Dystopia

by Charles Eugene Anderson

‘The Stinker’. It was there I had to make a tricky maneuver inside of it because I had to draw the bow of the kayak in a different direction, so I could pass around the eddy and point the bow towards the Stinker’s exit.

  It was there that two angels made their way towards me. I still had to make my maneuver or else the bow of the kayak would’ve been pulled into the Stinker, and while it wasn’t a large eddy, there was so much data going through the stream at once, I didn’t want to be sucked down with it. I couldn’t fight them off and paddle the kayak at the same time. The first angel clawed into my arms with the long nails of both of his fingers that were almost as sharp as a bird’s talons. While he was strong enough to dig his nails into my arm, I dug my paddle into the data current harder. Finally, I was able to turn the kayak the way I wanted to go.

  While the first angel distracted me, the second angel flew to the bow of the kayak and was trying to pull it into the Stinker. Between the two of them I was able to hold my own, and I was slowly able to draw the kayak in the direction I wanted it to go. That was when a third angel came to join his brothers, but instead of attacking me, he helped the second at the front of the kayak, and the two of them were able to pull my craft into the eddy.

  I tried to make a digging stroke with my paddle into the stream, I might’ve been able to get through The Stinker if I had had Nestor’s help, but instead, my kayak was pulled into the eddy. It jerked me hard against the cockpit, and I knew I was going to get rolled into a very bad spot on this part of the river.

  Before I overturned, I was able to whip the back blade of my paddle at one of the angels on the bow with my free left hand, I hit him hard with a downwards stroke, but it did nothing to save me, and I still went into The Stinker’s descending pull of its data flow.

  I hadn’t played well against the Steiner, and I was going to lose everything because I had lost my queen too early in this game, and I was being pulled down. There would be no recharge, no second chance, and only death awaited me if I couldn’t free myself.

  ‘You can’t hold your breath forever. Sooner or later you are going to swallow a big mouthful of data,’ said my guide-trainer to me long ago, but first, I had to release the kayak’s skirt that held me tight.

  I knew if I could get back to the top, I could signal other guides who would call a rescue pickup for me. That was the best solution, but that didn’t happen to me. In the eddy, I had lost my paddle as soon as I overturned, and at first I was able to keep the darker data out of my mouth, but I couldn’t find the clasp for the kayak’s skirt. As long as I couldn’t find it, I would remain inside its cockpit and not able to save myself.

  I reached behind me where the clasp should’ve been, but there was something else there. It was the angel that I had knocked into the eddy earlier. He had attached himself to the stern of my craft, and when I reached back I could feel his teeth as he bit into my hand.

  I knew I was going to swallow data at any second. A human could swallow a few mouthfuls at a time, but anything more was bad. I had to release the skirt, but instead of withdrawing back my hand, I was still going for the rescue clasp.

  I was able to release the skirt, but instead of freeing myself, I was going to free that angel also. I wasn’t a hero, but I decided our fates were going to be the same while the two of us were in the stream.

  “God makes beauty, and he waits patiently for beauty,” I said a guide-prayer of my own.

  I still had the angel with me when the visions had left, and I pulled the angel tightly by his hair with my good hand. The creature was lost in his own dark data visions, but I didn’t care. I had my wits back, and with my left hand, I was able to activate my float-bag.

  The yellow bag inflated around the two of us. I had positioned the creature in a rescuer’s pose. After a while, we were free of the Stinker, and I gasped as fresh air filled my lungs. My float-bag’s internal compressors deflated the emergency raft to half its size but it still kept enough air in it to keep our heads above the river.

  Blood mixed in the data and went into my mouth when we hit the next rapids. They were ‘The Juniors’, they weren’t big rapids if I was in my kayak, but when I only my head sticking above the water and trying to hold onto the angel, they seemed huge to me from that low vantage in the data-water.

  I must’ve gotten more of the river’s raw data and the angel’s blood in my mouth when I had to come to the surface again to breath. The juniors might’ve been smaller, but they were big enough for me to take in what my body couldn’t handle. I couldn’t help but to drink more of the data.

  I could see the angel, and I still held him. I knew if I didn’t rescue him he wouldn’t survive the next set of rapids. I still had life and decided to save the angel. I grasped him tighter in my arms, and took his head out of the data.

  I instinctively swam away from the current and tried for the shore. There was a nest of angels, and I was surprised to see them living so close to the stream. I deposited the wounded angel amongst his flock. They ignored me, and rose to attend to their wounded brother.

  I sat on the shore and didn’t have the strength to move, and in its middle sat an angel in the flock that looked familiar. This angel looked so old and frail to me, and when I looked at him, he looked up at me. It was when I saw a face that I had seen many times before. It was the same as my friend, Nestor’s face, but this one was an angel, and his face was more careworn than the younger man I thought I knew.

  I sat there for a few minutes, and he hadn’t said anything to me. When he finally spoke, he started slowly to stand, “Do you not see that Allah is he, whom we do glorify? All of those who are in the heavens and earth are glorified when the angels extend their wings? He knows the prayers of each one, and it is exaltation to him.”

  When I finally spoke, I said, “Are you my lost friend?”

  Then Nestor said, “At a young age I was happy at the sight of my friends.

  Now listen to my end and see what happens. I came in like a cloud, and I left like the wind.”

  “I don’t understand,” I said.

  “The past and the future are all the same, the younger man hasn’t yet met the man he’ll become,” he said looking at me with eyes that were too cloudy to see his brown pupils.

  “He’ll become you?” I asked. “But you were lost and I was trying to find you.”

  After we had spoken some more, he said to me, “It’s time for you to leave. Go further downstream. There’s an island you need to see, and a man you need to speak with.”

  Sometime in his life, I knew my friend, Nestor, would be transformed into an angel. He would no longer be the man who was married to three different women, but instead he would be reborn into a different creature, an angel. Once the angels had been my enemies, but then I wasn’t so sure. The myths said the bookbinders had been transformed into angels. I wasn’t a bookbinder’s friend. I had been their foe, yet I had a friend who’d become one of them.

  I could no longer rely on the kayak, but the perils of the stream below no longer mattered to me. I would ride the rest of the way without any difficulties and without a kayak.

  I floated on the river further than I had ever been in my kayak, and I followed the data until the stream widened so far I couldn’t see the river banks.

  In the flow of the data stream, sat a very small island, I had never seen it before, and I was surprised. As I floated closer I could see that there was a pavilion on its grounds. It looked like it had been built by the ancients. A man stood in its middle, and I could see librarians doing their twirling dance around him.

  “Are you a librarian?” I asked, as I pulled myself from the stream and into full view of the man.

  “I’m the first librarian; I’ll be the last librarian. Sometimes I’m the Augur,” he said to me.

  I looked and he stood in the middle of a group of lesser librarians who danced around their master. They wore white tunics while his was black. The librarians were in their spinning dance, and as they twirled around the
ir master they pointed one hand towards heaven and their other hand pointed towards the earth.

  “Would you like to join the dance? You have drunk from the river. You should,” he said. “You’ve survived angels, the data, and the rapids. You’ve earned the right to dance.”

  I started to spin with the rest of the librarians around their master, and at first, I could only imitate the others, but after a while I was lost in the movement.

  Everything in the stream came his way while I saw him standing in the middle of his pavilion. Every few minutes a librarian would appear, and do a spinning dance near him, and then disappear. He motioned for me to come near him, and he was unlike the older Nestor, the angel. This man was young and active; he was aware of everything around him.

  He wanted to see it all, and I was no more a distraction to him than anything else that was there. The librarians fed him information constantly, all of his wants and desires, and nothing was denied him by his servants and their swirling dance.

  But I found my nerve, and I spoke, stopping my own dance, “Where is my friend, but the Nestor who lives now?”

  “You speak during the dance. You’re the guide who can stop us. Stop his dance, and ours. None of the librarians can do what you have done. It must have been the angel’s blood mixed into the data you have drunk.” Then another