Planet Fever

by Stier Jr. , Peter

  In that living room, a giant, black-velvet painting of what looked to be the Pinta, Niña and Santa Maria in a harbor adorned an entire wall. On another wall hung a picture of wild stallions galloping in an old-west landscape; next to it a case of books on miscellaneous topics like self-help, new-age, pulp novels, and a set of Funk and Wagnal’s encyclopedia that stopped at SA—SP. The rug was made from a fake furry animal of some kind (sloth, perhaps?).

  A brief cursory scan of the place revealed random plants, a chrome-framed glass coffee table with Popular Mechanics, Cosmopolitan and National Geographic magazines dispersed about, and there was a disco ball suspended from the ceiling. A couch on one end of the room faced a giant hutch with a hi-fi stereo set that looked like a spaceship console from the 70s. Over in a corner by the front door rested a pair of ski boots, skis and one pole. On the shelf next to the spaceship console there were stacks of old records: Emerson, Lake and Palmer, Jethro Tull, Best of Mel Torme, The Who, and Johnny Cash…. The most interesting ornament was the crash-test dummy seated and leaning against the bookshelf. The place posited itself as an amalgamation of the ‘60s, ‘70s and ‘80s with a style and consistency to kitsch.

  This was a thrift store transplanted to a living room, but with better, softer lighting and no musty smell.

  “Peek-a-boo! Howareyou?” A high-pitched voice squawked from the corner opposite the disco ball. Perched atop a coat rack stood a bright-green parrot. “I see you. Don’t get fooled again,” the bird whistled.

  “That’s Parakleet. You can call him Pal for short. He’s an Indian Ringnecked Parrot,” Eliza said.

  “Peek-a-booo! Nice to meet you!” Parakleet, or Pal pitched.

  “You bet. Nice to meet you too, Pal,” I said.

  “I bet! I’m your pal! Peek-a-booo!” Pal trilled.

  Reacting to my double take, JD said, “Yeah, Parakleet is real special. That’s one smart bird. He’s got a vocabulary over a thousand words—which is twice more than most—and he understands.”

  “That name….” I wondered.

  Eliza smiled. “Obviously rhymes with ‘parakeet’, but it’s also a Greek word for advocate, and he advocates, all right.”

  “Get comfortable. We’ll get you out of your bind. You can count on it. I’m your pal. Peek-a-booo!” tootled the astonishing bird.

  “Yeah, his prior owner was a litigation attorney, so he sometimes sounds like one of those commercials,” JD said, then pointed to a beanbag on the floor. “Definitely get relaxed.”

  I checked the big, yellow beanbag chair and sank down onto it.

  JD walked over to the stereo and put on a record, some kind of spacey, rhythmic synthesizer music mixed with syncopated whale calls.

  “Would you like something to drink? We got some great herbal tea JD’s mom brought back from Korea last time she was there,” Eliza offered.

  “Sure.”

  She walked through the beaded curtain and the clacking sound triggered a momentary flashback to my childhood: our basement had been a quasi-disco hippie lounge with dance floor, hi-fi, and … disco ball. An eclectic mishmash of strange cultural combinations.

  “Peek-a-booo!” Pal blasted.

  JD leaned over the side of the couch and snapped on a device that shot up multi-colored lights at the disco ball and made it twirl—we had the exact same thing in our basement. He dialed the twirl speed to “low.”

  “I appreciate your hospitality. This is a … funky place.”

  “I got a funky mom. She’s a product of the 60s, 70s and 80s. She stepped off the bus in 1988, and I don’t think she owns one thing from after that year.”

  “But this place is sooo cool,” Eliza said, walking back through the beads. “It’s original.”

  “Yeah, original,” I muttered, scoping around the room for more treasures.

  She handed me a mug with a picture of a gorilla on the side and set the other two mugs onto the glass coffee table.

  “That was fast.” I watched the steam rising up from the mug.

  JD and Eliza exchanged glances.

  “We already had water simmering before we left. That’s how you gotta make this tea,” JD assured me.

  “It’s a slow simmer,” Eliza offered.

  “The client must be informed of everything that’s going on!” chirped Pal.

  Eliza lighted a stick of incense. Whale calls and distant tribal drums issued forth from the speakers.

  It was clear: I was in for a weird night.

  A LUKEWARM wave of relaxation and calmness poured over me as I sipped the tea, listened to the music and zoned out. The tribal-whale songs put me at ease. The colored lights revolved around the room and my mind began to wander off into imagination turf….

  I felt like I was sitting inside a funky spaceship, cruising through inter-dimensional space … an oceanic habitat teeming with space-whales. I imagined the bird Pal as the ship’s artificial intelligence interface, chirping random data when he thought it was needed. Thoughts could be transmitted with ease and speaking vocally was unnecessary in this floating ship.

  “…the client must be informed of everything that’s going on….” I heard in my mind, or did I? Did Pal say it, or did I think it? Or did I think I heard it?

  “Of course. We don’t want to freak him out.” Eliza’s voice entered my mind.

  I glanced over at the couple lounging on the couch—JD leaning back with his arms behind his head and Eliza skimming through a Cosmo magazine.

  “Did you just say something?” I asked.

  They both shook their heads.

  I must be losing it—again, I thought.

  I sipped more tea. The incense had permeated the room and altered my perception: through my nostrils I perceived a differing dimensionality about the space I inhabited, as though we were underwater—yet breathing, sitting, and drinking tea as normal. I was floating down a river in outer space underwater—that’s the best and only way to explain it…. I needed to break the trance, so I peeled myself out of the beanbag chair.

  “I need to use the restroom,” I announced.

  “Down the hall on the right,” either Eliza—or JD—or both in unison said.

  I placed the tea down on the table and slogged my way to the bathroom. I flipped on the light, turned on the faucet and splashed cold water over my face.

  “Do you think he’s ready?” Eliza’s voice was still inside my head.

  “Sure—the Honcho says he is. He can hear us right now. Might as well.” JD’s voice was also within my mind.

  I took a piss and listened for them to speak again. Butterflies filled my chest as an impending sense of exhilaration overtook me.

  Something was about to happen.

  I returned to the living room and JD sat on the couch flipping through an issue of Mad magazine, Eliza gazed at the spinning disco ball. I dropped back into the beanbag and rested my arms behind my head.

  “It might be easier if you close your eyes….” the voice of JD suggested from within my head.

  I looked over at him. He read—or pretended to read—the magazine. He glanced up at me and gave a nod, as though asking me “how’s it going?”

  “Otherwise you’ll get transdimensional interference,” said the voice of Eliza, still somewhere inside my brain.

  “Your five senses are ‘tuned into’ a specific reality frequency. We’re currently breaking into it and operating from another one—but the more your regular senses operate, the harder—”

  “What the hell is going on here?” I blurted out.

  JD and Eliza seemed startled.

  JD shrugged his shoulders. Eliza just stared at me with her big puppy-dog eyes. The parrot squawked.

  Had I gone mad? Was I having withdrawals from the pills? Or was this young couple fucking with me? A blackening smog of paranoia began to rise….

  “He’s slipping.” JD’s voice.

  “You’re fine. You’re not having withdrawals. You’re not paranoid. Or going mad,” Eliza’s voice comforted.<
br />
  I closed my eyes and felt a fluttering tugging at the outer edges of my eyelids, as though my brain’s upper part had been caught on a fishhook and was being reeled in. The tugging became more pronounced and I felt like some force was pulling me out of my own body. My eyes were closed, yet an awareness of alternative space encompassed me….

  “WHERE IS he? I think he’s doing all right. Not quite ready for the full data-dump. We gotta ease him in casually…. Full disclosure at the mountain. He’s our Pal.” The voices of JD, Eliza and Pal meshed together. “It’s a little tricky to explain in concepts you can comprehend…. I-we will reveal more after you clear your mind out in the desert…. Don’t panic, this is only a test…. Don’t worry about a thing, I-we have got your back … You just gotta relax right now and trust me/us. My-our name is Atoz Al Ways and I-we am-are the designer, developer, producer, and architect of the thing you call ‘reality.’ At this moment, you are outside your known reality habitat, in more ways than one. I-we cannot explain what I-we mean at this very moment—your brain would explode, and I-we wish to avoid that from occurring. Tomorrow my-our helpers/proxy liaisons JD and Eliza will drive you to the desert and tell you where you need to go from there. That’s it for now—your natural senses are overriding this signal….”

  My eyes shot open and I peered around the room.

  Same scenario: JD and Eliza on the couch. Only JD was clipping his fingernails and Eliza was knitting. Pal let out a loud whistle.

  “How you feeling? Looks like you zoned out there for a bit.” JD collected his nail clippings and placed them in an ashtray on the table.

  “The tea’ll do that to you. Very relaxing.” Eliza continued knitting.

  I almost said something, but refrained.

  “Peek-a-boo!” Pal squawked.

  I watched the colored lights revolve around the room. The whale music continued and that is how I fell asleep.

  I WOKE up to the smell of pancakes, bacon and coffee. The first early streaks of dawn jabbed through the blinds. JD was attaching a sleeping bag to my backpack with bungee cables.

  “You’re gonna need this if you’re planning to stay out there at night,” he said. “Try these on, we look about the same size.” He tossed a pair of hiking boots onto the floor. I put them on and walked around the room.

  “Yeah, they fit. Thanks.”

  “No sweat bro. There’s a towel for you in the bathroom. Hit the shower then we’ll grub and bolt.”

  “Okay,” I said, and made my way to the shower.

  In the bathroom, I checked myself in the mirror. I had slept the whole night through and felt rested. My mind was like an old radio that had been in the repair shop and was now firing up. No static transmissions, just the humming glow of a comfortable tone. I checked for random voices, like that of the doctor, or my hosts, or good ol’ Ron the Gipper. Nothing so far. Radio silence. It seemed the heavy narcotics had cleared out of my system and I was gaining my mind back.

  At least, I hoped so.

  “You still have to get out of range,” a mild voice stated.

  Shit—the voices were still active, but I didn’t feel menaced from this one; it was rather a matter-of-fact vibe on the soothing side. The same one that had directed me to go to “the mountain.”

  Atoz, I discerned.

  “Mmmm-hmmmm.”

  I took a warm shower and brushed my teeth. When I got out into the dining room a plate with a pile of pancakes, bacon and coffee awaited me.

  Eliza beamed. “Enjoy. And thank you for getting us out to Zion for the day. If it weren’t for you, we’d have never thought about going.”

  “Oh. Yeah, you bet. Thank you for your hospitality.”

  THE LIGHT layer of frost gave the environs around Hurricane a golden-white hue in the early morning light. The Scout International ambled up the quiet, two-lane freeway; the dogs lolled their tongues and checked out the windows from the back. They radiated unabashed excitement.

  My mind and the sky shared a common trait that fine morning: both seemed fairly clear. I wondered about the last time my mind was “clear” of booze, of uppers, of pharmaceuticals, of experimentals, of deliriants…. That I couldn’t recall.

  As we approached the entrance of Zion National Park, to the left passed endless reddish vertical mesas and to the right a series of pointy, ragged mountains. We stopped at the park ranger booth and the ranger noted the valid park sticker on JD’s windshield and waved us through. On the right, signs pointed to a maze of user-friendly campsites. JD drove the other way. He wanted to go “where not a lot of tourists venture.” About a mile in he turned left onto a smaller, one-lane dirt road.

  “This is ‘Zion Canyon Scenic Drive.’ It’ll take us a ways in—a couple of hours. Then you can go hike to wherever you want from there.”

  He was taking us into the heart of Zion.

  The two-hour drive up the road was slow, bumpy and scenic. At some of the steeper inclines Eliza and the dogs got out of the vehicle: Eliza to direct JD around giant shards of rocks and holes strewn about the road—which was more a trail than road. The final ascent was a two-hundred-yard slope so steep that all I saw out of the windshield was blue sky and clouds; I thought we might flip over backwards.

  “I love this shit!” JD continuously repeated.

  Over the final crest the vehicle leveled off, revealing a panorama of mountainous desert.

  We were atop a mesa overlooking an entire city of otherworldly red and brown castle wall mesas, splotched with green vegetation at their bases. This went on as far as I could see, and I had trouble believing it wasn’t all a splendid painting. Far below us a winding river coursed its way through the canyon, tiny specs of faraway cars making their ways on the road alongside it.

  “This is it,” said Eliza.

  “It certainly is,” I said.

  The dogs ran around and chased one another as JD got out a blanket, a cooler and my backpack.

  We sat and ate some grapes and trail-mix and allowed the breeze and the birds and the resounding quiet to be our entertainment.

  So it went for quite a while….

  After a bit, J.D. spoke: “Which way you thinking about going?”

  I scanned the landscape of endless mesas and canyons. I shrugged. I still wasn’t entirely sure what I was doing in Utah, and more specifically inside Mt. Zion National Park. But having been compelled to come this far led me to believe I would be pointed in the right direction. Or perish, lost in the middle of the Utah wilderness.

  “If you look that way, to the north of us, you see that big towering rock over there. It’s called ‘North Guardian Angel.’ It’s a view all right, and it’s right where the canyons border the more foresty mountain area. I think if you start now, you could get to the base by evening, camp out, then climb up it tomorrow. That’s what I’d recommend.”

  “Sounds good. Thanks for looking out for me. I really appreciate it.”

  This was it. Time to go.

  They each gave me a hug and Trumpet licked my face. Eliza grabbed a bag from her pack and handed it to me.

  “It’s a homemade granola whatchamacallit.”

  JD took a couple liter bottles of water from his cooler and put them into my backpack. He zipped it up and patted it.

  I thanked them again, said “so long” and began my trek downward on a little hiking trail.

  I WANDERED down the trail into the canyon area which was edged by shrubbery, desert trees, and whizzing insects. The sun gained momentum into the sky and started sucking the sweat out of my body.

  I reeked. The last of the pharmaceuticals was flooding out of my skin and the smell was toxic and metallic. When stopping to take a break I noticed my hand trembling: I had the shakes … not as bad as a hangover after a week long vodka binge but enough to let me know that I was detoxifying hard. I didn’t want to sit around for long because my mind would begin to go into a panic-like paranoia: What if withdrawing from the drugs cold-turkey gives me a heart attack and I die out here? My
heart’s beating too hard…. Maybe I should’ve stayed at that infernal hospital…. This was a complete mistake…. Why am I doing this? I’m totally insane….”

  Yet, a still, quiet voice prompted: “move on.”

  So I moved on.

  By dusk, I had sweat out quite a bit of the garbage in my system and arrived at the base of a large mesa/mountain that I presumed to be the “North Guardian Angel” that JD had spoken of. He was dead on target: it was a solid place to camp out for the night. I’d get some rest, then in the morning ascend the mountain. I laid out the sleeping bag and set down my pack, then gathered a bunch of dry twigs and little branches to fashion a small fire. I sat and ate some of the homemade granola, staring at the flames until it was time to sleep.

  I woke up to the tweet of a bird. It had a distinct pattern and cadence of the first bird I remember hearing from childhood that had resided in the field behind our duplex. Two slow whistles rising in pitch (G and A) followed by three successive, rapid whistles jumbled in F, octave lower F, and C.

  The other awakening, natural sounds of nature filled the air as the sun rose. I ate another handful of granola, sipped some water, packed up the bag and cleaned up the spot.

  I began my ascent.

  The first part of the climb went easy. A narrow trail wound up the side of the rocky mesa hemmed at times by close-cropped canyon walls. Things got tricky about two-thirds of the way up, which was mid-afternoon by the time I got that far—and it got steep. At times I crouched on all fours and climbed up, making sure every piece of stone I grabbed or stepped on supported my weight; if it didn’t, I would lose my footing and slide backwards a bit—which happened multiple times. The fragrances of the natural were overwhelmed by the unholy funk of big-pharma synthetic sweat. I couldn’t quite place that smell: chalky, pilly, metallic, unsettling, unnatural. How much more of this stuff did I still need to sweat out?

  Climbing about and up the mesa sparked another childhood memory: a movie I had loved as a five-year-old kid: Close Encounters of the Third Kind. The poster had been mesmerizing to my young and imaginative mind—a cluster of bright stars in a night sky above a two-lane road illuminated by a mysterious glow off in the distance of a barren and dark landscape. I often wondered where that road was going to. What was there?