by phuc
We were resting in a mess of wires by one of the huge bolts, and Steve, he was running on, talking ninety miles an hour, as if he were on some kind of caffeine high, which he wasn't, unless the dog urine fruits were naturally rich in it.
And maybe they were, because we were all in one of those late night type of conversational, philosophical moods that one usually associates with coffee houses or university lifers or chat-it-up smart guys trying to score pussy.
Only thing was, it wasn't late night, it was day, but the day wasn't much. The sun was down low, literally, and it was leaking its light over the water, making it the color of rich bourbon. There was a lot less water now. Much of it had been steamed away. But still that sun dripped into the sea, and our version of Sol had begun to lose it shape, like a rotting fruit going quick-fast to liquid. On the sea bed all manner of creatures, giant squids, fish, and even our great catfish friend, Ed, squirmed in the mud.
From where we were, we could see the great fish clearly. The dark things, the ravenous cancers, or pissed-off shadows, whatever they were, those hungry things that had been inside of Ed, had exited the old boy's ass. The shadows fluttered about the muddy sea bed like crickets. There was too much light for them, fading or not, they hopped and twisted and fell about like dying locusts, came apart in little black pools that ran into the mud and were absorbed.
The people who had been inside Ed exited as well. They were very small from our position, the size of termites. But we knew they were people. They came out of the gaping mouth of the fish and disappeared into the mud. It probably went very deep, that mud.
Maybe miles.
If anyone was still in the fish, they might stay on the surface for a while, as Ed covered a lot of space and was sinking more slowly, spread out like that, but he was sinking. We could see that big buddy going down.
Goodbye, Bjoe, if you're still there. Goodbye you man-eating, dick jerking, asshole.
The horizon had become a charcoal gray band, and it was broadening. Soon, all the world below would be dark.
Above us, the clouds were near touchable. Puffed up and white as a Jesus robe.
I said, "I think, tired as we are, we should start moving again, while we can see to climb.
If the sun holds out just a while longer, I think we'll reach the clouds."
"And if we do," Reba says, "who says that means anything? It can be just as dark inside a cloud as out. The sun goes, what the fuck does it matter where we are?"
"I'm thinking the beam leads somewhere," I said. "Remember Popalong, he climbed up here, through that hole over the drive-in, and it was nearly as high as this. He saw things.
He told us a little about them. This world has an attic."
"But there's no guarantee this leads to it," Reba said. "This world, in case you haven't noticed, lacks logic."
"Doesn't matter," Grace said, "we made this decision, and now we're stuck with it, we either ride the dick or use our fingers."
"Say what?" Reba said.
"It's an old saying I just made up, meaning, we've made a decision. We don't know if it's the real thing, the big cosmic fuck, or just us playing with ourselves. We won't know till we get up there."
"There really isn't any other way to go," Steve said. "Well, other than down. And if we climb down, I don't think we're climbing down to much. A lot of mud, dead fish, and such."
"You're right," Reba said. "Of course you are. I'm just tired."
We started climbing again.
There was something I hadn't mentioned to the others. The clouds. I feared our oxygen would thin. But it didn't. Truth was, the sky, the clouds, the whole arrangement, was way lower than back on earth. But it was a bit chilly. As we climbed through the clouds, they felt wet and sticky, like cotton candy.
And then we broke through a bank of clouds so thick you could swat them with your hand and knock them about. When we rose above them, struggling our way along the wires on the beam, we saw it.
A hole at the top of the world, the beam traveling up through it like a knife through a wound.
3
When we came to the top of the beam it began to narrow dramatically, and eventually we had to go one at a time. Grace was the first inside, followed by Steve, then Reba and myself. Behind us, the sun dimmed even more as it dissolved into the mud.
We climbed over the lip of the sky and stood in a room.
A dusty goddamn room.
A big room, I might add. But, a room.
Dimly lit, but lit. The source? Unknown.
There were all sorts of things there, and many of them were things I remembered Popalong Cassidy describing. There were backdrops of all sorts and tins of film, and loose film scattered helter-skelter, piles of television sets, all sizes.
Looking up, I could find no ceiling. Just darkness. In fact, I couldn't see any walls. There was just a floor and lots of junk and lots more for as far as the eye could see in the dim light.
"There seems to be some kind of path along here," Grace said.
And there was. A break in the backdrops and tins of film, forming a little corridor. Dust clouds rose and floated as we walked. We were all soon coughing, but in time the dust ceased to bother us, and we proceeded at a brisker pace.
"I remember Popalong Cassidy said he could walk into the backdrops," I said.
"Yeah, I remember that too," Grace said.
"We find one of home," Steve said, "we're set."
And as if wishing would make it so, we found just that. A huge backdrop hung down on chains attached at the top to... Who knows what? The backdrop was so long it curled on the floor. It was a painted outside view of the pool hall back home, the street out front. It was where my friends and I had conceived our plan to visit the Orbit Drive-in; it was where Willard had kicked some ass protecting Randy, the two who were later welded together by a lighting strike, welded in such a way they became one mean creature, the Popcorn King.
"If we can step through that," I said, "we will be in my hometown. Everyone can find a way home from there."
I turned for an answer from the others, saw another backdrop across the way. The Dairy Queen in my hometown. A tear abruptly dripped out of the corner of my eye, ran down my cheek.
"We could search about," Grace said, "but if we can step through it, if we can go back to East Texas, close enough for me."
"You said it," Steve said.
"I'm up for it," Reba said.
I walked slowly toward the backdrop, stuck out my hand, and, ran up against canvas.
I pushed again.
Harder.
Nothing.
I hit the canvas with my palm. Then my fists. Hard as I could. It rippled a bit, but I didn't pass through. I fell to my knees and pressed my forehead against it.
"The lying sonofabitch," I said. "He didn't go anywhere. Popalong said he could go through the backdrops. He said it."
Reba bent down and put her arm around me. "Come on, Jack. It's okay."
"No. It's not okay. I've had about all I can take."
"Get the fuck up," Grace said.
I turned and glared at her. She stood there in all her glorious, topless beauty. I had turned and was prepared to be angry, but looking at that woman, her face full of confidence, all I could do was make myself stand. I said, "Sorry, I had a moment."
"Okay," Grace said, "but now the moment's over. Popalong, who knows, maybe he did pass into these things. In his mind. And what works one time, may not work the next. We aren't whipped yet. We're never whipped till we say we're whipped."
"I don't know," Steve said, "I'm feeling a little whipped myself. I just don't have the energy to fall down and cry, or I would."
"Me too," Reba said.
"We can rest, or we can search," Grace said. "And, another thing, something important, I think.. .Right over there. A wall."
It was. A nice brown wall that ran way up into the darkness, out of sight. There was a standard light switch on the wall. I hit it. The lights in the great room brighte
ned. There was a creaking noise, and the backdrops began to move about on their chains, changing positions. They locked in and were still.
"Now there's something cute," Grace said.
It was a door, revealed by the movement of the backdrops.
Grace strolled over, took hold of the knob. "When I turn," she said, "be ready for whatever."
She turned the knob, pulled the door open.
Nothing leaped on us.
No whatevers.
Inside the room were all manner of mirrors, and looking into them, we looked different in every one. Not just short or fat or tall or wide, but, we had different faces. I could recognize them as our faces and bodies, but they were different.
Even Grace showed discomfort, started moving along quickly. For in many of the mirrors her shape was not so attractive. Her breasts drooped, and she looked tired and scared and old.
I looked weak, bent over, my fingers almost touching the ground. Steve's face was blank in many of the mirrors, and Reba was chunky and big-legged and exhausted.
"It's how we really feel," Reba said.
"I don't feel that way," Grace said. "Not at all. I think it's how this world wants us to feel."
"Whatever, I'm for going back to the other room," Reba said. "At least some of the backdrops are pretty."
But we kept moving, and soon the mirrors were gone, and there were these rows and rows of what we had seen in a pile on the ground beneath the hole in the sky. They hung on cables from the ceiling we couldn't see. There were crude cut bodies and nicer ones, and really fine ones, some with windup keys at their backs, many without, all the fleshy ones nude and shiny. No one stunk here. They looked fresh. And there were aliens. The ones in our dreams, and in the pile below the sky.
The aliens were in great chairs in front of enormous cameras that were poked through holes in the floor, and the chairs, they rode up in such a position that the alien's filmed-over, bulging eyes were pointed down into the cameras, and the creatures were held in place by belts and straps so they wouldn't fall from their chairs. They didn't move.
We walked slowly toward them, threading our way between the hanging figures. A tentacle dripped over the side of one giant chair, and I reached out to touch it. It was slick with decay and smelled.
"Dead," I said, "all dead."
We moved between the chairs that held the many aliens, came to a canyon in the floor.
We looked over the rim, all the way down. All we could see was a dim red glow. We could feel heat coming up through the opening.
"This must be the garbage hole, where the bodies are dumped," Grace said.
"My guess is," I said, "that red glow is the sun. It has fallen onto the drive-in world, heated it up. I bet all that's left now is lava."
Looking across the vast expanse on the canyon to the other side, I could see cars and buses, planes and trains. They looked small and were all heaped together in the manner of toys tossed aside at the end of the day by an exhausted child.
"I bet we're looking down the funnel from the sky," Steve said. "It could be that, instead of the waste hole."
"The funnel was far away," Grace said. "The waste hole was just below us."
"Maybe," Steve said. "But time and distance...Nothing makes sense here. And there's some of the same kind of stuff that was thrown down the funnel over there," he said, pointing at the autos and planes and such on the other side of the great gap. "But who, and why?" Reba said. None of us had an answer.
We went back and looked at the hanging bodies, and Steve said, "You know, I think these human shapes haven't gone rotten because they've never had the spark of life. The ones below, I bet they , had it, and they didn't work out, had to be discarded. The others, they can be wound up, but these...Look up there, see, the more human ones have wires going into their heads."
I looked, and sure enough, 1 could see the wires twisting down and into the tops of their skulls."
"Oh, God Almighty," Reba said.
We rushed over to where she stood, and what we saw made us all gasp and go weak.
Hanging in a row were a number of alien and human bodies. We recognized the human shapes. There were several copies of each. There were crude carved wooden copies, and windup copies, and I suppose there could have been copies in the pile below, and we just hadn't seen them, or they were too rotted, or too mixed together.
It was all the members of the drive-in.
Replicas of them.
I saw my old friends, Randy and Willard.. .Crier.. .Many others.
But there was something even more stunning.
Us.
Figures of us.
Rows of us.
Hanging there. Mouths open. Wires running into our heads. Windup versions. Crude wooden versions. Naked little suckers letting it all hang out.
"Ain't this the shits?" Steve said.
"I think my tits perk higher than that," Grace said, looking down the row of replicas.
"Damn, Jack," Steve said. "Are you really that well hung?"
"He is," Reba said.
"I second that," Grace said.
"I wish I hadn't asked," Steve said.
4
Grace had Steve boost her up to the top of one of the hanging figures of herself. She put her hands on its head, said, "The cable has a little hook, and it fits into a thin loop around the bodies' necks. The wires, they.. .seem to be just pushed into the tops of the skulls."
Grace yanked at the wires. They came free. "Yep," she said. "I'm going to unhook this one."
She did, and swung down, and Steve managed the copy down. We pulled the body away from the hanging rows and out into an open space where there was a little more light.
We all bent over and pushed the inert figure's hair around, felt where the wires had fastened into its skull. There were these little bumps, and if you looked close, really close, you could see the holes where they had gone in.
"What the fuck could this all be about?" Steve said.
"I have an idea," Reba said. "And I don't like it."
"What?" I said.
"Bend over, Jack. Put your head toward me."
I did as I was asked. Reba ran her fingers through my hair. She said, "I found these before. I just thought they were birthmarks.. .They look like the marks from the wires in the Grace figure head."
"Now, wait a minute.. .Coincidence. They're just little birthmarks or something. I didn't even know I had them."
Reba didn't answer. She just bent forward, offering me her skull. Reluctantly, I ran my trembling fingers through her hair. There were little bumps.
"The same," I said.
Grace ducked her head forward. I ran my fingers through her beautiful, blonde hair. Same bumps.
Steve ran his own fingers through his hair, said, "Me too."
"I don't think I like what I'm thinking," I said.
"The catfish," Grace said. "Ed. Remember, there were edible wires inside his flesh. They were so big, we could see them. But with us...They're small. They could be...must be inside us."
"No," Steve said. "I'm human. Can you make a machine hungry, make it want sex and Coca-Cola? I don't think so. Shit, man, I had a life before this crazy place. It sucked, but it was better than this. I got all kinds of memories. I got a divorce for heaven's sake. I mean, what robot wants to shit or pee?"
"We all have lives," Grace said.
"No," Reba said. "Think about it. The windup versions, the woodcut versions. It's like whoever made them was learning. Advancing."
"But, couldn't they just be models based on us?" Steve said.
"We all have the place for the wires in the tops of our heads," Reba said.
"It's too crazy," Grace said. "You mean, all our memories are...false."
Reba nodded. "Could be."
"We're just goddamn robots," Steve said.
"Technically," I said, "I think we're androids."
"But East Texas. Our homes...You mean, they never were? We never left this world? Or rather, we've alwa
ys been here?"
"I don't know," I said. "But, I'll tell you what. I'm pissed. We've been fucked...Jesus. That means Mom and Dad. They never were. Or they were machines. Like everyone else."
"Like us," Reba said. "What I'm thinking is they may never have been your parents. It may be all in our head. In our.. Jesus.. .in our wires and circuits. We were given past histories, tossed into this world for something's entertainment. Even the aliens, they're false. They're just bodies. Rubber at first. Then devices like us. Something someone was playing with until he figured out how to do it better, and then, he/she/it grew bored."
"That would explain why the world is coming apart," Grace said. "Our creator. He just doesn't give a shit anymore. I always thought, you had a creator, he had to be better than some egotistical Christian god, wanting everyone to love him and worship him while he killed people with diseases and made them suffer...But, you know, compared to our god, that Christian god is looking pretty good...If there ever was a religion called Christianity...My Lord, everything is in question."
"All of it must have been based on some truth," I said. "Our creator's truth."
We all sat down around the Grace shape on the floor. Just sat there. Quiet. For a long, long time.
Finally Grace said, "I say we find this creator, and kill the sonofabitch."
"Sounds good," I said.
"Wouldn't that be a bad idea?" Steve said. "He is, after all, our Frankenstein.. .And how do I know that? Is there really a character called Frankenstein? Or is that just part of the whole brain implant — probably a chip in my head of some kind. Man, everything we know or have learned may be a big old fart-smelling lie."
"We're each different," Grace said. "Where he fucked up, is he gave us free will. We can do what we want. And that means killing him. Hell, wanting to do that. Have some kind of revenge. That makes us human, don't it?"
"If there ever were humans," I said.
It took a long time for us to make our way around the funnel, to the other side. We ended up sleeping a lot, and eating all our fruit. But finally we made our way to where the planes and buses and such were.
