“I am vast, I contain multitudes”
*
FRAME: St. Ignatius; SUBJECT: Ira
*
We’ve had missionaries here, the kind that bring their ‘word’ to you like a rock in a sock–trying to beat you “saved.”
Bird worship? Maybe somebody way back in the mists of time looked at an Ignatian Puffin and saw Quetzalcoatl. I highly doubt it though. There is nothing divine about those vicious little shits. But “bird worship” in the way a rich person in the West might pamper a prissy little lap dog? Absolutely.
My grandmother was like that. She had two: Abbot and Costello. They had blue black body plumage and that dark blue-green stripe down their backs (the island’s wild Puffins wearing the same coloring reversed).
They look identical. The wild and domestic Puffins. My Nana swore I was color blind, used it like slur, and I may be. But every one of those awful birds on those god forsaken islands looks identical.
The locals gather them in the forest, the domestic birds. It’s a whole big thing, has it’s own holiday. They use their kids as a distraction. Oh yeah, I participated in this shit: banging on pots and pans and running for my life. You run right through their spawning grounds, through a bunch of horny, territorial, hell birds. You’re trying not to trip over dead birds or tree roots. All while hiding in a crowd from the kind of kid who trips other kids just to watch them get swarmed by Puffins.
And behind the child-phalanx, here come the elders. While the birds try to eat their young, elders snatch eggs and birds elbowed from the nest. They wrap them carefully and put them in big wicker baskets set aside for the season.
When the birds hatch, they imprint on whomever is nearby. They seem to hate every other living thing. Abbot and Costello “knew” my mom and aunt and uncle. I was still an impure thought when those birds hatched. And no matter how much Gram insisted the birds “just needed to get to know me”, those little shits knew I was not of their flock/tribe/family. They tried to kill me, not very effectively. They are composed mainly of feathers and hatred but only a kilogram or two of it.
The worst part of the holiday where we cull is what happens to the live birds. The ‘found’ birds. The ones pushed from the nest. We eat them. They’ve imprinted on other birds and will never acclimate to humans. It’s a whole holiday feast.
I hate the birds. I don’t want them dead, or to eat them (or any meat, thanks Gram-Gram). I don’t want one as a pet or companion. I just want them away from me because I loathe them, and that’s not really allowed in what’s left of our culture. They’re about all that’s left of an “us” that we don’t entirely remember. We have this one stupid thing: the relationship to the stupid, vicious birds.
*
FRAME: Earth (0x7DD); Washington DC
*
“None of this makes any goddamn sense” Mal’s sipping evening coffee staring at the cliché she made in her office: the board, no bits of string, just streaks of dry erase and her scrawled notes next to pictures. There’s a victim that no one cares about, grinning like an idiot through a patchy beard, beak nose hanging over his stupid dead face. Then there’s his death and the extreme and spectacular application of violence in a city that is a big deal. “Who gives a fuck about you?”
“I do. Well, not that particular one.”
Mal finds her ice-face before turning to face the intruder. She looks the speaker over: tactical vest, pistol, curved sword in scabbard, aviator shades over a big-old-nose identical to her victim’s. “I’m sorry, I thought we notified the family already. What the fuck are you doing in my home?”
There is the sound of singing, Mal’s man-candy–the young man-child fed with so many muscles and the exquisite bone structure, that one. He’s butchering “So Tired of Being Alone”, walks in on the scene wearing only Mal’s robe. The women wait, hear the pat-pat of the big man-child-puppy running finding his pistol and returning. “Hands up! Get down! Right now!”
Both: “Shut up.”
Mal: “You know how many times she could’ve shot me while you were running to get your gun? It’s a lot, Stan.”
A(79) agrees: “It’s a lot, Stan like a-lot-a-lot. So I’m going to need you to accept that I’m here to talk and to point the pistol and your ‘combat erection’ elsewhere.”
The Witch tells Mal what she perceived: a forgettable man tunneled in from an adjacent Earth to blow up the shnoz.
“Oh, that’s all.” All I know thus far. “And you expect me to take it on faith that people can “tunnel” between adjacent Earths, which by the way now exist.” Yes, it would be easier for me if you just accepted fact. “Demonstrate divinity or at least the supernatural and I’ll entertain the possibility.”
The pop of quiet lightning, and arms arrayed as a peacock’s feathers appear behind A(79), behind the witch with the shnoz wearing the shades. Some portion of the hands ephemeral have middle fingers raised. Arms arrayed for an instant and gone. The man-candy conveniently yawning and stretching did not see the magic, just the shibboleth satisfied somehow–two grinning women.
And there’s a mundane miracle here between Mal and A(79): two that tend not to trust, do. They talk in good faith about what the witch saw coming and what to do about it: “a wave of beige, of forgettable men.”
*
St. Ignatius; Naratorr: Ira
*
Three days in a cramped cave that reeks of bird shit. As someone predicted (me, I predicted it) the birds started tearing through the food supply almost immediately. The caves, the failed mines, are the only place on the island the poor rats can find any peace from the birds (i.e. not be ripped to shreds). When the rats fled to wherever, we inherited their shit-covered floors.
When some razor-beaked devil bird rips your sack of rice open, it’s best not to pick the grains out of the floor turds. And when that same Ice-pick beak pecks through the plastic of so many of your water jugs, there is now way, practical or hygienic, to recover the water.
The disaster I predicted as I was trying to get people to the mines, people-not-Puffins, happened while we watched and waited. And I said the worst possible thing: “The Puffins gotta go.” That’s the when-and-why of my own people handing me over to the goons.
“Here’s your bird worshiper, take her.” Me, duct taped. Covered in Puffin shit, doubtless smeared over a million tiny cuts and scratches on my feet and ankles. This. This scene should help you understand why I hate those goddamn birds.
*
Erstwhile offshore, Lucretia fought Cassius for her very being. She fought him better than most he had encountered and devoured. She fought him so well she did wrest control. Lu gave orders, so many so quickly and with such an air of command that no one bothered to question.
Doing her best impersonation of him-as-her, she befuddled the host–her grandfather’s mercenaries. She gave orders in his voice-come-hers that had them chasing ghosts through the woods. She did facilitate no fewer than three incidents of friendly fire, and 23 of the 24 casualties taken by the PMC (read: private army) were a direct result of her efforts. She did see to the complete destruction of the PMC’s artillery on the island, the same guns that surrounded the island’s hospital got real loud for a second and silenced each other.
Don’t kid yourself, the mundane miracle about the hospital wasn’t kindness or mercy, for Lucretia had never shown anything but mercy’s technical definition–to end suffering. No, it was wrath, rage, the will to live long enough to smite the thing that threatened her. She did fuck up Cassius’ plans royally until he drowned her and again asserted control of the body they shared.
*
Its a small island, I could walk it in pitch black. In fact, I have, and a couple of the others too. I’ve lived here almost all my life, so the bag over my head seems extreme and silly, as do the shackles. They tell me “Geneva doesn’t cover fanatics” and I don’t say anything because my mouth is taped shut. They hit me a lot anyway, like a lot a lot.
Pull the bag. Rip the tape. “Fuck. Ow. Thanks for the warning.” Where are they? “Who is they?” *bap* gun tap slap to side of her head* The fuckin Birdos, where the fuck are they? “The Birds? The Puffins? If you haven’t massacred them, fucking everywhere?”
Ok, ok. I’m not ‘getting cute.’ And the guy with the gun screams something about the hospital, the one with the doctors and the people too old or sick to move, that one, the only one left.
And they were going to kill everyone in the hospital, blow it up with big guns from miles away, just for fun. So I say: “I’ll take you to the terrorists, the Birdos. They’re on another island, I know where.”
The guns roar. “Too late, Birdo.” No no no, I told you. I did what you wanted. I gave you the thing. The guns roar and are no more and the hospital still stands. I was happy to lead the goons away from a hospital full of Gram-grams and sick kids. Now, I’m taking them to my grave for no goddamn reason.
The olive drab SUV climbed the road out of Port Town. There’s me in the back, shackled and sandwiched between two goons that reek of whiskey, ass, and aftershave. Yes, Port Town is the actual name of that god-forsaken place. We crested the hill, passed the first farm and there’s the blown up big gun, and another and another. Men screaming over the radio at each other.
It didn’t matter if they could or couldn’t blow up the hospital. It didn’t matter what they threatened to do to me or others in front of me. It just mattered that they had me and something to threaten me with. And when they didn’t have the second thing (the threat) and when they realized my worth to them(absolutely nothing). They’d just shoot me.
I should’ve seen it a little sooner, that I was going to die., perhaps when the invasion started. But you always think you’ll outwit it, right? Some way to jump out of the way of death, less-than-last-second like in the movies. Don’t people say that? Do you hear that often in your role?
*
EOT; Earth(0x7DD);Earth(0x53);(√(−1)). LOCATION(S): MANIFOLD
*
A(79) presents a plump, conical marijuana cigarette, “I’m gonna burn this.” Smoke choke as she passes a lit joint to Mal, conjures a third for Special Agent Man-Candy who tries to politely refuse. “Tell boy toy to gird his loins and smoke the joint. Where we’re going he’s high or he loses brain, permanently.”
The big statuesque fed, Mal’s pink terrycloth robe half covering him stands there, face all judgmental. He starts with his speech about how he’s never imbibed and how he’s watched that shit warp people, and mal smirks. Mal, the silver fox, walks up puffing and shotguns her man-snack, leans up to kiss him sweetly. He’s clear-throat coughing up the shared hit when she places the joint in his mouth. When he looks past his love to the weird and weirding woman, he sees sparks are arcing off her and he and mal and everything is light.
Time drips honey slow and the women giggle at his first time high. The pop of quiet lightning, and the three fall through from the study of a row house in Georgetown to the scorched plain at the End of Time.
*
Mal shakes it off, presses a finger to a nostril and shoots a clot to the packed ash beneath her. “Jesus fuck, you got any more of that?” to the witch in the shades with the big nose who nods and conjures ever-more marijuana.
“What the fuck?” And Special Agent Man-Candy whines and rolls on the packed ash, bleeding from the ears and nose for some time, long enough for the women to roast a few and set to planning.
The three walk a time indeterminate in the place where time holds such little sway. Three figures cross the edge of the Great Wastes, three figures cresting and falling on ash dunes: witch with a big beak in a bathrobe and stunner shades, Mal the fed smoking conjured weed like a chimney, and Special Agent Man-Candy with Mal’s pink robe girding his loins.
They come to a lonely liminal: a coffee shop beside some rail road tracks that rise-from and fall-to the packed ash.
The thing is grey and wasted, window glass litters the ground around it. A single streak of blood red paint marks the door frame above the entrance.
Inside is entirely elsewhere and elsewise. Inside the lonely liminal, across a barrier as swift and subtle as a light switch, is warmly lit and of seemingly infinite dimension. Ghostly things, orbs of honeyed light operate a roastery and other machinery–vast things of polished brass and jet black metal. Steam pipes radiate warmth and the sweetest sounding industry. The smell of coffee beans and whiskey and products benevolent and nourishing curl through the air.
Mal rolls with it. Man-Candy’s mind is perpetually blown. A(79) orders her usual times 3, passes a mug of the coffee sublime to the fed in her jammies and the other to the fed in his loin-cloth and they wander along the wall of the slender-narrow and infinitely long factory to a restaurant style booth.
“What in the fuck is any of this?” from the baby-faced and statuesque Special Agent. All in good time and the women lean in low over the red glass candle holder with hushed whispers for a long time. Trains from nowhere to nowhere rush through the building, silent but with a force that blurs vision–out the floor or from one window to another. The orbs mostly ignore them, dance about them, go on about their inscrutable business unimpeded. No no, seriously where the fuck are we? “Easy dude, this is St. Ignatius, or part of it. It’s metaphysical or perhaps metaphorical basement.” That means nothing. “Neither did your question, so shove it.” And she returns to planning and scheming with Mal.
They sit, and one little fae thing, one little glowing orb carrying a silver platter dances and flits over to the booth like a drunk waiter. It deposits the silver tray with the tiny pool of light atop the candle holder. “Thank you, garcon” from A(79). The candle’s heat beneath and the women’s words above excite the light, make a conjured image dance and flit ghostly-holographic before them.
They see what was: the dice cultist and forgettable man boards a train that carves a path Earth-to-Earth, (0x7DD)-to-(0x53). He plants the bomb that kills the fuckup no one cares about. They see what will be: his co-conspirators and compatriots do the same at stations in London, New York, Tokyo, Moscow, Paris, Beijing. Forgettable, beige men and women, placid faced and empty board busses in Johannesburg, Jakarta, Seattle. All carry bombs or are themselves bombs.
The holograph hovers over and dances round one individual, dead brain and soulless eyes, the only thing propelling the forgettable shell is the steady stream of overlapping number stations blaring from its headphones in place of some podcast or well worn playlist. The drone walks to its workplace and past it, and to some pre-determined site where it promptly detonates itself. Hologram zooms out to a ghost world engulfed, coated, covered in the red blips–each point a single instance of violence in the beige men’s bombing campaign.
“Why show us this?” To stop it dummy, and Mal begs pen and paper from the Witch while Man-Candy tries to manage a high he was not prepared for. To answer your question: the heavens have a “no-fly” list, and a particularly brutal beige man wants to circumvent that. This is how he attacks you and your world: present a problem, these bombings, and yourself as the solution. He wants to rule, and more to rule worlds he’s rendered predictable–cheating death all the while.
Radio frequencies, locations, names, descriptions. The two Earthly feds take the gifts given. When Special Agent Man-Candy awakes to the honeyed light on his face, big man little-spoon with his lady nuzzling his back, he thinks it a dream. He is convinced he dreamt until he sees the notes, the frequencies, the latitudes and longitudes scribbled on bar napkins on a bedside table.
*
FRAME: St. Ignatius; SUBJECT: Ira
*
The hill above Port Town, I see them, all three of the towns (at least three)–the village, the town, the modern city. I knew the soldier’s couldn’t see like me, like the Ignatians. They couldn’t discern the island’s breathing, the way the place expands, contracts, and distorts–plastic on the wind or fabric on a wave. My home is crumpled paper. It’s why outsiders generally get lost and give up and go home and leave us with our birds. It’s why things get really ugly for those that don’t, and why I took them to the woods we don’t visit and the chapel we don’t talk about. May we all get lost forever, Amen.
*
Cassius looks himself/herself in the mirror, steadies a shaking hand, slaps the earthly vessel across the face. Speaks directly to her: “Listen you little shit, you can have the fucking body back when I achieve my goals.” She laughs bitterly in their own face.
“Don’t bullshit me. I’ll have my body back when you’re in hell where you belong.” The two fight a long while before a bathroom mirror in Cassius/Lu’s cabin.
In control, quaking right fist clenched at her side, Cassius makes final preparations–punching parameters into a keypad control panel inside a briefcase device. Gold light shines from the device and bathes the torso of the body he is consuming.
For simplicity’s sake, let’s call it what it will appear to be: a bomb or nuke. A series of pre-activation checks and tests and calibrations proceed and read in-the-green. There is the smile of relief on Lu’s face, twitching and contorted by Cassius, the relief of the first fucking thing that’s gone right on this campaign. He speaks into a secured phone in his host’s strained voice: “ready the helicopters.” The click lock of the brief case. The white noise of Lucretia screaming in his head. Limp and stalk to the helipad built atop the old freighter’s deck, the thwokka-thwokka of the corkscrews.
The flight of helicopters, Cassius/Lu and his goons is half way to it’s destination, half way to the island the Ignatians abandoned when Lucretia’s latest sabotage sets the old freighter–the PMC flag ship–ablaze.
*
FRAME: Earth(0x7DD); CVN-80-A USS Enterprise (Refit), Bridge/CIC (Coast of St. Ignatius)
*
Ok, so how did these chucklefucks go from shelling each other to sinking their own ships?
“Well Admiral, if you take that kind of incompetence and let it off the leash as it were…”
My question was rhetorical, thank you. Render aid, keep trying to get their leadership on the line, and let’s manage this shit show.
Flash on the horizon, what the fuck now? “Well, admiral that flash is in line with what we know of a nuclear device” Rhetorical. Again, rhetorical. Claxons wailing in the background as the great ship braces.
*
The red carpet, Marine guards and flags and all the trappings of the state reminding every viewer/listener/reader it is the state. A president stalks down the aisle with “Roman sweat” on his brow to say this: “My fellow Americans.” He let’s the moment hang so that you may see the sorrow in his eyes, know it in the timbre of his voice, “cowardly terrorists have inflicted great hurt and pain on our people.”
He tells a story about a nuclear weapon bought, borrowed, or stolen and concealed in some terrorist stronghold of bird worshiping lunatics. Of how the soldiers of an innovative public-private partnership gave their lives trying to disarm the weapon, of how a carrier and destroyer, how the USS Enterprise had been lost in the nuclear shockwave just off the cost of St. Ignatius. The islands are no more, they sank beneath the sea. The sailors lost will be mourned as heroes, and the civilians of St. Ignatius (when mentioned) will be mourned as well, I guess. Except that’s not what happened. That’s not what happened at all.
*
The bomb-not-bomb blew, and if many kilotons of energy were released (they were)– Ignatius aimed/angled/oriented the energy upward-and-outward and downward-and-in. For the barest moment, a laser beam seemed to leap from St. Ignatius to the heavens.
See, Ignatius is not an island so much as an archive, tesseract, library, factory, foundry, distillery/brewery/roastery, bridge, and doorway. It’s part of an old maintenance/civil-defense system, and it’s everywhere–on every Earth at once.
And that’s how Cassius escaped Earth(0x7DD): with a big fucking bomb-not-bomb. New cosmology or old, the machine would keep him quarantined on one world, never let him fall through. So he climbed into a new body for cover and on to St. Ignatius like a slingshot, and he severed the island’s link to a world and sent it flying off toward the nearest adjacent and appropriate location in the multiverse: Earth(0x53).
What about the good people of St. Ignatius and the sailors on the carrier Enterprise and the destroyer Occoquan? All were pulled to Earth(0x53). St. Ignatius did what it does by nature and design: it adapted and contorted-distorted, folded in a new and novel way to accommodate the extra space and time.
The natives are used to it, living in one place across several different Earths and iterations of self and sometimes unself. That’s the most remarkable thing about the Ignatians: they seem to have the ability to perceive their home, this place smeared across the multiverse, whole and complete. They also appear completely oblivious to how remarkable a fact that is.
END CASSIUS AND THE WITCH CHAPTER 3