#checkerboard wormhole

[alligator-dreaming]

02-21-2022

I had a nap today and I saw Sonic the Hedgehog fight a second, smaller Sonic the Hedgehog

There was also a checkerboard wormhole

[egressparadox]

Nathan Yuri's lab notes

LAB YRI NTH

the black siting of the last known member of mask tribe, the discovered "projector" bearing all of the tribes knowledge in regards to warfare and brutality as an artform.

the image, that the distant globes and the stars, aren't globes within a shared field whatsoever, but instead are windows in motion, gateways, that once crossed, set the observer or subject into a contained environment, whereas before, it was potentially infinite in possibility. --for the reality / perspective metaphysicians hypothesis

the opening of a gateway or wormhole gone wrong, opening instead into a "hall" of doors. being incredibly corrupted or inhabited, and infinitely vast (the labyrinth egress paradox) . which presents the earth as being one in thousands of leveled playing fields. that is in a sense, the "rapture" of our potential reality from what it has been contained to be, visualized by the common person, as a rapture or war between heaven and hell. . . our globe suddenly becomes open to the other realities, that are still , bound by the universal laws of light and reaction. our reality suddenly, is unoppressed or divided by the words of man, or any other intelligent conjurer, (in laymanesse : "dimensional wavelength")

released was mankind, of its power over greater conjuring and control, when it ate the "fruit" and cursed itself with the perspective of mortality so vivid that it became so. MAN the paranoid and empathetic angel. repossessed by their evolutions as they came into being. what would have just been a powerful though in man, will now be master over man kind. tropes derivative of "tarot" will be thus defined as such.

the labyrinth, the checkerboarded field, an environment, of sheerly symbolic objectives, loosely defined. read until they create a reality as complex as the earth, and made purely defined. with every other god tongue, they become other worlds entirely. ours, the tragedy of MAN the angel, who has become its thoughts.

[xponentialdesign]

#everyday #trapcodeTAO engulfing checker hole variation  #opArt @animatedLoop #aep -> http://bit.ly/2m68Cs7 WATCH TUTORIAL : http://bit.ly/2ng47vX

[ask-the-guiding-light-cast]

Necrozma snakes his way through the swirling colors and distant checkerboard patterns of Ultra Space, flapping his giant wings as he goes. It seems that, for all his newfound strength, he can’t quite pinpoint where in the bridge between worlds and realities the few that escaped his wrath sauntered off to.

“Where are those contemptible fools?”

He slows up, his third eye narrowing. A huge spark of energy catches his attention and he looks to his right. His other two eyes flash purple, probing the chaos of Ultra Space for any vulnerabilities. It doesn’t take long for him to force open a jagged Ultra Wormhole and fly inside of it. On the other side, he finds himself high above a series of tiny islands. There’s nothing of interest he can see besides a single mountain jutting into the air.

... no, wait, that’s not quite true. There may not be much to see, but there’s plenty to sense. Numerous strong spirits dwell here, alongside...

“... humans. So, I’ve found a world of humans and pokémon, have I?”

Necrozma’s aura flares out, filling the sky with hues of purple and red.

“Yes, it’s clear to me. These pathetic mongrels are leeching off their pokémon. Using them to hide from their own, inevitable destruction.”

“Well, I won’t stand for it! All life is a mistake! I will snuff out your souls and turn your world to dust! I am Necrozma, Light of Oblivion!”

---

@monarchialmoon, it seems there’s trouble afoot! ... or, aflying?

[nowitsdarkfic]

chapter seventeen (”...serum..”)

There’s the sound of a machine beeping right behind my head. I’m waking up to the clean smell of a hospital again, but there’s something else here. Something different.

I roll my head over the surface of the pillow to find there’s a silvery metal table of scalpels and a hefty glass syringe right next to me; underneath that is a big smooth gray block. A computer, maybe? There are little lights along the side and it’s making a quiet hum. My head aches me, such that it feels like someone hit me in the back with a hatchet or at least something sharp.

I try to lift up my arm to massage my temples, but I can’t. Something’s holding me down.

I take a look down to find I’ve been strapped down to a hospital bed. Actually no, it’s an operating table, complete with those tough, heavy brown leather belts. Someone also took my clothes and my boots, and gave me a hospital gown instead.

What the hell?

I blink several times so my eyes adjust to the pale yellow light casting over me. And then I catch the sound of a door opening to my right. I roll my head over again to find old man Mike Morlente, the curmudgeon down the street from Brick’s house, and the creepy old white-haired guy striding into the room. Surely this is just a bad dream.

The old guy sneers at me as he stands to my right. The curmudgeon is down by my feet. Mike rounds my head to meet up with me on the left side of the bed.

“Well, well, well,” he says to me. I swallow--I don’t know how long I’ve been laying here, but apparently I’ve been laying here long enough to have a sore throat.

“I should’ve known it was you who’s been trying to uncover everything that’s been going on with my company and my daughter. I was wondering what happened to those placebos, too--that little bitch.”

“No, you don’t understand--” I start, feeling my heart hammer inside of my chest.

“I think I do!” he snaps at me. “You met Maya one day and got curious, didn’t you? That’s what Walter’s grandfather tried to do with me, but now he’s pushing up daisies. Just like you’ll be doing soon enough. Joseph Bellardini. Former lead singer of Anthrax. Don’t think I don’t know.”

“What’d you do with Brick?” I demand.

“Nothing. But he’s living on borrowed time. So is your old band.” I want to know where Lars, Chris, and Nancy are, that is if they are in fact nearby. I don’t even know where I am!

“We tried to warn you in the church,” says the old man.

“Warn me?” I lift my head to look at him. “Warn me of what?”

“Don’t dig too deep, young man--you’ll hit the aquifer and get taken down with it.”

That line from the first copy of After the Watershed, the exact one about digging too deep down and drowning. Maya coming to a church. Of course.

“I’m Reverend Victor Newberry,” the old man continues, setting his hands down on the table on either side of my feet. “Maya and her sister came to my congregation with Michael here. You can just say we put the fear of the Lord into them when they were younger.”

I gape at him. Suddenly it makes sense. Maya duped me in Seattle... but she was making a cry for help, though. She knew I’d come back because I’ve been trying to help her. She saw herself in me. She believed in me.

“You disgusting sack of shit,” I blurt out; something I don’t say often because it’s easy for me to forgive people.

“That’s right,” he whispers to me.

“Just like what we’re gonna do to you,” the curmudgeon adds with a sneer on his face. “I’d like to take all of this curly black hair and make wigs for all of my kids.”

“And then smash his poor little cock with an old Bible!” Reverend Newberry adds.

“Remember, a dusty old Bible means a dirty life,” old man Morlente points out as he’s putting on latex gloves. “But first, I’m gonna stick this syringe of cybernetic serum right into his vocal cords--”

He picks up the syringe closest to me, the one with neon blue fluid inside of the chamber. Neon blue that’s glowing underneath the pale yellow light like it’s radioactive. It’s not a placebo, but the real deal. The same shit injected into Maya and Brick and Anthrax. The same shit that’s killing them all very slowly and very painfully. Moreover, the end of the needle is massive, like one of those needles used in bone marrow transfusions. 

“--stick it right into his vocal cords and take that obnoxious voice of his.”

“You sure you wanna stick that big fat needle into his neck?” the curmudgeon stops him. “It’s pretty big.”

“I’ve performed delicate surgery on Maya and Candace so neither of them would wonder too far from home,” old man Morlente assures him. That explains the scar on Maya’s forehead! Yes!

“Yeah, but you’re using a huge needle, though. Shouldn’t you use something a little smaller?”

“Now why would I do that? This shit is going to kill him anyways. It’s pretty much our equivalent of the lethal injection.”

“The same reason why you put a controller chip inside of Maya’s brain? You didn’t want to keep track of her--you want to control her.”

“Wait, what?” I ask him.

“Yeah. You didn’t figure that one out?” the curmudgeon chuckles at me. Old man Morlente chews on his bottom lip at the curmudgeon. And then he turns to Reverend Newberry.

“Get him out of here,” he orders in a terse tone. I look over at the sight of that white haired scumbag guiding the curmudgeon out of the operating room. Old man Morlente then holds onto my chin and tilts my head back so he can see what he’s doing.

He doesn’t put iodine or anything on the skin. He’s just going to do it. He’s just going to put a needle right into me and inject the serum into me!

I snap my eyes shut. Oh God.

Death, here I come again. But for real this time.

There’s a loud thud! outside of the operating room. I feel the tip of the needle come within a hair’s width of my skin when old man Morlente loosens his grip on my chin.

“What the hell--?” he mutters. I open my eyes and look at the syringe in his hand. Still full of that fluid. He didn’t inject it.

But the door to the right swings open and Lars and Hiro burst into the room, holding a rubber mallet and a brick, and that burlap sack in that respective order. Lars is also wearing my checkerboard shirt over his actual shirt. He leaps over me and tackles old man Morlente down onto the floor, knocking the table over and all the while brandishing that mallet.

“Get Joey out of there! Quick!” he orders Hiro. He hangs next to me, rummaging through the sack.

“Thank you,” I tell him in a broken voice.

“Chris called me and Kim from one of the payphones in the City,” he explains, taking out one of the magnets. “And there was a wormhole opened up for us in Seattle so we boogied here as fast as we could.” He holds the slender black magnet over the buckles fastening the belts down on the table. There’s a little clank! next to me and the one holding me down at the chest comes undone. Low tech belts, high tech buckles.

He follows suit on the other belts holding down my wrist, my hips, my thighs, and my ankles; meanwhile, I hear Lars and old man Morlente struggling on the floor, probably swinging the mallet around in hopes to knock him out. I sit up in time to see old man Morlente on top with the tip of the needle pointed right at Lars’ neck.

I reach into the burlap sack at the end of the table for the rubber hose and come up behind old man Morlente with it. I put it around his neck and tighten it. He gasps, and throws the syringe on the floor, hard enough such that it shatters. Lars closes his eyes so nothing gets into his eyes. I linger close to old man Morlente’s ear as he’s struggling to breathe.

“Tell me what you did with Brick and Anthrax,” I whisper to him, loosening my grip. “Tell me what you did or I’ll give you a war like you won’t believe. Tell me.”

“They’re--” he gasps for air. “They’re en route to Seattle!”

“Are you being sincere?” I demand.

“Yes!”

“They’re going to bloody Seattle!” Lars shrieks, sitting upright. There’s whole manner of beeps and screeches from the tower next to us. Little glimmers of pure white electricity shoot out from the sides. Lars looks down at the shirt, my shirt that he’s wearing. The computer is going haywire from the checkerboard pattern.

“Yes! That’s it!” he declares. I let go of old man Morlente so he can stand to his feet and run out of there, probably to look for Reverend Newberry and the curmudgeon.

I don’t where I am, and I don’t know if Brick and Anthrax are even here right now. But I help Lars to his feet and we put the mallet and the hose back into the burlap sack. Even though I’m still wearing this hospital gown, one thing’s for certain and that’s I’m getting the hell out of here.

[nowitsdarkfic]

chapter forty (boston cream pies and feathers)

November 6, 1988. Oswego, New York.

“Where are we?” Lars asks me in a muffled voice.

“Right here.”

I turn my head and I can tell we’re back at Black Orchid, even with the coat of freshly fallen snow all around us. I recognize that door, and I raise my knuckles to the panel. There’s silence. Then it swings open to reveal Mrs. Hamilton wrapped in black lace and leather and smelling of rose water. Her face lights up when she sees us.

“There are my boys!” she declares. “Morgan and I were just wondering about you—come on in!”

We step inside the place where we’re met with a blanket of warmth and a kiss from Morgan.

“You guys need to take care of yourselves better,” she advises us, brushing off the front of my coat. “Come on, take a load off.”

“I do not like the way you looked at me when you said that,” I confess, and she bursts out laughing at me.

“Also there’s someone waiting for you on the second level, Joey,” Mrs. Hamilton nods up the stairs on the other side of the room.

“Who?”

“Go check it out. We’ll take care of your clothes for you guys, make sure nothing happens to them.”

She and Morgan offer to take the checkerboard outfits Marcia and Sonia gave us, and then Lars follows them towards the kitchen. I make my way to the stairwell and up to the second floor, where I'm met with the warm aroma of chocolate coupled with fresh baked bread. Cindy and Lupe are seated at the little table before the stage with a quartet of Boston cream pies, each of them the size of my palms, each of them glazed with a thick layer of chocolate: the former has her hair brushed over the side of her shoulder and embedded with tiny specks of silver glitter throughout, and is wearing a little low cut black dress lined with lace; the latter has her hair tousled all around her head, is sporting those hoop earrings, and a little black leather jacket. Cindy adjusts the neckline of her dress right as I walk up to them.

“There he is!” she greets me, and gestures to the chair in between them. “Have a seat.”

I round the table to the chair and nestle down in between them. Cindy pushes one of the pies in front of me and Lupe leans over my shoulder. I turn my head to look at her little chin resting upon the point of my shoulder and her dark eyes staring back at me.

“Hello, lovely,” I greet her in a low voice, feeling the butterflies flutter up inside my stomach.

“Sexy boy,” she whispers to me. Cindy picks up a fork and sticks it into the side of the pie, and holds the bite right before my mouth.

“Eat up, Mr. Stallion,” she commands to me and I open my lips for the bite. Light and fluffy with the chocolate and the crème. Perfect. I swallow and she gives me another bite. Lupe, meanwhile, runs her fingers over my chest.

“Ladies, please,” I insist, putting my hands up as if to resist them.

“Oh, come on, baby boy,” Lupe says to me in a breathy voice, stroking my chest.

“Yeah, you know you want some of this,” Cindy adds, gesturing to the pie in front of me. “A couple of girls who'll take off their clothes for you and some decadent cake to go with it.”

“Not really what I was expecting for breakfast, but I will take it, though.” I open my mouth for another bite of Boston crème pie which is then followed by Lupe laying her hand on the right side of my face for a kiss on the left. Cindy then puts down the fork to do the same for the right side. I've got a mouthful of cake and two girls kissing me at the same time. Ha!

“Please—” I beg in between their kisses.

“Admit it, there's no way you can resist this,” Cindy whispers in my ear.

“The only thing that would make this whole thing better is if Gwendolyn was here dancing for us,” I confess.

“My darling sister has a little touch of the flu, I'm afraid,” she admits, bringing her lips closer to the underside of my jaw. “But I've got you covered, big boy—”

She kisses my neck and that's when I feel my jeans tightening. I'm growing in between the legs at the touch of every kiss from both Cindy and Lupe. I shift my weight to get comfortable again but he's only enlarging. Lupe touches my chest with a caress as light as a feather.

But there's a part of me resisting this. There's that cake right in front of me. I lunge forward to the fork for another bite for myself, but Lupe grips onto my wrist.

“I want—” I plead, groping at the plate of Boston cream pie. “I want—I want—!”

Lars emerges from behind the stairs with a smarmy grin on his face.

“Ooh, free cake!” he exclaims, oblivious to the fact I'm being groped at myself.

“Help me,” I beg of him.

“Oh, come off it, man—look at you! You fucking—STUD!”

“He wants the cake, though, Cindy,” Lupe tells her.

“Definitely. I don't blame him, either—it's quite delicious.”

“Come back any time, though, baby—” Lupe whispers into my ear before kissing my neck again. Cindy licks her lips at me before they both stand up. Lars takes Lupe's seat next to me once they step away; I sink down in the chair with the fork in my hand.

“God damn,” I mutter to myself.

“I'll say,” he adds, taking a bite out of his little cake. “They were all over you.”

“I like the way Lupe was touching me,” I confess, inserting the tines of my fork into the cake for another bite, “—you know, down my chest and all along on my neck. She really knows how to please, that one.”

“She's the youngest, too.”

“Right. It's like it's natural for her. And I'm not the kind of guy who'll have at it with just anyone, either.” I think about my encounter with Dominique in her and Matt's house. She isn't just anyone, and neither are Lupe or Gwendolyn for that matter.

“So how do you want to get back to your place?” he asks me. “I don't feel like opening yet another wormhole, especially after Molly overheard us last night.”

“And it also just seems like overkill, too, y'know? 'Cause I live nearby.”

“Right!”

I take the bite of cake and then swallow it down.

“There is the bus stop up by the country club over here, though,” I point out.

“Really?”

“Yeah. I took it over here on the night before my birthday and that was legitimately how I found Maya. I just happened to be there.”

Lars gapes at me with the tines of the fork pressed to his bottom lip. “Shit, man. Why didn't you add that to your story before?”

“Didn't even think about it 'til just now.”

“Fock man, that explains everything. What time does the next one come?”

“What time is it?”

He glances at his wrist again.

“A quarter to ten.”

“Shit, we gotta go.”

“Oh, snap—I wonder if we can take these with us.”

“I'm sure we can.”

We pick up our cakes and hurry back down the stairs to the first floor. Mrs. Hamilton, Morgan, Cindy, and Lupe are in the next room talking about something as we're headed out the front door. I'm eating the cake with my fingers as we're walking at a rather fast clip down the sidewalk towards the bus stop. The clouds are funneling in from the lake and the winds are picking up: as long as it doesn't snow again, we'll make the bus on time. I lead Lars to the corner and to the left of us, across from the actual bus stop itself, stands the storm drain, now filled with a low snow pile. I stuff the remainder of the cake into my mouth and point at the drain.

“This is where I found her,” I tell him with my mouth full.

“Holy shit,” he breathes out, taking another bite of cake. I guide him across the street to the stop, and within a couple of minutes, the bus lumbers up to the curb to take us back to my neighborhood. Upon climbing aboard and taking a seat next to the window on the left side, I peer over my shoulder to look at Black Orchid again, and the Denny's sign, and beyond that stood the stadium lights lining the hockey rink. I guess I'm just an idiot but it's clear to me now in broad daylight.

It takes us twenty minutes to return back to the stop a few blocks from the complex, and once we're off, I guide Lars away from the bus stop and hold up a finger at him.

“I have to take care of one other thing, though,” I explain to him.

Glancing both ways, I lead him across the street, exactly back the way I first came to Black Orchid, back to my place. But we don't return to my place: I keep walking up the block, up towards the House of Grey. Snow blankets their roof and I see the lamp in the front window switched on. Good, they're home. Lars is right behind me as we stride up to the front door. Before I can knock, it swings open and Billy pokes his head out. There's a look of concern upon his face.

“Hey,” I greet him.

“We're glad you got here,” he says to me.

“Why's that? What's up?”

“It's Brick.”

I think it might be the wind, but a cold chill runs up my spine just now. I glimpse back at Lars, whose eyes are wide with concern.

Billy lets us inside. The house is warm, and Barney and Spence are seated at the table, looking as though they've been waiting for me. I turn my head to the living room and the couch where they had laid him down. He looks normal, like the Brick I've known for years, but there's something off about him.

His eyes look as though they're made of clay.

He's got feathers, feathers like the ones I put on my mask for Halloween and the ones I have in the old headdress, decorating his face, the crown of his head, and all down his shoulders and his chest. But I'm coming closer to find the feathers don't even look real. The stems look as though they're made of wires, like the tiny white wires I saw up in Seattle holding the electronics together, while the plumes are made of this weird glossy blue stuff: they're jutting out of his skin like they're part of his body. Lars gasps right behind me.

That Boston cream pie isn't settling with me now.

“What the—What the honest to God fuck,” is all I can stammer out.

“He's still alive by the way,” Spence assures us. “Like he's breathing and he makes these weird little whimpering noises every so often, but he hasn't moved.”

“We turned the lights out a little bit ago and they glow in the dark,” Barney adds.

“When did—this happen?” Lars stammers.

“Like right after you left,” Barney replies. “They just sprouted out of nowhere as Bill was making us breakfast.”

“Did you take him to the hospital here in town?” I ask them.

“Yeah,” Billy assures me. “They're baffled. They don't know what it is.”

I return to Brick and those feathers in his skin, which is now as pale white as a ghost. He has that exact same look on his face that Maya had just before she transformed into that dragon monster thing. He looks like Maya when I found her, worse than her in fact.

“We don’t know what’s wrong with him, Joey,” Spence confesses in a soft voice. I hear Lars step away from me and into the kitchen to join them. But I'm still standing there, staring at his face and those itchy looking feathers growing out of him. I hope he doesn't turn into a monster or worse. I'll save you, buddy. You’re my best friend. You and I go back years, to when we played hockey together in the back yard. I can’t lose you.

And I’ll save Maya, too. I'll have to save her first if I must.

I’ll figure this one out, even if it kills me.

****************************

And that’s a wrap! Hang tight for book two!

[nowitsdarkfic]

chapter ten (the song that closed denmark)

January 10, 1989. Portland, Oregon.

I'm still here after all. I'm still here and yet Lupe is gone. I was so distracted, so sidetracked by all that’s been happening that I failed to see what went down in the background. Even though it happened without my knowledge, I still feel like I could’ve done something. I could’ve made my way to Black Orchid to check on the girls: there’s not only a wormhole connecting there with my place, but I could’ve stopped there while we were driving home! I was so close, and yet so far. I failed to protect the girls and two of them ended up dying.

I'm just laying here on Lars' silly putty couch, thinking of everything that happened, including my falling into the lake. I'm looking up at the dim lit ceiling over me and the only trivial thought I have is what's the time.

Surely, this is a warning from Maya and her pushing me was a mere part of it. She's warning me not to come close. But why? What is her family hiding, or rather trying to hide? More importantly, why are they hiding from me and Lars? And what even is with the taking of my best friend and my former band down with it all?

Or maybe she doing this to trick me. She does have a history with that.

I can only think of who she and her foster father might take next. My parents, probably? I shudder at that thought.

I'm thinking of Candace, and what she might be thinking right about now. I wonder what she might be doing at the moment. I wonder if she even knows what happened here and back in New York. I wonder how she'd feel about it, like would she be surprised if either of us told her or if she's in cahoots with Maya wanting to hide all the time, too.

Lars returns to the room right then, wrapped in his heavy coat once again and with a pair of heavy red suede gloves on; but he continues on into the kitchen for something, with his long brown hair drifting behind him like a smooth curtain. He had brushed his hair.

I owe him my life. He saved me. He risked his life to save mine, kind of like how I risked my life to save Maya. And like Maya, I'm more or less his problem now. At least until I'm nursed back to my normal amount of strength.

I lift my arm out from underneath the blankets for my skin to breathe. I look down at my skin, which is brown on my forearm but slightly pale upwards over my elbow and my upper arm. My fingers are still slender and narrow, but the veins in my hand are a lot more prominent now after experiencing what I went through the past three days. They had taken off my clothes, probably after the three of them got me into the car and drove me off to the hospital.

I lift up the blankets a bit, and I take a glance down at my bare chest. There are those reddish marks on my skin from where the person put the paddles on me. Maybe that’s when I opened my eyes at that one point. Or maybe that was after Lars had dragged me out of the water. Who knows and I don’t think I’ll ever know.

I was actually dead on arrival. I really had died and resurrected.

Lars ducks down for something in the pantry.

I flash back on the first time I was here with that copy of After the Watershed found here in Portland. She led me on. She led both me and Lars on, and I fell for it falling into Lake Ontario. Granted, I took Candace's word for it in that Maya likes to create diversions, but I never thought it'd play out like this.

He rises up before the pantry and pushes some of his hair back from his shoulder onto his back. He then strides over to me, flexing the fingers of his gloves all the while.

“Joey—I hate to do this to you, but,” he starts once he approaches me, “I need to run into town real quick for a few things. Given I live so close, I'm just gonna walk. It’ll only be about twenty minutes, maybe.”

“No, God, please don't!” I beg him. I try to sit up but I can't because of the dead weight of blankets over my body. I'm weak from the lack of nutrients in my body.

“Listen, I know. You almost died. Shit, you died! So it's understandable that you're kind of paranoid right now. But—I need to run a quick errand, though. If you're hungry—and I'm sure you are, you've been comatose, therefore you haven't eaten in three days—scratch that, four days—I have plenty of fruit and some bagels in the kitchen. Go on and help yourself and take care of yourself. Walk around. Get the strength back in your legs and your body.”

I grip onto his arm. Much to my surprise, I still have a little nugget of strength in my hand and in my forearm.

“Please—” I beg him. “Please don't leave me.”

“I'm just going out for a bit,” he explains with a soft look on his face. “I won't be long—I just need to pick up a few things for dinner, alright?”

I gaze up at him: the side of his head is illuminated by the gray light filtering in from the window behind me.

“Since they took your clothes given they were drenched, soaking wet, there are my clothes in the closet that you can borrow until we get you back to Oswego. My pants might be a little baggy on you, though… Oh, but there's also that checkerboard shirt that Marcia had made for you. You were wearing it when you fell in the lake but it was only a little bit damp, so it's on the dryer right now. I'll be back, Joey. I promise.”

And without another word, he steps away and heads out the door, leaving me alone in the house. I lay my arm back down on top of the blankets. I guess it’s just me again.

[nowitsdarkfic]

chapter seventeen - part two (a big dumb wormhole)

I fall onto my side somewhere. Did it work? I don't know. I can't say.

I reach up to rub my eyes and I find I'm laying on a park bench. I lift my head to better observe everything. I'm surrounded by lush shrubs; to my right is a stretch of sidewalk and a warm lit street beyond that. I peer up to the sky over me: thick clouds, much like the blanket of them spanning over the skyline of Seattle. Indeed, I peer before me to the street venturing towards something that looks like the Space Needle. I'm back in Seattle! Albeit a different part.

I feel the smooth surface of the arrowhead in my hand; using the amber light from the street, I cradle it in the palm of my hand to better observe it. The rounded edges, the smoothed surface... who would have known such a small slice of stone could carry with it such power to do a remarkable thing for Lars.

I climb off of the bench and place my feet flat on the ground next to me. A car silently rolls past me. Another hydrogen powered thing. I peer up to the sides of the street to find the lights are floating in mid air in total silence. I examine more closely to find they're rotating around, albeit at a slow pace.

I zip up my jacket and tuck my hands into my pockets. I have my fingers wrapped around the arrowhead to assure it doesn't fall out as I'm walking. When I find the six of them, I'll make sure to put it around my neck so I have it on me the next time I see Lars.

I shiver even with my coat on: it was hot earlier today and now it feels as though it's about to rain. Maybe even snow. It's not the lake effect snow but I do know one thing about Seattle is that it can snow up here. I bow my head against the cold wind blowing in from my right as I walk down to this little neighborhood of Seattle, this neighborhood that calls itself Ballard.

I'm walking in through the darkness, and I'm reminded of the other night when I found Maya. So much has happened in these past few days that it feels like a thousand years. I just wish that after wherever we're having dinner together and bringing up the possibility of my bunking with someone for the night, that I can relax and recollect my thoughts for a bit. A lot has happened and I've hardly had the time to process any of it.

As I'm closing in on the outskirts of Ballard and ultimately Seattle itself, I catch a glimpse of some smooth neon lights on the buildings closer to the heart of town, all of them bright shades of bluish white and bright orange. With the glow of the neon and the greenish yellow light from the floating streetlights on either side of me, I notice the sidewalk is weirdly clean. Too clean in fact, like someone had come through and scrubbed down through the cracks of the pavement. I can only think about New York City and if there's any stretch of sidewalk this pristine. Everything smells of new car.

In fact, I stop at the first crosswalk to let a round little black thing skirt along the storm drain before me like I would for passerby. It's lined with dim dark blue lights and I hear a soft scrubbing sound underneath it. It's a street cleaner.

I lift my head to behold the sight of the bar on the corner before me. The place has small round windows about the size of my head and a door covered in dark blue circuit board. The cold bricks on the outside are lined with those same floating lights like on the street, but they're soft blue instead of that amber color. Across the street is a tattoo parlor lit up by the same neon lights. There's a cafe next door with dim smoky windows, the bases of which are lit up by even more neon.

I'm a bum hick walking through a world that's half of a century ahead of everyone else.

“Joey!” I hear a woman's voice calling me. I reach the corner and peer around the block. I catch a glimpse of a series of lights strung along the awning of the tiny club next door: all of them are strung together by clean white wires. The wires then connect up to a flat black board of what looks like metal.

“Joey!” she calls me again. I turn my head to the other side of the street to find Nancy and Chris holding hands, and Dominique and Matt huddled together. I peer down the street to make sure no other cars are coming, and then I cross the black pavement to meet up with them. Out of the corner of my eye, another street cleaner scurries up behind me, wiping my tracks clean off of the pavement.

I step onto the sidewalk and meet up with them: an updraft of breeze blows my hair back from my shoulders with every step.

“Where's your partner in crime?” Matt asks me as part of his greeting.

“He couldn't make it—like he had stuff to do back at home,” I answer; it's sort of the truth, given he did nudge me off away from the house. But I don't think they can handle something like what I witnessed back there. I notice Kim and Hiro aren't with them.

“Where are your partners in crime?” I retort back to them.

“They're in here,” Chris gestures to the cafe behind them, the one with the smoked windows and the bright lights. “Waiting for us.”

“Alright, awesome!”

I follow them into the cafe right as the wind picks up again, and I can sense the rain upon us. The cafe has a black and white square checkerboard floor, much like some of the patterns back at Marcia and Sonia's upholstery shop, and heavy black metal tables with spindly bar stools surrounding them. The whole room is lit with cool blue and bright orange neon lights suspended from the ceiling in glass bulbs. I spot Kim and Hiro seated at the booth against the wall, and the four of them lead me towards them.

Nancy and Chris slide into the smooth black leather seat next to them; followed by Matt and Dominique, which leaves me to take the seat next to her and across from Hiro. On the side of the table is a smooth sheet of glass the length of my hand stood up by a bundle of white wires running underneath the surface of the table. Hiro presses on the screen with his fingertips and asks us what we all want.

“Wow,” I remark once our orders are taken.

“So advanced we don't even need a waiter,” says Kim as a tube slides down from the ceiling and lands onto the surface of the table. The bottom of it flattens out and then fills up part of the way with water. Part of it tapers off before receding back, thus leaving a clean glass of water in its wake. He takes a sip from the glass.

“Ballard's one of the few neighborhoods around here that's a little slow to the change in technology,” Dominique explains, “all the neon lights and cleanliness is trying to oust all the rusty machines and the rust of the current era. The one big issue is it's just been so quick, all of it having sprung up in a couple of years, beginning in the heart of the city and then fanning out into the surrounding areas. I don't know if you could see them because it's a little too dark outside right now, but there's a lush garden on every rooftop here.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. It keeps the rooftops cool during the summer time and it's kept further away from the chrome and the circuitry to prevent rusting and contamination, which I find to be overkill because it's all water resistant with the rains up here and everything.”

“Downtown Seattle is far more advanced with it,” Chris joins in.

“But why is everything clustered here, though?” I ask her.

“Well, there's the danger of all of this advancement in technology getting out of control. When something novel comes around, it's terrifying at first but then you see the good side of it. The problem with that is it makes you blind to any downsides. Seattle's whole mantra is to keep it all under wraps because we're afraid of it all seeping out into the rest of the country. All of this is experimental so we don't know if any of it will be any good for a larger scale like the continental United States.”

She picks up her glass of water, which formed from the same way, a tube extended out of the ceiling.

“And like what Chris said, downtown is in the twenty second century already. The drones and the bionics are coalesced in the heart of downtown.”

“Are there humans?” I ask her.

“Yeah, but—they're not what you expect, though. The advancers of all of this have all died because cybernetics can only keep a human alive for so long.”

“Cyber—Cybernetics,” I repeat. “I'm sorry, I'm kind of a country boy. This is all painfully new to me.”

“Yeah, and we kind of figured that, too.” She chuckles at me. “Seattle is where it is because there were these people who... gave their lives to the whole thing to advance the city far into the future, farther than anywhere else. They experimented on themselves with what they had before introducing it all on us for our benefit. They were all very old, having been around since the previous century, and they finally broke through enough to give it life. I guess it was too much for their bodies to bear it.”

“Their heirs are some of the laziest fucks, though,” Chris grumbles, and Nancy nudges him. “Well, they are.”

“Unfortunately the predecessors of it all have let the power of the city go right to their heads,” Dominique presses on, nonplussed. “Since everything is working fine downtown and in other parts of town, they've decided to let it all do as it pleases.”

“That's why it's so slow here,” I follow along.

“Right! You know we have these plasma glasses holding liquid water and the street cleaners outside, but Ballard still has cars that run on gasoline. A couple of the bars across the street still use regular kegs of beer and bottles of liquor. They still have bar backs, too.”

“The islands—across the Sound from here,” Nancy pipes up, “are really far behind on all the advancement, like it's still the middle of the century over there. It's such that there's no light over there at night.”

“It's so weird to see a drone over there sometimes,” Hiro notes, “never mind a hydrogen car, but an actual drone.”

“Speaking of which, this poor boy has no place to sleep tonight,” Dominique points out, setting a hand on my shoulder.

“Oh, yeah, that's right!” Kim recalls. “Would it bother you at all if you spent the night with me?”

“Kim's got a really nice comfy couch back at his place,” Matt tells me, “Chris and I have slept on it many times in the past few years.”

“Nan and I'd offer our place,” Chris himself explains, “but—” He turns to Nancy.

“It's kind of a mess,” she admits with a shrug. “I just haven't been home and Chris gets lazy at times.”

I laugh at that. “I hear ya, man.”

“Messy boys, always needing our help,” Dominique teases me with a grin. Once our food arrives on a drone from the other side of the room, I figure that Dominique a lot, but she's with Matt so I have to keep it cool. But she's been to New York and she knows my name. I still have to figure out Nancy a bit more, but she's a good source of comfort for me at the moment. She did put her arm around me when we were waiting for the guys after all.

As I'm eating my linguine, I tuck one hand into my pocket and that's when I feel the arrowhead in there. I can only wonder about all of this heavy machinery around us and what she had said about all of the advancement here in Seattle. I also remember what Lars said about wormholes. My hope is he's wrong and that big dumb wormhole closes up before anyone here sees it near that bench.