beautiful attribute of

human form, more than mind, more than spirit, hands,

thumbs, skull, teeth, the long cobra vertebra, the ballet

of ribs, and knuckles and joints profound. I saw all this

even though my eyes were rolled up into my head. And I knew

why I saw his skeleton. It was because his flesh, all of

it, muscle and mucous and blood was at that exact moment

entering my body through the liquid Ted had called Tool

Water. And I knew also that he was feeling me just as I was

feeling him, not feeling, really, but eating. I could feel

him doing it. Gradually I watched the sphere empty into our

bodies until there was only the lines, becoming one, one
 277

line between us connecting our mouths to each other. Then

the line too began to shorten and as it did, our mouths

were drawn to each other. We followed the line until our

lips were touching, then mouth to mouth, our tongues and

fluids joined. I could taste his manhood; I could smell his

cock. Gently, longingly we kissed, then separated.

“Now we are with each other, Charles Shredder.”

His eyes were moist and clear, his hands, rough and

warm.

I said nothing. I just gazed into his eyes, into the

little unhuman retinas, into the little black holes leading

into the depths of his mind.

He gently released my hands and looked out at the

Dragon.

“We’re at the point of my Transpiration. I can feel it

coming.” I heard a slight tinge of fear in his voice. He

laid his head back against the neck rest, took a deep

breath and slowly released it. “You know, Major, I feel a

little shy.” He laughed softly and closed his eyes. He took

a deep breath and held it, then slowly let it go. “Do you

know what we really are, Shredder?”

“No, what are we, Ted?”

He looked at me, the blood was draining from his face.

“We’re silence.”
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His voice caught in his throat and he gargled

hoarsely. “Whatever happens don’t interfere.” Then his

voice was lost in inarticulate gurgling. His face became

red and bloated, his eye lids flew open, his eyes bugged

out, huge and veiny. He began to quiver. Drool spilled over

his distended lips. His hands became gnarled. He began to

quake. The Throne threatened to topple. Sounds erupted from

his mouth, hisses and foreign words, words I could almost

understand, words I wanted to understand, utterances full

of involuntary information.

“Sh...shrimp bowts are us...comun, thar sss...sssails

a...a...re in sight...sh...shrimp boats are

uh...uh...comin...there’s da-da-an’s sin to nite,

hurry...hurry...H..hurry...Ho...ho...ho...”

The quaking stopped. Ted remained. He was as still as

a statue, not stiff but still as a thing, still and hard. I

reached over and touched his face. It was soft and powdery.

I looked at my fingers. A fine, soft, chalky flesh colored

powder remained on them again, I touched his face and more

of it came off on my finger tips, a fine pallid dust.

Gently, I rubbed his forehead and it came off in my hands.

His skin had turned to powder! Beneath the powdery

substance was fresh pink skin. I began to rub his features

away, exposing beneath them yet another face, a face I had

 279

never seen before. Fine, black arched eyebrows. Soft, full

eyelids, opened and a pair of black Asian eyes looked back

at me. I started. Ted’s mouth turned into a smile and

crumbled into dry little dust cakes. I reached out and

brushed his lips away exposing yet another pair of lips,

the soft, red, full, sweet lips of a woman. Delicately, I

brushed the rest of Ted’s face away. Another face looked up

at me with an unearthly beauty, an Eskimo face. The face

smiled, showing its fine white teeth.

“Hello, Shredder,” she said.

I started to speak but my voice failed me.

“Don’t look so surprised,” she said.

“Who are you?”

“Oh, come on, you know.”

“You’ve changed.”

She laughed and as she did, the remainder of Ted’s

form, his clothes, his skin, his hair, fell away from her.

She was naked and ravishing. A neat little triangle of soft

black hair flared between her full, sleek thighs. Her

calves rolled down into long sinuous legs, her pillowy

tummy, her sweet breasts, nipples in a full ring of nibbly

flesh, her gorgeous alien face, oh, and those lips.

I bent down and brought my aching lips to hers. She

wrapped her arms and legs around me. Her hands cunningly
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swept up under my robe and took hold of my buttocks. Cock,

hard from months, nay years, of deprivation, swelled and

exploded but even before I was spent her finger sought the

rim of my rectum and slipped into my interior. And in the

same magical moment of coming my cock raised up like an

avenging angel, renewed and ravenous. In a moment I was in

her, in her so deeply, her moans brushing my ear with a

butterfly touch, her pelvis rocking me, cradling me, giving

me succor, giving me her balmy fluids. I tore into her with

homicidal fury. Her legs were over my shoulders. It was a

feast! I pulled my aching cock from her luscious portal and

buried my face in her billowing landscape, smelling her

musky, wondrous odor, licking her armpits, the crack

between her ass, the rose bud of her anus, drinking her,

craving the shit in her body and at last, her beauteous

flower, fold after fold, my ears covered by her strong

tender thighs. Somewhere above me I heard her wails like

the merciless north winds. Magically, we fell from the

throne and spun into each other, eating, devouring, my

cock, buried in her throat and again I came with a racking,

quaking sob, but again, she mastered me with a touch and

again I was burning stone. Oh, my God, Emily who were you

all this time?

 281

I moved toward her, heart throbbing, trembling with

fear, seeing her face once again, meeting her mysterious

eyes again...

“We’ve only just begun, Shredder. Your cum is thin

yet. We haven’t reached the root of love. I’m going to milk

you, Shredder, until your cum is as thick as honey, until

it is a city, until it is a world and then I’m going to

bury it in my womb.”

Her eyes glowed with an awesome fierceness. Her voice

brimmed with lust. And again, she sucked the living fluids

from my body like a great oceanic whirlpool, moving like a

great rocking clock, with a tenderness of another tilting

her child to sleep. But I didn’t sleep. I spilled. The

hours and the road swept by us. Darkness seeped into the

sky. And by the soft red glow of cabin light I wept my way

through ecstasy upon ecstasy. I was a plaything among the

stars, a child floating in the jelly darkness, in the air

above all torment. I was a star. She was the light

stretching like Tool Water into the hot, opulent void. I

saw my people and she saw hers. I was the sower. She was

the reaper. Horse and earth, wind and sail, knife and

butter, funky, homey guardian lizards. Fuck. To fuck. Oh

fuck, sweet, sliding, slithering fuck. Hot and honest, true

and caring, evil and fantastic, gyres weaving time,

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infinite death time, nothingness, abundance, chilling

thunderous infidelity becoming every lover abandoned to her

appetite which ever mercifully renewed me.

The night raged on, incomprehensible and still my

semen flourished like some great mycelial entity, growing

thicker, clotting, regurgitation in miraculous ecstatic

waves, a gusher of life, seemingly endless. And then she

stopped.

“It’s almost time to go,” she said.

“How can that be?”

“My shift is up.”

“Your shift is up?”

“Please, Shredder, no echoing. I want to do it one

more time. One deep, sweet soft, slow time, I want to be

rocked to sleep as I go.”

She smiled at me with her strange, black eyes and I

realized that for all our intimate probing we had always

remained formal.

“I want to turn out the lights,” she said.

Slowly the cabin lights began to fade.

“But I want to see your face,” I said.

“You can see my face, even in the dark.”

I felt her arms wrap around my neck. I felt her body

open. I felt her lips touch mine.

 283

“Bekin,” she breathed, “come in me.”

Her voice became husky, almost masculine. Something

inside me tore loose. I felt afraid. This beautiful being

beneath me, surrounding me was pulling my heart out.

“Bekin, who are you?”

I couldn’t answer. My long hard cock seemed to sliver,

to divide become some kind of membranous gray matter, some

equation emitting laser. This thing, this wand which had

served my appetite began to take on a life of its own. It

peeled back with a stamen-like multiplicity, dividing into

separate intelligence’s, each with separate ideas. Fibrils

expanded from what was left of my human stem and spinning,

it entered her watery utopia.

“Rock me, Bekin,” she murmured in that low alien

timbre, “rock me into your deep bloody cum.”

I rocked her. And indeed, I could see her face, her

gleaming eyes, reflecting the faintest starlight. I rocked

her as her body melted beneath mine, twisting into

shapeless whirling energy, voice, beyond air, entering my

mind. I saw whales, I saw trees. I saw mud rolling down

from the hills in waves. I saw the end of the world. The

creature beneath me was no Eskimo, she was the last sweet

breath of life. She was a journey, a night tern lost in the

wind, the rolling, singing sand. Gone. Gone. Her blood was
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rivers. Her eyes gleamed, two sparkling lights, wife of the

stars. She was the Planet singing me to sleep.

I awoke to the webless, silver corners of my cabin. I

had a splitting headache and my eyes burned. I rolled over

on my side. The blue robe with the tiny school bells on its

hem lay on the floor and all that had transpired the night

before broke in. I rolled on my back and looked at the

ceiling then closed my eyes. I was tired, used and

released. My skin felt cleansed, inside and out. I

remembered the “Tool Water,” the taste o Ted’s mouth and

the uncanny Eskimo. I wasn’t embarrassed. I had done many

things with my body during these 48 years, yes, 48 years of

being Shredder, but nothing like last night. It was last

night, wasn’t it? Perhaps it wasn’t over. Oh God, if there

was only some way to tell the time. I wondered if, in fact,

it might really be over and the second time storm imminent.

How long had I been on the Black Tortoise? I ached for

mobility. I hungered for the motels and open country of New

Coming. I knew I would never touch the Eskimo again, that I

would go up top and find Ted or Emily returned to their

former selves.

I didn’t try to slow the butterflies that were

crowding around my esophagus, inviting me to come under,

under and under into the depths of “down time,” nor the
 285

angry wail of satiation just now returning to desire. I had

fucked the Planet! I knew it. I could smell its wet stamen

odor on my skin. They had departed from the scheduled

program, or had they? Was I just “part of the plan?” or had

they dipped into the till? Had they “up there,” my captors,

shared fluid with the booty? What was a little oil swapping

between old reformed terrorists? It was, after all only

dream cream.

I stretched and bent my toes, testing my leg muscles

for atrophy (who knew how long I had been in this bunk?). I

turned my head and surveyed the room what was this place?

How did I know it was 64 stories tall? How could that be?

Where were we really going? Were we actually going to some

sudden outland, some beer can dead soldier land where they

could wear my skin out? Where they could beat me up for

some drive-in movie camera? It didn’t matter. It didn’t

matter where they beat me up and left me. That didn’t

bother me for some reason. It wasn’t the pain of death, nor

death itself. No, death was not so bad, no, not so bad, it

was just...so embarrassing. To be some suck-mouthed fish in

the chemical outland of a city. That was what was bad,

dumb, ugly, something a dentist might throw away, or a

doctor, shit on the face of an intelligent planet, entering

 286

huge orifices on huge barges with extravagant atmospheres.

I suddenly longed for oriental nights in Chinese junks.

I sat up, the primitive blood rushed toward the heart

of gravity leaving me stunned a moment with ontic spirtz.

Beneath it all was the ever-persistent hum of the Rig. Not

once had it stopped (at least to my knowledge). I rolled

off the bunk and onto my feet. I stretched and turned

toward the wall which housed the “shower.” It seemed to be

completely solid, no lines, no traces of an opening.

“Well, I guess it’s the end of the party.” I slipped

into my dress; the little bells rang annoyingly. My passage

to the elevator was uneventful just before I stepped into

it, I saw a flash. Actually, it looked like a blue and

white striped horizontal ghost.

The door slid open. The light of the open road washed

against the walls of the short corridor that led to the

main cabin. I rounded the familiar corner and spread a

convivial smile fit for Ted. I even warned him of my

approach by clearing my throat but it was all unnecessary

for the driver’s throne was empty. I called Ted’s name but

there was no answer. The steering wheel moved eerily by

itself. I looked out onto the road. It stretched out from

me, a thin ribbon surrounded by huge mountains and needle-

sharp peaks, blue-gray stone and dark green fir. It

 287

meandered among them in easy, gentle curves. At present we

were descending a long corridor to some enormous canyon

floor. The Rig rushed downward without slowing.

I made a precautionary inspection of the cabin. It was

most certainly empty. I edged toward the driving throne and

then slipped into it. The Dragon opened before me and a

great comfortable feeling of self-possession filled me. No

wonder Ted and Emily never left this seat. Where were Ted

and Emily? Who was driving the Rig? Perhaps it was on

automatic pilot. The panel didn’t tell me anything. It was

covered with numerous, randomly scattered little lights

which blinked on and off erratically. I looked beneath the

panel at the peddles and stirrups and gasped. They

disappeared into an endless black hole. Instinctively I

jerked my legs back, remembering the sonic-glass that

separated my feet from the interdimensional interface. I

pressed the paging button on my right, hoping to hail Ted

up out of the john or the void or where ever he was. But no

answer came. I slipped my foot into the stirrup and pushed

the pedal down. It gave vacantly beneath my foot. Nothing

changed in the Rig’s behavior, it simply kept rolling down

the great saddle toward the glacier canyons.

Thus, I sat and watched the Dragon unwind and the

shadows shift over the moraine and snow-capped peaks. The

 288

air was glassy. The wind bent the branches of spring

cherry, casting yellow pollen and needles across the road,

dusting the Black Tortoises’ great windshield. There were

no animals, no birds, no insects disintegrating on the

glass, just sky and pine and stone. As the light shifted

the sun momentarily blazed between the mountains and then

disappeared behind the peaks and trees. I waited with

waning hope for Emily’s shift, but as the light passed and

the road wound on, the cabin remained empty. No 300 pound

bombshell, no Ted, no beautiful Eskimo, only eternity and

its flags; the trees, the wind, the stiletto peaks of

shimmering snow, the great thoroughfares of glacier flow.

What was it called, “nostalgia of the infinite?” a touch of

time sickness, that was all.

I would be in complete darkness soon if I didn’t

figure out how to tap into the Rig. I realized, sitting

there in the late afternoon, that Ted and Emily had only

been diversions. They had no control over anything. My real

captor had been and still was, the Rig itself, the Black

Tortoise. It turned out the lights...and it turned them on.

And more than likely it was meant to keep me in until the

end of the trip and whatever awaited me on the other side.

If I was to find a way out, I would have to begin at once.

 289

I checked the chutes and seals first. All were locked.

I glanced up at the roof of the cabin and noticed a spinner

seal, obviously put there to gain access to the roof. With

a wisp of hope I pushed against the tappet valve and

watched the integers line up, flashing their red numerical

series. It was an assertion lock as I had suspected.

Perhaps the Rig didn’t really have a mind of its own,

perhaps it was really just a big safe. As if in response,

the numerals lined up like three lemons on a slot machine.

There was a little burst of orange steam, followed by an

acrid green smoke ring as the ion barring’s disintegrated,

releasing the seal. The rest would be mechanical. I pulled

the disk away. A wing barring with knuckle holds was

beneath it. I pushed my knuckles into the wells and

twisted. The plate began to revolve. As it turned two metal

tongs emerged. I grabbed them and twisted them in opposite

directions. The seal released with a hiss and the tongs

came out in my hands. I tossed them on the empty driver’s

throne. I reached up and pushed. The hatch lifted. I felt

fresh air.

I pushed the hatch away, expecting to see a feathery

slash of blue sky. Instead, I found yet another

compartment. It was a tube-shaped metal room with a blunt,

rounded roof. Big naked bolts held the steel together. I

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crawled up into the windy chamber and felt a steely chill.

I had become unaccustomed to such direct contact with

nature. I looked down into the driver’s cabin with a

surprising little spasm of nostalgia. The mammal in me

wanted to return to the warmth of its prior den. I checked

the top of the hatch and found the hatch key, pulled it up

and out of the hatch body and flung the hatch cover over my

familiar world. I slipped the key in the picked of my

dress.

The compartment was almost completely dark. There were

a few slits where light and the cold crisp air whistled in.

Was this some kind of dead-end pressure valve? I searched

the walls for some kind of second hatch or sliding panel

but found none. I looked at the floor and saw a series of

file grooves. I noticed again that there were similar

grooves on the walls. I planted my feet squarely in the

middle of the foot grooves and put my hands on the grooves

in the walls and twisted my body to the right. The room

began to revolve with it. The wind got louder. I could feel

the temperature dropping. Clearly, I was revolving an

opening. I continued to twist and the room turned. A

brilliant line of light emerged in the wall. The room

opened like a twist lock cap on a medicine bottle. As the

side of the wall opened the air speed increased until it

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was a hurricane force. The blast all but pinned me against

the wall.

Although I had never been an acrophobe, my feet ached

and my mind reeled. I fully expected to be in direct line

of sight with the tree tops. Instead there was only space

and the snow-capped peaks. I was clearly far above the

trees and the road. I was in a virtual skyscraper moving at

a tremendous speed.

I caught my breath and pulled myself away from the

wall and the pinning wind and grabbed onto the sides of the

opening. I pulled myself forward against the wind and

peered over the edge. The sight was truly awesome. I had

never really gotten a good shot at the Black Tortoise

without the illusion of holographic contraction. To be

perfectly frank, I actually doubted Ted’s and Emily’s

assertions about the Rig’s size. How wrong I had been. The

Rig was immense, a wall of black metal running down...I

leaned over a little more...running down it seemed almost

to infinity. My feet ached with fall-shock.

I looked out at the horizon. Between the mountains,

for above the trees, the sun was beginning to edge its way

out of sight. I knew the temperatures would begin to drop

drastically at shadow-fall. I poked my head into the

hurricane force winds and looked up, hoping to stunt my

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vertigo. Directly above the opening was a set of hand grips

leading into a thin-skinned access channel which went up

and out of sight. I grabbed the handle and hoisted myself

into the high spaces of the upper Rig.

The access channel was dotted with a long row of

portholes. It lead up to a towering fragment spire. I

pulled myself deeper into the channel, watching the

cloudless, darkening sky. I moved along at a good clip by

simply lying back and pulling myself through the access

channel by the hand grips. The passageway gently curved

upward and my progress began to slow. I climbed the steps

as my angle to the rig became perpendicular. The awesome

landscape came into view. I stopped and rested and caught

my breath. In the distance, I heard a low, melancholy

sound. It rose and fell in baleful glissandos, pealing

partials away with an incipient, weighty hysteria. The

sound once perceived became increasingly penetrating. It

was a ghostly, infinite sound, saccharine like the last

sigh of a gargantuan corpse, a gargoyle of a sound. My hair

bristled. Something about it seemed to sap my energy,

filling me with a leaden melancholy. A sudden invading gust

of wind shot through the channel. Immediately my body was

cold. I began to climb quickly up the channel to work up a

bit of body heat and shake off the numbing atmosphere. The
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sound became louder as I approached the opening at the

other end. I realized with sudden bristling of hair what

the source of the sound was. It was the access channel

itself, acting as a huge vertical flute, the winds blowing

over its lip at more than a hundred miles an hour. The wail

grew deafening as I neared the end of the access channel. I

carefully stuck my head out of the channel and was met by a

blast of warm, luscious air. The sound now engulfed me. It

thrilled me and scared me. It made me laugh.

Above the access channel was a form fitting crows

nest. It sat atop the fragment-spire. Grip bars ran along

its side. A small platform extended from its base. I

grabbed the grip bars and pulled myself into the gale and

stood on the platform. The crows nest was indented and my

body fit perfectly into it. There were straps hanging from

its sides. I strapped myself in and released an ecstatic

scream. The wind whipped it from my mouth. The crow’s nest

was a good quarter of a mile above the Rig. I looked out

onto the vast landscape relishing the fresh, unprocessed

oxygen. At that precise moment the Black Tortoise was

negotiating the up side of the canyon at a tremendous speed

considering the angle of ascent and the size of the Rig.

The mountains loomed above me. Beyond them I could see yet
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other ranges, white needles becoming steely blue with

distance.

I looked down at the base of the platform and noticed

that it was sitting on a swivel ring. It was obvious then,

that the crow’s nest wasn't fixed in one direction. I ran

my hands along the edge of the crows nest hoping to find

lever that would release the swivel ring. Above me was

small ledge with two knuckle grooves and what looked to be

a set of gage pulleys. I reached up, slipped my fingers

into the loops and pulled down. The platform shuddered. The

crows nest began to rotate.

I felt the wind slice around me as I became a part of

a sudden wing. The mountains continued in infinite

progression westward, the sun growing dusky, beginning to

tint the streamer clouds with northern pink. A massive

range of flame-shaped peaks glowed gold and white in the

distance as if in a far away time. The crow’s nest turned

windward like some radar crucifix. The wind knocked my ears

about and then went dead as the South came into view, the

Dragon’s Tail.

I couldn’t focus on it. I tilted my head like a dog

listening to a faint sound. At first it was a yellow blob

with a trace of Martian continental stain, then the yellow

became flat and shiny and synthetic with red and honey-
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colored smears. Sticks came out of it. Or were they black

rods? The blob became translucent, divided into plates,

each with separate color schemes, consecutive windows

unshuffling. Buildings, yes, they were buildings on the

horizon as if they had been projected, black buildings

stained blue with distance. They towered over the southern

line of trees, making them look more like an edge of grass

bordering a huge bulging hologram. The yellow thing was the

air. Cities! Incomprehensibly compressed. Cities, yellow

towns, red towns, army brown towns, dead, stock still and

bloated. This was the shit end of the Dragon, where all the

scum skrit went, this 3-D Xerox. Little wonder the North

was pure and clear.

I jammed my finger into the knuckle groove above me

and the crows nest began to rotate westward, turning me

from the towns, and the cities, and the smog. The tiny

forest foreshortened and came dizzyingly towards me,

abruptly growing like the first hump of a giant roller

coaster, becoming at my end, the familiar trees and

mountains and clouds of the North. I craned my neck toward

the South and caught one last glimpse of the cities as the

crows nest turned. The wind began blowing. My eyes watered.

The Eastern horizon was already in blue twilight, no stars,

but bolt blue, the glaze jelly of dead eyes. The wind blew
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harder as the gold and blue North tunneled forth. In full

blast I looked into the eye of the destination. The moist

trail of MAMA moving away in the distance. Oh North, eat

what’s behind me away. The wind shifted as the crows nest

turned West again. The sun, cushioned on the mountains, was

beginning to dwindle in the northern lace, cool with

wondrous aura. The crows nest continued to swing southward

and the hot vomit colors glistened up again as the

foreshortened trees unlatched and sent me rushing into the

Xerox. Flat yellow buildings on red skies, March music and

hammers in the distance, hummering on the end of a great

hurricane’s eye, the Cities, in primer color. Bossy,

polyester, cubical skies in mathematical mock, generated by

disk drives. Men’s cologne and heat, refried heat, like

things rubbing together without oil what was out beyond

those cities where the world wrapped around and headed

North again? I knew there was no North going that way, only

cities and people and creatures, as if on an endless

conveyer belt. The crows nest continued turning toward the

darkening eastern sky just beginning to fill with stars.

The clouds and the trees had grown dark and beautiful, the

East in Everlight.

The crows nest continued to rotate northward and the

wind returned, pinning me with a perpetual freezing gust.

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The temperature had dropped considerably. If I didn’t find

a way to get back into the Rig I would arrive in the Fabled

City in frozen crucifixion a quarter of a mile above the

Rig for all to see. I tugged on the cable in the knuckle

groove and rotated westward, side slashing the wind and

then continued toward the putrid southern horizon. The wind

stopped blowing. I looked down at the trailer’s broad roof

and gasped. It was studded with star-like portholes of

white, amber, blue, green and pink. Something about them

made my blood freeze. It was as if the South with its Xerox

sky had sent infesting rays into the skin of the trailer

and had created thousands of luminous multicolored

blisters.

I knew once and for all that I had to get off this

contraption and into the strange comfort of the Rig. But

how! Perhaps I could unbuckle myself from the straps and

gingerly work my way down the mast into the access channel

and get back into the main cabin. I reached for the straps

but in the darkness, I couldn’t see them anymore. I was

suddenly hit by a wave of vertigo. I involuntarily shouted

and almost fell into black out. I flung myself back against

the crows nest and gulped at the air, fighting my melting

knee joints.

“Shredder get hold of yourself.”

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And I did. I did it all at once and completely. There

was something else, a certainty in the form of a soundless

voice came to me, “Fly,” it said.

I knew what it meant and how it would be done. I

reached up and ran my fingers over the edge of the crows

nest, feeling the smooth indentation of the knuckle groove.

Near one end of the groove was a button. I dug my feet into

the platform, pushed my body against the crows nest and

released my other hand. I reached up and took hold of the

cable pulley and at the same time pushed the button and

quickly joined one hand with another around the hook at the

end of the cable, and as I did, I felt the securing straps

unsnap. I fell forward into the void.

Immediately the wind took my body like a kite and sent

it aloft. My legs began to dog paddle, climbing up the wall

of space. I saw the unwholesome southern sky flash by me

and out of sight and the queer, ominous, speckled back of

the trailer sweep up crazily. The “zing” of the unwinding

spinneret cable wailed. I was flying! I looked up briefly

and caught the eerie glow of the southern sky reflected on

the crows nest as I fell away from it.

“Fly, Shredder, fly!”

I spread my legs and let everything go, my voice, my

shit, my piss, everything. I was overcome with a glaze of

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peculiar objectivity as the stadium sized trailer roof

enlarged. Its multicolored portholes dilating, drawing

nearer as the cable unwound, lowering me gently on a

cushion of speed and wind. I felt an oozing warmth and I

heard a sound like a rabbit scratching Styrofoam, a bottle

of water being tipped on its soft, furry head. My eyes

found new pockets of pleasure. I realized with a muted

titter that I was snoring. My eyeballs slipped gelatinously

forward from under my eye lids and pools of amber, white

and pink came into view, sweet, soft, glowing marshmallows.

I stared at them, fish lipped, drool chilling the side of

my mouth. What were they? Colored orbs with shadows. They

were faces. They were part of the cargo. I looked down at

them again. They shifted their eyes toward me. Brown eyes,

blue eyes, green eyes with dreamy hunger. What had the RAD

said?

XXXXXXXXGHOST PLANETXXXXXXXX

Faces of ghosts. It was impossible, but it was real.

They were ghosts! I don’t think I ever had known for

certain, but now I did. I could tell. They were really

ghosts! The atmosphere around them was dead, literally

dead, something yet nothing, a corpse of an atmosphere.

There was a sense of interfacing dimensions...i.e. two

different ways of being real, the threshold between the

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imagined and the actual. There is always a shimmering

between those two places. Usually awareness shifts easily

from one to the other, using a kind of boot strap technique

where by one is made accessible by denying the veracity of

the other. A feeling of stability (sanity) is maintained by

phasing the shift between the imagined and the actual with

those of other people, the focus usually being on

maintaining veracity with the real by separating the

imagined from it. With ghosts there is no way to separate

the imagined from the actual. It simply is there, defying

the basis by which one discerns one’s sanity...that’s why

they’re so frightening, ghosts. I knew with certainty that

I was going to land on them. I was now a mere twelve yards

above them, gently blowing down. There was no time to

speculate on the possibility of other choices. I pulled my

legs into my chest and fell like a parachuting spider onto

the top of the trailer. I could feel the faces watching me

as I approached. I hit the roof and slid. The portholes

flew by...hello...hello...hello...I was rushing toward the

aft end of the trailer. Dreadfully.

Silence. Not even the wind was blowing. The roof of

the trailer was aglow with a gay array of lights. Far ahead

of me a giant Varashield cut the wind, making the surface

strangely calm. I looked down between my legs. Looking back

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up at me were the blood brown eyes of a face the size of a

hand pressing against the glass. I couldn’t take my eyes

away from it. It was fascinating in a pasty sort of way.

Like looking at a pickled body, not just a body however,

no, a pickled, dead body that could look back at you, the

kind of body that might jump up and grab you by the nose.

Eyes that made me want to look back at them forever, just

to see if I was right, just to see if they really were that

way, if they really were dead or if they really were

looking at me. The glass was steamy and beaded, not from

breath, no one was breathing behind that glass, but from

some kind of wet pressurized containment, some ectoplasmic

moisture. I felt a burst of clammy death sweat as if some

putrid, sweet smelling gas had leaked up and entered my

system. I heard someone gasping and panting. He was

floating over ether holes which were expelling ether rays

at soldier force, blowing his nose off, his moth off, his

face off, ether wind blowing the green from the leaves,

blowing the inside of him away. I reached down for him

through the glass and tore his eyes away. He heard me gasp

and then I looked out into my own dimension. Ghost holes!

Ghosts, hermetically sealed. I trained my eyes on the front

of the Rig and picked my way through them. They were, after

all, only fellow passengers. Weren’t we all heading the

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same direction? Were we not going to Qxneon? I set my eyes

for the wind plow in front of me about a hundred yards

away. Gradually, I picked my way forward, calming my

breath, prodding it along whenever it got caught.

Painfully, slowly, I worked my way forward. I knew that I

was weeping piteously, both from fear and from a strange

mourning as if the faces were releasing some of their

stranded lives up into mine, asking me to come join them

there in that chamber beneath the surface. Several times I

slipped and fell among the faces. They looked back at me

with unstartled, unblinking eyes. Screaming beyond the

atmosphere into the ears of the ghost that haunted my own

body. Blondes, blacks, brunettes, children, women, men,

smooth faces, whiskered faces, some chiseled, some rounded

and apple cheeked, some smeared, some fish mouthed, pushed

up against the glass. I began laughing. They were worried,

worried that they wouldn’t make it to Qxneon. “Don’t worry

folks, ol’ Major Shredder will get you there. We’ll all

make it to Qxneon.” What other cargo was on the Black

Tortoise?

At last I came to the end of my journey. Before me, in

the center of the Varashield was a hatch. I grabbed the

pressure wheel and turned it with all my might. It gave

easily, spun, in fact. The hatch door opened. I peered into

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the darkness fully expecting to find myself in the gaseous

death chamber of the ghosts. But no, it was only a huge

dark bay filled with boxes under a dim green glow.

I cautiously stepped into the darkness. I stopped,

then turned and looked out at the roof of the trailer to

get one final glance at the faces. They were gone! The

trailer’s surface was black except where it reflected the

livid orange and yellow cities of New Coming which glowed

like a huge mechanical eye. I closed the hatch on it all.

As I walked through the dark bay, I realized that I

was glowing. I looked at my legs, they shimmered with an

ectoplasmic phosphorescence, my hands were alive with

Kirlian sparks, my skin tingled. I looked down. Even my

pecker was glowing! And there was something about my eyes,

the way I could see, so clearly even in the darkness of the

bay. I could see colors I had never seen before, ultra-

violets and infra-reds. I could grasp the whole scene as

one strange wrap-around gestalt like a holographic Mobius

strip. At the same time every tiny individual element of

the big room was broken down into a separate part forming a

mosaic of the whole. I giggled. My ears! I could hear the

white noise of my nervous system, the blood circulating,

the beating of my heart and all of the harmonics that

comprised the Rig’s gentle hum, even the slip of my bare

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feet crossing the floor oscillated in a fan of crisp

partials. Perhaps I was undergoing another curious

transformation. Perhaps I was again in the eye of some

unknown storm in any case, I was hungry and I knew just

where to go and how to get there. The Genetic Kitchen was

through that door ahead of me, through it and down the

corridor, the second door on my right. The first door on my

left was the shower stall. I headed there first.

* * * *

I settled back into the supple driver’s throne and

looked out on the empty Dragon. Dawn had not yet broken and

didn’t show the slightest sign that it would. How long had

I been out there? I looked up to my left at the RAD. It was

iced. Perhaps the Eskimos could tell me. After all I had

supposedly established communication with them.

I reached up and touched the On-dot. Immediately the

screen filled with Technicolor static accompanied by a

screech and a gobbling hiss. Involuntarily I threw my hands

over my ears and shut my eyes.

My mind went dark, the cortical after images faded

into an orange mud becoming electric, then splattered into

nothingness. I was confronted with a black three-

dimensional field. I could reach out into it with an

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invisible arm and feel its space and silence, complete

silence, not even the white sound of my body.

“Yes, Bekin,” a voice inside me said, I felt as if I

had become a receiver. “Now we’ve got you by the eyes.” It

continued, (I think there was chuckling). I could feel the

curves of the driver’s throne, could smell the polyethylene

of the cabin.

Their voices came to me, five of them in a neat

sandwich of harmonics, all saying the same thing, all

saying it at once.

“Don’t open your eyes. Just listen. We are the

Eskimos. You are in a place, Bekin, where the

constellations are forever changing. Every star map is out

dated at the moment of its configuration. Ahead of you is

the city of Qxneon. In Qxneon there is no air, no light, no

life. The temperature is the same as the dark side of the

moon. Ustad Isa has been sending signals to you during

“down time.” We have monitored his messages but have been

able to make direct contact with him. We don’t understand

much of what he sent you. But this much we have gathered.

He is planning to meet you at the top.

“But beware. There are interlopers. MAMA is in on it.

She is constructing huge scanners which she will connect to

the Radios when they arrive in Qxneon. The radios are the
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newest addition to MAMA’S arsenal of inventions. She

created them in the swamps of Mompono. Combined, they form

a kind of hypercontracted, organic, photo-protozoan

intelligence, known as the Super Conductive Random Event

Accelerator Medium or SCREAM. They are SCREAM radios, or

Scanners. Being a combination of insectoid and photo-

genetic nucleotides, they eat radiation and possess the

insect’s ability to remain stable in the face of mutation,

a super-conductive stew of ancient organic potential, the

world’s mind in a petri dish, unaccountably quick,

adaptable, brilliant, tenacious. Imagine their power when

they are directed by a MAMA. A MAMA gone crazy. You asked

what a MAMA is. A MAMA is a mental ubiquity, a dimension

and simultaneously, a presence, a personality, a big black

hole piercing the epicenter of the world with a cable

connection to all that is conscious throughout the

universe. That’s a MAMA. MAMA’s gonna make them Radios

scream. And if you’re not at the right spot at the right

time, Ustad Isa will get them instead of you. It’s the

truth, the Screamers are specifically designed to

unscramble anathematic permutations such as nonhuman

communications. If they pick up his signal, they will have

effectively blocked the transmission you are to send back.

Ustad Isa will intercept their signal of yours. He will be

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immediately returned to Cwargin dimensions and MAMA and the

ghosts will go with him. There is nothing you can do with

the Radios even though they are in your possession. All

MAMA’s genetic ingenuity has gone into their creation. You

cannot destroy them; you cannot change them. Your only

chance is to ride the trip through and be at the point of

transmission with your signal before they are.

“As you have noticed, you have a new body. It is the

body of future man. It’s actuality will depend on whether

you survive. Your eyes are the result of a careful

selection of mutations. They are bee’s eyes, actually, more

than bee’s eyes. They are eyes with an inherent insight,

they reach beyond light and feel the composition and

structure of events. They are wonderful instruments. You

have not begun to realize their potential. But keep in

mind, the Qxneons have similar organs. Your ears are the

ears of a snail. They can actually feel and taste sound.

Your other senses are also heightened. You’ll become aware

of them when you need them.

You see, we too, have developed Transmission. It is a

small signal but we are a small people. We have become tiny

red dots existing on the surface of the eye. We live in a

tide pool environment. We must have a living eye to stay

in. Otherwise, we would simply dry up and blow away. We

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cannot live in dead men’s eyes long. Everyday more and more

eyes are drying up. We cannot go with MAMA and the ghosts.

We have to stop her. Once you lose your MAMA you can’t get

her back. We won’t be any bother. You won’t even notice us,

except perhaps, if you faint or die. We will be a prelude

to your falling. Just after the cold sweat, just before the

certain knowledge, i.e. just before you know you are going

to fall out of the real, you will see us in formation,

rushing toward you. As we approach, you will hear sirens

and the field of your perception will become freckled.

You’ll feel it coming on, blowing you away with little air

jets. Then you will see us speeding out of you in the par

secs we have of wet-time. We will be aborting you.

While we are with you, we can be of great assistance.

You can draw on our resources. If you wish we will appear

now.”

“Yes, I would like that.”

The dots emerged out of the darkness, red fire flies

dancing on the finger tips of children. I felt a deathy

queasiness as they approached. My panicked blood rushed to

feed my brain. I was slanting toward black out. Then they

stopped and I immediately felt better.

 309

“We’re sorry about that,” they said in a spray of

harmonics, “It’s a primitive signal. Perhaps you could help

us with it.”

“Weird, you’re really weird, but I guess I’ll have to

consider it. Like having a psychic cold. If I was in

trouble and I called for help would you come?”

“Immediately.”

“I hope it wouldn’t be with a seizure.”

“No, that can only happen if we are granted

permission.”

“And how is that given?”

“Permission is given when the personality backs up.”

“So how do I make it back up?”

“Then it won’t.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

“Please, open your eyes, but do it slowly,” they said.

Their voices began to fade.

I opened my eyes and there on the screen, actually

projecting out of it, was the Eskimo beauty.

“Hello, Shredder,” she said.

I laughed. “This is too much. What are you trying to

do, bribe me?”

She was beautiful. There was a soft glow about her

face. Her skin was radiant, almost insubstantial. Her eyes

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glowed with a piercing intelligence I hadn’t caught in the

dark warm night of our lovemaking.

She laughed.

“Of course, we’re trying to bribe you.”

“How did you separate yourself from the rest of the

gang?”

“The RAD. When you have a RAD, I can separate, any of

us can,” she added with a slight smile.

“And it wasn’t Emily?”

She leaned out of the screen. I could hear a faint

crackling.

“Does it matter?” she said.

“It matters,” I answered, smelling the faintest trace

of electricity.

“Listen, I was Emily. I am Emily. And I am Ted. I am

the shine on their eyes. Don’t you see, they were ghosts.

There is no one driving the Rig. There never has been. The

Rig was pre-programmed...to pick you up.”

I leaned back and looked at her. Her eyes were black

and intense, hyper-dilated.

“You’re talking garbage,” I said, “but it doesn’t

matter. The question is can you come out of the set and

join me on the carnal side of things?”

Her smile waned.

 311

“Only on the plain of Ka’ba.”

I felt a stab of disappointment, “You sound like a

soothsayer,” I said.

She looked steadily back at me; the corners of her

mouth slightly curved up. I realized suddenly that she was

not smiling at all, it was simply an alien gesture of

acknowledgment.

“Take your industrial science and shove it, Shredder,

I’m really not into breeding for the fun of it,” she said

unmeanly, take us on soon we may be the only living

organisms left on earth. We are the Planet’s hope. Our MAMA

wants to leave us. Can the human part of you understand

what that means? It means there won’t be any life any more,

not one part of it. There won’t even be any ghosts. We’ll

be as dead as pocked-faced Mercury. I promise you we won’t

be any trouble.”

“That’s not enough,” I said, finding myself smiling

back at her with the same non-commitment.

“Listen, Shredder/Bekin, listen to the sounds that

follow me around.”

I listened.

Deep hypnogogic space blew into my eyes. A violin

was playing somewhere out in the darkness bowed by the

wind. The Eskimo night swept in with muffled voices

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under ice. An old woman is shrieking on the open

tundra. A man is running out of an ice shelter. He is

running toward her and she is screaming at him to go

away. Another man is coming out of the ice. He is

chasing the first man. He is catching up with him. He

is knocking him down and he is talking his brains off.

Meanwhile, the old woman is shrieking. The second man

is pulling the first man over the snow toward the ice

shelter. He is smelling meat and sleep. A while later

the lights go out in the ice shelter. The old woman’s

teeth gleam in the moonlight as she shrieks and

shrieks in the freezing darkness.

A man is holding an icicle toward the light. He

is smiling and looking deeply into it. He is fusing

his mind with the refracted sun. The water in his

mother has turned to ice. She is right beside him,

tilting in frozen effigy as if she were a statue of

herself calling him home. Her spirit is refracted

too...as a ghost. He is tracing its journey through

the arteries of MAMA to the end of our dimensions. He

is thinking, “What If there was no MAMA? How could I

check the spirit of things out? I would always draw a

blank. Without MAMA there’s nowhere to go. I’ve got to

get Bekin to the right place so he can get there

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before MAMA does. He’ll go home and Ustad Isa will

close the hole up after him and MAMA will still be

with us.” Ted and Emily are coming, but both at the

same time. They are moving side by side, !walking!

towards a pair of meat hooks hanging from the ceiling

of some unknown bay.

I lifted my head from my chest. It nodded to and from,

settling finally on its place of passivity.

“A ghost, a ghost,” I heard my voice say, going up in

a cobweb of sound.

She was close to me breathing electricity on my ear.

“Human beings have three kinds of spirits. One spirit

will have a future life. A second spirit gives life and

warmth to the body and leaves it at death. The third

represents possible evil and stays with the body after

death. These are the ghosts. We are the free race, the

Seminoles of the Spirit. We’ve left our bodies behind. We

won’t bother each other. Perhaps we can become friends, you

know what I mean...join milk, but until then, let us walk

with you.”

I laughed and heard my voice slur.

“Ugh, keemo sabi, many beavers agree. How do you say,

“yes” in Tonto talk? What am I supposed to be, one of the

radio cowboys? Let’s throw parts of our bodies at each

 314

other. Let’s get guns and blow each other’s legs off. What

is this guy, Bekin, some kind of robot, some kind of

invention?”

“No, he is an alien in a man’s body. That’s why

everyone wants his semen. It contains a biological message

from an exobiological source, an interfacing of

actualities, like the wax mold of an ectoplasmic arm, or

the echo universe of quarks and squarks, gluons and

glutinos, but alive, Bekin, living, ready to breed. Imagine

hybrid babies of interfaced dimensionality! That’s what you

are. Do you understand? A multidimensional entity. You’re a

radio, Bekin, a walking, talking inter-actuating radio. You

carry the genes of the human/alien potential, suspended in

the seminal fluid better known as cum. Millie and Charlotte

got some for MAMA and we got some for us, a lot. All you

need is the spark of Ustad Isa’s signal and the connection

is complete.”

“What happens then?”

“Nobody knows, annihilation, transubstantiation. It

doesn’t matter if MAMA gets out, we all go.”

“How do I know that this isn’t a trick to get to the

transmission point before anybody else?”

“How do you know that all this isn’t just delusion,

that you’re back in the Bin, delirious, or insane? Haven’t

 315

you noticed; the world has gone crazy? Besides, your powers

dwarf ours, you know that you can eject us anytime you

really want to,” she said pinning me with her eyes.

“I can, can I?”

“You will see,” she said, smiling.

“Will you help me if I need you?”

“Yes.”

“You and all your brothers and sisters?”

“All of us,” she said, “together we will make Shredder

a mighty army.”

“Okay,” I said as I slid my eyelids back, “dive in.”

“You’re a real Democrat,” she whispered as she flew

up, my body falling into a black, creepy swoon, falling

down, down into the DownDown. And yes, they were on my

eyes, the Eskimos

Yes.

I fell asleep.

Pulsations of magnetic wind.” A force running

through me. Can hear it move. Can feel it sending

signals deep into me. What are they telling me to do?

They are telling me to do something. Sacramento has

fallen. The soldiers are dead. The recruits have

burned and buried their uniforms. Captain, captain, am

I still in the Bin? Let me out. The soldiers have

 316

turned to stone. They are killing them, their soldier

spirits. They didn’t do it, I did. I took her body and

humbled the creatures on it, I burned her water away

and I fucked her, Jesus, God, I did. I was just mad

and horny. Yes, yes, I fucked her and then I killed

her ass.

I am sleeping and yet I am not sleeping. Can look

about me but can’t move. Have been dreaming about the

Bin. Perhaps it’s all just a dream and I’m still

“recuperating.” Don’t feel no body. But can feel am a

state of total feeling. The space is immense, though

somehow contained. It is crystal black. Can see out of

the back of my head. Am light but cannot see light.

Can see objects but not the illumination I think they

are weapons, no, perhaps they are women’s limbs

sitting in a dark room waiting to be assembled, maybe

it’s a hospital. I am the light...sitting in space,

surrounded by objects. I did not create the objects.

They were created by a source outside myself. Sources,

I should say, for each one of them seems to be coming

from a different god, each one of them coming from a

separate and distinct center. Not one copy. Not one

more important than another, everyone of them creating

the possibility for the others to exist simply by its

 317

presence. When I look at any one object it becomes

more specific. Each aspect of it particularizes,

causing still more separate entities to exist,

creating a micro-scoping effect. I seem to probe into

increasingly greater generalities the more specific

everything becomes. The object doesn’t blur, it

constantly refocuses. The objects particularize when I

give them more than a quick passing glance. There

seems to be no space in them at all, only continually

individualizing ideas about them. Yet they are real.

They are solid. There is something disturbing about

them. I know what it is. They are looking at me! They

are all aware. They are conscious. They have created

me, the rocks, the books, the people, the chairs,

anything that has thrown itself before my awareness.

What is making me aware of what, what is throwing me

into any specific situation at any particular time? I

do not know. There are only constantly changing gods,

looking at me through various holes, poking their

corpses at me just to give me the once over, gods or

situation, static, electro-static evaporating from a

zipper. They can become anything.

They are becoming big round dots glowing faintly,

even though they are pitch black. I can see stars

 318

through them. The stars are close to my eyes. I can

touch them. I know why, the dots are the portholes in

the trailer’s roof. I am in that dark bay where all

the bodies are. I am on my back facing the roof. I’m

floating. Below me is a stairway of tranquil bodies

drifting in space like long potato shaped clouds. It’s

my one body duplicated over and over again. I can walk

the stairway all the way to the top and look out at

the stars on the other side of the portholes.

And yet, I’m not in the bay at all, I am in the

driver’s throne looking out on the Dragon and I’m

sound asleep. I can’t move. My head is thrown back,

mouth ajar, limbs in disarray, body comatose. And yet

my mind is active. Little astral ants, each with its

own holy card of MAMA, each with its own sinister

desire to please her, are searching every part of my

body right now. Time is issuing out of me like smoke!

It is as if my psyche were carbonized in the chair.

This awareness has come on me like a drug.

I can feel her move, MAMA, running through my

fauna and flora in a big slow wave. She has my body!

She’s searching every fiber of it, rutting through me

with her big soft nose. I am soothing my awe-stricken

spirit, letting myself be probed. She’s cunning and

 319

unbelievably awake with the supple focus of a snake.

Relentless and troubled. She is sniffing the “Bekin”

in me. She is dirty and proud. I know she wants me to

be fully aware of her shameless travels through my

body. There is nothing more alien than her sure yet

restless touch, this beautiful ingenious worm.

She is letting go because I am waking up. I can

feel my head turning. Air is whistling up into my

nose. My ghost is coming back to me. It has found its

gravity. I am feeling my body become aware of me. It’s

unbelievable! I’m getting a hard-on. Don’t be afraid,

it’s just me. No, it can’t be me, I can’t be awake and

be this...this other thing. My eyelids are tearing at

the paralysis of sleep. My body is going to scream.

Don’t be afraid, my darling, I’m sorry for all the

times I thought you were ugly. I think you’re

beautiful, I love you. Please don’t leave me out here

in the cold. But my body doesn’t like me. It thinks

I’m something creepy. Oh, but I love you so much. You

are so perfect. Have me, have me, please, have me.

It’s afraid. I hope it doesn’t jump out of the chair

and cause me a lot of trouble. I open my mouth, a bead

of saliva is rolling out of it, my eyelids are about

to crack open. Here I come...

 320

I plunged my teeth into its flesh and snapped

awake. Something very wrong was going on the hum was

gone. I felt naked without it. It was not possible.

The Rig had stopped!

A green light was flashing through the

windshield.

I slowly rose from the drivers throne and peered

out the window. We were at a toll booth. The lane open

sign flashed a “go ahead” signal from the canopy but

the gate arm was down. The toll booth was far below

me. There seemed to be shadows moving down there but I

couldn’t be sure how many there were. I knew they had

been aware of me. I could feel their echoes still in

the cabin. Hunched and buried in their clothes with

long detective souls prying little compartments open.

Their pin-projectors had already pierced my cheek

bones. I knew all this by way of intuition but with

none of that hanky-panky doubt. I took note of my new

powers. I felt them lasering the i.d.’s of the cargo

bays for radios. There were many more than I had

estimated. And passengers, there were thousands of

them, not corpses of flesh but corpses of ghosts in a

state of cauterization. The ray had already been over

my body while I had been dispersed. It had obviously

 321

caught my animated, gregarious spirit roving among the

cauterized, frozen ghosts in the bay. A loose one so

to speak, a spook in the attic. The red lights on the

toll gate blinked. The Dragon was wet and hash marks

glared. I saw boots breaking the puddles crossing in

front of the Rig.

“Take it onto Shrapnel. We’ll unload the Beef

there. Send the rest of the stock off to Gristle

Point. Keep your prongs sharp, we’ve got a live one in

there.”

There were several sharp raps on the side of the

Rig, and accompanying sparks. The engine started and

the toll bar lifted. The Rig was moving again, but I

could tell that it had entered greater waters. It no

longer was our mother. The walls of perspective had

begun to shift. The Rig, in fact, only went through

half of its gears and stayed at a low cruising speed.

Just ahead to the right appeared a large reflector

sign.

QXNEON CITY LIMITS

15crks
PREPARE TO BEACON

Suddenly the instrument panel was transformed as

its surface broke into a hundred video screens. The

heater vents flipped open and began pulling the old

 322

air out, making a low sucking sound. The throne

shuddered then split in half, revealing yet another

chair, a black purple velvety thing. The two sections

of the old throne slipped into the dais, leaving a

brief vacuum pop. The windshield cracked into a

million pieces and fell onto the road as a new window

blew out in a bubble, thinner, crisper, clearer than

the heavy road type. There was a knife and sheath

sound as thick beams shot out from the sides of the

Rig forming a huge pronged visor.

The Dragon was a float gray. The center stripe

was black. It began to rain, the drops, huge and

heavy. They smashed against the window, rolling down

in thick black trails. Two hulking window wipers came

into action. At first, they strained against the

collected water and mud. Finally, they cut a swath

through it, leaving a few long bubbly streaks. I bent

closer to examine them. Bats. It was raining bats.

They were coming past the window by the thousands. I

could hear them shrieking even through the metal. The

Rig was cutting across their flight path. Then the

rain stopped. Far ahead, over the road I saw it...

 323

QXNEON CITY LIMITS

There was a magnetic silence as the air parted

and the vacuum set in. It was like a cold wind making

everything go still. Instinctively I held my breath.

As we passed under the sign the cabin came to life.

The screens awake, flashing and beeping and sending

little pictures and diagrams and geometric forms.

There were radio stations sending music, television

programs from the forties, there were old shots of

rockets and time warp pictures of actual Roman Legions

charging the Jews. There were churches and choirs

singing, there were news programs from every age. Old

songs, new songs, ghost orchestras making music post

mortem, Tommy Dorsey playing live chickens by cracking

their bones. There were weather reports from the

sixties, and special educational programs designed and

directed by the mentally retarded. The Rig visor

sprang to life as rotating beacons came on and the

grill sent signal configs to the Gristle Point

receiver station. I stood up and watched it all. There

was no place to hide. It was taking me in.

Night was dark, the road empty. The Rig rushed

down the Dragon’s last few miles, eating them up

beyond repair. Every once in awhile I thought I saw

 324

something run across the highway. During the entire

trip nothing had crossed the Dragon. There was a sense

of excitement about this place, a culmination of

memory. Although I could not see them, I felt the

nearness of tumble weed out there, night along the

Mississippi, A&W Root Beer stands, tulle fog inching

up from the weeds, and flashes of silent sheet

lightening in the distance. Or was that sheet

lightening? The flashing was more like the discharge

of large camera bulbs, sudden and blue-white. Yes,

they were volcanoes flashing. I could see the cones.

The programs on the video screens began to

change. The old shows had taken on a jerky, jelly like

quality. They became oozy and sentimental, the war

scenes had a warm attractive glow, while lovers began

strangling each other with their tongues. The

newscasters all became Iranians. There were

commercials for soaps that bleed, and cattle-prod

walking sticks guaranteed to scar, take-home puppy

meat and devil-may-care vibration guns. A burping,

quawking, bone cracking whiplash beat blared from the

speakers. There was something wonderful about it.

Alluring, Los Vegas and cum in your mouth, rolling out

into the desert, red necks burning gas through their

 325

cars, crying and singing and slamming heads against

the rocks. Gonna catch yuh, gonna find yuh, gonna pull

you out of the window of your car. The cones circled

the horizon in a wide arch, each one puffing like a

video game mock up. Yes, Major Shredder, this is a

scene. You wanted a war? Well, how about this

one...the end of history? My fangs bristled. My

uniform? I didn’t have a uniform only a fine film of

blond down which covered my entire body, I was naked.

I had to get ready! I felt like a princess without a

pumpkin. I was elated. Surely, if this had all been

planned there must have been provisions made for

suitable attire. I certainly wasn’t going to be made

to go naked in the streets? The thought sent a chill

through me. How was I supposed to look? Did I really

have any choice in the matter? Or was I really just

being pinned by the hypnotist’s show? Was it really

just a lot of whoop-tee-doo? Couldn’t I just get out

and head back into the wilds and set up camp? Were

there any wilds left anymore? Was this so big that

even the fundamental moisture was being drawn off? So

real that it seemed common place? But was this not

just more hypnosis? Who said there were no choices?

Perhaps a few shots, hmm? Something to test one’s

 326

psych-out threshold? Something to intensify the

imagination, to stupefy it? Call it death, or

bitterness, or just plain loneliness. Why not go for

broke, even if it was ultimately embarrassing? The

hypnotist’s snare, smoke in the night? Who were these

people, after all? Were we all not on the same planet,

subject to the same indignities of body? Qxneon was

the culmination of New Coming. The tip of the boil.

Hadn’t I been a part of it? Yes, my hand was being

dealt me because I was in the game. So why not play

it? But to play it might mean the death of something

that was at this very moment scratching at the inside

walls of my body. Making me drift and shift and coast

irresolutely, pinned by the ears to the siren call of

my adventure. I could see myself stuttering like a fat

boy with a ball. I am going to pick this ass up and go

the aft end of the cabin and rummage around until I

FIND SOMETHING TO WEAR. I wanted a cigarette. I wanted

a glass of wine. I wanted a tablet of speed, I wanted

just a little saucy tiptoe of some bugga-bugga plant

to take me out. I ran to the aft storage bin. It was

empty. The Rig was beginning to shimmy wildly. I

looked out of the window. The surface was raised with

 327

wave like projections, actually coming out of the

surface of the road. The Dragon itself was wavy.

The volcanoes were closer now. I could see flares

and even a little lava. The atmosphere rocked with the

shifting air pressure. My ears began to pop and un-

pop, my stomach became troubled. I pressed a button on

a nearby clothes-chute and took a dive. I crashed

against the metal walls and rattled down the chute,

feeling the fine hairs on my body heat up and my skin

flush and pug in the friction and the speed. I

impacted with the cloth floor, wondering

simultaneously why there was need of a clothes chute

if Ted and Emily simply disappeared? Surely their

clothes broke down too. Or did they leave their bodies

behind...corpse after corpse after corpse? Who picked

up after them? The thousand days of “down time” blown

into space, reopened. I had picked them up, of course.

That had been my real job, to pick up the carcasses of

drivers...or the driver. I was their Bone Boy. Perhaps

there had been only one entity using both bodies,

keeping track of m by employing a stream of biological

wonders, keeping me confused, using one body after

another then casting it off like old clothes. Madrone

 328

and Charlotte, even old officer Allen. And what about

my Eskimo friend, Nora of the North?

The clothes chute gave way. The up draft blew the

contents up around me. Below a red glow appeared as

the bottom of the open chute came into view. Sheets,

thousands of sheets rising like freed ghosts. I knew

what they were. They were the shrouds of all the dead

passengers on the Black Tortoise. I heard the rumble

of large engines. A moment later I was suspended in

air as a gust of wind blew up through the opening. The

sheets spread open below me and formed a canopy, then

whipped away, sucking me down with them. We flew like

something loosed from the Sistine Chapel, glorious and

strangely reeking. I heard voices”

“Hey, look at that up there.”

“It’s a Spook!”

“Let’s get it down.”

“You can, I don’t want to touch the vermin.”

The nets fell, small meshed semi-gelatinous

things, like Chinese glass noodles. They wrapped

around us, me and the sheets even as we fell. They

stuck to us, little chains of protoplasm. I could feel

it forming itself into thousands of tiny suckers. I

 329

was stuck to the chute doors, hanging above the

ground.

There was laughter below me.

“Get him down.

The mesh around me began to stretch like warm

transparent bubble gum, then snapped. I fell enwrapped

in my sheets and for the first time since the

beginning of the trip I made contact with the ground.

It was an ugly meeting. The wind was knocked out of

me. There was pain beyond transcendence. I groveled

and contorted, making short, little sucking sounds. I

recoiled as searing arc-beams hit my eyes.

“Look at that, a moth”

“Beautiful, isn’t it?”

“Yeah!”

“Burn it.”

“Burn it?”

“You heard what I said.”

The web exploded in flames.

The elegant saddle on which to ride, unholy and

bald headed, bucking at the heat, screaming and

coiling in the torture of chemical transformation.

Instantaneously, I was blasted into steam and foam as

the Pyros flushed me with soda-acid expellant.

 330

“Let him run awhile, you don’t see them that

often.”

“Listen to him scream.”

“He’s not screaming, he’s singing.”

“Shouldn’t we toast him?”

“What, and free his ghost? We got enough dead

running around. Let Z.A.P. take care of him.”

They turned their arc light from me and walked

into the darkness. I felt an electric swoon as a

formation of tiny red dots emerged in a newly growing

darkness, tiny harpies singing with ecstatic voices,

angels hissing coma-songs. The Eskimos were coming. I

could see them swimming on my closed eyes, red fire

flies in formation, ready to blast off and draw a

black sheet over me.

“Wake up, Bekin, stop farting around. You’re not

dead yet. You’re not even hurt. In fact, you look

great. Get your ass up off the ground. We have a

village not too far from here.”

I staggered to my feet and by the light of the

flaming net, picked the unburned protoplasm from my

skin. In a few places I had to dig and pull the

charred remains that had fused with my flesh. It was

painful, but at the same time, I felt a kind of

 331

matter-of-factness about it all. I felt little

revulsion, even while tearing a three-inch cord from

my face. My body was covered with picks and stripes. I

wrapped a shroud around me and left the Rig, moving

into the darkness towards the volcanoes.

The stars drifted cool and high above me. There

was no hint of dawn. My pain was almost gone. There

was something tough and resilient about my skin. It

felt like soft living leather, almost vinyl. My bare

feet swung and dug into the surface of the planet

which was a combination of cinder and ash and fine

cold powder. The night was like a big black room of

unknown dimensions. The light from the volcanoes was

an eerie blue/white, like electrified pigeon shit,

bone light, which did little to illuminate the

landscape. The effect was more like a distant super

strobe. There was even faint rumbling. At times a wind

blew up a gust of smoky air that reeked of burning

mausoleums. Sometimes there was a strange sweet

fragrance as if it had just escaped from some vent in

heaven, too sweet and rich for a mustard eater like

me--made my spirit insane, like it was being tickled

to death with divinity. And sometimes it came on

unmasked, with the unmistakable smell of rot, rot like

 332

the gas of a billion bodies blowing down wind. It was

my heart that lived, burned like a cinder. The deeper

I pushed into the night the brighter heart’s dark

light became.

Something was waking up in me. It talked to me,

not with words but with a careful choice of feelings.

It felt wonderful to once again be the one moving

through the darkness, making the bushes snap, the

hallways creak, the hairs stand on end, to be a Night

Raider, Ghostbeast. When I left people turned into

meat. Was that what I was witnessing, the birth of my

ghost? Like Ted and Emily, I had tossed several bodies

off. Ah, the perils of time travel, scarabs with

scabs. Good old Shredder what’s left of you? “Here I

am, here I am, “I can hear my own voice shouting,

“It’s just illusion, underneath it’s just the same old

thing, shit in the warlord’s underwear, eat/kill/die.”

And then there was Bekin. That’s who was really left:”

Bekin, his spirit shape, just visible beneath the

charred, transformed flesh of Shredder. I wasn’t

Bekin. I wasn’t Shredder. I was their collective

ghost. These feelings culminated in a sense of fusion

forged in a kind of black fire. I could feel my ghost.

It was like having a new friend. I began to glow. My

 333

eyes turned green, my skin amber and black. I was a

pearl-handled gun moving in the darkness. I could hear

the volcanoes rumbling. They swung to my right and

left and behind me, blowing their tops electrically

like computer generated mock ups. But they were real,

they were certainly real. Lava poured down in rivers.

I had traveled a great distance. “Come on, Shredder,

let’s rumble.” Ahead of me were lights.

The village encircled me, about twenty-five stone

igloos. They had no doors. The light came from gas

lamps stuck on poles. There were node-shaped fuel

canisters, connected to the lamps by tubing. The night

was totally silent except for the hiss of the burning

gas. Light was shining inside each igloo the dusty

streets were empty. There was a feeling of nervousness

about the place.

I walked to the nearest igloo and I peaked in.

There was a hallway about three yards long which

seemed to open into a room. I cleared my throat and

started to speak. My voice erupted in a succession of

hoarse yelps. I reached for my throat. There was a

hole in it about an inch wide. I covered the hole with

the palm of my hand and shouted.

“Hello, take me to your leader.”

 334

My voice thundered out and then quickly died in

the silence. I stepped into the doorway.

The room was dome-shaped. Curved wooden benches

fit into the walls. A single gas light burned from the

ceiling. Gray tunics. Old pants, blouses, cast off

garments, underwear were scattered about the floor in

profusion. It was as if the place had been filled with

people who just then magnetically disappeared.

The gas light sputtered, casting chocolate

shadows in amber light. And although the room was

empty there was a crowded feeling about it. It was as

if there were beings all around me, pushing up against

me, looking at my eyes, smelling my singed and chared

flesh. I walked around the periphery of the room,

stepping over the clothes. It felt like a mausoleum.

There was something dry and clean about it, too clean,

as if just beneath the emptiness and scattered apparel

was dead flesh, renegade biology hiding below the

bubble surface, deep water ready to grab me out of the

boat and pull me under with it. The smell of shit, in

fact, was beginning to emanate from the place. I

reached down and picked up a pair of panties. They

were blue and pink with little gold and black stripes.

They were stained with an unholy yellow and brown,

 335

honey gone sour. I put them up to my shredded nose and

sniffed them truly, that’s what they did smell like,

honey gone sour, earthy honey, distilled by slow

seeping layers of putrefaction until they had acquired

the sweet, ancient aroma of death and resurrection,

burial incense. Embroidered on them in sky blue and

dawn pink were the words

NORA OF THE NORTH

I tugged at the fabric to test its tensile

strength. It burst apart in my hands. A little brown

cloud rose from it, then quickly turned into dust

pellets and fell to the floor. I threw the panties

down and rubbed my hand off on my shroud. Suddenly the

full impact of the place hit me. It reeked! It reeked

beyond disgust. It reeked of formless, ubiquitous

terror. It reeked beyond all tolerance, even beyond my

astronaut conditioning. “REAL! REAL! I’M REALER THAN

YOU!” It roared. I rushed out of the place into the

night.

The sky was still clear and the streets were

empty. The dust lay in a deep fine powder. “Moon

dust,” I thought, “just the same kind of dust you have

on the moon, poor barren moon dust, never had anything

in it but itself. I never expected to see this world

 336

with Remnant, but there it was, Remnant, primal dust,

bones of the Big Bang, shell of the egg pulverized

when the chick broke out. Was she really out there,

waiting for me? MAMA, head lights in the dark, the Big

Bird, preparing to push me out of my nest. Was someone

pulling my leg? It couldn’t be possible she couldn’t

do this to the blue planet. But there it was, Remnant,

dust, like Mercury. I saw my foot prints in it. There

were on others. But the emptiness was deceptive. It

felt crowded, as if a hundred munchkins had their

chins on my knees. Dead munchkins at that. But they

weren’t munchkins. They were Eskimos.

I examined the other domes. They too were filled

with clothes. They all had the same pattern to them, a

kind of swirl, like a collapsed spiral, as if they had

been sucked down into the earth by a magnetic vacuum

cleaner. There was always the same incredible stench.

It would come on only after I was in there for a

while. And each time it came on with the same

intensity. I could smell goblins in it, dirty faced

angels emeritus who had slept so hard they had fallen

apart. This had been their place of disembarkation,

the Eskimos, where they had left their bodies behind.

What had Yoho said:

 337

“Human beings have three spirits. One of these

will have a future life. A second gives life and

warmth to the body and leaves it at death. The third

represents possible evil and stays with the body after

death.”

I left the village of discarded bodies. The

Eskimos didn’t need them anymore.

I headed into the darkness. The sky was filled

with stars, but there was something unsettling about

them too. They didn’t twinkle. They stared. Of course,

there was no atmosphere. I sniffed at the darkness

with my nose holes. Nothing came in. The desert fell

away. I seemed to be able to send myself aloft and

move through the darkness on the threads of my

thought. I could feel myself speeding over the ground

but dreaming it instead of walking it. I drifted and

dreamed and mused. I floated, giggling and snoring

through space and time. My mind filled the void and

bareness with sunny days and shadows leaking infinity

under leaves and crevices and toys and even children’s

heads, shadows, shadows, shadows, darkness made darker

by the light.

I stopped and looked up, craning my neck at the

zenith, at the universe exposed, unveiled. It swung in

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a long slope of gravity, this dead planet, for it was

surely dead. There was no air. One could feel it, the

emptiness. Below me, to the South was nothing but

Remnant and light. The cities were probably completely

destroyed by time, turned into a Technicolor mush.

What was time now, back there? The door was closed,

the box was sealed. There was no way to get back to

that “other” time. It was as if it had never existed,

but for the foot prints of flash and memory. And what

about Ustad Isa? Would he be waiting for me anymore?

Perhaps not, for I was still here, charged but porous.

Perhaps Ustad was still there too. Perhaps he was on

his way, rushing the Matrix. Perhaps he would hoist me

up and we would fly together, me in this toga of

charred, transformed Shredder skin. BEKIN, BEKIN, I AM

BEKIN. I had pulled through it. I had passed the plain

of Ka’Ba. I was on the way out of here. I was near the

airport. Sure, there would be enemies to fight, those

near the airport. Sure, there would be enemies to

fight, those who were aware of me, but I had Shredder

and the Eskimos and I could breathe when there was no

air! I looked due North toward the far volcanoes and

began walking. To the North toward a long, thin, blue

neon blur. I felt my stomach grumble. I patted it with

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a loose flopping hand and grinned, my scars gathering

in puckered rills. I felt beautiful, like the mummy

returning to catch a sun bark to the stars. Yes, that

was the place, Qxneon, the last glow on earth.