Adrian chuckled dryly as his gaze came to rest upon the matching mid-century denim of the pants they had purchased together. She had been teasing him about the fact that she had never seen him wear the same outfit twice. And not only that but they were always the most expensive brands made from the latest new-tech fabric which then led her to fold her arms chidingly and with a stern expression she told him in all seriousness that he really ought to start buying used and sustainable. Now here they were, a coordinated pair. Their old-world farmer’s jeans and their faded t-shirts bearing the logos of extinct companies and long-dead musicians.
It was like an old western flick where an outsider rides his horse up to the saloon and it brings out every stink-eyed cowboy in the whole town with each of them chewing their straws and resting their hands on the butts of their guns, just daring him to breathe so much as a whiff of trouble. In this modern-day version, near the Washington-Idaho border, the suspect character was anyone whose skin was darker than the russet potatoes that grew in the fields nearby. And that was Galloway.
“It’s like the Wendat captains used to say. The only way for a people to be truly free is if a leader’s authority ends at the tongue. All my people have ever wanted was to be free. Ironically, it is in this so-called Land of the Free where it is impossible.”
It is where an imperturbable peace meets an unquenchable creative urge,
Presenting a transcendent nexus.
It is where consciousness finds a new way to arrange itself,
And yet, we still have to ask, What the fuck is this?
“I ain’t taking anyone’s word for gospel. If Moses himself comes down the mountain with a pair of tablets, I’m gonna have to see the finger that inscribed them for myself.”
Those plump insolent lips—matching her bright red bow in both color and gaudiness—from which cryptic riddles and acerbic wit poured superfluously.
Her lash fluttering against his wet cheek. It was the most minute of movements and yet it conveyed the grand sum of every smile she had ever flashed his way and every tearful wave goodbye and every hug that had come at him running and sometimes screaming upon their every reuniting, however protracted or brief.
And then his eyes went to the nightstand which was really just a stool because there was nothing on it.
But whatever battle had taken place there was over now. The good citizens of South Tucson were busily cleaning up the debris, presumably in prelude to a return to normal. An uneasy and amnesic truce, as was the American way.
It wasn’t merely a historic scientific breakthrough, he decided. It was a transcendent work of art. It was the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, the Great Pyramid of Giza, the native-engineered Amazon rainforest—and every other wonder of the world—translated into vibrational form.
Following a round of tearful utterances and lung-collapsing hugs, Karen and Joshua turned one last time to behold the earnest and glowing faces that would surely greet them on the other side of some henceforth passage beyond the offing.
“This will change everything,” said Dr. Farah as they began to file back into the van.
“There is a tendency for people to think of Africa as the laggard of the world. The last to wrap itself in the trappings of civilization. But this is wrong. Africa is, and always has been, first. First to conceive of existence as transcending the struggle to merely survive and reproduce. First to ponder the elusive mysteries of the greater world and surrounding universe. And first to contemplate the abstract concepts that unify and inspire illuminated beings toward loftier heights. Not to mention first to understand the importance of living in harmony with our environment, a concept the western world has yet to catch onto. And it is only out of respect for this symbiotic relationship that we were unprepared for the invasive scourge that found its way back to us. But with the discovery of Seafaring Man, the narrative is about to change—to be reclaimed by its rightful stewards.”No matter how turbulent or absurd or fucked up it might have been, he was desperate to prevent her from getting away because he was desperate—and always would be—to witness what she might say or do next.
But most of all, it would give them a chance to spend more time with their new friends from around the globe which left Joshua to wonder if they would ever see each other again after they finally made it to their homes and their families from whence they came. He sure hoped at least some of them would.
But one thing he did know. They were sure going to miss these days when the world and their lives in many cases nearly came to an end.
“If everything is destined to die and then to utterly vanish from all memory—not even a fucking atom left behind to commemorate it—we might as well just accelerate the process and get it over with. Get back to that blissful sleep of sublime nothingness that we were so rudely torn from.”
“What I’m telling you is that whatever you’re thinking about doing, if you’re sufficiently compelled, you should go ahead and do it. Or not. Frankly, it’s all just song and dance anyway, isn’t it? All that flickers across the screen before us is nothing more than an illusion of activity, of change and process, and of things happening or stagnating. In truth it’s all just permutations of energy from within a vacuum in which such excitations shouldn’t even be possible. Of nothing in want of something in want of nothing.”
He strapped on his helmet and shoulder bag and then removed the camo netting that covered his own bike which was an electric model with retro-styled fenders and fairings and a faux gas tank where all the circuitry was housed. The shocks were on the stiff side but that’s how he liked them. By the time his haunches had settled onto the non-slip seat with the gel inserts he was already leaning forward in attack position. He pressed the starter button and whipped the throttle and hung on like his life depended on it. Because it kind of did. His dual-sport tires obliged by spitting up a maelstrom of dust and small bits of rock as they vaulted him forward like an ambushing feline and then kicking out to the left to turn up the narrow gouge in the bush that served as an access road. He zipped through the jagged seam like an electrical pulse through a serpentine circuit, deftly weaving between and around, and in some cases over, the exposed rocks which were arranged as a perilous gauntlet for anything on two wheels.
But Jarvis wasn’t worried about any of that. He could’ve done it in his sleep. All that mattered was that it was five o’clock.
Time for a drink.
They all jerked their heads toward him at the same time. Their eyes the visual depiction of alarm bells going off.
“As I have learned in my Kabbalah studies, the universe is as it should be. Not just a single version of it, but all versions. Because if all is the mind of God, and in God, every possibility is known, then every possibility is equally real and equally divine. By this principle, even though there are so many things that seem wrong, the totality of everything is perfect.”
And then she hit him with a breathtaking smile that felt to him more like a secret weapon.
“And then they call us the slouches and invaders when ecosystems and social orders predictably break down, forcing us to migrate for the sake of our very survival. And yet, it is they who have made our ancestral lands unlivable, not us.”
Only mobs of Nazi soldiers and their viciously swinging batons had been able to break them apart. As they were being herded toward their respective carts with their skulls ringing and their limbs bloodied, he remembered how he had tried to look back one last time, to steal a final snapshot of that most precious of all things which he knew would not likely be returned. But in the shouting and the lashing and the tossing of bodies he was robbed of even this.
Even as stillness crossed that subtle threshold to rigidity, he did not want to let go. He dreaded the very thought because he knew the falling sands of forgetting would begin at the first separation.
“What I mean is, there is only one, undivided reality. It encompasses every potential life. Even though it feels like you’re going places, or undergoing progression, the underlying truth of your existence is unchanged. So, in that sense, all notion of change is illusory.”
She immediately found herself darting from one blood-soaked body to the next and jumping every time plumes of sand kicked up by her feet. The sound of invisible projectiles zinging past her with each one. In the spaces between gunfire, she could hear the bellowing of men’s laughter coming from the ship, as if all but a game to them.
What started out as formless quickly became coherent. The maneuvers were both wild and precise at the same time, performed in spellbinding synchrony, twisting and turning every which way in a fluid sequence of beautiful and complex patterns. This living fabric, this poetry in motion, gracing the heavens with its spontaneous artistry.
“A place both breathtaking and bleak. And what better place than this to encapsulate the idea. The end of a continent. Its very history a most fitting allegory for a promising journey gone terribly wrong. A land of wonder made hopelessly dark.”
Joshua cut her off as he pictured himself accompanying her to some nearby café under a bewitchment that would only ratchet its grip with each shared laugh and casual touch of the arm and finally an awkward pause and interlocked stare and, well, shit, if it got this far, he was several steps into the land of no return already.
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