Chapter Eleven: Pharsalia

Chapter Eleven: Pharsalia

 

 

“Well, it's alright; Love is what you want.

Flying saucer take me away—

Give me your daughter.”

 

-T-Rex

 

 

In which Gia's time runs out.

 

 

Frank looked up Roman-581 on an online database.

The official space agency's own website said:

 

Roman-581 is an oblong planetoid, a moon-dog, originating in the solar system's asteroid belt, between Mars and Jupiter. According to a group of conspiracy theorists called the Beta Beta Blockade, the planetoid was knocked out of its home position by space-based warp experimentation and, after a journey of 275 days, travelling at 5700 miles per hour, is scheduled to collide with our planet on September 28 or 29 of this year.

 

A link at the bottom of the web-page led to an official Beta Beta Blockade site, to an open letter from the BBB chairman, Fito Lei:

 

We are calling for NASA, for the United States of America, for big business interests, for the executives of the 11-22-998 Company, for the CER, for all the world's governments, for all the world's corporations, for the men and women who know more than we do, to step up to the plate and tell the truth. The people of Earth deserve truth, for a change. We deserve to be told that Roman-581 is not some blip on the meteor shower grid, but a verified global destroyer. We deserve to know that the End is upon us, once and for all, and for real.

...

 

Probably, all the hullaballoo over Roman-581 was bullshit and pocky.

...

 

A response to Lei's post, attributed to Anonymous, said:

 

The CER knocked Roman-581 onto a collision course, digging for their bullshit anti-matter, and when they realized their fuck-up, they “dug” a mud-hole in order to intercept it. That's exactly how it happened. The hole wasn't an accident. The asteroid was the accident. The asteroid was supposed to land in the mud-hole and disappear into the sub-strata. But those goons don't get anything right. So, we still have Roman-581 bearing down on us, and the man-made mud-hole is going to tear the galaxy apart. But nevermind, because those dumb yokels are going to spring WADC-6 on us next, and now it's a triple-apocalypse. Well done, gentlemen. Bravo.

...

 

Frank received a phone-call at 9:11 AM from overseas, from Manchester, in Great Britain, from a man who identified himself as Gary Bee. Frank and Gia were getting washed and shaved and dressed, ready for the afternoon's funeral. The kid was still missing, so everything was still bonkers. Phones were driving Gia positively anxious.

Gary Bee told Frank, “We've been dreaming of one another, you and me, my friend. Does the name ring a bell? Gary Bee? We've been characters in each other's dreams, on and off for the last three or four weeks. Real apocalyptic stuff. Am I ringing a bell for you?”

Frank said that he was, indeed, ringing a bell, and loudly. “Yeah, you were there. There was a lightning storm. Lots of noise and dark places. We were trying to amass firearms, as I recall it. I think you got all torn up when the lightning wave touched you. How is it that you located me? That you pinned me down?”

“I got your name quite directly, the old fashioned way, right out of the phonebook. Frank Burczyk. B-U-R-C-Z-Y-K. One of the characters in the dream spelled it out and I made a mental note and thought I'd give it a whirl. Located a chap in Boston but he wasn't you, obviously. But you're you, aren't you? Lucky break. Second try. And here we are.  You're in Canada. Pisimatum province, yeah?”

“Yes, that's true. Things are off the charts, here. I think a street in my town became Roman, overnight, and no one seems to be noticing. Or maybe it's just me, losing my walnuts. Two hundred Roman crypts, or more. And nobody seems to give a one righteous fuck about it.”

“Are you talking about real life? Or fucking dreams, Frank?” This guy was from Britain, apparently, but he talked like he came straight out of Nowhere, Nebraska. “Some people can't tell the difference—especially a guy in your position.”

“I'm talking about real life, Gary,” said Frank. “It's beside the French street.””

“I don't know what to tell you. You're out of sorts, my friend. If anyone's fucked in the head, sadly, it has to be you. Just like me. We're both part of something that seems like a mind disease. You're there, I'm here, and we're kind of stuck in-between the pages.”

“So I should just smile and pretend everything is mostly normal?”

“Yeah—makes sense to me. You've got bigger problems to sweat, you know. Basically, you're right in the spray-line of the WADC-6. She's a blast-wave that's going to rip the planet in two pieces, more or less. The lightning bomb, from the dream. It's going to blast through north Pisimatum first.”

“I wasn't aware. They keep talking about an asteroid, not lightning.”

“They're going to launch the WADC-6 in the hope of destroying Roman-581. Does that make sense to you, Frank? The mud-hole failed and WADC-6 is the counter-offensive. They figure if they can neutralize the asteroid with all that electric energy, then, well—”

“Are you an expert on these things, Mr. Bee?”

“I'm nobody, Frank. I pieced a few things together, is all. I analyzed our dreams, where they overlap, yours and mine, made some notes, et cetera. Most people don't know anything about what's going on. Lots of conjecture, sure. But what really happened is that these big-shots were looking for free energy. Free energy that they could sell for top dollar, that is. And when they tried to fire up their warp junkets they inadvertently dropped Roman-581 on top of us. So now they'll activate the WADC-6, try to minimize the damage, but that's just going to make things even worse, like throwing fire on a paper-cut. That WADC-6 lightning sheet will never stop bouncing once she gets going—like Mrs. Pac-Man, from the video arcade—and she's going to eat everything that stands in her path.”

“Like yourself.”

“Aye, Frank. Like myself, in the dream.”

“My sympathies to you.”

“That dream is just a dream, Frank. I think it is representation of possible outcomes. What we're seeing are just glimpses of a fancified version of the new reality.  Warp reality, now that 11-22-998 Company has fired their prototype junkets. You are in Pisimatum and I am in Britain and the world is going to break along a spiral fracture that begins out your back door.”

“Holy shit.”

“I just want to give you a heads-up, Frank. I noticed something.”

“Holy shit.”

“Frank?”

“Yes. Holy shit. I mean, yes.”

“I may have noticed a loop-hole in the dream-narrative, and I think you may be able to exploit it to our benefit. To the benefit of everyone, I mean.”

...

 

His body hit the ground in two equal-sized pieces, bloody and dead.

...

 

Gary Bee asked, “Do you believe in Jezus, Frank?”

Frank said, “Christ?”

“Yes. The Redeemer. The Lord of the Universe.”

“I really never found the time for him.”

“Simply by contemplating Jezus, Jezus found me.”

“I'm not going to stay on the line for this. I'll hang up.”

“Fair enough. Forget I mentioned it.”

...

 

Gary Bee asked, “Are you medicated, Frank?”

Frank said, “For depression and such?”

“For all of it, yeah.”

“Yeah, pretty medicated. Way over the top.”

“You'll want to keep up with all that. Fill your prescriptions.”

“There's really no chance I'm going to forget.”

...

 

Gary Bee asked, “You ever heard of Operation: Alphabet Soup, Frank?”

Frank said, “I don't believe so.”

“These guys think we're going to turn into zombies and start eating one another.”

“Sounds pretty unlikely to me.”

“Operation: Alphabet Soup is a counter-measure. Basically, the military weighs the statistical likelihood of zombification affecting any given population. If they decide zombification is more likely than not, they turn their guns on the uninfected civilians, reducing the population to zero, and then they kill themselves in turn.”

“Sounds like a bad idea to me, Gary.”

“It's one of those lose/lose scenarios that the governments simply adore.”

“I think I'd choose another route.”

“You think you have a choice?”

 

[Lacunae]

...

 

 

After getting off the phone, Frank utilized an internet search engine to locate Gary Bee in the United Kingdom, in Manchester. He had to be certain he wasn't being pranked. Messed with. He found a Gary Robert Bee, a Gary Ziegried Bee, and a Gerry Bee. He telephoned the first one, at 0844 800 3744, and recognized the decidedly non-British voice.

“Frank? Hello?”

“Yes, hello Gary. I'm just checking.”

“I'm not pulling your leg. How could I do that? We dreamed of one another.”

“No, I know. I had to check.”

“I understand completely.”

“Yes, good.”

“I know you're thinking about—”

“I'm not thinking about that. I'm not thinking anything, Gary.”

“I'm not really a rapist, Frank. That's just dream fiction.”

“I hope that's all it is.”

“I promise it. It's all layers. You have to think between the layers.”

“Thank you, Gary.”

“Now, about that loophole—”

“Yes?”

“Frank, are you listening to me?”

“Yes.”

“There's a shed. A dirty little tool shed. And there's a book on the floor.”

“Yes, go on, Gary—”

...

 

[Lacunae]

...

 

The police weren't looking very hard for Kayla, and they didn't find her.

Officer Bernard was dead, having hit a bull moose while pursuing a black lycanthrope.

There were no other officers to spare.

“I understand you're upset, Mrs. Burczyk,” said the voice on the other end of the line, “but you must know a mass homicide investigation takes precedence over a missing teenager. This town is full of bikers and bodies, and that's much more than we're staffed to handle. I'm certain that your niece will wander home, eventually. They almost always do.”

“But they sometimes don't,” said Gia.

...

 

After Tracy Olafson returned to Bob Scieszka's side, to her duties as homemaker and fuck-toy, on the morning after the feast of Venus Genetrix, she said, “We're onto something here, darling. The shortest word in the English Language is a secret, transcendental thing. It has no letters. Its only syllable is a whisper of breath. And it is syllogistic with Love.”

“Synonymous,” Bob said.

“Precisely,” said she. “Precisely, to a key.”

“To a tee.”

“Yes.”

She produced a felt-tipped pen and wrote on a napkin.

Its only syllable was a whisper of breath.

How heartfelt.

Scieszka was not particularly an amoral man, but he was wrestling with concepts. The concept of Tracy Olafson as recycled lover. The concept of worshipping Jezus alongside the pagan deities. It was a delicate situation. The concept of finally publishing a novel despite being a terrible writer.

Grand ideas. Paradoxes.

He was heading down the Christian path, for the most part, and taking Tracy with him.

A great many in the District of Ghost River were Christian by default.

Except for weddings and funerals, Frank Burczyk hadn't ever been to Church, and he wasn't about to start. (Tracy liked Church because of how anti-Frank it was.) Bob, on the other hand, told people he was Christian, because that's what his parents told him he was. Also, he celebrated Christmas, and celebrated big-time, so that cinched it.

Around the age of sixteen, Frank Burczyk realized that other Christians were going around saying that Jezus was God.

He said, “I thought you said he was the son of God?”

They said, “No. Jezus is God. One and the same.”

Frank said, “That makes no sense at all.”

They said, “Obviously, you aren't Christian.”

After that, they were exactly right. He sure wasn't Christian.

...

 

Next, after Frank got off the phone with Gary Bee, from Manchester, Bob Scieszka called him. He said, “Frank, is it okay for me to still believe in Jezus and such?”

Frank said, “The last guy who called asked me the same fucking thing, Bob. I don't care. I don't want to talk about religious studies. I have to draw a circle around Hell. I don't have time for all these existential quandaries. Ask someone else. You're the guy who usually has all the answers, anyway.”

Bob said, “Okay. Next question: I forgave Tracy for what she did. I love her and so I took her back. It seems very Christian of me. She broke into my secret files, accessed my novel, and used it to torture Gia, but I think I forgive her for that. I think I need to do a lot of forgiving, with so many surprises on the fresh horizon.”

“Life is fleeting,” said Frank. “Do what you must.”

“Obviously, then, this also means I'm not coming to your mother's funeral. Tracy would not be okay with it, and if Tracy's not okay then neither am I. I'm sorry, Frank. I liked your Mom a little bit, when we were young. She always had bizarre ideas, didn't she?”

“Goodbye, Bob.”

“I'm going to the city, Frank. We'll talk when I get back.”

“Will we?”

“Sure we will.”

“Fuck off, man.”

...

 

Bob said, “Shit, Frank. Frank?”

And Frank said, “I'll shit when I'm dead.”

...

 

Way too many phone-calls for a Tuesday morn.

...

 

Gia believed in things. Love and Angels. An involved Creator. Eternal life.

Frank did not care much about these things.

He preferred strippers and pharmaceuticals.

Gia had all kinds of books. The Life Less Walked In, and My God is a Water God, and The Universe in Eleven Degrees. A bunch of feel-fine malarkey. “Oprah loves that shit. Oprah and every other asshole who goes into Barnes & Noble with too much money in their pockets. Who pays thirty-five bucks for a fucking book, anyway?” He needed to find some nice passages for his mother's service.

He wasn't a total atheist.  He merely believed that many claims were founded in horse shit.

“I do not believe in the Loch Ness Monster.”

“I do not trust faith healers.”

“I would not buy a used car from Sylvia Browne.”

“I am open to the prospect of UFOs.”

“I've seen a ghost, haven't I?”

“I think there is a God, but I also think we know almost nothing about Him, and it's pointless to argue either for or against His being. I do not believe he died on a cross. That seems silly to me.”

 

...

“I am a critical thinker,” he told Gia.

“Oh, balls you are,” she said.

“I wish you could recall what you said last night.”

“All that universe stuff?”

“Yeah.”

“I'm not surprised that I don't. It's just babble.”

“No—I could hear sense in it. I really could.”

“That's why you're not a critical thinker, honeybum.”

...

 

The Beta Beta Blockade had posted some brand new info, online:

 

As of this morning, the cause of the Great Die-Off, which will begin on Thursday, will involve the following:

 

1.                   Worldwide drought,

2.                   Disease

3.                   Men From The Sky, with Light-Swords,

4.                   International warfare,

5.                   Axial shift,

6.                   [Unknown]

7.                   Roman-581 heavenly body, and

8.                   [Unknown]

 

Or any combination of the above.

...

 

Before the funeral there was a meeting with a psychic, one Diana Luvana, who currently operated out of her home, but who once gave palm readings at the Jain hair salon, on Main (and not far from where Vinyl Gigi had stood). Frank thought it was a hysterically inappropriate (mis)use of funds—sixty dollars for a thirty minute sitting. Time and money, completely wasted. And even though Gia had been friends with the Luvana woman for years, no discernible discount was applied.

“I already had the appointment booked,” Gia confessed, “but I had it bumped up a few days. I was wanting some guidance for our marriage, Frank, but now we need to utilize every available resource in order to locate Kayla.” And Frank did not need to spout off about how fortune tellers were fraudulent by nature, because Gia already knew how he felt.

“Thank you for humoring me,” Gia said. “And thanks for not forgetting that I'm not the one who's been receiving phone calls from a character I dreamed about.”

Diana Luvana was short, stout and blue-haired, somewhat resembling a gothic dwarf.

Recently this woman had spent a rather obscene amount of credit card dollars on a novelty item that was presently amusing and exciting the millionaires of several brandy-sipping cliques around the world, and a few Carolingians at home—specifically, the simply-named Buddha Tube, also known as the Nervous Box; a black seeing- and hearing-device employed at parties and events for (allegedly) speaking with the deceased. Diana said she had travelled to Versailles, in France, in order to purchase it. That was where they were manufactured, at the rate of seventy-seven per month.

“So far, less than a thousand of these have ever been made!” Diana said, enthusiastically. “Demand far outstrips supply. So, you might say I won it at quite a cost— though I didn't pay even a tenth of what the big boys are paying. Call me Special. I dare say it will shortly make a healthy return for itself. And for me.” She was fucking bonkers, Frank could tell.

Her mother, who was present in the drawing room, thought she'd paid far too much for it—full amount never disclosed—she called it a vain and dull purchase. The woman was ancient and bone-white, though a good eight inches taller than her daughter.  “It must be trickery and nonsense, all smoke and mirrors. For, if it were remotely possible to communicate with the world of spirits, we would have done so ages ago. More likely, you've bought yourself a costly cigar case.”

To this, Diana Luvana said nothing. She knew that men of far, far greater means than herself were bidding GDP-sized fortunes on non-functioning Buddha Tube knockoffs; that the hand-crafted production run had been so limited that the small, ghostly boxes were valued near priceless; and that she owned the only one for parsecs and parsecs in every direction.

She told her mother, “Fortune is all but guaranteed. At the very least, I have the option to sell this treasure to the highest bidder.” Perhaps she'd be looking at a fourfold—nay, tenfold—return.

“An amazing thing. Come see. You've never seen its like before!”

“I have heard of a man who mortgaged his entire fleet just to try one!”

“You can look here, and speak here, and listen, and the dead will converse with you!”

It was costing Frank two dollars a minute to hear the women bicker.

He wondered aloud what would happen if, conceivably, a zombie were to use the Buddha Tube to contact its own soul. Surely, the two had to be separate, he reasoned. He was only being a smart-ass, of course, and Gia was scowling hard in his direction. He said, “A zombie is a mobile cadaver without life or spirit. Such a creature ought to be able to talk to itself in the Otherworld, if there were a way to get a zombie to talk.  What would that be like?”

“A corn husk speaking to its cob, essentially,” Diana said.

Gia said, “There is no such thing as a zombie.”

Diana's mother told her, “I wondered the exact thing, myself.”

The black box opened like a tiny coffin, revealing plasma bulbs, cathode ray tubes and a small anti-matter chamber, and three convex looking glasses, each the size and shape of a clamshell. Three tiny speakers broadcast garbled sounds from beyond, and a single microphone allowed one to ask questions of the dead. When it was performing optimally, as Diana explained, the plasma bulbs would glow dull blue, and ectoplasmic mist would waft over the box's edges. (Rendering her mother's “smoke and mirrors” assumption correct.) The voice of a replying spirit tended to sound like a child at two hundred paces, speaking though a long, twisted pipe.

“You can ask it anything,” Diana declared.

“Anything?” asked Gia.

“Absolutely. The spirit realm is a realm of no-time, after all time. There is no thing that hasn't already happened. The craft of spirit-talking is the craft of prophesying. You can ask the ghosts any question about any thing, and they will provide an answer.”

“Perhaps just a bit of getting-to-know-you, to start.”

“If your game is about playing it safe, then by all means.”

Gia leaned close to the box and said, “Hello.”

Many voices speaking many languages responded to her, all at once. The result was so much verbal flotsam. Diana adjusted a knob on the side of the box in order to separate the many layers of talkers. Finally, just one was discernible, louder than the others.

A voice that would later identify itself as Albert Einstein—though not the Albert Einstein— said, “Hello.” The clamshell mirrors displayed three views of a shadowy mask—a face not fully formed—two at a distance, floating in a sea of red water, and one very close-up, as if peering through a keyhole with an eyeless socket.

Gia asked of it, “Are you an angel? A ghost? And, when did you die?”

The spirit informed her that he was not dead because he had not yet been alive, perhaps never would be alive, sadly, and existed in an emotionless mire of quantum despair and lost opportunity.

“Where is my niece? Where is Kayla Valens? What has become of her?”

“There is much water around,” said Albert Einstein. “There is deep water and a laughing man. The ghosts pronounce his name very distinctly—he cannot hide his deeds from the seers of the under-verse. I sense a hard rain and a cold winter.”

Frank rolled his eyes.

Diana said, “Are you not convinced?”

“Of course I'm not,” said Frank. “This is too easy to fake.”

“I'm not a charlatan, Mr. Burczyk.”

“No, I know, you're honest and upright. I get it.”

“I can't read palms any better than the ghosts can augur.”

“I suppose that's completely true, Ms. Luvana.”

“Why not ask it a question, yourself. Didn't your mother recently pass?”

“Yes—her funeral is this afternoon, actually.”

“You could try to contact her. Would that convince you?”

“Probably not.”

Einstein, still listening, evidently, warbled, “Huldora Bjola Burczyk exists halfway in the realm of long, peaceful shadows—the world of eternal nightfall—and halfway on the physical planes, even now. But it won't be long before you join her there, at the crossroad. The cold-hearted lovers in the room will soon taste the kiss of midnight.”

Diana turned the volume down low and announced, “There's a lot of doom and gloom from the Nervous Box, these days—makes me wonder if the rumors of a comet impact are true.”

The old woman shook her hands and said, “That's poop. It's just poop.”

Frank made googly eyes at Gia. This was possibly the most ridiculous waste of time he'd been mixed up in for a very long time. Even sillier than Bob Scieszka's candle party. He wanted to leave, didn't even care about getting his money refunded. He cocked his head toward the door and hoped that Gia would announce their departure, but she ignored him.

Diana turned the volume back up and Gia asked, “How will we locate Kayla? Where should we start looking? Is there a particular body of water?”

Einstein babbled on about fire and darkness, pain and rage, his own identity, and the events of his brief Earthly existence. He did a fair bit of bickering with fellow spirits, then said, finally, “The missing child will return to a quiet household, free from bondage, on her own accord. She will be alone there, and will herself cross over after a brief span of time.”

“Are you saying there's a comet on the horizon?”

“And worse, perhaps, affirmative. The estranged lovers will soon taste the kiss of—”

Diana Luvana powered-down the box and closed the lid. She coughed and said, “It gets itself into a loop, repeating the same garbage over and over. This is a low, confused spirit. He seems to be telling you that your niece is near a body of water, but will soon bring herself home.”

Frank chuckled and the old mother winked at him.

Diana said, “There's still fifteen minutes remaining, so I can read your palms, or consult the Tarot deck, or even brew up some tea leaves. Are you interested?”

Gia said, “I'm kind of interested in all this doom business.”

“Like I said, it's just a loop.”

“But maybe there's something to it. There's a mud-hole in space, after all.”

“My Nervous Box began babbling to me in the middle of my slumber, last night. Like a news transmission when one has left the TV playing. But the Nervous Box transmits the words of the dead, not those of the living, and I have been alert and sober to this foreknowledge. But it's hazy, like a dream. As it goes, the box's whispered prophecy must be taken with a grain of salt.”

This was the first time Diana had said anything sensible, in Frank's estimation.

“I really think we need to go,” he said.

...

 

Diana Luvana said, “Not all souls are human, you must realize.”

“Do sheep have souls, too?” asked Frank.

Gia nudged him.

Diana Luvana said, “Dark things walk among humans, as humans. It really only depends on which spirit fills the fetal vessel. Souls are like water—there's a finite supply and it's the same supply that has been recycled over and over since the beginning. But even water becomes contaminated, from time to time. Sometimes you get oil mixed in with the rain. And that's why there are dark things walking among us—they don't even know that they aren't people. Some folks, myself included, think that humans are actually far outnumbered.”

“Strangers in a strange land, huh?”

“You have a good day, Frank Burczyk. And you, Gia, always a pleasure.”

“Thank you.”

...

 

 

Frank and Gia went to the Pharsalus cemetery to bury Dora.

To get it over with.

It was the two of them, plus two teenage workers from the Samo funeral home, and a bone-wreck of a minister named Klim. Sunken chest and hollow cheeks—the skinniest grown man Frank had ever seen.

 

To the gods of the dead and to the memory of  Huldora Burczyk.

She was loved by her husband and will be missed by the world.

Her son erected  this monument for her.

 

Dora was buried beside her beloved Francis, according to her wishes.

Cranberries and rot in the air. Cool mist breezing over the forest.

The cemetery was vast and rolling, and everything above ground, it seemed to Frank, was as dead as what lay below. The trees were withered and black, and the ground was littered with decaying yellow leaves. Like seeing the world through the grey-tinted glasses of Hades, he thought.

Terrible place.

The stink of freshly crushed mushrooms.

Gia laid pink roses on the grave, and Klim said some words about the Earth goddess, Gaia. “Dearly beloved, blah, blah, blah.” One of the Samo kids sneaked away to urinate behind a gnarled old oak tree. The other one was on his knees, eating a submarine sandwich from a brown lunch bag. Greaseballs, both of them.

Frank had prepared no eulogy of his own. He thought, “My God is a Water God.” He imagined himself the biggest asshole on the surface of the planet, not crying hysterically, tearing his hair, nor weeping softly,  nor silently praying for the good his mother's soul. He was feeling nothing at all about it. Empty inside, completely. “I'm a rotten fucking prick, goddamn me.” Maybe he was even mad at the old girl, still. Angry at her for all those years of insanity. “Blast me all to hell.”

Gia said, “Nobody's here to see her buried. I feel terrible about this.”

“It's just death,” said Frank. “No reason to celebrate.”

“Still. This is so... ignominious. Even for Dora.”

“Maybe we should have put her on the Street of Tombs, after all.”

“It's so cold and ugly out here.”

“Let's go home. It's done. It's all done.”

“This whole world is cold.”

Klim took a snapshot of Frank and Gia at the headstone.

“It looks like a keeper. Just twenty-five bucks.”

...

 

Never wanted to be here in the first place.

...

 

After Frank and Gia left Pharsalus behind, the old drunk, Berry Bob, arrived in his shit-box Tempo. Came to pay his respects to the old girl. Passed ten ounces of gin through his kidneys and recited an ancient Gaelic poem.

“You were a fine party, girl, indeed. Yum, yum, yum.”

...

 

Gia had done her best to exist respectfully within the moment, at the funeral, but when it was over she allowed the stress to return. She was fidgety and scatter-brained, twirling her hair and chewing her bottom lip. They couldn't get home fast enough for her liking.

Driving back to Discord, Frank tried to steer the conversation away from the Idiot, urging Gia to recall their sleepy conversation from the night before. “You really had shit figured out,” he told her. “String theory and the eleven-dimensional universe. Everything. The meaning of life. Truly. You were rolling. You blew my mind. Do you really not remember it?”

“I told you, I don't,” Gia said. “It's a bad time for me.”

“I know it is. I worry about you.”

“Worry about Kayla.”

“Kayla is just fine. I'm talking about us.”

“I don't know what to say about us. I'm barely holding together.”

“I wish I could help you.”

She popped a cherry Halls lozenge into her mouth. She said, sucking, “I can't believe Bob Scieszka bailed on you, like that. What a prick. You knew him your whole life, didn't you? He knew Dora, did he not? The least he could have done was come to pay his respects. That's pretty low. Clown behavior, if you ask me. Dirty and rotten.” The lozenge clicked against her teeth. “Even after what he wrote, he still should have come. I can get over all that shit in his book, someday, maybe, but how can I forgive him for this? To leave you stranded at your mother's burial. Jerk. I expected better.”

“I didn't.”

“Same fucking disrespect at our wedding, if you recall.”

“I do.”

“After we get home, there's a number I want to check.”

“A number?”

“It just came to me. I recall seeing a phone number written on the Sears catalogue. The Christmas Wish Book. It's Kayla's handwriting, I'm sure. Red ink and happy faces. It could be a friend of hers. I want to check. I can't believe I haven't called already. I can only imagine the worst.”

“The girl is fine.”

“Frank, it's already Tuesday.”

“It's two days. That's all. Teenage girls do stupid shit.”

“It's eating me up. I feel my guts twisting.”

“She's fine.”

“I fear she isn't. Drive faster.”

Gia had about twelve more minutes to live.

She was exhausted—nearly ruined. Empty.

Guilt, guilt.

Something.

Frank reached out and laid a loving hand on her thigh.

“We're almost home. We'll find Kayla—I promise. I really do.”

This shared look, profound and full of quiet desperation, would be their last.

He was going to say something about turtles, something funny, but decided against.

A red 2003 Indian motorcycle came roaring up to the truck, coasted briefly in the wake, then whipped around. Frank was driving between 54 and 58, which was something like grandmother-speed on this particular Tuesday. The Indian's V-Twin engine howled like a chorus of wart-hogs with chain-saws, pushing the cycle to 75, and climbing. Frank wouldn't have known the Indian from a Harley Screaming Eagle (some days he barely knew his own truck apart from a Dodge). Within half a minute, that bike was gone just like a bat out of a Meat Loaf song.

“The ass you save may be your own,” Frank muttered.

Gia said, “Maybe I want a divorce.”

“Huh?”

“A divorce. Maybe a separation. I don't know.”

“Are you kidding around?”

“I don't know. I don't feel like myself. Maybe my hormones are out of balance.”

“You shouldn't joke about divorce.”

“I'm not joking—it's how I feel, sometimes.”

“Is it how you feel right now?”

“Of course it is.”

“Is it how you feel usually?”

“Maybe I feel stress, Frank. Maybe we need a break.”

“That fucking sucks.”

“Yeah. I know it does.”

...

 

He found himself thinking of Mexico, again. The first time, the honeymoon trip, or the second time, the anniversary vacation, at Emathios, it didn't matter to him. Either was fine. He supposed he would give up vital organs if he could go back there.

Just for a day.

One day.

Not too much to ask.

...

 

Slipping through the layers.

...

 

He had Bob Scieszka in his thoughts. Bob's voice, sowing the bullshit.

They were arriving within Discord city limits.

Frank's guts were already churning from all the talk about divorce. He said, “Is there any chance, maybe, perhaps, that you possibly made an X-rated video, once upon a time?”

“Pardon me?” Gia said.

“Like, a home porno. You and some guys. Did you ever partake in such a thing?”

“Did I ever partake in such a thing?”

“Yeah. That's what I'm asking.”

“I wish you could hear yourself, Frank.”

“I wish you could answer the question, Gia.”

...

 

Slipping through the layers.

...

 

There was a small, brown man, Dr. Indy Bhugra, digging in Frank's ears, peering into his skull, looking for God-only-knows. He was the Asian version of Pastor Klim, from the funeral at Pharsalus, looked just like him, but older and half-toasted. Smelled like old leather.

Frank wanted to know what was going on and Dr. Bhugra, being a very straightforward sort of individual, having treated orphans and child-lepers in Mumbai, said, “Your wife has been murdered.”

Frank was all out of sorts. He was in Mexico, and he was at Rebowken, and he was at Tromso, just passing through, and he was driving up the highway, having just buried his mother, and he was in Mexico, again, the second time, and he was at Meskanaw, all these places at once. He said, “Has the bad part happened yet? Is Gia dead?”

The doctor nodded.

“I've given you a sedative.”

Frank thought about his burned-up sister.

“She said something about...”

...

 

Vali-yum, yum, yum.

...

 

When Frank and Gia pulled into the driveway, at home, on Candle Avenue, there was a red Indian parked at the curb, out front, and a Corsair motorcyclist named Codeman waiting on their front step.

Wild-eyed and just freaking nuts, somewhere between Attila the Hun and the crag-faced gunslinger, Clint Eastwood. The trademarked Corsairs C on his leather coat made Frank think, “Haven't you got any cents (sense), man?”

Gia said, “Frank, that's the guy who passed us on the road.”

He was about to comment on the guy's t-shirt, visible through the unzipped jacket—a crude cartoon rendering of a panda bear sporting a raging pink erection, without caption or context, completely non sequitor—when he sprung to his feet and came toward the truck. Pretty agile, for a thick fellow.

“Yeah, he is the guy who passed us. What does he want?”

“Maybe he knows something about Kayla.”

“Why would this guy know anything about Kayla?”

“You never know.”

The guy's deep-set eyes and dirty hair were familiar to Frank—he recalled a snot-nosed student from grade school, one of those under-achieving absentees, never in class, usually off stealing bicycles or sniffing gasoline out of torn potato-chip bags. Jimmy Codeman. Jimmy fucking Codeman. Frank hadn't seen or heard of him since—

Codeman came directly to the passenger-side of the truck, smirking. His threadbare moustache was totally Fu Manchu and his eyes were black, little beans. He raised a .357 magnum revolver, tapped the glass, then shot Gia twice in the face.

Glass shattered and chunks of bloodied bone landed on Frank's shirt.

Codeman said, “Those bullets were paid-for in full, courtesy of Berk.”

Frank was practically deaf from the gunfire. He barely knew what was happening.

“Do you hear me, bitch? The score is reset to zero. No winners today.”

The barrel of the gun was still smoking.

“Bitch? Are you listening?”

Gia was all the way dead. Her heart had stopped and the last of her synapses had already mis- fired. When her half-destroyed head rolled in Frank's direction, he was still expecting to see her mouth form tangible sentences—“Help me, Frank. I love you. Call a doctor. It hurts. Save me.”

“Gia? Gia, baby, are you okay?” He couldn't hear himself speak.

Just fuzz and white noise in his ears.

The Indian motorcycle barked to life and Codeman kicked it into gear, heading out past the Poil-au-Con Elementary School. Mrs. Lockhart's grade one class, returning from a field trip to City Hall, had heard the heavy-metal gunshots with amphitheatre clarity.

Frank put his hands on Gia's face and tried to kiss her back to life.

No such luck—doesn't even work in the movies.

“Gia? Don't go.”

But she went, anyway. Nothing to it.

...

 

So Gia was dead and Frank was alone.

No big deal—the rest of the fucking world wouldn't be far behind.

...

 

Frank couldn't stop talking about Codeman's shirt.

Bear with a big dick.

“Is it funny? Is it a joke? What the fuck can it possibly mean?”

The police couldn't tell him. One of them offered, “Panda bears are Chinese, aren't they?” Aside from that nugget of perfect wisdom, not one of those cops had the vaguest notion. These guys were over-worked, weary, and virtually bleeding exhaustion.

“The whole town is upside down,” said the shorter cop. “We're sorry about your wife, and all that, and I suppose that we're stretched so thin that it seems like we don't care. That's not even partly correct. We've got reinforcements coming up from Tromso, for the Union Street scene, and we'll catch the bastard who killed your wife. I absolutely guarantee it.”

Another cop, muttering only to himself, said, “Fucking world will be over before that.”

...

 

[Lacunae]

...

 

Equilibri-yum, yum, yum.

Extra premi-yum, yum, yum.

Vali-yum, yum, yum.

...

 

Frank thought that Raful, the Nero's concierge, was delivering another fine bottle of Champagne, courtesy of the enigmatic Mr. Sharky, but the man who appeared in the doorway, accompanied by a very unattractive red-head, was certainly not him.

Now Dr. Bhugra was saying something about morphine.

Enter the blue zone. Valium and morphine and Xanax and codeine and whatever.

It was all broken English.

“Are you taking other drugs? What is in your bloodstream? Hello? Talk to me.”

Frank said, “Everything.”

“Pardon me? Hello? I want you to say what you are taking.” And then he ran through the list again. All the shit that was already coursing through Frank's system, and more. He kept popping his fingers at various points around Frank's head. Snap. “Can you hear me?” Snap, snap. “Are you feeling suicidal? Tell me what you have taken.”

Ativan and Percodan and laudanum and cocaine. And everyone can fuck the fuck off.

“I gave you a powerful sedative. What else did you take?”

“Yes, doctor, all of it. Five of one, half a dozen of the other. Both!”

“You need to talk sensibly to me, Mr. Burchard.”

“Actually, I don't have any coke. That part wasn't true. I never used the stuff.”

“You have overdosed, haven't you?”

“Give me whatever you've got.”

“Do you have prescriptions? Are you taking Zoloft for depression?”

“Some rotten son of a bitch just killed my wife.”

“Yes, Mr. Burchard, I am trying to help you.”

The room was spinning wildly. Frank couldn't help but notice that the nurse, the homely red-head, was holding two bottles of pills that had been in his front pocket. These bottles were empty now, but had been fairly full at the top-side of the day. She was whispering in the doctor's ear.

“What the fuck is she telling you, doctor?”

“You have taken too much, Mr. Burchard. What did you take?”

“I told you, all of it.”

“You are making my job very difficult.”

“My name is Burczyk, not Burchard, you ignorant cock!”

Then the vomit-spasms took over.

...

 

He was lying in bed, drenched in sunlight, and there was a very blurry police officer sitting in a chair, not three feet away. The yellow stripe up her pant-leg was about the only detail that registered on him. The air reeked of medicine and cleaning products.

More of this bullshit.

The police officer, a lady, up from Tromso, was talking very slowly. He thought it might have been a glitch in his brain, playing reality at one-half speed. She was saying, “In three days we have all these bodies. Your wife's ex-husband was killed on the street in front of your house on Monday, and then yesterday your  wife was murdered, in your driveway. All I want to do is find the connective tissue between these tragedies. It doesn't make sense. I would like for you to make it make sense to me. Can you do that, Mr. Burczyk? These things must be related, wouldn't you agree? One thing follows the other. I seriously doubt they're random, standalone crimes. I think that would be spectacular. The odds of that are a billion to one against.”

Frank coughed and said, “Is that an actual statistic? A billion to one? Or are you just talking out of your asshole?” His own voice, in the drum of his head, sounded two octaves too high.

“What would cause someone to kill your wife?”

“Tracy would find cause.”

“And Tracy is who—?”

“My ex-wife. She's crazy. Tracy Olafson. Ask her.”

“Last night, you said it was a biker—wearing a panda shirt—that shot Gia.”

“Tracy had to have been involved.”

“Your neighbors saw the same biker you described. Corsairs. Asian fellow.”

“Yes, I know, but—”

“Mr. Burczyk, there are only about three people in this entire region who fit the eyewitness description we have. Chances are about 99 percent that your wife's murderer hasn't even had the opportunity to flee town yet. And you can damn well rest assured we're going to catch him and punish him as far and as hard as the law will allow.”

Hot tears began streaming down Frank's cheeks. He couldn't will them to stop.

He tried to see her. She could have been char-broiled and dead, like his unknown sister, and he wouldn't have noticed. Everything was light and shadow, fuzzy around the edges.

“Would you like for me to call the nurse?” the woman asked.

“I'm fine,” said Frank. “I'll be just fine.”

“You're under no obligation to be fine. I think fine is out of the question.”

“I don't know what you want me to tell you.”

“I think you've told me enough for now. Get some rest. Sleep it all away.”

“I know his name. Haven't I told you his name?”

“You haven't.”

“He was Jimmy Codeman, back in school. I recognized him.”

Frank could hear the scratching pen on paper as the officer wrote the name down.

...

 

To this one perfect woman, a couple years back, he said, “I love you megabucks, super-sized, with a side of dipping sauce, extra fries, platinum rewards, and bonus air miles.”

...

 

Perhaps his life was a comedy.

The most unfortunate, unintentional humor.

That would be worth laughing about.

He said, “As soon as I get home I'm going to fucking kill myself.”

...

 

[The following scene is paralleled in The Lush Dysentery, which is the second book in the "Sink Bunny" narrative:]

 

This other gentleman, name of Bill Finger...

Fifteen or sixteen minutes back, he was a part of an altogether different story—a tale of romance, melodrama, and of broken and mended hearts. Now he finds himself suddenly past his prime, by years if not decades, widowed, not so recently, and about to stumble face-first into mild adventure. A brand new narrative with a different hero, a younger man, the story of someone else—but one that he will certainly impact.

He was of the Seeger-Whealer clan. Real, honest-to-goodness can-do people, around these parts. Not blue-blooded, no, more of a hard lumberjack-purple.

He met these men at the pub, then fell in with their number, like street toughs, and by 11:00 at night had been invited back to the secret clubhouse, which was nothing but a cobwebby recreation room underneath a rickety manse at the edge of town. He had been to this place before. Sometimes they hosted small dart tournaments here. Sometimes it was called the War Room, depending on who was running for what.

Old men and their dying dreams.

There was much to discuss. The Little girl was missing, still missing. Crime was rampant. Drugs were flowing in the streets. Certain members of that other club, the Carolingians, the men with the most pull, were more concerned with career acceleration than with good works. Corruption at city hall, dark political affiliations, that sort of thing. Also—this woman, Diana Luvana, local gal, real sweet, had purchased a Buddha Tube, one of those devices contrived for chatting with the dead.

Much ado about everything.

At 64, Bill Finger was the youngest of the bunch, though he was by no means a member. Three of the other men in the room were in their seventies, and the Engineer, Gaulthier Tremblay, the Grand Guignol, was one month shy of ninety. Bill was the spring chicken of the group. Hostility and dementia were rampant but Bill's mind was still sharp as a pencil. Sharp as a butcher's knife.

He remembered being born. He remembered his conception.

He claimed his mind went all the way back, and beyond, to before he even Was.

That was his story. That was the hot, focal point of this fine late summer evening. The old men who hungered for Immortality and Scotch whisky had taken more than a passing interest in Bill Finger's strange tale. One old man in particular: Tremblay himself, who was closer to death, statistically, than anyone in the room.

The Lawyer, Rodney C. Culling, always suspicious, wasn't having it, not one little bit. He said, “Who do you think you are fooling, Billy? We didn't just fall off the banana boat. You were a sperm before you were conceived—nothing but a clot of jizz. No one can remember that far back. I've met some strange stories, but I've not yet met someone who remembers swimming up through the semen puddle.”

These men, keep in mind, had witnessed queer things.

They had dabbled in twisted, esoteric past-times.

There was a photo of Culling above the shuffleboard—black and white, wearing a moustache and smirking like Clark Gable, taken around the time of President Kennedy's fateful ride through Dallas. This man had not aged terribly. He was grey-white and sagging, but still identifiable as the man in the photo. Hanging beside him, amid various football memorabilia, was a rusted sextant, which was their society's symbol. It represented direction—the ability to navigate the mysteries of the eleven-dimensional Universe.

The original members, Carolingian and Rotarian cast-aways and exiles, called themselves The Seekers. They disbanded and re-banded several times during the turbulent Sixties—when the Earth very nearly spun off its axis—and renamed themselves The New Seekers. Then, in 1971, a hippie musical act with the same name released a song that would come to define Coca-Cola (“I'd like to teach the World to sing...”) and the society decided to go nameless ever after.

They were simply The, for the last four decades, and there were now only five left—four in attendance and one, the plastic surgeon, the Doctor, Aloysius Cockwell, hovering around 75, taking her yearly vacation in Puerto Rico.

Tremblay was rolling through a large, leather-bound journal, one of several, dating all the way back to the early decades of the Twentieth Century. He had forgotten which entry, in particular, he was searching for. “Smiley recalled the birth canal in detail,” he said suddenly. “Do you remember Mr. Smiley? Tall fellow, as I recall, and always frowning. He had perfectly preserved memories of being in utero, and obtained without resorting to hypnosis.”

“He was an opium addict,” said Culling. “A real cunt about it, too.”

“And they say the society's first chairman, Morrison, had a womb experience, do they not?”

“Who is they?”

“We.”

“We don't know much, at all, about Morrison.”

“But we know that he recalled the womb experience, yes?”

“He kept that story mostly to himself. He didn't even write it down. You won't find it in those dusty volumes, if it's what you're looking for. You'll find third- and fourth-party hearsay, nothing more. I believe the man was functionally illiterate.”

The Banker, Gabriel Johns, and the Politician, John-Delores Welding II, were nodding in agreement. They were forever nodding in agreement. Their arms were folded on their chests, their faces weathered and acidic. Bill supposed they shared an asshole, or would like to.

Culling said, “Before we go further, I wish to say I hope you aren't full to the gills with beans, Billy.” He gave the faintest shit-eating smirk, his courtroom trademark, but still allowed, “I won't say you're a charlatan, given the sanctity of this situation—sacred house rules and all that crappity-crap—but the sentiment is not far from the surface.” (He was sauced enough that sentiment came out as sediment.)

“I wish I could say I appreciate your candor,” Bill said.

“Listen—in children under two years of age, there's no ability to form long-term memories,” Culling said. “It's simply not possible. That's the scientific side of it. But, then again, as we all know, this little fraternity has rarely interested itself in science.”

But Bill could remember everything, and not from the point of view of the ovum or sperm, as the Smileys and Morrisons claimed to. Nor the image of his parents, naked, elastic skin, fucking each other on a heap of wet towels, on the bathroom floor, just an hour before Christmas dinner with her parents. Not Mother's fire-red hair sticking to the porcelain of the toilet. Not Father bellowing, “Good, good, good, God, Baby Jesus!” No, nothing of that sort.

Bill Finger remembered an entire World.

“It was quite like here,” he said, “but different in many respects, of course.”

“Are you talking about the uterus?” asked Culling.

“No,” said Bill, “I mean before that. Long before the uterus. Even before the balls.”

Finger's claim was unlike the others. He told them he recalled a large room, concrete and polished marble cladding, vaulted ceilings, overlooking a densely forested valley. Golden colossi in the distance, taller than the trees, lording over all. The air was moist and warm, nearly uncomfortable. It smelled of flowers and spice and salt.

Central to the memory image: There was a keg-sized telescope by the window—must have weighed a metric tonne—aimed at a string of five small moons. The walls were adorned with ornate tapestries. “It wasn't Earth,” he told the group, “before you go thinking such a thing. Five moons. And it wasn't past or present or future, either. It was somewhere else entirely, completely outside of this realm.”

Johns nodded at Welding and mouthed the word, “Realm.”

Culling poured four more drinks. Johns was abstaining today. And lately.

“Go on, Billy, tell more,” said Tremblay. “Don't let these these ones get to you. Their skulls have gone soft from all that permethrine in the air. The chem-trails, yeah? They don't reason so good, no more.” He looked like cancer and formaldehyde—a  mottled skin pulled taut over a rack of bones. “Ol' Rodney has two cocks stuffed up his own arse and it makes him entirely disagreeable. Just tell us all what you recall, as best you can. It's all very good—I believe you.”

Bill Finger relaxed some. The Scotch was pure Heaven. Culling was no cheapskate.

In the other Realm, the Then-time, the room of tapestries, a small Doctor approached him with two glass vials. There was a helix of DNA in one hand and a tadpole-sized, embryonic skeleton in the other. He said, “Your frame is all built. You're ready to go. You're all set, Trooper,” and et cetera. And Bill knew that the Doctor was not speaking English, even though it seemed that way in the memory. The tapestries that hung upon the walls contained words that were unreadable.

In the Now-time, the room was dark and reeked of old men. This lonesome basement, where cards and billiards had been played barely three or four times in a decade or more, where the laughter was sparse. Despite the facade of skepticism, the secret society that had gathered 'round wanted nothing less than the instruction manual to Creation—particularly the chapter, if any, on Cheating Death.

“You got to choose your DNA?” asked Gabriel Johns. “Is that so?”

“No,” said Bill, “it wasn't choosing, any more than getting fitted for new dentures is choosing. You might get to pick white teeth or yellow ones, but not much else. The dentures have to be sculpted to your mouth. They have to fit to the terrain of your gums. The code of my DNA, the model of my body, these things were already prepared. We look the same in the other realms. If I were to go to Valhalla, I'm still going to be me.”

“Of course you'll still be you,” Welding snorted. He was a squat, fat man with pocked, red cheeks. “Are you honestly telling us about the Resurrection? Such ideas we already accept. The God of the World has already shown us these truths.”

Johns said something about Christ and the Holy Ghost, and the infernal gods of Pluto Prectalis, and then dropped the name of Mithras, for good measure. He may have been sober, but he was so far out of the loop he might as well have been drunk or dead.

“I'm not talking about Christian dogma, or any of that Biblical swill,” Bill said. He recalled the familiarity of the Then-time, how real that place seemed in his brain, vibrant and highly defined, more real than real. He recalled his reluctance to leave, the look of concern on the Doctor's face. And the Doc telling him, “It's just such a long way back, my friend. You might not make it.”

An unbearable yearning.

“And why would anyone desire to leave such a place? That realm felt like it was my home, like I was somebody who mattered,” he told the ancient men. “It felt real to me. An unbelievable sense of peace. Even now, near seven decades on, it felt more substantial than anything that has come since. I can recall the fibers of the wall-hangings—practically feel it between my fingers. I think of that telescope, the material of its construction, like steel and enamel, mixed up,  though not quite either. The smell in the air. The fine dust on the floor tiles.”

“You travelled down the string?” asked Tremblay. “I read a book about it. That's how you came—by circuit. And the circuit leads from that realm to your mother's womb. You came as a pre-existing somebody. That is the basis of the entire thesis.”

Culling rolled his eyes at the oldest man.

“Yes. I recall the journey. I recall that the Doctor set the Helix and the Embryo into the space of my brain, and then I fell backward, into electrical blue current, and the next phase was the uterus. No sense of time passing, but a real sense of feeling yourself degenerate into the baser forms.”

“Jizz,” said Culling, nodding authoritatively.

Tremblay, helping himself to a third drink, said, “These are spheres. Picture speech balloons connected by tails, like in the comic books when many people are talking at once. This balloon, that balloon, he said, she said, another balloon, a thought bubble, perhaps. All connected by the circuits. You move up and down, all along the circuits. That is what Mr. Finger recalls so vividly. He remembers moving from one realm to the next, via the umbilicus.”

Tremblay had been going on (and on) about such things for a long time.

Bill added, “There are different ways in and out. If you come to this realm, as I did, as we all did, by the method of being birthed, then the only way out is to die. Other realms have other rules. I recall hearing of a world of clear blue water where you come to be with nothing but a splash, and you depart again  by swimming into blue holes.”

“Sounds so quaint,” said Johns. “And you're always you, no matter where you end up.”

“Mostly, yes. The Core you is hard coded into the circuitry. I could wind up with flippers for legs, but you should still recognize the Core me, if you look closely. I do believe, however, that the Core evolves as we go, too. It only makes sense. The Realms are the building Cells of a Universe that never stops growing.”

Tremblay urged everyone to pull closer. They huddled around the card table, where Mr. Culling used to play Rummy with Mrs. Culling, a million years before. “Mr. Finger has seen all the way back, the circuits and the Cells, just like I detailed it. You may have thought I was crazy, but Mr. Finger is describing exactly what I have already described to you.”

“Of course you could have coached him,” said Culling. He was in the business of law, after all—trials and hearings and such—and knew a thing or two about coerced testimony.

“We define ourselves as honest men,” barked Tremblay. “I have trusted you, Mr. Culling, with my basic freedoms. I have trusted Mr. Johns with my fortune. Our bond of faith in one another is our strongest, best weapon. Mr. Finger has nothing to gain by lying. Cui bono, Rodney? And why would I coach him? To convince the lot of you of... what, exactly?”

Mr. Welding barked back, “Nobody thinks you literally coached Mr. Finger, Gaulthier. We're just applying the Razor. We always trust the Razor, don't we? The simple explanations are usually the correct ones.”

And then Culling muttered, “You're too old to write the book of this story, Gaulth.”

“I know the place he speaks of,” said Tremblay, wagging his finger around the room. “Where Bill has been, I have also glimpsed. I recall the same Realm, the one he has told us about. I recall the two vials—the helix and the embryo. Bill speaks of tree-tops and golden statues. Fat telescopes. Strange scientists and tapestries full of occult symbols. I too have dreamed of that place.”

“You dreamed it,” said Johns, “but Finger says he remembers being there. There is a remarkable difference between a dream and a memory.”

“Not really,” sighed Culling. “The brain is a fancy thing. Quite easy to fool.”

“You sound like you're swaying, Rodney,” said Welding.

“I'm always on the fence, J. D. I'm never perfectly one thing or the other.”

“It's a wise policy.”

“Whether anyone else is convinced doesn't mean a lick of pocky to me,” Tremblay snorted. “Mr. Finger has seen what I've seen, and that's all the confirmation I need. The rest of you can go straight to Hell, for all I care.”

Bill excused himself to step outside in order to smoke, and Mr. Culling went with him. It was almost two o'clock in the morning. The air smelled of dust and the vague promise of rain. Bill lit an unfiltered cigarette and Culling lit a stale half-smoked cigar from his lapel pocket.

“You know, deep inside, we're all Alchemists,” said Culling. “All of us.”

“I'm not trying to sell you a used car,” said Finger.

“What are you trying to sell us, young man?”

“It's my theory that some of these realms are becoming confused. Much like heading for Guyana but ending up in Laos, if you take my meaning—but on a quantum scale. Imagine that you are standing simultaneously on all the floors of the World Trade Center, but then the planes hit, and the building collapses, and all the floors begin pancaking together, dropping through the ether.”

“We have better things to discuss, don't we?”

“I don't know that we do, Mr. Culling. I'm not even sure that we exist.”

“How so?”

“I don't think we exist here, is all I mean, on this particular floor.”

“Go on.”

“I think we've fallen through. That's what I'm saying.”

“Like pancakes, you say?”

“Like pancakes.”

...

 

Bill Finger wanted to talk about the gods of Pluto Prectalis, and about his recent journey, sideways, into a dimmer version of Discord—stretched thin and reeking of Apocalypse, but Culling was yawning hard, complaining of exhaustion and a sour belly.

“Too much chat for tonight,” said the Lawyer. “I must rest. But we'll talk again, and soon, provided this tear in space doesn't open so wide that it swallows us entirely. Black holes and streaking comet-tails, and such.”

 

...