The Starry Sphinx

by V X Lloyd

  When he found an empty Jaeger bottle, he did so, and he corked the lid back on tight.

  "Hey," Perry called back to him. "About all that I was doing. Out there. Let's forget about it."

  Moony headed back to the driver's seat and nodded, eyes scanning overhead for the saucer Perry somehow had not noticed. He drove on.

  After donning a fresh set of clothes, the two men enjoyed a silent feast of cinnamon-toasted tortillas, after which Moony drove back to the beach and the two men hit the hay, separately in the sand.

  Before nodding off, Moony absentmindedly found that he was able to scan Perry's cerebral activity. Perry was reminiscing to when he was nineteen in Utah on a road trip, when experimentation had a more fruitful outcome. The “Have you ever” game ended in fun that once; he had never again managed to convince the world that very few things in life were big deals.

  Moony reiterated to himself to avoid handling crystals at all costs. He slept and dreamt of himself being as vast as a whole universe of indescribable music and twinkling lights.

  *

  On the return drive, the twelve-cylinder engine brought the RV screaming down the flat, wondrous Arizona highway.

  "How's the temperature. You good?" asked Perry. He still had sand in his beard, and he wore new sunglasses from the gas station in Why, Arizona. These were aviator-style frames which suited him well.

  "Oh, yeah. Good." Moony had the audacity to wonder why he felt so awful today, pushing from his mind the fact that the day before, he had been abducted by aliens. Prior to that, he had consumed amphetamines, driven across a third of the continent, and drunk just one beer shy of a baker’s dozen because he didn't know when to stop, and because Perry had convinced him that there would be no harm in overdoing it.

  Today, he was not so sure. While Perry seemed to be used to feeling hung over and accepted the state as a necessary evil, Moony was not. He got up and walked to the rear of the RV, pondering over the cases of Mexican beer.

  "Is it illegal to drink in a moving vehicle if you're sitting way back here?"

  "Mmm…"

  "Will it help the hangover?"

  "It always helps me."

  Moony cracked open a beer. Sweet Jesus, that was going to do the trick. He knew it. He could hear the sweet relief fizzing deep inside the can of malty nectar.

  "You want to bring me one?" asked Perry with a grin exaggerating his overbite. "Highway patrol on this Interstate are pretty lax, should be fine," he said to himself.

  Moony watched as the cars zoomed by, remembering the night. He tried to reconcile that as far as the rest of the world was concerned, nothing had happened to him. He looked at Perry, but he couldn't seem to find the right words. He closed his eyes and called on the Sphinx.

  [New Bookmark Added]

  He flipped to the highlighted entry in Universal Documentation, disconcerted to find that it pointed to a Bible verse.

  Hebrews 1, 1:14

  Are not all angels ministering spirits sent to serve those who will inherit salvation?

  He mulled the statement over for any nuance of secret code that it contained. His hunch was that if it pertained to his situation at all, it meant that the best way to break the big news to his landlord was just to be out with it. "Perry, you're an alien. Like me."

  Perry's facial expressions came in the following order: he squinted, he smiled, he frowned. "Buddy, you're not a alien. You're just some spoiled rich kid. Don't be so hard on yourself."

  "I'm absolutely serious, and I can prove it to you."

  Perry perhaps feared that the tide had turned, that now it was Moony's turn to chase him with something stiff and persistent. He took a deep breath. "OK, buddy. I'm listenin.' If you have something you want to say to me, I'm all ears. I won't judge you."

  "Guess a number." Just when Perry was about to say OK, Moony gave his answer. "6."

  "Nailed 'er," Perry smiled. "But it doesn't take a alien to get lucky with numbers."

  "Think of a color." Moony knew the right answer immediately. "Peach." Perry smiled wider. "Now think of a state in the US." The thought Perry held was right there on the surface, easy to read. "Texas. Wait. You decided you're going to try and trick me and say Guam instead. Guam's not a state, by the way."

  Perry nodded, but his smile faded. He slowed the vehicle and pulled over to the side of the road. "How in Christ's name are you doing this? You some kind of magician?"

  "Not a magician. An alien. A human, but a human from another galaxy."

  Perry gave every indication that he believed nothing that Moony was saying. He wanted to, but experience had taught him to be guarded about such things. All his life he had been made to look like a fool for wanting to believe in pretty much anything. He wanted to believe that aliens existed, but he was mistaken in that he believed he lacked firsthand experience, so he was on the fence even about that. It was a leap to imagine that he himself was one. "All righty. I believe you."

  Moony paused. "There's something else I want you to know. Just while I'm at it. Maybe you already know. I’ve been with Deb. She's into Celia, and I'm part of the bargain sometimes.” Moony regretted speaking.

  Perry sniffed, but he didn't seem all that surprised. He took a deep breath and blew it out. Then another deep breath, and a long exhalation. Moony recognized that Perry was using this sort of conscious breathing as a form of emotional management, which was great except how Perry's breath was filling the front of the RV with a smell like a raw potato. “I don’t blame her," Perry said. "She’s who she is. She's a fiery woman. Christ, I don’t blame you either. It’s just nature bein' nature.”

  Both men stared sagely out their side windows for a time.

  "Not to change subjects," Perry said. "You were just telling me you're a alien."

  Moony nodded. "Human alien. An alien that is also a human. My home planet isn't Earth. Sometimes I take long trips there, but for whatever reason I don't remember what happens there. What's more, it's like I said. You're an alien too."

  "You're givin' me the willies."

  Moony could sense that Perry was scared.

  "I want you to know because there is something very important about to happen that I want you to be a part of. It's big. It may be dangerous. I want your help."

  A long pause. His face widened into authentic joy. "You saying, like, I get to be a hero? You and me, we can be heroes?"

  Moony wondered that himself. "Yeah. We have a part to play in... well, fighting the forces of darkness."

  "Hey, what's the catch, though?"

  "I guess the only catch is like I said, that you already are an alien, so there's nothing you can do about that. Another catch is that the only way we can serve the side of good is to take some risks."

  "I think I'd know it if I was a alien, don't you think?"

  "Our kind are very protective about their abilities. They don't even trust people having memories of the home world. Like I said, I know that I've traveled back and forth, but I can't recall specific memories of it. You, on the other hand, were born to alien human parents. And I guess the thing with alien humans is that we get sleepy and forgetful about our abilities. Any alien human needs to have their powers re-awoken. Otherwise they're just like anyone else, except maybe weirder. For whatever reason, your parents must have just wanted you to have a normal life."

  "How do I get all woken up?"

  "It's passed from sight to sight. At least, that's how The Gypsy did it to me, and I have an inkling for how to do it myself. So let's just try this now. Here. Look into my eyes."

  Perry shrugged, took off his sunglasses and matched eyes with Moony.

  They sat that way for some time, uneasily staring into each other. Perry hiccupped.

  Then from above Moony felt a strange pulsing and the sign of the Sphinx.

  "Shit, dude. I can feel something."

  "It's transmitting. It's happening now. Whatever comes up, whatever it feels like, don't break eye contact. This is extremely important."

&n
bsp; "Is it gonna rip up my mind?" Perry gasped. "Whoa." Thus ended his bout of hiccups.

  Vague movements swam around in the air between them. Somehow, they actually sensed colors and confusing lights. Numbers and weird whispers were heard. Throughout it all, there was the emotional backdrop of something sacred and immensely precious.

  A knock on the window.

  In Moony's peripheral vision, he saw a man in sunglasses and a brown uniform standing outside.

  "Arizona Highway Patrol," came a voice from outside the RV. "Everything all right in there? I'll need to see your license and registration."

  Perry didn't budge. Moony definitely did, but he managed to hold eye contact.

  The transmission picked up strength.

  11.2, 11.4, 108.1, 1005...

  Letters and colors and shapes floated through the air. Thousands of almost-words took form and flooded their minds. Hydronamium langeriol, houses in trowniuc antroneop...

  The mysterious super-sensical cerebral transmissions of being attuned to a maelstrom of galactic communication signals.

  What had begun as a pulsing noise now became more discernible. Music, voices and recognizable shapes flashed before them.

  Without saying anything, without moving, each man knew they were experiencing the exact same transmission, the exact same sense of curiosity and wonder. Their minds completely blown, neither saw the need to make any effort to understand what was happening. Some part of them knew that this was part of the grand scheme of things, that everything was happening according to a schematic that was impossibly vast, yet discernible, even from their distance.

  Whirling nebula and color storms passed before them. There were intricate mechanical designs and strangely-colored plants with intoxicating perfumes. Mind-bending expanses of vacuous space and dust. Millions of conversations, thoughts, feelings.

  From outside the RV, a voice: "Turn off the engine and put your hands on the wheel."

  A crescendo of experience in which the multitudes of scenes and panoramas of entire lives thickened into a pulsing bright light that grew more and more uniform. The whole vision condensed into a line, then a point, sort of like the effect of shutting off a really old television set.

  A moment passed. An eternity of peace.

  Perry turned off the ignition. The mystic silence of the Arizona desert.

  His eyes shone like the he'd just stared into Heath's copper pot for a thousand years.

  With euphoric patience, he put his hands on the wheel, looked over at the cop, and said something really faintly.

  "What's that?" asked the officer.

  "Can I roll down my window?"

  When Perry spoke, Moony heard in his voice an incredible depth, a fractal expanse of weird shapes that hinted at comfort and power. On the surface, the voice sounded the same. But somewhere subtle, this was no longer the same old Perry.

  Warily, his hand on his gun, the officer demanded that Perry roll down his window.

  Perry spoke like he'd just come from the mountaintop. "Howdy, officer. My buddy here wasn't feeling too well. He got a case of the squirts, you know, the runny buns. Sorry it took me a minute there. I was just telling him he better act right, I didn't want him to make any sudden movements of the bowels."

  The officer asked for Perry's license and registration. In slow, even movements, Perry reached in his wallet and handed him his license.

  "We got a long drive ahead of us, you know, and at this point I think he's just trying to get attention."

  "Is that right, sir?" the cop asked Moony. Moony gave what you'd call a dumb nod. "You're not feeling well?"

  Perry spoke for him. "I told him he wasn't supposed to be drinking the water. But this guy, he's stubborn. He kept drinking the water. All sorts of water."

  "I think it gave me an amoeba," Moony said. "Nothing seems to help." He shrugged. "I poop and I poop, but I can't seem to get rid of the amoeba that way."

  The cop stepped a half-step back, clearly less invested in things than initially. He glanced at Perry's license and back up at him. "I'll need to see your vehicle registration."

  Moony got a stack of papers from the glove box and Perry handed it all to the officer, who found the one he was looking for, looked it over, then handed Perry’s license and the entire stack back.

  "You boys get your runny butts on out of here," the cop said.

  "Sure thing, officer."

  Moony was incredulous. Perry beamed him a thought.

  It's not about what you say, dude. It's all in your intonation. Nothing to it.

  As if he was suddenly the expert. Perry the charmer. Perry the captain of infinity. Perry the galactic lady's man.

  As soon as the highway patrolman turned around, Perry put his right hand out.

  Moony gave it an earnest fist-pump.

  Perry finally let it dawn on him all that had just happened.

  "I'm -- Whew. Christ, I'm dizzy."

  Perry choked back something. “Here. You take the wheel. I’m gonna piss.”

  Just before retching into their coffee can, Perry sighed and said "We're gonna be heroes. You and me. We're going to do this, whatever it is."

  *

  On the drive home, Moony shared with him some information about his quest, about the Gypsy's use of nano-3, and what it was capable of. He didn't know that he could trust Perry enough to tell him about his top-secret mission to pursue the checkered potion, and anyway he was still pretty sure the Sphinx had made a mistake putting her trust in him. Moony told Perry the importance The Gypsy placed on her contract with We Rain, and suggested that if they could learn about the people behind that company, maybe they could know how to motivate them to abandon the deal and therefore save maybe thousands of midwestern minds. Perry said that being on a heroic quest was something he'd always wished he could do, and only now that he had been welcomed by the Hall of Stewards did he really feel capable of heroic deeds.

  In Moony's apartment, the two tried to contact the Sphinx. After a refreshing sensation of distant warmth above, Moony received the following response:

  To you alone do I weave my mysteries.

  Perry felt that there was a bright light on overhead somewhere, but had no sense of a personal presence.

  Moony shrugged, then Perry shrugged in response, saying "Yeah, hey, what can you do? Do you think we ought to be using our special powers? With what you said about the Gypsy, it sounds like we're using... I don't know how to put this... dark energy."

  "From what I understand, it's definitely possible. The Sphinx said these communication channels were taken over and corrupted. On the other hand, they did originally belong to the Sphinx, so surely they can't be all bad. If we can use them carefully, maybe it's OK."

  "Yeah, we're, like, using the enemy's weapons against him. Or her."

  Moony thought back to his time with Perry on the roof of the Frog Regal when he had tapped into Perry's mind to fish for details about the checkered potion. He remembered that he had come up with something there. A hunch about someone living in apartment A112.

  "Perry, I have something to confess. Last week, at the movie screening, I scanned your mind and I found something. What can you tell me about apartment A112?"

  Perry whistled low and long. "Boy, I don't know if I can get used to this mind-reading stuff. Hard to say what else you found in this ol' noggin. Apartment A112, huh? Well, that'd be Julio's. I don't condone what some of our residents do for a living. As long as they pay rent, and they're good neighbors, I aim to stay out of everyone's way. But I happen to know that Heath and Julio have some sort of a trade going on, and as a matter of fact, I heard him talking about some potion he would give to people. My understanding was that he did this as part of some official ceremony. Maybe religious, or maybe something else. I don't know if you could call it drugs or maybe it falls into some other category. It may be worth a gander."

  "Yeah, sounds worth a look. I want to get to the bottom of this nano-3. Find out everything I can about it. Where the
y make it. Anything. Everything."

  "And I was meaning to tell you as soon as you mentioned it, I bet I might be able to dig up some dirt on that cloud seeder lady. My cousin Terry works in that Jack Towers building. I'll give him a call, see what we see."

  "That's great, Perry. Wow, that would really be incredible."

  They high-fived. They low-fived. They fist-pumped.

  "Awesome. We're going to be heroes."

  Perry headed out, and that left Moony alone in his living room, rubbing his chin thoughtfully.

  He tuned in to the Sphinx for advice on apartment A112.

  [New Bookmark Added: Lyric Poetry of the Milky Way - Volume 91:2:8b]

  He brought up the bookmark.

  Lo! What winsome herald she gainsays

  when betwixt her sephiric bosoms

  his questing pole offers at last her antidote.

  She beckons him to offer currency, that she may drink the one

  and leave the other. Her earnest request sets his great pole ablast,

  unburdening him loftily of spume-volleys from his dark depths

  which pour, anointing also the sapphirine midriff.

  Yet hearken thou which one must be chosen!

  Damn, Moony thought. That was a refreshing surprise. He wondered if the other material in the Lyric Poetry anthology was like that. He'd have to recite some to Celia sometime.

  Rereading the bookmark to discern its coded message, he figured that it sounded pretty positive that he would find a dark brew there.

  As an aside, he hoped the Sphinx would continue to send her coded messages using this sort of text. He found it more erotic, therefore much preferable to the biblical one.

  He went to the kitchen and found an empty jar that had been a container for some kind of exotic French mustard but was now empty and clean. He grabbed it and its lid and slipped them into his pocket and already began feeling immensely positive about how he seemed to be taking one right turn after another. In recent memory, he'd already thwarted a whole ship of alien jellies and recruited a brother alien to the cause. What risk could the Gypsy pose to him now that she no longer held sway over him with her tracking software?