Radio Sphere (5 page)

I had thought everything was getting better.

Saraswati sent me on an expedition to find her friend. She said we could share his friendship, a perennial somewhere south of I—90. He is said, said Saraswati, to be one of the wisest, most powerful in all the world— the ancient Ganesha. I was to find him inside a large obsidian colored cube between the city and the sea with history inside.

Crossing the boarder of I—90. Returning one again to the apocalypse of ancient decay I was immediately sad by the state of absolute abandon. Everything was red with neglected, alone, it hurt to walk through with no way to offer change.

Buildings are meant to be lived in.

I heard a roar from the havoc of what was once apartments and suddenly a beast the size of a dozen dogs leaped from the iron scraps. The beast chewed on iron rust from the collapsed ancient carapace. Mid—mastication it looked up and noticed me. The beast roared and I ran while wetting my pants. The apples Saraswati sent with me tumbled to the ground. The beast crushed them with hoofed feet and so much force they burst like the explosives they used in the old world; magnalium mixed with strontium, potassium perchlorate,
³³
and… and… what else?

Fire burst as the stomp of the beast exploded the skin of the apple in all directions.

I fled through an iron curtain of rusted mist that seemed to emanate from the back of the beast; I ran as fast as I could.

The beast followed.

I ran.

I could
feel
the monster, heavy gravity was all around me, come hot and powerful and ancient, like a rocket piercing through the sound barrier, that wrecked clouds and mountains alike. The beast was not from this world— it devoured it, showing me true destruction up close and in progress. The quadruped forced itself towards me with destruction meant to stop flowers from blooming, children from dreaming, life from living. Mist flowed off its back like a cape dissipating towards the horizon.

The monster was anti—love with a sly, indicating smile.

Passing through a thicket I entered a glen, a hole of peace somehow placed between the corpse—shells of buildings on all sides, and music
³⁴
was playing. The glen was accompanied by several plastic climbing tubes that children once played on surrounding a dinner table. The music seemed to emanate from every direction.

“Hello, friend, don’t mind me.” A small human—like creature hummed.

“I’m… I’m…”

“Running, I know. Covered in sweat. Out of breath. Lost your apples?”

“My apples… I need those… where are we?”

“This place is mine. Nobody enters here without my knowing, my approval. I saw you chased by that horrible beast, I helped you.” All at once: completely weasel, man, horse, tiger, dragon, and woman. The only thing in common between the creature’s shifting forms was a spider—like movement and deep red paint covering its body like clothing.

“Thank you.”

“You are my guest. Have a seat,” itsaid pointing to the table made of ancient wood surrounded by chairs uncomfortably close together, none matching, with a smattering of chipped, broken, and pulverized vitreous, translucent ceramic material resembling the shell of a cowrie spread across the surface.

“Won’t the beast follow?”

“No.” It said while running fingers through porcelain dust.

“How can you be sure?”

“I can be, yes. Absolutely certain. Those monsters have no food here.”

I slowly wandered a few paces while gazing around, “aren’t we his food?”

“Oh no, no, no. Of course not. They eat the ruin.” It’s stature was amorphous as it pulled a human corpse out of a plastic tube and brought it to the table, posing it in a seat. I felt as if I must’ve been dreaming, but I knew I was awake.

“Why did that thing chase me?”

“To kill you. You startled it. Perhaps it thought you were hunting him. Creatures, they have instincts,” it hoisted another corpse from another tube, sitting it in another chair.

“It was never this dangerous before.”

“Well, it isn’t “before” now, is it?”

This creature did not seem dangerous, but when I saw how he handled the corpse with ease and whimsy I knew he could be malignant. He was some kind of powerful hermit beat—brain or beat—brain god.

“What is your name?”

I told him my name, he told me he has had many names since the start, “I am from and of the earth. I come from far out,” but I could call him Iktomi; Iktomi was male, or the creature’s all—at—once—ness disguise had given up, or decided, and presented me with one solid and consistent image. A tall, hunched man, only slightly older than myself, with brown hair like mine reaching down below his knees. “It is all rather simple if you can see all of human time. You won’t have to worry about any of that for awhile yet. Maybe you’ll be ready in the future. I’m not sure. I’m really rather uncertain. Good luck. You, well, you I like.”

“What are you preparing for?” I asked knowing all along he saw nothing wrong or strange with how he handled the bodies, that if I offended him I might become one— a prop— and that his power so exceeded my own that once I entered the glen with Iktomi I would never be in control again.

Iktomi was more interested in cleaning dishes with his button—less, open sleeve, then he muttered: “When there are clouds in the sky, and they are all brown, always brown, you may be sad, but remember they’ll soon pace away.”

“Okay…”

“Look—” he gestured around the glen, “do you see the point?”

“What is the point?”

“—not everything has a point. For example, a pencil is pointless.”

“A what?”

“Never mind, well, I want to know a ploy to distract us— There are apples, right there, on that tree.”

On the table appeared a whittled porcelain tree with the largest apples I’d ever seen almost crying off the branches. Twice the size of the ones Saraswati grew, the apples were dark red and every shade till light yellows emerged. I quickly began to devour one from each hand.

“Yesterday was the perfect day to be lonely,” Iktomi started, “but today it seems companionship is in order. This transient form is nothing more than a nodule. You are only a piece of what you think of as ‘self.’“

I ate.

“Each ‘individual’ is nothing more than a non—periodic signal, a decaying signal, we are but an effect produced outside of the mind.”

Apple after apple, it felt like a trance as I focused on Iktomi’s words.

“We are on a journey, an experience, to new realms of thought. The scope and content of the experience is limitless.”

As I ate I felt strange.

“Turn on! Think for yourself.”

All of a sudden my entire
waking life

seemed to be a dream,

then a terror,

then not mine

I was laughing and crying in turn about

it all, then moving on, instant after instant a new life.

I felt as if my body was filled with air instead of blood, like I could float and if I tried to hum I would, I could, but I didn’t.

I tried to stay on the ground,

the moment passed like

ripples
across
a pond

I got scared I missed it forever—

cursed to walk the land as I always had, blood bodied. I felt like all of life

is some kind of careful balance between holding back

letting loose

just enough

to keep from destroying

butterfly wings with dragon’s fire

until only few truths remain.

The look and feel of porcelain had become miraculous to me. The dust ran through my fingers,
my
fingers, I could see the origin of life, I was the source of the Earth and sun and every moon there was! I was a rising wave! I was—

Wait, no. Is that right? Wait.

I felt sick. Unsure. Where exactly was I?

“I’m alive now, right now; confirmed now. For now.” Iktomi looked at me with a smirk.

My lungs were rebuilt by butterflies which is why I
can
fly and my brain used to be mush but Saraswati helped me repair it— the lightening struck the lump of clay and it was alive. A brain built of brains, each growing on top of the previous until a usable whole was formed.

A trail of turtles, 17 long, limbs of fire and shells of ice, crossed my path. The second 7th turtle grew large as a carriage when the line stopped in front of me so I hopped on his back and went for a ride. The turtle’s back elongated as he turned into a dragon, long and thin, with a mane of unburning fire. The dragon tried to fly, but its weight kept us down and its paws created chasmic prints.

The rest of the turtles cried as their brother screamed from growth then began collapsing in on himself like an imploding star, slowing the passage of time until nothing moved at all. I smiled at the wonder until I was amazed to see Saraswati gracefully, yet powerfully, grow from the ground before me.

“Hold. You have stumbled into a rare and pivotal moment,” is how she greeted me.

When her words stopped, on that exact beat, Iktomi dropped from Saraswati’s branches with a charming smile and a nasal exertion of triumph.

“We’ve met, you’ll remember me for sure— from the past if I’m not mistaken.” Iktomi spouted with uncertain sincerity. “You may not know this guy though.”

A long, white haired man dressed in magnificent robes that looked as midnight does with a pale lunar glow and galactic twinkling stood on the other side of Saraswati as if he’d been there even a moment earlier.

“The races of earth…” he started.

“Groovy, I guess Yeomy is going first,” Iktomi forced in.

“Have fallen. The earth itself survives. Life survived. Power has dominion now, the beasts and men have been reduced in so great a number that any can take command! Those who want will win.” Yeomra finished. He spoke with force, like he’d practiced the lines a thousand times before.

“You humans, finally, have fallen, like me, but you are only
just
, so young, so barely even there. I have lasted since perhaps the very moment that lasting started. Only, on that day not long ago when I witnessed your landing hard did I begin to notice, reflect on my befallen state. Like an addict or a fool I refused to realize the waste of it all…” Iktomi trailed off as he stared at the ground.

In the dead air Yeomra started again: “Some die and that’s it, they’re done— others though, with no great power or ability, can become so much more. I lied, mind you, it takes the greatest power of all— sheer will. Not the will to live or to be great, but the will to expand and learn; to become wholly self and individual gives us the discretion to make greatness as we please.”

Saraswati took control once Yeomra finished. “George, please follow along. You know you can if you focus. Don’t force it, allow it to enter your mind, but do not allow it to take over— entertain the ideas as you did when we have spoken in the past. Wait until they finish speaking each, then take your time to review what they told you. Decide on your own time.” Iktomi performed a small leap of joy as Saraswati finished.

“Decide when you will, as long as you decide on me! But, listen now: The powerful always have followers, if they seek to or not, and not because they need followers but because the followers need them. Coyote follows me. The bulgasari follow Yeomra. Saraswati follows Ganesha.

Those who want power always seek followers, demand them in some cases, but that is a weak zardozian power, an authority not earned or achieved through valid means. In the end though, power is a means to the oft forgot end. Both are likely meaningless.

The search— for power or anything else, anything at all— is infinite and important.” Iktomi made in—place dances as he seemed to lose interest in his own words.

“Once, the populations of creatures expanding across the world outnumbered the power and abilities of the gods, but no more and never again! The bulgasari will keep this world free.” Yeomra enjoyed his own words as much as he expected me to.

“We must create new life. Like none we’ve seen before, creatively, but sill, however, we only have the parts and supplies from what we can find already invented. Pretty hard. I’ve been working on it for a while, considerable intellect up here, but nothing groovy yet… just a matter of time.” Iktomi’s tone continued and he seemed more and more to just be thinking out loud. I could tell he was afraid of Yeomra— and I was afraid of him.

Still trapped in icebound time, the mane of fire I’d been grasping off the back of a brand new dragon whelp shocked me when I remembered it was there upon glancing down; distracted by the mesmerizing conversation before me. What could I have done to possibly deserve this?

“George. Now do you realize some new ideas? Take control of time as needed.” Saraswati said.

“Well, wow,” then I paused; when I came back I felt as though I had an answer: “You are both coeval, opportunistic, and shallow; in any other world you’d belong together in prison. Saraswati is the only one I would follow, and she would not use me for her own ends or glory. I’m uncertain of reality, but for now I am exhausted of this.”

Yeomra vanished before another word, but Iktomi was quick to say: “You may feel you’ve chosen wisely— but by the time you slowly die before your family deep beneath the dirt, and time once again trickles to a stop for you, you will regret.”

Saraswati’s branches swayed in the breeze, as if to smile, then she returned into the ground. The icy flow of time began to mollify.

The turtle—dragon’s final act was to eject me from his back, launching me through the apple scented air and just for a second my sight went black.

Before I knew it I was back outside the glen, alone, much later in the day, with no trace of Iktomi, but I could still hear his voice.

“Ice baker. Lemon squeezer. Hydrant kicker. Son of twenty beers. Tomorrow pointer.”

I looked around for the glen, for Iktomi, for a trace of what I should be doing, but instead I found myself laughing aggressively and alone, accompanied only by mist.

“I’m bored. I’m board. I’m a board. I’m aboard. I’m starboard. Wet and cold. Floating. I’m shrinking. Midnight running.” Iktomi’s voice continued to float around, “What’s the frequency?”