RUNTIME ZERO: Streaming The New Infinity (Dark Math Chronicles)

by Mick Brady

  The silver-haired stranger moved through the studio like an astronaut exploring the moon, seemingly absorbed in every detail; though by now, the place was nearly empty—just a bed, a table, and a couple of chairs were left. Not a single brush, roll of canvas, or tube of paint remained—no sign, in fact, that an artist had ever lived there, except perhaps for the rumpled character unfolding on the daybed, still groggy in his Jack-the-Dripper jeans and t-shirt. Everything else had been hustled up to Half Moon in his brother’s VW bus the day before and dumped without ceremony in his mother’s garage. The evidence of his fall was all around him.

  He had come full circle, Will told his mother, but just to visit. He couldn’t stay but wouldn’t say why. He knew she’d freak if he told her the truth—that he was riding out his last few days in the studio just to see what the end of the line looked like. After that, he told himself, anything might be possible. Who knows, a whole new world might be waiting for him just around the bend, and if not, he’d just have to hustle one up. If there was none to be had, what the hell difference did it make? This life, as he saw it, was pretty much over. Now, how could a mother dig that?

  The mystery man, apparently finished with his survey of the premises, grabbed a bentwood chair that had once graced the halls of the VFW Post, leaned back against the wall, and spoke.

  “A long time comin’, Will.”

  “Do I know you?”

  “We’re part of the same circle of friends.” His steady gaze contained everything the young artist would ever need to know, but Will wasn’t ready to receive it; he was still streaming Channel One.

  “And what circle might that be?” He was now glistening with sweat.

  “The one that connects you, me and Juliette. My name is Chrome.”

  Watching him closely, Will reached under the mattress and pulled out a small, hand-tooled leather bag, poured some jumbleweed into a chocolate zigzag, rolled it up nice and tight and lit up. “You scared the shit out of me, man. You have any idea what kind of neighborhood this is?” A wisp of blue smoke curled up into his nose as he spoke.

  “I do. Juliette tells me it’s a real war zone.”

  “Yeah, well, she should know.” Will took another long, slow drag, then pretended to study the joint fastidiously. “Where the hell is she, by the way? I wanted to give her back this pendant,” he said, fingering the silver bar. As he took another toke, Chrome stood up and walked out of the room, returning with two cups of coffee.

  “Let me ask you something, Will,” he said, placing them on the table.

  “Sure, man, fire away.”

  “What do you think happened the other night at the Factory?”

  “What happened was real simple, man. I took Juliette’s advice, got an audience with the queen, and she screamed, ‘Off with his head!’”

  “And then you saw the x-ray vision…a sight that sent you running for the door.”

  “That flashcube nightmare? It was a bad case of refried brains, my friend…an acid flashback.” Will’s eyes were tightly closed, as if he were trying to block out the memory.

  “That was no flashback, Will; that was Reality. You were thinking with your whole being for a moment, seeing things as they really are. What Juliette calls ‘seeing in the dark’; it was made possible by that talisman you’re holding.”

  “Wow. She did say she’d be there when I needed her, but hell, man, I might have been better off taking Andy’s movie offer.” Will got up, walked into the bathroom, took one last hit on the roach, tossed it in the can and flushed it down. Then, after splashing his face with cold water, he began to study himself in the mirror. As he stood there, lost in thought, he suddenly began to feel as though he and the entire room had become one, that his individual self had been dissolved into a greater reality, and large sections of it were beginning to shift like the pieces of a giant jigsaw puzzle, whirring and clicking as they began to interlock and form a single, sublime entity. When it was over, everything around him looked brighter, more vivid, as if a series of tumblers had fallen into place, unlocking an abandoned segment of his brain.

  “It now appears I’m entertaining angels here,” he thought, “and that’s a hell of a lot better than going crazy.” Suddenly, seeing in the dark didn’t seem so farfetched. When he returned to the studio, Chrome was staring out the storefront window, its layers of grime now highlighted by the morning sun.

  “You know, man,” Will said, struggling to understand his own words as they tumbled out of his mouth, “this might sound really weird…but it just hit me that this x-ray vision thing you were talking about may actually have saved my life, or at least one version of it; I would have been, at best, a one-eyed artist in the land of the blind.”

  Chrome smiled, carefully weighing what he said next. “Exactly right, Will; a masterpiece is meaningless in the dark. But remember, we’re all part of a greater creation, and we ourselves can each become a masterpiece. And rest assured, from now on, no matter how dark it gets around here, Juliette and I will be hauling in buckets of light.”

  “Weird. Five minutes ago I would have thought you were nuts, but now, it all makes perfect sense. In fact, it now seems clear that the Factory was nothing more than a giant glitter machine, pumping out chaff to distract me from the truth. But what about the zombie jamboree, those shadow people…Were they real?”

  “More real than the darkness you’ve been living in, unfortunately; reality without the filters. The horror comes from seeing it all at once, for the first time. That’s why people prefer to live in darkness. The truth can be terrifying.”

  “Great. But where does that leave me?”

  “Like your friend Royko once said, Will, your head’s on fire…and that’s a good thing. Not an easy thing, but a good thing. Eventually it will enable you to break out of your wordcage and sync with the underlying pattern of the universe, and that’s where the fun begins. In one form or another, Juliette and I will be here to help.”

  “Thanks, man. I’m running out of options.”

  Chrome smiled. “My pleasure. Now, how about a trip to one of your dream worlds?”

  “Electric Kool-Aid? You? Me?”

  “No drugs needed. We’ll do it the old-fashioned way, cruising down a long stretch of two-lane blacktop.” With that, Chrome threw down the deadbolts and opened the front door. A Triumph Tiger 650, cherry red and ready to roll, was waiting on the sidewalk.

  “Whoa…this yours?” Will said, circling the machine.

  “Yeah…thought we could head up into the mountains, where the tribes are gathering; drop in, see what’s goin’ on.”

  Will, busy checking every nook and cranny of the gleaming engine, turned toward Chrome with a smile. “You talkin’ Woodstock? Hell yeah, man. Let’s roll!”

  “Actually, we’re heading up to a farm in Bethel. Woodstock will get all the glory, but won’t have to clean up the mess.”

  As they chatted about the details of the ride, a small cluster of hippie chicks approached the man with the metal hair; one even asking if she could touch it. Chrome, mildly amused by the attention, said she could touch his if he could touch hers. The warm gush of willing laughter that followed was enough to convince him that this was an angel he could ride with.

  Words shouted into the wind were muffled by the engine’s roar, making for precious little conversation as they rolled through the summer hills. Will was running full-out on a tab of Sunshine, while Chrome was on his own preternatural high, having mumbled something about drugs creating too much lag. He was like a ghost on the machine, weightless in the balance as they rocketed in and out of the mountain curves, breezing through pockets of cool air that drifted up from the rocky creek below. Will, staggered by the sunlight smashing through the trees, shouted into the wind, “Now this is what I call High Art!”

  They took the long way around, running up along the Delaware, then headed north into the mountains to pick up 17B winding south toward the tiny town of Bethel. Though he knew Will was itching to get there,
Chrome chose this roundabout route for a couple of reasons: one, rolling through the real Catskills in mid-August was a virtual biker’s wet dream, and two, he was well versed in the history of Woodstock. He knew most of the major roads coming off the New York State Thruway would, by now, be blocked with traffic jams up to ten miles long, making the long way around a shortcut. Will, his hair blowing in the wind, was blissfully unaware of these details.

  In time, the road became a highway, and the highway a maze of abandoned cars, a jumbled pathway for the endless parade of freaks drifting toward the music. Chrome somehow threaded the needle through a cloud of Brown Buddha and patchouli and reached the outskirts of the magic city by sundown, where he gunned the weary Triumph up a grassy hillside and set her free beneath an ancient apple tree. A chocolate spliff emerged from behind Will’s ear, and he offered Chrome a taste to get the party started. Chrome, who could get no higher, declined.

  “Ready to take a dip in the cosmic sea?” Will, already glassy-eyed and jangled from the road, seemed to be caught off guard by the immensity of the crowd stretching out before them. His fingers danced nervously around the pendant resting on his breast.

  “This is for you, Will; these are your people. I’m just along for the ride. When you come back down to earth, though, the sun and I will be here to greet you…stone solid.” In the embrace that followed, the energy in Chrome’s aura provided a bracing jolt of clarity to Will’s drug-addled brain, but it was soon forgotten.

  “See you in the morning dew, my brother,” Will said, his smile shifting like the ground beneath his feet. With that, he turned and waded into the crowd as a new band lit up the sky with a tune so fine he felt like he was goin’ up the country on a hot summer’s day. He made his way through the sticky-sweet clouds of smoke and pheromones, moving sweat to sweat with countless bodies in the night. Then, somewhere in the zone between the Dead and the Family Stone, he fell into a trance and began to dance, his soul adrift in karmic bliss, free to fuck the angels of his dreams for all eternity. They were scattered all about him on the naked earth, half a million strong.

  As the night wore on, his sense of wonder wore off. Without a vision or a dream or an angel to sustain him, he was hit head-on by the roaring darkness, which came crashing through his makeshift skull like a boulder from the moon, turning his tangle of utopian fantasies into a night on Bald Mountain. He found himself falling through the surface of the earth, trapped on a flaming freight elevator with an entire army of earthlings, and not a one of them could hear his screams. When he finally hit bottom, the only one left was Andy, way up in the sky, with diamonds.

  The crowded dawn found Will, bleary-eyed, winding his way back to the only patch of clarity he could remember, where Chrome sat rapping under the apple tree with a small band of beaded nomads. Will, all scorched and sated, slithered into the circle, hunkering down to mine the vibes while trying to block out the sound of a dormouse screaming through the trees, telling him to feed his head!

  “But how the fuck do you know that, man?” a bronzed, bearded gypsy in fringed and beaded buckskin was saying heatedly to the heavy-metal angel, his tribe of fellow gypsies scattered in a rough circle behind him.

  “It was blowin’ in the wind,” Chrome said, and the gypsies burst into laughter.

  “Yeah, well, Wavy Gravy just announced we’re now the third-largest city in the state,” the buck-skinned fellow said.

  “Look, I didn’t say you couldn’t change the world; I said it’s unlikely you’ll change it for the better. Every person on this planet is descended from hundreds of thousands of bad attitudes, and the undoing of that collective blindness is a task far beyond your newfound wisdom. Sorry.” The circle erupted in protest.

  “You can’t be serious, man. We rode in here on a wave of peace, love, and harmony. We have instant karma on our side. Once that bolt of enlightenment hits, this’ll be a whole new planet.” Plenty of amens from the circle of gypsies.

  “What you call enlightenment is not for the fainthearted, and certainly not for amateurs. Rebellion is just as blind as obedience, so watch out; it can be quite a shock when the lights go on.”

  “Hey, man, where you been? Haven’t you heard of acid? Here we are at the dawning of a new fucking age, and all you want to do is paint it black! I feel sorry for you, man. I really do.” With that, the gypsy stood up and started down the hill, with his people a few steps behind. Chrome watched them wander off, as Will inched over and lay down on the grass beside him.

  “What the hell was that all about?”

  “Not much; just another debate about the shadows on the cave wall. How was your night in the garden of earthly delights?”

  “Lotsa rain, but no lightning.”

  “Relax, Will. There are plenty of storms up ahead.”

  “No thanks, man; had one too many. Time to anchor off in some nice, quiet lagoon.”

  Chrome stood, stretched, reached into his pocket, and pulled out a dazzlingly smooth, perfectly round white stone with the soft warm glow and translucent purity of ancient alabaster, no bigger than a wild cherry.

  “Is this what you were looking for?” he said. His eyes twinkled as he held it up, then dropped it into the palm of Will’s hand. Will stood transfixed as a strange warm glow, unlike anything he had felt before, began to spread through his body. Chrome smiled, turned, and headed downhill toward the bike.

  “Let’s roll, Willie Boy; we’re headin’ home.”

  13

  PURGATORIO

  In one last, desperate attempt to defy the laws of emotional gravity, Mona Lisa and her friends whisked Will into the heart of New Jersey for a weekend retreat at the Soul Integration Center, a sprawling estate once owned by a New York art dealer, now a fountain of instant karma for a new age of Aquarians. She thought the off-tempo mix of primal scream therapy and immersive tantric yoga would be just the thing to jar his demons loose, but from the moment he took his place in the circle of hungry souls, the unbridled howling felt even worse than the Rorschach treatment he had just received at the Echo Factory.

  Many of his fellow supplicants were women from the Upper East Side, still brittle from the Fifties, hoping to join the sexual revolution before it all petered out. Others were mere window shoppers—spiritual tourists scouting out the latest in designer religions. But there was also a small cadre of authentic spiritual desperadoes—people whose lives hung in the balance—people like Will, who was trying frantically to reach the safety of nirvana without getting his ego bruised.

  God’s mercy finally arrived in the form of an earnest young man with the hair and jawline of a comic book superhero. Stepping into the center of the circle and bowing toward each of the cardinal directions in turn, hands joined above the heart chakra, he invited one and all to disrobe and join him in the sacred waters, which was basically a heated pool nestled inside a chamber of glass in an adjoining section of the compound.

  As night fell in the outer world, they undressed in awkward silence and folded their earthly garments on their meditation cushions. Following the lead of their new superhero, they formed a loose line and began to giggle their way across a wooden footbridge leading toward a soft blue glow in the summer night. There, in the middle of a clearing, they came upon a steamy cathedral lit from within by the underwater lights of a shimmering lagoon surrounded by a jungle of flowering tropical plants. The air was dense with the musky scent of sandalwood incense as they slipped into the silky waters, uttering moans of joy.

  Will lingered at the edge for a moment before sliding beneath the surface, emerging seconds later in the middle of the pool. He floated on his back through a fog of murmuring into a world of liquid wonder, where soft inner parts of the body proper, long constrained by the weight of civilization, were primed to unleash the secret longings that lurk within us all.

  A fetching, blond madonna of childbearing age stood shoulder-deep in the center of it all, her beatific face beaming rays of cosmic love into the mist. As Will drifted by, she reached out
and captured him in her arms, then reeled him in and held him tight, like a cherub on the belly of the midnight sky. He folded into her softness, his eager mouth searching for the source of sustenance. As she stiffened in his mouth, he grew hard in her hand.

  She kissed him deeply and tenderly on the lips and then began moving slowly toward the epicenter, which by now was fully erect. Thus, by suckling the child, the woman gave birth to the man, who began the cycle anew, sending waves of love crashing against the sides of the pool. When the coupling was complete, they kissed and came undone. Will began to drift through the clusters of saints and sinners on his way to the deep end, where he stopped for a moment to observe the frenzy, then closed his eyes and sank beneath the surface to ponder the emptiness of his existence.

  The magic of his slo-mo descent into silence seemed to bring him back to his right mind, the mind he had occasionally glimpsed while orbiting Chromium and Juliette. “This world is far from perfect,” he thought, “but what if there really is another one? A better one, on a higher plane, with far less pain and struggle?” Ever since his encounters with them, he had begun to consider this a distinct possibility, and now, in the otherworldliness of his watery chamber, he began to realize that a chance for a new life had been offered him. All he had to do was stay alive long enough to find the signs, and follow the bread crumbs into the next chapter of his life.

  At the last possible moment, he pushed hard against the blue concrete and rocketed back to the surface, gasping for air. After climbing out of the pool he grabbed a towel and padded back over the footbridge to the meditation room, alone, to wait for the session to end. During the long drive home, he tried to explain to Mona Lisa that, although he appreciated her concern for him (they had been apart for a while but remained friends), all it had done was remind him once again that it was impossible to fuck your way out of the darkness, and that screaming didn’t help much either. After that, silence. He didn’t mention his underwater revelation, thinking she might not understand. When she finally dropped him off at the studio, she kissed him on the cheek and said, wistfully, “I hope you find your angel, Will. I’d love to see you fly.” He didn’t know it then, but it would be the very last time he would see her.