Intelligentsia…. Flash: The Experimental drug ‘Fractalyn’ is currently under testing and when approved, will revolutionize not only the way you think but what you think…. Flash: The Originator of All Realities has gone into hiding. Big Cheese Phos Atomos Paradosi has publicly stated: ‘For a being that created it all, that’s a pretty cowardly move. Maybe it’s time you pass the reigns to someone else, like me’…. Flash: A scientific study has proven that all non-scientists are wrong about everything…. Flash: The Royal Commission on Global Bravery has predicted that within the next 15 years, the entire planet will be fully brave and the date will change to be perpetually 1984…. Flash: The entire universe (and everything therein) has doubled in size overnight, the problem is attempting to be corrected…. Flash: the end of this story is being changed as we speak…. And that’s it for now—I am Froward Moroni and you’ve been listening to my Weekly End Jack-up Statement. ”
The circus music faded out and I turned the radio off. Same shit every week.
THE NEXT day I woke up at 9:30 A.M. and it was already hot. I didn’t feel like waking up, but I couldn’t fall back asleep. Memory from the night prior was hazy, at best. The deficit was reinforced by the fact that next to me lightly snored a blonde female, clad only in her underwear.
Damn. Another one of those “day after the blackout” moments.
I rolled out of bed and went to the kitchen to get some water to help remove the coat of fur that had grown on my tongue from the drunken night before. My memory wasn’t even a blur—it was an utter lack of anything resembling memory.
On the table by the kitchen stood a 1.5 liter bottle of Mescal.
That explained a lot.
Only a film of fluid—the equivalent of one decent-sized shot glass full—was left at the bottom. I turned on the water, put my mouth under the nozzle, then splashed cold all over my face. I cupped some in my hands and splashed it over my hair, slicking it back.
An incessant radio buzzing permeated my head, followed by a static-ridden signal frequency. A newscaster-type voice intermittently crackled through the static. My own “thoughts” accompanied, or superimposed themselves with the static-garble. Then another voice, this one calm and assertive, crackled in: “I’ll meet you at the mountain,” it said.
What the hell? I wondered.
I walked to the bathroom, looked in the mirror, splashed some more cold water on my face, took a piss, and walked back out to the bottle of Mescal.
“Eh, screw it.” I grabbed the bottle and polished off what was left.
The shot went down really hard, like the clog in a toilet on the verge of needing a plunger rescue. The burn writhed its way down my pipes. My thoughts scattered like dust mites and I attempted to collect them one spec at a time, trying to string together whatever pieces of memory I could before my unfamiliar houseguest woke up.
I closed my eyes.
“AND WHAT did she say to you after she woke up ?” An unseen voice with a hollow cadence interrogates me. He sounds like the calm-voiced computer “HAL” from the film 2001: A Space Odyssey .
The room is absent of any source of light, yet I can see my own body. I can’t decipher whether or not any walls or ceiling exist here, but I do sense an overwhelming vastness of space in this strange venue. I’m in a Lay-Z-Boy recliner. Not restrained, but somehow unable to move. Contentment and utter comfort pour over my being: I could spend an eternity in this recliner….
A complete awareness of my own past, present and future swarms within my head. My tenure as a human being is before me—in my mind—like a slide show that entails every physical and mental instance of my life. Time seems non-existent, or at least irrelevant.
I ponder my interrogator’s question, “…what did she say to you after she woke up?”
“HEY … ARE you okay?”
I opened my eyes to find the girl waving
The circus music faded out and I turned the radio off. Same shit every week.
THE NEXT day I woke up at 9:30 A.M. and it was already hot. I didn’t feel like waking up, but I couldn’t fall back asleep. Memory from the night prior was hazy, at best. The deficit was reinforced by the fact that next to me lightly snored a blonde female, clad only in her underwear.
Damn. Another one of those “day after the blackout” moments.
I rolled out of bed and went to the kitchen to get some water to help remove the coat of fur that had grown on my tongue from the drunken night before. My memory wasn’t even a blur—it was an utter lack of anything resembling memory.
On the table by the kitchen stood a 1.5 liter bottle of Mescal.
That explained a lot.
Only a film of fluid—the equivalent of one decent-sized shot glass full—was left at the bottom. I turned on the water, put my mouth under the nozzle, then splashed cold all over my face. I cupped some in my hands and splashed it over my hair, slicking it back.
An incessant radio buzzing permeated my head, followed by a static-ridden signal frequency. A newscaster-type voice intermittently crackled through the static. My own “thoughts” accompanied, or superimposed themselves with the static-garble. Then another voice, this one calm and assertive, crackled in: “I’ll meet you at the mountain,” it said.
What the hell? I wondered.
I walked to the bathroom, looked in the mirror, splashed some more cold water on my face, took a piss, and walked back out to the bottle of Mescal.
“Eh, screw it.” I grabbed the bottle and polished off what was left.
The shot went down really hard, like the clog in a toilet on the verge of needing a plunger rescue. The burn writhed its way down my pipes. My thoughts scattered like dust mites and I attempted to collect them one spec at a time, trying to string together whatever pieces of memory I could before my unfamiliar houseguest woke up.
I closed my eyes.
“AND WHAT did she say to you after she woke up ?” An unseen voice with a hollow cadence interrogates me. He sounds like the calm-voiced computer “HAL” from the film 2001: A Space Odyssey .
The room is absent of any source of light, yet I can see my own body. I can’t decipher whether or not any walls or ceiling exist here, but I do sense an overwhelming vastness of space in this strange venue. I’m in a Lay-Z-Boy recliner. Not restrained, but somehow unable to move. Contentment and utter comfort pour over my being: I could spend an eternity in this recliner….
A complete awareness of my own past, present and future swarms within my head. My tenure as a human being is before me—in my mind—like a slide show that entails every physical and mental instance of my life. Time seems non-existent, or at least irrelevant.
I ponder my interrogator’s question, “…what did she say to you after she woke up?”
“HEY … ARE you okay?”
I opened my eyes to find the girl waving
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