Archelon Ranch

by Garrett Cook

  When he returned from his distraction, his father and Sagramore were standing over him. It was a common sight when coming back from Objectivity, but it was nonetheless an unpleasant one.

  “Dear me,” said Sagramore, his voice full of concern, “this is no good at all. If he just had Objectivity, it would be fine. He would be just what we’re looking for, but now…”

  “Do we kill him?” Bernard’s father asked, loading a syringe with something unfamiliar. Bernard wished that when this time came, there would be some sign of misery or lament on his father’s face, some indication that his son would be a loss. Bernard wished his father felt something and beyond that, that he would be able to feel the something his father felt. Bernard had never missed affection before his Objectivity advanced, but felt the affection the thirsty young woman had for the margarita and was curious about it. It was not love of course, but it was more than the monkey’s fondness for the hat, which had been just about the most affection he’d encountered before. There must only be love at Archelon Ranch. There must be love. The golden haired young ladies smiled in his memory, smiles of devotion, tenderness and hope. Bernard was grateful to find that Sagramore was thinking over the proposition instead of giving it an immediate yes. If he died as the Bernard that was Bernard and not one of his adopted selves, he was fairly certain that the dust tunnel would not spit him out as it usually did and his dreams of Archelon Ranch would therefore go unrealized.

  “No,” said Sagramore, “I don’t think that will be necessary. We just need to find the means to anchor him here and then find out exactly what the mud does to an individual genetically programmed to resist it. I think after that, I should be able to make him a Consensual.”

  “I suppose that’s good enough. You must understand, I’m not eager to kill my son.”

  “Of course not. Who would be?”

  “I love my son.”

  “Of course you do. He is your son.”

  Bernard was quite certain his father was lying. He was also quite certain that he did not approve of this plan to fix him in consensual reality. If he stayed consensual, he would be stuck in bed until he finally lost it and ended up enduring the visions Suburbanites had to deal with. He did not want to be a Suburbanite and wasn’t sure why he wasn’t one already on account of the mud and CRAMPS (Consensual Reality Affirmation Mediator for Permanent Schizmatics). Far as he could tell, it was something in his DNA, something in his mind, something special. He had never considered himself special, but he had to be. He was enduring the mud, after all, and Archelon Ranch had chosen to reach out to him. He would never get there if he couldn’t…

  I am the dresser drawer. I am full of clothes and I am made of wood. I am a dresser drawer. I am a dresser drawer. I am a dresser drawer and I am a dresser drawer. He reached out in the language of dresser drawers and pleaded his authenticity. He thought of the first time, how strange it was to be stiff and trapped in the dresser and he welcomed it. He closed his eyes and focused on how all beings were not altogether unlike a dresser drawer, especially himself. He had been a dresser once and he would be it again. I am a dresser drawer I am a dresser drawer I am a dresser drawer I am a dresser drawer hello dresser drawer I am a dresser hello to you dresser drawer I am a dresser drawer I am also Bernard I am a dresser drawer what are you talking about I am a sheet I am a sheet hello sheet I am a bed I am the plexiglass I am Bernard I am I am I am I am I am…

  He faded from the bed and was once more something else. He was big, he was hungry, he stomped through town picking up pedestrians with his mouth gnashing them into a fine paste. His biggest, most prominent, thought was “I am hungry”. He was not sure what made him hungry or what made his distaste for meat disappear completely, but this Bernard, the tyrannosaurus rex Bernard, wanted to eat people. The message was still there for him, perhaps ready in the mind of every tyrannosaurus rex. Something had prepared this self for him, the one thing he needed most to know. Archelon Ranch is beyond the city, Archelon Ranch touches the eternal sea, the sea of seas that cannot be corrupted, the sea outside of time. Love and delight and devotion wait for you. They wait for you past the gates of Archelon Ranch. If there is just one place to go, choose Archelon Ranch. Archelon Ranch is calling and it waits for you. He reached out past this self and sought to take his flight. He reached for the place, for unity with the marble, the sea or the great sea turtles. He sought nothing more than to be one of those turtles, but the turtles said, “You are not, you are not a turtle and you are not. You cannot cheat. There are no shortcuts to Archelon Ranch. There is one road only.”

  He cried gigantic dinosaur tears as he felt the place from which hope and love must have originated reject him. He stomped and ate and cried and contemplated what had to be done. Bernard reached for the Bernard part of him and saw the bed and cell and syringes, the wicked father and the crass, hateful brother. He stomped through the city knowing what would have to be done. As the body tugged away, he tugged back, affirmed Bernard and the tyrannosaurus to be one and the same. The DPW triceratops hurled itself at him, but he had strength, passion, jaws of steel and a desperate need for love to protect him. Police and triceratopses and angry gang members could do nothing to stand against him. Home. Hope. Love. Archelon Ranch is calling Archelon Ranch is calling.

  The house, small, petty and angry thing, stood tall, but not tall enough. He raised his clawed feet and gave it several hard kicks, then buffeted all of his scaled body against it. Pounding with his angry, saurian head, he burst through the wall, looming over his father and a terrified Professor Sagramore. He lifted his colossal legs and brought them down on weak, sadistic humans. Bernard returned to Bernard and found himself wading through wreckage where he found a gun that his father must have kept in case the now dead guard dinosaurs went wild. He walked out of the house, or what was left of it, for what would be the last time (and considering that he was usually sedated and dragged out for his trips to the community pool, sort of the first) and set out for Archelon Ranch.

  IV

  I watched from the Hendersons’ roof as my plan to make a hero out of Bernard began to come to fruition. My Deep Objective brother had become a tyrannosaurus and brought bloody, screaming death to Sagramore and our father. It’s not as if our father didn’t deserve it, or wasn’t written for eating, but I still felt a bit sad, having just been party to what must have been a particularly agonizing death for him. I had just allowed my flesh and blood to kill off my flesh and blood to prove a theory and establish my own existential relevance but the funny thing about that was once I stopped feeling kind of sad, I felt important. I felt big and useful. This stagnant loop of tropical death we call a city was ready for change now. All Bernard had to do now was… he would have to just… he could… and then you know there was…

  Well, fuck. It wasn’t THAT far ahead, and yet somehow I had managed not to plan that far ahead. At least I had given him a gun, since Garrett Cook’s work tended to be on the violent side and he would probably have something to shoot. I decided maybe I should give him some space to get his bearings and we could plan out his heroic future together.

  As he emerged from the ruins of our house and picked up the gun, I felt relieved, like things were finally on track after the years of suffering that had fallen upon this city at the hands of the tyrant sadist hack, Garrett Cook and his stagnating plot. How long ago should this turn of events have been written? How long ago should this have started moving forward? How long ago should Bernard have gotten free and initiated his mission of glorious redemption? These questions hounded me, sickened me and gnawed at me. I was starting to really hate Garrett Cook and his damn imagination. I could thank him for life, but I could thank myself more. I had a right to my hate, but it still felt good thinking that I could leave it behind soon enough now that Bernard was free and the protagonist could set the wheels of justice in motion.

  I climbed down from the roof but still chose to dart behind things as I stalked my brother, curious what would come next. Not th
at it was my concern. Now that the narrative was being rectified, I probably had little more to do with it. But I’d still get to enjoy my life a little bit more knowing everything would be okay. Unless Bernard was going to be some kind of martyr; not altogether out of the question. Government cyborgs could end up ripping out his brain and the reader would be left with a sad familiar feeling and a desire to stamp out oppression. That would be no good. Couldn’t risk it. I had no idea how audacious it was of me to keep following my brother until his victory was clear.

  From my vantage point behind a trash can, I first heard the accursed phrase. Like the words “christmas” or “blowjob”, it was a sparkling, ominous fireworks show of language that would explode new priorities into life. “Archelon Ranch” he kept mumbling until he took a deep breath and sat down on the curb to think. Archelon Ranch. It sounded beautiful. It sounded dangerous. Some great conspiracy, some colossal secret that only a person who had attained forbidden unity with the All could hear about. I kept the volume of my cellphone and voice low as I called the man who, sadly enough, was the only one who would know what Archelon Ranch was. I had thought I had parted company with Authorial Intent forever, but there was nobody else I could think of calling.

  “Hello?” said the Reverend Calvin Jenkins.

  “This is Clyde.”

  “Give me one reason I shouldn’t hang up on you, you rotten son-of-a-bitch…”

  “Bernard is free and he has Deep Objectivity.”

  “That’s vaguely interesting.”

  “What is Archelon Ranch?”

  The line went dead for long enough that I suspected he would make good his threat to hang up. There was heavy breathing on the other end, real heavy, the sound of a man who needed a paper bag to hyperventilate into. Now I knew this phrase had power. Now I knew it had meaning and that it was loaded with sinister purpose.

  “Reverend?”

  “Plot be preserved. Where did you hear that?”

  I turned up the phone’s volume and pointed it towards my brother, who had resumed his awestruck, confused mumbling. His time deliberating was no respite from his renewed obsession.

  “Archelon Ranch, Archelon Ranch…”

  I quickly turned the phone down again before Bernard could hear the voice on the other end. I didn’t want him to know that I was out there. In his addled state he would no doubt remember me as the guy who stuck extra syringes in him for leisure instead of as the mastermind who ignored the naysayers and pulled off his risky and highly abstract rescue.

  “Your brother is talking about Archelon Ranch?!”

  “That’s where I heard it.”

  “Plot preserve…”

  I was sure he could feel the thick, glowing superior smirk on my face straight through the phone. There could be no doubts now, no matter how much a shell-shocked space cadet my brother was. He knew about whatever Archelon Ranch was after all. As the door to door Campbellians would say, he had received the call.

  “Your brother might be the protagonist, hard as it is for me to accept it. I really expected someone more stable, but I should have realized this whole thing is by Garrett Cook and Garrett Cook doesn’t write about stable people. Hindsight is twenty/twenty… but don’t take that as a definite acknowledgement. I’m still going to have to run some tests.”

  “Okay, but what is Archelon Ranch?”

  “You could say it’s a kind of…”

  I was getting impatient. If my brother were less spacy, I would have thought that he was going to leave and I would have to resume my mobile stalking efforts. He had stopped mumbling about Archelon Ranch and was now loudly telling himself that he was not the sidewalk. I was glad that I had read up on Deep Objectivity and knew that over time without contact with the mud, it could be controlled; particularly by a superior mind or a designer human. My brother was a designer human with a superior (though malnourished) mind.

  “Archelon Ranch is a very special place.”

  “Do you know what it is or don’t you?”

  “There are a number of things. The author’s obsessed with the phrase. It’s haunted him for some time, but he’s never been able to do anything with it.”

  “It’s gibberish? It’s nothing?”

  The Reverend laughed a remarkable haughty laugh that made me hate him again.

  “Oh, no. Quite the opposite. It’s THE thing.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It’s the place where the big secret is held. It could be a realm of cowboy mystery or a secret government brainwashing facility or a fucked up postmodern madhouse. The thing is, it could be all of these things, but it’s probably none of them. For it to actually figure into the plot, it has to be something wonderful, something wonderful and safe that’s more than just a mantra.”

  “A paradise. He’s a prophet leading us on an exodus from this city.”

  “I’m not saying it’s impossible, but I’m still going to need to run some tests.”

  “Okay, so do it.”

  “You stay out of it this time. I need to know.”

  “Okay.”

  “I mean it!”

  “Okay, get on with it, then!”

  The thugs parked their motorcycles across the street a minute later. There were five of them. One was huge with an eye patch, one was a lady wielding a chain whip and there were three nearly identical bruisers with shotguns. I recognized all of these guys, and it was easy to predict what was coming.

  The huge muscular Narrativist with the eye patch charged at Bernard first and put his weight into it. The kick came just as he did. It was a mighty roundhouse from Bernard that broke several of the guy’s ribs. Though Bernard was smaller, he hit ridiculously hard, smashing the Narrativist’s jaw off its hinge with a vicious uppercut. The big guy thought of reaching for the knife at his side, but had to stop himself, devout Narrativist that he was. With another quick combination Bernard brought the thug to his knees and then to the ground.

  The three thugs with shotguns caulked their weapons but with unnatural speed and grace Bernard outdrew each one of them, gunning them down before even one could fire. Living in this city as long as I have, I had grown used to seeing people die. Every time it happened, it felt ugly and pointless, like it only happened because that’s what fucking happened, but with Bernard it was different; every time he killed, it was poetic. When he shot those guys down, it was quick, graceful and downright sensible. I would have thought that the girl with the whip would have learnt a lesson from her unfortunate companions, but she didn’t. She didn’t see him holstering the gun as she charged at him, snapping her whip. He grabbed it mid snap, and with the same animal grace with which he’d shot the men with shotguns down. He wrapped it around her neck, squeezing hard. In under ten seconds, all five thugs sent for my brother were dead. I had never seen him wield a gun before and knew we never gave him lessons in martial arts, but he killed like nothing else in nature killed. It didn’t take me long to figure out why, either.

  Objectivity. He knew when they were coming, how their bodies worked. He could hear the gun explaining how and when to fire. I was beginning to get the author’s intent and it was a great relief to see that my brother had been chosen for a good reason. He was the man who was going to bring us where we were going. He was the one who would lead us to Archelon Ranch. Whatever the place was, it had to be special and Bernard would have to be a special and beautiful man to get us there.

  My arrogant smirk returned as the large man’s cellphone rang idly five, six, seven times. Then mine rang.

  “He got them all, Reverend. Quick too. That boy can kill.”

  “Yes, he’s the one.”

  “And he’s going to Archelon Ranch.”

  “Plot preserve.”

  “Plot preserve.”

  I felt far less cheated than I had before. When I first figured it out, I resented the hell out of the author, but now it didn’t feel so bad. With a surge of pride and confidence, I approached my brother, hugging him for what had to b
e the first time he had been hugged by anyone.

  “Do you see it now, Bernard? You’re the guy! You’re the protagonist!”

  Bernard’s expression was blank. His eyes hung wide open, vast and stupid. There was no recognition behind them. For some reason, I played along. I let go of him as though it was a case of mistaken identity. Could he have been joking? Had Bernard encountered joking somewhere? Had he been a joke?

  “You’re the protagonist, Bernard!”

  He shrugged and walked off, the confused expression traded for one of sharp, focused zen intensity. My heart sank and I felt once again like I was a bit part, once more as if I hadn’t been written, once more as if the effort it took to assert my being was all for nothing. Bernard was not thanking me for all my efforts. Bernard was not going to heal society or make the world safe for me again. This was not my book. This book did not belong to the city or the Narrativists.

  “Take us with you!” I screamed, “Take us with you! This place is Hell! Take me with you!”

  The us of course became me because I was more concerned for myself than anything. It didn’t make me a hypocrite. Bernard was the hero. The man for whom this book had been written and he didn’t even know me, didn’t even know his own brother. Awful though our relationship was, I was his brother and I had helped him. Made me wonder what the point of life was and if Bernard was its star — the center of it all. I could come up with very little to think about but the repeated awful realization that he was not taking me or anybody else with him, that this was his quest. I looked around me at the hot, vine covered rainforest city and my feelings toward Garrett Cook shifted into hate again. I hated Garrett Cook more than anything, though my world was too small to have much hatred in it. If he would have paradise, I would have it too. I would make it my own. Hell, I’d do everything in my power to make sure that at the end, it was me at the Archelon Ranch, not that selfish little shit, Bernard.