Christopher WunderLee

The Loony: a novella of epic proportions

for Anna Toe,

real or unreal

Ground Control to Major Tom

Your circuit's dead, there's something wrong

Can you hear me, Major Tom?

Can you hear me, Major Tom?

Can you hear me, Major Tom?

Can you…

— David Bowie, Space Oddity

10

The firmament’s like an ass shivering. A mechanical storm erupts from the oracle of the Cape as the anointed supplicate themselves to the fiery belches of a foreign god. The steel phallus of the deity levitates slowly, rising in a spectral haze of cooked air.

There has never been a true miracle. The sun has never waved as it passed in its burning chariot, the statues have never cried animated tears, the mother of god has never spoken to children in an isolated European glade. There is no way to express a miracle. But they knew they were seeing one.

Inside the vessel of god, which was oscillating like an enormous dildo and lifting itself into the virginal recesses of the sky, they were bolted to his innards. They were isolated from his divine skin by sanitation suits and caressed him gently with trembling fingers. They were going to his home, the first of humanity invited for supper and, perhaps, a cocktail. They were weeping, pissing, screaming, dreaming. They could not see the worshippers bowing to the infernal power as the vehicle lifted itself away from their terrestrial lives.

They had begun to climb the invisible rings of Jacob’s ladder. They passed the tower, a structure so confused it could speak only in twisted, pornographic tongues, and the clergy announced to their congregation in voices inspired by the divine launching of the first interstellar obelisk that humanity was now synthetic angels, soaring on gasoline wings. The followers howled in pleasure, the tube of god was taking their envoys to see his thrown, decorated by constellations and quasars, to listen to his voice, a hole so vacuous it did not allow light to escape, to stare into his helium fusion eyes.

By now, the oracle had ejaculated its fumes and the projectile that had lifted off from its moist insides was a faint stream of fire writing the cursive of the lord across the sky. The pilgrims were finished clapping, finished watching, and it was the end of the miracle. All the worshippers were herded out of the oracle’s protected grounds. They moved in a dreamy daze, staring in wonderful disbelief, as the protectors guided them towards the gate. They did not speak, but made eye contact with each other and silently assented.

There is no more sky. Space has been harnessed. Like time, it will be a tool for future use. Man has been initiated into the pantheon of the gods. He sits beside them, an equal, an atomic overlord, super-sonic seraphim, a creator, a destroyer, a janitor of nature, a fortune-teller, a miracle maker, and a preacher.

There is no future. It is already known, already engineered. But they don’t know that. Only he knows. Even while he watches, it almost convinces him. His head droops into his arms, where he cradles it paternally. The screen repeats it like a stained-glass window, over and over again while the preacher repeats himself over and over again. He collects fragments in his palms. He listens to the somber, dependable voice affirming the images, like the gothic icons of graphic saints dying desperately for god’s grace. By now, he has seen enough. They stand motionless, just behind him, passively watching. He sways towards the screen, his own image superimposed over the lie. The room is the same, as if he just noticed. They are the same. The phone rings as soon as the noise ends, one sound for another…

9

“Hello… Yes this is… yes… I’m here… Who is it…? What do you… well, how… how did…? I’m… Yes… indeed… I’m… I’m… I can’t do this… this any longer… I don’t… well… I can’t… I’m not… I don’t want… (Out-of-room voice 1: … may god’s love be with you…) I can’t continue… I’m afraid… I can’t… not… no… I’m uncomfortable with… I didn’t… Yes…. I know… I’m aware… of that… I’m… I can’t…Well… yes… of course… but, I’m not… this is… No, I… (Out-of-room voice 2: …and the papers want to know whose shirts you wear…) Its not… that… it’s… it’s just that… I can’t, I didn’t… I’m not… equipped, I’m… I need to know… about, well… about her… I can’t… this is… I don’t care… no… whether we’re talking… over Styrofoam cups… I need to know… about… well, is it safe… for her…? (Voice 1: …far above the world…) So? There’s no need… I don’t… need… why? I’m… I’m… not… I don’t want… Yes, well… I understand… but, I’m… I can’t… do you expect? How long? I mean… this is… how long will I have to… to continue…? Forever… there… I… this is… why…? I… I’m… no… I will not… I refuse… my life… my whole life… the contract…? …under duress… I… what else could I…? I… surely… I don’t even… know… will I always…? Ed…? Yes… I remember Ed… the neologist… the… he wrote the acronyms and… (Voice 2: …and the stars look very different today…) I… I… remember… I remember them all… eject…ed… Is? Is there… why, I mean… why Ed, after all… all these years? I don’t… understand…? I’m… I… no… I’m not… you can’t… this is… absurd… you’ve… what…? Thanksgiving Day float…? Where…? …carried away… by a… a cartoon dog… do you…? …the footage…? …the Pulitzer picture…? Do you? I’m… how…? You’re saying he… he was… no, I’m… this is… I’m not… no longer… you can’t… no… I’m not… going… I’m not afraid… this is no… life… no…well… I… yes… of course… but… (Voice 1: …your circuit’s dead, there’s something wrong…) …wait… listen… I’m… (Voice 1: …can you hear me…?) …no… no… no… I’m not… you can’t… I’m… I… I’m… no… I’m not asking… no more… questions… I… I made a mistake… no… I didn’t mean… I… was… no… worried… you have to understand… the pressure… the… I’ve not… I’m not sleeping… I can’t… I was worried about… about her… I swear… I never meant… don’t… please… you’re not going… going to have Them… Them… do… anything… I’m not… (Voice 1: …and there’s nothing I can do…)”

8

Doctor Albert Lochner finds himself cloaked indiscreetly in a shaggy bathrobe with a Klimtian, oddly symmetrical pattern and cartoon slippers that look like they are going to dine on his heels. The television is finally quiet. The phone is talking to itself within the sheets. About this time of morning, and its subsequent retrieval of autumn dropping leaf-like memories, Lochner has managed to secure his first cup of coffee and lets its aromatic tendrils waft languidly up his nasal cavities (being a non-caffeine drinker), as he stands at the door, patiently waiting for yet another day of mad dashes across the American surrealscape with his two G-men. His mouth feels like he’s been chewing tin foil, his eyes swollen from too many bargain mattress dreams, his greasy face extenuating multiplying depressions in his skin, finding himself up-close in the head’s mirror, mapping his wrinkles topographically. He looks out over the empty parking lot of a thrifty motel two lights off the interstate as if he’s a hermit just escaped the cave and witnessing the grandeur of god’s true morning for the first time since he was chained to the shadowy puppets of false realities.

Every time the doctor thinks of it, he rides it out to completion, knowing full well that the same questions, the same ruinous ideas, and the same morology will make him consider, in the paroxysmal glitter of his mind’s eye, if it all didn’t really begin with the iconography of the fiction, which will, without fail, lead him to consider how he went from pragmatic scientist to mythopoeic weaver of the tallest tale since the globe went flat after the reasonable good fellows of the 18th Century had their way with it. The story, the tradition, the beliefs, all the prerequisites for a proper myth…

However, he has not gotten that far, not this morning, not the morning of chardonnay twilight, with Riesling spindles of light breaching the moldy curtains and Windex deficient windows. He’s still dwelling, like a very content Purgatorite, on the beginning of his lust for invention. When Lochner tries to analyze his own desires, his own actions, his own Freudian absurdities and Jungian nuisances, he’s taken captive by the sort of reel-to-reel imagining of a brute, oftentimes vulgar, more often than not, nonsensical superciliousness of a pride and true mythomane. They are rides on his neurosis explored by the self of a drunken bodhisattva who has come to realize: the big question’s not: what’s the sound of one hand clapping, that’s easy “clap, clap,” but what’s the sound of one finger snapping? He is convinced, more often now than before, since he’s had quite some time to contemplate it in the backseat of the government plated sedan, that he has always believed in tangential velocity. Like many children, he was told the tall tale of the man, who is said to smile down on his satellite TV screen, falling at a random eight kilometers per second, and grant the wishes of pure innocence and faith. But Lochner never saw the face, never saw the kindly wrinkles and gentle eyes, the mona lisa lips or the enlightened brow. He saw, when he looked up at the great balloon of refracted light, a lone silhouette in a rocking chair with his profile glaring out into the ether, a dying grandpa of the expanding universe who sat lonely and betrayed upon his lunar throne. But this was all fiction, like the Martian skull, or the canals of Venus, or the rotten apple core in the middle of the earth, where dragons dwelled and little midgets with hippie beards frolicked gaily with skinny little homo elves on Tolkienie quests.

The fantasy, the pure construction of the eventual ego, had been with him from the very start, from the plop of his shoulders out of the gooey loins of his own private Eve, to the first word he’d ever spoken, to the one giant step of his toddler foot, to the decision to study astrophysics, and speak, as perhaps Newton prophesized, the language of the almighty. It was the fiction of it, the complete and utter abandonment of reality, and the trappings of the outrageous laws of control, the abstract artistry of tabulating the stars and comprehending the roars of the sun. It was boundless fiction, complete enrapture, an unknown mythology just waiting to be manufactured.

He was born in Oxnard, Mississippi for some anomalous reason, at two minutes to midnight, on the first day of winter, in a very unprofound leather seat, about a mile and a half from the Great Grace of the Lovely Watchmaker Hospital and Health Institute, and slipped like a gooey sausage from his mother’s loins and landed with a plop onto discarded cigarette butts, and receipts, and salted nuts that hadn’t made it properly to waiting mouths, and strange tumble weeds of lint from some unforensically explored former episode in the automobile, forcing his mother to pick flakes of tobacco and white lint shards out of his matted hair for days afterwards. His father was a latter-day troubadour who sold domestic engineering implements with the poetry of commerce and convenience door-to-door throughout the south. He was a big, red, slightly acned Nordic man of Viking heritage who steered his big Valiant like it was a ramming vessel and was about to get some serious Lindinsfarne ass. Lochner’s mother said he looked like Thor after a few too many millennia of hurling thunder and wrestling angry chaos wolves and drinking to the health of yet another resident of Valhalla. That was all he knew of his father, for the very night that he’d plunked like loose change onto his crimson floor, he’d dropped the young beauty school grad at the corner of Woolfe and Wolfstencraft and sped away like a feral cat, honked one, rather pleading honk, and veered on to the highway, never to be heard from or seen again.

Lochner’s mother, the daughter of a camera man for the British Secret Morphology and Metaphysics Society, whose largest claim to fame was they believed ardently that John Donne and William Shakespeare had written all of Francis Bacon’s works, was, at one time, a model for a major Italian pin-up calendar outfit, but had retired after one too many photographers phallically ravaged her with their equipment, and had immigrated with a cousin and an acquaintance to the grand ole US of A, to start a new life and become a movie star. The three split up though, in DC, after one professed her love for Regina (Lochner’s mum) during a bacchanalian bout of absinthe and lemon twists, and the other decided to join a book club that later turned out to be a cult, known singularly as the Membership, and was later arrested along with eighty other members when they tried to liberate their fellow citizens by gassing a subway car with opium smoke and strategically placed laudanum soft drinks in several soda jerk fountains. After the threesome went their own eumoirous ways, Regina Lochner slipped like a specially treated throat lozenge into the seedy, contrectated terra incognita of the Louisiana Francophile militia, recruited by a motherless gypsy trader by the name of Zapata as she waited for a Zephyr coach to take her to California, where she believed, she’d perform, in various illuminated casting couches the obscure art of movie starlet manufacturing.

Once the Confederate Rangers broke up the Gaul procumbent movement, finding dear Regina starving and wearing only a long hair-do (“in the way of Joan,” she was told ahistorically), she sputtered unevenly from town to city, practicing the very undemanded science of psephology in the back rooms of Oriental rug shops and kitty ranches, until she’d saved up enough dough to buy herself a man. When she came upon Upton Svardsgoordjarne (a Swedish noble, he attempted, exiled to the land of moving pictures and motor cars due to a failed coup against the Emperor of Umbria), she bobbed her head and puckered her lips and swung her meaty hips like they were flagging him in, until poor Upton yielded to her fleshy charms and impaled her with his manhood (she read quite a few of those novels, her favorite being, of course, the Wives of Buckskin Buccaneers hexilogy, by none other than Chaste Peckerton). The two were nycterent lovers for a vainglorious thirteen months, busy in random hotel rooms sneaking up on each other every night after Upton returned from hocking hoovers, irons, mops, and a very technologically (for its time) advanced flat-grill charring unit that was too difficult to explain and sold dismally. However, when Regina’s pouch elongated outwards so that her inny became a champagne cork, Upton took a stable position in Ogden, Utah as an exterminator and began to provide for his new family like the pleasant pagan boy that he was.

Albert’s mother, whom fancied a nomadic romance on housekeeping linens and was not exactly ready to begin the posturing of an unfamous knave with her kitchen and family room and wreck room and squeaky four-poster that went thump in the night, began to hunt around for a rodeo clown or a sailor. She figured some fellow would rocket her to Hollywood and leave her waving on the studio’s doorway with a thank you ma’am wave as they pulled out onto the busy highway and she began her laborious ascension onto drive-in billboards (always the thought of advertising to god, so titanic and lavish and loud, he must have noticed, all the famous people are going to heaven). She was caught, not even having the chance to recline her stretched body before the man, by Upton, who lifted the offending penis off the Berber and tossed him headlong, like an angel ousted from seraphic ranks, out a third-story window, causing the poor Okanogan red to break his leg in four places, his wrist, and fracture his pelvis. The heat was on, Johnny law was gunnin’ for Upton, and he fled like a millenarian from a lunar eclipse just a half an hour after Albert wailed his first mad cry.

Albert grew up fatherless, congested, and persistently sick in a world of movie theatre Sundays (the church of the personality) and tongue bathing dogs with floppy soft ears and comic books where asymmetrical evil-doers were bested by triangularly endowed, tight-wearing, primary colored, dimpled chinned champions of the ideals of the empire, and lollypops from the bank teller windows, and ice cream trucks with gristled tunes ta-tunking out of loudspeakers, and summers under the hose and sea shore vacations where he built sand castles out of the fragments of heaven. They moved into the Levittown sanctuary of Regina’s parents (who were aficionados of the wily ruminations of the one and only Doctor Benjamin Spock, grandma having read Baby & Child Care some eleven times) while she went to beauty school at nights and worked as a roller rink waitress during the day for bratty heirs of the fortunes of business journal listings and society page write-ups. Albert attended public school throughout his elementary education (his only true memories were of duck and cover armageddon exercises, although how his little freckled arms would protect him from an Atomic blast confused even young Albert), but was awarded, much to the pleased and pampered ego of his mother, a scholarship to a Jesuit secondary school when he turned ten. There, at St. Christopher of the Fat Child of Jesus School for Beloved Angels of our Lord, Albert was ensconced in the mythology of Catholic dogma, he listened wide-eyed and repentant to the tall tales of carpenters and fishermen and lion feed, took Latin and Greek, studied history and books, politics and science, and considered quite seriously joining the ranks of the “soldiers of Hey Zeus.” But once he was old enough, he heatedly flogged his mushrooming “worm” (as his mother used to call it) in fitful, delirious carnivals of incensed yearning, and he realized, whilst apologizing for the damn thing, that he could never go without such a blessed, contorted, convulsing ecstasy, and he, who saw the pearls of budding breasts and the sheen of nude skin, could not, despite what god promised, go without at least touching one of them just a single time.

He attended a primary school in Hartford a few thousand miles from his home, where the boys wore blue uniforms and played the god forsaken games of rugby and cricket with synthetic new England accents (they were all of them, from out West somewhere) and the instructors all feigned orthobiosis and talked with guttural nasal voices about Milton and that jolly fellow Joyce, “a little preposterous, don’t you think, but jolly good prose,” and Donne and that coy Marvel. Albert received excellent marks on his tests, but received a bit of a nasty reputation as mildly pantophobic, and oddly strange. He was less than popular, couldn’t sqweeg, or muster, or tally hoe to save his life, failed miserably at the juvenile game of defamation, and spent his four years haunting the halls of education, watching his fellow classmates go on like pleased rogues about to bed a damsel in distress. About the only sexual expergefaction he experienced throughout his teens (during those wholesome golden days of Eisenhower patriarchy) was the soterial discovery of Justine.

Justine was, like the solemn, haughty tone of her name, an exoptable maid who’d been plucked from adolescence and placed rather squarely into the capable hands of a nunnery to be deflowered in the most imaginative ways. It was described so indelicately, Albert foamed and spat and breathed, just listening. She was defeated and branded and lesbianized by her own caregiver, and she had no qualms with any of it, not the sodomy or the crucifixes up her cunny or the sacred oil lubed lavishly onto her pubertal stiff nips, or the eucharist wine poured down the prepubescent arroyo between her legs and offered ceremoniously to several starving nuns in the cloister of their rancorous lust. He stayed with her as long as he could, tenderly caressing her as she spoke of the rose thorns whipped against her flexed buttocks, as she detailed yet another eunuch orgy in the tomb of a high priest, amongst the skeletons of saints, as some sausage drove in and out of her now swollen womb. Albert clutched desperately to the words, comforted her in the darkness of his own assumptions, surrounded her with his seldom expressed assurances, and begged her not to finish. Instantly, like a disease finally manifesting itself, they were in desperate, absurd, maladroit, shameful adoration with each other, hopelessly Albert possessed her, he worshiped her, and dreamed in sickly fear of her leaving him. They spoke, misunderstood, miscommunicated, he died as her words left her lips, he was resurrected by her confidences, he followed her, she played with him, he desperately needed her to profess everything and she did, and he confessed to her, and she forgave him and he tried to forget about her experiences and they absorbed each other and promised never to stop speaking. But she did, she finally, one gloomy night of tree branches regaling the window, his drip drop semen ponding in his pjs, said her last few words and ended it with him. He wept bitterly that night and never forgave her for her trespasses.

* * *

And so it was, for the future doctor recovered from his melancholic desperation that last ecstatic summer before college, before the dorm rooms, and the exams, before the unfortunate meeting, and the inclusive acceptance of the lie, by purchasing his very own vermilion Valiant and flaneuring American-style like a doomsday piece of celestial litter across the country, to see the great Pacific and leap its shores like a mad expatriate on the parabolic chariot of Helios.

He mounted his metallic stead the day after graduation, after he’d received the card from his grandparents with a one hundred dollar bill, crisp and clean, as if it wasn’t the bloody tampon of Liberty’s purity, and whistled (out of character). Albert had managed to dragon chest away a good twenty-three quid, but knew he’d be short, and chug, chug, chug to a stop outside of some lazy middle-earth town of Stetsons and dairy manure, but with his grandparents’ contribution to the rocket fund, he’d be soaring over Big Sur and its fabled conifer skyscrapers with money to spare.

He took the highway southwest, screaming like a warring foreign spirit, honking like a beat trumpet player at the down’s syndrome cars clumsily cruising at the sickly pace of the legal limit, and tore up the pavement with bellowing tar, acrobatically weaving, swerving, his engine rhonchisonant, speaking in automotive tongues to the lord’s of velocity, the wind howling in defeat, the particle/wave duality of light, using its bipolar personalities alternately, trying desperately to keep up with g-forced Albert, riding on his father’s lightning bolt. A few cruisers around Cincinnati saw the diamond shard of speed plummet through their jurisdiction and pulled out in hot pursuit, sirens wailing, lights flashing in patriotic hypnosis, balls of their feet aching as they pummeled the accelerator, and steering wheels shaking in excessive harmony, so that soon Lochner had a convoy of falling stars tumbling through the highway night of the earth. He paid them little mind, as he skirted the big rigs and muscled the dawdling commuters, until the image appeared on the side of the divine road, a receding figure of animate arches, feminine and holy, a vision, mother Mary of god, thumbing it in Ohio, her dziggetai broken down, her Joseph long since discarded out of boredom (she’d received the ophelimitic deblateration of god for jesus’ sakes alive), a lygophilic picaroon just ready for the picking… And the meteorite stumbled over god’s dooryard.

There was Albert giving Aristotle the big finger as the whitewalls of his terra cruiser retraced the passage of inertia through history, his swerving, gravel spitting, screeching tires resisting… a quick nod to Galileo, before passing quite gracelessly to the pages of the infamous Principia via the brake pad just in time to smile crookedly at the vision, who reeled back on high boot heels and almost, in a clumsy frolic of back-stepping away from the shoulder, fell over her pastel floral luggage collection sitting stacked in an almost Stonehenge-like ring. However, before he was able to lean across the great velour expanse and open the passenger door for his roaming jezebel to leap in, if she so chose, a gaggle of pistol wielding pursuers were on him like ants on a lonely, lost, newly unwrapped sandwich at a Sunday picnic in the park… Poor Albert was dragged quite indelicately out of the cabin, embarrassingly sprawled out on the pavement before his on-looking Aphrodite, frisked like a fondled female secretary in a crowded elevator, and seated roughly in the back of a tired, whining cruiser whilst the boys in blue confiscated his birthright. He spent six hung-over nights in a local jail with a jocuserious russet giant named Jeremiah spouting neo-scholastic theology.

By the time Albert was sprung (on a technicality, the presiding judge’s hemorrhoids couldn’t stand the prosecutor’s wordy explications and lengthy diatribes), he was a full-fledged disciple of the Herculean negro, a clergyman in the high order, and he sped away in his vermilion Valiant mind belching like a terret’s syndromite on uppers.

Albert continued his swath across the dead pavement of the great belly of America, refused to slow down, got himself involved in six more car chases, one count of larceny in St. George, prostitution of a miner (perfectly of age, but still, words can be confusing even to officer of the law, in this case a Texas Ranger, and the law is the law, you can’t buy sex from a digger), shoplifting charges (little more than a few cans of black label beer and a tootsie pop), and lastly, subversion (when he screamed “God is in a coma, oh no, its serious,” during a friendly parade on Main Street in a little town called Hamlet).

However, Albert finally rolled his by then dilapidated Valiant into the great golden state of California one month to the day of his departure. He stopped, apologetically, at the sign post, which read: “Welcome to California, where fantasy is reality and reality a fantasy,” and stood in front of the miniature sun with its sunglasses and toothy grin, its white gloved arms protruding out of its neck, pointing westward. Eating his lunch of fried chicken toes, he watched passively as cars rumbled Okie-like towards the ocean in great pods, noticed a few girls in convertibles that looked like Hollywood starlets.

When he was finished, the greasy lunch wrapper began to make its way to the ground via a sweeping arch and a ballet tumble, caught somewhere between the earth and the sky. How do you hide from gravity? It seemed to refuse to join the rest of the refuse in the highway’s gutters and got caught in a mighty gust, like some wind spirit was using it as his parachute, lifting skyward, dropping nonchalantly, swaying, spinning, a poetic cursive Albert couldn’t decipher.

As he left, his own bellowing exhaust tossed the soiled wrapper up ever higher, until it was like a child’s balloon let loose at the state fair, departing as if it was a traveler who’s said farewell and began a defined journey. Albert, when he was a child, always wondered if some Chinese boy was standing on the Great Wall, making a living receiving American rainbow balloons and selling them to tourists or other kids as anti-gravity reconnaissance kites, or perhaps, those balloons, those lost, missing balloons of the world, traveled off to some cloudy balloon utopia, or the promise of one, only to discover, once they got there, that they were segregated, like in Homer’s Republic. There was a myth of colors, blue ones were the philosopher kings, red were the soldiers, yellow the commoners, green the servants, and white, pure white, were the slaves. Perhaps that balloon he had lost the last time he ever had one, on a beach in the Gulf of Mexico, was now the emperor of helium, enthroned in a vaporous court, sighing orders to the lesser balloons. The land, Albert assumed, would be called Zeppelin, and it would receive all wayward balloons, because it promised them a country without strings, a world without masters, a nation without pins or needles, a place where an ambitious balloon could make something of that inflated life.

* * *

Of course, Albert had done as he intended, he was not a man to be trifling with false purposes. He drove directly, although somewhat obliquely, due to the state highway system recently constructed on the backs of imported Chicanos, to the ocean.

Just in the nether reaches of the town of Lompoc, Albert first sighted the hazy cobalt of the great Pacific, which excited him breathlessly, causing his delirious accelerator to get a little manic, and he sped up involuntarily. Albert felt the lurch of the curb, as his Valiant smacked directly into it and continued upon its path. The sun, which was the gloating older sister of his dear moon, was just about prepared to let the water sizzle it into oblivion on yet another day, families were packing up whicker baskets of sandy munchies and a few teenagers were stretching the light to finish an enjoyable final match of volleyball, as the car snapped the chain partitioning the highway from the boardwalk. There were no more half-naked young girls strolling beside the waves, no more surfers out tempting sharks to confuse them for sea lions, no more frisbee throwers posturing, no more little kids building intricate sand castles or fishing for shells, only a few stragglers watching the setting sun. The Valiant struggled through the dry sand, but continued to accelerate as he reached the apex of the first dune and clamored wildly as he descended, hit the straightaway, veered around a random life guard’s watch tower, long since abandoned by the young fellow who pumped up on Charles Atlas ads in the back of comic books (he’d never have some buff guy kick sand in his face and walk off with his girl), waved as a mother screamed and clutched her frolicking child to her knees, and drove headlong straight into the water.

The collision was minute, seemingly uninspired, considering what Albert had imagined, the brackish barrier was defeated effortlessly, and he continued onward, his wheels still gripping the wet pebbles of infinity, until he was fully submerged and the car floated gently to the bottom of the reef. The water found its way in through the engine block as Albert lit a final cigarette, pouring in through dashboard nobs, unsealed cracks in the great armor of the doors, and first tickled his sandaled feet. It rose quickly to his lap and he began to shiver. There were no fish to be seen, he’d hoped he’d see a gray predator circling his position, waiting patiently for him to plunge out of the cabin and right into its big, mean jaws. But there was nothing but cloudy water, the silence of submersion, the rush of the water trying to fill the void, the groans of the structural integrity of the car, as Albert sat patiently.

Then, he heard the first thud, he allowed three or four more before he turned his head and saw the swimmer, surrounded by water, his face contorted by the lack of air, his hair wafting angelically, his palm smashing against the hull of the invading object. Albert watched him as though he was from another world, he was seated normally, his feet firmly planted to the solid floorboard, his arms free, his body barely wet, while the swimmer, the young rescuer, floated, fought, argued with the buoyancy of his own body. He looked comical, how heroic he was not, an absurd apparition with desperate eyes and inflated cheeks, pounding on his door. There was no way Albert was letting the freak in, that was for sure, not with the water only half way up his spine. He’d just have to wait. He could rescue the body, that would be admirable, he’d still get his picture in the local paper, maybe even a citation from the mayor of the little town of Lompoc. But no hero was going to ruin Albert’s meeting with Triton.

The swimmer disappeared, Albert was almost sad about it, it was so quaint, so life affirming to see a stranger trying to save him, but now he could get down to business. The water was rising, it licked his collar, a few more minutes and he’d be back in the womb. He considered another cigarette, perhaps a blindfold, but didn’t light it. Dostovesky stood in front of a firing squad and thought he was going to be murdered. He was led out onto the spot, his arms tied behind his back, placed against a pole, the squad raised their rifles, he clenched his eyes shut, waited in anguish for the ring of the powder, and they gave him a reprieve, what delicious torture. That was how he married desperation and god, nothingness and divinity, the urbane and the holy. Strange trials fortify the genius and the saintly.

Another thud, Albert considered ignoring it. But then, they came from two different sides. Two busy bodies bothering him, actually three. They were struggling with the latch, playing a floating game of charades, trying to get Albert to unlock the door. He thought it best to wave and feign confusion. “What?” he mouthed. He shrugged as the hero stabbed his finger at the lock, shaking his head and grimacing. “I really don’t know what you want,” he said aloud. It sounded strange, tunneled, buried. The back window gave way, the second daredevil’s leg protruding into the cabin. A swirl of red blood cycloning around the pink stump as he retrieved it and tried to break away the rest of the glass. Sharks, now we’ll have sharks. It serves them right. Albert thought all of California was infested with sharks. That’s what the paper said, anyway. He held steadfast to his lapbelt as the young man rode a wave of invading water into the now exposed inside of the car and tried to pull him out. “Oh no,” Albert said, releasing a bevy of air balloons, in which, he was quite sure, he saw several of his more innocuous thoughts written out in black lettering. But the hero won their wrestling match for the release lever, even after Albert slapped his hand away a good three or four times, and felt himself dragged, he wasn’t about to help, bump, bump, a good one on the forehead against the roof, out of his lovely Valiant.

Both men emerged from the waves choking and coughing and treaded water. Albert pretended to be out cold. Otherwise, how could he explain his behavior? He felt the man grip his chest and begin to swim to shore, where, he snuck a quick look, stood a gaggle of witnesses, all pointing and somewhat cheering, some one had started clapping, what a televised nation they were, as the young man tugged him closer and closer. He felt the earth come up to meet him, they were on solid ground, he limply crawled along with his savior, still partially submerged. The on-lookers stepped out into the waves and Albert was lifted onto the beach. He played possum.

7

By the time the leaves turned amber and marmalade and began dropping in swift, dangling flummery onto the parched earth, Albert was back in New England, long since forgetting his plunge into the Pacific, and beginning what was already a controversially castrophenic career in the high sciences after ignorantly (not accepting such a vainglorious notion of innocence) proposing a solution to the Mead Equation that mimicked nearly perfectly Professor Ernest Pumpernickel’s close call of the 20’s. Almost disrobed of his honors, Albert recovered from the controversy during his senior year by publishing a groundbreaking article in The Ivy Journal of Planck’s Legacy in which he proposed that black holes were actually not conic cavities in the time/space continuum, but flaws in the fabric of space. Thus, their inconvenient way of being incalculable; Albert likened the enormous light suckers to wrinkles in a newly laundered black wool blanket, providing shadows in space, not the complete absence of it. Of course, the notion was attacked vigorously by the astrophysical community, who thought such an unpretentious idea was laughable, except that it warranted some renewed investigation in the curvature of the four dimensions of warped space/time. However, the amount of responses inversely propelled Albert into the limelight, his theories on the escape velocities of stars and the gravitational fields being drawn into them, later to be visible through a responsive, reactive knoll nearby, likened to the theory of “white holes,” save that Albert gave space/time a current-like consistency rather than a vacuous nothingness that had been so prevalent, therefore, Albert proposed that the ether moved in absent tides, in which light was invisible briefly, garnered attention throughout the scientific community.

Known hence forth as a quantum heretic, Albert was left in a strange limbo, his ideas were discussed to a great extent; however he, himself, the boney awkward man with the argyle bow tie and starched opposing patterned shirt, with large mordant eyes cradling chatoyant pupils, Cyrano nose, and ashy teeth, who so many considered the personification of floccinaucinihilipilification, was greatly ignored. He would hear colleagues discussing for instance his assertion that time, like light, inherently had a particle/wave duality, that it was simultaneously finite, structured, and negligible while being observed to have progressive disturbances propagated without displacement of the media. However, as soon as the good doctor attempted to engage his confreres, to initiate a dialogue with them, he quickly found himself feeling like a ventriloquist. People listened to the dummy, the artificial construct, the abstract fool, but had no use for the actual creator and so, his theories dandled upon his lap in the lonely spotlight. His conceptual fame amongst the elitist circles of Bohr’s boys did little to impress the wanton young girls parading around campus with inviting flesh, not a single one found his scientific sacrilege worth moving her quadriceps, nor did it bring any young disciples to sit at his lonely table awaiting the H_20 to get funky.

This only perpetuated dear Albert’s assault on scientific dogma and before long, as he entered into the year after his master’s thesis (ostensibly on the subject of certain children’s toys proving Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity by measuring the shady gravitomagnetic force), the practical applications of having a pariah of his caliber in on the more theoretical experiments the university was entertaining at the behest of the military-industrial complex (who donated enormous sums to the department) caused several faculty researchers to recruit him rather vigorously. The first to approach Albert was Dr. Wilma Brecht, an aging, German-born physicist who had immigrated to the US of A shortly after World War II and who headed up the Conceptual Applications of Random Phenomena Department (and allegedly ran the whole show with a zealous gestapo fervidness). Dr. Brecht remembered Albert from his rather colorful dissertation given a few months before and had been quite impressed by the young rogues willingness to turn a very serious rite into a rather mocking, albeit intellectually stimulating, affair, after Albert turned the floor into what appeared to be, for all intensive purposes, a child’s romper room after a very giving birthday party. However, Albert weathered the snorts and barbs with a certain indifference, even as he setup small stairs and discussed the successive undulation of a slinky as a metaphor for the ribbon of time, or when he couldn’t get the gyroscope to spin properly after several attempts and amidst a cacophony of coughs and uncomfortable farts. He proved his point and furthermore, made a memorable impression on several key faculty members. All of who, at some point, indicated their willingness to offer the young scientist a place in their labs.

And so, Albert spent his PhD years as an associate researcher on Dr. Brecht’s Fenris Project, which had the rather lofty aim of proving order was inherent in complete randomness and therefore, could be quantified and even, predicted. Thus, the raging wolf of chaos could be confined by theoretical chains, and maybe even domesticated. This was also around the time that Albert published his avant-garde paper The Waves of Cosmic Equanimity, in which he proposed that the universe was expanding not in a gradual and uninterrupted manner, but rather, moving in great spurts and stops, in what he called Defined Equipoise. The theory was so outrageous, most astrophysicists simply shrugged or snorted, some treated it with light retorts thick with a condescending tone, while a small cadre of the more conceptual of their lot, lauded its ingenuity. The theory would have died in the pages of the small, greatly ignored Violet Lurch Quarterly, except that it just so happened to be a slow month at The Bean Town Crier’s science desk and a Randian journalist with his mind set on making it out of the dry, bi-weekly supplement, touted Albert’s new hypothesis like it was Darwin’s dodgy brainchild aboard the Beagle. He wrote up a lengthy feature, which was later picked up by several national dailies and monthly periodicals. From there, things blue shifted bigger than the word of god, and Albert was all over the place, sitting in on discussions, defending his supposition, delivering lectures, and turning down symposiums, even appearing briefly on a local morning show called Rouse Yourselves Big Mass, before the university itself decided to host a dinner gala in his honor.

So there was the awkward doctor amidst the elite of the institution, none of which understood what exactly he’d done or hadn’t done, even with lengthy explanations by Dr. Brecht and Co. However, with the free champagne and all the pats on the back, dear Al was feeling pretty good, and when his aged mentor, as tipsy as he was, led him stumbling back to the laboratory, arm-in-arm, her Bavarian voice whispering perversities into his chilly ears, he went ahead and bum rushed her against the university’s multi-million dollar telescope after she appeared in the double-doorway of the planetarium in only her white lab coat. Next thing he knew, Dr. Brecht was straddling him in his twin bed a few hours later and screaming something that sounded like: Gawd est toad, gawd est toad… Albert awoke with her snoring against his cheek the following morning and tried to make one more go of her, but she’d already regretted the whole damn thing, and dressed quickly, avoiding his eyes, and departed without much of her clothing.

He’d given up on her, actually contemplated trying to make it to the lab, when the door rattled almost apologetically. “Back for another helping… are we? Felt so good,” he triumphantly taunts as he swings it open and frames himself, in all his skeletal beauty, in the doorway, only to be quite shocked (and a little dismayed) to find two rather serious looking gentlemen in matching navy blue suits and finally groomed faces, standing in formation and staring back at him.

“Mr. Albert Lochner,” the robotic lips sputter out.

“That’s doctor,” he corrects, stepping back and grabbing the first piece of cloth he can find, which just happens to be her blouse, slightly ravished, and puts it on as if he wore a peach with honey dew flowers and lassos shirt everyday.

“Dr. Albert Lochner,” the robotic lips repeat methodically, “this is special agent…”

Lord Lochner, with his crown slightly askew and his scepter beating time to the chaotic rhythm of a sitar player and a belly dancer all the way from Persian Superior, burps wildly and places his royal red robe with white trimming over his shoulders.

He clucks at the unforgiving sun, boiling the rain puddles that gathered desperately during the night rain and pecks like a pendulum at the feed. He cocks his neck, quickly surveying the barnyard for a foxy predator and returns to his soil laden breakfast.

High above the tent, the audience transfixed like a congregation watching the return of the messiah, and swoops like a raptor over the bar, loops his kneepits around the wire and flings himself with abandonment out into space, feels the tight grip of gravity begin to tug at his limbs, just as his partner, the Amazing Arlo, catches his wrists and swings him like a child’s doll onto the perch.

He’d blacked out, faint vignettes of royalty and chickens and acrobats, the soldier kneels above him with a dirty glass of yellow water, mouthing the words in a prank of deafness, just like those kids used to do on the dorm, until he can gather his strength.

* * *

Albert stands amidst several seated clinicians, in the middle of a rather habdab routine, a mix of the jazzy Skipper and the subdued and dignified Whoopee, his arms are swinging in great gyres, as his feet, he has decided he’s wearing tap shoes, are doing the best jig this side of Lawrence Welk, and he’s humming a few notes of his own composed dirge, although much of it is borrowed from Mozart, he’s feverishly reaching the climax, has thrown in a clap in three-fourths time, and screams: “ohh, oohhh,” after the break. They, for their part, are taking notes, and monitoring his progress.

“Albert, Albert, are you on any drugs?” the spectacled fellow leaning against the corner, perhaps to hold it up, its obviously made of some sort of gelatin snack, requests politely.

“Show you right,” Albert responds haughtily, a little annoyed by the interruption, after all, it takes a great deal of concentration to maintain the routine.

“And how long have you, or what is the extent of your current situation?” he asks, after penning on his clipboard for a time.

“This is obviously completely acephalous, which is probably why I’ve been brought in, or at least,” he pauses and then realizes he’s broken stride, “partially. You need an astrophysicist, there are certain factors that need to be relayed accurately, perhaps not for the time being, no, they could be fooled, but for the future, when the concepts of interstellar trigonometry are as commonplace as arithmetic, or subtraction, and I, I volunteer. As long as I don’t have to go to Korea, I volunteer, I’m qualified.”

“You feel as though you are being interviewed.”

“Have I got the job?”

“What would you like to do?”

“Of course, this is all a formality, I’m sure,” Albert has slowed the pace; he’s simply skipping his taps at this point, in order to impress the officials. “Being right out of college, you know I have a PhD, I couldn’t expect anything better. But that’s a prime point, you see, I’m malleable, pliable, I have no morals, not at this point, I haven’t acquired them yet, there’s no incentive for me to yet, no children to pass down my hypocrisy to yet, no wife to impress into giving up her honey pot, that’s a clear advantage. You know, we really seem to have clicked, you too enjoy a good groove and I can tell, I’m observant, you’re impressed by my tapping. This could be an everyday kind of thing, we could jam daily, before coffee and doughnuts and the day begins. I could teach you. Then, there’s the professional aspects, we see eye-to-eye, I’m sure I’m quite impressive to you at this point.”

“Tell us more about the job.”

“Oh, I see,” he’s snapping his fingers and dancing lightly on his toes, “one of those kind of things, yes… well, we’re all afraid of Sputnik and Beatniks, the yellow army has invaded our children’s subconscious, neuroses is rampant, they’ve been beaming some sort of mood enhancing agent down, all the bombs in the world can’t protect us from them if they’re the emperors of space, McCarthy knows about it, we’re in serious trouble. I’m a patriot, I really am. I’ll send them up there and get them home for you. I have the intelligence, we have the technology. Crap, we could transmit them up there like TV waves, but that’s not good entertainment, no, we need to launch them into the sky, ride the lightning… I’m prepared to assist, even lead this sort of an operation for you. I’m not afraid of the commitment, my dears. I’m not afraid of the Russians, maybe the Chinese, but they’re years behind, it’s the Reds we need to worry about at this point, Berlin’s been dissected like a high school worm experiment, uncraftily, unskilled, we need precision at this point. Sure, there are other scientists out there, Einstein might be helpful, in an abstract relative sort of way, ha, but you need youth, new ideas infused into the program. I’m your man.”

“I see,” the official seems convinced, he writes creatively in his notebook, probably nothing to do with the interview, probably a grocery list.

Albert’s gotten over his initial shyness and dismay, after the two G-men showed up and he thought he was being arrested. So, this is how they do it. “So, this is how you do it.”

“Please specify, Albert.”

“Do I got the job or what?”

“I think we can find a place for you here,” he’s clamped shut his notes and stood up. Albert rushes him and thrusts forward his hand to shake, which is accepted and handled surreptitiously.

“I’m serious about those morning practices, a little calisthenics and we’ll get right down to it. You won’t be sorry gentlemen, I’m the finest mind of my generation, constructed by sanity, well-fed, composed, clothed, dancing my way through the mulatto avenues of twilight. This is going to be a grand experiment, and I will not let you down, no sirs. Now, what shall be my title? Do I get a complimentary rank or am I considered a civilian still? I think I’d like to be Captain Doctor Albert Lochner, if that’s not too much to ask. We should draw up the paperwork for me to sign. I really can’t tell you how pleased I am, this is the start of something mutually beneficial, you won’t be sorry.”

The recruitment process was that simple: impressionable, agreeable, slightly perverse, perhaps a little eccentric, but all together, a patriotic chap with a small mouth and no Trotskyite political skeletons in his footlocker. Albert was shown out of the room by two underlings and taken to his new place of residence, now that he was part of the operation. He realized, of course, that he would be giving up certain liberties, certain rights, but he comforted himself with the idea that he was doing his patriotic duty. A few years of service would look good on his resume and he never thought he’d get this kind of opportunity right out of school, not in a million millennia. He was pleased with himself.

* * *

At the time, the National Aeronautical Space Administration wasn’t its own agency. It was part of the Department of Defense. NASA didn’t begin operations until late in ‘58, morphing from the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics and its major research laboratories-Langley Aeronautical Laboratory, Ames Aeronautical Laboratory, and Lewis Flight Propulsion Laboratory. The new agency was given dominion over several military operations, including the space science group of the Naval Research Laboratory, the Army’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory managed by the California Institute of Technology, and the Army Ballistic Missile Agency, where the captive ex-Nazi wiz Wernher von Braun and his team of engineers were developing rockets that would later appear to carry astronauts into space.

Back then, the space program was legit. The whole charade began because there was a promise made by an idealist who got scared after Korolev and his cosmonauts were doing so well, what with Sputnik 1 & 2, Uri Gagarin, and all those ships flying around up there (reports concluding that this all actually did happen). His advisors domino theorying outer space… all sorts of fearful innuendos of the Ruskies attacking from orbiting battleships as large as luxury cruise liners, perhaps turning the whole moon into a godless commie outpost with no private property rights, or setting up a space station right over Kansas and hurtling down filthy propaganda pamphlets and using telephoto lenses to take dirty pictures of good, wholesome American moms and daughters that they’d later give to the soldiers of the invading Red army like promises. So Jack, the good Catholic boy already obsessed with images and folklore of the final days, makes an oath in front of god and everybody that America’s going to send some modern day conquistador 250,000 miles in a Buick, park on the moon for a good while, and head on back again like he just ran up to the Dairy Twist for a hot buttered rum vanilla swirl and some fries. Now, they had to fulfill his promise, come hell or high water; they had to be lunar immigrants before the end of the decade. The money was there, the science just needed to catch up. The only problem was, they were ages behind. The Cold War was in full swing, there was a real need to out-do the other team. No one knew who had what really, what they planned to do with the big red button, all the silos, the Cubans, the Chinese, the Koreans, the damn Vietnamese.

So it was time to improvise…

* * *

There were as many false reports as there were actual sightings. The whole project began in the Southwestern desert, near Las Cruces, New Mexico, where the scientific research team collaborated with the former Nazi’s Peenemuende Missile Program. But some fiascoes about crash landings made it next to impossible to continue there and while von Braun and his team went deeper into the desert to design and test real rockets, the conceptual group was moved to Rainer National Park in Washington State. It was there, under the canopy of pristine conifers, that an unknown, top-secret proving ground was constructed, named Fort Harmony.

Albert arrived with the main contingent of scientists, engineers, and other technical staff as the base was just being completed. The various other contractors, artisans, subcontractors, consultants, subconsultants, advisors, and representatives were already present, being guided not by military commanders, but by the true generals of this particular operation, the people from the motion picture industry. By far, they made up the largest demographic at the new base, occupying five of the eight barracks, more than even the military at that time. The general of the generals was the man hand selected by the Principal of NASA’s Apollo Program, the director.

The director had very little experience, none of them really did — it was like being the parents of Fat Man & little boy. There was nothing to refer to; they were charting unheard of ground, perhaps impossible ground. Max Feling had done a few operations, you’ve probably seen a few, “They’re Among Us,” “Loose Lips Sink American Battle Ships,” and the classic “The Reds Don’t Want You to Love God.” His private sector experience was far more impressive, with productions for Coca-Cola, Woolworth’s, Parker Brothers, and Coors. He’d graduated from the prestigious Irvine School of Photography and Film, was recruited into the military directly afterwards, made several films for the US Army during the Korean conflict, and was later offered a position at the National Security Agency’s Department of Internal Communications, before moving on to private sector work. Feling’s work was considered perfect for the project; he had experience mocking up historical events (or possible events), had a documentary style, and was known to rely on his technical advisors. That was where Lochner came in, being trained in astrophysics and interstellar trigonometry — he could show the director how the rocket would plough through the open womb of space, how it would land on the moon, how the astronauts would walk, how things would behave in the lunar atmosphere, all the stuff needed for realism.

It was Feling, after all, who recommended that the program extenuate the phallic shape of rockets in the first prototypes, the very same vehicles that America would watch thrust like stallions into gravity’s skirt. The actors were all from the armed forces, just like Ronald Reagan, so they knew what they were doing. But this, and the actors’ appearance, made the slender tube with the ribbed head all the more appealing — it made sense to them all instantly that they should be strapped to an enormous penis and shot into space. It was almost as though we were constructing a dildo for the castrated earth, giving it a tool to finally impregnate the stars.

Feling’s initial drawings were green-lighted by the Public Information Sector just for that reason, it would appeal to all citizens on a subconscious, Freudian, perverse wavelength. The men would see the giant dick launch into the sky and seethe with pride, imagining themselves with such a rancorous vibrato, daring to just take what they wanted, pull those panties down and fire one off into the great unknown (of course, the homo-erotic aspects occurred to them all as well, but no one mentioned it, knowing no man wants to admit he fantasizes about being the wearer of those panties). The women would see it, hard, pulsating, bulging, forcing its way up, and grow unexpectantly moist, dark images of it penetrating them would fuel their desire, the astronaut’s robust frames, assured eyes, patriotic attitudes, would make them moan right there on their couches, releasing that orgasm of Americanism that has pushed them across continents for centuries, would now compel them to reach for the moon. These couch-high honeys, getting the odd look from mister, were the grand-daughters of the women that fucked men across the Continental Divide, got a little unpuritanically perverse in order to get lazy husbands to cross the Atlantic on kindling, rocked ancient Germanic tribesmen into migrating to the greener east and making war on Rome — they’d push the men into space simply with their collective spasm of pleasure, a great energy release emanating out of their homes, a bubble of positive energy sending the dick sky-high. And after the triumph, the beds across America would be shaking insatiably, headboards slapping against the wall all night, secretaries, teachers and nurses all showing up with bruises on the tops of their heads the next morning, the men showing up with broad, content smiles on their faces, whispering in restrooms about how the little miss went wild last night just after the moon was stepped on, pulling off her house dresses, ripping off his t-shirt and climbing on board like she was one of those nasty street-walkers going to ride him into infinity. The day after, once their mission was a success, the entire nation would be well fucked, at ease, confident, ready for the next big war…

* * *

The project began very quickly after they’d found the proper location for what would be seen by millions as the lunar surface — an unknown area in Siberia called Burstchkeize. It was a desolate place, but there were still those random weeds, snakes, insects, and trees that had some innate god gift and were growing in the wasteland. They used a chemical developed during the war called RA-87 (commonly known as Hyperlapislazuli to hairdressers) to purge the production area of any life, guaranteeing no worm, spider or rodent would obstruct the schedule for the next ten-thousand years. The clean-up was monumental, like aliens picking up after the victims of Vesuvius (Lochner used to have the pictures of their ships hovering over the mountain hanging in his office), the little ashen creatures, their shadows reflected into the soil even after they were long gone. Once they had the area cleansed, the next step was to place things just so — a boulder here, a whole hill was constructed to hide an oasis in the purgatory, a pebble field with just the right mix of unknown rocks, a nice sloping valley where the lunar rover could roam in full camera view.

After the Moon Base phase was completed (under completion deadlines), Operation Osiris began — they needed a lander, a rover, space packs, suits, the whole business. The prop wizards from Motion Picture Mayhem & Magic built them in pieces, an attempt on the agency’s part to obscure their purpose. The money didn’t even come from government officials, but was filtered to them through front operations. The production company didn’t fair well afterwards, most of the people involved, even those that painted the U.S.A. signs, were randomly extinguished in oddly normal tragedies. A hairy beast in the Rocky Mountains a year after the project was complete mauled Franco Smiles, the father of the Arachnidazoid of movie fame and the prime contractor for most of the special effects. Debbie Cunningcake, a locally renowned painter of realism who had produced some grand space-scapes for the backdrops, met her end when she electrocuted herself in the bathtub with an item respectable women refrain from utilizing. And, Jakob Himmerlein (aka Fidalgo) was boiled alive in a horrible porridge plant fire — his body found in one of the large vats of the tan broth. The official story was the he fell in just as the fire began and was suffocated by swallowing over twelve gallons of the porridge, so much that the coroner had to cut him open from crotch to throat and empty him out in order to find his internal organs.

When they received the items from Motion Picture Mayhem Magic, they were all pleased, but no one more than director Feling. He went into a fit of glee, rubbed each item as if it were a woman who’d agreed to go to bed with him, and began to shoot immediately. From what Lochner saw of the dailies, it was perfect. Then, the ex-marines and navy men came in who were going to be the fabricated heroes of the great yarn. They donned the space suits and with giant rubber bands attached to their waists, ran around the manufactured lunar-scape, seemingly bouncing in air. In a few days, the team had shot all the important pieces of history — the first step out of the lunar-lander, the rover racing across the cratered moon, coming up to the camera and sliding like a bank-robber being chased by the cops, the men excavating for lunar souvenirs, and the famous run down the hill. They were right on schedule.

* * *

Outside the gyro-chamber they’d dubbed Poker Face, where the astronauts feign weightless acrobatics for the funneled sycophants of America’s supremacy, Albert itches a rogue ankle and lets the end of his cigarette candle him a path, as the gyro turns, its entire eighty feet of round steel spinning like a lost planet, the gears whining, and everything not bottled down rising in spectral levitation. He’d tried it, thought it was fun. Now, as he gazes out into the wandering spires of the milky way’s lone visible tentacle, he sees the gyre, a miniature promise, an enormous spin cycling washer, a guilty lie he’s assisting in, like the time he helped those other boys, those boys who’d never spoke to him before, like the time he helped them fool that fatty girl with pudgy cheeks into believing Dirk Berry had written her a love letter and desperately wanted a response. Albert, watching the weighty neophyte carry her desperate dreams, her unrequited juvenile ardor, her absolute glee, towards the unknowing boy, he hated himself for taking part in it. She, whose grotesque face neared beauty, shamed and hurt and so sad, he’d tried to apologize, tried to lie and say he didn’t know it wasn’t true, but she didn’t forgive him, just like they would not forgive him. He has smiled, and toasted accomplishments, and given speeches, he has spoken of the operation as if it was real, has taken on that synthetic tone that infests the camp, while at the same time, deep below the gravitational instructions and the relative force explanations, he has heard the movement of nurses and the echo of pee in a bedpan. “The Buddhists say it is all an illusion,” he has tried to reason.

Green gymnosperms and craggy rocks of mountains for miles, Albert is moving from the gyro towards the miniature lunar-scape — like a Japanese Godzilla movie, he stomps around tiny rovers and a tiny module, looks up as the real thing, the tacky satellite, emerging from behind a Halloween cloud, almost sees the silhouette of witch and her broomstick, and focuses one of the massive telescopes on her bare belly, radiuses out the distance from a mountain range of craters to the flat Mare Tranquillitatis, and downsizes the measurements. If the LM is to gently decelerate, seemingly float like a visiting angel, the velocity must equal the proportional distance, otherwise, it will look, even to the untrained eyes of the couch zombies, artificial. For another thousand years, they will be viewing these scenes, like tele-scriptures… He hands and knees the strip, confirms his coordinates, and the distance, and places an ever so holy X right where he’s planned the landing. The transition from the miniatures to the real time, Siberian footage will be flawless, nothing out of place. He’s perpendiculared the gravitational force in relation to the direction of motion down to the finest micrometer. He scratches at the seventy-two hours of stubble, chews on a numb lip, drags off the dying cigarette clinging from dried saliva in the corner of his mouth, a mirror of his attention, with his own craters and ancient lines and dried face, around the eyes the most, the eyes of the man of the moon, lifeless, stealing light and refracting it, pretending to glow, to matter, he matters only to the tides and lobster fishermen. But that was what Albert thought, he was as barren and as soulless as the great, lonely boulder in the night sky, but They knew better, as the project reached its completion, as the final touches were made and the filming was complete, They saw something Albert missed, something useful…

* * *

That was about the time the military showed up and began to take over. People present the day before were no longer working on the project, there was a lot of hush-hush business going on, and they were all watching their own asses, no one helping anyone. Within a week, the motion picture people, who had been like the lords of the manner, treated specially, brought delicacies, plied with fine alcohol and beer, shipped in strippers and hookers, began diffusing, like the hair on Lochner’s head, their numbers began slowly to thin, until it accelerated, and they were nearly all gone. One day Feling was ordering around majors and captains, screaming about the lack of lighting, and raging off the set in disgust, only to be coaxed back by a colonel or some seemingly high official in a fine New York bought suit, and then his foldable chair was in the trash heap. Albert out one late night enjoying the fresh mountain air and a cigarette, after what had to be a month or more of the director’s absence, caught a glimpse of him standing by a dark sedan, staring back. He remembered the eyes, filthy with nothing. Only later would he consider what the regularly immaculately dressed and groomed director looked like, someone who’d just finished crossing the whole country in a Greyhound bus. In place of the movie people, filling their quarters and drinking their beer, were special operations technicians and engineers, as well as more and more regular army personnel. Next, contractors and subconctractors and consultants and subconsultants no longer appeared in the mess hall morning after morning. Almost daily, some mechanical engineer or aerospace technician would no longer answer his door, his name removed from attendance lists, not even a lonely toothbrush left on his bathroom sink.

So up late one morning, Albert is about to holler at Dr. Kurt Obelsky, his bunk-mate and a meteorologist specializing in stratospheric conditions and theories of space storms, for letting him sleep in after the two went out the night before and got a little tossed at a local pub, when he realizes, lo and behold, dear Kurt’s bed is gone. The whole damn thing… They didn’t just fold up his blankets and make it look nice, They removed the entire cot, footlocker, and metal wardrobe closet. Albert’s hard pressed to find even a rogue pube in the toilet bowl or some shavings still ringing the sink or a fingernail clipping or any trash in the garbage cans… Kurt’s gone for good like he’d never been there in the first place, which is exactly what the officer in charge of the science team seems to want Albert to believe when he asks… “Kurt who?”

“You know… Doctor Kurt Obelsky… from Odesa… meteorologist… Berkeley… Cal-Tech… been my bunk-mate since I arrived… on Doctor Gregarin’s team…?”

Lochner had been important to them to make the space walks look realistic, to make the images of space work, to make the lander come down right, but now, he was nothing more than a liability. He was getting nervous; they knew it and they gave him Harris. She was presented to him at the Goose & Sweaty Spoon Saloon in Ketchum, a little tavern the technical team adjourned to after work. Lochner was sitting with Kirst, a geomorphologist and photogrammetric expert, when the loud mouthed waitress by the name of Candy, a real Candy too, with a southern mouth harp kind of voice, blue eye shadow, years of smoking wrinkles, gum constantly popping, kind of woman, served him a beer and said it was from the woman sitting at the end of the bar. Lochner turned his head and lifted the bottle in salute and there was a blond to beat all blondes, an absolutely flawless vision so breath-taking he dropped the beer right on his own foot and watched as it broke into pieces on the floor. She was one of those women he had stared at but never dared say a word to, one of those women who never really acknowledged a man like he existed, one of those women he fell in love with from afar and had delicious night fantasies about. She was tall, about 5-foot, 8-inches, with clear, warm skin, sunshine hair and a petite nose. She had thick, pouty lips, and crystal eyes that seemed to glow like mythic auras. The way she was sitting, he could see her long, slender legs from the knee down. She smiled as Candy mopped up the mess. “The lahdy sez she wanzta giv ya another un, but ya need to hol onta it, don’t git sa excited.”

Harris was stationed nearby, he should have known right of the bat, but with this blond siren giving him the fuck-me eyes reserved for men with goatees and sports cars, he wasn’t thinking about the job, he was thinking about how long it’d been since his zipper’d had a reason to come down. She came over after he said nothing about the beer and scooted her chair up close, put her hand on his knee, gave him big blue stares as he described the incredible twists and nuances of physics, laughed at his jokes about profane equations with tremendous, guttural cackles and then, as the night grew late, she said: “Doctor, would mind very much giving it to me tonight?” That night, she took Lochner home and sat him on her couch. She paced her living room, removing her stockings, lifting her dress provocatively to undo suspenders, exposing bare flesh, covering it, rolling them down her perfect legs with her toes pointed forward like a ballerina, slinking gloves off her hands, slowly unbuttoning her coat, and then, in a smooth transition, she let her dress slide down her body. He had a glass of wine in his hand that got upset by an unmentionable reflex, but he didn’t take his eyes off her, even as he felt the wine spilling onto his trousers. She rushed over and picked it up before it got all over her couch and straddled him. Lochner removed her bra and buried his face in the most juicy smelling breasts he’d ever tasted. She acts (he didn’t know then) like he’s just given her everything she’s ever wanted and moans with a voice that sends semen out of him, a rough sigh that is the noise he’d wanted a woman to utter since he was fifteen, a sound that makes him feel as though he’s given the woman enlightenment, salvation, heaven, and paradise all at the same time, along with the voice of god thrown in. She begins to grind against him, but he’s already blown it and it’s going to be awhile before he can continue.

Poor Al, initially, after his premature geyser that first night, thinks he’s blown his shot… She cuddles with him and soothingly rationalizes it for him, even tries that she’d already came herself… twice… But he goes to work the next day feeling wasted, foolish, like a man who’s blown his chance at life itself… Only, come 5 PM, as Lochner leaves the testing facility, there she is, leaning ever so lip-smackingly against an Army issue jeep. When she sees him, she actually runs up and jumps into his arms, wraps those honey thighs around his waist, and gives him a hot breathed smooch, tongue and all. She takes him by the hand, all the other techies and soldiers and officers watching, and leads him back to her ride. They go straight to her place… barely making it inside, she’s half-naked by the time they reach her front door, and fully nude half-way up the first flight of stairs. They end up just doing it on the landing between the two floors. She behaves as though he’s the best that she’s ever been with, just like the hookers he’d later buy for company while he roves the country with the G-men. But, at the time, he didn’t know this. He really thought women treated it like men, if it worked you were calling their name, if it didn’t… well… it was still worth the shower afterwards. But no, Harris was a pro. For the next three and a half months, the two are practically man and wife. She would lay against him in the dark, her nipples brushing his chest and beg him to do it again. She’d show up at the office and get him to take her into the bathroom for a quickie, she’d hide nasty pictures of herself in his reports, she’d call him and say the dirtiest things imaginable over the phone. She made him believe he was the deity of her heart, the dominator of all her dreams, the comedian of her humor; she made Lochner believe she wanted him, desperately. It was then, that they planted their purpose for giving him Harris. And Albert, in his ignorance, bought it.

“Hello… hello… yes… this is… What…? Who is this? Where…? What… what are you… are you going to do? No… please… yes… I’ll do… I’ll do whatever you asked… just don’t… please… I’m… I’m begging you… don’t… don’t hurt her… I’ll… yes… yes… please…”

* * *

Lochner watched the rocket the same way millions of Americans did, on television, its awe-inspiring plume of exhaust vaulting it into the sky, disappearing into nothingness, the ultimate symbol of humanity. The only problem was he knew there was nobody on board, no destination, no complicated operation, no heroes, no danger — it had all been filmed six months before in Siberia and Rainer National Park, on a sound stage. There wasn’t even room for people in the rocket. They went up the platform, entered the hallway that supposedly led to the rocket, which was blocked from cameras and view, and took the elevator underground to sip martinis and watch how well the show worked.

It succeeded better than any other movie ever made. It was like the Bible of motion pictures. It was suddenly history. Countries across the globe reported on it, people flocked to their homes every night to see what those crazy astronauts were doing today on the unforgiving moon. Don’t bother with the radiation shield that would have fried the entire crew, ship and instruments long before those stellar cowboys got a third of the way there. Don’t bother with the excruciating vacuum of space, the suits a thin material so that the men could be distinguished in them. Don’t bother with the amount of power it would have taken to actually land on the moon and then take off again, let alone cruise around in a car on its surface. No, this was the truth; Armstrong walked on water, cured a leper, and brought Glenn back to life. Well, he did some miraculous stuff, none-the-less.

He even saw it in the encyclopedia.

6

So, that was the whole ride… now, here he was in yet another highway colony motel, somewhere in the peripatetic purgatory of America’s missing heart, after another day in the car with Them, the whistle of the radio attempting to tune in a tower far too distant, his only company, his pictures, his notebook (which is confiscated on a hebdomadal basis), some magazines haphazardly chosen for him by G-man 2 (none of which he finds very interesting), and his envelope-packaged candy-colored compulsory pills.

The painting, glued greedily to the back cardboard like adolescent’s tongue to a wintry pole, is in watercolors and indigo ink, distorted finely, Pissaroesq with faint winks of Cezanne and a Gaugainain mulatto woman disrobing beside a pool of Picasso goldfish, mixed indelicately with the scope of the Chinese landscapers of the Ching dynasty, only with that faint waft, like a subtle California burgundy knock-off, of pure bipolar Van Gogh shrubbery bordering her halo of a cunt. The woman bends anatomically towards the focal point, but her left arm, raised to provide perspective and highlight the artist’s gift for movement (the left breast mimes her stretch), tosses the entire structure into disarray, causing the acrylic syllogism to collapse upon the weight of its own perversity. The room is dominated by the painting, a room shot from some photographer’s tricky lens to look like a suite at the Hilton, but when you get right down to it, is a little sparse for three men of middle age, all with their own agendas, and ideas of place, and thoughts of domination, and duty, and purpose, simply two king beds with wholesale furnishings, personal lamps, a single-serving coffee maker that squawks like a demonic bird from the apocalyptic drama of Bosch or childhood sweating death sleep, and an overhead light illuminating languidly and undramatically, diffusing the perfect miserableness of the whole affair and all the collective regrets, which are voiced by Doctor Lochner as he plops unceremoniously onto the bed nearest to the bathroom/sink room/coat closet.

The location was Topeka, Kansas, although no one ever told anyone else. It had to be Topeka, or Duluth, or Okie City, or Toledo, it was definitely not New York, or Frisco, or Seattle, or Boston, or New Orleans, perhaps Baton Rouge, or Tacoma, or Sacramento, or Providence, or Clarksville, that was a distinct possibility. In Topeka, as the corona of Apollo’s buttocks slid craftily below the western ink of the horizon, the incessant peel of porn, televised, moving, jerking, sloppy, grotesque, kept him company as he sat at the corner of the bed, smoking yet another fine Danish cigarette, the splotch of the synthetic vine on his shirt the only thing left of his jug, twisting between his scalpely fingertips, hypnotized like a late night infomercial participant or a twilight evangelical eunuch who’s just been cured by the loving hands of the best con-man in the lower forty-eight by the moving contortions of Gomorrah flesh and the mighty howls of ecstasy, until the star of our show’s over-doing the whole banshee bit and caterwauling the way men wish they could make a woman sound (and resonating through Doctor Lochner like memory burps of Harris).

Beside the unbleached titanium curtain covering the champagne evening, the lone G-man checks for his partner’s return by deftly caressing the valence with his unoccupied left hand, as he fingers the knob of his service revolver neatly nestled in its holster inside his Gagalooloo & Vincent sports coat, and surveys the parking lot with predator eyes. Doctor Lochner calls him “G,” mainly because of his official function, but more significantly because he always remains and the other one, the one he calls “C,” always runs their errands. Tonight, it’s for dinner and another bottle of syrupy red Idaho wine for the dear doctor. G is always present, a constant, a peripheral figure in the corner, faceless like a pagan statue that’s been molested by zealot Christians, missing fine edges, lips, a definable nose, but still not abstract, that blurry memory of nameless meetings kind of impression, it makes him good at his job. G watches Doctor Lochner like a divine shepherd eyeing his sacrificial lamb, the savior of the flock, a small donation to the wild fangs of chaos, harnessed by the burning projectile from his gun, bringing down the nightmare, one lamb for the safety of them all… He watches as Lochner masturbates in the lunar glow of the street lamp peering through the voile blinds, he stares absently out over the room as a local prostitute named Penelope wriggles like an ashamed vermin, belches out great guttural groans of sublime grace, like a siren finally getting the sailor towards the homicidal rocks, never tenting his service trousers, never grabbing the loud whore and sloppy-seconding her into puddling oblivion, never watching the naughty vignettes of sensual epicure on the television screen, just watching impassively.

“…oh yes, yes, yes, that’s it, that is it, yes, yes, yessss, yessss, harder, har-der, har…der, yes, yes, yessss, yesss…”

It has been two years, 734 days, moving in at night, packing up in the morning, driving onward, his place in the backseat a warn spot in the characterless sedan no one would ever notice moving along with weeknight traffic, the shaded windows, the government plate, the continual migration to another, unknown destination. The fast food drive-ups with the young girls on roller-skates and nude legs, the convenience store taste clinging to his molars (no matter how hard he brushed), the cheap beer piled in disposable garbage cans, the road ahead, the families passing on vacations, the summers, the sights of festivals, of picnics, of commuters.

* * *

There on the crusty vomit green couch of his grandparents' Sunday morning sunshine wreck room, with the eunuch kitty Buster spread eagle sacrilegiously in one fragmented doorway of light, “for a castrated cleric of the feline faith, he sure was immodest,” and the fronds of Grandma's favorite fern as his crown, the ten year old version of Albert sits fresh and expectant, flipping the pages of one of the old man's ancient magazines, the Southern Literary Messenger, June 1835 edition.

He's perusing, with the interest of the dirty mind of his age, a Poe tale, knowing the author as a seedy peddler of horror and suspense, he's a little unimpressed, although perked enough to continue, since its presented like an article in a newspaper, and little Albert, even at that juvenile age, adores the sullied slop of the news, with all its violence and scandals and politics and outrage.

Hans Pfaall, a Dutchman guiding an interstellar balloon through the paroxysmal avenues of space, departed earth on All Fool's Day and spent nineteen days on the ethereal ocean, but though Albert finds the voyage altogether very appealing, what with “arms set akimbo” and all, he is disturbed from his restful reading slumber by an impulsive inflection in the background noise, which, quite unexpectantly, begins to sound like the crackling fire of an A.M. radio. Albert, slowly growing more aware of the alteration, looks up to see if something is amiss, the refrigerator broken and leaking, the clock on the wood wall in the shape of sea-faring vessel stopping, the heat revving up (although not needed), but sees nothing immediately that could cause such a change. He returns to journal, just as Hans has sent his lunar emissary to the Mayor of Rotterdam (where folly lives, he will later uncover), when the ripple alters again, this time distinctly, absently, purposefully, as he is straining to hear, perhaps, a word or more, perhaps confusing the random bombardment of noise for ordered tonality.

Buster, laying prone, very uncatlike, on his back, radiates his triangular ears like a sail in the wind, and Albert, who's grown hoarse and nervous, someone is surely taunting him just below a whisper, reaches out to give that furry belly a bit of rub in an attempt to remain composed, only to be mauled quite violently in a persnickety four arm clutch, with claws imbedding themselves in his forearm. He picks up a brief chuckle as he retrieves his arm and gives Buster a head full of all the explicatives he's picked up from the playground, highlighting the barrage with “mother fucking, titty sucking, two-ball bitch,” his best string as yet debuted before human ears.

The cat takes offense and scrambles spontaneously to his feet, does a quick left, right, and four-padded gallop out of the room, just as Albert inspects his injuries, three relatively deep scratches running horizontally down his forearm, and the volume is then turned up, slightly, as though someone is toying with the knob within his inner ear. He hears the words, muffled, but conspicuous in their sound of sense, no longer as though he's standing behind a closed door, however very Frostian of him, and gives a good index stab into the right canal to test its accountability.

It has been going on for as long as he can remember, as if an enduring soliloquy, he just didn't hear it before, but he remembers it, remembers its distinctive modulation within the chorus. The songs have gone solo, the conductor, an eight-armed Hindu directing each octave in maestro mastery, waves them onward and their tangled tongues pitch the noise autonomously, mixing and inflecting.

Albert flings his head back against the brawny cushions of the couch and propels himself onto his feet, listening effortlessly. He stealths his way onto linoleum, takes up the wooden handled cleaver, and mindfully enters the hallway. About two doors down and to the right, he nudges the silent door open. They're still deep within their dreams, and the avenues of paradise do not want any more angels. She's partially uncovered, a nude leg dangling lonely off the side of the bed, like she'll subconsciously step out from under the disheveled blankets at any moment, and her arm is uncomfortably tucked below her belly. He can see the beginning of her left butt cheek, indiscriminately cloaked by an errant corner of the top sheet. The room is musky, stifling, warm, like a temperate cavern, she's breathing evenly. Albert moves near the bed and sees the top of his head, a sienna tiara of tousled hair lying flatly against a pillow. His mulchy chest and neck are above the covers and his closed eyelids sputter in dreamy REM.

Albert makes his way directly above the man who made the night torrential and kept him awake with the guttural coughs of his mommy's ardor. He's not seen this one before. Albert usually wakes them up before grandma and grandpa return from the confines of WASP guilt, and sometimes the men converse with him, whilst his mum cooks breakfast in her nightshirt and brews coffee in her bathrobe. They are entwined, his abdomen pressed gently against her midriff, her other leg tossed indelicately over his thigh, his right arm hiding below her chest. They are still entrenched in their nightmares, and the streets of heaven are clogged in a cherub parade.

5

G-man No. 2 tells him they’re headed to Chelan, Washington as they’re driving. That’s pretty close to the original site, either they’re going to do him there in some grandiose homage to his efforts (which is unlikely) or this is just the next place on the list of some bureaucrat’s clipboard. He’d imagined it all along, it would say at the top “Doctor Lochner’s Odyssey” and then, over a four-day marathon of map gazing, the assistant would randomly throw darts at a giant map of the states. Another assistant would tell him where it landed and he’d scribble that down. The agents call in; he goes down the list, checks off the last place, and tells the agent where the next one is. This is probably his only job.

Lochner has thought about running to Switzerland, sanctuary for politicos and fascists, but they’d get to him. He’s only safe as long as they can watch him. Sometimes he lets himself think about Harris. He’s got a few photos of her that weren’t confiscated after he signed the agreement. His favorite of which is one where she’s kneeling on the bed, his button-up shirt and neck-tie on, a view from the back, her head turned, a Vermeer smile on her lips, her eyes pleading for him to enter the photo and run his hands up into the shirt. You can see the silhouette of her, the shirt not long enough to cover her entire ass, so a small oval of it lies there wantonly. The next favorite he only allows himself to look at on special occasions, that’s the one in which she’s completely naked, taken from high above as she lays in their bed, her arms stretched out as though motioning for him to come to her, her entire body, from head to furry hole, visible, appetizing, pleasing. The rest are for day-to-day gazing, some with nipples exposed, or with cute outfits that reveal more than most women would allow to be seen of them, or costumes she would wear for him, the stock french maid, the dominatrix, leather strapped, number, the wonder woman gear, the viking warrior super mini-skirt and gold breast plate, etc. But Albert’s been trying not to think about her. Even when he focuses on the good things, trying ever so hard to avoid anything else, it always returns to her betrayal…

He’s often wondered why they didn’t just give him an alias and throw him in jail for some counterfeit crime, why they would devote so much time to keeping him moving, pay two federal agents to stand guard. His best guess is — he’s the last one. He knows for a fact that Feling is dead, he saw him come rocketing out of the sixth floor window and splatter on the pavement outside the Hotel Monaco in Virginia Beach. The official story is he tripped on a lamp’s wire and accelerated so fast from the fall that he smashed through the window. The problem with this is of course, gravity requires a downward arc, not a horizontal plain that sharply drops off at a given distance. You don’t throw a ball, it goes perfectly straight and then just drops. No. Two hefty guys dumb enough to look down to catch a glimpse of their handy work after the director met the sidewalk threw poor Feling out of the window. Lochner saw them with his own eyes, in real time.

He knows he will fall out of a window at some point, or be suffocated in a vat of oatmeal, or shocked to death by genital electrodes. So, he decides that once they make it to Chelan, he’s going to go see the old site and god be damned if they kill him for it. His plan, which is not the most ingenious one ever constructed, is to get a hooker and pay her to entice the G-men to give up their statue impressions. While they’re rollicking with a much-needed screw, he’s out the door, in the car, and half way to Rainier. The evergreens, just like he remembers them, shadow the road in the night, making it difficult to see ahead. It’s an old country highway up there, too, with nothing but cabins, moose, and fear keeping him company as he spins around turns, edges beside voluminous drops, bounces over wood bridges. But Albert remembers where it is, he stops just in time to see the yellow iron gate that was always there, tucked behind an innocent looking driveway with a mailbox that reads: “The MacFarthers” and a sign that says: “Re-elect Governor Gabbie Hayes, four more years means four more chances! Paid for by the citizens to re-elect Governor Gabbie Hayes, Hayes for Governor ’58.” He idles the feds’ car up, waiting for a guard to appear but nothing happens. Perhaps, they’ve abandoned it. If they have, there won’t be anything left.

Out in the forest now, walking up a road that once carried the entire moon up and down it but now is barely distinguishable, he’s pretty sure he’s risked his life to see nothing but the ghosts of the past. It’s inky dark, with strange rustlings in the bushes, the kind that cause him to stop when he really shouldn’t and peer into the darkness. Then, realizing that he’s standing there waiting for whatever it is, he begins briskly getting away, not running, in case that would be a sign, but walking much faster than before. As he jogs along, pretending not to hear the sound of dried leaves crunch under footfalls, pretending not to hear that branch snap as something steps onto it, pretending not to hear any whispers, any sounds at all, he sees light up ahead, a lot of it. Are they filming a sequel? Perhaps Mars is the next project. Who have they bamboozled to do this one? More college grads with empty checkbooks and fantasies about being involved in one of the most important missions ever attempted. That’s how it was for Lochner, he knew all along they weren’t really going, but he knew his name would be forever attached to the fact that they did. There it was in the annals of history, the Who’s Who of Science, 16th Edition, he was like Oppenheimer, he was like Bohr, he had a place in time.

At first, of course, they pretended that it was a real mission, but it didn’t take long for the team members to all know that it wasn’t. Most of them knew long before that, they’d studied the logistics, the technology wasn’t there. They could launch a guy up to orbit around our little pebble in the cosmos, but firing a guy to the moon was a whole other story.

Lights, like aliens landing on earth, lights. Lochner creeps through the underbrush, on his stomach, edging forward like a soldier on elbows and knees. As he came out from under a beautiful “Burning Bush,” moving one of its fiery branches out of his way, he could see the top half of the craft. It was approximately six stories high, about as wide as a high-rise apartment building, and lit up like a tacky house in the suburbs a few months before X-mas.

There are noises coming from the complexes, Albert can see people walking about as he crawls forward, milling about like it’s a cocktail party — it is a cocktail party. The great dome he watched go up is still there, so are the barracks, the supply tent (which is actually plaster & wood), the laboratories, everything. It’s a fully functioning base, but where are the guards? How come he could just walk up? Unless they’re planning for him to come, perhaps they’re final trip for him is the stars? Perhaps, this was all an elaborate plot to get him to show up and go with the aliens.

There’s a steady stream of well-outfitted people heading towards the ship, walking up the entry plank, and disappearing into the light. They’re all dressed up nice, the women with evening gowns and the men in tuxedos or their best military regalia. Albert slides down the hill on his hands and heels and merges into a line of partygoers, they don’t even notice the new addition — or they pretend they don’t. Don’t get paranoid. They’re ambling along, the conversation light, flirtatious. He needs to connect with one of them, cloak himself in the go-lucky ambience so he can walk right in. They’re all drunk. There are two women walking with their arms around one another, stumbling, giggling loudly, a bottle of vodka being passed between them. “Hey, howz about sharin’ a little Russian warmth with me?” They make eyes at him, give him a good once over, if he’s lucky they’re drunk enough to see him with alcoholic myopia. The one with the bottle, practically falling on her friend in an erotic embrace, thrusts forth her hand and he takes a good swig from it, puts his arm around the lovely closest and wanders on. They’re happy as hell to have him and before they’re even getting close to the ship, he’s between the two of them, touching their bare backs, laughing at slurred disdain, gathering information from tid-bits of comments, slapping one on the ass after she says something superficially interesting, feeling their wet lips contact his cheeks. They go on like this for about two hundred yards and then, there’s the starship, glowing, humming, with jazz music blaring out from within it, with the collective buzz of a thousand conversations, laughs, curses, fights, pouring out of its front door.

No one even hesitates; they seem to be as comfortable with entering the galactic battleship as they would be heading to the local bar for a good time. Albert let’s the crowd carry him in, right passed two marines, fully armed, standing in ready position. They enter an enormous hall, pass coats to doormen, are ushered into a grand ballroom that dwarves the dome they constructed to film the lunar landing. There are hundreds of people inside, all with drinks in their hands, dancing, talking, eating off a giant buffet table, and a full big-band going at it on a sound stage. A banner over it reads: “Project Marvel: the Future of Space Exploration!” Albert loses the girls in the crowd, but he doesn’t mind, they fulfilled their use and he got the chance to feel their asses a little, look down the fronts of their skirts to see the crescents of perky breasts, and felt their smooth, milky skin against his arms. All in all, his cover was beneficial on a two-fold personal and professional level.

It was about that time that he saw her, leaning against an ornate column as a general handed her a glass of wine and was mumbling something to her. Albert watches his face, he has the look of man who believes the night will end with the two of them rolling in sheets, a queer twinkle in his eyes, a coy flirtatious sort of way of beaming at her, gently pushing forward the community of two by touching her arm, placing his hand on her back as he leads her to their chairs, the tent of his slacks when he’s profiled. And she’s going right along with it; an actress so good the old chap really believes she’s just dying to get that stiff thing in her. He must have looked like this. People in on it must have watched them from afar, smirking at his infundibular eyes, his fantasy an inside joke for the surveillance team. “How can this guy believe she’s really interested?” “Hey, look at him now, he’s totally into it.” “Ah, that poor sop, wait’ll she breaks your heart.” “What an ass, he’s buyin’ her a ring, for god’s sakes.”

Albert stands across the dance floor from her, waiting for her to see him. It doesn’t take long and she crooks her head to laugh heartily at one of the general’s jokes, placing her hand on his forearm as she says something like: “oooh general Metterich, youuu make me laugh.” And then, there it is, a crinkle in her brow at first, unbelieving it’s him, acknowledgement slides across in shock, the cover-up smile and back to the general, never to look again. What does she think? Did he ever really matter? Where do they train these kinds of people? Lochner has images of sex training operations, of flirt tutoring, of bizarre experiments to make them used to everything, not shocked by any perversion, up for any nefarious request by the object of their mission, hundreds of beautiful girls, abducted from orphanages, and reared by the military to be sex soldiers — used on politicians, spooks, terrorists, their entire function, to get the guy to love you, to need you, to be willing to die for you. This is actually a pleasing idea, until you realize that one of them, one of them not probably really named Harris, was trained, was tortured, was manicured, to be his ideal, to be his love, to be the one who made him give up life and live a mutually subsidized lie. Then, he begins to sort of fear the underground, black operation, because that means that any woman could be one of them, that means the days of love-making, the hours of conversation late into the night, the walks on beaches, the cuddling over a movie, the dinners, the meetings, were all part of her job, part of the great charade that everyone was in on but him. His heart, his fantasies were on display, used by a tool of the black army to get him right where They wanted him to be, and it was so easy — Dr. Lochner meet Harris, now here’s what we need you to do…

He was her successful career, a name in her dossier, “Professional Experience” she could use to get more work.

* * *

Then, things got hectic, Lochner’s lovely fiancée tipped off the soldiers that an unwanted guest was present, witnessing their celebration. As he picked at the shrimp cocktail plate, Albert sees two heavy-set fellows in army green, stomping towards him — a serious purpose in their eyes. He’s up and over the buffet table before they can get to him, crawling on his hands and knees under the long tablecloth, with arms shooting into his cavern trying to grab him. Finally, the table ends and he shoots right out of it, joining the crowd again, looking back to see the army men still crouched down under the table. He heads right for the women’s john and ducks into a stall, puts his feet up and locks the door. He’s lucky enough that there wasn’t anyone powdering a nose, or sprinkling water over their eyes, or fixing lipstick when he went in, but the stalls are filled and he watches as slender legs shuffle beside him. She will have to pee at some point. He watches the shoes; he knows Harris’ shoes anywhere.

It’s a long wait, he wonders if they’ve given up on him and then, he sees her high-heels. She’s standing at the mirror, her legs shifting. Albert’s out of the stall, got a hold of her, and back in before she can even begin to utter a sound. He puts his hand over her mouth and takes out the six-shot, petite handgun she keeps in her stockings, thus giving him the chance to slide his hand up her skirt, and touch bare thigh. He puts it right to her temple, cocks it, and releases her mouth.

“Alright, you know why I’m here.”

“I did it to protect you.”

“You did it because They told you to.”

“No… no… that’s not true.”

“You… you… want to die here?”

Eyes are moist, exhausted, pleading. Mouth is covered in white tape, shoulders are naked, save a thin strap that leads down to a black teddy Albert gave her. Her hands are behind her back, tied to a chair.

“I swear.”

“You… you… you were trained to do this to me.”

“No… they had me… trapped… they told me they would kill me, kill you…”

“That was a show, you think I’m stupid, just because you could fool me, you think I can be fooled by anything… Is that it?”

Her chest is heaving, the shadowy impressions of her breasts apparent as she draws a deep breath. Her legs are exposed, spread apart by ties to the chair legs. A hooded figure causing her to squeal enters the frame, holding a long black pole. He begins to touch her with it, running it smoothly up her leg, around her knee, up her thigh.

“I was abducted, stripped, tied to a chair, filmed… you think I made that up.”

“Damn right. I know about you, I know all about this whole operation. I thought you really loved me, I thought I’d help them make their movie and go on my merry way.”

“I loved you.”

“Shut up… You’re a government whore, They beat that out of you by the time you were ten.”

“What are you talking about — who? Who beat it out of me?”

She is jerking, shifting her weight, trying to get away, screaming in muffled sobs. Her bright, sunshine blond hair matted to her sweaty forehead. Her eyes are clenched shut. She is trying to scream. He’s behind her now, his stick running up her back, over her shoulder. He slides it under the strap of her teddy and pulls it down her arm, exposing her left boob. He taps it with the end of the stick, causing it to bounce. She is crying, howling with fear. Locher is mortified, speechless, ashamed of the aching hard-on, as he watches the film with two of Them.

“Why can’t you just stop for a second and be honest with me?”

“I am, Albie… I tried to find you, but they told me if I looked… they’d kill you.”

“Who told Them I was here, huh? Who’s roaming the countryside, not allowed to make a phone call, not allowed to see his mother, not allowed to stay anywhere longer than twenty-four hours?”

“I’m so sorry.”

“You don’t have that in your emotional vocabulary. You are a lying whore who ruined me for her paycheck.”

“That’s not true. I was the one hurt by this… I was the one that lost everything.”

He swings the pole as hard as he can, for an instant Albert thinks he’s going to hit her, but he goes lower, breaking the chair legs, sending her collapsing onto the ground. He forces her to get up, holding only the remnants of the chair; he tears off the seat, exposing her fleshy buttocks framed by black satin. Albert remembers her wearing it — turning in a siliceous pirouette, his favorite part of the teddy, the way it looked on her backside, his second favorite, its voile material. He smacks her playfully on the ass with the stick, her cheeks fluttering from the blow, growing red, she tries to scramble away.

“You were hurt? Can’t you just admit it once… just for me?”

“You think I’m a different person than I am, I never went to spy school or whatever it is you think they did to me… I was a private… I went into the army to get out of Cheesedelle… I told you this.”

“And who wrote that biography for you?”

“Albert, why do you think they move you around so much? Why do you think they haven’t just killed you?”

“Why?”

“Because, I’ve done all that they’ve asked. You’re the reason why I’m an army whore… not them. If I’d never met you, never loved you… I wouldn’t be here… with that general…”

He licks the side of her face as she cringes, the tears trickling down her cheeks. The camera zooms out; he stands behind her, the pieces of the chair littered about. She’s standing; her legs slightly bent inwards, her arms behind her back, her face wracked with anguish, her breast dangling in the open air, the hooded man’s hand squeezing it. He places the pole between her legs so that the greater part of it slides up her belly. Then he pulls it back behind her and his hands appear around her neck, down her sternum, around her chest. He grabs the fabric roughly and tears it off of her. The hold button’s pushed just as she is exposed completely, her body convulsing from the force, the shreds of the teddy falling down her sides, her face frozen in pain. The man turns to Albert by swiveling his chair…

“This is the price of the moon.”

“Yes.”

“Do you think it’s worth it?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“It is a national anthem, the greatest triumph of man’s ingenuity ever attempted. It is better to believe it than fail at it.”

“There’s nothing to be done?”

“No. We’ll await your answer.”

“Yes… of course, yes… Just let her go.”

“I’m afraid it’s not that simple, doctor.”

“Fine, I’ll sign whatever it is you want me to, just don’t hurt her…”

“Would you like to watch the rest of the movie?”

“Yes.”

* * *

No one ever thought the world was flat, not in Columbus’ day, not ever. That was Enlightenment propaganda, the advent of the Dark Ages, or the concept of such a rancorous era, sometime between the high Renaissance and the age of reason. It is believed, although never confirmed, that that is when it got started. The Greeks knew the world and all the heavenly bodies were spheres, they spoke of them as such. But how easily it was to contort the concepts of history, how easy it was to make school children wear construction paper hats of Puritanical indifference and go-lucky Indians with feathers and big smiles, how easy it was to picture that great Spaniard trudging ashore of the new world, claiming the vast wildness for king and country. It was just the beginning…

One government says to another: “we would like to say we beat you in a war, what do you say to that?” And the other responds: “fine, fine, we’ll just need some reciprocation, have the historians begin their work and the diplomats draw up the papers. Of course, we’ll expect the normal provisions.” And it is so.

The children receive their textbooks and listen dejectedly as the teacher lectures, dreaming of jump ropes and water fountains, osmosisly receiving the impregnating myth.

“We would like the honor of being the first to have conquered the known world, we will call our champion Alexander and he will be lauded as the greatest military commander of the ancient world.”

“Fine, of course,” They agree, “but it will cost you. You’ll have to agree to Genghis Khan, and Julius Caesar, and a displacement of your power, a swift shift in military might, a sudden, historically speaking, collapse, and the eventual disarmament and ineffectuality of your empire. We will begin the paperwork.”

A cheap coffee smell mixed with the stench of burnt Styrofoam wafts through the air, the collective aroma of cologne, after-shave, perfume, pharmaceuticals, synthetic cotton, body odor, sweat, ink, pencil led and shavings, old olive loaf, peanut butter, cigarettes, metal, plastic, and paint permeates the room as men in cubicles talk incessantly on one-way radios and phones. A long, assembly of square tables have been shoved together in the next room for an impromptu meeting called by the honorable envoy from the French Congo, who’s currently talking in muffled tones with the honorable envoy from Finland and Chile, who are both nodding like pendulums as if the rhythm will orchestrate the course of the conversation.

They have been meeting for all of time, at least that’s what they’ve decided, having control over that sort of thing, observing the edict of compromise and control. Constructed for the sole purpose of historical accuracy, the United Architects of Information is a voluntary, unilateral, international, transcontinental, official, unknown, illicit, secret, sometimes bombastic, federation of countries under the sweaty armpit of the United Nations World War Deterrence and Advertising committee. Every nation on the little celestial marble floating warily out in the ether of god’s gaseous universe, is a member and meets twice yearly to discuss historical accuracy and information sharing.

History, the known incidents of the past, the chronological record of significant events, the cause and the effect of time, is decided like a neighborhood poker game around the post-industrial waste table of the United Architects of Information through complex bartering systems, owed debts, gambles, bluffs, buy-offs, pay-backs, intimidation, threats, arm-wrestling matches, Indian leg grappling tournaments, and an occasion “rock-paper-scissors” contest.

The true foundation of the organization is unknown, but its modern form, with its delegates, speakers, agreements, and records, was designed by the preeminent Kurdish civil servant and political philosopher, Bertrand ibn Johnson, who recognized the futility of physical action and was the man who coined the idea: “the victor writes the account.” Johnson, inebriated by his own ego, determined that through a network of collaborating dignitaries, the Janusian, distorted face of time could be morphed into the Aphroditic, grandeur of advertising and public relations. “You must sell the citizens your account, not just beat their heads in,” ibn Johnson said a little too often to remain coy, but none-the-less, convincingly, and it was from that seed of deceitful clarity that the They were born.

From thence forward, representatives of the world’s domineering powers could propose historical events, present to their fellow Brutus’ proposals for battles, wars, treaties, tragedies, atrocities, skirmishes, near misses, rivalries, retribution, and the like, to later find it written in the sky as though belched from god’s own wisdom. The economic and military might of the nation determined its value, capabilities of requesting “favors” from other countries, and ability to receive positive treatment in historical records. The history books churned out the doctored events a few generations later, slowly tweaking things, adding insignificant facts after insignificant lies, until the full-blooded truth of the matter was that Japan conquered China in the Japo-China War, or the Serbs killed the Austro-Hungarian heir to the thrown, or it was an Englishman who first stepped foot on the north-pole (it was actually completed by an Inuit woman named Meme Snowpucker), or German scientists invented the rocket, or what have you, all of which, blatantly, specifically, without question, were complete and utter lies, born from the ironically green tables of Their negotiations, compromises, debts, and credits.

There were only four hundred men on the planet that knew this, and they were all pathological pseudologues or hobos or politicians. The truth was, no one knew what had actually happened, ever, because as far as they knew, They had always determined what history was going to say was a fact and what was a landmark event and who was to blame and who was not.

* * *

Albert stared into her eyes, confused. She looked injured, hurt, pleading, upset. He couldn’t understand her. She said his name, twice, and he released her. She did not get up, but turned to face him, both still on the toilet. “Oh, Albert,” she wept. She tried to nestle close to him, but he kept her away. “Please,” she whispered and stretched her neck to kiss him. He felt her soft lips contact him, her breath against his nostrils, that familiar smell. He shuddered from her closeness. “This is where I belong,” she said finally, after a few pecks on his chapped mouth. She rubbed her head against him like a cat trying to scent her owner. Albert caressed her nude arms and shoulders.

Harris clasped the back of his head and smiled coyly into his eyes. “Would you like to come home?” she asked, pressing herself against his lap. “I can make you forget it.”

Albert reacted to the pressure involuntarily. He still had the pistol in his hand. He raised it to her head.

“Do we have to do this way?” she asked, pretending to ignore the gun, scooting up his thighs. She unbuttoned the top of her skirt and pulled it down over her shoulders. “I think you’re going to need both hands.”

Albert reached out and cupped her left breast in the palm of his hand, ran his thumb over the nipple, touched the dark mole just under the areola, “I remember this from Shakespeare.”

“Put the gun down and put the other hand here,” she instructed, drawing up the ends of her skirt. He could see her rotund haunches, the slight appearance of cellulite rounding itself on her upper thighs. How he loved the way it giggled, the curves changing, the supple ripples of skin. Albert ran the nose of the pistol up her thigh and around her backside. Harris moaned.

“I missed you,” Albert finally admitted.

“You don’t have to miss me anymore,” she unbuttoned his fly and gingerly exposed him. With a shuffle of her weight and ascension up his body, she positioned herself and let the tip rub her insides. When she was ready, the canal wet enough to accept him, Albert felt himself enter her, he remembered the way it felt, the smooth, sweaty walls, the encapsulating warmth of being within her, he shuddered, and tried not to cry. “There… there now,” she breathed into his face as she began the motions, the one’s she was famous for, the elliptical clock-wise hip dances that teased her labia and got him harder, until he filled her entirely. “Quietly.”

Albert came in a convulsing shiver rather too quickly; Harris continued to move against him, even though he could do no more. He collapsed his head in between her breasts and held her by the hips. She continued to work on his flaccidness, getting as much as she could out of him.

She heaved out a short, inaudible sigh, and shook slightly. Then, she relaxed and let her weight push him back against the toilet. “I’m sorry Albert.”

“Me too,” he barely said, holding her. She pushed away from him and stood up.

“HELP… RAPE,” she screamed, “HHHEEELLLLPPPP, please, someone, HHHEEEELLLPPP…” she ripped her own skirt further open, tugged her soiled panties nearly off her own body, and began beating on the stall door. “NOOOO, STTTOOOPPP, NOOOO, HHHEEELLLPPP,” her mascara was running, she threw herself against the wall and collapsed to the floor, her legs spread open, her right arm lying over her chest, readjusted to not cover her breasts, for the benefit of her rescuers, of course, and pretended to be injured.

By now, there was a crowd of the bottom of people’s legs outside the stall. Albert remained on the toilet, confused, staring blankly at Harris’ body, still somewhere enjoying its sight, but knowing he had to react. The marines’ feet came towards the door. Harris’ arm was partially outside the stall and one of them pulled her quickly out from under it. She closed her legs so that her knee didn’t hit the door and lifted it back up when she was free of the stall. Albert heard the gasps from the crowd and a few of Harris’ moans. They were all hard out there, the bastards.

“Back away,” he heard one of the marines order the crowd. Albert heard them cock their own guns. “You there,” they were, he assumed, addressing him, “come out of there.”

“I’ve got a gun,” Albert threatened, hearing his own voice, not realizing that he intended to speak to them. He still hadn’t comprehended what happened.

“Throw the gun out,” the marine yelled.

“No… ah… you throw your guns in here,” Albert tried, even shrugging.

“You’ve got five seconds to throw your gun out and unlock the door… or we’re firing,” the second marine barked, Albert could see his legs spread in an attack stance. Harris was being dragged out of the room along with the rest of the spectators; he caught one final glimpse of her before she disappeared around the corner. He was quite sure she’d waved.

“I’ll give you two and a half seconds to throw your guns in here or I’m letting loose the hounds of hell,” Albert replied, pointing his pistol at the door.

“Five… four…” the marine began.

“One hippopotamus, two hippopotami,” Albert counted down.

“three… two…”

“two and half hippopotami,” Albert finished first and squeezed off all six of his rounds into the door. Then he listened for a second, they were still standing there, perhaps they were stunned.

“FIRE,” he heard and things started to explode around him, first the side of the toilet erupted, then the wall behind him, then he felt a surging pain in his shin, another caught him in the shoulder, the toilet paper receptacle got the worst of it, two right in the kisser, it was gone…

4

Those were the days of snow battering the windowpanes, great swirls of ice and gusts of wind, knock, knock, knocking on the glass. Albert was relieved that they’d try to help him; at least they had not forgotten him. The days were dark from their very start, as if the sun could not penetrate through the thick afghan of clouds and some celestial hand had dimmed its helium glow. The trees he could see from his restrained position were naked of leaves, shivering in the wind, contorted and lifeless. The sky was a soupy ash, heavy and melancholic.

Of course, Albert was a bit down. Locked up in a room, the drip, drip of his IV, the occasional sanitized nurse or doctor with their distant voices and farther away mannerisms his only company, the pain in his shoulder and leg. He was kept restrained, a prisoner patient. They refused to answer his questions, he had stopped asking them, and they began their own interrogation. He wasn’t about to reveal a thing.

She was with him constantly. It pained him worse than the bullet in his arm, he tried not to think of it, but she continued to bother him, and he had nothing else to do. He replayed the meeting over and over, invented things he could have said, dreamed up alternate endings, things she could have said or done, he stopped himself though, she hadn’t done those things or said those words… She had not saved him. He tried to forget her, tried to wrestle her from his thoughts, but she held on, refusing to depart, and so, he lived with it.

His only respite from the gloom was the every other Tuesday nurse. She was young, milky, heavily laden with curves, and jocular, she wouldn’t let him frown or brood. How could he be sad when she stripped him of his gown and sponged him considerably, giving special attention to his wee little winky? At times, she would lean against him or her bare forearm would brush against his skin and he would react embarrassingly. “Well, you’re easy,” she would tease and give his teepee a little pat. Albert would grin despite himself and make small talk with her.

“This is incontrovertibly the most dismal April we’ve ever had, a real T.S. Eliot kind of season, I honestly don’t know what they’re thinking, six more weeks of the groundhog in Hades, I guess,” he usually said and she would nod her head or give him a smile, or he would try: “If you feel the need to have your way with me, I won’t tell a soul, I understand, there’s something about restraint, something uninhibited, its really not your fault, you should embrace those feelings, and climb on board, you see, I’m ready…” But she never did.

Albert was quite sure he had made some mistake. She was not returning. The doctors didn’t know anything about her, or they claimed they didn’t, and Albert grew feverish. They calmed him the best they could, an administrator promised to look into it, and that helped, he recovered slowly. By now, he was able to move about. Everyday, he went to the nursing station and asked: “do I have any visitors coming this week?” He didn’t say anything specific about her, not with the pores at the end of their noses being bugged, or the cuticles of their nostril probing fingers having micro-recording devices (the skinnier of the two “regulars” had a mole the size of a dime on her upper lip, which, Albert was convinced, contained some sort of pigmented video relay projector), but he knew they knew who he was asking about, and they would always, annoyingly, in Albert’s opinion, sympathetically (artificially) answer “no.” However, this didn’t deter poor Albert, he had time and fantasies and his every other Tuesday nurse still appealed to him in her cleansed nun of the religion of the mind sort of way, a priestess of a forbidden temple of some lost faith, a very naughty, orgulous religion in which she was enslaved.

* * *

He was beginning to develop an escape plan, with the help of his every other Tuesday nurse, whom he was sure would help him. But he never got to implement it, for the very day he intended to broach the subject with his bather, the administrator announced that Harris would be coming for a brief visit.

Albert waited for weeks, they really couldn't say when, “soon” was all they knew. He tried to look better; his belly seeped over his regulation filament pants (they replaced the buttless gown after he had recovered from his wounds and was allowed out into the halls, there was something unclean about his ass hanging out and he often took to rubbing its bristly hide against unsuspecting nurses when he was in a good mood). He started to do crunches, not very many, not enough to make him sweat or breathe heavily, but all the same, a little something for her. He had gotten his head shaved when he first arrived, very military, very dapper, he thought, and he could now shower on his own — which brought up a host of problems, first being that the every other Tuesday nurse no longer gave him a sponge bath and thus, his winky was ignored, and secondly, he was vulnerable in the communal tile room. An assassin had made an attempt on his life just two days before, obviously highly-trained, the predator had actually gotten himself taken in as a patient and came after Lochner with the end of a tube of toothpaste. Luckily, Albert saw him coming, his own commando training switched on in an instant, and he karate chopped the guy in the neck, round house kicked him in the chin, and knocked him off his feet. Albert had been hit though, he hadn't been fast enough, right above his left eye, and blood began to stream down his face, making it difficult to see. The assassin, not missing a beat, leapt to his feet again like a break dancer ready to do some jigging and came after Albert again, masterfully stabbing the toothpaste tube at him in fitful lunges only an equally well trained soldier could parry, dodge, and avoid. Finally, the assassin made a mistake, over extending himself at just the wrong moment, and Albert swooped in, snapped his elbow, causing the deadly tube to fly skyward, kicked his legs out from under him, while keeping hold of his shattered arm, spun him around like a pro-wrestler ready to do a close-line maneuver, got the tube as it fell, and ninja starred it right into the guys larynx, severing the artery in his neck, the poor fool fell dead in the now pink drain of the shower.

They held her arrival over his head like a Damoclesian sword, forcing him to undergo interviews and experiments, keeping him in line with threats that she wouldn't be able to see him if he didn't behave, motivating him during group sessions, impregnating his mind with ideas about giving her a present he had made during arts & crafts (a finger painted portrait of her inner eye surrounded by angels, saints, and humming birds), and still, she did not come.

* * *

INTERROGATOR 1, colonel: And now part six of our on-going discussion THE STATE OF WELLNESS. Recently, Samuel asked us all our opinion on the mystery of uniped footprints in the jungles of the Congo. Today, we go back to 1969 and allow Albert, do you like Al? No. We allow Albert to share with us some of his thoughts.

(File footage of the Nagasaki inferno, a naked black child burning on the gallows, and an Austrian soldier entangled in the barbwire death camp of the Bulge)

INTERROGATOR 1: Of course, we will be respectful, mindful, and good listeners. We will give Albert the chance to explain to us what he finds so interesting about 1969. Remember, that was the year that Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on the moon, the year of the hippie, and the summer of love.

(File footage of a young black and white woman with bared breasts and flowers in her hair dancing with a grizzly bearded boy as a psychedelic band zombies on the stage, Ken Kesey flashing the peace sign, soldiers walking through the jungle of Vietnam, and the lone figure of an astronaut, the earth mirrored in his visor as the stars and stripes flutters in the vacuous wind of space.)

INTERROGATOR 2, captain: (singing) doo, daa, dooo, daa, dooo, da, tot, a doot, between the moon and New York City, the best you can do, the best that you can do, is fall in love…

Out-of-room voice 1: Columbia, this is Houston reading you loud and clear, over. I guess you're about the only person around that doesn't have TV coverage of the scene.

Out-of-room voice 2: That's all right. I don't mind a bit.

Voice 1: They've got the flag up now.

Voice 2: Beautiful, just beautiful.

Out-of-room voice 3: We are men from the planet Earth, first set foot upon the moon, July 1969 AD.

LOCHNER: Despite the fact that it was the crook (he makes quote signs in the air) that oversaw the whole thing, as dirty as they come…

President RICHARD NIXON: Hello, I'm talking to you by telephone from the Oval Room at the White House. And this certainly has to be the most historic telephone call ever made.

LOCHNER: er, captain doctor Albert Lochner, number 344 dash 858 dash 10910.

INTERROGATOR 2: It says they were dropped out a cargo plane at 40,000 feet and the splashdown was for television, along with the big parade and more Nixonite angst.

(File footage of capsule bobbing like a cork in ocean waves, the Red army marching in Moscow along side ICBMs and tanks, a map of the world turning bloody from Russia to London)

INTERROGATOR 3 (obviously military intelligence): The Queen Mother is a Bismarkian infidel, she's sold the House of Windsor to the Chinks, we're being bamboozled while you cannoodle with the enemy. It's all right here, the Song of Solomon, not a love poem, a prophecy…

INTERROGATER 1: We're giving Albert some time today, let's focus… Now Albert, you were talking about Richard Millhouse Nixon…

INTERROGATER 4: …an onslaught of Amazons, impaled male heads on spears, and bloody nipple acid spouts and a ceremony for the castration of mankind, there is a scheme afoot. They are invading government in hordes, whores of hordes, hordes of whores, and America doesn't even know the Zuluness of it, the secret network of vaginas, they have lips you know, you ever notice how every woman is a lesbian, they let their vaginal lips do the talking while our hard pricks remain silent, we won't know what happened.

LOCHNER: Quite a smoke screen.

(File footage of smoke wafting over an unknown city, people running from tear gas canisters and riot police)

Out-of-room-voice 4: He's a whistleblower, knows too much… the space race with the Ruskies, he's one of them. He was a technical advisor for V2Blitz Incorporated throughout the entire episode.

LOCHNER: Since I have an astrophysics background, I was intrigued, OK, but I'm no snitch, I sat in the backseat of that car for over two years, only escaped, or tried to escape, twice.

INTERROGATER 1: So Albert believes we never stepped foot on the moon. It's Albert's contention that the whole historical event was fabricated in Russia and Rainer National Park in Washington State.

LOCHNER: It was ideal, television was a new, malleable medium, we didn't have science fiction TV yet, so it was very easy to fool the general public.

INTERROGATER 1: According to Albert, we couldn't, technologically speaking, travel to the moon in 1969, we still aren't advanced enough.

LOCHNER: It was Kennedy's fault. That's why the killed him, he and those other three astronauts, and probably Bobby too.

INTERROGATER 1: He maintains that the entire Apollo Space Program was created…

LOCHNER: Caesar Kennedy and his damn promises and the cold war…

INTERROGATER 1: …fabricated for patriotism and that he was part of it.

LOCHNER: And then they continued, giving big bucks to the military-industrial complex, spend, spend, spend, gotta beat the Reds.

Out-of-room voice 2: This one right here?

Out-of-room voice 1: That’s it. You got it right there.

Out-of-room voice 3: Our flight collected 200 pounds of lunar surface samples.

Out-of-room voice 4: I got it. That’s 20 pounds of, that’s 20 pounds of rock.

INTERROGATOR 1: Throughout the late sixties and early seventies, we sent several men on several different missions to the moon.

Out-of-room voice 3: We were just bouncing around like two little kids and babbling back and forth, and we had a wonderful, exciting, emotional time.

Out-of-room voice 1: Oh, rats.

Out-of-room voice 3: There's so much overwhelming evidence… it has to be true. Conspiracies feed un-Americans.

Out-of-room voice 5: If you're asking me what the hard proof is besides the — the photographic record and the film records that we have, we also have a large number of samples that are viewed chemically very different than any rocks that you would find here on the earth.

INTERROGATOR 1: For Albert, the lunar landings are protean assertions his experience indicates are false, like having faith. He has difficulty with accepting that which he can’t prove. For example, the names of the missions: Apollo, Gemini, Mercury. Why did they choose pagan gods? That’s something we’ve talked about frequently.

INTERROGATOR 5 (CIA): There was a real Hebrew element to it.

LOCHNER: And what about the lactose intolerance of it all?

Out-of-room voice 2: There’s about three sources of light on the lunar surface. Like on earth, the sun is the strongest, the earth was there, and then there’s the reflecting pool surface of the Sea of Tranquility. That reflected light makes the moon visible, it steals it from the sun and passes it off as its own glow.

LOCHNER: And why are the stars shining in the heavens and not in the hells?

Out-of-room voice 2: The sky's pitch black because there are no stars, and only one sun, the one that god built for Adam and Eve way back when, when he first spoke.

INTERROGATOR 2: And Washingtonwood spun it like a great myth, and we all bought it ‘cause we’re gullible lizards, not men.

(File footage of komodo dragons, an alligator basking in the sun beside a river, claymation dinosaurs roam a volcanic world)

INTERROGATOR 1: Nineteen sixty-nine, Apollo 11 lands on the moon.

(Clip from “Jesus of Nazareth,” as actor Danny Wallace is crucified by Roman legionnaires, his chest pierced, his face ragged and bloody, he intones: “Father… father, why have you forsaken me?”)

INTERROGATOR 6 (NASA): And even if we had faked the whole yarn, we pulled it off, believe it or accept your excommunication from the dream. We’re not hosting any subversives, no fags or poets, or Wobblies, or atheists.

(Clip from “The Crucible” in which a group of women are hauled away by the chief inquisitor)

INTERROGATOR 1: But why does he know the truth and no one else? Is it possible that we’ve all been duped except for this one man?

Out-of-room voice 1: Looking across the beauty of the moon, it's the most barren place imaginable because there's never been any life up there. But it's beautiful in its way because it's rolling terrain, gray in color.

Out-of-room voice 3: (Singing) If you get caught between the moon and New York City… the best that you can do…

Out-of-room voice 6: (From file footage) Well, it's a great majesty to look up in the velvet sky and to see the earth with all of humanity back there, and that's where home is. The moon was a magnificent desolation.

Out-of-room voice 3: Houston confirms a good ignition. Start on (unintelligible).

Out-of-room voice 2: What a ride! What a ride!

INTERROGATOR 1: So what are we to do for Albert? How do we help him?

Out-of-room voice 1: Doctor Albert Lochner, good morning.

INTERROGATOR 7 (Galactica): Good morning to you too…

INTERROGATOR 1: What irrefutable evidence do you have that this never happened? You’re a scientist, where’s your proof Albert. Let’s talk about that…

LOCHNER: Well, I have first-hand experience, the fundamental reason I know is because I saw it faked, I helped you fake it. I was there from the very start. From the first day, you recruited me, I was only too willing.

INTERROGATOR 3: I, I mean, after all, we were not big buddies with the Soviets during the Cold War. We had an arms race, and the space race going on. We were able to detect what the Soviets were doing. They were certainly tracking what we were doing, and if we'd filmed the whole thing, and the notion that we had some sort of sweetheart deal with the Soviets…

INTERROGATOR 4: Right, because I was going to say…

LOCHNER: …that’s ignorance, I think that time will tell, we’re in league with the whole globe, invented history, pay-offs, kick-backs, promises, contracts, all so one nation can claim some historical truth, but its all in the past, you willy-nilly bastards, don’t you see, there’s no way to verify it, you can’t witness it, you take secondary hearsay sources and you say: Shakespeare was most certainly a vampire, but you never saw him, never met him, never heard his voice, or watched him write.

INTERROGATOR 2: …fighting the Vietnam War, you think I don’t know men who’ve been maimed by gooks and died by the Cong’s sneaky guerilla warfare? There’s dominoes falling all over the place, a wonder none have hit you, you’re ignoring the arms race and the Russians in Cuba, going after Key West…that we paid them off, I think makes it very difficult to understand why we were fighting the Vietnam War, why we had the arms race and everything else going on. This would — frankly, if we had paid off the Soviets to not tell anybody about the moon race, that would not be the big story.

LOCHNER: The big story’s that every century was a hoax, and I don't think anybody believes that.

INTERROGATOR 4: But what sort of cahoots are we talking about here, are we talking about the friendly buddy, buddy kind of warm regard, or we talking serious fucking?

INTERROGATOR 1: I think this has a lot more to do with the very American suspicions of big government, the idea that the King is up to no good and at our expense. Its very independent, very spirited, the very ideals our country was founded upon. But I think in this case Albert’s taken his theories too far, his inhabited them, and that’s why he’s here. We need to help him come back to the land of the real, throw our lassos up there and swing him back to earth.

LOCHNER: I would tie roses to your knots as peace offerings… perhaps send a lunar emissary with a note, but he’d refuse to land, only pump up the helium and float back without a response.

INTERROGATOR 4: I knew they were up to no good, damn royal family, just a bunch of Nazi cows with anemic blood. That’s why Rasputin was able to overthrow the czars, and Anastasia was the only one to survive, probably gave ‘em all a go at her hinny.

INTERROGATOR 1: And you say it's really quite implausible that we stepped foot on the moon?

LOCHNER: Easily explained.

(File footage of Albert Einstein teaching, young students nodding, and college graduates walking down the carpet with diplomas)

INTERROGATOR 5: (Singing) This is ground control to Major Tom, you’ve really made the grade…

INTERROGATOR 7: (Singing) …and the papers want to know whose shirts you wear…

INTERROGATOR 5, 7, 2, & 4: (Singing) This is Major Tom to ground control, I’m stepping… (humming) …through the door…in a most peculiar way… (humming) …and the stars look very different today…

INTERROGATOR 1: Like the leap from no rockets during the Second World War to moon walking in just twenty years, or the radiation, and the know-how…

LOCHNER: Right, right.

INTERROGATOR 1: We went from biplanes to jets in a relatively short amount of time.

LOCHNER: You don’t understand how time really works. Everybody knows about minutes and hours and days and months and years, but they really haven’t comprehended the dimensional aspects of what time is, the directional significance, the longitude and latitude of time. Nor do you understand what time can do to the truth, it’s a bit like bleach.

INTERROGATOR 1: The implication being…

LOCHNER: We’ve been brainwashed by the concept.

INTERROGATOR 1: …we’re somehow conditioned or programmed to — to accept false information, that time is what?

LOCHNER: The question isn’t about tricking us about the exact nature of time, but the evidence is always present. Ever notice how different days feel longer than others do or how one person can think that two hours have passed by, while another thinks only minutes. Consider sleep…

INTERROGATOR 1: Are we sleeping?

LOCHNER: …its an active part of life, the brain is doing some funky things, and it takes up time, 1/3 of your life, and yet, you have no concept of the hours you laid in bed, it doesn’t feel like six hours or eight hours, or a short nap can seem long, while a full night of sleep can seem like a second. What we’re talking about here is a major event horizon conspiracy, a myth so entrenched in our subconscious, we cannot fathom its fallacy, its fabrication. If its so pliable, so conscious-based, can’t it be utilized as a tool, like directions… which way is north? If you are standing on the South Pole, every way is north, but can you go west? Time is little more than direction intensified… events happen in time, just like they happen at specific locations, which are defined by their relation to other places, so if things happen at specific times, in relation to other times — not that day, but the next, or not that hour but two or three before, where did the relationship originate and how do we, as laypeople, know it is true?

INTERROGATOR 1: Either that or, as we know, things happened when we think they happened…

LOCHNER: A conspiracy of titanic proportions.

INTERROGATOR 1: …perhaps involving some fabrication, but generally speaking, true. What other things, or what would be the benefit, Albert, of creating a myth as you’ve described? How would this help people or assist government? Is there some reasoning behind them selling us this bill of goods?

LOCHNER: How do you know Columbus sailed the ocean blue in 1492? How do you know that the country was founded in 1776 or that there was a war of 1812? Have you met an eyewitness or seen any incontrovertible evidence? Is there any way to really know for sure that history actually happened, that the world wasn’t created the day before you were born? We’re told in church that indeed, one day the world was puff — there. Is there any way to know when that day was or if there ever was a day or if this is all just the dream of a species of angels?

INTERROGATOR 4: Breeding angels?

INTERROGATOR 1: Kind of a part of it is a blurring between fact and fiction.

INTERROGATOR 7: Pop, I said Poppy, a piece of Pop Poppy…

Out-of-room voice 3: Shhhhhh…

Out-of-room voice 6: It’s working too good.

Out-of-room voice 1: The sodium amytal suppository.

LOCHNER: The Cambridge Seven, those were the days.

INTERROGATOR 1: It says you never completed high school.

LOCHNER: On Massachusetts Avenue, only we used to call it mass-of-two-shits.

INTERROGATOR 5: Well, we — you saw it in the commercial for foot powder, she’s so happy she’d got VD, cuddlin’ and ridin’ in the boat.

INTERROGATOR 1: And do you realize Albert where you were?

INTERROGATOR 3: Your true name is Poppy Malloy, of the Jersey Malloy’s, two, two, seven, nine Fitzgerald Street, apartment one eleven, your father was a Nihilist at Stoddard’s Drug Store on Folly Boulevard and your mother, well — you know your mother arranged flowers for painters, up until, up until, well, that nasty accident…

Out-of-room voice 1: Major Tom?

Out-of-room voice 3: Lovely.

(File footage of women smiling in lengthy bathing suits during a beauty pageant)

Out-of-room voice 7: Science fiction stories about space with rockets in the shape of tea saucers and anal probing aliens and look out, LOOK OUT.

LOCHNER: Captain doctor Albert Lochner, number 344 dash 858 dash 10910.

INTERROGATOR 4: And if — and if — right.

Out-of-room voice 11:…they all conspiracies?

INTERROGATOR 1: And if it was beyond our technological capacity to land on the moon, at what point did the fake space program turn into the real space program?

(File footage of the Zeppelin crashing, the first attempts at flight, a man with wooden wings jumping off a barn, a jet)

INTERROGATOR 5: …why she can just kiss and hug and all that, no fear of repercussions, not if she’s smilin’.

INTERROGATOR 1: Well, Albert, I think we’ve made some interesting progress today.

Out-of-room voice 2: Progress of the brain worm…

(File footage of an earthworm burrowing into soil)

INTERROGATOR 4: And if they are burning their rubbish, are they polluting it, the black smoke?

INTERROGATOR 7: Pollute your black smoke.

INTERROGATOR 3: …but she was only disfigured, she still had a juicy cunt and big boobies, put a bag on her head, that’s what the old man used to say Poppy, when he’d nibble on her arse with his pinching fingers.

Out-of-room voice 4: Yes.

Out-of-room voice 2: Good to see YOU again.

Out-of-room voice 1: We’ll be back with more misinformation after you take your nap and your meds.

INTERROGATOR 5, 7, 2, & 4: (Singing) …floating round my tin can… far above the moon…

* * *

Lo and behold, Albert steps over the dead cat carcass delusion in the hallway and comes upon four guys and their maker huddled around the wall. There’s Lolly McGuire, a narcissistic necrophiliac from New Haven with one eye sewn shut and a gaping lobotomy hole in his forehead where a crucifix tattoo used to be; Johnny Changing, a tabescent taphephobe hailing from Omaha who Napoleonically always has his hand stuffed down his trousers and lets everyone know he’s touching himself (“I’m touching myself, I’m touching myself”); Vance Engels, diagnosed with acute kakorrhaphiophobia and present, allegedly, due to his epistemophilic poetry, of which he hands out on paper scraps during evening “free” time to anyone willing to promise him they won’t prejudge it until they’ve conceived of their own misgivings; Ladybirde Matteoto, an effeminate castrophenic with bi-effective demophobia who has a strange nyctophoniac tone during nightly discussion in the card room; and the one and only hyperhedonic, brimborian, and mendaciloquent maritodespot, playing craps and engaged in a heated, rather secretive, hubbub over someone’s roll.

“What are ya playin’” he asks, “for?”

“Redemption, sin, sacrifice, a new covenant, perhaps some wings,” Johnny Changing says, tickling the dice in his semeny palm.

Albert crouches down as if to initiate himself in their little union, but immediately feels as though he’s not wanted. The shooter stops and eyes the new arrival with a holy glare, mutely suggests his annoyance, and rattles the dice over the floor.

“Ohhhh,” the general peal comes, as he’s rolled a niner.

“Damn,” he says under his breath, just loud enough to thunder.

“That’s it, that’s it,” Vance Engels shouts, jumping jacks, and boxer dances. “My nebula now.”

“You’ll get it,” Ladybirde Matteoto promises, fetching the dice and handing them back to the shooter. “Snake eyes, one, two, three…”

“I want in,” Albert tries before the shoot, “I want in.”

The shooter, life-giver and life-taker, the tap dancer of the genesis and the voice of the big bang, blows hard on his cupped hand, sending all five back in a sort of hurricane reel, arms swooping, balance off, gives his arm a good swing, and tosses again.

“Noooo,” they chorus.

“No such luck for the almighty,” Lolly McGuire gags, even snapping his fingers.

“Whose was that, whose was that?” the hermaphrodite asks.

“Mine, all mine,” Vance Engels chimes, “two thousand light years of real estate and eternal life.”

“I want in,” Albert tries again, “can I get in on it — please, please?”

“You gotta ask the bossman,” chuckles Lolly.

“What do you say, I go to church, I’ve read the bible like four times, come on, let a guy have a chance,” Albert pleads to his creator.

The icon head assents to his challenge and dusts off his hands on his toga.

“What’s the bet?” Ladybirde asks, clutching the dice as the mediator.

“I want to be the monarch of the moons, not just this one, but every damn one of them, and I want to have a rose garden and be called the Little Prince, and speak some French, and be omnipotent, and…”

“For?”

“What did you guys play for?” Albert looks about to his fellow crappers.

“A ride in my MG,” Johnny says, “and Ladybirde promised him homemade bran muffins.”

“I got a book about migrating birds he seemed interested in,” Vance explains, “and I threw in my LP collection,” he asides to Albert, “I only got three, but he don’t know that.”

“Baseball cards,” Albert tries, looking excitedly at the divine.

“Need to sweeten it,” Lolly says.

“All right, I got a shoe box full of pez dispensers.”

God agrees.

Its Albert’s turn first, he wipes a little snot, just like the big leaguers, onto the inside of his index finger and thumb, rolls the dice craftily from one finger to the other, and checks their weight, does a few tosses in the air, and finally, rubs them between his hands as though he’s trying to warm up a bit. By now, Jehovah’s gotten a little impatient, so Albert crouches down into shooting position, and lets them fly. Rattle, rattle, rattle… a one and a three. He receives the dice from Johnny, does his whole routine again, before they take them away and give them to god. He twinkles a little with his fingers and tosses unceremoniously. Rattle, rattle, rattle… a four and a five.

“All right then,” Albert meditates, giving the dice a good warm up and spinning his shooting arm before letting loose. Rattle, rattle, rattle… a three and… yes, a three… Monarch of the Moons. “Show you right.”

“Daaammmm,” Vance slurs.

The creator’s not too pleased with himself and gruffly shakes his head and snorts holy water snot, a little of which catches Albert on the chin. He’s 0 for 5 with this crowd. “Bitch,” he whispers earth-quakingly and wanders off dejectedly, his mighty crowned head down and his big winged shoulders hunched forward.

Albert’s quite pleased and waits respectfully until the maker is out of ear-shot before he says: “Kicked his sanctified ass.”

“That we did,” Ladybirde confirms, a good sport ungloatingly.

“He’ll recover,” Lolly offers, as though a therapist for them all.

3

His white pleated paper thimble is filled brightly this evening, all sorts of stimulating colors; he trolls the contents to see what he’s got. “Hmmm…” he’s done well, some psychotropics, mooders, downers, psychedelics, and then, well then, he sees it, and he fumbles through the pile, dripping pills like jelly beans onto the floor, hearing faintly their scurrying rolls, and he retrieves her.

Hoisting it like an Olympian torch, Albert waddles desperately towards his room, too agitated to bother with the rainbow of chaos he’s created on the tiles, or the throng of greedy poppers all scrambling for the best high, or the every other Tuesday nurse bending at her waist to pick up a rotten towel, her buttocks framed perfectly and crying out for a good whack. He smells her hair already, and can almost feel it against his face. As he downs his Styrofoam water, he plops it in his mouth and smells her body.

He enters his room and stands at the door, thinking she might already be in bed, but she’s not. He checks underneath, out the window, perhaps in the closet. Patience. He sits at the end of his mattress and rubs his hands together. His gaze is downcast, staring at his over-working fingers rolling methodically over each other, he realizes there’s a presence, someone at the door, and he’s caught within her eyes, sympathetically, apprehensively looking into his.

“I had trouble…”

“Harris, Harris…”

He’s off the bed and against her, her mouth hot and mixing with his tongue, her thin arms draped around his neck like a prize, he’s clutching her against his entire body, wants even their knees to be touching. She’s wearing a speckled summer dress of lavender flowers and vines. He remembers when she bought it, debuted it for him right out of the dressing room, pirouetted proudly in it, its brief lines swinging up and exposing her nude thighs. He’s already rubbed one red, plunked the back up and roamed around her synthetic silk panties, causing one side to ride up her crack, exposing the full cheek. He’s buried his face in the cradle of her neck and shoulder, where the stench of her sex is most maternal, his none ass grabbing hand is in her armpit, moist and aromatic. He quivers slightly, the whole existentialist days forcing him to rejoice too strongly, his composure tossed off like a challenge, his body reflexively contorting itself in elated vertigo. He tries to remain circumspect, at first, reminding himself of his suspicion, and the guarded secrets she’s been hired to loosen, he stares into her face, her whole face, investigating it for a plot, for the purpose of this new charade, but he only sees an Aphrodite mask. He tells himself there are too many pretenses, that they need to talk about the last time, as she purrs against his shoulder and pelvis grinds, swivels those savory hips along with his fumblings, that this is just further deceit. Was that love in her eyes or contention? He’s misread her from the very genesis, from the bar to the base, how many men has she been bedded with since then, a hundred, two, all of them embraced and given full access. It hurt him so, the betrayal, the men she’s ran through the script with, all those foreign fingers inside her, those anonymous dicks poking her good, those sweaty mouths cupping her nipples, hands roaming her freely, her going along with it the same way, visiting her victims like a saintly siren of sensual salvation, come to give them all a little toss before wandering onto her next roll. He was ashamed of himself for holding her, afraid he wouldn’t let go when he should.

“Oh, Harris…” was all he could manage.

“Don’t worry, you don’t have to say anything,” she breathes into his ear. She’d been in town for a week, just trying to get a pass to see him. An officer, a captain by the name of Franks, had taken pity upon her and gotten her in (how many times did she blow him for that? What sort of nasty little promises did she make? What sort of illicit acts?). An injured dog of jealousy barked in his mind. They must be getting desperate, that last interview hadn’t gone well for them, he’d toyed with them and they knew it. And now… now he was the prince of rose blooming rock satellites. They were really failing on this one. She’s been given the green light: fuck him into confession. No, no, no…

But, to feel her skin, to see her jade eyes, and smell her winterfresh breath, he couldn’t risk it, he couldn’t preserve himself, not with that there and that there (he’s taken to probing her between the legs), and those bouncing buttons on her chest. He’s pitiful. The jealousy he felt has subdued, he had to settle himself down, down boy, don’t let those wily charms work over his analytical prick. She picks up on it immediately, a true professional, begins to really turn it on, the two still pressed together, her entire ass hanging out, his hand now motionless, just resting on the exposed cheek, she begins to lead him by leaning back, to the bed. Ah, ha. He statues himself in place. She looks up doll eyed, comic books her lower lip out, and tilts her head impeachingly. She remains still, save her nervous groin.

“I’m soppy wet for it,” she intones warily, “don’t make me beg.”

They have had her locked up in the desert outside of Windhoek, where the sand is so cinnamon it looks like it should be surfed with toast. There were no other men — only a girl about a year out of high school who’d come from a Manhattan socialite’s womb and joined her church’s mission to convert the animists in the Kalahari region. Only, she got caught up with a dark man, a chief’s son, who convinced her to join their land war against the progeny of the Boerish Dutch. She was arrested after a bomb went off in a fat white man’s mansion, killing all eight of his Negro servants, but not harming the master of the house, and taken to the jail. Harris met her and spooned her affectionately every night, asexually, until the girl was sitting at the edge of their bed, weeping, feeling sorry for herself, her skirt pulled over her knees and leaned down to lay her head on the pillow and exposed a sliver of her rouge maw. Admittedly, Harris had dove for it and not let go until the little whiner was creamy all over and opened up and subdued. After that, her and her little action figure (garnering the name from her willingness to allow Harris to practice invultuation upon her) pulled the itchy army blankets up over their heads every night and slurped and sucked and grinded until morning chow call.

She was released just thirty days before, after sanitation and debriefing. The young girl, as far as she knew, was still there, probably fingering herself constantly, she’d become a real whore. Harris showed Albert some pictures, she looked like a girl on the cover of cereal box, freckles on her checks and nose, big blue pond eyes, a slightly off-kilter grin, brown pigtails and baby fat arms. Albert licked his lips, imagining two sets of boobies brushing against one another and furry chops meshing together.

Albert listens, calculating the accuracy and the plausibility versus the doubtful and the fabricated, decides the total equals truth, at least some granule of it, and tries to forget the gnawing questions about last time. Why’d she do it? There was no one he could trust, certainly not this silver-lipped, sex crazed super spy. But she was there, finally with him, after all those nihilistic hours of waiting. He should be overjoyed, clamoring to get that dress off, he should have his dick in her right now, she should be scratchy his back with her long nails, and grunting, and they should be in sweaty delight. He could share a vagina. He’d done it in the past, so what, for now, if she’s lying, if she’s just been dicked by more men than he’s ever known, throw in some midgets and a giant, or some girls. She was there, had been rubbing him just the right way.

They played card games, Harris and Albert, in his room, beside the reflective night window. She convinced him to wander the grounds on not too bright days, to feed the dirty air rats in the driveway, and sit on the veranda and watch the twilight. They let her sit in on one of his interviews, something they agreed to a little too easily, in his opinion. He said more than his registration number, name, and rank, actually mentioned his mum, that was all they wanted, really, for him to cathartically blame her, and she held him after it was over in her arms. For the first time, they’d been so near to each other, she didn’t taunt him with her possible nudity or provoke him to fondle her quaggling petals, or engage him in paizogony immediately. They laid together and slept.

* * *

Harris’ Love Song for Albert

My wine is warm, I’m wondering whether I should have ever known you at all

The day is clear and I just can’t see beyond my windows

Because you’re so dear to me, so dear to me,

And it reminds me that I can take it all

Now the light is dripping from cold rain clouds, I drank too much,

I couldn’t sleep last night,

Not without you

Because you’re so dear to me, so dear to me,

And it reminds me that I can take it all

I’ve fetched you a beer, I’m wondering why I think you’re here

The hours are cruel and the days are longer still

I’m waiting for the day to come

When you’re near to me, so dear to me,

And it reminds me that I can take it all

So frightened for your empty hands, sleep leaves through the morning door

I used to watch you dream

And wonder if I was there

Because you’re so dear to me, so dear to me,

And it reminds me that I can take it all.

She, and Them, those that she was working for, were giving him back his axiopistic fantasy, the nubile wife with clinomania, caring, a little naughty, comforting. They stayed in his room mostly, Harris got dressed rarely, only when they were required to eat in the dining hall or for an appointment. Albert, for his part, didn’t leave the bed often, save for a glass of water or to fetch himself another package of cigarettes. He maintained his distance; never let himself believe she was there only for him. He knew he had to remember that, for one day she would be leaving, and he had to protect himself. She was aware of it, she tried to get him to talk with her about it, tried to rebuild permanently broken bounds, but he saw the lapis vacuum in her eyes, the distant forced emotions she feigned feeling, he recognized her role.

“Ally,” wondering aloud sounding, thespianly, “may I have you do something for me?” She’s at the other end of the bed, laying on her belly, her feet in the air, as she applies fingernail polish. Albert’s reading a newspaper, alternately studying the text and staring down at her posterior positioned slightly arched. She waves her wet fingernails and turns her head; their eyes meet briefly. He’s attentive, so she sends a lone finger down the crack, parts her legs more, and circles the hole, gives it a few little taps. Then, she makes eye contact again. Albert feels himself reacting to her proposition, she knew he’d never done that before, she knew that he wanted to but was too Presbyterian, she elevates her hinny a little bit, keeps her finger probing. He considers it, she said that she hated it, knew it had to be done, for Them, but that it hurt, hurt for days. He didn’t know it was so important, he begins to consider how imperative he is to Them. They’ve given her a message: Time to go to Sex-Con 5.

He waits for her hand to be just right and he clubs it with his closed fist. She screeches as it tears in, her own finger. He’s on her before she can remove it, straddling her thighs, grabs her offending hand and pushes. She tries, at first, to fight back, but he’s too strong. He uses both arms, shoving it further, she cries out a few times, as her finger edges its way deeper, but its too dry. He dumps a tube of her hand lotion in great ejaculating spurts onto her quivering cheeks, massages it into the fissure, and has her lubed properly. He forces her hand back and forth, two fingers in and out and way in and out, and way in and out. She’s grinding against the bed, caterwauling every time it disappears all the way to the knuckle, her gold band hiding, until Albert can’t stand it any longer and pulls her to her knees and drives himself deep into her shit-can.

* * *

“I don’t want that little retard in my house,” he hears Aunt Edna as he opens the backdoor and enters her linoleum, Spring-lit kitchen, clutching a pink ribboned present and a basket of technicolor eggs.

“Aunt Edna,” his mother’s pleading voice from down the hall, “he’s doing much better…”

“He’s not welcome,” her voice quakes.

“…it’s Easter Sunday…”

He was supposed to stay in the car. She’d looked back into the rearview mirror, but not the way she usually did, not with those disconsolate, dismayed eyes, but with a compassionate, earnest gape, and told the little boy in the middle of the seat, in his one and only cobalt blue suit and peach bow tie, after the tired hours of the sermon about Jesus’ second coming in the portentous temple, his little fingers fumbling with the ribbon of his proud gift, that she had to go in and make sure there was an Easter celebration at his distant aunt’s home. He knew it was untrue, not because she lied to him often, but because he could tell from her humility and her apprehension. Albert waited, his eyes downcast, discomfited, the way they always were now, that silent divulsion for his ill behavior, how it embarrassed her, how it upset her, until he couldn’t remain any longer, a sudden trepidation that she wasn’t coming back, that she’d left him in the car, and sought the asylum of Aunt Edna’s sympathetic ears. Albert climbed out of the backseat, fidgeted at the car door, he didn’t want to get in trouble, tried to assemble a feasible lie, and took up the present and the eggs, which he attentively watched mutely changing. He would bring them to his mother, “mommy, you forgot the eggs.”

His cousin Sandy, standing near a metallic white with red and blue stripes jungle gym, her finger near her mouth, her eyes set upon him, took flight when he emerged from the car door. She’d been watching him since they arrived, her enormous elliptic eyes fixed upon him as he sat motionless in the car, only his lips moving. Albert knew she understood about him, even in her innocence, and he felt self-conscious and culpable within her gaze, even little kids know he’s diseased.

He finally made his decision and mounted the partially bare, partially ivory steps, and stood before the screen door. It could make a noise, screen doors on back porches are want to do that sometimes. His little cherub arms were filled with the elaborately packaged box and the cedar branches of the egg basket, he had to put them down to open the door. He placed them beside the stairs and gently, hesitantly pulled the handle, stretched his foot out to hold it open, and reclaimed the package and the basket. He stepped into the familiar kitchen and stopped.

“He doesn’t belong here,” Aunt Edna was agitated, angry with his mother, because of him, because of what he had done.

“…for family…” her voice was injured.

“We love Albert,” a new voice, remembered as Vera’s, Uncle Ed’s wife, “but he’s unwell. Edna’s just watching out for the other children…”

“…he’s all alone…” she was begging.

“Its too much to ask,” his aunt said with finality.

Albert felt his guilt rising, trickles of saliva rolled off his lower lip and onto a cloudy blue egg, heat seared his face, he was afraid the coffer of his ribs would rupture, the features of the room swirled, pressing heavily down upon him. They were blaming her for him, she was unwelcome, he had ruined it for her. She couldn’t find out he’d heard, or knew, her eyes would betray how saddened she was in him, again, increasing, the mortified depression collected around her pupils, he saw it everyday, everyday overwhelming her stare. He’d humiliated her enough, even he knew that, could tell, became so obliquely aware after each time, she tried to cloak it with strained smiles and a lighthearted tone, but he felt it, each time, erupting within his heart.

He had to get out, leave before she returned, get back in the car, and look like he’d been waiting the entire time, later he’d say: “I saw Cousin Sandy by the play structure,” to let her know that he had waited, not moved. Albert turned quickly, willing himself out of the house, away from their words, and the weight in his arms changed, suddenly lighter, multiple crackles spewed from the floor, the hollow smack of the basket handle, he had time to realize it, see the split carcasses of pastel egg shells and the meaty white and yellow insides gushing out, he tried to get by them, get out before…

Two steps and his body was falling, he saw the modest chandelier, the stains from the stove on the ceiling and felt the thud of his body against the linoleum, the sticky cushion of twenty or more eggs against his back, the tangled shattering reverberation of the serving bowl in the box as it collided with the ground, the sound of footfalls on the carpet in the hall. He’d hit his head, the pain still resounded within it, but he rose as quickly as he could, felt the fragments of egg matter drip from the back of his arms and his rear, and scrambled for the door. She couldn’t know…

“Albert,” he heard her specifically, but refused to accept it, as he stumbled down the steps, and heard the screen door knock against the frame. He got across the lawn, just as the back door was reopened, he was by their car, but couldn’t get in, not dirty. He didn’t turn, he couldn’t see them, they were all on the back porch, he stared at the back window, refusing to look. He felt contact, her hands upon his shoulders, he couldn’t help it, he was weeping, he’d tried not to, tried to contain it, but he couldn’t, not with them standing there, not with the present shattered, the eggs all over the kitchen floor, the words he’d heard spoken, the horrible, horrible guilt radiating within the pit of his belly.

She gently tugged his jacket off his arms, they said something, he didn’t hear, or chose not to hear, as she wiped the back of his trousers with her hand. The car door was opened, she’d moved to the back and opened the trunk. He climbed in, snot leaking into his mouth, his eyes itching with brackish tears, his chest quivering, and buried his face in the seat. The door was shut. Silence. She opened the driver’s door, the car lurched with her weight, the door shut, the car started, the music picking up again, and they were moving…

2

Albert woke in the predawn hours of the morning; Harris was sleeping soundly, her legs parted as if she’d been riding a horse too long. The coming light streamed delicately over her curves, the blankets discarded sometime in the night, exposing her entirely. Perhaps someone had come into the room and slid them down her body ever so gently, not waking her, but voyeuristically revealing her for their own masturbatory purposes. Perhaps they’d even chanced a touch, petted her silky pubic hair, or nibbled on a nipple. No. Albert had to decide. What he chose, as he looked upon her, saw her uncomfortably sore crotch, was to accept that she had wanted his pleasure that night, wanted to sacrifice something of herself for him. They may have sent her, may have even prompted her to offer her vulnerable hinny, read to her some passage from his file and clung to some anal-retentive character trait, a psychological clue to his weaknesses for girls’ posteriors, but she had made the offer with her one and true asshole. He could either spend those precious moments on Their motives, puppet stringing her onto all fours, or accept that she was genuinely trying to share herself completely. Albert felt saddened by his own manipulation, after he’d made his choice, holding her arm behind her back and forcing her to do that…

It was not as though he’d investigated it analytically, or consciously weighed the decision, he’d realized during the act, when she had been tortured into crying but continued to push back, she hadn’t fought, struggled a little at first, when he’d initially drove her long fingernails inside, but her arm went limp once she was aware. That was not Them, for how could They know he was going to do that, that was her, Harris, relenting, a silent agreement to let him try his perversity out on her, her eyes had said it. It was during that sacrifice and the moments afterwards, when exhaustion had him collapse atop her spent body, probed, aching, and repellent, when her sobs were the only thing left and the stench of her sweat and shit hung on the sheets, when she’d caught her breath, stopped convulsing, turned her head and kissed him lightly on the lips. It was the actualization of her will, her will to allow him, to invite him, to agree to him, in which he found his answer.

Through the rest of her visit, Albert was gentle with her, they walked hand-in-hand as they strolled the grounds of the hospital, cuddled on the benches in the protective shade of the great oak tree he had found so frightening days before, made soft love in the grass behind the rhododendron bushes, near the fence, and no longer talked of Them.

“When you leave here,” she said, her knees pulled up to her chest, a candle the only light, late in the dark, “we’ll find an apartment near the zoo and fill it with trinkets we buy together at swap meets and second-hand stores. There will be pictures on the walls of our time together, travels to sunny places, both of us in bathing suits, with mixed drinks, standing before waterfalls, and on horses. We’ll have a big, plush couch that’s perfect for sleeping on and Sundays we’ll never leave the house, just lay in bed or on our couch and make love and eat and watch television. Then, in the evening, I’ll get up and put an apron on, that’s all I’ll wear, and I’ll make you a marvelously big dinner that we’ll eat in the nude, with wine. Afterwards, once we’ve both had a little too much to drink, we’ll cuddle for awhile, until we can’t handle each other’s skin so near any longer and we’ll make love one last time, before the work week starts.”

“I’m sorry Harris… for… for doing… doing that to you…”

“I wish I could have been you,” she replied instead. “Do you know that? Did you ever know that?”

“No,” he whispered, looking down into his glass, “I don’t understand.”

“Its not bad, you’ve always thought so, I know that, but its who you are. There’s something balanced about you, you’ve known so much that others will never understand — they’re all real, they are…”

“I will make you something, something for our home.”

“Oh Albert, that’s all I want.”

The following day, she was gone, returning to Them, leaving him alone in the prison, to go back to her life with the department. She probably knew it was the last night, had not told him, for she had to disappear again, invisibly, unemotionally, and had refused to let him sleep. They sat up, laying close, her breath against his neck, her body pressed warmly against his, cradled around him, his hand gently sliding over her skin. Albert remembered just before closing his eyes, her love poem, listening to her sing in her sweet, untrained voice, her love song. She said she wrote it while waiting to see him again. Never explained the last time, the rape, and the arrest, the disappearance, the month in a Namibian concentration camp, he’d forgot to try to understand, just accepted it, again, another one of her fabrications, or something she’d chosen not to divulge to him.

He woke and stared at her pillow, the remnants of her weight still impressed upon the down, a string of her hair found on a corner, her smell still clinging to the sheets. He knew, at least he told himself he knew, that she would leave and that he would wake up one morning to her absence, again. He didn’t want to move for fear that he would change the bed, pressure removing the wrinkles she had made, or that the housecleaners would come and change the sheets, remove the pillowcase, walk off with her aroma and the remnants of her presence. As long as the pillow was still indented, as long as her hair was still littered on the mattress, her place in bed still warm, she’d not be gone for too long.

Over the weeks afterward, there were false alarms, near misses, when he’d inspect his rations, and think, for a brief instant, that she was there. He was almost sure, one summer day, waiting for Ladybirde to receive his cup, that he’d been given Albert’s, that should Albert have been just a millisecond earlier, he would have gotten her, would have been reunited. But he was never sure, he asked the nurses again, every week, did he have any visitors scheduled? They would never reply definitively, poor Albert, you cannot do that to him, she’s never coming back, that’s what the word NO means, even just for this week, NO means she’s left for good, and he cannot handle that, so they defensively redirected his questions, avoided them, even pretended not to hear them properly. “I know you know what I said,” he’d grow enraged, “I know you know I said: ‘do I have any visitors coming this week’ and that you’re covering for her. For THEM.”

They, it was true, were part of Them. Very few people weren’t part of Them — how could they not be? They had taken her away again, he had to relent, agree, go along, if ever he wanted to see her again. Just like his decision before, Albert didn’t pro and con it, thesis and antithesis it, he simply trudged forward. All right, if that is what it takes to have her back, to have the apartment near the zoo and the furniture from swap meets and second-hand stores, and the pictures on the walls of travels to places with waterfalls and horses and beaches and fruity drinks, and the Sundays of reclusive love and the meals with her in her revealing fringe apron, if that was what it took to have all that, Albert was finally willing to comply. He knew they had a purpose for him, a reason to keep him alive, a reason for locking him up and not just popping him. He’d confess, sign another agreement, do whatever it was They wanted to get her back.

He headed straight for the doctor’s office, dodging malcontents trying to get more or better drugs, avoiding the nurse who tried to help.

Out-of-room voice 1: Can you hear me Major Tom… can you hear me Major Tom…?

* * *

Albert hoists his leg over a galeanthrope rubbing his neck against the doorframe and purring. The doctor is at his desk, busy with heaps of forms. He observes Albert's entrance and looks up patiently.

“I need Harris,” Albert pounces.

“We've determined that the regimen is magnifying your… your problems…”

Out-of-room voice 1: Its perfect. My sister's lettuce leaf doll.

Out-of-room voice 2: …draw a veil over the fate of those who perish…

“I'll agree to whatever They want, I don't care,” Albert pleads, remaining on his feet.

“The nurses tell me you had a visitor… have been up, walking around…”

“We're going to get an apartment by the zoo and buy trinkets from second-hand stores and go on trips.”

Voice 2: Words half reveal and have conceal what it is…

“Albert, do you remember when you came to us?” he's tolerant.

(File footage of soldiers dashing over a battleground, Sean Connery's James Bond at a gambling table, and the Nuremberg Trials)

“…it was voluntary, I can't keep you if you want to go…”

Voice 1: Oh, ward those monster bits off your head.

“I'm asking you to return her to me.”

“The Harris Group protocol is not helping,” he says cryptically. They are part of Them. “Do you remember when you first came to us?”

“…after I was shot…”

“How long ago was that?”

“…a year, I don't know…”

“Twenty-two years, Albert. After you drove your father's car into the ocean, in California.” Now he understands.

“Who won the war here?” he asks, pacing.

“Do you remember?”

“I never knew my father.”

“He's been here over a hundred times.”

“Did we… go to the moon, here?” he doesn't remember coming back from the john, afterwards…

“We've talked about this on numerous occasions.”

“We didn't, did we?”

Voice 2: …and all the world's a stage…”

“We still have a lot of work to do, you and I.”

Out-of-room Voice 3: Among them: horned bears, tailless beavers, and 4-foot-tall ape-like creatures with thick beards and large wings.

“What do you need me to sign…”

“For release?”

“…to get her back?”

“Do you remember when you first arrived, Albert? You did a tap dance. Do you remember signing your admission form?”

“I've lived up to my contract, I spent two years in that sedan, I wasn't escaping. I had to see her…”

“…its up to you when you go.”

“Don't you understand? You have to talk to Them, get her back for me.”

“I can't. Its not helping.”

He understands. No North American Yeti attacks, no genital electrodes, no oatmeal suffocation, not for him. He's been dislocated, removed from time. He flips through the pages of the Who's Who of Science, Lobbe, Loblitz, Loché, Lochear, Lockler, Lodden, no Lochner, Albert, no: “American Astrophysicist and interstellar trigonometrist instrumental in the early stages of the US space program. Lochner calculated the earth's gravitational escape velocity, enabling Apollo mission astronauts to break orbit and travel to the moon.” Nothing.

“I was never here,” he says.

“We do not think you are ready…”

“I am, I deserve it… after all this.”

Voice 3: Surely, the earth is flat.

“Let me consult with my colleagues,” the colonel says.

“I need to go, to see… to be involved.”

(File footage of rocket shivering, raising in an inferno of smoke, an astronaut running on the moon, and a sea captain with his hand over his eyes, peering out into the ocean)

“Its not what you think, Albert, out there… things are quite different than you remember.”

“I know, that's why I want to go,” he replies, he understands now.

1

Gravity howls unremittingly against the asphalt of the temple. The inferno tumbles down, like a wave leaving the shore, spreads its burning tentacles out in a raging storm, and begins to lift the chariot above even the sky…

It is time. The rising has begun, but its vaudevillian in its complexity. There are no feathers, no messages, there is no ascension, nothing but the shards of technicolor instrument panels and the crackle of radio waves. Above him, the tube bends asymmetrically into a lewd cone and the tip is breaching the first sphere of heaven. But its vacant, abandoned. He fears the absent clouds, the way the firmament will tumble down, like a Chicken Little prophecy…

Inside the vessel, which is lite-brite busy in a glowing spectra chorus, he sits against the wall, his feet feeling metal contract and stretch, tubes lock, air escapes, a deep shudder awakening within the trembling frame, an uneasiness of engineering, the din of angry pressure, the scream of air, as he soars toward the suburbs of heaven.

There are no heroes, not anymore… there are no saviors, no messiahs, no more prophets… they have been replaced, like temps in an office, faceless fixtures that come and go, no longer conjuring up the almighty’s breath, they no longer tumble over great injustices with brute force, they no longer venture out on quests, no longer weather trials, or save oppressed races… Now, they mount up with telephoto lenses and night-vision goggles and M-1 tank fleets and air cover and bomb raids and pinpoint sights and submachine guns and satellite extrapolation and heat sensors and movie special effects in small plastic grapefruits… They are the unholy, constructed… Techno-uber mensch… the secular messiahs that Nietzsche never predicted…

Albert, in his cyborg chair, horizontal in directional indifference, eyes a vertical technician securing his helmet, gives him the thumbs up, and feels the curled fist thump on his plated crown. “God speed Doctor Lochner.” He pulls the hankie straps over his shoulders, although how they will hold up against the g-forces is highly questionable, what with the perforated squares. He mummifies himself with one roll and gets a second from under the sink, careful not to flush. The initial phases of the countdown are just beginning; technicians still going through the checklist. He’s ready, as ready as could be expected. The vessel grumbles to life, the earth shakes, the phlegmy voice: “Commencing the prelaunch checklist.” He begins his pretrained, memorized, do-it in his sleep routine, he flips switches, joggles gauges, checks the Christmas lights strung in a sagging bow, ensures the velocity control odometer is set, secures his bearing, flips more switches for good measure, sniffles, tries to quell his growing nervousness, he sings a little of her song, and after each: “check; space acceleration unit, check; gravity release pressure, check; life support systems, check; love handles” he squeezes the cellulite doughnut around his belly: “check.” Here we go.

Out-of-room voice 1: Up… up… and away…

“Check, Houston, Folly-33 ready,” he’s given himself a code-name.

Out-of-room voice 6: Commencing countdown…

“Check,” Albert replies, squirming a little from the cold porcelain against his bare bottom. He’s in, secure in two-hundred yards of unscented, quilted, highly absorbent sanitation and a good knuckly grip on the seat.

Out-of-room voice 82: T-minus ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five…

Digital pyramids in red neon tick-tock, he has begun his movement, pressure building in his sinuses, waiting, praying, the loud, fluttering rip of the release, a puckered plop, icicle drops rebounding against his spread cheeks. “You promised…”

…four, three, two…

A gray-scale, televised image bobbles on the screen, seemingly random, against the cameraman’s manual turbulence, big thoughts of small boys sitting Indian style inches away with worship gazes and lone girls on couch cushions with arms pressed tightly against nervous chests and whole families arched around family room flickers of granulated pixels and even, an older man, perhaps in a bar in Portsmouth, with a amber lager hoisted halfway to parched lips, frozen in an almost sacramental draw, prideful, scared, transfixed, seeing that knight of his mirror rising, paternally warmed, like that little league home room with three and two and two men on and one last toss…

Out-of-room voice 2: Out of the park…

He’s weeping, genuflecting against bare thighs, introspective, for those last few moments, occupied by the brand name… Was that even American?

…one…

Lift-off… we have lift-off… she’s all yours…

He pulls the lever, the flushing noise, the vessel moves, slightly at first, struggling, loudly, screaming, the hull shakes violently, Albert can barely stay on the toilet, he has to grab hold of the sink and the wall, he closes his eyes, tears streaming down his cheeks, wriggling from the sheer velocity, ejaculating, yes, he can feel it moving, lifting, like an angel carrying him to god’s bedchamber, a cocktail placed before him, and nice salutations with the almighty,

“Hello my ideal maker… you’re not blind.”

Voice: Folly has cleared the tower…

The tower of Babel, the leaning tower of Pisa, the tower of Rapunzel’s hair, he is Apollo with Hermes’ wings, the chariot of the sky, They are watching, supplicating themselves to his image, he opens his eyes, she is watching, his lips forced against his teeth, cutting, the first drops of blood…

…she’s all yours Houston…

The halo of refracted light, downtown paradise, passing right on through like a fiery parade, all the orders rimming the sides, waiting for the chance for salt-water candy and clutching lost balloons, perhaps even Ed would ride by, still clinging to his ginormous cartoon dog, and wave knowingly…

“Oh, I’ve been…”

Gravity has gone in the mud… …you’ve really made the grade… He takes the off-ramp, into the darkness… “God is some kind of slum-lord.” The tail rocket drops in wormy segments, hollow, tumbling towards splashdown. He sees it, a skipping stone, dangling as if on puppet strings, full, contouring into a welcome face, his provolone complexion and bright thievery framed within a hexagon portal.

…floating in a most peculiar way…

The vessel lurches, he’s nearly on the linoleum, floating feathers, shards of tissue, she’s motioning towards him, the panel goes red, the sounds of her frying pan, fatty bacon in nude strips, the ratty bathrobe and heelless slippers, he’s got his fire engine fighting a major blaze over by the fridge, there’s that song she hums, all the time… One alarm, followed by another, and another…

…far above the world…

She’s always needed more than one, otherwise, she’d be late. He’s waiting for her to lean over him and make it stop. The two of them, sharing one mattress, except on those few nights, those nights when he would be there… Her brackish shivers wet the corners, twice his size, her warmth bending over his feet and shoulders…

Electric currents geyser off the buttons, the heat enters his knees, buried under the panel, the linoleum tile splits below soft clenched toes, the voice… the voices, crackling over radio waves, blend into one, the ivory sea fills the window, the steel knocks, collides, the seat snaps, the screen erupts, the dirty image replaced by throaty crystals, he’d woke after the anthem, and turned it off… no… this is not true, this is not yesterday, but a collapse, he’s running through the house as the doors slam behind, towards the center, towards her room, he’s never heard any of those names, never been to any of those places, those are secrets, his secrets, empty days of checkered gowns laying over naked knees, the squeak of soft-soled shoes with arch support, the dribble of pills in paper cups, the sheets of lapis lazuli out of the common window, car lights driving across the sky… He’s going down into it, a great staircase vines down into the pit, the visor mirrors the fire, the flue of the first breach slurps the flames out in genetic spirals, the helix of the burn, the pressure compacts, god’s clap, crumpling metal towards his center… the coal of the room, she’s standing just behind, her talon fingers creasing his shoulder, that soft guidance, towards the door… When her eyes tumbled down, that rusty guilt bleeding onto her handkerchief, the palm of the nurse hoisted over his head, his fumbling feet still in pj slippers, and clutching the moldy bear… When her eyes tumbled down, jade droplets on his crayola pond, muffled breath, stale prayers and her bowed head, a lectern of her hands covering her mouth and nose, he’s turning, following the sanitized lead and anesthetic stench, as the doors swing for one last fragment, she’s mangled on the waiting bench…

…and the stars look very different today…

The walls cave, the rush of the artificial breeze collides with his ribcage, he’s broke loose, feels the stress of the entire vessel pressing down, around… No… this is not a moment, not how it will be, how it was, there never was a day like that, she never… she never… tumbled… down… there were never streetlights and belt buckles and the little store on the corner and the familiar out the back window, receding, spring hillocks and snotty clouds, the missing curves and pale rocks, the empty seashore, the brown hills, the newly budding apple blossoms, the gate, the single asphalt strip towards the rambler buildings, the tires grinding just outside double doors and the stark gowns waiting with blurred faces, the back door never opened… No…

…I love her very much she knows…

He reaches out, like she did… playing like the light of the womb, its all collapsing, the window folds, the last capsules of light flicker, one crater, eyes cast, the devouring pressure, he’s running to the center, the tumbling is too fast, he’s closing the doors behind, the last few never slam, the crunching of it all like big wolf fangs, he’s almost there… He’s almost to her… the avalanche contacts…

“…and there’s nothing I can do…”

God speed Doctor Lochner.

* * *

The colonel picks up the telephone and dials, waiting patiently for an answer. “We've finalized the last one,” he says immediately and pauses, listening. “The mission is secure… yes, sir… no, severe psychosis… he's not retrievable… yes, sir… the Harris protocol… the last one… no, he's been ejected… comatose… no known medication… he's over the edge… its protected… thank you… yes… of course… Apollo is secure… I look forward to it… thank you… yes, sir… no records, no… he'll be confined… they know… we've established that… no, they've accepted it… twenty-two years… yes… yes… pseudologue… its complete… it will be… thank you.”

He hangs up and holds a thick manila folder cradled in his hands. With a flick of his thumb, the corner begins to blacken, smoke lifts languidly from the side, the flames rise, engorging themselves, until he drops it into his pea green metal wastepaper basket and watches it burn. The smoke becomes heavy and begins to dissipate. The colonel collects the tin receptacle and leaves his office. He walks down a long hall with many doors until he reaches the end. Outside, he lifts the container over his head and lets the breeze carry away the ashes…

The End

About the Author

Christopher WunderLee is a published poet, author, and journalist from Seattle, Washington. His poetry and prose have appeared in numerous journals and magazines, including ZYZZYVA, The Midwest Review, Places, Modern Nomad, and The Paris/Atlantic. Kalopsia, a collection of his poetry, was published in 2003.

Content

Christopher WunderLee
The Loony: a novella of epic proportions

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About the Author