by V X Lloyd
“The fact is that the pyramid exists. It’s your choice where you want to be on it, whether you’re on the top, availing yourself of your choices, or you’re on the bottom. Don’t ask me to explain why anyone would choose to refuse. I don’t think all the processing power in the world could make sense of that.”
He didn’t bother to disguise his disgust.
“All the same, I disagree.”
She remained stock-still for a few moments, staring right into him. The room grew inky dark. She gave a subtle nod.
“I guessed as much before I came here. Though I remain open to the possibility that you will change your mind. I want you as my ally.”
“Lonely at the top, eh?”
She paused and narrowed her eyes at him.
“It is, actually. But you know what my life looks like? I travel around the world, I make important deals, I experience the best of the earth. It’s exactly what alien humans like you and I have been bred to do. No matter how hard you try, you’ll never be much use at anything else. Despite what your Sphinx claims, Moony, you should know that the takeover is already underway. Know, too, that I’ll give you a spot high on the pyramid. I don't need your help; fate is on my side. But I’m a busy woman, and I genuinely want to see you on my team, shining and victorious. Because it won’t be the same for you as with others. Your power has been awakened. You’re alive to your extra bandwidth. You won’t be unconscious to the network tapping your resources. It will be unbearable for you. I’m offering you the only real path.”
“How very sporting of you. It’s either I do your bidding or else you mine me for processing power.”
“Look around you. Life’s not fair, but don’t blame me. I didn’t stack the deck, Moony, but I definitely play the game. I’m being completely honest. You’re not.” She smiled again, and this time it felt cruel. “The more you do for us, the better your chances at moving higher in the pyramid. So help us with nano-3. I'd like you to help us negotiate a clandestine partnership with a cloud seeding organization in a matter of weeks.”
Moony had no idea what cloud seeding was, so he accessed the database for a quick definition on it.
Cloud seeding is where dudes fly in planes and spray some stuff that aids in cloud formation. It’s supposed to make it rain. With all the drought, it’s very popular right now.
The Gypsy, if perhaps she was reading his thoughts, nevertheless looked bored with what she found in him. “I’ve arranged a meeting with Amethyst Barstow of the seeding distributor We Rain, Inc. Their company board just needs someone to address some logistical concerns before they sign the form. With you fully connected to our network, it’s nothing you can't charm your way through.”
“You're selling her nano-3?”
“Labeled as an additive to prevent spoilage. You know how additives are all the rage these days.”
He had the beginnings of a clever idea, though deep from the syrupy bowels of Moony’s belief system, warning bells went off. He couldn’t exactly go so far as to be duplicitous around someone who was actively reading his mind. He reminded himself with a sense of pride at how he had he been accused his whole life of being one of the most thick-headed individuals anyone had ever met. Thickheadedness, after all, was his special power.
He redoubled his efforts to engage Moony-mode. He would keep things as close to the truth as possible and trust that his cerebral denseness would obscure the rest and keep him safe.
He could sense her trying to probe him, but didn’t think she was succeeding.
“You can count on me to look into this.” He brushed his hand through his hair and kept it there. Then he thought maybe that would make him look nervous, which he totally was not, and he smoothly brought his hand back down and put it in his pocket. He smiled casually. “So, where is this meeting?”
“My company, Exaggerated Conglomerates, is meeting We Rain at their headquarters in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Next Thursday at 2:00 in the Jack Towers building,” she said, standing to walk past him towards his front door. “You’ll be my representative. Be there, and I promise you, your place in the network is secured forever.” She brushed her hands on her jacket as if handling the money had gotten them dirty. “I’m going to excuse myself and head across your hallway. I need to meet with your talented neighbor Heath, maybe clear my chakras.”
Moony shrugged. “Clear away.”
The Gypsy walked out, handing him his stack of money on her way. It was a thick stack, but because it was unsorted currency, he couldn't tell how much was there. He folded it and stuck it in the front pocket of his sweat pants and stared for awhile at the indifferent figure she cut walking away from him. It occurred to him that technically he found her attractive, but he found his attraction covered by an armor-plated layer of fear. He found the woman terrifying. Mysterious not in the ways he could be inspired to navigate. The image that came to his mind was that of a giant preying mantis devouring her lover head-first. He shivered.
In the bedroom, Celia slept like one of the logs which waited indefinitely for the fireplace. She always denied that she snored, but sure enough, she snored, happy under a thick comforter. The bedroom’s plasma screen TV played the end scene from King Kong.
He put on his Denver Broncos cap and went onto the balcony to either get fresh air or smoke a cigarette – he would decide when the time came, and bring his lighter in case.
His balcony was decorated with souvenir flags from countries he’d traveled to. He saw that the storm had blown Portugal off the edge. He called out a farewell to Portugal, cigarette dangling precariously from his lip. He straightened the remaining flags, wondering if the cold numbness in his hands was what death felt like. He exhaled deeply, satisfied at how each breath plumed like smoke to join the clouds.
Maybe, he thought, the best strategy wasn’t that he should go against the Gypsy, but rather that he should simply prove himself useless to her. She wanted him because he had abilities she valued. His charm, for example. He needed to get close enough to her that he could get his hands on some nano-3. Without it, he had no hope of brewing the checkered potion.
The Gypsy’s proposal made no sense to him. It wasn’t possible that she actually trusted him. But then, he supposed, people like the Gypsy probably didn’t trust anyone. And why was that? Because she herself was not trustworthy, not loyal to any cause but her own. Either the mission she was sending him on was a trap, or it was a trap, or maybe it was some kind of a trap. Why had she come to his apartment? Well, obviously this was the mysterious stranger foretold in his vision when on the roof of the Frog Regal. She either knew or suspected that he had allied with the Sphinx. He hadn’t exactly been stealthy about his interest in the checkered potion when he poured through the mysterious data stream searching for clues about it.
That meant she was trying to enlist him as a double agent to the Sphinx.
She had every conceivable upper hand on him. She knew about the Sphinx, knew about his plans to find the potion, and yet she seemed to believe she could get him on her side, and had even given him a stack of money and a job assignment.
His Moony-mode, fortified by genuine ignorance, was his firewall against accidentally betraying the forces of good. He didn't know any secret details or sensitive information about the Sphinx. And since she was only going to give him clues along the way, maybe he didn't really risk much hanging around the Gypsy or whomever.
And after all, what better way to learn how to brew the checkered potion than by getting to know the Gypsy’s contacts?
*
All this was very well and good for the grand quests of an alien human, but Moony wasn’t so sure that he was up to that yet. So much about his past remained mysterious. He was an alien, but he was also a human.
Meanwhile he had his terrestrial life to figure out, didn’t he? If his adult self was going to strive towards a deeper meaning, he did need to take professional practicalities seriously. And there was his family affairs, which all he had done lately was postpone and
avoid. His sister’s death was something that he distantly knew he had strong feelings about, yet he could only suppress those feelings when they threatened to surface in him.
And Celia. Wasn’t there a level of earnestness in their intimacy that Moony was unintentionally fighting to keep at a superficial level?
He slid the balcony door open, returning inside to reread the email his mother sent a week ago, placing himself in the past before he had learned of Yvette’s death.
Dan,
Is Alex with you? I haven’t heard from your sis either.
Mom
Dan was his father’s name. Dan Jr. was Moony’s official name, though he hadn’t gone by it since he was nine, when his grandfather first began telling stories of the capricious bowlegged horse named Moony he liked to ride. Each time Thurmon Jr. told the story, he mistook certain details. What began as a story of Dan riding a horse named Moony became the tale of the nine year-old Adams boy who practiced night and day riding a horse named Dan, even though his mother did not allow it. He would laugh and everyone around would indulge him, when in fact it was Thurman’s son, Dan Senior, who discouraged horse-riding, though he was seldom around enough to enforce his demand that his son “do something more sociable like play golf.” The way Thurman Jr. told the story had Moony eventually winning a trophy for some aspect of horsemanship. Moony couldn’t recall doing this, and often wondered where the trophy had gone. The Adams side of his family indulged the notion and Dan received the nickname Moony.
Moony had written his mother back a note which demonstrated ignorance, hence, he hoped, innocence, as to his brother’s whereabouts:
I’ll bet you a million bucks Alex is back at your house tomorrow. If not, swing by and collect your bucks.
That kid. How inconsiderate.
Dan
When Moony (Daddy-Pops) had received the phone call from the Montana police informing him of Yvette’s death, he gave the authorities his mother’s and father’s phone numbers and called his father. When no one answered, he left a message and flushed his phone down the toilet bowl.
Terrestrial life brought challenges that felt no simpler than the grand quests of an alien human. He wanted a hint.
His mind again turned to the Sphinx.
He closed his eyes and silently inside himself, he called on her.
At once, he felt the rush of golden warmth, like a great bird descended to him and spread its wings over him.
[New Bookmark Added]
In his internal database, he activated the link to the new bookmark.
It opened Universal Standard Human Documentation to an entry on Heath candy bars.
The light faded and Moony was left with the sense that Heath might hold the next piece of the puzzle for him. As he seemed to be an important contact of the Gypsy, perhaps he could be tapped for useful information, maybe even an ingredient for the checkered potion.
In the parking lot down below, he saw The Gypsy step into the passenger seat of her idling black Infiniti, its exhaust making small plumes in the cold air.
With her out of the picture, he figured he might as well go see Heath now.
Heath answered the door at the second knock. He looked pure, like he had just gotten finished seeing the face of God in a shiny surface.
He had. He had gazed at the underside of a copper cook pot until the creator of the universe stared back at him, wondering what he wanted from him. Heath just wanted to say hello. God understood, as God always did. Heath cradled the God Pot in his arms like a baby. Shadrack stood at the room's far end kicking a strangely lit-up ball that Moony thought looked conspicuously like an Imperial torture drone from Star Wars. The ball twitched and hovered of its own accord, and when he kicked it, the ball lit up and jetted its way back toward Shadrack.
With the certainty that could only be brought about through a divine realization, Heath marched into Moony's apartment. His bare feet looked like a seventy year-old man's. Moony followed him inside and shut the door to the bedroom where Celia lay snoozing.
“I hope you don't mind if I have a seat,” Heath said, sitting down. This would not be the last time Heath sat down in Moony's apartment. You will be told when it is.
There was a knock at the door. Female knuckles.
Moony opened the door. Deb, wide-eyed as to inadvertently appear sad, wearing a white fur coat over a white tank top, leaned close to Moony's face, smelling like mint toothpaste. “Busy?”
Heath, meanwhile, stared down at his cook pot with a wide boyish smile.
Deb patted the bulge of money in Moony's pocket and said “Yum,” then draped her fur coat on his couch, and made herself comfortable. She made Moony uncomfortable with his decision to forego underwear beneath his sweat pants.
Heath did not acknowledge Deb, who in the current low light resembled a bleach blonde virgin Mary; God the father was in the cook pot, packing his dirty laundry into a Kenmore washing unit from 1977. He was washing jeans and whistling something Heath couldn't hear. He could only get a visual from the cook pot.
“I have a fair amount of incriminating evidence on you.” Deb kicked her shoes onto the floor like she owned the place.
“Do you?” Moony asked, wondering if she wanted to be paid off or something.
“You left your watch at my place,” she said, producing Moony’s missing watch.
“I’ve never been to your place.” How did she get ahold of his watch?
Deb winked at him.
The bedroom door opened and Celia walked out, rubbing her eyes. She was stark naked, all right.
In a hurry to remedy the situation, Moony raced to her and wrangled her into the bedroom. She had a flashback of sexual abuse from one of her foster dads, but then she recognized her Moony-O.
He half-tossed her onto the bed, and, as it goes, she half-flew herself onto the bed. It was a delicate bounce she received from the bedsprings. She started kissing him, so naturally he kissed back. Deb made herself present in the bedroom doorway, and she liked what she saw.
From the front room came the squeak of the couch springs.
Moony sat up, intending to exit the room, but from behind him, nimble as a forest creature, Celia slid him out of his shirt. Deb stepped forward and slid him out of his sweats, the stack of cash making a thunk as it dropped to the carpet.
He heard the sound of his front door opening and closing. Heath leaving.
The two ladies in his bed did not encourage him to think very deeply about his idea to talk with Heath, so he didn't.
*
His front door opened again.
“Hello?” It was Perry's voice. Just the nonthreatening person he didn’t want to see.
Moony got out of bed. His voice cracked. “Hey! Perry.”
“All right if I come in?”
“Well,” Moony said, sliding into his sweat pants, thinking of a cover story, “I just woke up. . .”
Perry sat down on the couch, looking at Heath’s copper cook pot. He shouted again at his friend in the bedroom, “Been doing some cooking? Christ, this smells like battery acid.”
“Sort of, no,” Moony said, flirting with the idea of ratting out Heath as he walked into his living room, putting on an expensive T-shirt.
Perry looked down at his hand where there was once a wedding band. “I think she and I are going to get back together.”
Moony wondered if Deb could hear Perry, or if that would change anything. Slapping sounds came from the bedroom. “It’s really something, the way this weather keeps happening.”
Perry’s eyes shone with a simple peace that Moony couldn’t bring himself to complicate. “Things are looking bright between us,” Perry continued. “We’ve arrived at an agreement. I think I’ve come to understand what romance is. Finally, after all these years.”
“Yeah,” Moony continued, very much playing into the thickness of mind he had always found so ready-at-hand. “So much snow, in such a short time.”
“Deb said she would be checking on your windo
w, that your bedroom window had a slit she needed to look at.”
“Yes. The... window. Oh, you know, that reminds me of something. She did come by, actually.”
Perry’s very normal smile conveyed absolutely no suspicion. “When?”
“The crack is minor, really. You guys are swell landlords for taking care of it so quickly.”
Deb, half-dressed in Celia’s clothes, half-dressed in Moony’s, but still somehow not fully dressed, walked over to Perry, applying fresh lip gloss. From the bedroom, the slapping sounds continued. She gave him a great big hug.
“Ooh, you smell nice,” Perry said. "Reminds me of -- huh, that's funny. Reminds me of the Gap."
Moony pulled his face into a tight smile as one might picture Abraham Lincoln’s to be.
*
Deb sat on Perry’s lap. “Oh, baby. I am the happiest lady in the world.”
Perry beamed a little, nervously. “Let’s hold off on the public display of affection until later.”
“Moony has done a marvelous job decorating the place, don’t you think?” She hopped up and down a little, rocked back and forth on Perry.
“Sure is nice.” Perry gave a deep sigh.
Deb continued rocking. “The bedroom is beautiful too. I was in there for a while, working, working away. Just working, thinking, what a job this guy has done with the place. He can really squeeze a lot of love in between these walls.”
“Oh yeah, that’s right,” Perry intoned, his voice somewhere between “exhausted trucker” and “polite salesman.”
Deb watched Moony. “Sorry I took so long. Once a girl gets stuck in Moony’s bedroom, well, getting out isn’t easy.”
“Quite true,” said Perry.
“Moony is a pleasure,” she said, quickly showing her teeth.
