Blueprints of the afterl.., p.25
Blueprints of the Afterlife, page 25
“Chiho!” he called, her name catching in his throat.
The sun passed behind clouds.
He gathered wood and built a small fire and watched sparks rise and disappear against the backdrop of stars. He faded in and out but the sky never seemed to get any darker or lighter. He remembered the man on the mesa with his refrigerator filled with beer, stacks of books, and stuffed animals. Maybe that place was some sort of Bardo, maybe he’d pass through it on his way to the afterlife. Crazy talk, Skinner. He tried to shake the thoughts out of his head. Because the one thing he wasn’t going to do down here in this gully was die. There’d be no check-in procedure with the great beyond. He was going to get out of here and get back to his wife and daughter and grandson.
“You really think you’re going to see Chiho again?”
Skinner drew his Coca-Cola and thrust it in the direction of the voice. On the other side of the fire an impossibly old man in buckskin and ripped denim, with raven feathers appearing to grow from his long gray hair, poked embers with a stick. His lips curled over toothless gums.
“Identify yourself, old man.”
The Indian shook his head. To speak he just looked at Skinner and thrust the words out of his head with his eyes. “I won’t fight you.”
“You’re Talleagle.”
“I’m a dude passing through. That is what I do. I pass through.”
“I’m dreaming this.”
“You’re in a laboratory.”
“This land, it’s infected with hallucinations.”
“We asked you to reproduce, and your offspring was murdered. Now you’re on your way to screwing up your second chance.”
“Who was that man on the mesa, with the refrigerator and piles of things?”
Talleagle barely shrugged. “The Last Dude. I walk my path, he constructs the message. That’s our arrangement.”
“You need to help me get out of here.”
“Why do you expect me to help you,” Talleagle asked, “when you murdered my kin?” The Indian opened his buckskin jacket to reveal a sunken chest. With a great deal of effort he pushed his hand into his abdomen, releasing trickles then gouts of old black blood. After a moment of struggle Talleagle grunted and pulled out his liver. “Eat me,” he said, handing the organ to Skinner.
“I…”
“In my flesh is the medicine that will make you walk again.”
Skinner took the bloody mass and considered it with disgust.
“If you want to walk, you will eat my flesh.”
Skinner gnawed off a bite from the liver. Talleagle told him to chew and swallow. As soon as the meat hit Skinner’s stomach his nervous system lit up in electric pain. Talleagle’s eyes burst into flames.
Stars. Tears. Aloud: “Don’t fucking kill yourself, soldier. Don’t fucking kill yourself. Don’t fucking—”
The sun rose and the fire dwindled to a cigarette’s worth of smoke. The bottle connected to Skinner’s penis was full of urine. He disattached, emptied, then reattached it. He allowed himself three sips of water and a couple bites from an energy bar. A smattering of rain forced him under the thermal blanket where he shivered and clutched his belongings. After a coughing fit he consulted the transmitter again.
“Bionet. What ails me?”
“You’re getting a cold,” the transmitter responded.
“Well, no shit,” Skinner said. “More painkillers, please. And give me something for these fucking hallucinations.”
“Sorry, that’s kind of out of our area of expertise,” the transmitter said. Did it sound sad? As the pharmacological haze suffused his body Skinner dug through the backpack. The memory console. This would be his treat for getting out of this mess—indulging in some memories from his childhood: a happy trip to an amusement park, a birthday party, building a tree fort with his dad. The beautiful tropes of a boyhood were hidden here, he hoped. When the rain ceased he set the console on a rock to recharge its solar battery. He spent the afternoon watching the indicator light turn from red to orange to green and thought about how useless it was to be angry at anybody about an abstract principle. He’d really fucked it up with Roon, probably for good. All the anticlone propaganda he’d swallowed—what had it left him? How could any idea that drives a man away from the people who love him be considered sound? A rodent scurried across his line of vision. Woodpeckers tapped paradiddles into tree trunks, sending echoes down the walls of the gully.
Skinner unholstered his Coca-Cola and set it on a rock within arm’s reach. “Soldier, kill thyself,” he said aloud, then growled, “Shut up, you sack of shit.”
When night fell the Bionet transmitter died. Skinner smashed it against a rock and tossed the five broken pieces as far as his weak arm could. He added a few more sticks to the fire and ate a meager ration of food, enough to keep his body awake. The rain picked up. He cradled the memory console against his chest, and, suspecting he was about to die, pressed ENGAGE.
The memory was so faint that at first it barely overlaid the physical world’s darkness and fire. Yet if Skinner squinted he could make out faded green grass in a yard, a stuffed bunny with one ear lying on a hardwood floor, a bowl of Cheerios. The memories were choppy, sputtering, not entirely visualized, struggling to connect to his consciousness through the ancient console. The software had a tendency to render memories in greater resolution in response to feelings of empathy and tenderness. He packed his belongings and prepared for a long hike. Wait, he hadn’t moved from this spot under the tree. The packing belonged to the first-person narrative loading before him. Someone else’s memories had gotten tangled with his own. Crap interface. The rememberer shaved in front of the bathroom mirror and said, “Memory console calibration. Remember this now.” The memory card didn’t contain Skinner’s memories at all. These memories belonged to his father.
Skinner watched the courtship of his mother through his father’s eyes. A coffee shop, afternoon light through the windows, the sound of a burr grinder, this woman who would carry him knitting with red and yellow yarn and occasionally sipping from a cup of Earl Grey. The next memory was a moment or two after lovemaking, the stickiness of belly sweat and a house fly butting its head against a pane of glass like a frustrated nugget of static. Skinner watched his parents hiking through an alpine meadow, coming to a ridge overlooking a swath of western Washington, breathing hard. His dad brought a pair of binoculars to his eyes and swept them across the horizon, finding a distant city in flames.
Skinner watched his own head emerging from between his mother’s legs, felt with his father’s hands the warmth of his own seven-pound body, smelled a wet diaper, heard wails coming from the direction of the crib in the next room, then watched his infant self suckling from his mother as snow fell outside. He saw wisps of hair sprout from his head, turn into brown curls, saw his own first steps, saw himself smack wood blocks together and stuff blueberries into his cheeks. Through his father’s memories he witnessed himself vomiting all over himself, eating a pancake, pushing a toy ambulance, feeding a dog a potato chip, pointing at squirrels, crying at a loud noise, tearing apart a magazine, falling asleep in the crook of an arm. He was snoring, crawling, babbling, laughing, drinking from a cup, using a crayon. Skinner watched his father’s hands smoothing, patting, clapping, buttoning the buttons on his clothes, wiping a tear, opening an envelope, maneuvering a spoon into his mouth. As he grew older the memories sped up, a slideshow of skinned knees and sandwich bread, fishing tackle and wood grain. Running to catch a matinee. Learning how to change a tire. Chasing each other with a football. Blowing bubbles with bubble gum. Boyhood! He ached witnessing it again through the eyes of the man who’d loved him most. As the rain came down in an angry hiss, the broken soldier shivering alone at the bottom of the world mouthed the words, My son.
Q&A WITH LUKE PIPER, PART 5
We were supposed to meet Squid outside the buffalo enclosure at Golden Gate Park. He would be disguised as Chewbacca and was somehow going to fix Erika’s writer’s block. It was one of San Francisco’s pea-soup foggy days. The three of us waited in the mist on the bench as we’d been instructed, with Squid’s painting of Kirkpatrick’s academy, drinking our coffees. Then, after some time, around nine o’clock, came the steady procession of a marching legion. At first we could only hear them, boots stomping the earth in unison. Then they materialized out of the fog—storm troopers, hundreds of them, in formation. Just like in Star Wars, with the glossy white armor, laser blasters. I turned to Wyatt and said we really needed to chill out with the pot smoking. But this wasn’t a drug thing, it was something else. A parade. A convention. Following the storm troopers was a high school marching band playing the Imperial theme. I laughed—it was pretty cool. Then the Jedis appeared, all these nerds with their lightsabers, then other assorted characters, Boba Fetts and Han Solos, here and there an overweight C-3PO, the bikini version of Princess Leia, stumpy Darth Vaders, some sand people, someone’s dog dressed as Yoda. And Wookiees. Dozens of them. We had no way of knowing which Wookiee was Squid. As the parade marched past blasting its theme and waving its weapons one Wookiee broke off from the group and approached us. Really authentic-looking costume, about the same height as the real Chewbacca. When he spoke, though, it was a normal black guy’s voice.
He said, “You people are really screwed, you do know that, right?”
There was so much I wanted to ask, so I just started firing questions at him. Where was the Kirkpatrick Academy of Human Potential? Did he know Nick Fedderly? Why was he named Squid? What could he tell us about the weird document Erika had channeled? But he’d have none of it. He just shook his head, in a way you’d imagine a Wookiee would, I might add. Wyatt turned the painting around and asked if he’d painted it. Squid the Wookiee did a little hop as if we’d startled him. He asked us where we’d gotten it. We told him about stealing it from the café restroom and how the café owner had killed herself. I sensed that our ownership of the painting was a mistake. He told us we needed to destroy it immediately. I could tell he wanted it but Wyatt was holding on to it pretty tight.
Squid said, “Look, I’m not trying to be a dick. You guys just need to know it’s not safe for you to be digging into all this shit. Just leave it alone and walk away.”
I said, “I think you’re full of it. There’s no shady organization involved in some weird conspiracy. I don’t even really care about finding Nick anymore, to tell you the truth.”
Squid said, “We’re all in danger, dude. I’m putting myself on the line just talking to you. Do you want your writing back or not?”
Erika said yes and Squid/Chewbacca opened one of the compartments on his utility belt and handed her a tin of Altoids.
“It lasts about half an hour. He’ll know who you are. He’s expecting you. Just be humble and grateful and he’ll take care of you,” he said, then he blended back into the crowd, into a passing contingent of other Chewbaccas. We lost him. Erika opened the tin, which contained a single Altoid. To think we thought it was plain old LSD.
What was it?
I still don’t know. I guess some kind of custom, lab-made psychedelic. Back at the house, the three of us sat at the kitchen table staring at the Altoid for a long time. I was worried it was a trap, something poisonous. Wyatt suggested we take it to a chemist. Erika thought that was too risky. Finally she declared what the hell, she was going to take it. We gathered some pillows and went out back to our garden. Erika had planted all sorts of flowers out there, installed a bubbling fountain. We put the pillows down on the flagstones and sat in a triangle. Erika placed the Altoid on her tongue and the three of us linked hands, following Huxley’s advice, making sure the setting was peaceful and the people involved were loving and supportive. We sat there for a good five minutes waiting for something to happen. Erika closed her eyes. Wyatt and I watched her. After a bit she opened one eye and snorted and said nothing was happening. “Maybe it’s just an extra-minty Altoid,” I said and we all laughed. Then Erika’s head snapped back and she was gone. She didn’t respond when we spoke or when we gently slapped her wrist. Wyatt checked her breathing and her pulse. She was breathing a little fast and her pulse was up but nothing too crazy. Kind of like she was on a run. Wyatt asked her what was happening but she just shook her head and waved him off. Her pupils were huge. I kept my eye on my watch. Ten minutes passed. Twenty. At thirty-one minutes she gasped a huge breath of air. Her eyes fluttered and she squeezed our hands really tight and then leaned over and vomited in my lap. Actually she vomited several times on me, squeezing my hand so tight I couldn’t pull myself away. Meanwhile Wyatt was squeezing my other hand so I was basically trapped there, one corner of a triangle, a vomited-upon hypotenuse. After about four blasts of this, Erika let go of our hands, wiped her mouth, and said, “Wow!”
What was her demeanor like? Was she still tripping?
She was completely normal. After she said “Wow,” she confirmed that whatever it was she’d dropped was definitely not boring old LSD. Of course, I wanted to hear all about the trip but I was covered in puke, so I stripped out of my clothes and went back in the house and took a shower. When I got out, Erika and Wyatt were holding each other on the couch in the living room. The scene radiated a supreme aura of love. Not love in a sexual way, particularly, but a profound energy field of acceptance and celebration. When I came into the room, Erika saw me and smiled, gestured me over, and hugged me. Then she told us the story.
The trip began with a vortex opening in the sky, like a tornado but made of shadows. This swirling portal summoned her and she let herself rocket up through the atmosphere into space. She traveled at an unfathomable speed through the sponge-like structure of the universe, a structure she sensed to be omniscient and acutely aware of her past, present, and future. She felt she was being watched with curiosity or amusement, like a human watches an ant bumbling along its path. The universe revealed itself to be unbearably and painfully gorgeous, to the point that she feared its beauty might kill her. Gradually she decelerated and the foam-like structure of the universe reconstituted itself into stars and galaxies. Floating in front of her was a cylindrical object, a craft of some sort, as long as the earth is wide but about the same proportions as a soda can. As she approached she observed its worn exterior, scuffed and pocked by asteroids. She came to a metallic orifice, an anus-like portal into the vessel, passed through it with little difficulty, and found herself floating through a long tunnel toward a pinprick of light. As she told the story to us back here on earth she said it reminded her of a drawing of Persephone emerging from Hades that she’d seen in a children’s book on Greek mythology. When she emerged she was sort of coughed up onto a field covered in the most spectacular wildflowers. Looking at each petal, each bud was like falling madly in love. Above her stretched a horizontal shaft of what appeared to be sunlight, threading the cylinder like yarn through a bead. She figured this craft must have been not unlike the one in Arthur C. Clarke’s Rendezvous with Rama. I wasn’t familiar with that book so she drew a diagram for me, like—can I have a piece of paper?
Sure. Here.
Like this, then.
The inner surface of the cylinder was lined with vast forests, plains, deserts, bodies of water, all rotating around a central axis, a filament that provided light and energy, like a fluorescent tube running down the middle of a larger cylinder. Erika kept using the words “painfully alive” when talking about this realm. Painfully alive, painfully alive. A naked, dark-skinned girl of about ten approached cautiously. In her hair were vines and tendrils that curled and sprouted leaves and bloomed flowers as Erika watched. The girl held out her hand and spoke something in a language Erika didn’t recognize. Taking her hand, Erika let the girl lead her down a path into a wooded area, beneath trees unlike any she’d ever seen. The trees were more like pillars of gorgeous, multicolored feathers—reds, greens, blues, purples—about thirty or forty feet tall. Cosmic totem poles. It was all Erika could do to refrain from bursting into tears of wonderment. They came to a rocky hill. Erika sensed that this was where the ruler of this realm lived. The girl motioned for her to sit on the cool moss in front of a cave, then scampered off into the woods. After a moment a figure emerged from the cave, a tall, lurching thing in a long red robe with a hood that obscured its face. Its hands were long, bony, and shockingly white. Erika wondered briefly if she should be afraid but was soon flooded with the absolute rightness of this encounter, like she’d been waiting for it her whole life.
The figure spoke. “I hear you’ve got a nasty case of writer’s block.”
Erika nodded. She instantly recognized the voice but couldn’t place it. It was neither adult nor child, neither man nor woman. She asked the figure who he was.
“I’m Michael,” he said. “Come, I will heal you.”
She followed Michael through the forest to a stream over which an old tree bent its branches. From the branches grew fruits like she’d never seen, furry purple ovals. Before her eyes the tree blossomed and grew its fruit, which dropped continually into the stream, which bore the fruit, bobbing, away. Michael instructed her to catch one of the fruits and eat it quickly. She did as instructed, pulling apart the purple peel to eat the sweet, pink flesh inside. She said it tasted like nothing she could even begin to describe. When she finished, Michael took her hand and said that when she returned to San Francisco she’d be able to write again. She grew frantic. She had so many questions she wanted to ask him. She wanted to know if she had really been visited by extraterrestrials as a child. Michael said yes, this was so, and there had been contact between these visitors and earth for tens of thousands of years. For many centuries these extraterrestrials had been working to reprogram the human subconscious, preparing it for eventual inter–life form communion. The science fiction genre, Michael explained, was a means by which humans were coming to internalize, through myth, knowledge of the existence of other sentient life forms. By the time this communion occurred, humans would be psychologically prepared to embark on an interplanetary collaboration to spread life through the universe.
