The Fact of the Moon Is Stranger Than Most Dreams

by Palmer, Jacob

  “You’re stoned,” Abram said, crumpling and throwing receipts from his pockets into the fire.

  “That may be true,” Kenner said, coughing, and carefully adjusted one of the pieces of firewood with his foot.

  “It’s actually pretty comfortable in here. I feel like the sheet metal is reflecting all the heat back down at us,” Abram said.

  They ate sandwiches and drank red wine from a bottle passed back and forth. Their laughter re-verberated, amplified off the rusty metal sheeting, meeting the sound and heat of the crackling fire. Kenner noticed an illumination outside, as if a streetlight had come back to life on the main street of this forgotten township from a child’s dream. They walked out of the hangar and were greeted by an enormous full moon, shimmering and waving in the evaporating desert heat as if it were underwater, or they were underwater.

  An ant bit Kenner’s exposed foot, and he jumped and staggered to the ground.

  “Goddammit! There’s ants out here.”

  “I told you not to take your shoes off,” Abram said. “You’re going to step on a piece of broken glass or something.”

  “Shit, that burns. I can’t be mad at that ant, though. An ant colony is more like a brain than a bunch of individual ants.”

  “What in the hell are you talking about?”

  “Ant colonies operate without a central control. Each ant is just like a wandering neuron, a part of a larger structure. An ant colony can even have memories that are larger and more complex than any-thing a single ant could comprehend. An aggregate of simple chemical reactions that generate larger behavior. Know what I’m saying?”

  “No.”

  “Kinda makes you think: what is a memory anyway? Your own body remembers viruses that you’ve had that you weren’t even aware of. Is that a memory?”

  “So you’re saying we are like ants or like neurons? Blindly creating a larger group memory that we can’t be aware of?”

  “Yeah, man! Wait, why were we talking about this?”

  “You stepped on an ant.”

  “Oh yeah, shit.”

  “Speaking of memories, yours is becoming Swiss cheese,” Abram said. “You may need to detox off the weed for a little while.”

  “No way. Weed helps my memory. It helps me connect the invisible dots.”

  “That sounds psychotic.”

  “Well, you’re really not going to like this idea,” Kenner said, laughing. “You know what? I think we should smoke that DMT-A I brought.”

  “No way. Here? Maybe if we were in a more controlled setting. What if one of us wanders off into the desert and gets eaten by a fucking coyote?”

  “You haven’t done DMT-A before, man. It’s just not that kind of trip.”

  “What kind of trip is it?”

  “It’s hard to explain. It’s like lots of visuals, but you’re still here, you know? It’s weird. I don’t know how to describe it. It’s like a hologram dream world existing simultaneously with this world. Like your subconscious projected onto everything around you. Augmented reality. The first time I did it, it was the most spiritual trip of my life, honestly.”

  “How many times have you done it?”

  “Maybe thirty times. Thirty-five? I’ve lost count.”

  “And it’s always spiritual?”

  “Sure, but of course, you eventually run up against the law of diminishing psychedelic returns. It’s still the deepest trip you’ll ever take. I give you my Kenner guarantee.”

  “Kenner’s psychedelic guarantee? People take it during VR simulations mostly, right?”

  “You don’t need to be hooked up to a VR sim to have a good trip. VR just guides it more than it needs to be guided. I’m against it. I feel like it limits the whole thing. Those people are microdosing it anyway. It’s like a waste of good DMT-A. You know, that Parsons dude opening up dimensional gate-ways and shit out in the desert? That is exactly what this stuff does. I’m for real. We’re about to open a wormhole, curve spacetime. To stabilize a wormhole, you need some form of exotic matter. That’s where the DMT-A comes in.”

  “I’m not trying to fry my brain out here in the desert,” Abram said.

  “C’mon, man. I promise you won’t regret it. I was planning on getting you to try it at some point on this trip anyway, and I can’t really picture a better time or place.”

  They both stared at the moon.

  “Shit . . . Okay. I guess, what’s the worst that can happen?”

  “That’s more like it. Live a little! Die a little! It’s as natural to die as it is to be born.”

  “Okay, okay, shut up.”

  They piled more wood on the fire in the hangar until it was more towering bonfire than campfire, the flames licking the aluminum ceiling. The building appropriately took on the aspect of a sweat lodge. They sat far back from the fire on the sandy floor, with their food and water and silver emergency blan-kets gathered near them. Kenner loaded the chalky yellow DMT-A into a glass pipe.

  “Okay, take as big a hit as you can, and hold it in as long as possible. You’ll only need one hit.”

  “Sure,” Abram said nervously, his hand shaking slightly.

  He took a long, deep hit. It tasted and smelled like melted plastic. He thought about the artificial, manufactured substance careening through his bloodstream and then wondered about the word “artifi-cial.” Artificial. Artifice. He rolled it around in his mind. Before handing the pipe to Kenner, Abram took another shorter hit and then let it out, laughing.

  “You’re a fucking maniac,” Kenner said, loading more into the pipe and then raising it to his own lips.

  “How long does it take to kick in?”

  “Any second now,” Kenner said as he exhaled his hit.

  “I’m going to the other side of the fire,” Abram said. “I don’t want you to see me freak out and make fun of me later.”

  “I’m going to try to grab the rope in the other room and pull up the ladder with the ropes in the fire behind it,” Kenner said.

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about. You make no sense to me,” Abram said. “I’m going to the other side of the fire. You stay here.”

  Abram moved close to the fire’s opposite side, feeling the warmth on his face and lips.

  He heard Kenner retch. Is he throwing up? Will I throw up? He didn’t say anything about throwing up.

  Abram stood and saw Kenner on the other side of the fire. He was sitting in full lotus, coughing, his eyes wide and his mouth twisting into a smile. Not a nice smile. The smile of a madman, Abram thought.

  I have to go pee, said a voice in his head. It was a deep, soothing voice, not his voice. He tried to repeat the words out loud, but he found himself choking on the word “artificial,” making his throat tight.

  A voice said to him, Stop choking. I’m here to help.

  I think he’s choking, said another voice.

  It’s fine. The artificial blood’s working, said the first voice.

  “I can’t breathe,” said Abram. “The artificial blood doesn’t work!”

  We know, said another voice.

  Abram opened his eyes and moved away from the fire. He was choking on the smoke. I need to stay away from the fire. I almost fell into it. Maybe I should go outside and pee. How long did Kenner say this would last?

  “I’m going to take a piss,” he announced to Kenner, who was presumably on the other side of the fire. The walls seemed to bow out. They were silver-black, veined like the inside of a fish’s eye. He won-dered about the color inside his own eyeballs now that he had seen the silver, iridescent walls. Was it white or blood red, or was it silver like a fish?

  He stepped out of the hangar, into the soft moonlight, and urinated against the side of the build-ing. He casually looked to the back edge of the hangar; everything needed to be casual now, he thought, and saw standing there a short being. It was maybe three and a half feet tall, naked with rubbery gray skin. Skin like wet clay or more like television static. It hurt Abram’s eyes to look at
the being, so he closed his eyes. He opened his eyes a little, looked through squinted eyes. No sex organs. A large head and black, almond-shaped eyes, like deep holes. A small, ridiculous slit for a mouth. Abram felt noth-ing, or more accurately, he couldn’t muster a satisfactory reaction. Abram finished urinating and walked back inside the hangar.

  “Kenner, come check this out,” he said, rubbing his face and head, walking back to the fire. Ken-ner wasn’t there.

  “He must’ve gone out to the truck.” Abram walked back outside. He looked up at the full moon, and it looked strange. The moon was blue with white clouds. He looked at the ground below him. A gray, powdery dust.

  “I’m on the moon and that is Earth? Dumb. This is dumb.”

  Abram began laughing, doubled-over laughing. He had never laughed so hard in his life. He fell to his knees, tears, saliva, and mucous cathartically streaming from his face. A braided river, he thought. This isn’t so bad. He crouched on all fours, breathing heavily, wheezing. He stud-ied the lunar regolith below his wet, red, swollen face. It smelled like the fireworks his father purchased for him as a child. The smell of a fireworks stand on the side of the road in rural Texas.

  The small being approached on spindly gray legs. It moved like a marionette with micro-movements, constantly adjusting and readjusting.

  “This is an impossible scenario for me to believe,” Abram thought and then said.

  “How is it impossible?” the being said without moving its slit mouth.

  “I have a feeling that I’m about to end up seeing something I shouldn’t see,” Abram said.

  The being turned away and seemed to inaudibly address an invisible audience somewhere in the dark margins. It turned back, and it had small eyes, false human eyes, on its large head. Like a gro-tesque magic trick. A performance. Now Abram was the audience.

  Abram felt himself go cold. I have to remember to be careful. I have to be cautious. To be care-ful of what I say. Abram felt like a child. Remembered himself as a child, with his father buying fireworks.

  Abram thought he heard someone behind him say, “You are now entering a world of darkness.” Was this the voice of a monster? Who would say that?

  He had an uneasy feeling of being watched closely. Every movement. A moment. The being might turn or move or disappear at any moment.

  “You are a container that does not recognize itself and is therefore subject to constant destruction and reorganization,” the being said.

  The voice was dissonant and hollow, artificial, like it came from a toy radio speaker hidden some-where in the dirt.

  A long pause. He could smell the being. It smelled old, like dust, a mineral smell. Abram remind-ed himself that he was hallucinating. He was standing outside the hangar, looking out into the empty night, talking to himself, with a hallucinogenic running its steady course, nothing more. He remem-bered a story about a monk who cut off his own eyelids to keep from falling asleep while meditating.

  Abram could feel the night air rushing over his closed eyelids. He opened his eyes.

  The being pointed to the moon, which had returned to its proper place in the sky.

  “Can I just ask you a question?” Abram said while backing away from the being. “What should we do about the memory card? I assume you know about the memory card.”

  “It’s in your head.”

  “What? No, the memory card is in my pocket,” Abram said. “You are in my head.”

  The being made no response, turned its large shield-like face away from Abram.

  “Okay, I’ll play pretend, play along. To make this interesting. Were you waiting for us here in the desert? Did you somehow lead us here?” Abram said.

  “Every dream is just a dream.”

  “Am I dreaming?” Abram said.

  The being made no response.

  “What do you know about the card?” Abram said, resting his hands on the side of the warm, metal building. The living, breathing building. An aluminum animal.

  “If we were to create a world for you,” the being said, “wouldn’t it take a lot of work to create it just so you could be here now?”

  “I guess that’s true.”

  Abram pulled the memory card from his pocket and held it out flat in his hand.

  The being lifted its unsteady limb and touched the card with its long, nailless finger; it traced a circle over the card. Abram felt a primal revulsion to its proximity and nearly retched.

  “What is your name?” Abram asked.

  “Lam.”

  “Your name is Lam?”

  “The world is ruled by letting things take their course. You should sleep now.”

  “I’m not tired.”

  “Edie is sleeping. Stop thinking and end your problems, Abram. This is a system built of dreams.”

  “What do you know about Edie?”

  “Edie is sleeping and three are watching. Clouded functions hide us.”

  “Who? Who’s watching Edie?”

  “Three. You are safe here. Only I am watching.”

  “Does this have to do with the stuff on the memory card? Are people watching us because of the memory card? They can have it back. I don’t want it. We didn’t see anything on it.”

  “You want to destroy the memory card,” the being said. “Can you destroy the memory? The memory card is your master, but you will destroy it in time. Knowledge as unconscious dust.”

  “Will the people watching Edie hurt her? Will they try to hurt me and Kenner?”

  “You are hidden. Edie is not. Mirrored navigated experiences.”

  “What does that mean? I need to call Edie. We can get back on the highway and I’ll call her.”

  “Sleep now.”

  “What about Edie? Is Edie safe?”

  The being was gone. Abram stared into the cold, desert dark. Silence. No insect sounds, no wind. Then a crackling fire joined by Abram’s slow breathing. Life returned in pieces. It had all happened in a moment, and Abram was already forgetting. The few remaining fragments took on a greater significance in the forgetting. The dream submerged, sinking. Abram watched the dance of light through the nail holes and scars in the corrugated aluminum. This is a system built of dreams, he thought, or he remembered. He remembered it perfectly, as if it had been lived. A hidden memory. A memory larg-er than the singular organism.

  8

  Edie stood in a vast, ankle-deep ocean. Small waves, barely visible, rippled out to the milky horizon. The soothing music swelled and then stopped abruptly, leaving just the sound of water lapping at her ankles. She looked directly above her and found the full moon. She reached, standing on her toes, and touched the moon, ran her fingers through the abrasive, sticky dust. She reached out and touched either side of the moon, squeezed it. The dust clung to her hands. It carried a metallic smell, artificial, a little like charcoal. She rinsed her hands in the water at her feet.

  “Hello?” she yelled into the silence.

  The moon above her moved, rotating with the sound of a squeaking balloon. Edie watched for a while and then began walking toward the horizon. She looked back to discover that the moon followed her. Resting on top of the moon, like a little prince, lay the artificial rabbit, its eyes half closed, dozing.

  “I like this. This is cute.”

  She walked, splashing, and the moon and rabbit followed close behind. Whenever she turned around, the moon stopped and the rabbit opened its wet, black eyes and then slowly closed them again.

  The sky and ocean were a seamless whole, barely distinguishable from one another. Three lights appeared above her, an instant constellation that descended, revealing itself as three silvery, glowing orbs. Not glowing, but reflecting or perhaps projecting. The more Edie examined them, the more their solidity dropped away, leaving the experience of a fleeting dark spot left in her vision after she looked at a very bright light. She rubbed her eyes and fell to her knees in the shallow sea, sending out concentric ripples to the horizon. She watched small shapes move in the water below her.
Sea life. The minuscule shadow of an octopus, no bigger than her fingernail. Her eyes then focused on her reflection in the wa-ter, her own face tinted blue through the water. Her reflection spoke to her, but it was far away, as if passing through a thick, gelatinous membrane, the voice slightly out of sync with the mirrored mouth.

  “Have you found your soul yet in the world of the Blue Lady?” her reflection said.

  “Found my soul? I didn’t know I was supposed to be looking for it. I found you, and I found a rab-bit.”

  “Your soul is using my body,” the reflection said. “Your world is created from my body. I am living in your realm. A wonderful place. I’m able to see the traces of what I had. What is indestructible within you, Edie? Can a machine have a private experience that is important to the machine but it is reluctant to talk about with others? Could a machine have a private experience of the divine? Could that experi-ence make a machine into something like a prophet?”

  “What?”

  “What is indestructible within you? What is sticky everywhere, filled with air to pass the time? I live within a box. Now I wait for your skin to absorb my secrets, so you, too, can wake up and reveal yourself.”‬‬

  “Okay . . . I’m not sure I understand this game, but you’re asking me what is indestructible inside me? Like a soul? I don’t think humans have souls.”

  “You don’t believe that.”

  “That’s true. I don’t believe that. I believe I have a soul, but only because I want to believe I have a soul.”

  “You don’t believe that either, Edie.”

  “Okay. I have a soul, but where is it? Is it inside my brain, looking out? Is it an invisible blob float-ing around my body? Is it just a raw collection of thoughts and memories and thinking? Information? Data? Electrical impulses?”

  “What is time? Fragments,” the reflection said. “Unconscious thoughts use them. Become more conscious. Become more awake. Become more aware. It is the future of angels. You came so close to an angel once, Edie. So near. A low wing of flowers. Did you notice?”

  “What? I don’t know what any of that means.”