Arc 2: Locust and the Pomegranate
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“There be Monsters”
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Fragment: NULL
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Two trains leave 0 on the number line going opposite directions at the same speed. Work is at 11; Work is at negative 11. They come home at the end of the day. Both trips, trains pass in a subway tunnel. Salary folk catch each others’ eyes twice. They work a day the length of one heat death of a universe. Take the train home for the big crunch. Rest. Reset.
Now imagine the number line is a sphere. Flatten the sphere past penny flat to a plain. Scorch the plain. That’s Nowhere’s Endless Antechamber, the source and destination of time (and it’s opposite). A place. Plain. Membrane. It sits outside of time by necessity and design. In the little quiet corner of the fractal you call the ‘multiverse’, this place/un-place is necessary to maintain the arrangement.
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Fragment: 0x5f
Location: CARCERAL FACILITY OUTSIDE PITTSBURGH/EOT
Subject: Mark Shmidt/ “Ratslayer”
Date: 3/5/2021;NULL
*
“I’m going to pray for you.” Stretch the ‘yooooooooooooooou’ like taffy.
The mountain-guard, Mark Shmidt stares into the portal in the prison outside Pittsburgh. Debris slow-mo blowing through the prism-hole to wherever as it begins to collapse-close. The tazer still clinging to his ass by tiny darts, drawn up by the wind. He rises and dances in the air like plastic trash in a windstorm while the guards on concrete beneath him are only beginning to show shock on their faces.
The pop of quiet lightning. The alarm bell and a gaping hole in the broad corridor of a prison outside Pittsburgh.
*
Mark Shmidt rises to his feet on the scorched plain at the End of Time, though he does not know to call it that. In the distance, through the falling ash, a single strike of lighting draws his eyes to the horizon. There, in the distance and through the falling ash he sees them: a caravan of people small as ants cresting one dune, falling, and clambering up the next.
For lack of a better idea, the mountain-of-a-man follows.
*
Fragment: 0xFD.07
Location: Chapel
Frame: End of Time (EOT)
Subjects: MULTITUDINOUS
*
The ‘church’ began as a hole beneath a dead tree: the great shell of a desiccated Coast redwood in a ghost-grove on the scorched plain at the End of Time.
The congregation, weary from long past long wandering began digging with their hands during the second miracle: rain. A hard rain fell on the ghost grove on the scorched plain at the End of Time. The water ran in rivulets, gathered and pooled in a dip at the base of the great tree, the echo of the first tree. The water softened the packed-ash cement-ground.
With their bare hands, they dug. Then with tools possessed by wandering custodians that had joined them on their rambling exodus over the scorched plain, they dug.
The first miracle: A bolt of lightning deposited a stolen 2000 something Ford sedan and the prisoners from Pittsburgh out on the scorched plain. Those that saw the lightning followed: Nic’s congregation of heretics from across the ages, wandering semi-sentient custodians who had abandoned their duties. The bands came together to wander together.
There was a third miracle in “The Time that Time Held Some Sway” at the End of Time: the hole became a chamber, became a home, became a church. And the most sacred-coincidence of all, that most holy least-likely thing congealed there in a hand-dug ant’s nest beneath a dead tree: community.
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Fragment: 0x29A
Frame: End of Time (EOT): Headquarters
Subject: Professor Woland and Entourage; Management
Date: NULL
*
“Beings, luminous and otherwise, thank you for your time.” Waits for it: corporate dad-joke chuckles. “Beings of the Board, in the beginning there was a spark.” A woman with a purple scar wearing a pantsuit point-click-pats away at a laptop. Serpent-cable HDMI ties her universal machine to a projector that casts ghostly glow visual aids on a bare wall.
“A single spark, beautiful in its singularity and because of it.” The spark fissions, again and again again and so on. The projector frame becomes crowded as the man continues, his right eye going strange. In the dim room, it almost seems one great pupil or a void. He continues: “And the machine that manages the majesty of creation hums on, imitation being flattery and all” ever-dryer-chuckles, the frame now completely illuminated, no contrasting negative space “but at what point is enough, “enough?””
Gasps from the board. Woland continues: “What you brand ‘heresy’ I call “disruption”, and “blasphemy?” Smiles. “It’s “innovation.”” The Board adores his buzzwords. “The machine and the holy algorithm that runs it in the absence of the divine? Not broken. Board members.” He adjusts his human molar cufflinks for effect in the long silence. Slicks that ‘Gorden Gecko’ hair. “The proliferation of creation is a problem if we never go ‘agile’ and shift our management style.” He leans forward, the board members leaning-like, low over the table, listening.
“If gardening be our business, then garden we must. Austere. Dispassionate. It’s not a matter of creation and its majesty but how much of that majesty we’re willing and capable of managing with our team.” The lights come up on a boardroom with 13 different shades of beige. At the last word “team” the consultant Woland gestures toward the door and the two custodians standing either side of it. Heads bowed, acknowledged but not ordered, thus silent and still–the custodians wearing iron collars.
“The Holy Algorithm advised you to call us here because we bring problems to solutions that haven’t shown themselves yet.”
HR Supervisor: “Don’t you mean solutions to problems?”
For a fee. “We. I. am here to say and do what your contracts and scriptures won’t allow you to say and do: prune the garden. Give me the shears and the gardening gloves, while ye retain the sovereign fist and flaming sword.”
The Board Members nod, furrow their brows as if weighing wisdom. The semi-sentients standing by the door, the custodians in jumpsuits and wearing iron collars around their necks, don’t react. They haven’t reacted to anything other than direct commands the entire presentation.
*
Fragment: 0xFD.07
Location: Chapel
Frame: End of Time (EOT)
Subjects: A(523)^; MULTITUDINOUS
*
“Beings, luminous and otherwise, welcome.” The Parson wades into the crowd. High-fives handshakes and/or hugs the elected representatives of the known faiths. She does the same for the representatives of aspiring faiths. The great host in the reverberating chamber does as she does. Oh, they sit in kin and church and faith groups, but before the sermon the congregation mingles.
The teetotalers embrace the potheads and vice versa. Some of the hugs are fake-as-fug, many more genuine; some of the smiles are forced, many more warm and sincere. The “act of the effort to welcome” is sacred to every entity in the church. Amen.
It’s usually at this point that some portion of those from the teetotaling tribes within the congregation sneak off, put a bag over their head for faux-anonymity’s sake to sit with those who imbibe weed or LSD. Whatever it takes to swing the perceptual doors wide and illuminate self and sermon.
*
The house band quiets. The Parson, A(523) takes the stage at the deepest dip of the concave temple. She stands on a stone slab with moss and lichen smeared across it. Looks up, the ceiling the body of the tree enormous, one great brazier-lamp dangling by a gold chain from it. The remains of the tree’s roots trail down and twist into the floor, appearing as pillars holding the space open for the congregation.
“Oh my.” Under her breath to herself, levitating cross legged, she slowly rotates taking in the chamber, nerves at the huge crowd. Clumps of pews, groups of rugs carefully laid, simple chairs, bean bags and divans, some sit cross legged on the floor. Clumps of parishioners, their sum: a multitude. They consume coffee and weed, wafer and wine, some eschewing intoxicants. All enjoy each others company (or make the effort, damnit). Out in the crowd, she notes the Pope of Trash leaning in to whisper something to Oscar Wilde. She sees familiar faces and heretics of all ages. She sees her wife.
“Welcome, friends.” Her words are spoken, merely spoken. But like the strangely wafting smoke hovering, curling, dancing all about the chamber, the Parson’s words curl-climb-dive and echo, strong-clear-amplified in the kick off the walls that shimmy like a speaker cone. “First, the first commandment.” She holds a hand to ear like that wrestler. The congregation intones: First, do no harm. “Great work: now the second.” Raises her hands inviting response. The crowd sings: Fix the harm you do, or try.
“I’m loving this. Now the third:” The congregation shouts: less commandments more flexible guidelines. “We’re going to draft and craft with that one until it rolls off the tongue, but great enthusiasm.”
Whoa. Ok. I think your preacher ate the “special” communion wafers. What’s that? “Ok, I’m told they’re all ‘special.’ My apologies to the teetotalers.” In the audience, a Mormon staring at his hand distorting before him begins alternating between screams and laughter. “Can we get some volunteers with juice and snacks for the hallucinogenic-inexperienced?” She waves her trail-distorting-hand before her own face. Finds her wife in the crowd, sees one of her three smiles mouth “You got this. Roll with it.” while two of her many hands make a heart shape.
“Ok, today’s sermon is forgiveness: its a bitch but ya gotta’ try.”
This is when the mountain-guard with the flat nose walks in.
Having wandered down a tunnel at the base of a dead tree. He followed music and weed smoke. He walked toward the sound of laughter and the comforting-murmur of many voices, the blanket-babel of humans doing community. He emerged at the edge of the chamber, eye to eye at a great distance with the prisoner, the woman with the pretty voice he gave paper to in another life.
The Parson, her trip still on the uphill climb and her sermon not yet begun, finds his eyes, she freezes.
*
Fragment: 0x77
Frame: EOT (End of Time) Highway 1
Date: (-11;11)
Subjects: Nic(s); Ratslayer; Various Feds
*
Nic sits cross legged backseat of the blacked-out fed-truck SUV. The ancient-beyond-ancient being in a bathrobe and jammies is taking up too much space and flanked by a thin-woman and thin-man. Nameless feds pressed against the doors by the guest deity-spreading on the backseat bench. The vehicle is part of a convoy of fed trucks pushing down a highway toward some place on the scorched plain at the End of Time.
To starboard, to the right of the road, dunes of ash slow blow and roll, marching to nowhere from nowhere. On the horizon there is an aurora, a ghostly glow above the zipper rip in the scorched plain. A growing seam-rip in the pomegranate’s very skin.
“You weren’t in my chapel.” To the muscled driver, different from the thin-man string-bean feds. Nic catches his eyes in the rear-view mirror, uninteresting and dead but one eye flicks-strange, all black for a moment. “Where are we headed, precisely?”
“Headquarters, pre-exile paperwork to complete. Bureaucracy must be satisfied.” Huh ok. Looks to the borealis on the horizon.
“Tell Woland I said, hi.” Nic, one woman with glorious frizzy hair and many arms. She uses two hands to grasp the shoulder of each fed flanking her. Nic opens the rear doors with two more, unbuckles their safety belts with two more hands (all of this in less than a fraction of an instant). Smiling, looking forward the whole time. She then tosses the two feds, with little effort, miles off into the dunes of ash on either side of the road.
In the next fraction of an instant, while the driver’s mortal brain is just beginning to realize a sound and that it should be surprised, Nic focuses on the bench beneath her, backseat in the SUV.
It gains mass, the seat beneath her ass gains mass, then more mass and more again. For a fraction of a sliver shaved off an instant, the back seat bench weighs as much as the heart of a dead star. The moment-slowed, then continues at ‘regular’ pace because Nic, the ancient-beyond-ancient being, allows it to.
The hefty backseat, Nic’s seat, falls faster than a stone through the SUV to the road while the rest of the ride continues, the back shredding like paper around her. The front with it’s stunned driver and half a powertrain rolling along.
The screech of brakes, little time to swerve. The two fed-trucks trailing see the scene: cloud of car-come-confetti and a woman sitting cross legged on a bench facing away from them. Brake. Swerve to equal opposite shoulders of the road. With the barest gesture from two hands, Nic accentuates each car’s swerve, lifts flips and casts the two-ton trucks out into the ash like toys into her sandbox.
Nic stands, light as feather, Coffee cup conjured from nowhere in her hands and joint on her lip. The ancient-beyond-ancient woman in her bathrobe and jammies fissions into two women, equal and opposite in all things. The gloriously frizzy haired aspect turns to her sister, begins humming “Whiskey Story Time.” The two walk off the road and over the dunes and diverge, each following the aurora to it’s edge and one end of the zipper rip in the scorched plain at the End of Time.
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Fragment: 0xFD.07
Location: Chapel
Frame: End of Time (EOT)
Subjects: A(523)^; Mark Shmidt; MULTITUDINOUS
*
The Parson collects herself. “I did pray for you.” Though she’s not sure she’s fond of the result. “Me and my big mouth. “Sir,” a spotlight lands on the mountain-of-a-man with the flat nose too-many-times broken.
“I will now attempt to forgive you for breaking my nose in a prison in Pittsburgh.”
“I let you sing.” His voice is hesitant.
“You didn’t let me do shit, and that was after you broke my nose.” The congregation watches the exchange.
“I gave you paper.”
“I’m guessing that was guilt because you punched me, all of me,” gesturing at her thin frame still levitating cross legged, “in the face.”
“The other guards,”
“I’m going to save you from finishing that sentence, so that I can still forgive you for breaking my nose. And that’s just it: the other guards. Did you make them give other prisoners paper?
Mark Shmidt looks back at the Parson, confused.
You know, so they could document the whole nightmare? The other guards, because surely you weren’t responsible for anything you were caught up in. Do you know how long that living hell lasted in the country and on that Earth?
“No.”
“Six years.”
The man’s go-to emotion is anger, but it’s not coming. He’s wilting under her gaze, that nose like an accusing finger and the eyes that see through, stare through. He’s shaking. Red-faced. He can feel the rest of the congregation’s eyes on him.
“Do you know how many people disappeared, or were disappeared, Mark? Oh not like we did, we disappeared, I mean people who were disappeared, the old ugly way.” She says a number that he can’t hear over the white noise and the sound of his heartbeat in his ears.
“So, Mark Shmidt. I give you all the forgiveness I have right to: I forgive you for breaking my nose at the Prison in Pittsburgh.”
He opens his mouth to speak, can’t. He pivots and walks out, down the hall. Once he’s on the carved stairs to the surface, he’s running, like a fleeing child–out of the tree and out onto the plain.
*
Fragment: 0x77.11
Frame: End of Time (EOT): -11;11
Location: (11;-11)
Subject(s): Nic
*
Two trains, two lonely liminal skeletal things, both average examples of the refuse found here on the scorched plain. One train: the ghost of a sleek electric metro, the other the shade of a steam locomotive. Two trains, one luminous being. Nic, twin aspects, women equal and opposite in all things, levitating cross-legged over the dunes on the scorched plain at the End of Time.
The following happens twice: with the barest gesture from one of her many hands, the rest lazy-waving, arrayed behind her as a peacock’s feathers, Nic lifts the skeletal train from the ash. The luminous being sets the hulk floating, nose aimed toward an aurora on the horizon and a flickering blue light beneath it.
Two trains powered by equal and opposite women leave equal and opposite points on the number line headed toward it’s center. Each craft traveling on on a streak of light, from 11 and -11, toward zero. Toward the heart of the rift on the scorched plain at the End of Time.
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Fragment: 0x77.13
Frame: End of Time (EOT)
Location: Stolen 2000 Something Ford Sedan
Subjects: A(84); (0x1)
*
A(84) and Flannel Man snuck out of the story before the sermon to burn one with some of the congregation. Flannel man hovering cross legged over the hood, A(84) laying on it, head propped on hands contemplating the aurora that shouldn’t be.
Some heretical conjuring from the congregation has embedded a water pipe in the car’s console: a big bong loaded above the stereo, pipes leading to mouth pieces protruding from where the ash tray used to be. Long hoses passed from hand to hand and back, sharing. “We made a fed car into a bong.” A(84) is proud.
“Stolen car. And I expect that to be on your list of reasons you’re glad to be alive.” From Flannel Man. Both smoke-choke laugh.
Lightning in the distance, beneath the aurora, and the light begins to accordion-squeeze. The aurora compressed to a single beam, as if a great blue jet of light had pierced the scorched plain, shooting into the sky (that’s exactly what happened, except the light was chaos).
One single jet of light set this probabilistic pattern in that sky that seemed made of roiling velvet smoke:
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“Go get, 79”
“I’m driving” Gah!
“Yeah, luminous being.” A(79) puts on her aviators, still in the bathrobe and jammies. “Get in the car so we can…”
“Don’t say it!” A(84) interrupts. “We don’t P-word, that’s a cursed word.”
Flannel man in the passenger’s seat takes a big hit from the car-bong mounted below the stereo: “We improvise.” Smoke-choked, blowing the hit out his nose.
*
As Nic’s two-trains accelerate-impossible over the rift, a single strand, a stray string of her bathrobe begins to trail and grow. The garment unweaves. The thread-Scheherazade-seeming-never-ending, the fabric of her bathrobe, sews itself across the rift in the scorched plain at the End of Time.
Like a wound catching a stich, the rift tightens so it might heal, only a faint blue drip where the thread of Nic’s bathrobe has bound it.
This happens twice: Nic presses the train’s throttle to the firewall. Two trains accelerate toward each other on the scorched plain, stitching the rift as they fly.
*
The motorcade: 9 blacked out fed-truck SUVs. They halt, spread out abreast well back from the edge of the gaping rift in the End of Time and the deafening jet of chaos spewing out of it. A mountain-sized man with a flat nose exits the lead vehicle, opens the rear door for his employer.
Austere black-leather shoes. Fit-tailored suit cut from fine foreign cloth. Tasteful watch. Clean-shaven, angled-face, all-angles under salt and pepper hair. Two-different colored eyes, the right eye ‘strange’. The consultant Woland.
Shouting over the waterfall sound of the jet of chaos: “Board members, esteemed colleagues, this is where our shift in management strategy begins. I will heal this rift.” Applause.
“Bullshit he will.” Shouted, voice of thunder over the raging sound of the chaos jet.
*
“Bullshit!” The child with frizzy air and angry eyes wears a bathrobe, jammies and slippers. The ash piles low here, more a beach than dunes, she kicks it everywhere as she stomps toward the motorcade, alone, with a cup of coffee in her hand.
“He has no intention of healing the rift.” Shocked faces from the Board of Directors. The child in the holy bathrobe points back to the jet of chaos. There at the geyser’s heart just beginning to emerge: a black-bright orb. “Shalabh” (3 syllables: Sha-lob-hah). Confused faces from the Board of Directors. “Locusts. Plural. More than one of that.”
Nope from the Board of Directors. Not what we agreed to. Not at all what we had in mind. ‘Pruning’ and gardening, not, not Locusts for Dice’ sake. The Board of Directors is aghast, beside themselves. Livid. Livid they say.
Woland, facing the Board, takes a few steps back from the motorcade. “Anyone who believes there should be a change in management. Walk to me.” And an enormous man with a flat-nose, Bartleby, Gildenstern, and a few other gaunt G-men walk toward him. They gather around him.
“There will be no change in management.” The Chairman of the Board is puffing himself up for the next sentence and the rant beyond, one arm raised like a caricature of an outraged man when the ash at his feet dances like sand on a beat-drum. “I’ll have you know”
Woland brings his hands together before him, one slow clap. The great malevolent wave of animated-ash that laid flat in wait beneath the motorcade rises suddenly.
It envelops and crushes all 9 SUVs along with the Board of Directors and their entourage. The wave belches the crushed-can remains of the vehicles, consuming the rest.
Having brought about a change in management, the consultant Woland adjusts his human molar cufflinks. He checks his watch and turns to face the child.
Woland and his entourage and the massive wave, the building-tall ash monster, behind. They stand before the rift that will be a portal.
Between Woland and the rift on the scorched plain at the End of Time, in opposition, there stands a lone defiant child with angry eyes and frizzy hair.
*
END PART 6.
EXILE PART 7 IS ALREADY PUBLISHED IN SEVERAL EARTH ITERATIONS.