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&&&&&&& It was Lin Baeder who told Fleebus and Bubba about the Giant Monolithic Computer. Lin was one among the first group of hippy friends with whom Fleebus and Bubba spent an appreciable amount of time. They met him through Nestor and Merie. Bubba knew Nestor from his Transactional Analysis group at school. Nestor had been raised by Catholic monks somehow, Bubba was never really clear on that point. Merie was a dainty little lady with a large forehead and long dark hair. She was always wearing the kind of outfits that made her look like a nineteenth century English schoolgirl. She was fond of capes and high-buttoned shoes. Both of them were two of the outright sweetest people Bubba had ever known. Lin Baeder and his sidekick Sean Rhodes always showed up at gatherings at Merie's and Nestor's house. Lin and Sean both wore the kind of tweedy clothes favored by English professors. Every time Bubba was with them, he couldn't help but think of Simon and Garfunkel. One night after a few bowls of hash and glasses of Ripple, Lin (picture Art Garfunkel) told Fleebus and Bubba the tale of the Giant Monolithic Computer from Jupiter. Bubba had been telling Lin about his own vague intuition that there was a dark spirit with the aspect of a giant snake, King Cottonmouth, that writhed at the roots of the Delta's collective subconscious. Lin said that this was because of a giant computer under the city. It seemed an alien machine had landed in the vicinity of Memphis many moons ago, back when only the red man's ancestors walked the bayous and bluffs. It consisted mainly of a computer, more powerful than any that humankind had ever developed. Even with twentieth century technology and knowhow, we would have had to build a computer the size of the moon in order to equal the abilities of the alien one buried under Memphis. It burrowed deep underground and waited until humankind should reach a suitable level of technology to feed it and allow it to grow. That's what made the bluffs, you see. When the time was ripe, thousands of years thence, it would slowly begin to assume control of the minds of the populace. Meanwhile it put out its alien yakatisma rays to prep and pervert the minds of those on the surface. That's why Memphis was the way it was, with its thick layer of normalcy overlaying a deep-seated weirdness. Every electrical device in Memphis served a double purpose as an intake portal for the Giant Monolithic Computer (GMC) to suck up the psychic energy of the human inhabitants. Many police, city government officials, and school administrators were already under the GMC's absolute control. They were will-less automatons serving as the GMC's eyes and ears, arms and legs, making sure that no one did any unauthorized thinking. That didn't mean that they would bust every crackpot who got an inkling of what was really going on. The GMC had been psychically brainwashing humanity for so long that we no longer paid heed to our shamans and witches when they warned of otherworldly dangers. No, nowadays anyone stupid enough to blab things like that would be dosed with thorazine and set in a corner of the nuthouse while their minds were parboiled over the years in a slow simmer by the daily dose of chemical stew. But among the few who got a whiff of the GMC's activities, some were able to keep their suspicions to themselves. Any time the GMC's agents became aware of one of these, they would try to recruit him or her. That's why one had to be extra careful, even around fellow bohemians, for while the GMC's agents normally favored nondescript conservative clothing and lifestyles, many of the recruits had been bohemian intellectuals or psuedo-intellectuals before they became GMC zombies. "They might look just like us," Lin said. "Beware of anyone with considerable holdings but no visible means of support, especially if they claim to live off their art. If you see examples of their art, whether it be visual, like painting or sculpture, verbal, like writing or broadcasting, or else auditory, like music, and it impresses you as extra specially mediocre, and you can't figure out how they could make a living (Who the hell buys THIS shit?), keeping up a Mercedes and a three-storey house in Krautville... Watch out!" But there were also various entities who were battling against the GMC. For security reasons, Lin would only tell them of three: the Giant Armadillo (GA), Wight E (WE), and the Phantom Light Fucker (PLF). The GA was an alien entity himself. In fact, the GA's race was the one which had originally built the renegade machine, which developed a mind of its own and turned against its creators. It then proceeded to enslave several planets' populations across the Milky Way galaxy. Only through many centuries of constant warfare and anguish had they finally been able to defeat the GMC, but they had not been able to easily track it as it fled. The GMC had gone into hiding around a yellow star at the outskirts of the galaxy, settling into the soil of this beautiful blue, white, brown, and green planet Earth. It had taken many centuries more for the GA's race and its allies to locate the GMC and implement plans to prevent the Computer from taking over the Earth. They finally pinpointed it in the year 1950 AD, Earth Reckoning. They were alerted by changes in the light that reflected from our planet, changes that had been ultimately caused by above-ground tests of atomic bombs. By that time, the GMC had been on Earth some three millennia already. Its mind-mould tendrils were already well-rooted in the consciousness of humankind. The citizens of the galaxy had learned through hard experience that destroying the GMC outright at such a juncture could have disasterous consequences to the host species. They had decided to take their time and gradually wean human consciousness away from that of the alien megaparasite Data anaplura cognis. Their first move was to instigate the events that would lead to the advent of Rock and Roll music, resulting in a generation gap that would help put cognitive distance between the younger humans and their heritage of mental infiltration by alien intelligence. Perusing Akashic records of the scientific discoveries of the twentieth century, they were delighted when they ran across the work of the Swiss chemist Albert Hoffman. He had synthesized a chemical that would, in a short ten hours or so, sow cognitive seeds that could bring about neutralization of the GMC's programming in the subconscious command centers of the subject's mind. Their second big objective, therefore, was to ensure the popularization of the mind-altering chemical LSD25. They scanned the minds of the savants within the field of psychology, hoping to find an acceptable ally to spearhead this movement. They settled on Dr. Timothy Leary. The GA immediately initiated psychic contact with that individual. The rest is his story. Lin would tell them little concerning the mysterious entity known as "Wight E". "You'll know when the time is full for you to know," he slurred, glancing over his shoulder and slopping substantial drops of Pagan Pink Ripple on his patchy corduroys. . He turned back to them and, smirking, said, "You'll know." The Phantom Light Fucker, on the other hand, was a human being, one who had realized what was going on and secretly investigated it until he had knowledge enough to act. He had then contacted the GA and offered to help. Bimeby, bit by bit, the Phantom had gathered a team of recruits of his own, a group of "untouchables" trained to stymie the GMC's operations and sow chaos into his every soire. He was called the Phantom Light Fucker because he had a hobby that consisted of shooting out street lights. As anyone with any sense knows, streets lights don't help anyone but muggers. If you're out at night on a street where there might be a mugger, then the last thing you want is for the mugger to see you clearly. You're not going to see him till it's too late anyway. He'll be hiding somewhere, and the street lights just make more shadows for him to hide in. If it's totally dark, however, then the mugger can't see you clearly. THIS IS JUST WHAT YOU WANT. Put yourself in the mugger's shoes. It's dark. You're nervous. You don't know what might be out there waiting to pounce on you. You see an approaching figure, no more than a shadow coming down the street. It might be a potential victim, or it might be the Devil coming to take you down to Hell where you belong. It might be an off-duty cop with a gun under his coat. Hell, it might even be another mugger, one bigger or more heavily-armed then you are. The point is, YOU DON'T KNOW! It could be a damn werewolf for all you know! Four times out of five you lose your nerve and let this one pass on by unmolested. But if there are streetlights, if you can clearly see that the approaching figure is a brownshoe geek, an easy mark, then the sucker's had it. You stab him a few times and take his dough. He may run, but he can't hide. You can see where he goes because the damn streetlights are everywhere. And of course the geek is obsessed with the delusion that well-lit areas are safer than dark places. He's not going to have the savvy to hide in the shadows himself. So we really don't want streetlights. They help the muggers and they serve as energy-suckers for the GMC. Besides, they block out the stars. The Phantom Light Fucker serves us a number of ways by shooting them out. Bubba couldn't help but think of his old high school buddy Frank Bacon, whom Duh Gang used to find walking the streets with his twenty-two, looking spaced out as hell. He chuckled. "What's so funny?" Lin asked with the hint of a smirk. Bubba told him about Frank, how they suspected he shot out street lights and how they never could find out where he lived, even when they gave him a ride home. Every time they let him out of the car, it was in a different part of Bedford Forrest subdivision. "Hmmm," said Lin, "I think you better not tell anybody about this Bacon guy anymore. The wrong people might hear of it and draw the wrong conclusions. They might search him out and liquidate him, thinking he's the PLF. It would be a pity for anything to happen to an innocent nut like him." During the Sixties, Frank Bacon was possibly the smartest individual east of the Mississippi River, bookwise. Kinda questionable every otherwise. Everybody knew that. What most people didn't know was that he was also one of the weirdest. Duh Gang knew it, along with a few others who spent time with Frank outside of school hours. But Frank was adept at acting normal, which he did whenever he was in public. It was in private that his friends slowly grew to realize how really weird he actually was. In childhood and adolescence he worshiped comic books. He had more of them than anyone they knew, more than all of them put together. Sometimes they got the impression that he actually believed the stories in them were true, especially the Marvel line that included Spider Man and Dr. Strange. Bear picked him up in his microbus one night, on his way to a sock hop. Bacon was carrying a loaded .22 repeater rifle, lever action . Later, when Bear told Duh Gang about it, someone noted that all the street lights in the Bedford Forest subdivision were broken. Did Bacon go around shooting them out? After all, he was always saying as to how he hated the things. They could only wonder. They were to find him wandering the streets with his .22 a number of times after that, always in rather dark neighborhoods. Still, Bacon was definitely at the extreme upper end of the IQ scale. He read text books in his spare time, between comic books and science fiction. The text books he read were generally several years ahead of his grade level. He would easily have made Class Valedictorian, if he hadn't gone "juvenile delinquent" in the last few years of high school. At first, he just hung around the bowling alley, playing pool, with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth. Then he began getting in fights, and was often seen in the company of Libertie Naughton, an alleged "pushover" girl from Whitehaven High. Even so, with his SAT and ACT scores, he could easily have gotten into any university in the world on a 100% scholarship. It wasn't to be, though. At this point, dear reader, I realize that I haven't yet described Bacon's physical appearance to you. I guess the easiest way is to say that he looked like Huckleberry Finn would look if somebody took him and stretched him such that it added a foot or so to his height. He stood about six-foot-six in his stocking feet. Coaches hated him because he refused to join the basketball team. He couldn't have weighed much more than 150 pounds, either. His hair was naturally flame red, almost orange. Teachers used to accuse him of "peroxiding" his hair, back when that was fashionable among us mod kids. That was in the days before Sgt. Pepper's and Woodstock, when everyone wanted to look like the Beach Boys. His whole body was covered with freckles, and he always had something hanging out of his mouth (a toothpick or kitchen match, later a cigarette or a reefer). And he liked to wear funny hats, one of which, an old straw sun-hat, made him look even more like Huckleberry. Decades later, at their 30th high school reunion, the subject of Frank Bacon came up. Bubba had been telling Duh Gang about an unusual psychedelic he'd encountered back in the Seventies. "Waaal," Bubba began, "it's like this. I first heard about this stuff from Frank Bacon..." "Frank Bacon!" said Jaime. "I'd been meaning to ask about him! Whatever happened to that guy? Anybody heard from him?" "I saw him at the Atlanta Pop Festival in 1970," said Bear. "Yeah, and I ran into him up in the Missouri Ozarks in '74, at the Sedalia Country Music Festival," said Bubba. "That's old Bacon," said Jaime. "You never knew where he'd turn up." "Yeah," said Eric, "I used to wonder if he was a nark or something." "But you always saw him in some place where being a nark just didn't make any sense," said Bear, "like at pop festivals and stuff." "And he was such a pitiful hardcore acid-head," Eric said. "Hey now! Watch what you say 'bout acid-heads!" said Bubba. "Take it easy, Bubba, I didn't mean that like it sounded." "Anyways, it wasn't really acid," Bubba said, "Nobody really knew what it was. It didn't act like any psychedelic or any other kind of drug I ever heard of. Instead of tripping, you would actually see mythological things like fairies, leprechauns, fauns, naiads and dryads, banshees, and so on. There was never any telling how long it would last. Rumor was that sometimes people who took it disappeared and were never heard of again." "Weird stuff!" said Jaime. "Well, I was on the scene then, and I don't remember anything about any people disappearing," said Bear skeptically. "Happened down at Potts' Camp, Mi'sippi, supposedly. Coupla professional bass fishermen. One thing I do know: It changed people. Some of them got permanently spaced out, veggies for life, being fed by tubes at Shady Icons Sanitarium. Others cut their hair, joined the Young Republicans, and applied for jobs at local banks. Still others took to wandering under the full moon, or, more especially, during violent electrical storms, and writing lots of poetry." "It made people see fairies?" Jaime asked. "More than that, really. Turned you into a fairy. Don't snicker! Not that kind of fairy! Turned the whole world into Fairyland and you with it. Lasted two or three days, sometimes. Couldn't sleep a wink. And the world was never the same after that. No matter how far you burrowed into the Garden of Conventional Wisdom, the nine-to-five world, you could still see Fairyland behind every illusion of mundaneity." "Sounds like you know that stuff pretty well," Eric put in "I, well, I might've had some of it before. Couple times, actually." "Why?" "Why? I dunno. Spiritual path, I guess. Hell's bells, I was taking everything else I could get ahold of. Why leave that out? I guess if you had asked me 'Why?' at the time, I would've probably said, 'Why not?'" "So did you go to Fairyland?" Jaime asked. "I'm still there," Bubba grinned. "Right now you guys look like three big-jaw mutha-leapin' troll-monkeys!" "Did anybody ever find out what it was?" Bear asked. "Well, yeah, sorta. Some of us thought it might've been ketamine. I knew a guy who knew two guys down in Yazoo City. These two crazy chemists extracted it from flowers. It was like in the movie 'Photographing Fairies', except that the real flower looked different from the ones they ate in the movie. These guys extracted the essence and put it on pieces of paper with a picture of Mr. Natural on it. Each Mr. Natural square is one hit for one person. Dangerous to do more; more dangerous to do less. 'Drink deeply from that well, or not at all,' as Pope said. "Anyways, it was in 1973 that Bacon came back from Yazoo City, Mi'sippi, carrying a quantity of this stuff in his backpack. He was with Crazy LeAnn. You two guys didn't know Crazy LeAnn, did you?" "No," said Jaime, "don't believe I ever did." "Me neither," said Eric. "Well, me and Bear knew her. Sweetest little chick with long red hair. She was from Arkadelphia, Arkansas. We used to call her 'St. Ann of Arkadelphia'. She was a Wicca freak back when nobody ever heard of Wicca but anthropologists and occult-heads. One of those little hippy chicks everybody wanted to fuck, but somehow never could get right up to it." "Okay, okay, you had a crush on this chick," said Eric, "so get on with the story already." "Well, that's it. They had the stuff and everybody was taking it and I took it. So there." "So there?" exclaimed Eric. "What do you mean, 'so there'? You haven't told us anything!" "That's all I know!" said Bubba. "They said that they got it from Antwan and Heidi, two transvestites we knew back then. Antwan and Heidi said it came from two chemists down in Yazoo City. That's all I know." "Wonder whatever happened to ol' Bacon?" Jaime said. "Last I heard he went to seminary school," said Bear. "When I ran into him at the Atlanta Pop Festival he didn't look like any seminary student to me," said Bear, "smokin' stuff, drinkin' stuff, running around in his awe-nacherals like everybody else." "Musta made a really interesting preacher," said Jaime. "More preachers like him, I might still be a Christian," said Bubba. Of course, Fleebus and Bubba knew Lin was putting the shuck on them, even without Lin's sidekick Sean telling them so when Lin stumbled off to pee on the flower beds. "Don't pay him any mind. He gets like this when he's drinking sometimes." Lin was a nice guy, intelligent and a good conversationalist. But like some tweedy folk, he had a notion, stuck in his head like a splinter too small for the tweezers to get ahold of, that people in ragged jeans and cowboy boots would believe anything. Bubba wondered if Lin were maybe part Yankee. That would explain a lot. But in the ensuing years they liked to play with the GMC myth while they were tripping. For example, the library at MSU had a tower, where the stacks were kept, with no thirteenth floor. The two boys felt that this was taking cultural relativity a little too far. After all, this wasn't the Fifties. No one who could read well enough to want to go up into the stacks would be backwoods enough to be superstitious about the number thirteen. Even the most primitive of Baptists was too sophisticated for that. You all think I'm joking, but it's true! People, even conservatives, just had more common sense back in those days. Well, they did! It wasn't like today where everybody's so damn tolerant that they'll soak up anything that comes along like a bunch of damn cognitive sponges. It was like with evolution. Back in the Fifties and early Sixties, a lot of students believed in Adam and Eve. But once Darwin was decriminalized, you could hardly find a fundamentalist who wouldn't admit they figured the Garden of Eden was metaphorical, even if the rest of the Bible was literal, at least after a few drinks. Certainly you wouldn't find any maggot-brained Creationists in college. I surely didn't know any. Yeah, and it was like Memphis, too. When the Johan Cheesehead Yankees came down in their star-spangled boats to invade our mutterland, there was a brief and decisive skirmish, in which ironclads were involved someways, on the river. On the land, the Battle of Memphis consisted of one shot being fired at the poor enlisted man-in-blue who had to change the flags atop the courthouse. No one was injured. But that's what we like about the place. Anyways, Fleebus and Bubba would play with the GMC paranoia. "Look, Bubba, you can see there really is a thirteenth floor. It just isn't numbered." Sure enough, on the elevator there was a button where the thirteenth floor should be. It just didn't have a number out to the side of it like the others. It lit up when you punched it, too. Outside, Fleebus pointed out the intriguing aspects of the library's basic design. It was a rectangle enlongated vertically, with truncated corners, making it thereby an octagonal figure when seen from above-- or from underneath. At each corner on each floor was a window, six-feet high by three-feet wide, set in the truncation. From the outside, the windows looked black due to the tint. From inside, you could get a fantastic view of the flatland around, even to seeing the slight smudgey reddish-brown haze of the atmosphere around Memphis, something you could normally see only when at a distance from the city, out where the air was cleaner. Only where the thirteenth floor should be, there were no windows, just brick that extended the distance of one storey. "The library tower is a prime example of the kind of monolithic architecture favored by the GMC," Fleebus would comment. "What do you think they keep up there?" Bubba would say. "People who ask that question," Fleebus would answer. One day they decided to investigate more closely. "Let's check it out," Fleebus suggested. "I'm not going up there!" "Okay, you stay down here and keep watch for the Bantam while I check it out." "If you say so." The Bantam was the library's security guard, a short, somewhat belligerant and highly suspicious old guy. From what the two freebarders could tell, he was on duty at all hours, night or day. Bubba's mother, who worked in the library, liked the Bantam. "He's just as feisty as a little rooster," she would say. They'd given him the nickname Bantam when they heard her say that. Fleebus and Bubba suspected he was most likely one of the GMC's mind-slaves. Fleebus got on the elevator. Bubba watched the floor indicator above the elevator doors as the light ascended the numbers. Between twelve and fourteen there was an indicator light but no number. By the time it reached the tenth floor, Bubba realized he had no way of alerting Fleebus if anyone was coming. (There were no cell-phones back in those days, o my chillins. No, not even a pager. At least among ordinary humans. Who knew what the GMC's automatons might have!) Then he saw the light light up where the thirteenth floor should be. Of course, that was when the Bantam chose to march right up and stare at the indicator lights. Bubba could see the Bantam's hackles rise, his sickly green aura tingeing with red and purpley orange. The Bantam pushed the elevator button repeatedly, then began to march around in circles with his hand on the pistol at his side. Bubba stood frozen with fear as the Bantam's movements grew jerky and flecks of spittle flew out of the corner of his mouth. If the Bantam had been a normal human, he would've been having a coronary right about then. Finally the elevator arrived, the Bantam got on it, and Bubba watched in horror as the lights lit up, stopping at the thirteenth floor. Hey Aaaaaabbot! Then the other elevator door opened. (Did I mention that there were two elevators, side by side?) Fleebus walked out. "Let's split this scene, man!" he said. "You betcha!" Outside, they discussed their results. "The damn Bantam came just as soon as you reached the thirteenth floor!" "Geeze, I'm glad I didn't stay more than a second!" "What did you see?" "Nothing, man. It was all dark and they had the entrance fenced off with chicken wire." "Wow!" "So, basically, we didn't learn a thing." "We learned they don't want anybody going up to that thirteenth floor. "Yeah. I wonder why." The next day, Bubba's mother had some interesting news for him. "Can I ask you something, Pookie?" she asked. "Mom, please don't call me 'Pookie'." "Okay sugarlump. But anyways, what I wanted to ask you, do you know any of those radicals, any of those students who demonstrate and everything?" "Who me, Mom? You know better than that!" Bubba replied, putting his hand over the SDS button on his shirt. "Well, can you keep a secret, Pookie?" "Mom!" "Right, I forgot again. I promise I won't call you 'Pookie' anymore. I just wanted to know if you knew any of those people 'cause somebody tried to put a bomb or something in the air-conditioning units here at the library yesterday." "What!" "Yes. Mr. Pullet saw somebody go up there on the elevator. They called the Bomb Squad and everything. They went up there, all dressed up like astronauts. They said it didn't look like anybody'd broke past the chicken wire, but they went in and looked all over the place, just to be sure. Thank the Lord they didn't find anything. We were all on pins and needles the whole time." "Why didn't they evacuate the library, if they thought there was a bomb up there?" "They didn't want to panic anybody. I guess it could be dangerous if everybody panicked." "More dangerous than a bomb?" "Well, I don't know. I just don't know what things are coming to these days." "Well, I gotta go to class. See ya later, Mom," Bubba said, giving her a peck on the cheek. Then there was the time they took the Black Acid. "It's black, man." "I know. So what?" "So you think we should take it?" Bubba asked, "I mean, geeze, I never saw any black acid before." "Just like any other acid," Fleebus replied, "black, yellow, purple, what difference does it make? I mean, it's all the same chemical, LSD-25." "I dunno know about that. Seems like every different color of acid we ever had, the trip was different. And the same color, the trips had the same quality. Like Purple Microdot, every time you take it, the trip has the same sort of colors, the same sort of hallucinations, no matter where you got it, no matter when you got it. And different from any other color acid." "I think that's all in our heads. You know how much acid depends on setting and circumstances, the mood you're in, the people you're with, whether or not you like whatever activity they're into at the moment." "Yeah, well there are different impurities in different tabs, too." "Purple Microdot doesn't leave much room for impurities." "Yeah, well..." They looked each other in the eyes. "If we dood it, we git's a whoopin'," said Fleebus. "WE DOOD IT!" they exclaimed in harmony, and popped the tabs. "Wonder if it's Satanist acid?" Bubba mused as it slid down his throat. "Fine time to bring that up." "Naw, it's okay, I've had Satanist acid before. It was Purple Double-Dome. Great stuff! I got beat up and arrested by the cops!" "Sounds like fun to me! Let's stay away from cops, though." "You're preachin' to the choir, Padre!" "Yeah boy! Wanna go see Stan?" "Sure." So they bopped on down to Stan's place as the sun was setting. There were about ten people at Stan's, sitting around the teevee, passing pipes and joints. For once, it wasn't between channels. The old black-and-white show "Twilight Zone" was under weigh. It was an episode in which an old hillbilly 'coon hunter was out with his dog Ol' Rip at night, chasing a 'coon. The 'coon ran across a branch hanging over a stream. The dog jumped right in the stream and immediately went under. The old man yelled, "Rip!" and jumped in after him, but he went under, too. After a commercial you saw the two of them walking down the road, heading home. But when they arrived at the log cabin, the whole family was there, all crying and saying what a good man he'd been. Finally the 'coon hunter realized that it was him they were talking about, that he was dead, drowned with his dog in the stream, and they were mourning him. The old man and Ol' Rip continued walking down the road. Bimeby they came to a gate, at which stood a fat little Yankee city dude, dressed like a used car salesman. The Yankee dude tried to talk the old man into coming through the gate, but told him he would have to leave the dog behind. There were no animals allowed in Heaven, they having no souls, you see. The old man was firm. He warn't goin' nowhere that Ol' Rip couldn' come too. He apologized to the Yankee dude, and the two friends continued down the road. After a bit, a tall Li'l Aber sort of young yokel in a flannel checker shirt and ovahalls came toward them. The young man greeted them with a big friendly grin and told them he was Saint Peter, come to take them to Heaven. "Can Rip come?" "Of course Rip can come! What kind of Heaven would it be without dogs?" "But that feller down the road said dogs weren't allowed in Heaven." "Feller in a checkered suit? Real fast talker?" "Yessir." "I reckon as to how it's a good thing you didn't go in that gate! That's the gate to the Bad Place! That feller's the Devil!" By the time the show was over, Bubba and Fleebus could tell they were getting off on the acid. They decided to go for a walk down by the Church on the River. So they hopped in the Fode Mavrack and drove the ten or so miles to the church, parked in the church parking lot, and disembarked. The Church on the River was a Unitarian Church, one of those built in the modern style back in the Sixties, the UFO school of architecture. Duh Gang and associates had attended it now and then in high school, and found that it fulfilled their every expectation, a place where agnostics went who still felt the need to dress up every Sunday and sit in a group listening to someone expostulate from a pulpit. It was the only church they knew where guitars were employed in place of an organ. It stood on a knoll alongside the three Memphis-Arkansas bridges. The bridges themselves were interesting enough, displaying examples of turn-of- the-century, WWI-era, and WWII-era architecture. Aside from the church and the bridges, the entire area was undeveloped, offering a nice woodsy place to hike around in. Although it was located in the midst of the city, it was isolated by the bluffs. Once you walked even one step down them toward the broad riverbank, you couldn't see or hear the city at all. A fantastic place to trip. The church was beautiful in the moonlight, its roof stark and white where it curved to a peak over the front entrance, with tall windows below the peak that seemed to be alien eyes looking off into the distance reflectively, contemplating virtual Divinity, perhaps. As they walked through the parking lot and out to the edge of the bluff, the moonlight shone on the ground in fractal patterns, refracted by the lawn and the acid. "Look," said Fleebus, "there's little pentangles all over the ground!" Bubba bent down and brushed at the glittering shards of light with his fingers. "We must be the Knights of Pentacles," he said, getting the suit wrong. They walked to the edge of the most recent Memphis-Arkansas Bridge, a titan affair built of huge steel beams and massive stone or concrete blocks right after the Second World War, a time when America designed its structures as if they might have to withstand attacks by squadrons of bombers. The three bridges stood about fifty yards from each other, with the earliest the most northerly. The first was the most primitive, with thin girders strung together according to what seemed to be 12th century geometry. Parts had had to be brought in by railroad and horse-drawn wagon, and it showed. The second bridge was built during the First World War. On either side of the railroad tracks was a narrow lane for cars and trucks. It was a little more massive than the first bridge. Aside from that, the two were nearly identical. The third bridge had no railroad tracks at all. It had four lanes, all dedicated to the new vehicles which would dominate all future transportation. Its steel girders were two to three times the thickness of those compiling the superstructure of the other two bridges. One thing they all three had in common was the pilons supporting them. They looked like something from the temple at Baalbek, massive stone blocks that fit together as tight and smooth as pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. It was plain that megalithic architecture hadn't changed since Babylonian times. As they looked down the length of the Mississippi, they could see a bright spotlight probing the river and its banks. "Look," said Bubba, pointing to their left, southward, "a barge coming." Fleebus studied the light, which must've been a couple of miles away. "Looks just like one of H.G. Wells' Martian Machines, blasting away with its death ray," Bubba said. "Good guess, Bubba, but it's something much worse than a Martian Machine. It's an amphibious module controlled by the Monolithic Computer. That light is worse than any death ray; it's a GMC mindsuck beam. It's sailing up the river, sucking psychic energy from all the folks who live by the shore." Fleebus rummaged about on the ground. "Here," he said, handing Bubba a short branch of wood, "here's your weapon, a ray gun designed by the Giant Armadillo shimself for the specific purpose of neutralizing the damn things. Make every shot count!" Hiding behind the pilons and railing of the bridge, they opened fire on the invader. It fired back, trying to seek them out with its yakatisma-sucking ray. Luckily, they were too fast for the GMC, ducking, dodging, hiding, and running serpentine to avoid getting caught in its mind-numbing beam. The GMC might not be outgunned but it was definitely outclassed. The poe boys had trained for this all their lives, prepared since early toddlerhood by viewing gunfights on teevee, playing Cowboys-and-Indians and Army-Men, and of course, developing their eye-and-hand coordination via interminable pinball sessions. Then, mirable dictu, the light on the river went out! They'd won! Shortly thereafter the barge floated by, pushed by a tugboat, all appearing as nice and normal and everyday as you please. But the boys knew better. At least its mindsuck module was neutralized for awhile. "How long do you think it'll be out of commission?" Bubba wondered. "At least a couple months. Those things don't grow on trees, you know." Having neutralized the invader, much like the Pharoah did the Sea Kings, they ambled back up the slope to a broad expanse of grass at the top of the bluff and gazed out where the railroad tracks curved in a long arc from the horizon to the bridges. Immediately before them was a depression about seven-feet deep and broad as a football field. "This must be the Giant Armadillo's bed," said Bubba. "Yeah, and his bathtub, too, when it rains. Look over there." "Over where?" "Way over there, across the tracks." "I don't see anything." "That's what I mean," said Fleebus. "All the street lights have been shot out." "You think the Phantom Light Fucker...?" "Yep. Lin said the PLF likes to hang around out here." "Wow! I think you're right!" Meanwhile, the acid was continuing its proverbial erosion of the bonds that bind the framework of consensus reality together. It caused the sight of the tracks to form long-term afterimages, and soon the entire expanse of the Giant Armadillo's bed seemed filled with arching lines. It was difficult to tell which were tracks and which were afterimages of the tracks. "Y'know, Fleeb, what if that Twilight Zone show was a message from the Cosmic Mind?" "Whaddya mean?" "I mean, what if our whole life is just a hallucination, or maybe a dream?" "You mean like maybe we're two winos who passed out on the railroad tracks and are dreaming all this stuff, right from childhood up to the present moment, our whole lives a dream while we're really sleeping on the tracks?" Fleebus asked. "Yeah, right! You got it! Exactly what I was thinking!" "Like we'll wake up just two seconds before a train runs over us and slices us up into mincemeat?" "Yeah, like the last thing we'll see is this bright light coming toward us at 105 mph!" "Lord, Lord! Well, do me a favor then, Bubba." "What's that?" "If we end up walking down some crazy cool country road, dead but not knowing it, and we come to a gate and this Yankee dude tries to talk us into coming through the gate..." "Yeah?" "Bark or howl or something. 'Cause I might forget. Right now I'm pretty susceptible to fast-talking demons and stuff. If the Devil invited me to walk through a gate, I'd probably assume he knew more than I did about what was going on. I'd probably go right on in without thinking about it." "You got it, bro'! Any fat little turd in a checkered suit tries anything like that, I'll howl like a coyote!" "Well, maybe not howl. After all, we could be mistaken. I'd hate to get busted for howling at people on the city streets at night. Maybe you could just whisper?" "A whispering howl?" Bubba said doubtfully. "I dunno. I guess I could manage it." "At least try." "Sure pal. Will do." "Thanks. I feel alot better now." "Wanna go back to the dorm?" "Sure. Are you in any shape to drive?" "No, I feel kinda funny." "Gee, wonder why." "So, can you drive my car?" "Yeah, I think so." So they hopped in the Fode Mavrack and headed back to MSU. As usual when they were in this condition, the car took on a cartoonlike quality. Everything was bulbous, like a caricature of cars made in the early Fifties, the colors too bright and the shiney parts too shiney. The inside of the car was vast, with winds following complex convection currents beneath its arching dome, even with the windows closed. Outside the car, the city was a hodgepodge of dancing lights and the trails thereof. The doppler effect in the auditory field made the traffic sound like a whistling, ringing, whooshing progressive jazz symphony. Whenever they stopped for a red light, it seemed to stay red forever, but as soon as they dropped the subject of whatever conversation to comment on how long the light was taking, it would change to green again. Stop signs did their proverbial trick, too, seeming miles away only to rush up into their faces suddenly. Strangely enough, though it played havoc with their cognitive perception, it never seemed to fool the physical body, because they always came to a smooth stop with never a jolt. After a few miles of cosmic conversation, they forgot where they were going. This concerned them not a little, until they forgot about that also and went on to another topic. Suddenly they arrived at the dorm. "So this is where we were going!" Bubba said. "Sure thing, man. Our bodies knew it all along, even if our minds didn't." They went inside and rested a bit, reading Zap Comix. But after about a half hour or so they got cabin fever. "Getting hot in here, man," said Fleebus. "Wanna go for a walk?" "Sure. Wonder what time it is?" "There's your alarm clock right there. It says eleven o'clock. That right?" "Must be. I set it this afternoon, and it couldn't have wound down yet. Good clock." "That means we've been tripping about four hours." "We haven't peaked yet, then! This is pretty good stuff!" "I feel like I'm peaking now." "Hard to tell." So they went out back behind the jock dorm and ambled aimlessly on the large quad there. An asphalt track for runners circumscribed it, and at one end were posts set up for pole-vaulting, at the bottom of which was a thick pile of spongey material for the jocks to land on when completing a jump. "What about this Mind Control stuff you keep telling me about?" Fleebus asked. "It's pretty simple. In the Silva classes you learn how to lower your brainwave frequencies in order to accomplish things more effectively. You use the same frequencies you're in when you're dreaming or meditating. Or high. It's very relaxing. You can work on anything, including memory, logic, physical condition, even developing your psychic abilities." "I dunno, Bubba. Sounds kinda hokey to me. I mean, how's it gonna help me do things like lose weight or recover from an illness?" "With the Silva Method, you learn to more effectively communicate with your subconscious mind. Your subconscious mind interfaces with your autonomic nervous system, which is responsible for all your 'involuntary' body functions. Did you know that, with some hypnotic subjects, you can hypnotize them, stick a pencil eraser on the back of their neck, telling them it's a cigarette, and not only will they jump up and yell but also a blister will come up where you stuck the cigarette?" "I dunno, that sounds kinda farfetched. Where did you hear this, on 'Ripley's Believe-It-Or-Not'?" "'Psychology Today' magazine. Mainstream science. It's a fact, Jack." "So how do you do it?" "Pretty easy, you just go into a state of complete relaxation, both mental and physical. You wanna try it?" "How long will it take?" "Fifteen minutes or so." "I'm not gonna end up under your control or anything, am I? Am I gonna start barking like a dog or pecking the ground like a rooster right in the middle of Physical Anthropology class?" "No, it's not like that. It resembles hypnosis and it's kin to hypnosis, but it's not hypnosis. It's all in your control, not mine; I just give you instructions and it's up to you whether to follow them or not. You won't have any gaps in your memory and you won't lose consciousness. The worst that can happen is that you might fall asleep." "So where do we go to do it? Back to your dorm room?" "We could do it right here on the giant sponge," Bubba said, bending over to feel the stuff the jocks used to cushion their falls. "It's perfectly dry. Whaddya think?" "Sounds good to me." So they both laid down on the giant sponge. Bubba repeated the routine he'd heard his instructors execute so many times. "Feel going deeper...deeper and deeper...you may accept or reject anything I say...deeper than ever before..." As soon as he felt Fleebus must be deep enough in Alpha Level, he took himself down by the same route. Bimeby his body had lost all sensation of contact with the sponge; rather, it seemed to glow with an overwhelming bliss, better than the best hash-high, rather similar to the afterglow of a really great sexual climax. He seemed to be floating in space. After a few minutes of this, he opened his eyes, feeling both relaxed yet wide awake and full of energy. He looked over at Fleebus, who was still under. Bubba got to his feet and walked around a bit. Finally, getting a bit impatient, and slightly worried that Fleebus might fall asleep and catch a chill, he woke him. "How you feel?" Fleebus lay a minute or two without answering. "Ah, man, that was outa sight!" he sighed at last. "I never been so relaxed in my life! It's a whole 'nother world down there!" "Yeah, I know what you mean, bro'!" "No, I mean really, literally a whole other world! I felt like I sank down into the giant sponge and there was a little sponge world down in there, with sponge-caves and crevasses and tunnels. I'm glad you woke me up. A guy could get lost down there and never come back. A guy might not want to come back, it was so nice and blissful." "That's the trip, man! Let's go to the Waterworks." "Sure thing." Bubba slid his hand along the rail by the side of the quad. It was covered with a slick dampness. "Hey Fleeb, y'now something?" "No, what?" "Look how damp this rail is. Everything's damp. Look at the street, the walls of the dorms, the cars." "Hmmm, you're right. That's funny; everything was dry a few minutes ago." "Just before we did the Mind Control. Dewfall?" "In that short a time? Hardly seems right." "Well, what else could it be?" "Maybe we're still inside the giant sponge world. Maybe we never came out." "Don't talk like that! We're already several dimensions away from consensus reality as it is!" "Whaddya mean?" "Well, we got the GMC and the PLF, and the winos sleeping on the tracks, people dead without knowing it, and now you want to add the giant sponge world. We might not ever get back to Earth this way!" "Oh geeze, Bubba, now you're getting me to wondering. Hell, I was just kidding about the giant sponge. It's just dewfall or something." "Or something!" "Sheet." "Sheet." So they made their way across the street to the MLG&W Waterworks. The Waterworks were located on a stretch of about seven acres of land, mostly well- mowed grass interrupted every fifty yards or so by large groves of trees. The building itself was an eldritch affair built of cut brownstone, with blank windows faced with large-mesh screens. Each window was about fifteen or twenty feet in height. It was one of the spookiest structures in Memphis. A concrete drainage ditch, about four feet deep, ran along the borders of the land, with round tubular outlets, about five feet in diameter, leading into the sewer system deep underground. Fleebus and Bubba had found beautiful cave paintings of bison and mammoth on the walls a few feet inside the outlet tunnels during daytime explorations. These were no doubt done by latterday Cro-Magnon hominids fresh out of anthropology or art classes. Just before they stepped across the drainage ditch, Fleebus stopped and looked up and down the length of it. "Y'know what this looks like, Bubba?" "No, what?" "Please stop repeating me." "I wasn't repeating you. What does it look like?" "You know how comic books have these lines dividing the pictures? This ditch looks just like those lines." "There you go again. Now we got the GMC, the winos, the giant sponge world, and the comic book lines. You need a program to keep track of all the alternative realities." "Hey, we're just playing. You're not taking this seriously, are you? I mean, if you're weirding out on me, we can go back to the dorm room and you can start chugging orange juice." "Naw, I'm okay. Just playing. So now we're characters in a comic book?" "Looks like it. What kinda comic you think it is?" "Hmmm. Normally I'd say our lives are 'Furry Freak Brothers', but judging from the last couple of hours, we might be in a 'Zap' comic." "A little too bizarre, even for Crumb," Fleebus said, "maybe that guy who does the weird dinosaurs and Omo Bob... What's his name?" "I don't remember." "I know, we're characters in an 'Overland Vegetable Stagecoach' comic. Cool!" "That sounds right. So what happens when we cross the lines?" "I dunno. Maybe we go into a different comic." "Think so? That could really change things. What if we stepped into 'Spiderman' or 'Dr. Strange'?" "Or worse, 'Sgt. Fury and His Howling Commandos'! Or even worse, 'Captain Pissgums and His Perverted Pirates Meet Ruby and the Dikes'!" "Gross! How about 'Weird Tales'?" "Whoa!" said Fleebus. "I don't wanna do any 'Weird Tales'! I don't wanna go meeting some kinda Lovecraft horrors or anything!" "Don't even talk about it!" Bubba said, glancing over his shoulder with a shudder. "So do we cross the line? Or do we go back to the dorm? Have we got what it takes, or are we going to slink back to our pitiful little lives, wondering always what would have happened if we'd crossed the line?" "Right! Let's go back to the dorm!" "Bubba, you surprise me! All this time I thought you had the pioneer spirit! If Columbus'd thought like that, we'd be speaking English right now! Go back to the dorm, indeed! What would Abner Perry and David Innes say? What would John Carter of Mars say?" "They'd say, 'Go back to the dorm, before some crawling, chittering, blind idiot demon gobbles us up!'" "Al right, Bubba, we'll go back to the dorm. We won't cross the line, we won't take the risk, and we'll never know what we might've found on the Other Side." "Sounds good to me!" "We'll go back to the dorm on one condition." "What's that?" Bubba asked, narrowing his eyes in suspicion. He knew when Fleebus used that tone that he was up to something. "We'll go back, but you have to answer me one question." "Oh yeah?" "Yeah!" "Shoot!" "Okay Bubba, answer me this: What would Davy Crockett say, if he heard we went back to the dorm without even crossing the line, crawling back with our tails between our legs, nobody shooting at us, nobody even yelling nasty things at us, defeated by our own paranoia? What would Davy say?" "That's not fair! You got no right to bring Davy into this!" "Hey, don't shoot the messenger!" "Shit! You know I can't let Davy down!" "So we're crossing the line?" "Damn straight we are! And any Lovecraftian horrors from the depths of Hell better just look out!" "Right on! Let's go!" So the two freebarders crossed the line. "God will punish you for this, Fleebus," Bubba said as they stepped onto the Other Side. "We do what we must." The moon was full and had attained the highest point on the glittering dome of sky, straight over head. It seemed as bright as day on the quad, though of course it was a light that shone no colors but rather made everything look silvery. They walked out to the middle of the quad. It was a good place to smoke a joint, since you could see anyone coming, long before they got close enough to see what you were smoking. Fleebus pulled a joint out of his pocket and lit it. "Don't know why you bother with that," Bubba said, "we're so high already." "You saying you don't want a hit?" "Don't be absurd! Pass that jynt!" "Umm, gasp, good stuff!" Bubba inhaled deeply as he could, which was pretty deeply. "Cough, gasp, yeah." "This comic strip is beautiful, but not much happening in it. Wanna go the next one over?" "Why not?" Bubba responded. They made their way to the grove which separated this quad from the next one. It was a couple of acres in extent, and they stumbled through it, unable to see the ground clearly. "I can't tell if those are logs on the ground or people making out," Bubba said. "WHUPS! Excuse me, I'm sorry, didn't see you!" "Why are you apologizing to those logs?" "Are they logs? I thought they were people." "Now that you mention it, they are moving... Aren't they?" Sure enough, the logs seemed to be writhing in anger or pain. Or maybe embarassment? "Did they say something?" Bubba asked. "I could've sworn they said something." "Maybe you better apologize again, just in case." "Look folks, I'm sorry, didn't mean to hurt you." "Yeah, me neither. Hey, don't get upset, we're not here to mug you or rape you or anything. We're just a couple of stoned hippies out here tripping." "I know they found that comforting." "I think they're really just logs," said Fleebus. "Just what you want out here while you're making out, couple hippies can't tell logs from people having sex." Suddenly it seemed there were couples here and there all through the woods. Were they talking to them? Cussing them for being out there? Saying things like, "Keep the NOISE down, willya?" "Gonna calla COPS!" "Please! Take the money!" "Maybe we better just move on," said Fleebus. They kept walking, stumbling, but now they heard a new sound. Voices coming from about fifty feet away, along with other, less distinguishable sounds. People hitting something with chains or bats, maybe? "Sounds like a rumble going on," said Bubba. "People beating somebody up? Maybe we should go help?" "Help beat somebody up?" "No, help the person being beaten. There may be a gang raping some chicks over there!" "Gawd, I dunno. Now it sounds more like somebody bowling and laughing." "Good Lord!" said Fleebus. "It's Captain Hudson and his men, bowling a game of ninepins!" "You mean like in 'Rip Van Winkle'?" "Yeah!" "Well, we don't wanna go over there, then. They might put us to sleep like they did Rip!" "Noooo," said Fleebus, "I don't wanna be put to sleep. Had a dog got put to sleep once!" "Was his name Rip?" "No, it was Buttnose. Best dog I ever had." "Maybe we better just leave well enough alone." "I think you're right." They moved on, but when they got out of the woods, they found they were on the same quad they'd started out on. "I could've sworn we didn't get turned around," said Fleebus. "Beats me. I was following you." "No, I was following you." "At least we didn't get put to sleep." "I was absolutely sure we went straight ahead." "Maybe we just slipped into another parallel world. Maybe this one's the mirror image of the one we left." Fleebus looked around. "No, I don't think so. Look, there's the Waterworks building over to the right, just where it should be." "Let's go over there." "Okay." They walked away from the woods, toward the building about a hundred yards away. "Wait a minute!" said Bubba, stopping. "What?" "Did you hear something coming from those bushes over there on the left?" They listened. "You're right!" said Fleebus. "Voices! Sounds like girls' voices!" "More people making out?" "Or else evil spirits pretending to be girls, trying to lure us over there and do us in, like the river nymphs that drowned Hylas!" "Who was Hylas?" "Hercules' boyfriend. I thought you said you read Greek mythology?" "Oh yeah, I remember now. That was when Hercules went to the land of the Amazons." "No, that was in a cheap gladiator movie." "Maybe so, but they got it from Greek mythology. It was the story of the Argonauts." "Wow," said Fleebus, "to think that there would be so little difference between Greek mythology and cheap gladiator movies. Hey, I just got an epiphany!" "How's that?" "Maybe not all those Greek myths are meaningful symbolic treatises on the human psyche, maybe some of them were the ancient Greek equivalent of cheap gladiator movies!" "I thought they were symbolic of fertility cults or something." "I dunno. Maybe it's pointless to try to think heavy thoughts while you're tripping. After all, look what Aldous Huxley got." "What'd Aldous Huxley get?" "Well he was tripping on mescaline, see, and he got this big revelation," Fleebus said, "and he wrote it down, 'cause you know how you have all these big revelations while you're tripping and then you can't remember them later when you're straight." "Yeah!" "So when he looked at the piece of paper the next day, all it said was, 'Higamus hogamus, women are monogamous. Hogamus higamus, men are polygamous.'" "Haw!" "So maybe you think they're big revelations, epiphanies, but maybe they're just nonsense." "WHOA!" "What?" "I thought I heard my name being called!" "Maybe it's somebody we know, out here tripping like us." From the bushes came sounds like high-pitched giggling. Moreover, it did seem like the voices were calling their names, "Bubba! Fleebus! Come over here!" "I'm going over there," said Bubba. "They sound like they might need help!" "No, don't! Remember the nymphs!" "No, I think they really need help! Sounds like they're in trouble!" Bubba started to run toward the bushes. "STOP, BUBBA!" Fleebus yelled. Bubba stopped, torn between Fleebus and the bushes. "There's really nobody there, man! Or if there is, then it's not really girls! How would they know our names? No chicks we know would be out here hiding under the bushes! They'd be afraid of bugs!" Bubba hesitated. Fleebus certainly had a point there. But he could swear he saw movement under and around the bushes, and the voices were still calling his name. What if somebody were hurt or sick and needed them? "Come back, man, you're being fairy-led!" Fairy-led! The old Celtic folklore that hoodoos out in the woods at night might lure travelers to their doom with beautiful lights or images of alluring women. Could it be that the spooks were trying to split them up? Trying to lure him away to where Fleebus couldn't help him, or get Fleebus alone and jump him? Bubba knew from experience how harrowing it could be to spilt up when you're tripping together, never knowing if otherworld critters had taken your friend and substituted a doppleganger. Slowly, reluctantly, he walked back and joined Fleebus. "Let's get away from those damn bushes," he said. As they approached the building, Bubba spoke again. "I'm glad this isn't a mirrorworld. We've slipped through more than enough layers of alternative reality as it is!" "You got that right. Say, what's that up on that window?" "Looks like a couple of tarantulas!" They peered at the two objects clinging to the steel mesh covering the window, about eight feet up. "Those're gloves!" said Fleebus. "Gloves! How the hell did they get up there?" "Looks like somebody was climbing the window, and then fell down, leaving the gloves hanging there." "Fell down-- or was pulled down?" "Pulled down? Why? By who?" "Or by what, you mean! They look like they've been chewed!" "You think maybe the Giant Monolithic Computer's agents got somebody, somebody that tried to climb the window and escape them?" "Why else would anybody be climbing that damn window? There's nothing up there!" Bubba said. "Pulled the poor sap right out of his gloves!" "Why would they do that?" "I dunno, maybe 'cause he was doing the same thing we're doing!" "Maybe we better scram outa here!" "I'm with you! Let's beat it!" So they beat a path back to the dorm. As they walked down the hall toward Bubba's dorm room, they heard music coming softly from one of the other rooms. They stopped and peered in the open door. It was Lon Pentacoast, the little painter. "Hi, guys, hows tricks?" Lon said quietly. "Come on in." "What is that strange stuff coming from your stereo?" Fleebus asked as they entered the room. "Pink Floyyd, a song called 'Heartbeat Pigmeat'." "Sounds like a version of 'Careful With That Axe, Eugene'." "It is. It's on the 'Zabriski Point' soundtrack." "What's 'Zabriski Point'?" "A movie. You oughta see it. Pretty weird." The song consisted of a rhythmic drumbeat, sounding much like jungle drums in a Tarzan movie, while mysterious voices and sighs murmured in the background. It was intensely hypnotic. It fit with their trip hand-in-glove, so to speak. "So, what are you doing up this time of night?" Bubba asked. "I've been working on my latest painting. Wanna see it?" "Sure." Lon lifted a sheet off an easel in a corner of the room. The canvas was painted with what must have been a hundred little white birds, like seagulls. At the edges of the flock they faded into a whiteness like clouds or bright light that surrounded the flock. It was like white birds exploding from the Void. Bubba thought of M.C. Escher. "Pretty good," Bubba said, turning to Lon. Suddenly something white flew out of Lon's chest, right into Bubba's face. Bubba jumped and beat the air with his hands. "What'nell was that?" Lon bent over and picked it up from where it had fallen on the floor. It was a white piece of paper cut into the shape of a seagull. "White birds, man, I'm into white birds," he said in his quiet voice, "I've been into white birds for quite some time." "I can see that! It flew right out of your chest!" Right about then the screaming started. Don't know how many of you out there have heard the Pink Floyyd song "Careful With That Axe, Eugene", much less its more elaborate sibling "Hearbeat Pigmeat". Both songs start out in a relatively gentle, hypnotic beat that continues on for some five or six minutes. Then they build to a crescendo that culminates in what sounds like a woman screaming her lungs out, like Faye Wray when King Kong is looking at her, trying to decide if she is a new playtoy or the night's snack. (And yes, he did tear her clothes off in the genuinely unexpurgated version, the version shown in Europe, the version unseen in America until the 1970s.) Lon said something that might have been, "I hid it in my shirt and tossed it out at you," but Bubba couldn't be sure, what with the screaming and all. In any event, after the night's activities, after Twilight Zone, the Martian Machines, the GMC and the PLF, mating logs, Captain Hudson and his men, nymphs in the bushes, examining the essentially illusory distinction between this world and others, and then mysterious gloves on the window... after all that, white birds and insane screaming were the last straw. Fleebus and Bubba went back to Bubba's dorm room to crash. There was one last question, though. The clock said five-thirty a.m. "That doesn't seem right," Fleebus said. "How long were we out there?" "Hmmm, well, five-thirty, yeah. That is kinda strange. We were at the Waterworks for about an hour-- two hours, tops. And on the giant sponge for about a half-hour before that." "And reading comic books for what? Thirty minutes?" "Certainly not a whole hour. But we looked at the clock just before we left the room. It was eleven p.m." "You're right, it was. So we spent six and a half hours out there walking, including lying on the giant sponge? It seems more like about two hours, three at the most. How can that be right? Is it possible we spent more time on the giant sponge than we thought?" "We could not possibly have spent more than thirty minutes on the sponge. That kind of thing usually seems a lot longer than it is," Bubba said. "And I know we weren't in Lon's room more than thirty minutes." "So that leaves at least four hours unaccounted-for." "No, three hours." "But then, we spent four hours out at the Church on the River." "Doesn't count; that was before we looked at the clock. Didn't seem like that much out there at the river, either, anyway. Thirty or forty minutes driving, altogether, even going slow." "We couldn't have been on the sponge for more than a half hour. I know that much for sure." Fleebus scratched his head. "Way I figure it, there's at least three or four hours we can't remember out of that whole trip, most of it in the Waterworks quads." "Maybe Captain Hudson and his men did put us to sleep." "Or the nymphs? Or the Monolithic Computer?" "Who knows?" "Right now, I don't even care. I'm dog-tired. I'm gonna crash." "Sure, go ahead. I'll take the other bed." So that was the trip with the Black Acid. It was but one of many, many others, most as bizarre as it was. But during those trips, Fleebus and Bubba were just playing with paranoia and alternative realities. Over a period of time, though, these things became more and more real for Bubba, until they were happening even when he wasn't tripping.
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