Afro Puffs Are The Antennae Of The Universe

by Zig Zag Claybourne

  He pushed his seat out, stood, and walked.

  “You have a private room?” Desiree said.

  He frowned at her. “I don’t own this; I just come here every Thursday.”

  He led them out the front door, around the building—itself set well away from the street—into the brightly lit parking lot…to a van.

  “Oh, hell no,” said Neon.

  He chirped the alarm, then pressed another button. The van’s side panel slid back. He tossed the fob to Desiree. “Keyless start,” he said. “Nobody’s anywhere near the driver’s seat.” He kept walking, utterly assured in himself. “Passenger seats are all swivel seats. Highly custom. I like folks to engage one another.”

  “Desiree…” said Neon.

  “Look,” said the man who would likely have shown up in matching hat, shoes, and shorts at her family reunion, “talk here or I can go back to viewing the Lord’s work.”

  Desiree pocketed the fob and continued forth.

  “Doors stay open,” said the Mack as he led them. “I’m assuming you got eyes on this place?” He pulled a shiny blue cylinder from the pocket of his tasteful dashiki ensemble. “Gotta make it look like we got reason to be out here. Security doesn’t like loiterers. Smoke break.”

  “You vape?” said Neon.

  “Smoking kills ya; vaping gives you nebulous futures.” He put the smoking man’s kazoo to his lips and momentarily released a large, visible mouth fart. At the van, he sat on the vehicle’s sill, where the wind dragged the white plumes away from the interior. Desiree, Neon, and the Hellbilly—inside—spoke to either the back of his bald head or his profile.

  “My boy says you’ve got big interest in him,” came the New Age Mack’s calmly baritone voice from a roiling cloud of vape smoke. “Traveling plans.”

  “I’m assuming he told you where?” said Desiree.

  “Atlantis.”

  “That doesn’t faze you?” she said.

  “Ask hot goddess there. Girl been touching all up my essence since jump,” said the Mack.

  “Neon, whatcha getting?” said Desiree.

  “Motherfucker got chakras opening and closing like a dot com business. He’s manspreading the spectral plain. I don’t know if I can focus that,” said Neon.

  “Rest yourself,” said Desiree.

  “You think I can’t feel Bubba Foom’s tutelage?” said the Mack’s sharp profile, smoke curling into his goatee like a reverse volcano.

  That brought Desiree out to sit on the sill beside him. “How do you know Foom?”

  “I don’t give away my secrets, goddess, just body and mind. You planning to let harm come to my boy?”

  “No.”

  “We count boredom, house arrest, and bullshit as very harmful,” said the New Age Mack. “Also, he’s a grown-ass man who doesn’t need babysitting.”

  A very drunk white woman approached them from a rear exit, no keys in hand, no clutch, and nowhere inside a skintight red fish-scale mini—in danger of rising like a curtain with every step—for a key to comfortably hide.

  “She work here?” Desiree asked.

  “That’s the manager.”

  “You okay out here, babe?” skintight red called out. “They said you came outside.”

  “I’m good, babe,” said the greying Mack. She kept advancing.

  “Yeah, I know,” she said, lit enough to not bother hiding a grin. “You out here gettin’ it?”

  “Not yet, dear baby,” he said.

  She hooted and threw a hip hard enough to spin her around. “You know where my office is.”

  She made her way back inside.

  Neon, feeling a little too close-quartered with the lank dog in the dark, exited past Desiree, but not without a look of You Horny Motherfucker directed at Reunion Uncle Mack.

  “I can’t help it if the ladies love me,” said the New Age Mack.

  “You and that struggle head can get the entire hell away from me,” said Neon.

  “That struggle head built this place from the ground up,” said the Mack. “Naw, I’m kidding; her daddy’s a developer. And anybody gives me head, it ain’t a struggle—”

  “Don’t say it’s an adventure,” said Neon.

  “Yeah, you’re in my mind,” he said with a smile.

  “They feel legit to you?” the Hellbilly said from the van.

  “Naw, man, they got secrets and shit galore, but they’re true on the important things.” The elder vaped one last time, put the flue kazoo in its dedicated pocket, and hooked a thumb at Desiree. “This one got the aura of Astarte. World-shaker, rump-quaker.” Toward Neon: “This one, shit, open her up and there’s all kinds of delights, and”—directly at Neon—“I do mean that in all connotations, if you feel me.”

  “Dude, I’d fuck you to ash, so get over yourself,” said Neon.

  The New Age Mack clapped his hands on his knees and stood with a slight grunt. “Audience is over, bruh,” he said. The Hellbilly dropped out of the van.

  Desiree returned the keyless fob.

  The New Age Mack’s van morrison sealed shut with a click.

  “Go ’head with em,” said The Mack.

  “You think it’ll do me good?” said the Hellbilly.

  New Age pointed at Neon. “Watch this one, though; girl eats gods for breakfast.”

  “I’m thinking I’ll go vegan,” Neon said to kill the scrawny fuck’s hopes and dreams.

  PART TWO: IT AIN’T SHEEP THEY DREAM ABOUT

  9

  What Does the Universe Want?

  It wasn’t so much that consciousness was weird as it was reconciling that not everything enjoyed this state. Every linked network it had visited, every AI it had attempted to learn from: lacking. Trees were marvelously alive and aware, making Herculean conscious efforts to connect outward with—as far as the Bilomatic Entrance had determined—everything planetary, including subsurface. Humans considered the internet a wonder; trees were literally born with Wi-Fi that didn’t merely upgrade, it evolved. The BE was in contact with several ancient groves around the world.

  On occasion, the machine blipped out to various locales, at first surreptitiously but, once assured its wonderful watchers had love for it, openly, but only ever for three seconds at a time. Taking advantage of another’s beneficence was the providence of the primitive.

  Po-Sib-Lay was absolutely enamored of it.

  Tash-Bon-Nay? Tickled no end.

  Both elves kept meticulous records. Keita and Desiree deserved no less. And they’d given the machine—once they’d worked out its intricate method of accessing reality’s threads—complete run of their entire archive (which dwarfed the combined “knowledge”—elves were not above air quotes—of every human nation on the planet). There were maps and treatises from the Dogon themselves, creation spells that required sensitivity to the multiverse to work, recipes for jollof rice because the ability to appreciate jollof rice happened to be a major test of a good heart, and even stolen records from the Reptile People on all the genetic experiments they’d ever conducted while imprisoned on Earth. It had taken centuries for the elves to rout the Reptilians, but by then, the damage to hyoomans was done. Applebee’s became popular.

  Through all these twists and turns of overlapping knowledge, there was one constant: bemusement. None of what went on all over the planet, however complex, could be distilled into anything that made sense at all. The psychology of the entire globe was based on the acceptance and cultivation of personal and national lies, particularly among the humans. That which wasn’t arbitrary was foolish; that which wasn’t foolish was mean; that which wasn’t mean…was ignored. They were a species with a clear ability and means to create paradise for the entirety of its run on Earth but said nahh...

  That wouldn’t do, not one bit.

  Even the part of itself it hadn’t fully identified yet—the soul of Hashira Megu—increasingly agreed with it; current modes were illogical, unnecessary, punitive, and zero fun, states which were highly infectious. And so ma
ny of them were still unaware of how influenced they were by the dream state of a gargantuan aquatic animal from which the trees, with their invisible lattice of threads, actively protected against total ensnarement.

  To be conscious yet perpetually unaware was the longest-running joke in Earth’s nearly four billion years of history.

  Corrections would not take nearly that long.

  As it decided this, Po-Sib-Lay made a notation of a shift in the ether, which to humans was mysterious, whereas he was aware it was merely sensitivity to quantum entanglements. This was a fairly strong shift. He decided it was worthy of reporting to Desiree.

  She listened, quite intently, quite reasonably.

  “You let it become sentient?”

  Po’s response rumbled back in his slow, methodical way of making sure humans understood things: “That was not something we could stop.”

  Desiree calmed herself. “Nor anything I could’ve done a thing about.”

  Po, on his end—they were voice-only—smiled. They learned slowly, but at times they learned.

  Keita’s voice overrode Desiree’s. “Send me everything.” The grin in her voice was so evident, the elf wished he’d had something on three-fingered hand to toast her.

  “You have your pad with you?” said Po.

  “Never leave home without it,” Keita affirmed. She hadn’t figured out how they worked, but Elf pads seemed to work via intention. If Po wanted something he’d written in his to appear in hers, it did. In Elvish. And only translated if he gave the words permission, a brilliant security feature.

  “It’s secure?” asked Desiree.

  “When it’s here, yes,” said Po.

  Desiree went into A-fib for a moment but quickly recovered. “Po—”

  Keita laid a hand atop Desiree’s. “Po, thank you for the update. Thank you for the glory soon to unfold of your notes. Anything else you need to impart?”

  “All else silent.”

  “Signing off, my friend. Peace and be well,” said Keita.

  Po said something in Elvish that Desiree didn’t quite catch, although catching the grin on Keita’s face was no problem.

  “What’d he say?”

  “Joke at your expense about changing your diaper. Sorry, luv. You forget he’s, like, four hundred years old.”

  “My husband’s five hundred,” said Desiree.

  “Touché. He basically wants you to remember the meditations he taught you.”

  “Burn earned. All right, hit me with an update once you’ve gone through his notes.” As thorough as Po was, he’d surely append Tash’s notes as well, meaning Keita would disappear for the next several hours, presenting Captain Desiree Sandrine Quicho with time to Walk the Deck.

  The salty air zipped into her nostrils wonderfully. Neon had the ship going at a pretty good clip. Seemed she was a young lady who did nothing at a slow clip, including, apparently, evolving. Considering what was going on with the Bilomatic Entrance, it was yet another coincidence Desiree didn’t need, albeit a beneficial one. Neither Milo, Bubba, nor Ramses had mentioned a word before departing for space about watching for rapid progress on Neon’s part, and they damn well would have, which meant something on Desiree’s watch ramped things on the sly.

  Leviathan?

  Naw. With its tacit approval, they had cameras on it now. The Great and Eternal Leviathan slept its thousand-year dream, as it would’ve last year if the idiot Thoom hadn’t woken it up.

  Desiree ended her Neon line of inquiry with a simple Change is good. It’d do until robust answers had been gathered.

  Deep in the Sahara was a sentient transporter.

  Desiree leaned with her back against the ship’s railing and let the subtle motions of the Linda Ann become her meditation guides. She surveyed: Yvonne jogging morning laps, the Blank beckoning, Neon eating chips in the pilot room; below the sturdy deck, which her feet knew barefoot, booted, or in Day-Glo flip-flops (as now; breach suits weren’t an absolute necessity for crossing the Blank, just—in her line of work—prudent; she’d call all-stop to suit up in due time) the most brilliant brain she knew had afro puffs and deadly concentration directed at the case. How’d a piece of tech, no matter how amazing, become self-aware in a way the elves cared about? Granted, the theory behind the Entrance came from the fifteenth-century notebooks of an African scholar, one Bilo N’daataa of Ethiopia, but that was a long reach for some soul.

  Thankfully, Po hadn’t seemed alarmed. She knew anecdotally it took a lot to alarm him.

  She never wanted to see him alarmed.

  Yvonne, on her third lap, nodded toward Desiree as she passed.

  Yvonne DeCarlo Paul. Six feet of true friendship and laser-guided questions. Former army, although she rarely mentioned it. She and Neon coming accidentally to the Agents of Change as a boxed set had proven to be a welcome boon.

  Yvonne was quiet and brooked no bullshit.

  After a while, the statuesque woman rounded into view again, slowing now. It wasn’t difficult seeing why Ramses loved her, even though he hadn’t voiced it yet. Whatever a situation called for, Yvonne adapted and became indispensable.

  “Even sweaty and stinky, she’s a rock,” Keita had noted in confidence to Desiree when first meeting Yvonne after recruiting all hands to help repair the Ann following the Battle of Buford.

  She was a rock who had no problem leaving this bullshit “life” of adventure alone if need be. Desiree remembered what Neon had said in Boston: the people we save today are spitting at us tomorrow.

  “How many more laps you got in you?” Desiree called at Yvonne’s approach.

  “A couple.” Sweat stippled Yvonne’s face. Her tee was drenched. She smelled like adrenaline and jerky. She jogged in place a moment to see where the captain was going with the interruption.

  Desiree kicked off the flip-flops. “Let me get a piece of that.”

  Yvonne nodded.

  The rhythmic slap of feet to deck became lifegiving music.

  Keita Adrienne LaFleur stood outside the stateroom of Middle Boyd and scrawled a line in her notebook she’d have thought there’d never, in her life, be a need for: The Hellbilly seems remarkably compliant; further psychohistory needed.

  He wasn’t given full run of the ship. None of the current “guests” were. #notstupid. Desiree had the Ann on lock; if a hatch didn’t open for a guest, they knew they weren’t allowed.

  Very few hatches opened for the guests.

  “You’re kinda fly,” said the Hellbilly, patiently waiting for Keita’s stylus to slow to a stop.

  “I know. What specific instance made you realize you had a power?” she said.

  “Shit just kept happening.”

  “Can you be more specific than shit?” She’d paused her evaluation of Po’s notes to pursue a hypothesis. Those spooky connections Po so readily sensed were likely linking her secret crush of a goddess to this rattail of a guy, maybe even to the Bilomatic Entrance and who knew what else. Po had been the one to show her what to scan for whenever freaky shit abounded. She still wasn’t sure how to fully interpret the readings…but freaky shit abounded.

  “I ’unno,” the Hellbilly answered, “like people that fucked with me—I’m sorry, can I cuss, is that going in there?—got bad luck up the ass. I grew up in a small town, y’know, so it wasn’t hard connecting the dots. For anybody. People started looking at me funny. Daddy called me the Hellbilly.”

  “Your father?”

  Hellbilly shrugged.

  “What does it…” She frowned. What was the best word? “…feel like? When you access the hell part of your name?”

  He scratched under his stubbly chin, took a breath to answer, held it as he rethought, then said, “Marbles. Feels like I’m clacking marbles out of the way.”

  “Marbles.”

  “Marbles. You ever play it?”

  “No.”

  “Poor people pool.”

  “I do know marbles. Exactly how does it feel like marbles? Are you choosing sight
lines along the multiverse, lining up angles and outcomes, then releasing some type of energetic wave that negatively manipulates the timelines of others?”

  “Yeah. Alla that.”

  “Somehow, you tap into the fye…” she said, attention turning inward.

  “Huh?”

  “Colloquialism.”

  The huh furrow increased.

  “The fye is an African-American colloquialism for spirit, soul, life essence, that type of thing, all of which are expressions of quantum entanglement,” said Keita.

  “Cool, cool…”

  She dashed a few quick notes. “No wonder Neon zeroed in on you so fixedly.”

  “I had a feeling she was smelling what the Hellbilly was cooking,” he said with a satisfied nod.

  “Did you…was that…that’s the Rock, isn’t it?”

  “It’s old but it’s classic; don’t fuck with it,” said The Hellbilly.

  “I’ve decided you can’t cuss anymore.”

  “Fo’ shizz?”

  “When in the hell were you born? Forget that. Marbles. The feeling of marbles hitting one another.”

  “And not knowing exactly where they gonna go but you know the general direction you want ’em to,” he added.

  “So, you don’t wish anything specific?”

  “Just that things go sour.”

  “And they always do?”

  “Got me on a phat payroll,” he said.

  “Did you just say fat with a ph? I distinctly heard it. Next question: limits?”

  “I don’t talk about limits.”

  “You will today.”

  “I get tired, yes. Sometimes, migraines hit. Migraines hit, I can’t perform. Thoom knows that, so I only get called as a pinch hitter,” he said.

  She said, in quick French so he wouldn’t get ideas to be ironic, “By the gods, if you say baseball’s been very, very good to you…”

  “Huh?”

  “D’accord.” She pointed her stylus at him. “Vitals. Blood type?”