Exile Pt. 4

Exile Pt. 4: Rambo Strikes Back

*

Fragment: 0x63
Date: 18/4/2500
Sub-Fragment: Cathedral of St. REDACTED, Easter Service

Location: ‘Earth 14’, Winnipeg, Manitoba

*

The architecture of the cathedral evokes a single clear crystal rupturing the ground and reaching toward heaven. Stone columns hold delicate looking glass in place. It is stronger than carbon-fiber, actually supports the stone. A single, never interrupted prismatic vein of mineral and metal is inlayed in the crystalline structure. It’s Ariadne’s thread woven over and through the building. It appears as if it holds the whole holy place together. It is said the church possesses a “true” relic of the their twenty-first century saint. Etched on every empty wall or column, as if someone could not bare to see bare surfaces, one may encounter the symbols of the 47 known great faiths, or the gender/sex Mobius strip, or the Ellehmot, a symbol for a concept you have not yet learned. The Ellehmot represents an idea to be added to so many Earth languages in the 24th C. Definition (approx): a yearning or desire for more, distinct from greed/hunger/avarice. Reader, you don’t yet have the word for benevolent yearning any more than your body could hear the sublime sounds that pour from the pipe organs.

It is said that no one entity, regardless of augmentation, can hear the whole of any composition played on the cathedral’s sublime instruments. They are played by 8-armed musicians. Their music spans the infra- and ultra- and all sounds between (aided by hallucinogens in the communion wine).

Here is a rough translation of this era’s dense dialect and the beginning of the Easter sermon: “Friends, we gather to celebrate sacrifice and the miracle of resurrection. We celebrate the second sacrifice on this holy day, repeated themes two-millennia apart. The second miracle, the saint that gave their life for all. We gather also to pray for the completion of the arc. Fetch the relic, that we may contemplate it.”

*

ERROR. FRAME CORRUPT. RECORD NON-COMPLIANT. SEQUESTERED FOR REVIEW.

EROR. LOCATION INVALID: ‘winnipeg’ + ‘2500’

*

FRAME: EOT End of Time

*

Subject(s): Convergence Condition (A(99); A(84); A(79))
CFC Breach? NEGATIVE. PROBABILITY: INEVITABLE.
Curve-Status? DEGRADED.

*

A(84) lays on the slab, a body on the black altar in the chapel at the End of Time. Forever’s Endless Antechamber. Nic fissioned Gemini, one sister leans over the corpse, hands moving over the body. Listening for breath that isn’t there. She slaps him. Goes back to waving over what’s left of the Fuckup. Flannel Man stands at the foot of the altar. Maybe he was too high to battle evil after all? “He wasn’t high enough. Give me space to work.” Flannel Man turns 2D sideways, fades out, exits the scene.

Her equal and opposite sister sits on the first pew, A(79) stretched out, head on the eternal woman’s lap. Nic holds a steaming mug and lit joint, two of her many hands lazily running through A’s hair. “I know what happened, but tell me anyway.”

Eyes closed, recalling. I rode the car, we hit the light and I was everywhere at once. The whole of whole. I didn’t need to search for the fascist. I saw the bus station, the people, and him embedded in a bathroom wall. I took the people, all of them. Put them aside. I willed the building out of time. Wicked grin: “I threw a fucking car at him with my mind.”

“I’m proud of you. You have real potential, dear.” One of the holy entity’s arms high fives her, beaming with pride. Sinister, the left sister’s smile. She passes A(79) her honeyed joint.

*

Flannel Man, teleports elsewhere on the scorched plain at the End of Time, approaches one of the faceless entities who maintain existence and non-existence, the custodians. They are deep in the field of dead .gif spirits he showed to his mortal. Here, where the soul of every dead iteration is supposed to go, supposed to go, all the live long eternity.

Here, all three pro and antagonists can be seen, A((79) (84) (99)). in their glitch-repeating death throws. In the distance twin prism-rainbow plumes pierce the dark: one of the power plants, the textile factories making the warp and weft of what is, what was, what will ever be from what’s left, from the “bones” of ground up souls. Supposedly there’s one for the “A”s, another for the “B”s and so on an so on, forever and ever, amen.

“There’s a problem with the conveyor.” The faceless one cocks its head, curious. It is aware enough to be curious. The creature innocently follows the HVAC man, kneels. Its eyeless face is focused on the conveyer. Flannel man, pop, breaks its neck. Waves his cracked phone over the body and it disguised as a .gif ghost of A(84). HVAC instant slips a mile down the line, pulls the same trick again, and again again. Three dead maintenance entities, rigged to look like three anomalies, head down a conveyor toward ‘processing.’ A ruse, a thin one, meant to buy time. He just gave the authorities an unsatisfying answer to the mystery of three missing mortals. It won’t work.

More importantly, he bought time in a context where there’s none to buy. Flannel Man set a chain of events loose at the End of Time, a where-when that should be outside of those flows.

Speaking to no one: “We abhor waste?” Flannel Man smokes a stale cigarette looking at a field of dead .gifs loop-frozen, glitch repeating the moment of death. “I used to be in Custodial.” The HVAC man melts into the ground. The falling ash on the scorched plain begins to collect where he so recently stood.

*

BACKTRACK TEMPORAL FRAME, SUBJECT HVAC SUPERVISOR A(Series):

*

“For posterity’s sake: Why did you want to end your life?” The microcassette recorder hovering between the two, Flannel Man and A(84), both cross-legged levitating in the sacred cloud. Before Pittsburgh, before the bus station and the shank to the lung.

The Fuckup with the schnoz: It’s nothing special or spectacular. I was alone. With or without people. Always.

*

A(79) sitting next to Nic on the pew, both sipping coffee in a holy smoke cloud. The enemy can’t infect anyone.

Nic, the luminous being: “He’s trapped there, temporally temporarily stuck on Earth 14. He can’t fall through to the plain. But he has the animal cunning to escape.” Then I’m there, I go get him. A(79) sits up, eager.

“After a detour, hon.” Nic nods toward the corpse. Am I supposed to throw the dead guy at the Fascist? Is he my broomstick? Other-aspect intones overtones of the sacred arc of plot-geometry: he’s actually still slightly alive.

Nic goes motherly-teacherly: you will do this and like it. You do not see the utility of companionship. Let me elucidate: he will help you remain near a humane perspective, a truly-human being, while you face another being that aspires to embody evil. You teach each other, for good and ill, through proximity. Oh, that face. How every “A” I know broods and smolders so. Tell me, dear: what did isolation do for you, and to you, in your previous life?

“Nothing good.”

Now, run along and collect your emotional-support-Fuckup’s congealed soul. One of Nic’s hands offers her the keys to the Ford sedan. Flannel Man appears in the door of the Chapel, “You drive. I navigate.”

*

Fragment: 0x7C3

Date: 2/11/2073

Location: Pittsburgh District Community Mental Health Center

Frame: Earth(14)

Subject(s): Convergence Condition (A(99); A(84); A(79))
CFC Breach? NEGATIVE. PROBABILITY: INEVITABLE.
Curve-Status? DEGRADED.

*

“Sir, I will give you another ‘behavior nudge’ if you don’t calm down and stop swearing at me.” The overtaxed orderly’s excessive patience is exhausted by the crazy old man with the big Schnoz.

A(84) (or his congealed soul, his sentience, what’s left): That’s not a nudge, that’s a fuckin taser, you tyrant. Fuck you, and your fucking Roomba of oppressions.

“Sir, I still do not know what a Roomba is, the Therapy Assist and Security Drone is a tool. I don’t want to escalate.” Fuck you, polite-fascist. Gah! Fuck! Stop fucking shocking me! “I do not like foul language, sir.”

You don’t like civil and human rights either do you, Nurse Ratchet?

“I did look up that whack book. That mess is barbaric. And there is some gendered flavor on top of your disrespect, but I don’t engage, and I’m going to pray for you.” Gah! Fuckin’ Ratchet. Stahp! That’s why I call you that. I will have your lanyard. You wage-slave, jackboot, mother-stop! “I am well paid, sir. That does not mean I am well paid enough for this” Zap “daily” Zap “since I’ve worked here.” The orderly moves his thumb along the tablet screen, the TAS-Drone backs up. It’s behavioral nudge diode (taser, it’s a polite-taser) still rearing. “Are we cool, Mr. REDACTED?”

Down the hall to a room with no therapeutic purpose. Sinister vibe, spartan. Bare table, two-way mirror. Two not-too-comfortable straight-backed chairs. In another era there would have been an ashtray. “Can I have a smoke before the detective gets here?” The orderly tells him the Dr., which doctor, his new doctor will be there shortly.

The fascist A(99) strides in, beak-nose first, almost as young as the day he first dove into this world, 50 years ago, 2020. The fascist is wearing a psychiatrist’s skin. The orderly doesn’t seem to realize he’s standing next to the devil.

“Moo! So, Eww, ewe!” Pointing emphatically. Orderly Martin, thank you so much for your patience with a difficult patient. “We seed! He sees! He is me. Look at him, dummy. Look.” Capgras syndrome, or Capgras delusion if you prefer. He thinks I’m someone else. Next he’ll tell you I’ve been replaced by some “other!” “Not a smother! Mothertrucker is my evil twin.” Wow, doc. You’re the crazy-whisperer.

“Please, show compassion for the delusional man screaming at us.” He is ill, not crazy. Orderly Martin, not all heroes wear capes. You’re doing a great job. Now, let’s implement a treatment plan.

“Fuck your treatment.” Crazy old man, A(84) stands, pushes the chair back, backs up to the wall, feral.

“I need you to sedate the patient with your TAS-Drone”, gestures at the tablet. I need you to sedate him heavily.

“Fuck. Your. Treatment.” A port opens on the TAS-Drone, *chuffs* a tiny drugged dart into A(84)’s thigh. “Fuckin’ torture Roomba.” He’s crying. Slides to his knees, fighting the good stuff, he sings: “Stuck in the middle with you, yes I’m” slumps to the floor, mutters “stuck in.” Eyes fluttering.

A(99), the devil for all we know, kneels over him, death’s head grin, plague-doctor beak framing the face: “Fade to black, friend.”

*

Fragment: 0x2F
Date: 2/28/2002
Sub-Fragment: 0x7F

Location: Ypsilanti, MI

Subject(s): Convergence Condition (A(99); A(84); A(79))
CFC Breach? NEGATIVE. PROBABILITY: INEVITABLE.
Curve-Status? DEGRADED.

*

The 1990-something Ford sedan streaks across the scorched plain, the two halves of the vehicle flying blue-shift fast in perfect formation. Lightning strikes the car. A Ford sedan, average every way but running better than she has in years, is deposited by lightning bolt on the snowy-still-snowing median of Washtenaw Ave. Ahead, majestic in the headlight mood lightning: a 145 foot tall dick made of brick.

Flannel Man: “Behold, all it’s majesty.” The water tower phallus totem, old many-storied snow capped, circumcised. Is that a vein? “A cross, actually.” My god. That’s exactly what they were going for. Lights on the road. Red and blue, red and blue. The police responsible for the uni (pronounced: yoo-knee) across the street would like to discuss the lightning and parking on the median. “We gotta boogie.”

Slow-speed chase through heavy wet snow and evening commute in Ypsi (pronounced: Ihp-see). Flannel Man hangs out the window taunting the cops when he’s not reading the blank screen of his broke cell phone. There’s a spot prepared here, under the town, the entrance roves. There, that park by the river, turn.

A(79) accelerates toward the cold river. Are you sure? Yes, punch it, drive into the river, he tells her. Are you sure you’re sure? I’m looking right at it on the phone. I’m reasonably sure. She last second, swerves. Flannel is offended, the fuck? “Go back, girl!” A dozen college kids in jammies and cobbled winter gear sledding low-slope other end of the park gape at the scene. The Ford doing donuts on the park’s path and off. Four squad cars scattered all to shit, but trying to chase (for reasons they do not comprehend). The college kids cheer when the Ford cuts back, dashes back to the river, hits. There is a splash hiss vanish, as approximately precisely 4013 gallons of water flash boil.

*

A(79) and Flannel Man, in full glorious 3D in a non-descript apartment building underneath Ypsilanti. It’s permanent early Spring, colors sunbleached like technicolor added to a black and white frame later. A little alcove, world-in-world hanging on a clothesline. Every sound here shit tinny speaker. The air tastes metallic.

In 500 square feet of sadness and linoleum floors and empty walls there’s the remains of a book collection. A bean bag chair. Borges open on its face to save a page in “The Library of Babel” near a cup of coffee no one came back for.

Poetry and half writ to-do, don’t, won’t attempt lists litter the floor. But it’s warm. There’s food. Flannel Man knows the right cupboard, puts soup on. “He’s in the bedroom.”

A(79) finds an enormous black cat in the window sill, standing guard over a gaunt remnant. The cat bares its teeth, growls from below the basement of it’s gut. “Coop, man she’s cool.” yelled from the Kitchen, cat calms, but he’s not friendly. The remnant plays dead, pressing it’s face into the wall. A(79) can’t get a response. In the silence she count’s vertebrae on the remnant’s back every one visible. What did they do to you? Numbers the red welt wounds on the bald spotted scalp. It takes time and coaxing and soup to relax the remnant of A(84). She is horrified. The schnoz is there, but she sees nothing of him, the other A (or herself) in that broke-silent shivering old man. He says nothing, hunching, trying not to be seen while they collect the wet salt from his cheek. They carry the tear in the sample container from a Rona virus home test.

*

IMMEDIATELY PRIOR IN REMNANT’S FRAME

*

“I did it. I did it. I did it.” A(84) screaming, back arched, three-point tied to the table: A to C to B, head arms ankles. Mess of Medusa tangle wire leads lead from his scalp, finger tips, delicates, spine, and toes to a meter-by-meter black cube. Super-computer, medical miracle box, torture cube. It’s an innovation in the Universal Machine, brought to you by the son of A(99). This titan of industry is a perfect clone copy down to the schnoz and bile. His machine is sucking the life, or perhaps soul or essence, from A(84), sifting information and throwing the rest away.

The torturer: “What precisely did you do that you need to confess, degenerate?” A(84) whispers. “What?” mutters till the torturer leans in: your mom, I did your mom. Oh god, no I didn’t mean it. The machine produces every cruel sensation at once through manipulation of nervous tissue: knife in the kidney, kick to the gut, split the twig, cut the berries. Your mom was a good lay for a test tube. Fuck. Burning and beating on the soles of his feet. Every nail pulled half-off every finger and toe. Air horn in each ear. I’m sorry I’m sorry. The whole nervous system aflame. Whatever you want. I killed Hoffa. I stole the Mona Lisa. I’m fuckin Mothman.

“Describe for me, in great detail, your earliest memories.” And over agonizing hours of pain past pain, the torturer’s demand pours from A(84)’s lips: description. His home, books, friends. Every image and impression running down the wires to an innovation in torture. And as he speaks to his torturer, involuntary Judas, ephemeral gossamer filaments slither across the heavens, behind the heavens, to ensnare two Earth’s in a web of causality and math that makes no sense in three dimension. Two worlds: ‘Earth 14’ and yours, entangled in “the strange” by stories tortured out of a man’s congealed soul, his remnant.

In the torture chamber, the memories dance in holographic projections. Algorithm gibberish and stolen profane geometry. The Earth, Milky Way, uni-multiverse, the barest fraction of a fraction of the quintillion sparks are projected holographically over the Universal Machine: a map. The GUI, the map, of some great nerd game. The torturer, the clone, man-child self-styled Caesar watches the ghostly glow, the hologram. Map-lust in the villain’s eyes. Now there’s a course: a faint red thread curving from one read dot to another in that sea of everything, from star to star, from Earth to Earth. The Universal Machine, tone cold metal: “Course Plotted.”

The torturer looms: tomorrow we pay your world a visit at the head of a small army, and you’re coming with us. Father wants you to watch the beginning of the end. A(84) has pissed himself more than a few times, his flesh is welted, snot-streaked beard. I’m going to personally introduce myself to your friends and relations.

Pursing parched lips to speak, weak. “You and your army?” Death’s head grinning, yes my father’s army. “I know…” gathers himself “I know you too, I know you” Groans “all. You think. You, you’re a failure a shitty copy, a fuckup.” Turns the torment back on. A(84) gasps: “You are. Turn it up, Fuckup.” He sees familiar anger in the familiar eyes and the only target a young fool with a big nose ever found for it: himself. “7 times hotter. Hallelujah.” Weeping. Shaking. Shitting. Laughing. The torturer turns the dial on the machine to level 11, the maximum pain the toy can produce, irony-alarms and flashing lights warn of the danger to the victim.

The torturer, the clone of the fascist A(99) inflicts the pain that takes language. The tortured body arches, arcs, convulses, and falls through. Quiet lightning. Pop. A(84), or his aged remnant, vanishes. A sadist left alone with his toy.

*

FRAME: EOT End of Time

Subject(s): Convergence Condition (A(99); A(84); A(79))
CFC Breach? NEGATIVE. PROBABILITY: INEVITABLE.
Curve-Status? DEGRADED. CFC MEMBRANE: PERMEABLE.

*

A(84) lays dead on the slab, the black altar in the chapel at the End of Time. Forever’s Endless Antechamber. Middle-aged corpse on the slab. Nic fissioned Gemini, both sisters hovering over a cauldron on a hotplate next to the altar.

“Bubble bubble, he hasn’t been a boy for some times, but there’s trouble times three, ope!, two and toss me…”

Flannel Man underhand pitches the “precious liquids” to Nic’s weird aspect, she opens the vile and sniffs, “yes, torture’s the vintage, put it in the pot.” Stirs. “Pour the cauldron on grey clay” they ladle the foul brew on the body, in its mouth, on the wounds.

“The Devil’s on the march in May, nay February, where the roads are shit and the sky is grey. Hear him, say nothing:”

He is risen, eyes open gasping. A(84) sits up. “February 12, 2073. Michigan. Just about the middle of the Lower Peninsula. Red pine on a perfect grid.”

The Weird Sisters: “Be there, where the trees square. Beat the beholder or the fascist will rule as long as the red woods stand.”

*

Fragment: -0xB

Date: 2/12/2073; 2/11/2020

Location: EOT (End of Time); Michigan, Central Lower Peninsula, ‘Earth 14’; Michigan, Central Lower Peninsula, ‘Earth *’

LOGIC FAULT: COLLOQUIAL COORDINATES.

Subject(s): Convergence Condition (A(99); A(84); A(79))
CFC Breach? NEGATIVE. PROBABILITY: INEVITABLE.
Curve-Status? DEGRADED/DEGRADING. CFC MEMBRAINE: BREACHED.

*

The Ford sedan flies inches above the scorched plain at the end of time. Ash piling in dunes on the horizon, the pools of light rising, writhing, falling. The pools of light are buoys bobbing on a heaving parched sea.

“Is that normal? The ash.” Focus, bruh. Flannel Man driving. An immortal being and two iterations with a purpose. Hot-box holy smoke, cruising to pool of light, to battle, in a 1990-something Ford sedan. Someone passes A(84) a blunt. Nic said get you more high this time. I highly doubt that. Nope, orders. Mortals donning body armor in a weed cloud. A(84) wants a gun. You’ll shoot your eye out, no. Get your broomstick. For fuck’s sake.

A(79) lays out the plan: he’s got goons. Flannel Man: “I got the goons.” We don’t know how many. “Don’t care.” Ok. A(79), I’ve got the dad and any remaining goons. Broomstick get’s the clone and keeps anyone from. What? “Broomstick” is better than “Fuckup”, you’ve graduated to a better nickname. So you keep the goons and henchmen busy while.

“That’s definitely not normal.” To the left of the streaking Ford sedan, off the the road, a snuck-up rogue wave of ash leaps skyscraper high over the scorched plain. It’s stretched miles wide, long miles wide, lurching toward the road, lunging toward them. Backseat-driver passengers screaming “Go!” horror-watch out the window. They see a fanged mouth opening in the great wave of ash.

“Nope. Not normal. Buckles.” Passengers strap in, Flannel pushes the pedal through the floor. Car blueshifts toward the pool of light on the horizon. Sideways footrace with a wave of ash towering, leaning over the road, falling-fast toward them. Top of the wave about to break, looming over them low. Wave bottom clips the left rear end of the car, lifts it, kick flips the whip. Slew foot, car tumbles in as the wave crashes. The 1990-something Ford sedan escapes into the pool of light ass over end over ass again and out of control. The light pool portal belches prisms. The wave crashes, friction-hiss passes. The pool of light rises and falls with the wave as it passes, atop and astride the ash but never truly touched or profaned by it.

*

RECORD FRAGMENTED: LATER

*

Leonard the aspiring fascist has to piss, bad. The uniform clinging to his mid-age beer belly looks tough, but doesn’t do shit against the wind, upper-Midwest February razors. He has to piss. The boss loves a speech, he’s back in the formation. Leonard can only see the bird gestures, crazy arm ranting of the small figure up front by the portal. This is an army? It’s a convoy and he has to piss. He really, really has to piss, but he has a feeling the officer to his left will hurt him if he breaks ranks. ‘Perfect’ storm trooper square next to a red pine perfect grid in central Michigan.

The crack of thunder. Burst of light, heavens backlit by light cloud-to-cloud lightning. Puff pierced cotton. Low hanging winter clouds. Leonard the aspiring fascist lifts the rifle he’s never fired, looks through the scope at a rapidly growing spec. Not a bird, plane, but a 1990-something Ford sedan hurtling toward him like a missile, at speed, trailing smoke and every color from the prism.

A black-bearded madman, glowing eyes, hands on the wheel. Driving down.

*

RECORD FRAGMENTED: EARLIER

*

A(99) the fascist is giving a speech to his goons. A rousing speech. A good speech (by his standards). Reader, I could translate perfectly, but I refuse on the off chance you are vulnerable to such bullshit fascist sophistry. What’s more, it’s fuckin’ boring. It’s all death worship, oaths sworn against “degenerates” (he seems preoccupied with extraterrestrials and queers and people who derive joy from sex with no shame). He promises to turn the thousand goons gathered here into a great host and an empire that eats worlds and spans 1000 times 1000 years. A to C to B: take advanced technology back-and-over from ‘Earth 14’ in 2073 to ‘Earth’ 2020. Conquer. Build a bridge back to this world, return here in 2020, and make ‘Earth 14’ what it ‘should’ be.

The ‘bridge’ is a great gate, black metal monoliths like giant jet black dominoes arranged like a door frame to nowhere. Little baby bit of man made Stonehenge. Huge cables snake from either side of the gate to industrial generators on cargo trucks , one on either side buzz-humming and charging. They gather the enormous energy necessary to pierce, push through, from A to B. The gate is big enough for a semi-truck to drive through, for a formation of goons to march through.

The words are a joke, A(99)’s speech. The technology is not. He tells his audience they are wolves, but they are the jackals, the broken, the bitter. They couldn’t be happy in a world of relative peace and ever-increasing-plenty for most. Their world, ‘Earth 14’ is slow-motion lurching toward dysfunctional utopia after peaceful first contact. It’s not perfect, but it’s better. They reject it anyway because they do not rule it. That’s the kind of asshole who signs up to follow A(99).

Behold, A(99)’s army: storm troopers in too-tight uniforms shivering in parade formation on either side of the column of trucks and armored vehicles. Armored army trucks full of guns and tech and camouflage and communications and every other ingredient to start an insurgency. The fascist will take the jackals through the portal. He’ll trade them for a host-horde of locusts. Return. Eat up everything. Rinse, lather, repeat.

The crack of thunder. Burst of light, heavens backlit with cloud-to-cloud lightning. Puff pierced cotton, low-hanging winter clouds. A 1990-something Ford sedan nose diving toward evil.

*

Flannel Man at the wheel. The Ford sedan is tumbling above the clouds. An HVAC man flying it, he wrestles the steering wheel alternating gas and brakes, trying to right the spin. “Fall through. Both of you right now.” Quiet lightning, pop, A(79) vanishes, teleporting to into the red pine grid below to wreak havoc on stunned fascist goons.

A(84). I can’t. All performance anxiety in the backseat making a face like he’s straining to shit, can’t teleport. Broomstick free fall floating in front of him. “You’re still mortal. Go, or you’re bug-splat.” Flannel Man’s eyes are pleading to him in the rear-view mirror. All right but don’t look at me, it’s weird.

“You’re thinking. That’s the problem. Get pissed.” The car is in a controlled dive now, Flannel Man flying it, pierces the low cloud blanket. Ground below. “5000 feet, next few seconds or never. Go.” Flannel Man flips the stereo from a shrieking number station to an old fight song, cranks that shit. Sticks his head out the window, dog of war screaming along to the song, aiming the car at his target.

A(84) grips the broomstick float-falling, free falling with him. Closes his eyes. Quiet lightning. Pop. Backseat empty.

Flannel Man screams “Ante Up” out the window, in a voice and at a volume that blurs vision. Plows the car into one of the generator-trucks powering the gate. The explosion is enormous.

*

Pop pop from the tree tops. A woman cackling with glee. Prismatic flash. Pop pop from another tree top. The goons that aspire to be an evil army drop. “She’s in the trees!” The chase is on, goons into the woods en masse to hunt A(79).

Some goons take cover. Some goons shoot into the tree tops. Other goons shoot at other goons, when she appears and disappears between them. Montage collage. Keystone Kops. One thinks he’s found her, gives chase. Pass a tree, she reaches from behind the bark, snatches his back collar, bashes him into the trunk. Quiet lightning. Gone again and dancing in the trees again, and again again. She teaches fear to the ones that came to hunt her.

*

A(84) steps out of the side of a cargo truck, back of the convoy. Firecracker rifles and the woman’s wicked laugh echo off of everything. Fire and chaos after the Ford flung from heaven.

A dozen befuddled goons hear quiet lightning, turn to look at A(84) stupid, raise their rifles. Body armor and a broom stick. A(84) finds his stance, raises the broom over his head. “Drop your weapons.”

Fear in their eyes, one pisses himself. A growl so low the vision blurs from behind him. Self satisfied smirk from A(84) broomstick wielding Ronin.

Flannel man stalks past him, arms low, balled prismatic lightning in each palm. Eyes glowing, “You heard him, drop them. Now. Nope. Don’t you run” octaves past octaves deeper to the goons-who-are-fleeing. “Come here, quit running. You’re only making it worse.” The two, the immortal and the broomstick Ronin, work their way up the convoy-become-a-traffic-jam. Flannel Man teleporting back and forth, flipping 3-D to 2-D to slice the cargo trucks in half, flinging lightning at fleeing fascists’ asses. A(84) advances swiftly, disarming and disabling, beating goons with a broomstick.

*

F=MA, force equals mass times acceleration. The force of the Ford exploding the truck and his plans flings A(99) far from the gate. He slithers on his belly, peeks out from beneath the front of the truck. Red pine broken matchsticks, half a tree leaning against the gate, broken over the empty doorway. The gate seems undamaged, good. A(99) thinks he hears a crow.

The fascist taps at the screen of a tablet. He sets the gate to charging from the backup generator opposite side, another truck, and another tangled serpentine cable. Time is on his side. He hopes.

The red pine broken over the doorway. The tree’s blood, sap in winter that shouldn’t be, shouldn’t flow free, drips down. The blood of the tree anoints the arch.

*

ERROR. RECORD FRAGMENTED.

*

The aspiring fascists are routed. Most running, fleeing, escaping. Where? They don’t care. Tossing weapons in the snow, ripping insignia off stupid uniforms.

At the gate, a standoff. The clone, the fascist’s ‘son’, has A(84) struggling. The clone’s hands vice grip the two ends of a broken broomstick against A(84)’s throat, choking him, using him as a human shield. He is flanked by his father, the fascist A(99), and one remaining goon: Leonard the aspiring fascist. Leonard still has to piss. Desperately. He points a shaking rifle at A(79).

A(79) has a pistol pointed at the fascist’s head. “Let him go or I shoot your dad.”

And my man shoots you. The ‘son’: “And I crush your boyfriend’s throat.” I’m walking through that door, dear. The fascist presses a button on the tablet. Sparks, lightning arcs across the threshold behind him, holds-frozen, flickering. He begins backing slowly toward the portal, certain he sees hesitation growing in the familiar sad eyes, his eyes, repeated on the witch woman’s face. He has won. She won’t shoot him.

Flannel Man returns from tormenting goons in the forest. He bellows, his voice thunder : “Shoot Broomstick” sprinting past the speed of his words, the speed impossible. Perpendicular to the scene, the HVAC man’s path the x-axis straight between A(79) and the villains and their hostage.

A(79) aims, shoots directly at A(84)’s surprised face. Time stretches, honey-drip-slow, the cold light of February in Michigan gone gold hue. Each snowflake takes an hour in your-frame time to fall from cloud to Earth. Down near the the ground the bullet streaks lazily toward A(84), seeming to spin one revolution per second, if that.

Flannel Man glides between, pivots 2-D splits the bullet clean in half, hot hiss. One bullet, two paths, a miracle. Time snaps back. The fascist A(99) gasping, grasping his neck, staggers back into the lightning fantastic. He vanishes. Leonard shot-and-falling finally pisses. His finger twitches, and for the first and only time in his life, he shoots his gun at a living thing.

A(79) shocked-face, pulls a red hand from the lower left of her abdomen and the scorched hole in the armor. There is no clean-through twin hole on her back. She feint falls in a heap unconscious. Flannel Man runs back to her, exhausted, at mortal speed. Work boots chuffing in the snow.

A(84) headbutts, drives the back of his skull into the villain clone’s big nose, his nose, breaks and bloodies it. He grips the broom, snatches it back. Turns swings the stick at the clone’s face, but the villain leans back, reaches back. Swing and a miss from the broomstick Ronin. The villain touches the lightning. Pop. Vanishes.

Leonard the aspiring fascist, bleeding from the belly, leaning against one of the columns. A tiny man supported by the arch of a great door. Flannel Man arriving yells “Wait!” dives to cover A(79) the witch with his body.

A(84) punches the aspiring fascist in the chest, summoning some strength and power from some source elsewhere. Leonard’s sternum shattered, stunned dumb face. The arch shimmies, falls. Spark of the closing portal leaps to what’s left of Leonard the aspiring fascist, vanishes him to wherever. Shockwave tosses A(84) back in a heap. Gate snapping out of existence, save for fragments flung off into the trees bent and broken like match-sticks.

*

Flannel Man cradles A(79) in his lap singing softly to her, a song she knows. A song he knows she knows, holding his hand over the wound. A(84) staggers up, med-kit, 50 years of medical innovation more than he’s seen in a field kit. Styptic stop the blood, bandage, quick stich and a tiny ‘lil’ surgeon drone searching for bullet fragments.

“I fucked up. The Ford’s shattered and the gate’s gone.” Flannel man stops singing, keeps cradling the wounded A(79), consoles the other iteration. A(84) ineptly applies the medicine, watches the semi-automated tools fail to work. If the medicine is 50 years past his, so are the guns. Harm wins, she’s bleeding and they can’t stop it. Her eyes are open again. They are running out of medical magic fluid to transfuse.

A(79), the witch, opens her mouth: “I am a luminous being.” I know. We know. Flat lines. Eyes close. Tinny dial tone from the kit. Activate the defibrillator. The Ford is shattered and the gate is gone. A(84) holds one of her hands, Flannel man still cradling her. A(84) looks him in the eye, presses the a button on the kit. Speaker voice: “Clear.” They are not clear.

Lightning strikes the three. Lightning reaches back from a scorched bare patch of land to low cotton clouds.

*

Come to on the scorched plain at the End of Time. A(84) willed their trip here, bore the brunt of passage, paid the cognitive cost. Ears and nose bleeding, swaying on his knees.

A(84) disconnects and abandons wires and leads clumsily, silence from the medical machine. Silence from A(79). He unfolds and unfolds a napkin into a field blanket. Wraps the witch woman A(79) in it. Endless solemn silence on the scorched plain.

He marches, cradling her in his arms, guessing which direction is right with certainty “Nic will fix her.” That’s not the way things work, dude. “Yes, the fuck it is the way things work.” Crying, marching on. “*****, that’s not the way things work. You going to change the rules, bend the river? “If that’s what it takes.”

He carries the body in the shroud, the blanket, forever and a day across the scorched plain. Arms past numb, he staggers across the Endless Antechamber at the End of Time. The broken broomstick slung on his shoulder like a short sword in a scabbard. Onward ever onward staggering over ash piles. A(84)’s arms turn iron carrying her in the falling ash. Flannel man follows. Both men kicking ash, stumbling, staggering, kicking drifts that sift and swirl in the breeze. Iron arms to clay, they walk on forever and a day and a morning to boot. A(84) carries the witch woman, the ‘her’, iteration of himself to the small chapel sheltered in the desiccated dead wood. “Nic will fix her.”

*

Three fascists, two actual and one aspiring: A(99), his clone ‘son’, and Leonard the aspiring fascist hurtle along a highway in space-time.

The three travelling companions, one broke-nosed but living, one dying, one dead couldn’t appreciate the beauty of the prismatic symphony all about them (even if they were prepared for it and in good shape).

Reader, they were not in good shape. It is here and now, at this ‘moment’ as you call them that I, your humble narrator, swept that trash off the time-space highway. I cast them down to the scorched plain at the End of Time. I told you once before, reader, there are forces that keep their kind from spreading laterally in space and time.

Some worlds, some pools of light and possibility are sheltered in barns with blood over the door. Others guarded by forces mighty, miniscule, and all points between. Yours is the latter. Some corners of the multiverse spawn by accident, not ex nihilo, but from you and your happy accidents. Wave functions, arcs of “what might be” collapse just right in a pregnant moment, and a certain kind of rational nerd can rage all they want, but physics flips poetic and “let there be light” there’s another universe in the multi. There’s another pomegranate seed of swirling everything in the endless, holy fruit of creation.

Some seeds, some sparks, some iteration riddled universes are accidental. Some are intentional and beloved. All are precious accidents. Accidental or intentional, reader, you and yours appear to me as a precious lichen defiantly clinging to a precious rock dancing through the void of space. I confess, I love you for it, for the sheer tenacity of your existence.

*

A(99) lands in a pile of ash on the scorched plain, gasping, grasping at his neck. Coal coke, ground bone, burnt everything and anything, arsenic and iron oxide mélange mingle in the ash beneath him. The fascists’ blood drips. Maybe it’s magnetic, the iron in his blood, or maybe the sum force of ‘the strange’ congealing in the ash that shouldn’t collect. It is drawn to the blood. Maybe the ash is animate and tastes blood and feels hunger for the first time. Or perhaps some force has weighed and measured him and found him guilty. Whatever the case, the ash pile smothers and devours A(99) the fascist. It works from head to toe, suffocating and crushing the remaining life from him.

The clone, the son of the fascist, falls out next tumbling onto the scorched plain at the End of Time. He rises to his feet, ash on his ripped tycoon suit, hands clasping at his broken nose. The schnoz we all know. Blood drips from his hands to the plain, one drop, two. Friction hiss, he turns.

There’s a hungry living congealed wave of ash, blob-rolling toward him, reaching. Animated unintelligent hunger. The ash slow-slithers like a great snake glutton-dragging its last meal, his father, in its belly. The ‘son’, the clone out-paces the blob easily, but it is expanding in size and increasing in speed as it digests its meal.

Quiet lightning, pop. The remains of Leonard the aspiring fascist fall through and land on the clone, the ‘son.’ While the living man struggles under the corpse, the ash catches both bodies. The monster envelops them from foot to head. The clone-son sees the dead goon’s face pressing, crushing against his before the ash covers his eyes. Animate, dry, scorched and scorching, up his nose down his throat, in his belly and lungs. Choking. Crushing. Desiccating. Rolling on.

Fade to black. End of Exile Pt. 4

*

THINGS CAN’T HAPPEN SEQUENTIALLY AT THE END OF TIME

THE POMEGRENATE’S SKIN CAN’T BE PERMEABLE

NARRATOR’S CAN’T DEUS EX MACHINA WITHOUT

APPROVAL PRIOR IN TRIPLICATE TIMES THREE

IT IS MY DUTY TO INFORM YOU:

THE AUTHORITIES INTERVENE PART WAY INTO PART FIVE.

IT CAN’T BE HELPED.

*

ARC 1: COMPLETE

ARC 2: IN PROCESS