1/14/08
One day, without warning, they opened the door to my cell, my padded solitary confinement. A well-dressed man with perfect hair and a royal blue suit walked in wearing a smile that brimmed with empathetic tenderness.
"Hello Charles. I'm Mike Gallows."
"Hey." It was all I could muster from beneath the drug slumber.
"Let's go for a walk." He extended his hand to me and helped me up.
I trailed along beside him, dragging my feet, as we made our way through some sort of building I don't recall entering. It was old and clinical, like an outdated mental hospital, suddenly transforming into an office building with the turn of a corner.
"This is our main office, for now." With a wave of his hands, cubicles, computers, and clerical staff all seemed to materialize with his words.
As we walked, the business casual clad worker drones all peered out of their private hives to get a peek at this deranged madman the boss was giving the grand tour to. I hated them and their inquisitive eyes.
"We've got a few projects in the works, but, we consider your book a top priority." I swung my head up towards him from my hunched stance. "I don't think you know what your work has meant to some of us here."
"Where am I?" I don't remember sleeping.
"Well, that's sort of one of the tiny problems we're working on. We're not quite sure."
Gallows started walking, and as if on a leash, I lurch forward, shuffling along behind him like an obedient dog. The office interior fades and a shimmering laboratory sparkles in its place.
A young lab technician, hidden behind mousy brown hair and glasses, tinkered with various, unscientific looking tools. Blunt objects, odds and ends from a junk drawer, a handful of rocks. She continued to arrange them in some manner of specific order known only to her, seemingly oblivious to us having entered her arena.
"Now, we're going to need you to hop up on here and let us have a look at you." Gallows guided me to some sort of medical surplus lounge chair and shoved me down into it.
He rotated around me, appearing in doctor's scrubs when he re-entered my line of sight. I began to feel a soothing comfort trickle down my body. Numb nothingness filled the everywhere of ache and pain. My teeth went first, then my chest, my limbs.
"Just sit back and relax and we'll see what's going on here." Gallows activated some out of sight lever, coercing the dental lay-z-boy to draw me deeper and deeper into comfortable oblivion.
I felt electromagnetic pulses, radioactive tracers, psychic emanators, all probing my body looking for disease. Seeking answers. Locating my soul.
When eternity had just started to become a teensy bit tiresome, the procedure ended. A bright light still shone on my exposed aura. I was vibrating, tingling pins and needles as physical sensation began to awaken within me.
"Well, everything seems to be in good working order, and I believe we can help you with the last piece you're missing." Gallows began to raise my chair up to an upright position.
Sitting across from me, he appeared to be relieved. "Looks like you came through relatively unscathed, considering your story."
Gallows snapped off his latex gloves and jotted down some notes in a folder before handing them off to the assistant. A pure, silvery mirror was wheeling itself into the room, gliding on invisible mono-filaments no doubt.
The mirror came to a stop just a few feet away. As Gallows readjusted it directly before me, I glanced over at the young lab assistant who was cleaning away the bric-a-brac that was strewn across the countertop. All that crap seemed awfully familiar, now possessed by some sentimental force that was overwhelming me.
"What is all that? What does this have to do with me? What is the tower...?"
I turned to face Gallows but instead saw my own reflection. I gazed upon my duplicate, my shimmering clone that truly existed nowhere, and how lost he looked. I saw his despair and struggle, but how could you not with it weighing his face down like that.
That poor schmuck. All alone on the other side, unable to do much of anything. Just the exact opposite of myself, here in this cold, hard reality. But this didn't feel real. It hadn't in a long while. Before the book was written. Before moving to the city. Before the deal.
Innocence was the vital ingredient in this stranger's eyes. Unbitten by bitterness, my god, this simpleton was so long gone. I had forgotten what it was to be like you. To be lost and then refound. Bound by the immaterial, I buried you where they could never find you, the other side of here.
Over my howls of joy at this momentous occasion of me reclaiming my former self, I overheard Gallows instruct the young girl to watch over me in these final stages.
"Be sure to wait until it fully dissolves, then give him the sedative. Let him take all of it in before he sleeps. Then have him meet the others."
Gallows gently tapped the edge of the chair and whispered, "Welcome home Charles. Everything will be amazing."
As I absorbed all that I had left behind, every good and decent fiber of my being, the whole of my sane mind, as all that soaked into me all I could think was that everything was already amazing.
It always has been. It always will be.
"Novus Ordo Colligo."
Monday, September 26, 2011
Monday, September 19, 2011
The Tower of Brahma: Chapter 49 - Boy Cries Wolf (edit)
12/3/07
My brain is broken. Forehead feels hot to the touch as my mind boils alive in my skull. Something has gone horribly wrong.
I spend days at a time sleeping against the barrel of my gun, only waking when Spider comes to bring me some soup. I've let something out of my head, leaving whatever remained vulnerable, defenseless.
They send me to see a specialist, who specializes in something special no doubt. I don't care. Nothing feels real, no one believes me anymore, and there's nowhere to go. So, now I get to sit down with some egghead who wants to poke and prod me, work out my glitches. Awesome.
She comes in and catches my eye immediately. In fact I can't look away, or I won't, and I don't think I want to. She looks away for us both but keeps returning back to my gaze from behind her specs. The glasses frame her small, inquisitive eyes; amber pools drawing me in, eager to capture knowledge.
"Do you know why you're here?” She looks up from her clipboard and file folder. It seems we've started.
"I've a good idea, I suppose." So, I could meet you, I thought to myself.
"Well then, let's begin."
I pour out my soul to her, as it comes so easy to one of my disposition. I've known the zigs and zags of my life for years now. Recalled and examined the woes over and over and here it is all over again. Presented one more time in a rambling stream of sentimental sentences spilling forth and washing over her. She seems unfazed.
I give my diagnoses and the suggestions I tried to act upon to correct it all. The positive wavelengths I tried to ride all the way to a healthy mind. I scraped out the gunk and washed it clean. Molded the mess into a novel and sold it. Wiped my hands of the whole affair and walked away. God knows who's reading my travesty, if anyone at all.
She says very little in response. A flicker of life dances in her as I bombard her with the worst I have, laughing at my misfortunes which I'm sure come across as two-demential as they sound to me. I'm sure her own pains are worse, her suffering paramount to all others, but here she is trying to help me. Or maybe she's just earning her paycheck.
I want her to tell me I'm being selfish, or melodramatic, or that I'm too sensitive. And although I've dreaded it, fought the idea my whole life, that I need medication, that I should be drugged and mellowed out, well, now, that sounds so appealing. I don't want to be sitting on the edge of feeling too much anymore.
It's all lies. My repeated suffering and exorcising of personal demons. It's all flat, unemotional, detached anecdotes about this pretending madman charicature I've made myself into.
I hate being Charles Crown. I hate the Agent Fenris character in my book, always preferring to be Spider, the charismatic psychopath that does as he wants without reservation or consequence. A silent killer with no remorse. But I care, I feel.
"I care too much godammit!” I scream, pounding the table. She does not stir. I kick back the chair and stand. "Why?! Why do I feel so much, yet nothing at all?!"
My anger swells, frustration simmering internally, until I truly feel mad. "I'm feeling something for god's sake! I can't just be making this all up! I just goddamn can not be!"
I flip the table and scream, "This is real fucking pain I feel! Why the fuck can't I just feel it, accept this bullshit, swallow the whole fucking sadness that's making me hate this whole godforsaken world?!"
I reach past the girl across from me who is no longer there and slam against the two-way mirror that they're watching me from behind. I rage against the glass, hoping that I am imbued with enough strength to shatter it where I'm sure the countless others before me were unable. I hope beyond hope that it's me that brings everything crashing down.
But I don't. I just crash to the floor myself in exhaustion, knuckles and palms bruised and bloodied. I'm crying everything out, tears mixing with blood as I wipe the evidence of weakness from my face. I'm trapped in here and no one is listening.
My brain is broken. Forehead feels hot to the touch as my mind boils alive in my skull. Something has gone horribly wrong.
I spend days at a time sleeping against the barrel of my gun, only waking when Spider comes to bring me some soup. I've let something out of my head, leaving whatever remained vulnerable, defenseless.
They send me to see a specialist, who specializes in something special no doubt. I don't care. Nothing feels real, no one believes me anymore, and there's nowhere to go. So, now I get to sit down with some egghead who wants to poke and prod me, work out my glitches. Awesome.
She comes in and catches my eye immediately. In fact I can't look away, or I won't, and I don't think I want to. She looks away for us both but keeps returning back to my gaze from behind her specs. The glasses frame her small, inquisitive eyes; amber pools drawing me in, eager to capture knowledge.
"Do you know why you're here?” She looks up from her clipboard and file folder. It seems we've started.
"I've a good idea, I suppose." So, I could meet you, I thought to myself.
"Well then, let's begin."
I pour out my soul to her, as it comes so easy to one of my disposition. I've known the zigs and zags of my life for years now. Recalled and examined the woes over and over and here it is all over again. Presented one more time in a rambling stream of sentimental sentences spilling forth and washing over her. She seems unfazed.
I give my diagnoses and the suggestions I tried to act upon to correct it all. The positive wavelengths I tried to ride all the way to a healthy mind. I scraped out the gunk and washed it clean. Molded the mess into a novel and sold it. Wiped my hands of the whole affair and walked away. God knows who's reading my travesty, if anyone at all.
She says very little in response. A flicker of life dances in her as I bombard her with the worst I have, laughing at my misfortunes which I'm sure come across as two-demential as they sound to me. I'm sure her own pains are worse, her suffering paramount to all others, but here she is trying to help me. Or maybe she's just earning her paycheck.
I want her to tell me I'm being selfish, or melodramatic, or that I'm too sensitive. And although I've dreaded it, fought the idea my whole life, that I need medication, that I should be drugged and mellowed out, well, now, that sounds so appealing. I don't want to be sitting on the edge of feeling too much anymore.
It's all lies. My repeated suffering and exorcising of personal demons. It's all flat, unemotional, detached anecdotes about this pretending madman charicature I've made myself into.
I hate being Charles Crown. I hate the Agent Fenris character in my book, always preferring to be Spider, the charismatic psychopath that does as he wants without reservation or consequence. A silent killer with no remorse. But I care, I feel.
"I care too much godammit!” I scream, pounding the table. She does not stir. I kick back the chair and stand. "Why?! Why do I feel so much, yet nothing at all?!"
My anger swells, frustration simmering internally, until I truly feel mad. "I'm feeling something for god's sake! I can't just be making this all up! I just goddamn can not be!"
I flip the table and scream, "This is real fucking pain I feel! Why the fuck can't I just feel it, accept this bullshit, swallow the whole fucking sadness that's making me hate this whole godforsaken world?!"
I reach past the girl across from me who is no longer there and slam against the two-way mirror that they're watching me from behind. I rage against the glass, hoping that I am imbued with enough strength to shatter it where I'm sure the countless others before me were unable. I hope beyond hope that it's me that brings everything crashing down.
But I don't. I just crash to the floor myself in exhaustion, knuckles and palms bruised and bloodied. I'm crying everything out, tears mixing with blood as I wipe the evidence of weakness from my face. I'm trapped in here and no one is listening.
Monday, September 12, 2011
Tower of Brahma 48 - Anthropology of Entertainment (edit)
10/18/07
I've been walking up these steps forever, leaving plenty of time for introspection and speculation. Every cycle around the base of this tower marked another ending, another beginning, until the line between blurred. Steps of Eternity, one foot ahead of the other, this was my entire life.
The walking fell to the background and my imagination painted the canvas of my escape. I envisioned character after character building their arc, rising and falling and rising once again. They too were trapped in a circular prison, given life just long enough to come back around enlightened.
I distracted myself with their drama, getting lost in their tragedy, drowning in their passion. I forgot who I was and where I was going, only that I was moving forward. As the stories grew in complexity I found it harder to immerse myself. The variations on a theme weren't enough to distract from my isolation.
They fell in love, they fought, they reconciled. They waged war, they murdered and sought salvation. Beneath their two dimensional personas, a shadow grew. The sun behind my mind casts a long darkness stretching into an infinite web of storytelling. Black and white melded to grey, which folded in on itself and exploded into every color ever.
Nothing was new, only repackaged for the age, in the parlance of the times, the message becoming obscured beneath the blurred surface. The masses became lost in repetition, forgetting that they were moving upwards, instead feeling only that they were repeats of something that once was real.
I was everyone, somewhere else. Here and now, I was just a nameless form rising alone. I stopped walking. I looked up and couldn't see the top of this leviathan tower. Peering down over the side into the abyss of my mistakes and regrets, I felt the urge to plunge. I choked back the gag reflex of my soul and threw myself against the wall.
There had to be some way to find out where I was. How far I'd come. How much longer there was to go. I reached out into the shimmering futura with my mind and saw that I'd be walking steps forever. I sat down and rested my legs.
My head sunk into my hands. The weight of a multiverse pulled it down, made it impossibly heavy. Fake lies revealing truth, that's what was in this damned skull of mine. A hunk of fleshy meat firing electrical impulses. Divine light beaming down upon it, supplying the spark to ignite the slow burning embers. A stiff wind whips up the staircase blowing back my hair.
I withdrew. Pulled everything in as tears burst forth. Liquid poured from my eyes as a full bathtub might, water spilling over the edge as you lower yourself into its warm embrace. A reverse raindrop dripping from the edge of the roof. My stomach went wobbly as a thousand realities swooshed about my person.
I opened my eyes, the wind drying the cool wetness on the side of my face. I saw the bricks all around me. The endless perfect pattern containing all the molecules within. A concrete straw sucking me up into something. I retraced my last steps, following them into the curve of the tower. My eyesight got to just about 180 degrees, give or take, when I spied the marker.
There was a carving on the outside of the steps. I couldn't make it out from here so I got up and leaped down a few steps to get closer. I had to go back until I was almost on top of it. I leaned over the edge, dangling myself from the cusp of certain death so as to read it: XLVIII.
'Stomp-stomp-stomp!'
I scurried back from the edge as the footsteps grew louder. Someone was following. He had to run. Fight or flight surged through his brain, adrenaline through his heart, a chill down his spine. Mad dashing back up the steps, Charles Crown leapt steps two at a time. The sound grew fainter.
I saw another marker on the curve up ahead. When I read it I knew what was left to do. The weight of an entire lifetime of fiction didn't seem as heavy as it once did. Mankind's dreams sloshed about inside my head. I'd carry it as far as I could. To the top if I was able.
Almost at the next marker. Wish me luck.
I've been walking up these steps forever, leaving plenty of time for introspection and speculation. Every cycle around the base of this tower marked another ending, another beginning, until the line between blurred. Steps of Eternity, one foot ahead of the other, this was my entire life.
The walking fell to the background and my imagination painted the canvas of my escape. I envisioned character after character building their arc, rising and falling and rising once again. They too were trapped in a circular prison, given life just long enough to come back around enlightened.
I distracted myself with their drama, getting lost in their tragedy, drowning in their passion. I forgot who I was and where I was going, only that I was moving forward. As the stories grew in complexity I found it harder to immerse myself. The variations on a theme weren't enough to distract from my isolation.
They fell in love, they fought, they reconciled. They waged war, they murdered and sought salvation. Beneath their two dimensional personas, a shadow grew. The sun behind my mind casts a long darkness stretching into an infinite web of storytelling. Black and white melded to grey, which folded in on itself and exploded into every color ever.
Nothing was new, only repackaged for the age, in the parlance of the times, the message becoming obscured beneath the blurred surface. The masses became lost in repetition, forgetting that they were moving upwards, instead feeling only that they were repeats of something that once was real.
I was everyone, somewhere else. Here and now, I was just a nameless form rising alone. I stopped walking. I looked up and couldn't see the top of this leviathan tower. Peering down over the side into the abyss of my mistakes and regrets, I felt the urge to plunge. I choked back the gag reflex of my soul and threw myself against the wall.
There had to be some way to find out where I was. How far I'd come. How much longer there was to go. I reached out into the shimmering futura with my mind and saw that I'd be walking steps forever. I sat down and rested my legs.
My head sunk into my hands. The weight of a multiverse pulled it down, made it impossibly heavy. Fake lies revealing truth, that's what was in this damned skull of mine. A hunk of fleshy meat firing electrical impulses. Divine light beaming down upon it, supplying the spark to ignite the slow burning embers. A stiff wind whips up the staircase blowing back my hair.
I withdrew. Pulled everything in as tears burst forth. Liquid poured from my eyes as a full bathtub might, water spilling over the edge as you lower yourself into its warm embrace. A reverse raindrop dripping from the edge of the roof. My stomach went wobbly as a thousand realities swooshed about my person.
I opened my eyes, the wind drying the cool wetness on the side of my face. I saw the bricks all around me. The endless perfect pattern containing all the molecules within. A concrete straw sucking me up into something. I retraced my last steps, following them into the curve of the tower. My eyesight got to just about 180 degrees, give or take, when I spied the marker.
There was a carving on the outside of the steps. I couldn't make it out from here so I got up and leaped down a few steps to get closer. I had to go back until I was almost on top of it. I leaned over the edge, dangling myself from the cusp of certain death so as to read it: XLVIII.
'Stomp-stomp-stomp!'
I scurried back from the edge as the footsteps grew louder. Someone was following. He had to run. Fight or flight surged through his brain, adrenaline through his heart, a chill down his spine. Mad dashing back up the steps, Charles Crown leapt steps two at a time. The sound grew fainter.
I saw another marker on the curve up ahead. When I read it I knew what was left to do. The weight of an entire lifetime of fiction didn't seem as heavy as it once did. Mankind's dreams sloshed about inside my head. I'd carry it as far as I could. To the top if I was able.
Almost at the next marker. Wish me luck.
Monday, September 5, 2011
Tower of Brahma: Chapter 47. the Meaning of Life (completed) [edit]
08/02/07
I went out for a walk last night. I wandered down 2nd Ave, turned on 3rd, made a right on 1st. From there I crisscrossed through the Lower East Side. I walked by every bar I was familiar with, but didn't stop in any of them.
I was looking for something, not meaning to find anything. An empty quest through the lonely night, hoping things might make sense with some pavement under my feet. I decided to get a drink after all.
Back up into the East Village, Ave A's deviants all about me, I knew where to go. Lucy's; Agent Spider's drop point of choice. I had Marco bring me a Zyviec. He asked where Spider was as he added a shot of Polish Vodka to the bar. I tossed back the shot and told him I was solo tonight.
I polished off the beer and stepped outside for a smoke. It was near closing time and Tompkins Square Park was a black void before me. The gates were all locked and the police weren't about, yet I knew someone was in there. I could hear them; could hear the wail of his trumpet.
It was sad and jazzy. Dancing among the leaves, slipping around the maze-like walkway. It must have had a hypnotic effect on me as I found myself leaping the fence and wandering into the darkness. I followed the sound of the horn towards the center of the park, where the benches all arc around two massive trees. The moon beamed down through the gaps in the treetops illuminating the dancefloor. I was alone with myself standing amid the lunar puddles.
A man stepped into the light playing his horn. He wore a disheveled suit and a frazzled head of hair with matching beard. His eyes were closed as he sauntered towards me. The moon highlighted the cracks in his features. I thought of my father.
His slow, sad tune rode out on a long and nearly inaudible note.
"Hey kid. Thanks for coming."
"I guess I didn't have much of a choice. I've been at the mercy of random events for quite some time now." I really had. I had finished a book I didn't recall writing. It was soon to be released and in the meantime I was visiting therapists and specialists and psychiatrists at the behest of the publisher. I wasn't sure of anything anymore.
"Oh, I remember those days. So afraid I was being controlled, manipulated, that I often ran away from anything and everything. We always were so good at running away..."
The moonlight shifted as it began to turn away in the night sky. It provided a pathway to the benches where the man with the trumpet sat wearily. He spun the horn around his fingers with a practiced ease. With his other hand he took out a pair of glasses and slipped them on.
"But I remember this night too. Alone and wandering. Called into the dark by the beckoning blare of brass. Heh. A beer and a shot burning my belly. We never would've had the balls to jump the fence, let alone come in here this late, all alone..."
I examined his face as the leaves parted in the wind and the light shone upon him. The same glasses I picked up at Fabulous Fanny's. The beard, although much thicker, was still patchy in the same places. The I-ching tattoo on the left forearm peeking out from his rolled up sleeve...
"So, you're me then? I'm visiting myself in the past? How old am I, I mean...you?"
He chuckled and stared me down. I was guessing he had to be almost my father's age now.
"You don't even want to know how this is all possible. That's what I loved about this age. 30, right? Still had that sense of wonder and excitement. As for me, well, seeing as this is the year of our lord 2023, well then, I must be just shy of...forty seven. Man. Forty seven."
He looked down at the ground for a lingering, lost moment. The trumpet's twirl came to an abrupt stop as he glanced up at me.
"C'mon, sit a spell."
So, I dropped onto the bench next to him and stared down at my shredded Adidas on the pavement, my sock just protruding from the right pinky toe.
"Do I figure this out?"
"What, life?"
"Yeah."
"You already did. Now you're just learning to live with it."
The moonlight began to shrink away, letting the night envelop us. The remaining light focused to a point; thousands of leaves casting fractal patterns in a chaotic dance all melting into one spotlight, slipping towards a headlight, into a mere flashlight. It refined to a point, a laser, as it floated down the space between us and up my body. It rested on my forehead and fired.
"Here, put these on."
A pair of sunglasses were being placed on my face in the blinding white. I eventually got them adjusted and the world came into view.
"How is it daytime?"
I was staring out at the park midday, with dogs being walked, skateboarders flipping and tripping, and joggers bouncing by. The sun was everywhere.
"Okay, I just brought you through time so, you know, take a minute and soak it in."
Minor details made it to a secret part of my brain. Clothes were familiar, yet foreign. Bizarre technology was in place of small things like books, cell phones, stereos. Even people themselves felt somewhat alien.
"2023? I guess not much is different. People in a park."
A spin of the trumpet got my attention as he turned to me and said, "Let's walk."
I felt stumbly and awkward. Paying too much attention to walking, to breathing. I assumed everyone was staring, but no one was. The man next to me just smiled as we walked out and down 7th street.
"So, yeah, as you can see, life is just about the same. Some major changes in the air, but so many behind us as well."
Billboards and ads were either holographic, following me as I passed or just paint on a wall. Stores ranged from squatters sitting out selling their goods (glass bowls, hemp, and paper books), to high end, eye scanner designer vintage clothing stores big enough to fit five people comfortably.
"What about the book? What happens with the Tower of Brahma? I don't know the ending."
He stopped spinning the horn and placed it into his pocket. With a smile he said, "Well, what can I tell you? It makes an impact. Of sorts."
"What's that mean? You know what I had planned. How does it end?"
He chuckled to himself. "You'll read it eventually. Live it actually. God, I miss being you."
I put everything that's been happening to me in perspective. Somehow I was still alive. There was some purpose to all this. But I had to know.
"Is it my ending? What I really wanted? Did they make it something horrible? I wanted a happy ending...I did."
Tears welled up and I squeezed them out casually. Future me put his arm around my shoulder and with a grand sweeping gesture he wiped away the veil of reality.
"It's always a happy ending."
My arms weak, I clawed the glasses from my face, light turned to dark, letting them fall to the sidewalk. The night warbled and warped before me. The people, the sun, the future...gone.
I dropped to a knee and then tumbled forward onto my face. Consciousness sat dormant within my body as it heaved and hurled up the booze and stomach chunks. Every 20 minutes or so light made it's way into my open eyes.
Agent Spider walked up and lifted me by the back of my shirt. He began to drag me forward, and five feet later my legs found their footing. I was working my way up to lurching forward.
"C'mon kid, let's get you home."
A single note dissipated down 7th street and out into tomorrow.
I went out for a walk last night. I wandered down 2nd Ave, turned on 3rd, made a right on 1st. From there I crisscrossed through the Lower East Side. I walked by every bar I was familiar with, but didn't stop in any of them.
I was looking for something, not meaning to find anything. An empty quest through the lonely night, hoping things might make sense with some pavement under my feet. I decided to get a drink after all.
Back up into the East Village, Ave A's deviants all about me, I knew where to go. Lucy's; Agent Spider's drop point of choice. I had Marco bring me a Zyviec. He asked where Spider was as he added a shot of Polish Vodka to the bar. I tossed back the shot and told him I was solo tonight.
I polished off the beer and stepped outside for a smoke. It was near closing time and Tompkins Square Park was a black void before me. The gates were all locked and the police weren't about, yet I knew someone was in there. I could hear them; could hear the wail of his trumpet.
It was sad and jazzy. Dancing among the leaves, slipping around the maze-like walkway. It must have had a hypnotic effect on me as I found myself leaping the fence and wandering into the darkness. I followed the sound of the horn towards the center of the park, where the benches all arc around two massive trees. The moon beamed down through the gaps in the treetops illuminating the dancefloor. I was alone with myself standing amid the lunar puddles.
A man stepped into the light playing his horn. He wore a disheveled suit and a frazzled head of hair with matching beard. His eyes were closed as he sauntered towards me. The moon highlighted the cracks in his features. I thought of my father.
His slow, sad tune rode out on a long and nearly inaudible note.
"Hey kid. Thanks for coming."
"I guess I didn't have much of a choice. I've been at the mercy of random events for quite some time now." I really had. I had finished a book I didn't recall writing. It was soon to be released and in the meantime I was visiting therapists and specialists and psychiatrists at the behest of the publisher. I wasn't sure of anything anymore.
"Oh, I remember those days. So afraid I was being controlled, manipulated, that I often ran away from anything and everything. We always were so good at running away..."
The moonlight shifted as it began to turn away in the night sky. It provided a pathway to the benches where the man with the trumpet sat wearily. He spun the horn around his fingers with a practiced ease. With his other hand he took out a pair of glasses and slipped them on.
"But I remember this night too. Alone and wandering. Called into the dark by the beckoning blare of brass. Heh. A beer and a shot burning my belly. We never would've had the balls to jump the fence, let alone come in here this late, all alone..."
I examined his face as the leaves parted in the wind and the light shone upon him. The same glasses I picked up at Fabulous Fanny's. The beard, although much thicker, was still patchy in the same places. The I-ching tattoo on the left forearm peeking out from his rolled up sleeve...
"So, you're me then? I'm visiting myself in the past? How old am I, I mean...you?"
He chuckled and stared me down. I was guessing he had to be almost my father's age now.
"You don't even want to know how this is all possible. That's what I loved about this age. 30, right? Still had that sense of wonder and excitement. As for me, well, seeing as this is the year of our lord 2023, well then, I must be just shy of...forty seven. Man. Forty seven."
He looked down at the ground for a lingering, lost moment. The trumpet's twirl came to an abrupt stop as he glanced up at me.
"C'mon, sit a spell."
So, I dropped onto the bench next to him and stared down at my shredded Adidas on the pavement, my sock just protruding from the right pinky toe.
"Do I figure this out?"
"What, life?"
"Yeah."
"You already did. Now you're just learning to live with it."
The moonlight began to shrink away, letting the night envelop us. The remaining light focused to a point; thousands of leaves casting fractal patterns in a chaotic dance all melting into one spotlight, slipping towards a headlight, into a mere flashlight. It refined to a point, a laser, as it floated down the space between us and up my body. It rested on my forehead and fired.
"Here, put these on."
A pair of sunglasses were being placed on my face in the blinding white. I eventually got them adjusted and the world came into view.
"How is it daytime?"
I was staring out at the park midday, with dogs being walked, skateboarders flipping and tripping, and joggers bouncing by. The sun was everywhere.
"Okay, I just brought you through time so, you know, take a minute and soak it in."
Minor details made it to a secret part of my brain. Clothes were familiar, yet foreign. Bizarre technology was in place of small things like books, cell phones, stereos. Even people themselves felt somewhat alien.
"2023? I guess not much is different. People in a park."
A spin of the trumpet got my attention as he turned to me and said, "Let's walk."
I felt stumbly and awkward. Paying too much attention to walking, to breathing. I assumed everyone was staring, but no one was. The man next to me just smiled as we walked out and down 7th street.
"So, yeah, as you can see, life is just about the same. Some major changes in the air, but so many behind us as well."
Billboards and ads were either holographic, following me as I passed or just paint on a wall. Stores ranged from squatters sitting out selling their goods (glass bowls, hemp, and paper books), to high end, eye scanner designer vintage clothing stores big enough to fit five people comfortably.
"What about the book? What happens with the Tower of Brahma? I don't know the ending."
He stopped spinning the horn and placed it into his pocket. With a smile he said, "Well, what can I tell you? It makes an impact. Of sorts."
"What's that mean? You know what I had planned. How does it end?"
He chuckled to himself. "You'll read it eventually. Live it actually. God, I miss being you."
I put everything that's been happening to me in perspective. Somehow I was still alive. There was some purpose to all this. But I had to know.
"Is it my ending? What I really wanted? Did they make it something horrible? I wanted a happy ending...I did."
Tears welled up and I squeezed them out casually. Future me put his arm around my shoulder and with a grand sweeping gesture he wiped away the veil of reality.
"It's always a happy ending."
My arms weak, I clawed the glasses from my face, light turned to dark, letting them fall to the sidewalk. The night warbled and warped before me. The people, the sun, the future...gone.
I dropped to a knee and then tumbled forward onto my face. Consciousness sat dormant within my body as it heaved and hurled up the booze and stomach chunks. Every 20 minutes or so light made it's way into my open eyes.
Agent Spider walked up and lifted me by the back of my shirt. He began to drag me forward, and five feet later my legs found their footing. I was working my way up to lurching forward.
"C'mon kid, let's get you home."
A single note dissipated down 7th street and out into tomorrow.
Monday, August 29, 2011
The Tower of Brahma 46 Paranoia Paradise (edit)
01/31/07
"Congrats on the book."
I look up from my beer, removing myself from stasis, regaining the game. I looked over at the man next to me. He seemed to be a boy playing at manhood, much like myself. We wore contrasting costumes to match our competing characteristics. He was dark, and thin; precise. I was white, beaten, and defeated.
"I didn't finish it. I don't think I'm going to. I think I hate it."
"What are you talking about?"
"I don't think I'll like how it ends."
"Limbo is a better fate", I added.
I thought about everything. About all the things behind me, below me, above me, before me. Putting together words is easy. It comes so natural that it's kind of spooky. Piecing together a story is impossible. Imagine trying to unite all of mankind into a state of interest, of a suspension of identity, to con them into emotions with words parading around as familiar friends or unforgettable foes.
But it's a lie. A shadow puppet display of ideas and instructions, or rather suggestions, to a bored, complacent society that has become virtually shockproof. Hell, I've lost the ability to feel months ago. So I don't feel pity for myself. Fuck that sense of failure. I don't owe anyone my words. I don't have to entertain them, distract them. Forget about teaching anyone, enlightening just even one reader, once.
"I thought that was a good turning point in the book. When things got more, I dunno, ugly. Raw, you know?"
I focused in on the individual in front of me again. I attempted to deduce whether we were speaking telepathically. Paranoia seeped in and so the awkward silence must be filled.
"I don't know why I don't destroy the whole thing. Delete it off that online journal I have and trash the backup I have on my Powerbook at home." I cringed at the thought.
"If the editors like it as much as I have, well I know we can get this thing on the shelves by summer." He stopped speaking mentally when he said this.
"What are you talking about? I'm not going to write it. I came here to tell you. I'm done."
I was getting drowsy, but when I re-focused my eyes I was sitting beside Agent Spider, and the bar had a symbolic sheen. Below us were bodies that looked too realistic to be real. It was us, but more muted somehow. Confined.
"You completed the book three months ago when you asked that we hypnotize you to help your motivation. After the first session, you locked yourself up in your apartment for hours a day. You just emailed me the final chapter last week."
I felt high from the out of body experience, grounded down through the booze. Everything was asleep. Reality was melting. I focused my third eye and rode the vibrations, tuning into the music from the jukebox. I felt every person in the bar, drank in their emotions, feeding on their humanity. I needed to be real to figure this out.
"What are you talking about?!" I shouted more than I meant to.
He glanced around and gave me a weird look.
"You okay? What's going on?" That's what it looked like his lips had said.
"Is this like a gimmick thing? You're Agent Fenris, the crazy writer in your book?" That is what I heard. And it wouldn't stop.
Those three months must have damaged something. Maybe it was that "creating antennae" we had built to force the book out of you. The "magic signal" that stimulates your impulse to write. And for what? The new bible I'm assuming. Ahh yes, you'll be immortal through the written word. But only a shell of you. Something that was never even real in the first place. Agent Fenris peels away, Charles Crown lies behind, and what's there underneath it all?
The Tower rumbles and crashes to the earth. That last brick brought it down. No, every brick brought it down. Every moment spent building caused this disaster. Devastation is everything. Desolation is all. There is nothing left.
I'm waving wildly as my senses scream at me, every sensation of this city assaulting me. I burst out the doors of the bar, obviously stark raving mad. I've lost it, I've lost everything. I slam into concrete and suddenly there is nothing left.
"Congrats on the book."
I look up from my beer, removing myself from stasis, regaining the game. I looked over at the man next to me. He seemed to be a boy playing at manhood, much like myself. We wore contrasting costumes to match our competing characteristics. He was dark, and thin; precise. I was white, beaten, and defeated.
"I didn't finish it. I don't think I'm going to. I think I hate it."
"What are you talking about?"
"I don't think I'll like how it ends."
"Limbo is a better fate", I added.
I thought about everything. About all the things behind me, below me, above me, before me. Putting together words is easy. It comes so natural that it's kind of spooky. Piecing together a story is impossible. Imagine trying to unite all of mankind into a state of interest, of a suspension of identity, to con them into emotions with words parading around as familiar friends or unforgettable foes.
But it's a lie. A shadow puppet display of ideas and instructions, or rather suggestions, to a bored, complacent society that has become virtually shockproof. Hell, I've lost the ability to feel months ago. So I don't feel pity for myself. Fuck that sense of failure. I don't owe anyone my words. I don't have to entertain them, distract them. Forget about teaching anyone, enlightening just even one reader, once.
"I thought that was a good turning point in the book. When things got more, I dunno, ugly. Raw, you know?"
I focused in on the individual in front of me again. I attempted to deduce whether we were speaking telepathically. Paranoia seeped in and so the awkward silence must be filled.
"I don't know why I don't destroy the whole thing. Delete it off that online journal I have and trash the backup I have on my Powerbook at home." I cringed at the thought.
"If the editors like it as much as I have, well I know we can get this thing on the shelves by summer." He stopped speaking mentally when he said this.
"What are you talking about? I'm not going to write it. I came here to tell you. I'm done."
I was getting drowsy, but when I re-focused my eyes I was sitting beside Agent Spider, and the bar had a symbolic sheen. Below us were bodies that looked too realistic to be real. It was us, but more muted somehow. Confined.
"You completed the book three months ago when you asked that we hypnotize you to help your motivation. After the first session, you locked yourself up in your apartment for hours a day. You just emailed me the final chapter last week."
I felt high from the out of body experience, grounded down through the booze. Everything was asleep. Reality was melting. I focused my third eye and rode the vibrations, tuning into the music from the jukebox. I felt every person in the bar, drank in their emotions, feeding on their humanity. I needed to be real to figure this out.
"What are you talking about?!" I shouted more than I meant to.
He glanced around and gave me a weird look.
"You okay? What's going on?" That's what it looked like his lips had said.
"Is this like a gimmick thing? You're Agent Fenris, the crazy writer in your book?" That is what I heard. And it wouldn't stop.
Those three months must have damaged something. Maybe it was that "creating antennae" we had built to force the book out of you. The "magic signal" that stimulates your impulse to write. And for what? The new bible I'm assuming. Ahh yes, you'll be immortal through the written word. But only a shell of you. Something that was never even real in the first place. Agent Fenris peels away, Charles Crown lies behind, and what's there underneath it all?
The Tower rumbles and crashes to the earth. That last brick brought it down. No, every brick brought it down. Every moment spent building caused this disaster. Devastation is everything. Desolation is all. There is nothing left.
I'm waving wildly as my senses scream at me, every sensation of this city assaulting me. I burst out the doors of the bar, obviously stark raving mad. I've lost it, I've lost everything. I slam into concrete and suddenly there is nothing left.
Monday, August 22, 2011
the tower of brahma - 45 - grinning beginning (edit)
09/08/06
I have a plan. I need to know what's going to happen if it's bound to happen regardless. Can you alter fate?
I bought a chalkboard and returned it when I rediscovered my distaste for touching chalk. In exchange I got a corkboard, some thumbtacks, post-its and string. I began tacking up pictures of the twelve names I still had written on my forearm after a random phone call had instructed me that these were the people to be found and questioned.
There were seventeen total. The first five, all hidden within one person. Me. All facets of my fractured persona, they collapsed into just a writer, lost in the middle. And although I had unknowingly tried to halt my investigation further with heavy doses of alcohol and a sharpie, I could still read the raised letters of the names beyond the thick black government-esque classified crossouts. Now I needed to find out who these people were and what their connection was to me, to Agent Fenris, to the Tower itself.
Right after I sleep. Insomnia comes along with excess coffee and uppers. I need to dream so badly that I believe I am creating mock dreamscapes for myself in a half-awake sleep deprived delirium. Visions of holy writers and righteous believers come to me and tell me what I know, but am too lazy to do. Write. Get it out, down and on the damn page and then go take a nap.
Just as I begin to drift after writing my last word I hear the sounds of flames, concentrated searing fire. My neighbor is responsible. He's been building something for a week that I jokingly say is a robot. But now I wonder. He's always seemed shady and off to me, a freakish man-boy with thick glasses and chocolate icing for hair. I begin to watch him as he comes and goes. I take note of the sounds I hear and postulate in my mind the tools and possible substances composed in the construction of this enigmatic creation.
Finally after weeks of not sleeping I wait for him on the stairs by the roof. He's just a floor down so when I hear him hit the fifth floor and head down his hallway, I leap down the flight of stairs and rush him. I slam into his back and we burst into his apartment. We hit the ground and slide across near bare floors. I look around seeing the far side of the apartment first. A cot, a small fridge and neatly rowed tools. I turn and my eyes slide across his shocked face, his embarrassed look, and over his shoulder I become ensnared in the contraption that looms just a few feet above my bed.
Its center is a massive stone, carved meticulously, and surrounded by a wood base resembling an infinity symbol. Large metal rods are protruding from the rock in a multitude of directions. I think there were eight of them but I couldn't be sure for what I did next made it hard to determine what was happening. I never imagined I would have the strength to toss a rock that big out a window causing such significant damage to the wall. The rods, not fully soldered on, were smashed off and as I spun around huffing and puffing in a lunatic rage. I grabbed one off the floor.
My neighbor was scared. Too afraid to run for the door, which was open just enough for a hand to squeeze through and throw the door wide open. His fingertips barely twitched and that door was slammed shut, my free hand sliding towards the lock.
"What was that device you were building, neighbor?” The metal rod was a perfect weapon.
"My...sculpture...?”, he replied.
I suddenly felt mad. I probably have done something crazy. The metal rod in my hand and the enormous hole in the far wall told me the story. Still I had to know.
"Who sent you? Did they tell you to build it? Does it make me have to write?”, I pleaded for any answer.
"W-what are y-you talking about?” He had the eyes of a crazy person. But I out-crazied him. He would have no information that I could use.
I unlocked the door and stepped into the hall backwards. I had to let him know not to tip his hat to the narcs but how could I let him know without letting them know I knew. Their machine was broken. They must know already. Unless, this is their man, and if he becomes my ally then he'll cover for me. But what if he's a patsy though? Some dumbshit college kid they paid to assemble some low-end frequency transmitter above my bedroom. He'd have no idea of the intricate plot he would now find himself ensnared in. No, better to save the poor kid the ordeal of getting involved in a conspiracy this grand. He'll be happier and safer as a pawn. His watchdogs will think he snapped from his proximity and exposure to the device. Poor sap.
"Sorry kid. Forget Art. Go to business school.” And with that I gently let the door shut behind me, a smile of satisfaction on my face.
Now, what was I doing?
I have a plan. I need to know what's going to happen if it's bound to happen regardless. Can you alter fate?
I bought a chalkboard and returned it when I rediscovered my distaste for touching chalk. In exchange I got a corkboard, some thumbtacks, post-its and string. I began tacking up pictures of the twelve names I still had written on my forearm after a random phone call had instructed me that these were the people to be found and questioned.
There were seventeen total. The first five, all hidden within one person. Me. All facets of my fractured persona, they collapsed into just a writer, lost in the middle. And although I had unknowingly tried to halt my investigation further with heavy doses of alcohol and a sharpie, I could still read the raised letters of the names beyond the thick black government-esque classified crossouts. Now I needed to find out who these people were and what their connection was to me, to Agent Fenris, to the Tower itself.
Right after I sleep. Insomnia comes along with excess coffee and uppers. I need to dream so badly that I believe I am creating mock dreamscapes for myself in a half-awake sleep deprived delirium. Visions of holy writers and righteous believers come to me and tell me what I know, but am too lazy to do. Write. Get it out, down and on the damn page and then go take a nap.
Just as I begin to drift after writing my last word I hear the sounds of flames, concentrated searing fire. My neighbor is responsible. He's been building something for a week that I jokingly say is a robot. But now I wonder. He's always seemed shady and off to me, a freakish man-boy with thick glasses and chocolate icing for hair. I begin to watch him as he comes and goes. I take note of the sounds I hear and postulate in my mind the tools and possible substances composed in the construction of this enigmatic creation.
Finally after weeks of not sleeping I wait for him on the stairs by the roof. He's just a floor down so when I hear him hit the fifth floor and head down his hallway, I leap down the flight of stairs and rush him. I slam into his back and we burst into his apartment. We hit the ground and slide across near bare floors. I look around seeing the far side of the apartment first. A cot, a small fridge and neatly rowed tools. I turn and my eyes slide across his shocked face, his embarrassed look, and over his shoulder I become ensnared in the contraption that looms just a few feet above my bed.
Its center is a massive stone, carved meticulously, and surrounded by a wood base resembling an infinity symbol. Large metal rods are protruding from the rock in a multitude of directions. I think there were eight of them but I couldn't be sure for what I did next made it hard to determine what was happening. I never imagined I would have the strength to toss a rock that big out a window causing such significant damage to the wall. The rods, not fully soldered on, were smashed off and as I spun around huffing and puffing in a lunatic rage. I grabbed one off the floor.
My neighbor was scared. Too afraid to run for the door, which was open just enough for a hand to squeeze through and throw the door wide open. His fingertips barely twitched and that door was slammed shut, my free hand sliding towards the lock.
"What was that device you were building, neighbor?” The metal rod was a perfect weapon.
"My...sculpture...?”, he replied.
I suddenly felt mad. I probably have done something crazy. The metal rod in my hand and the enormous hole in the far wall told me the story. Still I had to know.
"Who sent you? Did they tell you to build it? Does it make me have to write?”, I pleaded for any answer.
"W-what are y-you talking about?” He had the eyes of a crazy person. But I out-crazied him. He would have no information that I could use.
I unlocked the door and stepped into the hall backwards. I had to let him know not to tip his hat to the narcs but how could I let him know without letting them know I knew. Their machine was broken. They must know already. Unless, this is their man, and if he becomes my ally then he'll cover for me. But what if he's a patsy though? Some dumbshit college kid they paid to assemble some low-end frequency transmitter above my bedroom. He'd have no idea of the intricate plot he would now find himself ensnared in. No, better to save the poor kid the ordeal of getting involved in a conspiracy this grand. He'll be happier and safer as a pawn. His watchdogs will think he snapped from his proximity and exposure to the device. Poor sap.
"Sorry kid. Forget Art. Go to business school.” And with that I gently let the door shut behind me, a smile of satisfaction on my face.
Now, what was I doing?
Monday, August 15, 2011
The Tower of Brahma: 44 - splitting infinite (edit)
09/06/06
I don't want to write it. If I do, everything ends. All matter just ceases to be. I thought I could stall. I writhed in pain, cocked fetal, clutching the pillow. My hand was pressed so deeply into my cheek I thought I could feel it smoosh into the muscles that screamed in excruciating pain. I took everything there was to take from the medicine cabinet. Even alcohol could not deter me from the pain long enough to sleep for even a moment. I had the .44 magnum against my skull. The cold, round barrel providing relief for a second.
Thoughts ran through my head and vibrated into a signal off my chattering teeth. The metal filling on the left side of my mouth was burnt out and old, no longer capable of receiving a signal from the machine that creates. I think they've upped the power to hit the molar lodged up high, just below my cheekbone.
It must have been a 44 MHz pulse at the very least. They wanted me to keep writing. I ran here to the city to escape but it seems I came here to be imprisoned. I wrote my way in, and now more than halfway through the story I wanted out. It seems as if my life is a series of escapes, breaking out of my town, my life, myself.
Faustian deal aside, I longed for a simple life free from the responsibility of everyone, everywhere. Each person I looked upon, talked with, listened to, they were showing me how to end the world. My feelings ranged from apathy to pity to righteous anger from time to time with an overwhelming sense of damnation. Hope held my trigger finger steady when normally it shakes. The eventual passing of the present is what keeps me here, in immense and terrific pain.
I don't want to write it. If I do, everything ends. All matter just ceases to be. I thought I could stall. I writhed in pain, cocked fetal, clutching the pillow. My hand was pressed so deeply into my cheek I thought I could feel it smoosh into the muscles that screamed in excruciating pain. I took everything there was to take from the medicine cabinet. Even alcohol could not deter me from the pain long enough to sleep for even a moment. I had the .44 magnum against my skull. The cold, round barrel providing relief for a second.
Thoughts ran through my head and vibrated into a signal off my chattering teeth. The metal filling on the left side of my mouth was burnt out and old, no longer capable of receiving a signal from the machine that creates. I think they've upped the power to hit the molar lodged up high, just below my cheekbone.
It must have been a 44 MHz pulse at the very least. They wanted me to keep writing. I ran here to the city to escape but it seems I came here to be imprisoned. I wrote my way in, and now more than halfway through the story I wanted out. It seems as if my life is a series of escapes, breaking out of my town, my life, myself.
Faustian deal aside, I longed for a simple life free from the responsibility of everyone, everywhere. Each person I looked upon, talked with, listened to, they were showing me how to end the world. My feelings ranged from apathy to pity to righteous anger from time to time with an overwhelming sense of damnation. Hope held my trigger finger steady when normally it shakes. The eventual passing of the present is what keeps me here, in immense and terrific pain.
Monday, August 8, 2011
The Tower of Brahma: Chapter 43 - Everyone's a secret agent. (edit)
04/05/06
It's true. Everyone everywhere. Some give themselves away by their stares. Some give it away because they're too good, synthesized perfection will always be manufactured too well. They've surrounded me for some reason. Some sinister purpose.
My apartment is not bugged, but I am always bound. Stuck to a room with a keyboard. I have memories of in-between times but those I believe to be artificially stimulated as waking dreams.
The signal they're beaming, its frequency is chaotically situated and freaks my neurons out spasmodically assisting my fingers to type what it is they want to read. A manual. The details are unnecessary. All that matters is the pattern. The formula. The key.
They're searching the mind for the missing piece. Enlightenment centerpiece of our eternal spirit. The current of our chakra sensitive, bio-electrical soul. The science of Art. I'm undercover.
Here. As a chaotic agent. Order's lost son, bad boy obsessed with the random, outlaw lone wolf of the mathematic logick, insistent on the applied applications of quantum chaos.
Science hero savage, lost to the wilds of nature's precision. Son of the Everybody Someone Publick, guild of masons building a literary tower in the subconsciousness of the masses so as to hide it from god within his children.
Martial arts training video, front row, downtown movie theatre. Agent Spider and I are rushed to our seats to make sure we are the dead center of the audience when we have to fight our way out.
The credits begin to roll and the moves shown upon the screen roll back over the insides of our minds. The two agents in front of us were easily identifiable and were, inevitably, the first two to strike.
Our close quarters meant they'd go in with knives, and we'd go out with two knees to the face. Bracing on the seat, a sweeping kick cleared my side of the row, while Spider throws elbows to noses. Forward kick chest slam, jumping knee uppercut, elbow smash head split.
Spider's got an agent in a reverse headlock and swoops the bastard up and piledrives him into the floor. Running along the edge of the seats, my Converse skidding across skillfully, I smack and crack these size thirteen's across faces. We're both twisting and snapping arms, locking legs, and dropping foes.
Agents. Everywhere.
Agent Strange is seduction personified. She's Cleopatra punk, imagination Queen, the Modern Mystic Mother. She wields snakes in dreams and details out my mission. Venom liquid informational packet self-destructs after download. She's spinning my internal vibrations and new age nonsense that's making me nauseous.
Then I feel it. The freefalling plunge. She's wiped away my third eye muck and clearly now I can see the world. This ever shrinking world of mine. I just was able to see for the first time as I saw reality disappear into the sky forever.
I'd never make it back. Wasn't meant to. Always wanted to be an astronaut. Center self, a drop of the Universe dripped free from the fluid cosmic mass that is everything. We're plunging in a liquid capsule of pure reality, dropping deep into the well of the unknown.
Well, I guess it's not we. You're all left in the main universe. The source. I've just borrowed as many of your templates as possible and placed them all in working order here in my metropolitan madness, my own private New York City.
It's been sculpted and runs like a perceptional motion machine to keep me experiencing, to keep me writing, to figure it out before my long voyage is over. Figure out the riddle, son.
What madness is this?
It's true. Everyone everywhere. Some give themselves away by their stares. Some give it away because they're too good, synthesized perfection will always be manufactured too well. They've surrounded me for some reason. Some sinister purpose.
My apartment is not bugged, but I am always bound. Stuck to a room with a keyboard. I have memories of in-between times but those I believe to be artificially stimulated as waking dreams.
The signal they're beaming, its frequency is chaotically situated and freaks my neurons out spasmodically assisting my fingers to type what it is they want to read. A manual. The details are unnecessary. All that matters is the pattern. The formula. The key.
They're searching the mind for the missing piece. Enlightenment centerpiece of our eternal spirit. The current of our chakra sensitive, bio-electrical soul. The science of Art. I'm undercover.
Here. As a chaotic agent. Order's lost son, bad boy obsessed with the random, outlaw lone wolf of the mathematic logick, insistent on the applied applications of quantum chaos.
Science hero savage, lost to the wilds of nature's precision. Son of the Everybody Someone Publick, guild of masons building a literary tower in the subconsciousness of the masses so as to hide it from god within his children.
Martial arts training video, front row, downtown movie theatre. Agent Spider and I are rushed to our seats to make sure we are the dead center of the audience when we have to fight our way out.
The credits begin to roll and the moves shown upon the screen roll back over the insides of our minds. The two agents in front of us were easily identifiable and were, inevitably, the first two to strike.
Our close quarters meant they'd go in with knives, and we'd go out with two knees to the face. Bracing on the seat, a sweeping kick cleared my side of the row, while Spider throws elbows to noses. Forward kick chest slam, jumping knee uppercut, elbow smash head split.
Spider's got an agent in a reverse headlock and swoops the bastard up and piledrives him into the floor. Running along the edge of the seats, my Converse skidding across skillfully, I smack and crack these size thirteen's across faces. We're both twisting and snapping arms, locking legs, and dropping foes.
Agents. Everywhere.
Agent Strange is seduction personified. She's Cleopatra punk, imagination Queen, the Modern Mystic Mother. She wields snakes in dreams and details out my mission. Venom liquid informational packet self-destructs after download. She's spinning my internal vibrations and new age nonsense that's making me nauseous.
Then I feel it. The freefalling plunge. She's wiped away my third eye muck and clearly now I can see the world. This ever shrinking world of mine. I just was able to see for the first time as I saw reality disappear into the sky forever.
I'd never make it back. Wasn't meant to. Always wanted to be an astronaut. Center self, a drop of the Universe dripped free from the fluid cosmic mass that is everything. We're plunging in a liquid capsule of pure reality, dropping deep into the well of the unknown.
Well, I guess it's not we. You're all left in the main universe. The source. I've just borrowed as many of your templates as possible and placed them all in working order here in my metropolitan madness, my own private New York City.
It's been sculpted and runs like a perceptional motion machine to keep me experiencing, to keep me writing, to figure it out before my long voyage is over. Figure out the riddle, son.
What madness is this?
Monday, August 1, 2011
The Tower of Brahma. Chapter 42. it healed me father. (edit)
01/31/06
There's a slo-mo scene, caught as a near photograph, that moves so agonizingly slow, but yet, keeping ever forward. A father is kicking over a table in a restaurant filled with patrons and staff and parents and kids. He holds his son's limp body in his arms as he presses forward through the friction of the future. He's raging through the moment in a blind, beautiful berserker moment of parenthood, and the natural desire to protect one's young has never shone so brilliant. Everyone parts from his path and the way is clear, if only he could get there sooner and not have to see his boy's face as it turns blue before his very eyes. His child, loose and limp, is nothing more than a body right now.
My father's whispering something in my ears a few years later. Divulging the secret horrors of what lie before me as David Lynch's 'Dune' played up on the screen and I cower far below the seats crying my silent, screaming cries. The echo of his words vibrated through me and coerced my cells to obey his hypnotic, apocalyptic word: Fenris.
That's what they called me. The little dog boy. The one with the wild look in his eyes and the canine scars on his young face. The government boys had a good time with that one, as they kept me on a leash, held at a ten foot distance at the end of a very long pole. I was curled up in a cage besides the others, all snatched from the woods and used for scientific amusement. They came to take me down the long hallway into the room that held the machine.
The big machine that had an open spot for a boy about my size. A machine that would make for this body a personality programmed for life, morality given now to my mortality. My final thoughts were of the ones I saw beyond my feral stare and how they all seemed so perfectly familiar in the most particular way.
Electrical jumpfires into the part of my brain that would combine the mind to the cold hard turbine AI coiled inside...
It's alive.
Secret Agent Kid, given license to get funky and explode anything he wanted to, adventure popping from his fingertips. Codename: Hotshot, low-key, nice, young man, able to be activated into the asskicker acrobat with the fire-engine red Ferrari that could launch a spycycle from its trunk. Gadgets and gizmos clued him in to the forbidden secrets. Feral wolf-boy instincts gave him an edge, and robotic intelligence, full of diligence, wondered of it's own demise and its utter lack of surprise.
So samurai cool and detached in that French sort of way with a fedora and fake accent somehow mystifying you into the context of subconscious demonstration on sublimation into the moment of just this very second, and not a moment beyond.
Angry, suppressed, intense crawling ferocity at the mistreatment and endangerment. Dark dropping of humanity into its primal pulse, dwelling down in the most submerged of mankind's essential humanity. Emotion information is misunderstood and my body spasms into a million shaking moments.
Crash. System reboot. The hotdog seems to be lodged. We're going to have to cut if we can't clear it ASAP!"
I'm gripping my chest as my breath is left ten thousand miles behind me, caught up in the air that was sucked from me one second ago, I'm gasping and trying to get some oxygen now!"
Superspeed injected my body with velocity, adrenaline skidmarks across my mind and spirit driven soaring across and through the space between there and here. Time screwed then and twisted now as the light flashed into illumination discovery.
A man hunched over and hacking, reborn tonight in a final flight towards the infinite night. There's a looming and a leering coming forth from the great unseeming. We unbecome and dance the song of some. The sun bows and the moon kneels. What we knew has blossomed into a new me that could now think clear.
My chest popped and cracked. The air hit my lungs, kicked the oxygen into my blood and the blue death that had fired and retired me, flushed from my skin tone. Lifted from beneath the waves I wasn't scared coming up for a breath of the sky. The Ocean dropped from my body, releasing me into the care of mankind.
My father whispered to me, "You're dead already, son."
There's a slo-mo scene, caught as a near photograph, that moves so agonizingly slow, but yet, keeping ever forward. A father is kicking over a table in a restaurant filled with patrons and staff and parents and kids. He holds his son's limp body in his arms as he presses forward through the friction of the future. He's raging through the moment in a blind, beautiful berserker moment of parenthood, and the natural desire to protect one's young has never shone so brilliant. Everyone parts from his path and the way is clear, if only he could get there sooner and not have to see his boy's face as it turns blue before his very eyes. His child, loose and limp, is nothing more than a body right now.
My father's whispering something in my ears a few years later. Divulging the secret horrors of what lie before me as David Lynch's 'Dune' played up on the screen and I cower far below the seats crying my silent, screaming cries. The echo of his words vibrated through me and coerced my cells to obey his hypnotic, apocalyptic word: Fenris.
That's what they called me. The little dog boy. The one with the wild look in his eyes and the canine scars on his young face. The government boys had a good time with that one, as they kept me on a leash, held at a ten foot distance at the end of a very long pole. I was curled up in a cage besides the others, all snatched from the woods and used for scientific amusement. They came to take me down the long hallway into the room that held the machine.
The big machine that had an open spot for a boy about my size. A machine that would make for this body a personality programmed for life, morality given now to my mortality. My final thoughts were of the ones I saw beyond my feral stare and how they all seemed so perfectly familiar in the most particular way.
Electrical jumpfires into the part of my brain that would combine the mind to the cold hard turbine AI coiled inside...
It's alive.
Secret Agent Kid, given license to get funky and explode anything he wanted to, adventure popping from his fingertips. Codename: Hotshot, low-key, nice, young man, able to be activated into the asskicker acrobat with the fire-engine red Ferrari that could launch a spycycle from its trunk. Gadgets and gizmos clued him in to the forbidden secrets. Feral wolf-boy instincts gave him an edge, and robotic intelligence, full of diligence, wondered of it's own demise and its utter lack of surprise.
So samurai cool and detached in that French sort of way with a fedora and fake accent somehow mystifying you into the context of subconscious demonstration on sublimation into the moment of just this very second, and not a moment beyond.
Angry, suppressed, intense crawling ferocity at the mistreatment and endangerment. Dark dropping of humanity into its primal pulse, dwelling down in the most submerged of mankind's essential humanity. Emotion information is misunderstood and my body spasms into a million shaking moments.
Crash. System reboot. The hotdog seems to be lodged. We're going to have to cut if we can't clear it ASAP!"
I'm gripping my chest as my breath is left ten thousand miles behind me, caught up in the air that was sucked from me one second ago, I'm gasping and trying to get some oxygen now!"
Superspeed injected my body with velocity, adrenaline skidmarks across my mind and spirit driven soaring across and through the space between there and here. Time screwed then and twisted now as the light flashed into illumination discovery.
A man hunched over and hacking, reborn tonight in a final flight towards the infinite night. There's a looming and a leering coming forth from the great unseeming. We unbecome and dance the song of some. The sun bows and the moon kneels. What we knew has blossomed into a new me that could now think clear.
My chest popped and cracked. The air hit my lungs, kicked the oxygen into my blood and the blue death that had fired and retired me, flushed from my skin tone. Lifted from beneath the waves I wasn't scared coming up for a breath of the sky. The Ocean dropped from my body, releasing me into the care of mankind.
My father whispered to me, "You're dead already, son."
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