(A chapter of Akayama DanJay.)

---

Dan and Jay slept on the fold-out while Bob retired to his bedroom, still wearing his tinfoil fedora as he tucked himself in. Jay said nothing of his visions outside, unsure whether Faith had been real or not. In the morning, Bob woke them for a quick breakfast. “Dan,” Jay asked over cereal, “have you thought about your thesis?”

“My what?”

“Your thesis. We came to Wyoming to research the Sheridanian Virgils for your PhD in Religious-Studies.”

“Oh, right.” Dan pushed flakes across milk with his spoon. “Maybe the college will inspire me.”

After breakfast they boarded Bob’s truck. Jay dialed his phone. “I’ll let Ms. Lyn know we’re coming.”

“Who?” asked Bob. Dan sat in the back.

“Ms. Lyn, the college’s event-coordinator. I called her at the bar to arrange our meeting.” Jay sat shotgun. Bob revved the engine and pulled out. “Hello, Ms. Lyn? Sure, I’ll hold.” Jay dated a fresh page in his notepad. Bob steered toward the mountains on roads of slippery ice. “Ms. Lyn? It’s Jay Diaz-Jackson.” He nodded. “Just wanted to let you know I’d arrive soon.” Jay nodded again but knotted his brow. He lowered his phone then returned it to his ear. “Could you repeat that?” He humphed. “Thanks. I’ll see you soon.”

“What’d she say?” asked Dan.

Jay shook his head as he hung up. “She said they’ve arrived ahead of us.”

“Who has?” asked Dan.

“She assumed I knew.”

Bob drove the winding mountain roads so quickly Dan clutched his seat-belt and chewed his gloves in terror at every icy hairpin turn. Jay watched clouds peek over peaks like boiling cream. “Almost there!” Bob pointed to buildings dotting the mountainside. “See that lecture-hall? That’s where Virgil Blue said all the nothing!”

Bob parked with such enthusiasm Dan’s body rocked forward. As the three stepped from the truck, a woman in high-heels approached, waving. “Mr. Jackson?” she called out.

“Diaz-Jackson, but please, call me Jay.” Jay shook her hand. “You’re Ms. Lyn?”

“Yep. Follow me.”

Ms. Lyn led Dan, Jay, and Bob onto campus. “Hey, wait,” said Bob, “this ain’t the way to the lecture-hall!”

“I couldn’t reserve the lecture-hall,” said Ms. Lyn. “I booked you a private room usually reserved for one-on-one counseling.”

Dan finally recovered from the drive. “But we’re supposed to see the lectern Virgil Blue sat on.”

“I’m sorry?” asked Ms. Lyn.

Jay explained while Ms. Lyn ushered them into an administration-building. “I think there’s been a misunderstanding. I wanted to meet you, Ms. Lyn. I wanted to ask about the Virgils from Sheridan.”

“Oh.” Ms. Lyn put her hands on her hips. “But they said they wanted to meet you.”

“The Virgils want to meet me?“

“They called two days ago, just minutes before you did,” said Ms. Lyn. “They said you’d call me to schedule your meeting.”

They rounded a corner into a hall of lockers. Virgil Jango Skyy sat in a school-chair attached to a tiny desk. Jay gasped and hustled to him. “Jango!” he said. “Virgil Skyy!”

Jango opened his good eye and smiled at Dan, Jay, Bob, and Lyn. He stood from the tiny desk, took his cane, and bowed his head. “Oran dora.”

“Hey, that’s one of the guys!” Bob gestured for Dan to follow. “You gotta get a selfie with this dude for your thesis!”

Jay struggled for words. “Why are you here?”

“You’re here, aren’t you?” said Jango. “There are no coincidences.”

Ms. Lyn folded her arms. “The Virgils arrived by bus half an hour ago.”

“Blue and I. Green is busy as always.” Jango brushed wrinkles from his robes. “Jay, I hope our abrupt arrival has not caught you off-guard.”

“It’s an honor to meet you again,” said Jay, “but why?“

Jango took air through his teeth. “In Sheridan there’s a story,” he began, after judging the audience worthy of hearing it, “of a sage who knew how the world would end. Men climbed to the sage’s cave to ask about the apocalypse, but the sage never answered. One day someone climbed to the cave and asked, ‘how will the world end?’ The sage, as usual, said nothing. They just sat facing the darkness. The climber repeated, ‘how will the world end?’ and again, the sage said nothing. The climber repeated again, ‘how will the world end?’

“And the sage said, ‘the eternities end when the Chain wraps the Wheel because no worms remain to salvage.’

“The climber was thrilled, but had to ask, ‘why answer me but no one else?’

“And the sage said, ‘because you asked three times.’ ” Jango beamed. Dan and Jay just looked at each other. Bob cocked his head like a dog. “Fifteen years ago,” said Jango, “Faith met me on the main island of Sheridan. Five years ago, Faith met me here at Sheridan Cliff-Side College. A week ago, Faith met me a third time.” From his sleeve, Jango produced the holiday-card which Faith had sent with Jay. He showed them the fox she’d drawn and signed inside. “I cannot ignore someone who meets me three times, even if the third time is only pictorially. There are no coincidences! I knew if I made the barest effort, I’d find the visitors I expected. So!” He clapped his hands. “Where is Faith Featherway?”

Dan, Jay, and Bob shared a glance. “Um.” Jay put a hand over his heart. “I’m afraid Faith died days ago. She was struck by lightning.”

Jango deflated. He looked down the hall as if Faith would appear around the corner. “Impossible.”

“I’m afraid so,” said Bob. Dan wiped his eyes. “Sorry.”

Jango covered his mouth. “But the Mountain arranged this meeting.”

“I arranged this meeting,” muttered Ms. Lyn.

“The Mountain and Ms. Lyn did their best,” offered Jay. “We’re Faith’s friends and family. You’re here to hear of her death directly from us in person.”

“I suppose.” Jango rapped his cane on the floor. “Thank you.”

“Geez,” said Bob, “I’d hate to send you home empty-handed. Can I buy you a bagel?”

“Wait,” Jay interjected. “You said Virgil Blue is here? Now?”

“Yes.” Jango pointed to a nearby door. “Waiting for Faith.”

“Can Dan and I interview them?”

Jango raised the eyebrow over his clear eye while squinting his cataract. “The Blue Virgil is rarely in a speaking mood.”

“Then we’ll just take pictures and notes.” Jay shook his camera. “You can supervise us if you’d like, so we don’t disrespect the honorable Virgil.”

Jango sighed. “Nah, go on in.” He walked beside Bob. “I’ll take you up on that bagel while we wait.”

“Me too,” said Dan. “This is a little too much for me right now.” Ms. Lyn led them away, leaving the door to Jay.

Jay licked his lips and knocked. Hearing no response, he opened the door and froze when he saw Virgil Blue’s silver mask staring back. The Virgil, in their hooded navy robes, sat cross-legged on top of a desk. The only chair available was their vacant wheelchair; Jay sat there thoughtlessly, weakly transfixed staring at the mask, then realized he should have asked permission. He wanted to count his own fingers, but found himself petrified. His thoughts wandered the embossed, buggy eyes. Seeing them, and being seen by them, was a profound experience. It brought Jay right back to a childhood dream—a dream he somehow knew he would see again.

Jay lacked the strength to take a proper photo. Without looking down, he willed himself to put his notepad on his thigh and prepare his pen. His wrist locked in writing-position. Unable to break eye-contact with the mask, he hoped his blind scribbles were legible later.

‘I’ve lucked into an interview with Virgil Blue,’ Jay wrote. ‘Their stare transfixes me. I sense messages from past millennia hidden behind the mask. Even if this teacher of teachers says nothing, I’m honored to share space with them.’

Jay couldn’t turn the notepad to continue writing. Instead he watched the mask. He could’ve watched the mask for hours. He stared at his two reflections in the silver eyes. The perception of depth reminded him how to focus his vision and operate his facial muscles, allowing his gaze to stray away. The Virgil’s navy robes were thicker than rugs. The Virgil’s sleeves were tucked into each other to hide their hands. The Virgil’s knees were so knobbly, the robes looked like a crumbling cathedral.

Jay found strength to turn his notepad over and continue writing. ‘Virgil Blue’s commanding aura cannot be overstated. I wish I could coax even one word from behind the mask.’

He gathered courage to speak. “Hello, Virgil Blue. My name is Jay. We’ve met before, in your monastery on the Islands of Sheridan. May I ask a few questions?” Virgil Blue didn’t respond. Jay recalled Jango’s lesson about asking three times. “May I ask a few questions?” Virgil Blue didn’t respond. “May I ask a few questions?” Virgil Blue didn’t respond. Maybe he was just supposed to ask? “On your islands, I got the impression that Sheridanians know centipedes are sometimes smuggled away. Smugglers just have to play by the rules to show they can handle the responsibility. Is that right? Any comments?” Virgil Blue didn’t respond.

Jay sighed and continued writing. ‘I guess I’ll have to leave without a quote.’ Jay wiggled his toes. He couldn’t yet stand under the Virgil’s indomitable presence. On a whim, he wrote an empty quote to convey the wordless message: “”.

“Drop the pen.”

Jay dropped the pen.

“Close it.”

Jay closed the notepad.

“Chase truth in your own navel, not mine.”

“I don’t want the truth,” said Jay. “All I want is—“

“Shut up.”

Jay shut up.

“Stop listening, too.”

Jay’s attention blurred.

“My body was born centuries ago, but my story is older. I heard it from the previous Virgil Blue, who heard it from the previous Virgil Blue, who heard it from the previous Virgil Blue, and so on. My story concerns the first man, Nemo, whom the Biggest Bird declared the first Virgil Blue. The original sun made Nemo immortal for its own nefarious purposes, but Nemo rebelled to guide Sheridan for all time. However, over millennia, despite perfect health, his mind deteriorated daily. Nemo’s last students struggled with his peculiar discipline. Nemo reacted violently when his students answered questions incorrectly—or correctly. He demanded students sit nude with him outdoors on winter nights so frozen fog would frost them.

“When students complained of frostbite, Nemo ate the afflicted fingers and toes. He acquired a taste for flesh and filed his teeth sharp like a shark’s. His final lesson was a display of depravity: Nemo chased his congregation through the snow ranting and raving, pouncing on his slowest students and biting off their fingers at the knuckle. It was decided Nemo should retire, and with startling lucidity, Nemo agreed. To pass the title of Virgil Blue, Nemo invented a ceremony in which a bird’s egg—fertilized with sacred seed inside—was smashed on the appointee’s forehead. Smashing a fertilized egg is against the spirit of Sheridanian law, so performing the ceremony is immediately followed by banishment or execution. Nemo passed the title to his only student who still had all ten fingers and toes, then banished himself, climbing above the clouds never to return. The new Virgil Blue brought Sheridan back to non-cannibalistic orthodoxy. They anointed a dozen subordinate Virgils to stabilize the islands—without smashing any eggs, of course.”

The room was quiet for a while.

“Two centuries hence, the new Virgil Blue was still in perfect health, but Nemo appeared in their dreams and told them to wear this silver mask, because their life would soon end. In their following dreams, Nemo ate the Blue Virgil’s fingers and toes. When no phalanges remained, Nemo chewed other extremities, until after excruciating years, the Virgil’s dream-body was totally devoured. Virgil Blue knew their time had come, so they retired the mask and passed the title by smashing a fertilized egg, following Nemo to banishment above the clouds, never to return. Since then, every Virgil Blue has put on the mask when Nemo began cannibalizing them in the dream-theater, and passed the title when he was finished. Every former Blue climbs to the cloudy peak.

“Some ne’er-do-wells dare trespass on that sacred peak, and such trespassers never return. Beyond that, everything these trespassers own is ruined. Their property burns. Their children die. Their spouses throw themselves in the sea. This is why the peak fits as final resting-place for the Blue Virgils: they call nothing their own. When they wear the silver mask, they surrender wholly. As Nemo breaks my bones in his teeth each night, I understand the asceticism he imposes. Nothing is mine, not physically, mentally, nor spiritually. When Nemo finishes gnawing my skullcap, I’ll lose nothing in climbing above the clouds.”

The room was quiet for a while.

“The only Virgils I anointed, Skyy and Green, I will never promote to Blue. I am the last one. This eternity ends with me. I am Nemo’s last student and his last meal.”

Jay didn’t move or speak for several minutes. He bowed his head, picked up his notepad and pen, and left without a word.

—

Ms. Lyn led Jay to the campus cafe where Virgil Jango Skyy sat with Dan and Bob at a booth. Jay shook Ms. Lyn’s hand. “Thank you again, Ms. Lyn. I actually had a question for you, though, about the event-brochure from the day the monks lectured here about five years ago. My friend Faith said there was a bird-photo; who supplied it? Photos of Sheridanian big-birds are rather taboo.”

“Oh.” Ms. Lyn blushed and smacked her forehead. “That was me, but they weren’t real birds! Twenty years ago I was on a flight from Indonesia to Peru which refueled in Sheridan, and I took a picture of some plushies in a runway gift-shop. Virgil Jango Skyy complained to me about the photo after the lecture, and we had a laugh.” Nevertheless embarrassed, Ms. Lyn left him in the cafe. Jay passed chatting students on his way to the booth. Dan helped Jango butter the halves of a bagel to share while Bob sipped a beer.

“Jay!” Jango raised his cane. “Is it time to collect Virgil Blue?”

“They’re all yours.”

“I’ll let them sit for a while longer. No one would dare disturb their eternal meditation.” Jango nibbled his bagel-half. Dan sipped milk and removed his black gloves to swipe through photos on his phone’s touchscreen. His fingertips looked chewed-upon. “Come, Jay. Dan is showing me his favorite manga.”

“I need some water,” said Jay. “Bob, can I buy you something to eat?”

“I lose my appetite at altitude,” said Bob. “Buy me another beer.”

Jay found a free cup for water and brought Bob his beer. “Is this really your second drink this morning?” He thought of all the icy hairpin-turns along the mountain roads. “I’ll drive us home, if that’s alright with you.” He sat across from Jango.

Dan showed Jango his phone and the old monk took it to scroll on his own. “Okay, you’re looking through the covers of each volume,” said Dan. “That’s Princess Lucia, daughter of the Ruler of Earth. Her family keeps her landlocked to protect her from the Hurricane, the cosmic horror which ate the universe, but she dreams of joining robot-pilots on the moon—the robots and the pilots are both called Zephyrs, so sometimes it gets confusing. One day she escapes and learns to pilot this robot, the Zephyr’s heart. LuLu’s was a cult-classic while it lasted.” Dan took his phone back.

“Where are you staying?” Bob asked Jango. “Bring Blue to my house. Dan, Jay, I’ll pump up an air-mattress for you while the Virgils take the fold-out.”

Jango finished his bagel-half while dismissing the notion with the wave of his other hand. “Virgil Blue and I booked a motel-room.” He stowed his hands back up his sleeves. “We planned to stay just one night, to extend our invitation to Faith.”

“An invitation?” Bob drank his beer. “To what?”

“To the monastery, of course.” Jango released a long sigh. “No one has ever visited me three times in such a fashion as Faith. I thought she was destined for the Islands of Sheridan the same way I was. Virgil Blue and I even prepared her initiation! If she were here to accept it, she could skip studying under Virgil Green and step right into the monastery.”

Dan bit his fingertips, scrolling through LuLu’s on his phone. Jay nodded and swallowed. “Is the initiation still, uh, ready to go?”

“If Faith is dead, then for whom?” asked Jango. Then his eyes opened so wide Jay saw the whole black and white of his iris and cataract. “Are you requesting—“

“No, no,” denied Jay. “I’d never invite myself into your monastery. But Dan studies religions! We hoped to research the islands for his thesis. Could you show us the materials and procedures of a Sheridanian initiation?”

At his name, Dan looked from his phone. Jango appraised his expression. “I suppose,” said Jango, “but before I invite you to our motel, I must warn you, the materials of a Sheridanian initiation ceremony are… controversial.”

“Centipede-powder?” asked Jay.

Jango shook his head. “The centipedes must be… consumed whole.”

Dan and Jay understood the implication. When Bob caught on, he bolted upright and held his fedora to his head. “You smuggled whole centipedes here with you?” Jango put a stern finger over his lips. Bob grinned giddily at Dan and Jay. “You guys have cool friends!”

“Please understand,” said Jango, “centipede-visions are integral to the monastery’s understanding of our duty as worm-vessels. In fact, if you plan to write about the islands, I insist one of you consume a whole centipede—under Virgil Blue’s supervision, of course.”

“Really?” asked Jay.

“We have the materials prepared for Faith.” said Jango. “Someone might as well eat a centipede. If you like what the centipede shows you, I could take you into the monastery—but I won’t pressure you. The life of a monk isn’t an easy one.”

Dan covered his face. “Jay, I don’t know.” He rest his fists on the table. His face was pale. “I can’t touch centipede.”

“You don’t have to. I’ll take it and describe my experience to you.”

“I can’t be in the same room as a centipede,” said Dan, “not since Beatrice died. I won’t go to Sheridan. Coming here was a mistake.”

Bob took air through his teeth. “You know, I’m in the same boat as Dan. I don’t wanna overdo anything.”

“Okay.” Jay extended a hand for Jango to shake. “I’ll take up your offer alone.”

Jango shook his hand. “What have you eaten in the last twenty-four hours?”

“A hamburger, cheese-puffs, and a bowl of cereal.”

“Don’t eat any more. You’ll likely vomit. I certainly did.”

—

That evening, Jay stepped out on Bob’s back-porch. Dark clouds crossed the sky. None looked like foxes.

He dialed his parents’ phone-number. His cell rang too many times. Jay knew he’d speak to an answering-machine. “You’ve reached the Diaz-Jacksons,” said his mother. “We can’t answer the phone because we’re on our second honeymoon! We’ll respond when we’re back from the Caribbean. Click!“

Jay drew breath. His jaw trembled. “Hi, Mom. Hi, Dad. It’s me. Jay.” He almost hung up. He could still change his mind and turn back. “I’m doing something kinda stupid. Kinda really stupid. You’ve specifically told me not to do this, but I’m doing it anyway. I need answers. I’m not sure how this will play out, but I might be spending the rest of my life on an island, or my life might even end tonight. Either way, if I’m reading the subtext right, I’ll be back to see you again in a sequel. So… I love you. Oh, and you’ve got some nice seashells coming in the mail. I love you.” He hung up. He blew fog on his hands. He stepped back into Bob’s house.

Dan sat on the fold-out, trying to untie his shoes. “Have you changed your mind about the initiation?” Dan struggled with his laces.

Jay shook his head. “Do you need help?”

“Please. We walked in grass on the way to the cafe. Now my shoes are dirty and I have to wash them, but I forgot my gloves on-campus, and I can’t touch grass-stains with my bare hands.” Dainty Dan let Jay untie his shoes. They were hardly dirty, just damp. “Jay, on the Islands of Sheridan, did you see too many centipedes?”

“Not too many at all.” Jay pulled the shoes off Dan’s feet. “Only near the peak of the main island, above even Virgil Blue’s monastery. You’d like it there, Dan. They’ve got a great library.”

“Then I’ve changed my mind,” said Dan. “I need to visit Sheridan, to prove I’ve moved on. Thanks for bringing me here, so I could realize.”

“I know you’ll love Sheridan, Dan.” Jay turned his head so Dan couldn’t see his tears. “Um. Here.” Like Dan’s father gave him his books, Jay gave Dan his notepad. He’d torn out any page about Faith as a fox. “These are my notes on the islands.”

“Oh. Thanks.” Dan flipped through the notepad. “I like your drawings of birds.”

Jay wiped his wet cheeks. “Maybe we’ll meet in Sheridan, huh? If I decide to become a monk?” Then he left and walked to the nearest motel. He knew the Virgils would be there, because there were no coincidences.

—

When Jay knocked, Virgil Jango Skyy brushed blinds aside and peeked out the window with his good eye. Seeing Jay, he unlocked and opened the door, then locked it again behind him. Jay removed his shoes and loosened his dark purple tie as his eyes adjusted to the dim room. Virgil Blue sat cross-legged on a king-sized bed. Their wheelchair sat in the corner. “Oran dora,” said Jay.

Virgil Skyy wordlessly limped to a rug rolled up against a wall. Jay wanted to help handle the heavy rug, but Skyy bade him to sit beside Blue on the bed. He knocked over the rug with his cane and swiftly unrolled it with his feet. The woven rug depicted the Islands of Sheridan from smallest to largest. On each island, a single man, repeated many times, climbed to the top and claimed the peak, until he finally disappeared above the clouds. The man was nude and black like coal. Floating above the islands, a bird in sky-blue robes oversaw the man’s journey. The sun was red and had a noticeable pimple, the Mountain.

“The first man, Nemo,” said Virgil Skyy, pointing with his cane. “The tapestry shows his journey from divine birth to ascendance beyond the rank of Blue.” He thumped his cane on the floor. “Students usually undertake this ritual after months or years of training with Virgil Green, then swimming to the main island and climbing it nude like the birds do. It’s their last step to becoming a proper monk. When a monk wants to be promoted to Virgil, they begin as Virgil Green, training students to make that same swim. You met Virgil Green, didn’t you?”

“I saw him on my tour.” Jay swallowed. “I understand he chased snakes from Sheridan.”

Virgil Skyy shrugged. “Close enough. The way I heard it, Nemo ate the snakes in defiance of the original sun. When he climbed above the clouds, the new Virgil Blue established Virgil Green as a subsidiary representation of Nemo’s being. Nemo was so much larger-than-life that to keep his flame alive he had to be divided and diluted.”

Jay let his gaze wander the rug. Unconsciously, his focus drifted to Virgil Blue’s silver mask. Jay had countless reflections in both of the mask’s compound eyes. “Virgil Skyy… Jango… On the islands, you said the dead are reborn.”

“Our worms cycle in the sand until they find the Mountain,” said Jango.

“You said no one remembers their past lives.” Jay pried his gaze from the mask. “Are you sure?“

“The sand on the original sun wears our worms smooth.” Jango pulled Jay to his feet. “We are effaced.”

“What if…” Jango guided Jay’s posture in sitting cross-legged on the rug. “What if someone slipped through the cracks?”

Jango sat on the bed beside Virgil Blue. “Virgil Blue once dreamed they were a bird eating grubs from tree-trunks. Who’s to say which thoughts aren’t memories of past lives?” Jango noticed Jay’s concerned expression. “But it doesn’t matter. Minds are just the whorls where the river meets the coast. Someday we will stop spinning, but what we were will spin again. Maybe we’ll spin the same direction as before, maybe oppositely. Maybe we’ll spin two directions at once. If you recall past lives, perhaps you spin clockwise on the surface while your depths present an opposing current. All currents are personal and temporary. The awesome stillness at the end of the eternities belongs to everyone forever.”

Jay put his hands in his lap, but kept them clenched. “Do you know Anihilato? The longest worm, the Master of Nihilism, the King of Dust?”

Jango tilted his head in suspicion. “I’ve heard some of those names, but they’re never spoken aloud except to Virgils. I never even mentioned them to Jun. Where did you hear them?”

“A little fox told me,” said Jay. Jango’s jaw dropped, but he grit his teeth in slow acceptance. Still his eyes were narrowed with skepticism. “Anihilato’s collecting worms for the Mountain, right? Worms which aren’t ready?” Jango nodded and Jay darkened. “What if it gets big enough to overpower the Biggest Bird?” He couldn’t bring himself to look at either Virgil. “What if the Heart of the Mountain’s cosmic plan has a stuck cog?”

“I can’t speak for the Mountain,” said Jango. “I’m only a Virgil. My goal is to guide, so your worms can find the Mountain in themselves.” Jay’s tense hands trembled. Jango licked his lips, considering Anihilato. “My brother Jun has long, greasy hair. Our father always wanted him to cut it short. One day, our shower wouldn’t drain. Our father reached into the drain and pulled out a thick, messy clump. Our father was angry, but he laughed, too—‘Look,’ he joked to my brother, ‘our hair-collector is working!’—as if the clog was the drain’s purpose all along. And it did have a purpose: convincing my brother to cut his hair that summer. Do you understand, Jay?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Then you’re getting close. Let’s try again: there once was a monster,” he said, “who couldn’t be killed in the day nor at night, inside nor outside, by a man nor a woman. Obviously the monster was slain by a hero beyond gender while passing through a doorway during a solar eclipse. The monster wore ignorance as armor. It protected itself with words like ‘day’ and ‘night’ and ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ and ‘man’ and ‘woman,’ but to those who know better, words are just words. The hero slew the monster with the blade of unpronounceable truth. Do you understand?”

Jay didn’t say yes or no. He didn’t even nod. He just relaxed the tension in his hands

“You’re ready.” Jango grabbed Virgil Blue’s silver mask. Jay gasped. Jango pulled the mask away. Underneath was a black tangle of centipedes. “I warned you.” Jango removed the navy robes from the centipede-bush’s dark thorns. The robe’s sleeves were empty. What Jay mistook for knees were loose folds of fabric. “Centipedes lose most of their potency soon after harvest. It’s not easy to smuggle a bush of them through airport-security, but no one bothers the living legend in a wheelchair, or wonders why they smell so funny to the dogs.” Jango reached into the robes where the femur would’ve been and pulled out a curved knife made of bird-bone. “Close proximity to Blue, especially in an enclosed area, will induce a contact-high. This gives the Virgil a paralyzing presence.”

Jay managed to speak. “How long?”

“Hm? Oh, Virgil Blue retired above the clouds decades ago.” Jango wrapped his right hand in navy fabric. “I’m watching in their stead until the end of the eternity. It should be any day now!” With navy fabric guarding his hand from thorns, Jango reached into the centipede-bush. He used the knife to pry up orange legs until he could pull a whole centipede from the tangle. The centipede curled into a spiral which Jango gave to Jay. “You’ve smoked centipede-powder, correct?”

“Yeah.”

“This will not be the same,” said Jango. “Someone who smokes centipedes sees their worms in the desert, squirming in the sand. You’ll have no such self-control. I will have no control. The centipede will take you straight to the Mountain and show you what you really need to see.” Jay nodded. “It’s a suppository.” Jay cringed and Jango burst out laughing. “Just kidding! Bahaha! Eat it.“

Without hesitation, Jay crunched the exoskeleton in his teeth. He tore off black chunks and swallowed them. Orange legs crawled down his throat. Dark liquid spilled from his lips. Jay wiped his chin and licked the liquid from his palm. He ate the last inches whole, retching and gasping until the centipede was gone. Jango said something, but Jay couldn’t hear it. He’d left the magic circle and was seeing through Nakayama’s compound emerald eyes.

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(A chapter of Akayama DanJay.)

---

The year is 2019.

“Geez. That’s really the last episode before LuLu’s hiatus?” Jay wiped his eyes. Seeing Lucille fight her own parents, even forgeries of them, made him emotional. “This show’s more depressing than I remembered. She bought time for the Zephyrs by reenacting her own trauma.”

“You’ve got it backward,” said Dan. “This is a moment of triumph for Lucille. She proves she’s not fighting for selfish personal reasons. She can discard the memory of her parents’ deaths and stand on her own, like a reverse Saturn Devouring His Son.”

Jay pondered that reply. Was Dan’s interpretation colored by his own feelings of guilt for his father’s suicide? “Is she discarding the memory, or cementing it?”

“If she’s cementing it, it’s empowering cement,” said Dan. “She’s Kali, destroying evil by dancing on humanity’s ego.” Jay nodded doubtfully. “What do you think, Bob? Was your first episode emotionally resonant?”

Bob blinked. “What?” Both his eyes were bloodshot.

“Is that cricket treating you alright, Bob?” Jay pat his shoulder. “You wanna finish your chicken-nuggets?”

Bob had forgotten his food. He grinned with new hunger and stuffed his apple-pie in his mouth. He spoke while he chewed. “That show looked cool.”

“It has campy charm,” agreed Jay.

Bob munched chicken-nuggets as he watched the credits. His eyes lingered on each still image. “I’m so bug-eyed—I can’t see that as anything but a drawing,” he said. “That’s not a giant robot, it’s a drawing of a giant robot. That’s not a space-laser, it’s a drawing of a space-laser. That’s not the moon, it’s—“

“When I get bug-eyed,” Dan interrupted, “people look like awkward monkeys. Our cheek-bones seem simian. We walk like upright apes. Our language is like primates alerting each other to hawks and snakes.”

“What do you see, Jay?” Bob ate cheese-puffs from Jay’s bag. “Are you having centipede-flashbacks, like Dan said?”

Jay rubbed his eyes at Bob and Dan. It was like seeing faces for the first time. “I need some air.”

“Try the back-porch,” said Bob. “The view’s beautiful!”

“Bob, can I connect my phone to your TV?” Dan pulled out his phone. “I downloaded all of LuLu’s ages ago.”

—

Jay stepped out on Bob’s back-porch, a concrete step looking over snowy grass. In the distance, a forest crawled up the Bighorn Mountains. Stars flocked around a full moon. He counted his fingers. “One, two, three, four, five,” he counted on his left hand. “Six, seven, eight, nine, ten,” he counted on his right. “I’m awake.” Still, his hands were flat and matte one moment, then shimmered with fingerprints the next. He accepted his altered state and tried to relax.

When he lowered his hands, he found a cloud on the horizon. It morphed faster than any ordinary cloud. He thought it looked like a white fox, and was shaken when the fox stepped over the forest onto the snowy grass with the misunderstanding of a Magritte. “JayJay! Are you hallucinating too?”

Jay rubbed his eyes and ears. The white fox remained. He sat on the step and covered his mouth. “Faith?”

“Yeah! I haven’t seen you in—” She couldn’t complete the thought, so she shook her head. “Ages, I guess!”

“You were struck by lightning.”

Faith’s smile faltered. “I was, huh? I never gave you and Dainty your cinnamon buns.”

“Did it hurt? Are you okay?”

“It didn’t. I’m fine, I think.” She sat on her haunches at Jay’s feet. “I don’t know what’s real anymore.”

“I hope I’m real,” said Jay.

“You and me both,” she sighed. “Wanna smoke?” Before Jay could refuse, Faith pawed behind her ear for a bug she’d tucked there. It was a cockroach.

Jay had seen roaches smoked before, raw like this in Eastern Asia or broken up and loaded into hookahs in the Middle East, but he’d never tried one himself. Roaches were thicker than crickets, but stubby. Their spindly legs were roots and their antennae were stalks of dry grass. They came wrapped in their own wings right out of the ground. “I guess I could smoke. Where’d you get that?”

“Mars, I think. Roaches are the only smokes I can dig up near the Mountain.” Faith’s little black nose exhaled broiling steam until the roach’s head lit. Then she bit its butt into her muzzle. She’d obviously practiced smoking as a fox.

“Faith, I don’t think you’re hallucinating, and I don’t think you’re on Mars.”

 She tongued the butt over each canine to make space to puff, then let Jay take the roach. “What do you mean, JayJay?”

“I think you’re dead.” Jay puffed. It was spicy and harsh. “No offense.”

“None taken. That makes sense, I guess.” Faith bonked her head on Jay’s knee. “I miss you guys.”

“We all miss you.” Jay gave her the roach. As a child, Jay scratched his cat Django just before the ears, and now he scratched Faith the same way. She smiled around the roach and closed her eyes. “Dan and your uncle Bob are inside, but it might be inappropriate to bring you in.”

“Hmpf,” puffed Faith. “I understand.”

“They just started watching the first episode of LuLu’s. We shouldn’t interrupt.”

“Ha. Yeah. That’s why.” Faith leaned her head into Jay’s hand to guide his scratching. “I’ll have to go back soon. Back to the Mountain.”

“Are you a Zephyr, whatever that means?”

“I wish.” She puffed again and let Jay take the roach. “I’m a Will-o-Wisp.”

“Is Beatrice there?”

Faith lowered her muzzle in melancholy. Jay hugged her and she slung a paw over his shoulder. “Let me give you the whole story.”

“Hold on.” Jay took his notepad and pen from his pockets. Through delirium, it took embarrassing effort to write the date and time. “Okay, I’m all ears. What’s the last thing you remember after the lightning?”

“I remember blinding light. And then I remember…  Do you remember when we smoked centipede?”

“Oh, do I remember.”

“It was like that. I was in a desert of rusty dunes.”

Jay hesitated to write that down. “Dan said centipedes probably invoke the same sorts of hallucinations in everyone everywhere. Those hallucinations guided Sheridanian religion, inspiring LuLu’s Space-Time Acceleration, an episode of which I just watched while totally bug-eyed.” He counted his fingers again: still ten. “You’re my centipede-flashback. I’m talking to myself.”

“Could a centipede-flashback share a smoke with you, JayJay?” Faith gave Jay the roach.

“I guess not. Keep going, then.”

“I didn’t notice I was a fox at first, it was all instinct. I didn’t notice my adorable paws, even while I dug worms from their little holes. I started chewing them up before I realized this was totally gross. Like, why was I doing that? Should I spit or finish the job? But I noticed my tail and my little black nose on my little white snout. Foxes can eat worms! So I swallowed. I also dug up some roaches, like the one you’re smoking. I’d never smoked a roach before, but there weren’t any crickets around, so I tucked ’em behind my ears for later.”

Jay puffed and examined the roach. The concept of roaches in the rusty desert reminded him, obliquely, of Dante’s woods of suicides, which Dan’s father had mentioned before jumping out a window. Surely not all the dead were worms. “You didn’t try smoking them right away? You’re pretty good at it for an animal without opposable thumbs.”

“Not yet. I didn’t know I could light stuff with my breath, so I was wandering the desert looking for a Bic. But then wind started, and it kept getting worse. Sand was just flying off the dunes—worms, too. Remember when we smoked centipede, you had to keep me from blowing away?”

“Yeah.” Jay returned the roach and flipped his notepad to a fresh page. He didn’t have the mental wherewithal for writing right now, so he was doodling whatever Faith described. “After that, you blew away without any wind at all. I climbed the mountain looking for you.”

“Heh. Sorry, JayJay. Anyway, I huddled at the bottom of a valley waiting for the wind to stop.” Faith showed Jay how she balled herself up, her nose tucked under her tail. “When the wind shaved the dunes to half their height, I felt myself crumbling into snowflakes.” She waggled her back-end in demonstration. “If it wasn’t for Bug-Bird, I would’ve been powderized!”

“Bug-Bird?”

“You know, the big blue bird with criss-crossed bug-eyes. They called themselves the Heart of the Mountain, but… you know me, JayJay, I like my pet-names. Bug-Bird saw me from the sky and dove through the wind on a sonic boom to land right next to me. I stepped aboard Bug-Bird’s wing, walked up their sleeve, and poked my head out of their collar. I couldn’t feel the wind at all!”

Jay felt a bit invasive asking this. “What was under the robes?”

“More robes!” Thank goodness, thought Jay. “Bug-Bird said she’d expected me.”

“Hold up.” Jay tapped his pen against his sketch of Bug-Bird growing wings, arms, and tentacles. “She? Not they? Not, uh, it?“

“She said I could call her whatever I wanted.”

“Neato.” Jay doodled Ardhanarishvara.

“She told me the wind was because a warp in the Wheel was making it wobble, and she needed my help fixing it for the Zephyrs to fight the Hurricane.”

Jay giggled at his own sketch of a fox riding a bird over dunes. “Jango’s brother Jun accomplished what he wanted with LuLu’s. It’s impossible for me to take Sheridanian imagery seriously. I just can’t hear ‘Zephyr’ without hearing ‘giant anime space-robot.’ “

“I had the same issue!” Faith finished smoking the roach. She extinguished it in the snowy grass. “I told Bug-Bird I’d be happy to help if she could explain what the heck she was talking about.”

“Haha.”

“Flying to the Mountain—her feathers tilted like airplane flaps—Bug-Bird said LuLu’s space-robots were just as involved as anything else! Everything would be a Zephyr eventually, they said, but until then, lotsa Zephyrs were just worms. The Wheel was making worms into proper Zephyrs by sifting them in the sand, or something, but the wind was swirling the worms through the air and they just couldn’t sift right.”

“So you were flying through worms?”

“Hoo yeah! Splattering against Bug-Bird’s robes like a windshield on the highway. I thought a bird would love to eat worms, but Bug-Bird said they weren’t supposed to—she doesn’t want to meddle with worms too much. But I was allowed to eat all the worms I wanted!”

“…How many was that?”

Faith’s blush radiated warmth. “Bug-Bird said worms were climbing that big red mountain—the Mountain. We were headed to the Mountain, so I thought I’d might as well give ’em a ride. But there were way too many worms for me to eat more than a few! I asked Bug-Bird, how many Zephyrs are there? She said ‘Innumerably many.’ But how many is that, I asked. ‘Quintillions of quintillions.’ That sounded plenty numerable, so I asked again. ‘It depends on how you count them,’ they said. ‘Zephyrs overlap. You saw me collect the Zephyr with golden wings, who carried the countless worms we all share.’ “

Jay thought Faith did a pretty good Heart-of-the-Mountain impression. “But how many is countless?” he asked. “Bug-Bird was waffling again.”

“That’s what I said! Bug-Bird, how many Zephyrs are there? ‘As many as thousands of thousands, or as few as thirty three.’ I was having fun at this point, and I figured Bug-Bird was, too, since her answer kept changing. C’mon! I said. Gimme a number! How many Zephyrs are there?  ‘Just two, myself and the other.’ How many Zephyrs are there? ‘Only one.’ But honestly, how many Zephyrs are there? ‘I’m done playing this game.’ Now she sounded like my mom having her patience tested. She landed on the Mountain by blasting fog from her robes. ‘Please, disembark.’ She protected me from the wind with one wing. Very cozy!”

Jay thought this sounded considerably more comfortable than his own experience, being hurled onto the big red mountain from a great distance away. “Did she try to shove you in a hole?”

“Nope. She opened a cave, but said I couldn’t come in until she’d prepared the place for me.”

“I guess the Heart of the Mountain is improving her bedside-manner.”

“Well, she said if I just walked into the cave as it was, I’d be sucked into the Wheel to become a Zephyr, and the wobbling couldn’t handle that. She had to set things up so I’d just be a lil’ Will-o-Wisp.”

“Is that really what she called you?”

“She said ‘wisp of my will,’ but that means Will-o-Wisp, right? Anyway, Bug-Bird’s other wing turned into a tentacle which reached in the cave and pulled out a fluffy, golden wing—a wing from that Zephyr we saw, JayJay! It smelled awesome up close, like flowers and honey! Bug-Bird spread the golden wing around the cave like shiny rugs so I didn’t have to touch the rock wall or floor. I should’ve been worried climbing into a cave like this, but honestly, I felt bored.” Faith? Bored? They must’ve been walking for a whole minute or two. “When I asked how much longer it’d be, I was cut off by a sound like a flock of seagulls. The golden wing rolled us up, coiling like a carpet, and pulled us deep into the Mountain faster than we could’ve fallen. I thought I’d be scared, but the golden wing felt so soft and smelled so sweet that I fell asleep.”

“How long were you out?”

“I dunno! When I woke up it was all green, all around. Bug-Bird and I were standing on the golden wing’s tippy-top as it pushed us faster and faster through all the green. She said we were in the Wheel.“

“Did you hear a buzzing noise?”

“We were zooming faster than sound, I think. Bug-Bird and I were talking telepathically, like this!” She stared up at Jay. Jay stopped sketching to stare back. “Are you getting anything?” she asked, aloud. Jay shook his head. “Ah, well. It works in the Wheel. Bug-Bird said the Wheel was actually yellow on one side and blue on the other, but I just saw green, green, green. ‘The Wheel turns the future into the present, the present into the past, and the past into the future—but,’ she said, ‘the Wheel’s wobble is mucking it up.’ Then our golden wing poked us straight through the Wheel’s surface.”

“You were outside the Wheel of life and death? What was there?”

“Well, below the horizon, it was just green—that was the Wheel. Above the horizon, it was just darkness at first. Wow, I said, there aren’t even stars out there! ‘Of course not,’ said Bug-Bird. ‘Reality is beneath us.’ But then the darkness filled with blue and red shapes. Bug-Bird pointed at the blue. ‘The Zephyrs.’ She pointed at the red. ‘The Hurricane.’ The red and blue were like super-detailed crystals, and they swapped the dark space back and forth. Then Bug-Bird pointed both her wings down to the Wheel.” Faith mimed it out, standing on her back legs and gesturing her front paws at the snowy grass below.

“What did the Wheel look like from outside?”

“Laser-lights were shooting from the center to the rim, zooming around the whole Wheel, then shooting back to the center. The lasers were actually, like, wedge-shapes.” Faith bit Jay’s pen and tried drawing in his notepad herself. When she was unable to doodle what she wanted, she gave the pen back. “Imagine the pyramids of Giza were glaciers zipping by. But there was a green bulge on the horizon—the warp in the Wheel, blocking the razor-glaciers or something!”

“How did Bug-Bird expect you to fix something like that?”

“I told her, I had no clue what I was looking at. She said the razor-glaciers were groups of worms sent to live, learn, die, and come back. She said I was worms, too, and all the worms in me had been in lots of different razor-glaciers a whole bunch of times. I couldn’t wrap my head around it, so she said she’d send me to a Virgil. I told her I had to bring the Virgils a gift, because they brought one to me in Wyoming. She must not’ve heard me; the razor-glaciers were just swooshing by. Some were tall as trees, some short as fingernails. She dipped one of her feathers in the green Wheel and the surface shimmered sky-blue. She told me to jump into it, but I told her again, I wasn’t leaving without a gift! I had cockroaches, but I didn’t think the Virgils would like them. She swept one of my roaches under her robes and returned it as the biggest bug-stick I’d ever seen, wrapped in its own wings like… like… like awesome fancy scarves!”

“And then you jumped in?” Faith nodded. “Virgil Skyy told me about meeting you on the Islands of Sheridan.”

“Perfect,” said Faith. “I’ll skip that part. Jango didn’t teach me to fix the Wheel anyway—although, his story convinced me to help Bug-Bird even if I didn’t quite understand what was going on. I steamed up from the Wheel and snowed back onto the golden wing. I said I’d do whatever she wanted, but I wasn’t sure how those space-robots Virgil Skyy talked about were related to anything I was seeing now. She was all like, ‘Perhaps you weren’t prepared for the highest revelations.’ “

Jay drew Faith, the white fox, jumping into and out of the Wheel with razor-glaciers zooming behind her. “It sounds like Jun’s giant anime space-robots are accidentally the perfect way to get folks outside the islands invested in Sheridanian culture.”

“Well, maybe. Then bug-bird poked a bunch of long blue arms out her sleeves and used them to fold the golden wing’s tippy-top small enough for me to bite down on it. It was soft and thin like a plush rabbit’s felted ear. ‘This Zephyr’s golden wings stretch to any length and seem indestructible,’ Bug-Bird went on. ‘If you bandage the Wheel with it, the Wheel will spin quickly as the Chain demands with nary a wobble. My desert’s wind will cease, and my water-world’s worm-processing will stabilize!’ “

Faith seemed to have a little too much fun mimicking the Heart of the Mountain’s mode of speech. On one hand, Jay wondered if this meant Faith was faking it. On the other hand, her story seemed consistent with Jango’s lecture on the islands. On both hands at once, this was clearly a centipede-flashback he shouldn’t take too seriously. “So you wrapped the Wheel with the golden wing?”

“Uh-huh!”

“Why didn’t Bug-Bird do it herself?”

“Like I said, Bug-Bird doesn’t want to meddle too much with worms. It’s better if I do it for her, because then it’s worms-on-worms. She also told me not to touch her throne in the Wheel’s center, because it would ‘scatter my consciousness across the cosmos.’ Oh, and the golden wing might try to talk to me, but I should ignore it, because it was new here.”

“So how do you wrap a Wheel with a wing?”

“I just jumped around! It was super floaty over there.” Faith let her body aerosolize to illustrate, levitating around Uncle Bob’s porch-light. Jay worried she would drift away. “It was so easy to fly, I wasn’t sure if I was pulling the wing or if it was pushing me and I just told it where to go. I pulled the wing near the center, then near the rim, then near the center, then near the rim, more times than I could count. Each lap, I flew outside the Wheel to admire the spokes I’d added. It took ages to make each one, but I didn’t mind! The wing was excellent company.”

“Did it talk, like Bug-Bird warned? Maybe, uh, telepathically?”

“No, but it was such a listener. Do you remember…” Faith descended to sit beside Jay. “Beatrice died while we were on centipede. That seriously fucked me up. I couldn’t even talk about it.” Jay nodded. “So I told the golden wing about her, and how much I missed her. My mind wasn’t in the right place, and I still thought I was hallucinating, so I wondered if BeatBax was alive, waiting next to me wherever I was tripping, and the golden wing was how I saw her keeping me company. The wing kinda cradled me when I said that. I swear, its honey-smell was right outta her shampoo-bottles!”

Jay wiped his eyes. “How about after you wrapped the Wheel, Faith? What happened then?”

“Bug-Bird showed up and said the desert wasn’t windy anymore! The worms were sand-sifting, or whatever! The Wheel was still wobbly, but I was done bandaging it.” Faith looked briefly proud of herself. Then her muzzle twitched like she smelled a bad worm. “Next she needed help with Anihilato.“

Jay almost dropped his pen. Instead, he shakily flipped to a fresh page of his notepad. Even before asking Faith to explain, he started sketching scenes from an old dream. “Dan mentioned Anihilato, too. What’s Anihilato, Faith?”

“Bug-Bird didn’t even describe. She just said there was a visitor on the red mountain which wasn’t ready to be a Zephyr yet. My new job was chauffeuring it far into the desert and dropping it off between any old dunes for Anihilato to find. I was on-board for anything, so I let Bug-Bird wrap me in the golden wing and sling me up a cave back to the Mountainside.”

“And what did you find there?” Jay was already drawing an orange amoeba boiling with teeth.

“It was so loud!” Faith huddled by herself and pressed her ears flat against her head. “It was some awful ball of dentures! They were all crunching each other up, and themselves, too. When you and I smoked centipede I helped you puke some teeth, right? But this? I couldn’t even bring myself to look at it.”

“But it calmed itself down,” said Jay, “didn’t it?”

“Yeah. The tooth-ball became this puddle of water with some worms in it, all tangled together. Bug-Bird had said worms were supposed to find the Mountain, but these worms squirmed for the edge like they’d jump off. Even they didn’t think they were ready to be a Zephyr! I was scared of the teeth, but I thought I could hold my own against worms, so I picked ’em up and beat them against the ground. This was when I realized I could freeze stuff by breathing on it, because I’m all snowy.”

“But you aren’t just snow.” Jay scratched her head to feel the powdery substance she was made of. “You can also breathe hot enough to light a roach.”

“I’m getting to that part, JayJay. But next I turned into a tornado and whisked the worms away, so whatever I am, I’m pretty dang rad.”

“A great and complicated tool,” said Jay. “What did you do with the worms?”

“Far from the Mountain I found some nice dunes I thought the worms would like. I didn’t want to drop them from altitude, so I decided to set them on the sand—but when I looked down, I realized how high up I was! I totally froze.”

“Literally?”

“Like a hailstone! I fell for miles and burst on the sand. The little wormies scattered everywhere. And then!” Faith jumped with all the fur on her back flared up. She was trying to have fun describing something which had clearly disturbed her. “The valley collapsed! Like a—Like a—What’s that thing which eats ants in a death-cone?”

“An ant-lion?”

“Yeah! The valley collapsed like an ant-lion’s death-cone. Anihilato burst out and grabbed me with way too many hands. ‘I’ve got you! You’re mine!’ It was the biggest worm I ever saw. It had a bazillion arms, a bajillion legs, and six eyes.” Jay shivered, drawing a monster from a childhood nightmare. “It used a bunch of hands to smush me into powder, and it used its other hands to eat all those worms I brought. I yelled to let me go, but it didn’t listen! It said it eats its own eggs just because the yolks are warm, someday it’d eat Bug-Bird and her whole Mountain, and today it was gonna eat me!“

“How’d you escape?”

“I got all fired up!”

“Literally?”

“Kinda! I got hotter and hotter, but Anihilato seemed to like that and used more hands to squash me down. When I shouted ‘leggo!’ my voice was piping steam. Soon I was all steam and I fumed between its fingers, so I collected as a cloudy fox far above its reach. Or so I thought! It reached up like a snake charmed out of a pot, grabbing at me. ‘You belong to me!’ it said. ‘I own your worms!’ I still steamed through its fingers, so I kept climbing up water-vapor like a spiral staircase.” Whatever Faith was made of, she was apparently ungraspable. “I asked Anihilato what its problem was, and it said my ‘worm-certificates’ were in its ‘box of souls.’ It was the rightful owner of all worms.”

The phrases tickled Jay’s throat. “Did Bug-Bird mention anything like that?”

“Nuh-uh! But Anihilato didn’t care. It kept saying it was allowed to eat me, because I was dead. I still thought I was hallucinating, and I told it so. But it said… if I was hallucinating, then I wouldn’t mind being eaten, would I?”

“I guess not?”

“I told it, if I’m hallucinating, I’ll go where I choose, and I’d never choose to be down there with it ever again. I’d rather be on Mars, apparently, interning for Olympus Mons. When I flew away, Anihilato called me a frigid rat. I was so mad! I scratched the Mountain’s surface until Bug-Bird opened a cave and crawled up.”

“Did you chew her out?”

“Hell yeah! What the fuck was that, I asked. Anihilato tried to nab me! Aren’t worms supposed to be sifting in the sand, or something, not whatever it was doing? She was all like, ‘I don’t control Anihilato, just like I don’t control you, or the golden wing-thing. I mustn’t meddle with worms myself!’ I didn’t care. A big evil worm like that has gotta be an OSHA violation or something.”

“At least.“

“But Bug-Bird wouldn’t budge. ‘You saw the tooth-ball,’ she said. ‘Anihilato processes worms not ready for the Mountain. It will eat anything—at the end of eternity, it will try to eat me!‘ That just pissed me off! How come I could touch the tooth-ball, but not her? How come I had to deal with that evil worm? ‘Ah, if Anihilato consumed you, that would be acceptable for reasons I cannot communicate!’ There was a whole lot Bug-Bird couldn’t communicate. I told her she was awfully tight-beaked.” Faith growled. “I told her in words way more colorful than that.”

“I’ll bet.”

“I tried jumping into the cave. Maybe she was hiding something there? But she blocked me with her wings and said she’d send me to someone who could talk on my level. She spread out the golden wing again and we whipped back into the Wheel.”

“Did she send you to another Virgil?”

“JayJay, she sent me here. To you.“

“Oh. Oh.” Jay put down his notepad. “I’m afraid I don’t have any cool lecture prepared for you like Virgil Jango Skyy. I can’t tell you what Anihilato’s deal is.” In compensation, he scratched behind her ears.

“That’s alright. I’m just glad to see you!” Faith’s hind legs thumped the grass in appreciation of Jay’s scratching. “What have you been up to while I’m gone, JayJay?”

“Not a lot. You and Beatrice had a great wake. Dan and I came to Wyoming with your uncle.”

“How’s Dainty doing?”

Jay leaned back on Bob’s porch. “He’s in mourning, let’s say.”

Faith whimpered. “Are you sure I can’t pop in and meet him?”

“I don’t even think he could see you,” said Jay. “You’re a figment of my imagination.”

“I promise I’m not!” She begged, rolling on the grass. “I just wanna tell Dainty everything’s okay! He hides it, but he’s a nervous wreck without me.”

“I know it well as you do.” Jay wagged a finger at her. “But you’ll have to return to that big red mountain eventually, right? Would you make Dan lose you twice?“

Faith opened her mouth to protest, but saw Jay’s point and just pouted. “Take care of him for me, then.”

“I’m trying.” Jay stood and brushed dust off his suit-pants. “I’m taking him to the Islands of Sheridan. I’m taking him to the Virgils.”

“You think the Virgils can help Dainty cope?”

“I promise.” Jay crossed his heart. “And if you’re really dead, you’ll see Dan someday. You’ll meet him near the Mountain and lead his worms to the Wheel.”

“Hmpf.” Faith pawed the dirt. “I don’t think that place is good enough for Dainty. I don’t trust Bug-Bird anymore.”

“I suddenly do,” said Jay, “at least in the context of my ongoing hallucination. The Heart of the Mountain taught you something.” Faith’s ears perked. “When Bug-Bird sent you to discard the tooth-ball, it was because they couldn’t risk touching the teeth themselves. In the same way, don’t worry about Dan. And tell Bug-Bird to get another intern to deal with Anihilato.”

Faith laughed. She turned with Jay to watch the moon. “Maybe Bug-Bird sent me to offer you that internship, JayJay!” Her tail steamed. “Think about it! I’ll see you in the next eternity.” Her body was buoyed back above the horizon.

Next
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(A chapter of Akayama DanJay.)

---

Last time on RuRu no Jikuu no Kasoku!

The year is 2420. The Galaxy Zephyr escaped the Hurricane’s bubble, but the Hurricane paid them back for it with a lightning-bolt directly into the Wheel. With the Wheel damaged, can Commander Lucille stand a chance against the cosmic horror which ate the universe and killed her parents? Or will it accomplish its misguided goal of perverted permanence? 

—

On sixteen golden wings, the Galaxy Zephyr flew a safe distance from the Hurricane. Lucille surveyed the warped Wheel in ZAB’s monitors. Where the lightning had struck, the Wheel’s perfect surface had a great green bulge. Near the bulge, the Wheel had no saw-teeth. “Charlie, Dakshi, can you fix it manually?”

In ZAY, Charlie led the Galaxy Zephyr to press the Wheel with its right hand, but the bulge inverted to protrude from the left. In ZAG, Dakshi led the Galaxy Zephyr to press the Wheel with its left hand, but the bulge inverted to protrude from the right. “No dice,” said Charlie. If anything, the bulge was bigger now. The whole Wheel wobbled each revolution.

Lucille crossed her arms. “Professor Bird-Thing!”

“Hai!” In ZAP, Akayama saluted.

“Part of you is inside the Wheel, right? How’s the damage look on your end?”

“My water-world’s slice-of-life is falling apart,” said Akayama, “and my Uzumaki Planet is too windy to process worms!” Through her branched, noodly tail, Akayama showed Lucille video of a desert sandstorm. “If you pulled the Chain, centripetal forces would shred the Wheel to pieces!” The Hurricane seemed to know the Wheel was busted, as it swiped tentacles with impunity. To evade, Eisu in ZAR and Fumiko in ZAO led the Galaxy Zephyr’s legs firing steam. “But I’m sure I can fix it. Give me one of those golden wings!”

Lucille pulled a monitor displaying the Galaxy Zephyr’s schematics. “Charlie, Dakshi, Eisu, Fumiko. One of your teams will control three wings instead of four.”

“I volunteer,” said Fumiko.

“Our teams can balance our thrust,” said Eisu.

“Well then.” Lucille tapped the touchscreen. “It’s all yours, Professor Bird-Thing!”

One golden wing recoiled into the Galaxy Zephyr’s spine. It snaked out the left pectoral into the Wheel. “The snowy white powder I added to the Wheel condensed around a helpful slice-of-life character,” said Akayama. “Call them our mascot! They’re wrapping the Wheel with the wing, but it will take some time.” A flying white fox popped out of the Wheel pulling the golden wing with its teeth.

The flying white fox was immeasurably adorable, but mid-combat, the Zephyrs couldn’t be distracted. “We can’t keep this up forever,” said Dakshi. The Galaxy Zephyr barrel-rolled to avoid ten tentacles converging. “How do we survive without the Wheel?”

“Brass balls,” said Lucille. “Leave it to me.” She sat up in her Commander’s chair. “Hey! You!” The silvery-blue Uzumaki Armor translated her shouts into eye-signals for the Hurricane to see. “Did you know my mother, Princess Lucia? Did you know my father, Commander Bunjiro?”

The Hurricane made a wide palm to smash them while signaling with its own countless eyes. “I might’ve!”

“Not during your pilots’ mortal lives,” said Lucille. Eisu and Fumiko dodged the cosmic slap. The flying white fox wrapped the golden wing around the Wheel to dress the bulge like a bandage. “My parents were born decades after you fled Earth. You’d only know them as pilots of Zephyr-Blue, original protector of the Milky Way!”

The Hurricane growled and grew legs to kick at the Galaxy Zephyr. “That robot murdered hundreds of thousands of my planets!“

“Your planets were homogeneous and identical! You ate them whole yourself!” The Galaxy Zephyr deftly dodged each kick. “Does it really matter how many were ‘murdered?’ “

“It’s all that matters! Every tiniest piece of me is the best humanity has to offer! Your parents are the real cosmic horror! I only destroyed Earth after I knew there was nothing left worth assimilating!”

“Is that so?” The flying white fox had wrapped the Wheel with three golden wing-spokes. “Were my parents worthy? Are they trapped in your disgusting consciousness?”

The Hurricane grinned disingenuously with a thousand mouths. “They are!“

Dakshi pressed a button to speak to Lucille privately. “It’s lying. Your parents died before they could be assimilated.”

Charlie joined the channel. “Bunjiro self-detonated to protect Lucia, who died soon after on the moon. You know that.”

Lucille ignored them and spoke to the Hurricane. “Oh really? You must’ve claimed my father just before his ship exploded. My mother—well, how’d you nab her?”

The Hurricane thought. “I reassembled her from your father’s memory. Inside me, your parents beg for you to come to your senses and give up the fight!”

“Impossible,” Akayama told Lucille. “If the Hurricane had that capability, I would know!”

Even Uzumaki chimed in. “I’ve synced with the Hurricane a hundred times. If your parents were in our enemy, they’d be in me, too, and I’ll tell you, they’re not!“

“How horrifying,” said Lucille to the Hurricane. She faked a sob while grinning ear to ear. “If you’d release their minds from yours, I’d do anything. I’d even surrender!”

The Hurricane condensed into a blob which smiled almost broadly as Lucille. “Really?”

“You have my word.” Lucille covered her heart with her right hand while crossing fingers with her left. “Eject them for me to inspect. Let me meet my parents!”

“Commander!” said Fumiko.

“You can’t surrender on our behalf!” said Eisu.

“You’ll inspect them alone, you brat.” The Hurricane spat two human bodies from a slobbery maw. “Leave your robots behind!”

“Those are forgeries,” said Akayama. “Uzumaki taught this trick when it let Hurricane Planets bicker over a false copy of me.”

Lucille flipped switches to disengage Zephyr-Alpha-Blue from the Galaxy Zephyr. When she stomped her pedals, ZAB refused to budge. “This is obviously a trap,” said ZAB.

“Don’t you think I know that? Buying time means letting the Hurricane think it’s two steps ahead!” ZAB reluctantly propelled itself through the Galaxy Zephyr’s silvery-blue Uzumaki Armor into the vacuum of space. Lucille looked back through the rear windows to see the flying white fox had wrapped the golden wing around the Wheel six times, adding six golden spokes bandaging the bulge. “Halt.” ZAB stopped a hundred yards from the bodies ejected by the Hurricane. Lucille removed the metal grill above her life-support systems to retrieve an oxygen-mask. “My bodysuit is vacuum-proof, isn’t it? How long could I survive in space?”

“At most two minutes.”

“Collect me in sixty seconds.” She donned the mask. “Pop the hatch.”

ZAB’s skullcap opened. Explosive decompression launched Lucille toward the free-floating bodies. The Hurricane chuckled in the distance, but Lucille didn’t know the language of its eye-signals and didn’t care.

She’d seen photos of Bunjiro and Lucia in history books. The Hurricane had reconstructed them lazily but effectively, covering their faces with oxygen-masks, concealing their bodies with red and blue bodysuits. Bunjiro even had sunglasses, and Lucia her ponytail. Both were unconscious, or feigning it.

Lucille had been launched fast enough to kick off Bunjiro’s head. His neck spurted blood like a person guillotined, but then his body convulsed and decayed like the Hurricane’s severed thumb. His arms and legs turned into tentacles which grappled at Lucille, but they were shriveling, and she kicked herself off his chest like a swimmer starting another lap. As she drifted toward Lucia, her supposed mother peeked and saw Bunjiro deteriorating into purple goo. Lucia panicked and sprouted tentacles, but too late: Lucille tore off her oxygen-mask and bit her neck open. They grappled together, biting each other, until Lucille finally knocked off Lucia’s head by jabbing with her ring of keys. Both imitation parents decomposed.

Lucille wiped blood from her jaw—though her bodysuit was still splattered with it—and again donned her oxygen-mask. ZAB caught her in its open hatch and she fell back into the cockpit. They zoomed back to the Galaxy Zephyr. “That was quite a show,” said ZAB. “The Hurricane looks angrier than ever.”

“Like I give a shit.” Lucille removed her oxygen-mask and spat more blood. They reentered the Galaxy Zephyr and assumed their rightful place in the head.

Uzumaki translated the Hurricane’s violent eye-signals. “You ungrateful brat! You just murdered two of my copies, each more human than you or any of your crew!“

“Don’t flatter yourself.” Lucille rubbed alcohol over the Hurricane’s bite-marks on her shoulder. “Even if those really were my parents, I’d kill them to spite you!” The flying white fox totally enveloped the Wheel with the golden wing, compressing the bulge. The fox slipped back into the hazy green Wheel. “The Wheel reminds us only impermanence is permanent! My parents are dead, I’ll die someday, and by my word, your pilots will die, too!“

“You’ll meet your impermanence face-to-face! Until now I planned to give you and your crew the chance to prove yourselves worthy of assimilation, but you’ve shown you’re not worth the effort!” The Hurricane ripped off ten of its own tentacles which bled teeth and perished. The Hurricane threw these scraps like blood-red projectiles each bigger than the Galaxy Zephyr. “This is what real teamwork looks like!” As the Galaxy Zephyr moved, the projectiles followed.

Charlie contacted Lucille. “Did your mom taste nice? I don’t know how we’ll dodge these missiles.”

Dakshi agreed. “Unless you learned something from Bunjiro’s blood, we’re not long for this world.”

“Professor Bird-Thing,” said Lucille, “is the Wheel ready for us to pull the Chain again? Are any characters in your slice-of-life eager to join the Galaxy Zephyr? Maybe your little fox-mascot?”

“Not yet, not yet!” said Akayama. “You can use the Wheel when the golden wing unwraps, but don’t pull the Chain! I’ve got a plan to bring in the rest of the main-cast all at once!”

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(A chapter of Akayama DanJay.)

---

Uncle Featherway sat on the stool left of Dan’s unconscious body slumped across the bar. “Is your friend okay?”

“He could use some sleep.” Jay pat Dan’s right shoulder. “Mister Featherway, are you ready for our interview?”

“Sure, sure. I’ve got time ’til my train comes in.” Uncle Featherway flagged the bartender for a beer and straightened his tinfoil fedora. “You wanted to hear about Virgil Blue?”

“Yes, please. I recently met the Virgils on the Islands of Sheridan, but Virgil Blue never spoke to me.” Jay prepared his pen and notepad. “I wondered if you could add anything to the stoic silence.”

“Only more silence,” said Uncle Featherway. “The monks came to Wyoming the same weekend Faith and I visited Sheridan Cliff-Side College. The monks carried Virgil Blue onto a lectern where they sat for half an hour.”

“Were all the monks silent?”

“Well, one in sky-blue said a few words.” Uncle Featherway sipped his beer. “But Virgil Blue’s inflection made their silence sound important.”

“Important? Like how?”

“Like…” Uncle Featherway put down his glass to wave a hand. “Like their silence was revealing secrets of the universe.”

“Learn anything?”

“Nothing I didn’t already know.” Uncle Featherway puffed out his chest and sipped more beer. “Hearing it from Virgil Blue just confirmed it.”

Jay spun his pen. He didn’t want this conversation to drift into tinfoil-hat theories. “Hearing nothing from Virgil Blue confirmed… what, exactly?”

“You know cargo-cults?”

“I’ve heard of them, yes.”

“After we dropped aid on island-tribes in World War Two, those island-tribes built fake airplanes out of scraps. They hoped statues would bring us back, like shrines for sky-gods. So if aliens exist (and they do), and if they’re been to Earth (and they have), then that’s proof that all religions are cargo-cults. When aliens created us, we didn’t understand what we were seeing. Over generations, our explanations became religions.”

Jay tried sticking to the facts. “What was Virgil Blue wearing?”

“A hooded navy robe and a silver face-mask which looked like an alien.”

“An alien? Could you draw the mask you saw?” Jay passed his notepad and pen over Dan’s back.

Uncle Featherway put the notepad on Dan’s back so Jay could watch him draw. “See, it had big criss-cross bug-eyes. It had a bulbous snout with a wide, straight mouth. And it had two long antennae to receive cosmic waves.”

“Huh.” Jay took the pen and drew his own rendition of the silver mask. “I saw the same mask, but I thought it was a bird. What you called antennae, I saw as long feathers.”

“Could be. Feathers are sensitive to cosmic waves, too.”

“And I thought the bulbous snout was a round beak.”

“Aliens can have beaks. Like an octopus, or a squid.” Uncle Featherway finished his beer. “What about the criss-cross bug-eyes?”

“I dunno,” said Jay. “I saw a bird-statue with the same eyes. I figured it was a stylistic choice.”

“Well, sometimes we see what we wanna see.” Uncle Featherway returned the notepad to Jay. “Anyway, the Sheridanians seemed closer to the original aliens than any other religion.”

Jay resigned himself to tinfoil-hat theories. “At the wake, you said there are different kinds of aliens. What kinds are there?”

“Oh, all kinds. You’ve got your gold-miners, your mind-readers, your machine-elves…” Uncle Featherway ate complementary mixed nuts. “But they’re all aliens. They all come from the same place.” He pointed up.

“Hm.”

“They made humans using DNA from outer space,” he said, “so we’re all aliens, in the end.”

“How insightful.”

“Yeah, it’s too bad Faith didn’t enjoy the lecture.” Uncle Featherway almost removed his fedora out of respect for the dead, but only tipped it to keep the protective tinfoil on his head. “She left halfway through.”

“How many people were watching with you?”

“The lecture-hall was almost empty. The audience was mostly monks.”

“Did you know anyone there? Any friends I could talk to?”

“Nope.”

Jay rest his head on one hand and spun his pen with the other. “Someone at the college arranged the monks’ lecture. Maybe I could contact them.”

“Sorry I wasn’t more helpful.”

“You were very helpful. Thanks for taking the time to talk.” Jay pocketed his notepad and pen and pulled out his phone. He looked up Sheridan Cliff-Side College’s contact-page. “I’ll call their event-coordinator.”

“Why not come to Wyoming? You could interview them in person and check out the lecture-hall yourself.”

“Not a bad idea, but I’ll still call ahead.”

“Wanna come with me? You can sleep on my couch.”

Jay bit his lip. “Would I be a bother?”

“Any friend of Faith’s is a friend of mine!” He shook Jay’s hand. “Call me Bob. Bob Featherway!”

“Jay Diaz-Jackson. When does your train leave?”

“Four hours from now.”

Jay bought himself a ticket on his phone. “Four hours is short notice to travel cross-country, but my life fits in a suitcase. Hey, Bob, does your couch have room for two?”

“Oh, sure. It’s a fold-out.” Bob looked from Jay to Dan. “What, you mean him? Shouldn’t you wake him up and ask if he wants to come?”

“He told me to take him to Sheridan just before you walked in. The mountain air will do him good.”

—

Dan stirred from his drunken slumber only after the train crossed into Wyoming. He blinked in sunlight doubled by mountains of white snow. The sky was wide and cloudless blue. “Jay?”

Jay gave him a bottle of water. “We’re almost in Sheridan, Dan. Just like you wanted.”

Dan drank the water and pulled up his orange shirt to cover his face. “We’re on a train.”

“Yep.”

“You can’t get to islands on a train.”

“Nope.” Jay made room for Bob as he returned from the cabin’s restroom. “Before we visit the Islands of Sheridan, we’re taking preliminary notes in Sheridan, Wyoming. Bob Featherway says we can sleep on his couch.”

“It’s a fold-out,” added Bob.

Dan let his shirt fall and show his face again. He covered his face with his black gloves instead. “I was staggering drunk when I agreed to go.”

“Too drunk even to stagger,” agreed Jay. “I couldn’t just leave you in the bar, could I?”

Dan sighed and tried to sleep. “Wake me when we get there.”

—

Dan next woke sitting across the back seats of Bob’s truck. Jay sat shotgun while Bob drove. The tinfoil under Bob’s fedora reflected the orange sunset, and the stars were out when they arrived at his house near the edge of the forest. “My place is a little small,” said Bob, “but the view from the back-porch is phenomenal. You can see trees creeping right up the mountains to the college.” Dan and Jay followed Bob over the snow and through his front door. Bob pointed at the couch. “There’s the couch,” said Bob. “It’s a fold-out.”

“Thank you for your hospitality.” Jay hung up his dark jacket and loosened his purple tie. “Can I buy you dinner? What’s your favorite restaurant around here?”

“We’re pretty far from town,” said Bob. “I don’t wanna drive those icy roads now that it’s so dark. But there’s a burger-place near the gas-station around the corner, past the chicken-farm.”

Dan sat on the couch and stared through Bob’s television. “I could eat some fries.”

“Lemme write down my order for you, Jay. It’ll be too long to remember.”

“I’ll visit the gas-station, too,” said Jay. “I left my toothbrush in California. I bet I can buy one there.”

“If you’re going to the gas-station, buy me a frozen-slush-drink-thingie.” Bob wrote it below his burger order.

“What flavor frozen-slush-drink-thingie?”

“Blue if they’ve got it. Orange if they’re out.”

—

Jay was so famished after the train-ride he ate his hamburger on the walk back. It reminded him of the crab-meat pastry he ate on the Islands of Sheridan. Every place has its meat-pie.

A chicken crossed the road. Thinking of Sheridanian big-birds, Jay bowed his head in respect, then realized how ridiculous he looked. Thankfully only the chicken had seen him bow. At any rate, the chicken bobbed its head back, so the respect was mutual. Jay wondered how just one solitary chicken had managed to escape the local poultry-farm. Surely if one of them could do it, more of them would follow suit. The farm had a billboard advertising fertilized eggs, so intrepid individuals could hatch their own chicks. Jay wondered if that was bad for business in the long run.

When Jay returned to Bob’s, Dan was wrapping a cricket in its wings for smoking while Bob explained cargo-cults. Jay gave Bob two cheeseburgers with everything, a chili-dog topped with fries, a box of chicken-nuggets, an apple-pie, and a blue-flavored frozen-slush-drink-thingie. “Where’d you get the bug-stick?” Jay asked Dan.

“Faith taught me to grow them.” Dan had trouble braiding the wings with his black gloves on. Jay set a box of fries on the coffee-table for him with some packets of ketchup. Dan nodded without looking from the cricket.

Jay sat left of Bob on the couch. “Have you smoked a bug-stick before, Mr. Featherway?”

“Yeah, when I was younger,” said Bob. “Sometimes kids smoke in the woods nearby. Their bug-sticks aren’t wrapped half as well as Dan’s, there.”

Jay opened a pack of cheese-puffs from the gas-station. “Good thing I brought extra munchies.”

“Nice.” Bob started on his cheeseburgers. Dan produced a white lighter from his pocket and offered the lighter and bug-stick to Bob, who declined the first puffs. “You two wanna watch TV while we get bug-eyed?”

“Sure,” said Dan.

“What’s on?” asked Jay.

Bob shrugged. “Service comes and goes because I cover my satellite-dish in tinfoil. It’s worth it to filter out subliminal messages.” Neither Dan nor Jay recognized the channels Bob flipped through. Most were in a foreign language, or English so distorted it sounded like a foreign language. Dan lit the cricket’s eyes and puffed. He passed the bug-stick to Bob, who puffed, coughed, and passed the cricket to Jay.

“Hey, Jay,” warned Dan, “have you had a bug-stick since you smoked centipede-powder?”

“Nope. I didn’t actually smoke at all on the islands.”

“If you’ve ever smoked centipede, crickets can give you flashbacks.”

“Really?”

“You might see patterns or hear whispers,” said Dan. “It freaked me out the first time. It’s harmless, but I wanted to make sure you knew.”

Bob grinned like he was meeting celebrities. “Wow. You’ve both smoked centipede? What’s it like?”

Jay distracted Bob by blowing smoke-rings. He passed him back the bug-stick. “Look, Dan, they’re playing LuLu’s.” On the TV, multicolored robots bounded through space.

Bob puffed again and coughed again and passed the bug-stick to Dan. “What’s this show? I like the spaceships.”

“LuLu’s Space-Time Acceleration,” said Dan before he puffed. “It’s an anime about giant robots.” The show began with a recap of prior episodes. “I think this is the last episode they ever animated, because the manga went on hiatus.”

“It’s in Japanese,” said Bob. Without puffing, he passed the bug-stick from Dan to Jay.

“Probably for the best.” Jay finished off the cricket. “The dubs were awful.”

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(A chapter of Akayama DanJay.)

---

Dan bit his nails pacing in the empty airport lobby. Each time he turned about-face, he checked the chart of arrivals and departures on the opposite wall. Jay’s flight filtered to the top as his plane approached. “How much longer, Dainty?” Faith stretched across four seats, threading herself under three armrests. She wore a heavy white sweater, since the clouds looked like rain. “Why’d we come so early?”

“He’ll be here soon.” Through a window over the runways, Dan scanned the misty morning sky for the shape of an airplane. The landing-strips were frosted and dewy.  “I wanted to beat traffic.”

“It’ll be rush-hour on the way back,” said Faith. “Maybe I should drive us home so you don’t have to worry?”

“I can drive us home.”

“Are you sure?” Faith now crawled over the armrests. “You bite your fingertips when you’re anxious, Dainty. If you have to drive in traffic, you’ll bleed all over the steering-wheel!”

Hearing her say that made Dan anxious, but he resisted biting his fingertips and proving her right. “I’m not anxious about traffic.”

“Oh.” Faith collected herself in one seat. She crossed her ankles and clasped her hands in her sweater’s pocket. “I miss Beatrice too, Dan. She was my girlfriend. You know BeatBax’d tell us it’s all gonna be okay.”

“I don’t want to talk about it.” Before he could stop himself, Dan found his index-fingertip between his lips.

“Well, can I get you something for breakfast?”

Dan checked restaurants up and down the airport corridor. “Nothing here appeals to me.”

“Chips? Gum?”

“No, no.” Dan sighed and looked out a window over the streets of Burbank. “A cinnamon-bun sounds good.”

“Oh? Where are they? I’ll buy three, so you, JayJay, and I can share!”

Dan pointed out the window. Across the street, a diner advertised bronze cinnamon-buns dripping with silvery icing. “Let me give you some cash.”

“Don’t worry, they’re on me!” Faith pranced to the escalators. “If JayJay gets back before I do, tell him I missed him, okay?”

As soon as she left, Dan bit a fingernail. He tore more than the white crescent, revealing magenta underneath. He rubbed it to salt the wound. If Faith saw the nail, she’d throw a fit. Well, no, but she’d coo sympathetically, and wasn’t that far worse? Dan jogged to an airport convenience-store and bought himself black gloves. He didn’t wear them right away—he sat near Jay’s terminal and ate all the skin around his nails. When Jay’s plane broke through the clouds, Dan donned the gloves to hide his hands. Jay was among the first to disembark. Dan waved. “Jay! Jay!”

“Dan! Oran dora!“

“How was the flight?”

“I survived.” The two hugged. “Is Faith here? Virgil Jango Skyy shared a story I’ve got to tell her about.”

“She’s buying breakfast. She told me to say she missed you.”

“If I had a cellphone signal, I would’ve called you every hour, Dan. You’re always telling me how pop-culture appropriates religions, right? For LuLu’s, Tatsu picked Sheridan clean!” Jay showed Dan his camera’s screen. “Look, three islands: a small sandy one, a middling piney one, and a big mountainous one where centipedes come from! On the second island these masked dancers lead to this circle of monks. They walk, they chant—it’s like the Kaaba, but there’s a bird in the middle! That’s why my framing is wonky: there are giant birds everywhere, and Sheridanians are super emphatic about not photographing them. Here, this statue is actual-size, maybe even a little small.”

“Whoa.” Dan compared the bird-statue to pines in the background. “They must be eight feet tall.”

“Yep. The statue represents the Biggest Bird, a local folk hero even taller than that. It’s not coddling a toddler, that’s supposed to be a grown man! It’s just not-to-scale. Doesn’t it look like Professor Akayama after Uzumaki made her a bird-thing?” Jay skipped to a photo of Virgil Jango Skyy with Virgil Blue in the background. “I’ve never seen anywhere like Sheridan, Dan. You’ve got to go.”

Dan tried to press camera-buttons, but his black gloves were too bulky. “Maybe I can write my thesis on Sheridan. I’ll run it by my advisers.”

“Here, I got you a souvenir.” Jay gave him the orange plush fledgling. “I got one for Faith, too, and I bought some nice seashells, but they’re being shipped. Where’s she buying breakfast?”

“She’s bringing buns from across the street.” Dan led Jay to the window overlooking the diner. “There she is.”

“She looks happy as she’s ever been,” said Jay. Faith bounced on her toes waiting at the crosswalk with a bag of buns. “How about you, Dan? Are you feeling okay?”

“Oh, you know.” Dan sucked a gloved finger. “Not great.”

Jay nodded in sympathy. “Well, nothing can get any worse long as you’ve got each other to help keep yourselves together.”

As Faith crossed the street, she saw Dan and Jay at the window and waved at them. “Hey! JayJay!” A speeding bus ran the red light and almost hit her head-on. Faith leapt to safety with a yelp. When her adrenaline wore off, she laughed and finished crossing the street. Then she was struck by a lone lightning-bolt, as if it was aimed at her specifically. She left only a scorch on the sidewalk.

Jay found himself instantly and totally disengaged from reality, incapable of anything other than self-analysis and attempts to describe and understand his own mental state at that moment. He felt like he was watching his life from thousands and thousands of miles away. Dan ran to airport-security as if the NSA could undo the last few moments, but Jay just raised his trembling hands to count his fingers: ten.

—

Because Beatrice died so recently, and the lightning cremated Faith so thoroughly, their wakes were held together on the same day. Their urns were arranged on a lawn by a lazy river: Beatrice’s urn was creamy and marbled, while Faith’s urn was matte-white. Jay left the white plush fledgling before Faith’s urn, then did his best consoling friends and family, but he didn’t recognize half the mourners. He knew Faith’s uncle by the tinfoil under his fedora, and he heard Dan’s persistent sobbing, but Faith had made lots of friends in art-classes, and Beatrice had tons of connections from nursing-school. “I’m sorry for your loss,” Jay said to Uncle Featherway.

“You’re Faith’s friend, right?” He adjusted his tinfoil fedora to protect himself from whatever Jay was thinking. “Do you know what happens when you die?”

“Um.” Jay looked at the urns. “What do you think?”

Uncle Featherway vigorously pointed skyward like he was always waiting for someone to ask him that. “Aliens made humans to mine gold. When we die, we’re reincarnated to keep mining. At the end of time the aliens will collect our gold, and everyone loyal to them will board their spaceship.”

“Wow. Does the tinfoil keep aliens from reincarnating you?”

“The tinfoil is for different aliens. The mind-readers have battled the gold-miners for eons.”

“I see.” Jay could only indulge tinfoil-hat theories for so long, even out of consolation. Still, he wondered if Uncle Featherway could corroborate his first ever interview with his niece. “Faith once told me you attended a lecture by monks at Sheridan Cliff-Side College. Before you leave for Wyoming, could I ask you about Virgil Blue?”

“Sure! Best lecture of my life,” said Uncle Featherway. “Virgil Blue didn’t say anything, though.”

“I want to hear your impression anyway. When are you free?”

“After the wake I’ll be waiting for my train in the sports-bar across the street. Hey, is that your friend over there? He’s pretty beat-up.”

“Oh. Excuse me.” Jay walked to Dan and pat his shoulder. While Jay wore a dark purple suit and tie, fitting for a funeral, Dan hadn’t found the strength to change out of his favorite old orange T-shirt. “Dan, have you eaten today?”

Dan absorbed his tears with his black gloves. “I haven’t eaten since Faith died.”

“Let’s try eating, then. I’ll pay.”

Dan turned to the urns. They were framed by the river, which Jay thought was a fitting metaphor for impermanence. Dan concentrated on the scene like he could freeze it forever in his memory. Finally they left the wake. “Where should we go?”

“There’s a sports-bar across the street,” said Jay. “It’ll have the essentials.”

There was a college football-game on, so the pub was crowded and loud. Dan and Jay could talk near the end of the bar and no one would hear or listen in. Dan declined to order anything, so Jay flagged the bartender’s attention to order a tuna-sandwich for him and water for himself. Dan picked crumbs from the bread until he built enough momentum to take a bite. Soon he discovered he was ravenous and finished the sandwich, so Jay bought him another. “Thanks,” said Dan. “Jay, you’ve put up with me for years now. Just… thanks.”

“Knowing you has been a pleasure,” said Jay. “I know Beatrice and Faith would say the same. Faith always giggled when you tried impressing Beatrice with Bible quotes.”

“I killed them.” Dan chewed his second sandwich. Jay didn’t know what to say. “Both of them are dead because of me.”

“What do you mean?”

“You know, I’m just so…” Dan put down the sandwich. “Can I order a drink?”

“Did you drive here?”

“I walked.” Jay ordered Dan a pint of stout off tap. Maybe it would help him vent. “When you smoked centipede in my apartment, Beatrice left because of me.” Dan drank half the pint the moment it was put before him. The stout was thick brown mud, but its head was foamy white cream. “I made her shake my hand and she couldn’t stand me anymore. She pretended she was called by the hospital, and she left in such a hurry she didn’t see the bus.”

“Dan, even if that were true, it wouldn’t be your fault.”

“And that’s assuming she didn’t throw herself under the bus to get away from me for good.”

“I can’t imagine she did.”

“And Faith—oh, poor Faith—“

“Faith was struck by lightning, Dan. That’s no one’s fault.”

“I looked so pitiful she offered to get breakfast, and then I asked for cinnamon buns from across the street. I basically stabbed her in the back.”

“You can’t blame yourself for acts of God.”

“That’s where we disagree.” Dan sipped more of his pint and finished his second sandwich. “I killed my dad, too.”

“I’m sure you didn’t, but I’m listening.” The wake left Jay in a listening mood, and stout loosened Dan’s tongue.

“I don’t talk a lot about my parents, do I?” Jay shook his head. “Tell me about your dad first, then,” said Dan. “That way I can’t back down.”

Jay relinquished a personal tidbit. “When he’s wearing a business-suit, my dad usually wears a t-shirt he got from a folk-music concert. It said ‘Born in Alabama, raised in Tennessee, if you don’t like my peaches, don’t shake my tree.’ He wasn’t born or raised in either of those places, but he’s been everywhere, and the phrase sounds like a cultural concept anyone can relate to, I think.”

Dan nodded into his half-full pint. Jay had shaken the tree, and now peaches were tumbling down. “My parents divorced when I was ten. My mom always told me she left my dad because of his unhealthy obsession with his job as a professor of Religious-Studies. She was a psychiatrist, so I guess she knew what she was talking about.” Dan had started talking continuously like Virgil Jango Skyy, as if this was a lecture he’d brewed internally for a long, long time. “Every year, for visitation, Mom would drop me off at his university for just a few hours. I’d climb all the way up to his office and he’d give me a book. The last time I saw him alive, he asked how I enjoyed Dante’s Inferno, and I said it was the best book he ever gave me, so he gave me the Purgatorio and the Paradiso. I was surprised; he’d never given me two books at once. Seeing my expression, he asked if I had any questions. I asked, ‘what happens to Dante’s guide, Virgil? I hope he was only put in Hell to lead Dante to God, and he’ll be admitted into Heaven at the end.’

“But he said, ‘I’m afraid the Virtuous Pagans are in Hell forever. They’ll never join the saints in passing through that final wall of fire into Heaven. But, on Hell’s outer rim, their only punishment is distance from God’s light, which they never even knew in life. So they’re free! Wouldn’t you rather spend eternity with those rejected scholars than the stuck-up prudes in Heaven? Remember, Dante’s Hell is self-inflicted: the condemned condemn themselves.’ “

“Hmm.” Jay leaned back on his bar-stool. “Hell’s outer rim doesn’t sound so bad, but I like your way better, where scholars go to Hell on purpose to bust people out.”

“Me too. So I—” Dan paused when the bartender topped off Jay’s water. “I asked him for more book-recommendations. Suddenly his face went pale and his hands shook. ‘I’m sorry, son. I’ve really robbed you,’ he said. ‘I hardly interact with you at all except through academic literary discussions.’ I said that was okay, because it got me great grades in English, and I wanted to study religion in college anyway, like him. ‘But there’s so much more to life than reading books professors give you.’ So I asked him to… to give me books as a dad instead. ‘That’s difficult,’ he said, ‘because to me, every book is about religion.’ He gave me almost half the books on his shelves, one by one, outlining his whole worldview every step of the way. When he was done, he thoroughly traumatized every word into me by jumping out the window. I watched him die.”

“Oh. Holy shit.” Jay ordered Dan a third tuna-sandwich. “I’m so sorry. I had no idea.”

Dan downed the last of his pint all at once. “It’s okay,” he lied.

But Jay wanted details, and it sounded like Dan cut off his lecture prematurely. He pulled out his notepad and pen. “Which books? What worldview? I mean, if you don’t mind discussing it.”

“Um.” Dan bit his third sandwich, but suddenly lost his appetite. “I’m hesitant to tell you. If it kills you, that’d be on me.”

“Take your best shot, Dan.” Jay dated a fresh page. “I’ll die when I’m ready.”

“Well, his worldview could be called ‘Pitying Fig-Makers,’ I guess.” Jay wrote that with a question-mark next to it. “First he handed me some sci-fi based on Dante’s Inferno. ‘Dante called out corrupt politicians and religious leaders with the language of his day,’ he said, ‘confronting them with the doctrine they claimed to represent. This sci-fi book modernized that concept so today’s readers can understand and appreciate it, and it almost won a Hugo and a Nebula, so it obviously succeeded in reaching people. All literature is written by people,’ he said, ‘and anyone can write anything about anything, and then anyone can interpret it in any way. No one needs permission. No one has authority. Fundamentally there’s no difference in legitimacy between this sci-fi novel based on Dante’s Inferno, the real Inferno, the Bible, the Koran, or a pile of leaves.’ “

Jay documented the sci-fi in his notepad. “So your father was an atheist?”

“Not quite. He didn’t think atheists went nearly far enough, because deep in the abyss you loop back around to seeing the face of God inside you. It’s not atheism, it’s not theism. It’s transtheism.”

“…Trans—“

“I asked him, if there was no legitimate authoritative text, then how could anyone know what to believe? ‘There’s no such thing as believing,’ he said. ‘Consciousness is neurological background radiation from which reality bubbles like particles and antiparticles—and even that’s giving us too much credit!’ He passed me two biology textbooks—Lamarck and Darwin—and two physics textbooks—Newton and Einstein. ‘Hundreds of years ago, science didn’t look like it does now. Hundreds of years hence, science will advance beyond our recognition—in fact, the purpose of science is its own replacement, and claiming otherwise demotes it to supernatural superstition. Consider Dalton’s hubris in naming atoms ‘that which cannot be split,’ as if he’d found reality’s rock-bottom! Even the formal logic of mathematics has been reinterpreted again and again.’ He gave me Euclid’s Elements and a textbook of non-Euclidean geometry spitting on it. ‘All truth,’ he said, ‘will eventually be considered naive and flawed in the face of another, better truth, which will itself be swept away. Clinging to any truth is being trapped in a religion, hiding the complexity of reality behind the simplicity of a bible, perhaps without even noticing, but probably noticing and denying it. Alternatively, accepting the impermanence of all truths reveals religion to be a great and complicated tool, a tool with many names: gods, governments, sciences, philosophies, histories, ancestries, morals, economies, laws, and so on. They intersect and they overlap, many limbs of one constantly shape-shifting Swiss army-knife. Humans evolved over billions of years, and metaphors evolved alongside. An atheist rejecting metaphors is ripping out their own organs because they don’t understand them, just like a theist discards their God’s creation when they deny science.’ “

Jay tapped his pen on the bar. “So governments, sciences, sexes, and so on, your father describes them the same way an atheist describes God? Not actually real in an absolute objective sense, but impacting the world through mutual delusion?”

“Deeper, Jay. It’s only a delusion if you haven’t caught on to what’s really happening. You and I are religions for our cells. Cells are religions for their subatomic particles. Every God is as real as you and me—that’s just not saying very much! When Descartes says ‘I think therefore I am,’ he’s using the same circular reasoning as a fool who knows God exists because they hear Him in their head. I asked my dad, what’s the tool for? He gave me a pile of history books and a pile of anthropology books, and told me ‘cultures are enclosed by semipermeable membranes. Within a culture there are simple rules, like, wear this funny mask, or, don’t eat these foods.’ “

“Or, don’t take pictures of birds?” asked Jay. “Or, use these preferred pronouns? Low-ball asshole-detectors?”

“Exactly. ‘Someone who can’t even follow the simple rules can’t be expected to follow more important rules, like, don’t murder or rape anyone,’ he said. ‘The wise know all these rules are artificially constructed, but usually follow the simple ones anyway for the sake of the important ones. But different cultures have different rules, so life is terrible! War! Slavery! Torture! Genocide! The important rules are broken by the fig-makers, those who mistake the window-dressing of simple rules for more than it is—or, worse, those who pretend to make that mistake for personal benefit, reinterpreting rules or even inventing new rules just to claim they’ve been wronged. Religions are written to create and protect cultures, then stolen and perverted to loot cultures to death, even the culture of origin. Fig-makers assign themselves and everyone around them to suffer everlastingly just to justify their own actions. This is ongoing, never-ending, and nightmarish.’ “

Jay puzzled with his pen on his lip. “Fig-makers? Making figs?”

“An ancient Italian way to flip the bird.” Dan made fists with the tips of his thumbs stuck between his index and middle fingers. When his thumbs wiggled, they looked like worms poking out of the dirt. Jay wondered if the figs were meant to be diminutively phallic. “Dante said the damned made figs at God for the torment they ultimately chose for themselves with the free will God gave them. My dad said these fig-makers walked among the living, perpetually surrendering free will to blame anything available for their own decisions and the resulting consequences. They probably won’t say they’re making figs at God—they might even say God’s on their side, or there is no God—but when they condemn themselves, they give God-like status to whatever they claim condemned them.”

“Hmm. Like…” Jay bobbed his head left and right as he wrangled ideas together. “Plenty of religions have important God-given rules about not setting people on fire. But if a preacher declares their neighbor a witch working for Satan, then the preacher could justify doing anything to that neighbor, even if they secretly knew they made it all up.”

“Yeah, and in doing so, the preacher surrenders their God’s power to the idea of Satan and the witch, so when they burn them at the stake, that’s making figs. It won’t solve the preacher’s problems—it might make them worse!—so they’ll keep finding more witches to blame.”

” ‘Those witches made me do it!’ ” said Jay. He thought he sounded a little like Lio. “Just give someone the demonic ability to shrink your wiener with black magic and you can make all the figs you want. Lots of folks have been lynched like that.”

“Um. Sure.” Dan covered his face with his black gloves. “I considered mentioning that, actually. Sorceresses in the Congo have enough power to shrink penises, but not enough power to avoid lynchings.” He smiled uneasily. “I guess I didn’t think I was the one of us to mention black magic.” Jay breathed through his teeth. “Sorry,” said Dan.

“Don’t—” Jay put his palm on his forehead. “Dan, Sheridan is covered in colorful flowers. Native Sheridanians have all different skin-colors. The monks wear different-colored robes, too. In LuLu’s, Zephyrs come in every color possible, and their crews wear matching bodysuits. Why?”

“I don’t know. Why?”

“So you can tell them apart.” Jay flipped his notepad to another fresh page. “Keep talking about fig-makers, Dan.”

“Anyway, I asked my dad, if life is this never-ending nightmare, what do we do about it? ‘Wake up and play the game!’ he said. ‘Steal Gods back from fig-makers by making a new God which wears their Gods like hand-puppets, and use it for the benefit of all because that’s what Gods are for. This God will be stolen, too, for fig-makers to use in malice, but that’s okay, because you can always make another, even reusing old names. If there’s a real God, it’s the loving emptiness behind the window-dressing, to whom all human conventions appear futile and transient. We can put God in any costume, because the real God wears us as costumes.’ “

Jay scribbled notes, trying to understand. “Trying to convince the preacher they’re wrong about witches is a waste of time. They probably don’t believe their own excuse for burning their neighbor at the stake. Your father says we can protect that neighbor by introducing new belief-systems, like telling the preacher ‘witches would be a lot nicer if they weren’t being set on fire all the time,’ or ‘maybe you’re a witch, too, and if you’re not, well, maybe you should be.’ “

“Or, if need be, by taking direct action ourselves,” said Dan. “He gave me a copy of the Bhagavad Gita to show how the wise might even appear to break their own important rules, like by fighting in a truly righteous war. I told you about the Bhagavad Gita once, right? When you went to Nepal?” Jay nodded. “Arjuna couldn’t engage in combat until he saw Krishna’s true shape for himself. He needed deep understanding of the ultimate reality before he could resort to violence. That just didn’t make sense to me. Could a loving God really be used to justify any war as righteous? Wasn’t that twisting morality like the fig-makers? My dad said I was right to be concerned: anyone opposing fig-makers had to avoid becoming a fig-maker themselves. But then he flipped through a picture-book of deities with bulging eyes, shaking fists, and gaping maws of pointed teeth. ‘All these are avatars from Gods of compassion, protection, and pure love,’ he said. ‘Do they look that way to you?’

” ‘No,’ I said! ‘They look angry as all Hell.’ ” Dan quivered a little just thinking about them. 

” ‘Precisely!’ said my dad. ‘When a mother sees her toddler sticking a fork in an electrical socket, she might look angry! Wrathful! Hateful! The toddler might fool themselves into believing mother’s judgement is what’s electrocuting them, but truly her appearance comes from love’s desire to protect the ignorant from themselves. A fig-maker feigning ignorance to take advantage of God’s love will watch it morph to protect them in these furious manners, because feigned ignorance is ignorance. Satan is just another great and complicated tool to show such love in so many ways.’ “

“In movies you might smack someone to wake them up or calm them down.” Jay slapped the air. “It’s for the best, even if it looks pretty bad.”

Dan nodded. “Next he handed me a copy of the Lotus Sutra. Have you ever heard of it?” Jay shook his head. “I hadn’t either. ‘The Buddha says most people won’t accept his ultimate teachings of emptiness and compassion, preferring teachings which promise an easy reward,’ he said, ‘so Bodhisattvas use skillful means, presenting inferior lessons within a contemporary cultural context, eventually leading to the real lessons which are beyond context. Avalokiteshvara can take any shape to share their lesson that form is emptiness and emptiness is form.’ “

“Avalokiteshvara?” Jay remembered such a name from the art-museum. “Is that Shiva on one side and Parvati on the other?”

“You’re thinking of Ardhanarishvara. Avalokiteshvara tried and failed to save all sentient beings, so they grew eleven heads and a thousand arms with eyes on their palms to perceive and end all suffering.”

Now that’s a giant anime space-robot, thought Jay. “Jesus has a couple heads, too. I’ve shown you photos of Asian Christ, Hispanic Christ, African Christ.”

“Don’t get me started on Gnosticism. Maybe Christ is one of Avalokiteshvara’s heads, or vice versa. My dad would say neither and both at once. Christ said ‘split the stick and you will find me there.’ If you can’t see Christ in Avalokiteshvara, my dad’s Christ is bigger than your Christ, and my dad wasn’t even Christian, so that’s just sad.”

“Was your father a Buddhist?”

“No, no. He was explaining the potential of all belief-structures—although he was probably a fan of Zen’s Bodhidharma, who meditated in a cave until his arms and legs fell off thinking about the emptiness of Buddhism itself. ‘Fig-makers put themselves in a made-up Hell so they can demand a made-up Heaven, possibly without even realizing how they’ve created an actual Hell for themselves and everyone around them. The wise make up Heavens and Hells to help people who need them, manifesting an actual Heaven by cultivating a proper understanding of nihilism which leads to universal benevolence. That means anything can be a lesson from God’s emptiness, even thoughts, daily interactions, and ordinary pop-culture.’ He gave me the last books he ever gave me, a pile of manga—LuLu’s Space-Time Acceleration. It was the first time I’d ever seen it.”

“No way,” said Jay. “Your father introduced you to LuLu’s?” Jay reconsidered his surprised. His own father introduced him to LuLu’s when he brought the DVD-set as a souvenir from Japan. “What was his impression of it?”

“My dad said it demonstrated his perspective. ‘In LuLu’s, Earth’s most powerful fig-makers are so egocentric they’re insulted by the existence of anything else, a self-imposed torment justifying taking the form of a cosmic horror called the Hurricane. The Hurricane eats everything and everyone it considers unworthy, becoming Hell itself. The survivors fight the Hurricane in the Galaxy Zephyr for the sake of the natural cycle of life and death with one new lesson learned, Heaven-on-Earth in comparison. The Galaxy Zephyr rips parts off the Hurricane and eats them, recycling the universe. This is wisdom versus ignorance, radical acceptance versus vanity, proper nihilism versus an imposter.’ “

“Sounds like your father detected Tatsu took LuLu’s straight from a monastery,” said Jay.

“He must’ve. He kept going on and on about it. ‘The mortals in the Galaxy Zephyr’s holy weapon, a discus called the Wheel, must have no clue about their role in what amounts to hand-to-hand combat between Heaven and Hell,’ he said. ‘If it were explained to them, I suspect they’d reject the concept outright. If they knew their purpose, they couldn’t serve it! But, because the Galaxy Zephyr wisely fights for all aspects of reality, including the grotesque portions like the Hurricane, the slice-of-life in the Wheel must be reenacting the giant space-robot combat in miniature. As above, so below! The manga demands readers join the fight against the Hurricane in their everyday lives by making them reconsider the relationship between the cosmic and the mundane.’ “

“Maybe you can explain this to me better than Virgil Jango Skyy,” said Jay. “Why does the Galaxy Zephyr need to save the Hurricane’s pilots? They’re not just fig-makers—they ate the universe and blew up Earth!”

“My dad compared it to metta-meditation,” said Dan. ” ‘First the Galaxy Zephyr’s crew-members fight for themselves and each other,’ he said. ‘Then Akayama collected the golden-winged Zephyr because it’s worth fighting for and it was ready to join the fight. To defeat the Hurricane once and for all, the Galaxy Zephyr must eventually account for fig-makers who are difficult to feel compassion for, and who rebuke compassion when they get it.’ “

“Hm.” Jay spun his pen. “So somewhere in the slice-of-life, there’s the most despicable side-character imaginable, and the Galaxy Zephyr has to find a way to love it.”

“Love to hate, maybe. ‘And,’ said my dad, ‘saving the pilots of the Hurricane will give the Zephyrs moral license to defeat the Hurricane itself by proving its fig-making was unwarranted. The world we live in is a terrifying place, and to redeem it, we must allow ourselves to be terrifying too. We defeat the Hurricane by recognizing the Hurricane within us, a Jungian brand of enlightenment. We are multilayered sieves, stealing bad Gods, processing them, elevating them into good Gods.’ “

Jay wrote all that down. “That’s one heck of a worldview.”

“Yeah, I couldn’t fit all his books in my backpack. I had to carry half of them in my arms. ‘Wow, Dad, thanks for all these!’

“He just looked out over the campus quad. ‘Dan, before you read the Purgatorio, you should know Dante’s Virgil has another layer of frustration. His Aeneid saved a soul from Hell, but he’s still barred from Heaven. In justifying Alighieri’s Almighty, I can only suggest transporting souls to salvation would be more important to Virgil than Heaven. To grease divine mechanisms would be his utilitarian delight. Every aspect of Hell is necessary to maintain Dante’s scheme, even the woods of suicides. So thank you for visiting me, because teaching you is the only resolution I could hope for in this life. I know I’ve given you the tools to recover from what I’m about to do.’ Then he jumped out the window. His body broke branches and he splattered across the quad. He died in an ambulance on the way to the hospital.”

Jay capped his pen. “Dan, thank you for telling me all this. I knew your father died just before we met, but I never knew he committed suicide like that.” He bought Dan a second pint, and a pint for himself. They both needed it. “You didn’t kill him, though.”

“Recommending books was the only thing keeping him alive.” Dan drank a little stout. “I sucked that from him like a vampire.”

Jay thought a Sheridanian might see it differently. Dan’s father offloaded his worms onto his kid. “When I went to Wales, you told me about the sin-eaters. You’re a sin-eater, Dan, and apparently a good one.” He wondered if Dan’s father had ever smoked centipede or if his mental-health issues were home-grown. He sipped his stout’s white cream. “You were the best aspect of life for someone obviously struggling.”

Dan started eating his third sandwich again. “He was showing me how to die.” Jay shook his head in remorse. “How not to die, I mean.” Jay sighed with relief. “Christ knew he would be crucified, and went to Jerusalem anyway. In a previous life, the Buddha let hungry tigers eat his corpse. Christ and the Buddha would tell you not to kill yourself, but they get away with it because of the depth of their understanding. To join them, it’s gotta be either martyrdom or seppuku.” Dan had eaten most of his third sandwich like a hungry tiger, but now lost his appetite. “Anyway, you can see why high-school was difficult that year. This one time…” Dan put the sandwich down. “I gotta pee. I’ll be back.”

Next
Back

(A chapter of Akayama DanJay.)

---

The fourth loop up around the island took half an hour. The fifth loop up took half that, and the sixth loop up took half that. By the light of the lantern and the full moon, Jay hiked safely even as the trail hugged a steep drop on one side and a sheer cliff-face on the other. Uneven steps were carved into slick rocks lodged in the mountainside. Jay panted up such a flight to find it was the last, and now he had to hoist himself over the boulders unaided. He encountered the river for a final time as it flowed from its source-spring. There was no bridge, so he removed his shoes and socks to ford the current. He met no birds as he hiked. He still saw woven nests, but each nest held at most two porcelain eggs. Each egg here wore painted lacework marking former matriarchs of Virgil Green’s congregation. Jay took photos of each nest and bowed his head out of respect.

When a stone ledge blocked him, Jay hoisted up the lantern and the box of pastries and climbed to them on his hands and knees. Finally he found a wide, paved path to the white-walled monastery. Jay lay on cool flagstones and snuffed his lantern to conserve oil. Fireflies would light his way.

“Hey. Hey!” Jay sat up. Lio stood below the ledge and raised his backpack. Jay wondered how many scrapes he’d endured refusing to remove his sunglasses, as if the moon was too bright. Lio shook his backpack at him. “Take it!”

“I’m not gonna carry your backpack for you.”

“You’re not carrying it for me. Just take it!”

Jay sighed and hefted Lio’s backpack onto the ledge. “Did you have trouble hiking in the dark?”

Lio tossed a glowing jar. Jay, already holding Lio’s backpack, barely caught the jar before it hit the ground. “Hey, careful with that!” Lio kicked the ledge as he struggled climbing to Jay. “Lilly caught ’em for me.”

The jar was filled with fireflies. They flapped madly against the glass, struggling for air and signaling for help with their taillights. Half had already died. “Need a hand?” asked Jay. “Or two?”

“I got it,” Lio wheezed. Sweat dripped down his face. “I got it. I got it.” He finally pulled himself onto the ledge. “See? All on my own.”

“Hmm.” Jay returned Lio’s backpack he’d lifted on his behalf. When Lio took it, Jay had a hand free to retrieve his lantern.

Lio smirked. “You needed to borrow a lantern, huh?” He smacked Jay on the back.

Jay pretended the smack made him stumble and he smashed Lio’s jar of fireflies on rocks beside the path. The survivors escaped, flashing thank-yous. “Whoops.”

“Ah, fuck! Typical monkeying around.” Lio slung his backpack over his shoulders and started toward the monastery. “You owe me for that.”

“I’ll be sure to apologize to Lilly.” Jay picked up his sugar-powdered pastries and walked the path. The white-walled monastery was close enough to count candles in its windows. “I can’t imagine you followed me here to visit the monastery, did you?”

Lio scanned the island all the way to the cloudy peak. “You didn’t seriously pay two hundred bucks for a tour just to come all this way and meet some bums in a nursing home.”

“Did you seriously come all this way to smuggle some bugs?”

Lio looked over each shoulder, checking for surveillance, as if Jay was some lucky secret viewer. He pulled his backpack to one shoulder and unzipped it. He carried nothing but glass jars. Half were packed with bug-sticks. The rest were empty. “I know a bug-smuggler when I see one. Don’t pretend you’re really here to fuck with monks!”

“I’m really here to fuck with monks,” said Jay. Lio scoffed. “If you want centipede, maybe you should join me. Only Virgil Blue can properly prepare them.” Lio sniggered and smiled just to show his teeth. “I’ve heard, improperly prepared, the high is like being sliced by searing knives, or crawling through hot barbed wire.”

“You said you weren’t religious.”

Jay shrugged. “I’ve smoked centipede Virgil Blue prepared, and it’s not an experience I’d really recommend.”

“Yeah, I’ve smoked ’em too, and you’re right, they’re not worth the hype—it’s like being eaten alive! But because of the hype, the thick ones sell for a thousand bucks a pop. If you collect some I’ll forgive your debt. You still owe me a favor for finding your passport, and for breaking my jar.”

The pair approached the monastery door. The white walls were tiled with thousands of sand-dollars. “I can’t believe you dragged your family along, just to pretend they dragged you.”

“That’s not the only reason,” said Lio. “My dad’s rich. Gotta show Lilly the ropes of running a business. I’m tryin’ to show you the ropes, too, but you don’t wanna learn to do a man’s work.”

“Bleh.” Jay photographed the monastery sans flash—the candlelight was perfect. “Maybe the Virgils could teach you to grow your own crickets so you can quit wasting time and money smuggling. You’d save on family-therapy, too, but I suspect not much.”

“Don’t tell me how to do my job!” Lio’s face was reddening like a Hurricane Planet.

“Sure, sure.” Jay felt no obligation to help Lio, but would’ve felt wrong leaving him up here alone in the night. “When I’m done with the monastery, I’ll relight my lantern. You’ll see it if you don’t go too far. Then I’ll lead you through the dark back to the inn.”

“I didn’t ask for your help!”

“I didn’t ask you to teach me a man’s work, but here we are. We’re both doing favors tonight. Maybe I should teach you to be a little more than just a man.”

Lio pushed Jay, but Jay didn’t even lean away. “I wanna teach you to be a real man. Compared to me, you’re no man at all!”

Jay just laughed. “Okay, okay, you caught me! I’m a giant goddamn anime space-robot bigger than the fucking universe, and I don’t fit in your stupid crab bucket!”

“Oh. You’re one of those, huh?” Jay didn’t ask what Lio meant, because Lio himself didn’t seem to know either. “If you’re a man, I’m an attack-helicopter. What’s in your pants?”

“Another, bigger space-robot, waiting to surprise you!”

“Ugh! You ‘people’ are all the same.”

Jay narrowed his eyes. He heard Lio’s quote-unquote. He couldn’t resist throwing fuel on the fire. “I wish I could help you, but the help you need, you’d call an insult.”

Lio shoved Jay against the monastery wall. Jay wasn’t restrained by Lio’s arms so much as his belly. He guessed Lio weighed at least 350 pounds. It was frankly impressive his hubris alone had carried him all the way up here. “I know you came here to pick centipedes. If I don’t get those centipedes, well, I’m sure those egg-heads will understand what I had to do to protect their precious culture from you thugs!”

Jay was honestly confused by Lio’s convoluted threat, and by the implication he was somehow multiple thugs at once. “What will you have to do to me?”

Lio reached into his Hawaiian shirt’s breast pocket and pulled out a fucking knife. Jay’s heart beat like a drum. “Betcha wonder how I got this, huh?” Jay didn’t really care. The knife’s hilt was a cool-looking dragon which Jay might’ve appreciated under less dire circumstances. “It’s made of glass, so it’s a cinch to sneak onto airplanes. Betcha wish you’d thought of that, huh?” Jay squirmed. “What’s the matter? Why are you acting so scared? I’m just showing you the cool knife I’ll let you pick centipedes with!”

Lio’s bizarre mindset snapped something in Jay. He wasn’t sure where this confidence came from, but he felt like he’d seen death before and would gladly face it again before he played by Lio’s rules. “Martyr me, motherfucker!” Jay spat on Lio’s face. “I’ll show you how a free man dies!”

“You—You’re threatening me! You’re making me do this to protect myself!” Lio jabbed the knife at Jay, pivoting to avoid stabbing his own stomach. The pivot gave Jay room to wriggle, so Lio snapped his knife against the monastery wall. It was even more fragile than Jay expected from a glass mall-knife. “Hey! You broke my knife! Apologize!”

Jay could hardly breathe under Lio’s flab. “Fuck off!”

“Apologize or I’ll beat the worms out of you like an egg-headed bird-worshipper, and chuck your corpse in the river!“

“I wouldn’t waste fear on a scrawny punk like you!”

Lio threw a punch. He telegraphed the strike early enough for Jay to lean just a little left. Lio’s fist cracked open on the monastery wall. “Aaugh!” He backed up, releasing Jay, shaking his bloody broken fist. His fingers were busted and misaligned. Shards of sand-dollar were lodged between his knuckles like shattered teeth. “You broke my hand! You did this to me on purpose! You—You’re forcing me to pick centipedes for you!“

“Leave, Lio! Go back to the inn!” Jay’s heart beat faster than it ever had before. “No one on our tour will care to help you, because they’ve met you before, but maybe the innkeepers will bandage you up to keep your blood off their floor!”

Lio swore and wiped Jay’s spit from his face. “Of course you tell me to go to the egg-heads.” Jay didn’t respond, because he knew Lio would go on anyway. “The waitress gave you both platters, and I had to get one for myself. The monks let you take pictures of birds, and I got death-threats. No one here understands me! You don’t even try!”

“Maybe we’d try if you were a little nicer, or somewhat sensible,” said Jay.

“See? You egg-heads are nothing but feelings,” Lio whined, “but I’m nothing but logic. You can’t handle logic, so you cancel me.”

“And… being canceled hurts your feelings?” Jay shrugged. “I can understand you on that.”

“I don’t have feelings, just logic!” shouted Lio. “I’ll get you your centipedes, you tyrant.” He walked off the path, toward the centipede-bushes, cradling his broken fist. He stumbled on a rock and finally deigned to remove his sunglasses, which he hooked on the neck of his Hawaiian shirt. Still he struggled in the night. “You broke my firefly-jar! How can I find centipede-bushes for you in the dark like this?”

“Your daughter caught fireflies all on her own. Ask her to teach you, unless you’d feel emasculated. And for her sake, and Eva’s, don’t climb above the clouds. Michael told me—“

“Michael told me, Michael told me!” mimicked Lio. “Go ahead. Blow some monks! You’ll distract them for me. I’m stashing centipedes up your seashells, too.” He swiped an open jar over fireflies. When he caught none, he swore with language too colorful to print.

“Call me what you want,” muttered Jay. Lio continued to do so until his voice faded in the distance.

Finally alone, Jay wiped Lio’s blood off the monastery’s front wall with a sock from his backpack. Then he knocked on the heavy wooden gate. While his heart-rate settled, Jay realized he’d been right to introduce himself as Jadie. The fake name kept ephemeral armor around him, like he wore saran wrap. Lio didn’t even believe Jay was his real name. He knocked again and capped his camera. He wondered if he’d have the chance to photograph the monastery in daylight. Up close, the candles made the walls of sand-dollars look like scrutinizing eyes. Jay knocked a third time, vowing if no answer came, he would leave the monks alone.

Footsteps approached and the wooden gate popped ajar. A bald woman, about sixty years old with rosy skin and sea-foam robes, peeked through the crack. “Oran dora. [Can I help you?]”

“Oran dora.” Jay hoped he’d studied his phrasebook well enough. “[I’m Jay,]” he attempted. “[I have gifts.]”

“[We’ve already got enough sand-dollars.]” The woman’s skepticism melted when Jay showed her the box of pastries. “[Thank you! Please?]”

“[Please.]” Jay allowed her a pastry. She kept the doorway narrow. “[I also have a cricket for Virgil Jango Skyy.]”

“[Did you buy it locally?]”

“I’m sorry? [I don’t speak much.]”

The woman fought for English words. “Who gave you cricket?”

“[An American friend,]” said Jay. “Faith Featherway.”

“Faith Featherway? [You have good connections.]” The woman opened the gate. “[Come in! We’ve been expecting you.]”

Left and right, hallways of monks’ quarters were decorated with tapestries of every solid color. The hallways curved around a grassy open-air courtyard, so the monastery was shaped like a donut. The woman led Jay onto the grass, where a hundred bald and silent monks sat cross-legged under the stars. No two monks shared both the color of their skin and the color of their robes. All of them faced the back of the courtyard, where the monastery’s wings reunited and a bell-tower rose. “[You brought enough for everyone.]” The woman opened Jay’s box of pastries. “[Right?]”

Jay felt compelled to count his fingers: ten. This was real as it was surreal. He handed a pastry to each monk. Their posture remained perfect and their eyes remained closed as they reached wordlessly for their pastry and put it in their lap. The closer Jay approached the bell-tower in the back, the older the monks appeared. The last two monks wore sky-blue and navy, and while the sky-clad monk was doubtlessly the oldest man Jay had ever seen, with aged leathery hide, the monk in navy had a heavy hood and a silver mask, so Jay had no clue of their age, gender, or even skin-color. That navy monk sat in a woven nest like those commemorating birds along the trail, warming porcelain eggs nestled around.

Jay held a sugar-powdered pastry for the sky-clad monk. He bopped Jay’s hand from below to toss the pastry in the air. He caught it in his mouth without even looking, giggled like a schoolboy, and opened his eyes. He had one black pupil and one moon-like cataract, large and white as the pastry had been. “Oran dora,” he whispered.

“Oran dora,” whispered Jay. He held the last pastry to the monk in navy, but they didn’t respond. Their silver mask had a beak, bulbous eyes criss-crossed like a bug’s compound lenses, and two long, silver feathers on top.

“Virgil Blue cannot sense you,” said the sky-clad monk with the cataract. “Keep your pastry. You’ve hiked hard to get here.”

“I did,” said Jay, “because I have gifts for Virgil Jango Skyy.”

“Then sit beside him.” Virgil Jango Skyy pat the grass with age-veined fingers. “You must be weary from the elevation. The air’s thicker down here where I am.”

Jay sat and unzipped his backpack. “A tour-guide named Michael gave me this letter.”

“It’s not addressed to me,” said Jango.

“I know, but I hoped you could deliver it to Michael’s nieces and nephews.” Jay pulled Faith’s envelope from his backpack. “I’m afraid this one’s not addressed to you either. My friend Faith Featherway once told me she met you, and I never completely believed her until this very instant.”

Jango admired the front of Faith’s holiday-card. He opened the card and inspected her hand-drawn fox. He turned her cricket. “Excellent wing-work.”

“Faith grew it, and our friend Dan wrapped it. Faith said she owed you a bug-stick. Is that why you expected me?”

“I expected Faith, but an ambassador with her banner will suffice. There are no coincidences! Welcome to Virgil Blue’s courtyard. Did you climb here just to give gifts?”

“I’m a photographer.” Jay showed Jango his camera. “Faith said you gave her centipede-powder in Wyoming. She shared it with me, and I had to meet the monks behind the bugs. Before I left, Faith gave me that card and cricket. I know she’d be here if not for personal circumstances.”

Jango took the camera and scrolled through photos. He had unbecoming digital-savvy for someone so old. “Wise of you to skip pictures of Virgil Green’s congregation. They’re quite protective of their matriarch.” At the next photo, Jango flinched. The reaction made Jay flinch as well, but as Jango examined more photos, he laughed and punched Jay in the shoulder. “You had me worried with the mailbox!”

“I’m sorry?”

Jango returned Jay’s camera, displaying the stone statue of a bird sheltering a toddler on a box of candles. “The mailbox. My vision isn’t what it used to be, and that’s a small screen. I thought it was a real bird.”

“Oh, no! I wouldn’t have taken photos if it were.”

“Why’s it filled with candles? I’m expecting a package.”

“Michael said it was a shrine to a bird who saved a child.”

“Eeeccht.” Jango hocked with disapproval. “Back when any-and-all bird-forgery was forbidden, Nemo, the first Virgil Blue, carved that statue to depict the Biggest Bird. Only his holy hands could craft it. That’s no child, it’s Nemo, full-grown, for scale. It’s a donation-box, but I use it as my address for incoming mail. I guess nowadays it’s a shrine to a bird who saved a child.” Jango stood, bracing himself against the bell-tower, and took a cane taller than himself leaning on the wall. The cane was like a giant wing-wrapped cricket, ten black spots around its gnarled tip. “This reminds me of a story. What’s your name, fledgling?”

“Jay.” Jay hesitated to help the old monk, because he seemed able enough on his own.

“Jay, bring me that brass incense-burner.” Jango unwrapped Faith’s cricket. Dan’s wing-work had preserved the odorous exoskeleton. Jay opened the brass burner and Jango stuck the cricket in it, butt-down. He shook one sleeve and a purple lighter fell out. He used it to light the cricket’s ten black eyes, and Jay closed the burner. “Oran doran, doran dora. Virgils and students, tonight’s closing remarks will be in English to accommodate our visitor. Enjoy your pastries! Jay brought tonight’s dessert and tonight’s bug-stick.”

The crowd looked at Jay just as he started to chew his pastry. He panicked and swallowed. “The bug-stick was wrapped by Virgil Orange,” he said, not really knowing why. The woman who opened the door smiled and waved at him.

“Jay is a photographer. Everyone say cheese!” The monks all smiled until Jay took a photo. “Jay is friends with Faith Featherway, whom I’ve met twice before: once about five or six years ago in Wyoming, once ten years prior to that quite locally.” Jay couldn’t believe this—surely Faith would’ve remembered to mention it?—but he wouldn’t interrupt. He prepared his notepad and pen as Jango lectured to the congregation. “Once, Virgil Jango Skyy was sitting beside Virgil Blue on a misty morning,” said the old monk, in the third person. “Jango stood and pat dew from his robes. ‘Virgil Blue, have you considered retirement?’ Virgil Blue said nothing. ‘You’ve said nothing for years. You’re stationary like a thorny centipede-bush. It might be time to choose a successor.’ Still, Virgil Blue said nothing. So Jango decided to take a walk. He left the monastery and stepped down steep cliffs—there were no carved steps so long ago, but Jango was spry enough to make do—and greeted birds hiking up. ‘Oran dora!‘ “

The students concurred. “Oran dora!“

“At each bridge, Jango drank from the river and bowed to Virgil Green’s island. He thanked Virgil Green for chasing snakes from Sheridan. ‘Oran dora!‘ “

“Oran dora!“

“Jango came to a stone statue of a bird shading a man with its wings. The bird and man stood on a stone box with a hinged panel. Jango bowed to it. ‘Oran dora!‘ “

Even Jay joined. “Oran dora!” The cricket in the brass burner and the repetition of foreign phrases made Jay feel a trance coming on. He stopped taking notes to count his fingers again: still ten.

“Jango sat before the statue. He saw smoke seeping from the box’s hinged panel. He said, ‘Someone lit incense in this shrine. I should sit and contemplate the Biggest Bird until the incense burns down and the smoke stops seeping.’ So Jango sat and watched smoke seep from the box. Six silent minutes passed. ‘I’d like to see the incense directly, but I’m too old and achy to open the shrine’s hinged panel. I can only hope someone comes to help me, but if no one appears, I suppose it’s not the Mountain’s whim.’ No one appeared. After some time, Jango said, ‘If one of my students would miraculously open the shrine, I would be nothing but grateful.’

“Now the box opened and a monk-boy crawled out groveling for forgiveness. He wore red robes and held a lit cricket. ‘I’m sorry, Virgil Skyy! I know monks shouldn’t smoke outside ceremonies, so I found this hidden place to indulge. I didn’t know it was a shrine! I’ve spoilt holy ground!’

” ‘Don’t worry. This is just our mailbox. You’ve delivered my first package in ages. Pass me your bug-stick.’ Jango traded the cricket for a pine-needle. ‘When I was young, but not young as you, I sought to smoke a bug-stick within the white-walled monastery. Before sunrise, I sat in the furnace so my smoke wafted up the flue. Then Virgil Blue woke to bring logs. They opened the furnace and I blew smoke right in their face, before they wore the mask. They could’ve disowned me, but instead they taught me this: when you want to smoke a bug-stick, eat a pine-needle first. This promotes moderation. Now, away!’ The monk-boy ran, chewing the pine-needle.

“When the monk-boy left, Jango put the cricket to his lips. It was almost burned to the stem, so the smoke was harsh and made Jango cough. The cough hung in the air like a cloud. The cloud snowed into a heap and the heap addressed him. ‘Jangster! It’s you!’ ” Jay couldn’t take notes quickly enough to keep up with this bizarre development. The congregation just smiled and nodded like they’d heard this story before, which only intrigued Jay further. The woman who let him into the monastery didn’t speak much English; was the congregation only pretending to understand, or had they heard the story enough times in Sheridanian to follow along?

“Jango examined the smoldering cricket-butt. ‘I’ve lost my tolerance. I’m already having visions.’

” ‘Haha, I’m real, silly!’ The heap of snow vibrated and morphed into a fox. Its tail was icy fog. ‘I’m Faith Featherway! Don’t you remember me?’

” ‘I can’t say I do, and I really think I would.’

” ‘We met in Wyoming! I told you my friend had a cat named Django? You said you owed me a bug-stick, and you taught me to smoke them? You gave me centipede-powder!’ ” Jay was impressed with Jango’s impression of Faith. The old monk sounded just like her, a fifth of his age, and the stiffness in his joints evaporated when he played her part.

” ‘I haven’t left the islands in decades. Why would I visit Wyoming? Why would I give you centipede-powder?’

” ‘You know, I meant to ask you the same questions,’ said Faith. ‘It was pretty puzzling! Here, take this.’ From behind her ear, she withdrew a cricket larger and more exquisitely wrapped than any Earthly specimen. Jango knew it came from the next eternity on the original sun. ‘The Heart of the Mountain told me to exchange it for a lesson from the Virgils.’

” ‘On this island there’s just me and Blue, and the Blue Virgil isn’t in a speaking mood.’ Jango shook a white lighter from his sleeve. ‘Allow me the honor of administering your lesson.’ Jango and Faith walked to the river and he lit the cricket for her. Without opposable thumbs, she adopted a peculiar manner of smoking, lying down to rest the cricket on her forearm. ‘As an emissary from the Mountain’s Heart, the Biggest Bird, you must be a Zephyr. Correct?’

” ‘Nah, I’m just a Will-o-Wisp,’ said Faith. ‘I’m not even sure what a Zephyr is.’

” ‘Let me tell you about the Zephyrs, then. My knowledge of Zephyrs dates back to my young adulthood, when I met Virgil Blue in Sheridan County, Kansas. My twin brother Jun Sakai and I were in our late twenties.’ Jango took the cricket and puffed it.” Jay turned to a fresh page in his notepad. He needed more space to make a timeline for this story-within-a-story.

” ‘Wait,’ said Faith, ‘Sakai? I thought your name was Skyy!’

” ‘It is! I was born Itou Sakai. Jun and I coped very differently with our nationality’s unpopularity in America: I lived with our mother in Kansas and introduced myself as Jango Skyy to take on ambiguous nationality; Jun spent most of the year in Japan with our father.’ Jango puffed again and returned the cricket to the fox.

” ‘Wow.’ Faith puffed. The white smoke she exhaled merged seamlessly with her cloudy tail. ‘That must’ve been rough!’

” ‘It was. When my father and Jun eventually moved permanently to Kansas, I knew next to nothing about my twin brother, so I tried relating to him with Japanese animation, which was popular on US TV at the time; try as I might, Jun found me only childish for this. But one day, walking with my brother through downtown, we encountered Virgil Blue lecturing on a soap-box. To everyone who would listen, they said ‘Oran dora!‘ ‘ “

“Oran dora!” Jay scribbled his drying pen to coax more writing out of it. Jango’s dialogue-within-dialogue demanded additional ink.

” ‘Virgil Blue explained how the Zephyrs exist outside the Wheel of life and death. The Zephyrs existed before the Wheel started spinning, and will continue existing even after the Wheel stops—but while the Wheel spins, we mortals must become Zephyrs ourselves to join the ongoing fight against the Hurricane, the Zephyr’s primordial egregiousness. When they dismounted their soapbox, they told me they came to Kansas because its Sheridan County is the Sheridan with the lowest elevation on Earth, and they knew some poor worms needed to hear about the Biggest Bird. I was those poor worms! The very same week, I joined Virgil Blue’s boat back to the Islands of Sheridan.’

” ‘You know,’ said Faith, ‘my friends and I have watched an anime which sounds an awful lot like you’re describing, with the Zephyrs and a Wheel and all.’

” ‘I’m getting to that,’ said Jango. ‘On the Islands of Sheridan, Virgil Blue sent me to study under Virgil Green. For many moons I danced with fledglings wearing only a wooden bird-mask and tail-feather skirt. I walked circles until my feet blistered and sat chanting until my pelvis ached. Virgil Green’s paradoxical questions pried my brain apart to show me the Biggest Bird. Winning Green’s approval, I swam to this main island. It took twelve hours. For six hours I swore I would drown, and for the other six I was drowning. When I crawled onto shore, a bird laid an egg in front of me and pierced the shell with its mate’s tail-feather. I drank the raw egg and it rejuvenated me. I hiked to the white-walled monastery in the manner of the birds, nude and sleeping in the road at night. At Virgil Blue’s monastery I earned this sky-blue robe, and I finally had the opportunity to send letters back home to Kansas. I sent my brother a letter every week for twenty years describing all I’d learned. He never responded.’

” ‘Aw. I’m sorry, Jangster!’

” ‘I didn’t mind. My attention was occupied by Virgil Blue’s library under the bell-tower there.’ Jango pointed to the bell-tower.” Jango pointed to the bell-tower. Jay felt buried in the story’s nesting. ” ‘The bell-tower holds books from around the world and from the past, present, and future. Books from the future are reserved for Virgils to annotate as their relation to the Biggest Bird becomes clear. As a monk, it was my duty to read the already-annotated books in chronological order to cultivate my understanding. After twenty years of studying texts with philosophical and religious merit, I was floored when Virgil Blue gave me the most modern texts I was allowed to read, only partly-annotated: a whole series of comic-books which looked just like a Japanese animation my brother chided so long ago. I told Virgil Blue I recognized the art, and they shook a sleeve to reveal a plastic figurine. Virgil Blue explained they’d traveled to Tokyo to meet the author while they wrote and illustrated the comic in order to gain insight for annotations. The author, seeing how Virgil Blue owned the full series before the final issues were even conceived, knew the Virgil was divine and gifted them the figurine. Virgil Blue gave it to me and insisted I pass it on to my brother.

” ‘I flew to Kansas and found my childhood home, but strangers lived there now. I visited the local post-office to learn Jun’s new address: I worried he’d returned to Japan, but he lived in a nearby motel. The motel’s owner explained Jun lived in the basement in return for janitorial duties. I knocked on his door, received no answer, and so opened it. The smell told me he wasn’t a very good janitor, but his cramped little room was filled with art! Art hanging on the walls, art taped to the ceiling, art stuffed under his dirty mattress! All of it depicted giant humanoid robots and their crews, shooting across space or leaping upon the surface of the moon. The art was sequential, divided into panels to tell a story.

” ‘Jun himself was hunched over his desk, aiming a spotlight at a pencil-sketch. He was pudgier than I had left him, and had a long, unwashed mane. He wasn’t happy to see me: when I told him I was a monk, not a Virgil, he remarked, ‘so you’re back after Mom and Dad are dead, and you’re not even enlightened yet!’ I felt so ashamed: I’d left my family behind! Trying to make up for it, I asked him how his comic was coming along. ‘Of course that’s what you ask! I knew the only way to break through to you was manga and anime.’ This caught me off-guard: Jun considered such things childish, but he apparently adopted them to communicate with me. I asked him about my favorite cartoon about combining dragon-robots fighting an alien menace.’

” ‘ ‘Daitatsu no Kagirinai Hogo. The Great Dragon’s Eternal Guardianship.’ At last Jun looked me in the eye. ‘You know, that title’s mistranslated; things are so much deeper than you realize! They probably thought the first word was dairyuu—‘ He wrote two symbols on scratch-paper: a star and a moon in a hat beside a serpent.’ ” Jay knew which characters Jango meant. He wrote them in his notepad: 大龍. ” ‘ ‘The great dragon. But actually, it was daitatsu—‘ More symbols: the same star and a foot stomping on a snake.’ ” Jay drew those, too: 大起. ” ‘ ‘Initiating political action; literally, to stand up. It’s a pun, because the word ‘dragon’ can be pronounced tatsu. All of humanity fights as one, represented by the fully-combined dragon-robot.’ ‘ “

” ‘ ‘This one?’ I gave him Virgil Blue’s plastic figurine and explained how I’d come to receive it. Jun turned the figurine over and over: it was a robot whose every limb was a different color, combined with mechanical seams. In the show each limb could separate into an independent fighting-machine, but they were strongest working together. Jun put it on his desk and tested the articulation. He was impressed by the figurine’s quality, and thanked me for bringing it, but didn’t believe my story for an instant. Why would this manga be so important as to appear in such a fantastical library before it was even written? I chewed my tongue. ‘When Virgil Green described the Biggest Bird with paradoxes, I wondered how one vessel could contain such contradictory aspects. Virgil Blue taught me the Biggest Bird is the Mountain’s messiah, hence her rarer name, the Heart of the Mountain. To me, this was worse! The Mountain contains all things, so I didn’t care that it contained contradictions. Shouldn’t the Biggest Bird, the Mountain’s messenger, be lesser, not equally complex? But when I saw Daitatsu no Kagirinai Hogo in the library, I understood. The fully-combined  dragon-robot couldn’t be piloted by all of humanity at once because disparate parts will always be at opposition with one another. Instead, groups of nations each nominated a pilot who could put their differences aside to fight the alien menace, so the fully-combined dragon-robot represents all the Earth trimmed of fat and ready for battle. In the same way, we cannot comprehend the Mountain, but we can comprehend its Heart. So the Mountain paints its contrast in the Biggest Bird.’ ‘ “

There were plenty of unbelievable elements to this story, but to Jay, the least believable part was Faith letting Jango speak for so long without interruption. Maybe Jango was telling a longer version of the story for Jay than he told for Faith.

” ‘Jun doubtfully sucked his lips, but eventually shook his head in reluctant acceptance. ‘You asked about my manga, didn’t you, Jango? It’s inspired by Daitatsu no Kagirinai Hogo, but that’s not my only source of junk.’ He opened a desk-drawer. My heart burst when I saw he’d saved every letter I’d ever sent him! ‘Don’t hold this against me, brother, but I’m making this pathetic, useless manga out of spite. This is my way to make fun of your stupid stories about islands and Wheels and Zephyrs—just as mass-produced as any other doujin.‘ He showed me more pages of art, scenes of the Biggest Bird on the Islands of Sheridan exactly as I had described to him. ‘I stole your God and secularised them into a bumbling scientist with poor bedside-manner. I stole your Zephyrs and reduced them to giant space-robots with laser-hearts. My goal was demoting and destroying what you loved and hoped to share.’

” ‘ ‘Brother!’ I hugged him. ‘It’s common-knowledge on the Islands of Sheridan that the Biggest Bird’s act of creation is reflected in art across the world. Tearing down her image and rebuilding it is itself an act of worship. I can’t read the cover; what’s the name of your manga?’

” ‘ ‘LuLu’s Space-Time Acceleration. The LuLu comes from the names of two main characters: Lucille and Lucia. Transliterating to Japanese, LuLu is pronounced RuRu, so I use this kanji with the same pronunciation. To me it looks like a winged woman holding a chainsaw, the image of their largest robot, the Galaxy Zephyr, wielding the Wheel.’ ‘ ” Jay knew the kanji from many a manga-cover. He wrote it down: 縷々. The second kanji, like the pointed spike of a blooming flower, was shorthand for repeating the previous kanji once more. ” ‘ ‘RuRu means continuous and unbroken to a meticulous extent. To defeat the Hurricane, the Zephyrs must fight on behalf of life’s every aspect—even the ignorant, cowardly greed which the Hurricane represents. Its worms must be collected in the Wheel.’ ‘ “

” ‘I don’t get it,’ said Faith. ‘Why do the Zephyrs have to save anything about the Hurricane? Wouldn’t Earth be better off without them?’

” ‘The Hurricane is in all of us, and if we think we can get rid of it, we prove it’s all we ever were,’ said Jango. ‘But collecting the Hurricane’s worms is not approving of its flaws! Collecting the Hurricane’s worms is inoculation against those flaws. In fact, collecting the Hurricane’s worms gives the Zephyrs permission to overcome them. I’m sure it’s as true in LuLu’s as it is in Sheridanian culture. Anyway, my brother told me he never planned to publish his manga or even share it with anyone, but I encouraged him to do so. Bring it back to Japan! Animate it for everyone to enjoy! There are so many worms who should hear about the Biggest Bird! I told him I would soon request promotion to Virgil. I’d take the place of Virgil Green for a few years, helping laymen become monks, but then I’d be allowed to read library books from the future. If I found LuLu’s among them, I would demand to annotate it, and if I didn’t find LuLu’s, then when he finished the series, he’d have to send me a copy, because it belongs in the library.

” ‘Then I returned to Sheridan. I still write to my brother, and he sometimes writes back. His insights helped me finish annotating Daitatsu no Kagirinai Hogo for Virgil Blue.’ ” Jango sniffed smoke from the brass burner before concluding. “Faith and Jango finished the cricket while walking to the monastery. ‘I really like your brother’s anime,’ said Faith, ‘but I’m kinda hung up on the timeline here. Where do I fit in?’

” ‘The Heart of the Mountain sent you from the next eternity back to the mortal plane. Causality as we know it collapsed when you crossed.’ Jango climbed a rocky ledge. Faith leapt it like she was weightless. ‘Clearly our meeting in Wyoming hasn’t yet occurred. Where do we find each other?’

” ‘Sheridan Cliff-Side College.’

” ‘I suppose my pilgrimage is predestined by the Mountain,’ said Jango. ‘I’ll bring you a bug-stick. I owe you.’

” ‘Don’t forget the centipede!’ said Faith. ‘My friend and I had lots of fun. But powdered! I’d be creeped out by all the legs.’ Steam rose from her tail. ‘Uh oh. I’m evaporating. How embarrassing!’

” ‘You’re returning to the Mountain,’ said Jango. The fox’s snow-torso bubbled and popped. ‘Oran dora, Faith Featherway.’

” ‘I was only here for, like, twenty minutes,’ said Faith. ‘This sucks.’

“As quickly as she’d appeared, Faith disintegrated into mist.” Virgil Jango Skyy smiled at Jay, penning the last of the story in his notepad. “Consider this story, my students. I hope you all sleep soundly.”

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(A chapter of Akayama DanJay.)

---

Last time on RuRu no Jikuu no Kasoku!

The year is 2420. The Galaxy Zephyr’s Uzumaki Armor turned purple as Commander Lucille reclaimed the Hurricane’s thumb, and other scraps, for the sake of all life in the universe. The Galaxy Zephyr’s super-stellar weapon is the Wheel of life and death which spins to regenerate the principal components of Earth’s lost population.

When the Hurricane enclosed the Galaxy Zephyr in a bubble, Lucille told Professor Akayama to prepare a batch of worms. Can this new Zephyr help her crew of ten thousand survive their escape to continue the fight?

—

“Our new Zephyr is incoming,” announced Akayama. “Get ready to pull the Chain!” Her tail branched another end which frayed into synaptic-cable. Just like Akayama’s tail connected her consciousness to the bird-like Nakayama, her tail now also transmitted her thoughts to all the Galaxy Zephyr’s parts. She shared the image of her Uzumaki Planet inside the Wheel, a desert of rust-red dunes where worms fell from the mustard-yellow sky. Nakayama flew on a column of steam toward the new Zephyr, which drifted with a hundred golden wings. “The main-cast of our slice-of-life is a classic group of twenty-somethings near the turn of the millennium.”

Lucille noticed her own confusion reflected in the faces of Charlie, Dakshi, Eisu, and Fumiko. She pinged her crew of ten thousand on a touchscreen, and their consensus was an emoji of bewilderment. “What are we looking at here, Professor Bird-Thing? A ball of wings in a desert? You said you were collecting worms. Not that I’m not glad to see something feathery like you, of course.”

“Sentient beings share most of their worms, just like biological organisms share most of their genes,” said Akayama. “The first human’s-worth of worms naturally accounts for a majority of the worms in total.” Nakayama’s blue tentacles ensnared the golden Zephyr and slung it through the sky toward the red mountain. The mountain’s summit crumbled into a caldera, caught the Zephyr, and dragged it into the deep. “That’s why I picked this primary vessel who will quickly accept their new role. Pull the Chain and they’ll be integrated into the Galaxy Zephyr!”

“About time!” Lucille gave Charlie and Dakshi a thumbs-up. The Galaxy Zephyr pulled the Chain and the Wheel spun so quickly, centripetal forces made its saw-teeth lengthen by light-years. Lucille didn’t let herself get caught up in her crew’s excitement, instead glaring defiantly at the Hurricane enclosing them all like a bubble. “Will our controls be more responsive, having another mind aboard?”

“Many more minds, depending on how you count them. Worms are molded by interactions over countless generations, so innumerable minds are reflected in this Zephyr—I estimate 77% of the variation in Earth’s life can be expressed as linear-combinations of this Zephyr’s components. In that sense, the Galaxy Zephyr now has a crew of billions.”

“They’d better be self-starters, ’cause I’m not gonna micromanage ’em!” Lucille watched golden light flow from the green Wheel into the Galaxy Zephyr’s purple Uzumaki Armor. “Is that them?”

“Hai.”

Lucille’s crew of ten thousand gasped when the golden light flooded over them. Lucille didn’t know why they gasped until the golden light reached her in ZAB: it carried bathing warmth like a hot-spring. The purple Uzumaki Armor relaxed to subdued silvery-blue. “Don’t get too comfortable,” said Lucille. “We’re still in trouble, I tell ya!” The Hurricane’s bubble contracted around them. As their prison shrank, its walls thickened. “Charlie, Dakshi, Eisu, Fumiko, report!”

When Dakshi pressed buttons, the Galaxy Zephyr’s left hand twitched almost instantly. “Significant improvement to extremity responsiveness,” said Dakshi. The twins Eisu and Fumiko concurred, wiggling the Galaxy Zephyr’s toes.

Charlie blinked in the harsh golden light. Sweat soaked his eye-patch. “The new guy’s a little bright. It’s a sauna in here! Can we turn ’em down a tad?” Thousands of Lucille’s crew signaled agreement with Charlie on their touchscreen monitors.

“Professor Bird-Thing,” said Lucille, “does our new Zephyr have a thermostat?”

Akayama typed on ZAP’s control-panel. “I have just the idea.”

Golden light collected on either side of the Galaxy Zephyr’s spine. Sixteen golden wings erupted with a blare of Gnostic archons’ trumpets, each wing longer than the Galaxy Zephyr was tall, every feather a jet-engine. The warmth subsided, and Lucille chuckled. “Not a bad look.” She flipped her hair back, and the Galaxy Zephyr grew a silvery-blue ponytail like that of her late mother, Princess Lucia. “Charlie, Dakshi, Eisu, Fumiko, each of your teams will control the four nearest wings. Learn your controls!”

Eisu directed the flapping of wings from right glute to mid-back. “How will this help us, exactly?”

Dakshi bade the wings from mid-back to left shoulder to bend in sequence. “We’re still not big enough to cut out of this bubble.”

“We don’t need to be big,” said Lucille. “We’ve got sixteen wings made entirely of jet-turbines. We’re certainly fast enough to slice right through!”

“I hope you’re right,” said Fumiko. The Hurricane closed in. Its red surface taunted them with jeering eyes and mouths and tentacles.

“On your order, Commander!” said Charlie.

“Go! No turning back!”

The Galaxy Zephyr fired all cylinders and swiftly accelerated with its new wings, flying for the confining ceiling. The Hurricane’s tentacles had no time to react before the Wheel sliced them off. Deeper and deeper dove the Galaxy Zephyr, the Hurricane’s wound bleeding giant teeth all around. “What the hell!” shouted Charlie. The teeth crunched each other into sharp shards which shanked the silvery-blue Uzumaki Armor deep enough to endanger the tiny Zephyr robots hidden within. “Aaaugh, that screech!” He piloted with his pedals, freeing his hands to cover his ears. “These teeth!”

Dakshi didn’t have the luxury of piloting with his pedals. Instead he committed his four wings to shielding the Galaxy Zephyr from teeth. Their screeching abated. “Eisu, Fumiko, report!”

“No teeth down here!” Fumiko redirected spare power from Dakshi’s four wings to her own.

Eisu did likewise as Charlie moved his wings into protective position. “Maximum thrust!”

“Ora!” Lucille had to shout over the teeth, because the wings didn’t stop the screeching all around her in the Galaxy Zephyr’s head. “We’ve almost bust out!”

“I don’t think so,” ZAB said to Lucille on a private audio-channel. “There’s no telling how thick the Hurric—“

“Ora ora!” Lucille ignored her robotic partner for the sake of morale. “Just a little more!”

The Hurricane squealed at the penetrating pain. When it grasped with tentacles, the Galaxy Zephyr’s legs kicked them away. Eyeballs appeared around the Galaxy Zephyr, signalling babble. “Disable your monitors!” said Akayama. “I’ve seen this before! The Hurricane is jumping into the crew just like Uzumaki jumped into me!” All the monitors switched off, and the Hurricane had no such opening. Instead, the Galaxy Zephyr’s silvery-blue Uzumaki Armor rebutted the eyeballs with its own.

“Why are you helping them?” signalled the Hurricane. “This is pure agony!”

“Because you’re trying to kill me,” signalled Uzumaki, “if not worse! Whatever pain you’re feeling, it’s coming from me, and I know we deserve it!”

After inexpressible duration, the Galaxy Zephyr burst through the bubble. “Oraaaugh!” The Galaxy Zephyr pulled tooth-shards from its silvery-blue Uzumaki Armor and let the wounds flood with gold.

Behind them, the Hurricane’s bubble deflated. The fistula they’d burst through flooded with teeth and shouted like an awful maw, audible through space-vacuum because of steam from the Galaxy Zephyr’s wings. “Look at the anguish you’re causing! I’m the human race, and you useless thugs are torturing me!”

“Pfa!” Lucille beamed so broadly Dakshi worried blood would drip from the corners of her smile. “Don’t fish for sympathy! This Wheel is reconstructing every aspect of Earth’s life, including whatever wretched bits made you what you are today! That’s all the mercy you’ll get from us! The only human who could possibly pity you in your present state was my mother, Earth’s shining princess, who died protecting us from you!” At the mention of Princess Lucia, the Galaxy Zephyr’s whole crew of ten thousand regained their grit from the grueling task of burrowing through the bubble. “You discarded your humanity when you decided it was beneath you! We’re reclaiming it, for our own sake and yours!”

“Aaaugh! I’ll show you humanity!” The Hurricane’s teeth bit one another and its own red flesh. Wounds produced even more teeth, grinding each other up in a static ball. “This is what real golden wings look like!”

“Prepare for electrical discharge!” shouted Akayama. The Hurricane cracked a thunderbolt. The Galaxy Zephyr was too close to dodge. They blocked lightning with the Wheel, which warped.

“You self-destructive bastard!” Lucille surveyed the warp in her Wheel. “We’ll save you from yourself whether you like it or not!”

—

In the Wheel’s green haze, Nakayama narrowly avoided the thunderbolt. “Konoyarou! The Hurricane’s really done it this time!”

“What? What did it do?” Uzumaki asked through thought.

“The Wheel’s warp puts worm-processing at an impasse.” Her left compound emerald eye saw a sandstorm plow through the Uzumaki Planet’s rust-red desert. “The main-cast of our slice-of-life took a direct hit, too, because my snowy white powder acted as a lightning-rod.” Her right compound emerald eye watched a bolt zap her water-world. “Although…”

“Although?”

“Maybe I can use one problem to solve the other.”

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(A chapter of Akayama DanJay.)

---

The night of his birthday, Dan Jones couldn’t tear his gaze from the campus bus-stop outside his apartment. He washed clean dishes again and again just to stand near the window in his kitchenette watching buses unload passengers every quarter-hour. By the time Faith disembarked the 8:30 PM bluebird-line, Dan’s fingers were raw and prune-like. He waited at the peephole for Faith to knock on his door. “Dainty! Ready to help me smoke my centipede?”

“Faith! Come in before you say things like that!” Dan opened the door and received from Faith a vanilla-frosted cupcake with the number twenty-four written in cinnamon candies.

“Happy birthday, Dainty.” Faith kissed him on the cheek and lounged on his couch. “Share that cupcake with JayJay. It’s his birthday, too! Can I hold your bong?”

“Thanks, Faith.” Dan put the cupcake on the coffee-table by the couch and passed Faith a glass pipe. “It’s not a bong, it’s a water-pipe. I named it Lio, after you-know-who. I use Lio to smoke cricket I buy from some frat-guys nearby, but it’ll work with centipede, too. Is Beatrice coming?”

“JayJay and BeatBax missed the bus. They’ll be on the next one.” Faith looked into the water-pipe like a microscope. Dan had meticulously cleaned Lio’s two internal chambers to crystal clarity. Inside the top chamber was a percolator: a tiny glass tree with five branches like fingers dipping their nails in ice-water. Ten glass buboes circled the mouthpiece for a solid grip. Lio’s erect stem poked from the bottom chamber and held up a tiny bowl to fill with a tablespoon of powdered bugs. “I’m nervous,” Faith giggled. “I’ve had this centipede-powder for years, but I’ve never had the nerve to try it.”

Dan took the pipe from her and set it gingerly on the coffee-table. “Where did you get it? I’ve always wondered where centipedes came from.”

“I got it visiting my uncle in Wyoming, right after high-school graduation. You’ll like this, Dainty, it’s about a religion!” Faith passed him a red card-stock pamphlet from her purse. He opened it to see a plastic-baggie filled with brown powder taped inside. He scanned the pamphlet, a religious introduction with text in ten languages, but he focused on the hand-drawn illustrations, some of which seemed copied right out of LuLu’s Space-Time Acceleration. “Monks from the Islands of Sheridan were lecturing in, um, Sheridan.”

Dan was about to open the baggie, but now decided against it. It sounded like Faith was riffing on LuLu’s to hide the true source of her centipede. Was the red card-stock pamphlet printed off a fan-site? “Maybe you shouldn’t smoke this, even with all of us here to trip-sit you. Taking bugs from strangers is ill-advised at best.”

“It’s okay. I’d met one of the monks before, apparently.”

“You must have impressed them. This is a lot. There’s enough to share with Jay and Beatrice, if they want to join you.”

“JayJay might, but ever since BeatBax started working as a nurse, she’s bugged me to cut back on the bugs. And… um…” Faith stared into Lio, refusing to meet Dan’s eyes, and took a deep breath. “You know, Dan, sometimes the way you’re transfixed by Beatrice makes her uncomfortable.”

Dan covered his face. “I know,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay. I mean, I’m certainly obsessed with her, so I know where you’re coming from.”

“I’m… attracted to her, but not like that. I promise you, it’s courtly.” He wandered back to the kitchenette to watch the vacant bus-stop through his window. “She’s a nurse who doesn’t take my bullshit. I think that’s inspirational. She awes me like a seraph. I’ll tell her that when she gets here. Then she’ll understand.”

“Um. Maybe don’t?” Faith suggested. “We’re all friends here. Just give her enough space to be your friend.” Dan nodded. Faith tried to smile at him. “Hey Dainty, look at this!” In her purse she carried a cardboard-box. She unfolded its flaps: it was filled with dirt. Six raw crickets were stuck eyes-down in the moist earth, sprouting buds which had their own black, beady eyes. “They’re propagating! I told you we could grow our own. If I dried them, would you wrap the wings? You’ve got a knack for meticulous work like that.”

“I could try.” Dan compared the budding crickets to a hand-drawn illustration in the red card-stock pamphlet. “I should show this pamphlet to my professors. It’s funny to read a brochure for a fictional religion like this, with centipedes as a sort of entheogen.”

“It’s not fictional,” Faith pouted. “The monks seemed reclusive. It makes sense no one knows about them.”

“But you said they lectured in Wyoming. Were they lecturing across America?”

“No, just the one lecture in Wyoming. They made a point to mention they would never return.”

Dan closed the pamphlet. “Well, what was the lecture about?”

“Nothing. It was a silent lecture.”

“Did they… make hand motions?”

“I don’t know. I wasn’t in the room.”

“And you want to smoke centipede-powder they gave you?” Dan wrung his hands. “I’ve smoked centipede, Faith. It’s a harrowing experience at the best of times.”

“This powder was prepared by Virgil Blue. Are you gonna tussle with Virgil Blue? This is the way it’s meant to be!”

“If you say so.” Dan poured half the centipede-powder into Lio’s bowl and packed it tight. He revealed a black blowtorch hidden under the coffee-table. “Did Virgil Blue tell you to drink cold orange-juice when you smoke centipede?”

“Virgil Blue didn’t say anything. They were the silent one. But Virgil Skyy didn’t mention orange-juice, either!”

“Then call me Virgil Orange, because I just saved you a sore throat. I’ll be right back.” Dan hurried to the refrigerator.

Faith stole his spot by leaning across the couch. “This is a nice apartment, Dainty.”

“Thanks. It was my dad’s, before he died.” Dan poured three cups of orange-juice and looked at the bus-stop outside his kitchenette window. Passengers disembarked the 8:45 PM bluebird-line. “There’s Beatrice and Jay. I haven’t seen Jay in person since he started transitioning—he’s always out of the country. He looks great—a little like me, actually. What should I tell him?”

“Tell him you like his T-shirt.” When she heard them knock at the door, Faith shouted. “JayJay, BeatBax, help me smoke some bug!”

Jay’s T-shirt featured Zephyr-Purple, the largest robot on the moon. Japanese characters spelled LuLu’s Space-Time Acceleration over the stars. While Dan puzzled over the kanji, Beatrice surreptitiously sat left of Faith on the couch. “Can you read it?” asked Dan.

“Of course,” said Jay. “RuRu no Jikuu no Kasoku! I learned the pronunciation the first time I visited Japan.” The symbols had complex sub-parts made of multiple strokes. “Whenever I end up in Asia, I always check whether the manga’s off its hiatus.”

Dan nodded and counted pilots in their cockpits. When Dan and Jay stood face-to-face, it seemed a mirror stood between them: Dan was pale and Jay was dark, but they had almost the same haircut, similar jawlines, and indistinguishable builds. “Here, Jay, sit down. Faith has extra centipede-powder if you’d like to try some. Beatrice and I could trip-sit both of you. Oh, and happy birthday! Faith brought us a cupcake.”

“Oh! Thanks, Faith.” Jay sat on Faith’s right. “And, hey, Dan… Beatrice told me she might need to leave early. She’s on-call at the hospital tonight.”

Faith taunted Beatrice with Lio, the water-pipe. “It won’t bite, BeatBax!”

Beatrice wrung her maple-syrup hair. “You promised you’d cut back on bug-sticks.”

“It’s not cricket, it’s centipede! And from now on I’ll only smoke my home-grown bug-sticks. They’re organic!”

“Does that really mean anything?” Beatrice sniffed the bowl of powdered centipede. “Ick. Do you know what you’re getting into, Faith?”

“Nope! You’re the nurse. Tell me!”

Beatrice showed Faith a website on her phone warning of roaches, crickets, and centipedes. “The psychedelic high from smoking centipede lasts minutes, but it can feel like hours—and some people have lifelong psychological complications after one dose. It’s not just a big bug-stick.”

“I didn’t peg you for such a bug-head, Dan,” said Jay.

“With anxiety like mine, you have to be.” Dan set the three cups of orange-juice on the coffee-table and sat right-most on the couch. “Who’s partaking? Drink a little juice.” Faith and Jay sipped orange-juice. Beatrice did not. “Allow me to demonstrate proper procedure.” Dan held up the pipe for them to see. “I’ll light the powder and plug this little hole with my thumb. Start breathing nice and slow.” He mimed igniting the blowtorch while plugging a hole near Lio’s stem on the bottom chamber. “When I unplug the hole, inhale, hold it, exhale, and chug the rest of your orange-juice.”

Dan inhaled through the pipe. The water in Lio rumbled quicker when he unplugged the hole. Faith leaned close to listen to the bubbling. “Neat!”

“Who wants to go first?” Dan held the pipe to Faith and Jay.

Jay folded his arms like the robot on his shirt. “Hell, I’ll go first. Let’s get this over with and see if I like it.”

“Thanks, JayJay.” Faith wiggled her shoulders. “He knows I’m nervous,” she said to Beatrice.

“Don’t be,” Beatrice chastised. “Panicking is the worst option on a psychedelic.”

Jay sipped more orange-juice. “I’ll try to keep that in mind.” He inhaled through Lio. Dan torched the centipede-powder. Its white smoke slipped through the percolator’s slotted glass fingertips and burbled up ice-water into the top chamber. Dan shut off the blowtorch, but Jay’s inhalation stoked the embers until the smoke looked like milk.

Dan unplugged the hole. “Now.” Jay gasped the smoke deep. His coughs spilled orange-juice on the carpet. He threw his head back to quaff the remaining juice, and when he put down the cup, he froze and stared through the wall.

“Wow.” Faith couldn’t pry the pipe from his grip. Dan rubbed Jay’s knuckles until he released his grasp. “Maybe I should wait until he comes down to take my toke?”

Dan cleared ash from Lio’s bowl with a paperclip and packed in the last tablespoon of the centipede-powder. “Take it now. I’ve heard it’s better with company.”

When Faith brought the bong to her lips, she met Beatrice’s gaze and coyly kissed the glass buboes around the mouthpiece. “Can BeatBax light it for me?”

Beatrice shook her head. “No, I can’t. I’m barely comfortable watching.”

“Okay. I’m sorry, BeatBax. Thanks for being here for me.” Faith sipped orange-juice. “Light me, Dainty!”

Dan scorched the powder. Faith grinned at the cloud she caught in the top chamber. Dan unplugged the hole. “Now.” She gasped up the cloud and coughed it into her orange-juice, spilling everything. Dan gave her the extra cup. “Sorry Beatrice, I guess there’s no orange-juice left for you.”

“Hm,” acknowledged Beatrice. She watched Faith chug the juice and sit stock still. “Now what?”

Dan rearranged the pillows to help Jay relax. “We should make sure they don’t choke on vomit or chew their own tongues off, but otherwise they’ll be fine.” Beatrice sighed. Faith still held the pipe like a vise, so Beatrice rubbed her knuckles like Dan had rubbed Jay’s and put the pipe on the coffee-table. The four friends sat on the couch. None looked at another. “I like your outfit,” said Dan.

“Thank you,” said Beatrice. It was a plain brown scrub. “It’s what all the nurses wear for work.”

Dan smiled and chanced a glance at her. Beatrice fiddled with her phone. “I always knew you’d make it into medicine. It’s so like you to help people.”

“Thank you,” Beatrice said definitively.

Dan shrank. “Faith told me I can make you uncomfortable. I wanted to apologize.”

“There’s really no need.”

“I know. She told me that, too. Can we still be friends?” He extended a hand for her to shake. Beatrice considered it, and finally shook hands without eye-contact. “Are you enjoying LuLu’s? Faith told me you liked Princess Lucia the most, but I think you’d fit right in as medical-personnel aboard a giant space-robot.”

She rolled her eyes. “I need to go,” she said.

“Sorry.” Dan covered his face. “I didn’t mean to chase you away.”

“You know I’m on-call today. I have to go to the hospital.” She stood and picked up her purse. “Goodbye, Dan. Take care of Faith and Jay. Make Faith text me when she’s able to.”

Beatrice shut the door behind her. Dan watched his kitchenette window as she crossed the road for the bus-station. While he wondered if it was ordinary for nurses to take the bus to work, he saw the 9:00 PM bluebird-line strike Beatrice head-on and smear her across the intersection. Her death was instant and painless, but unspeakably bloody. Dan held his head and screamed.

Jay didn’t hear him. Jay just stared at the birthday-cupcake while the world fell away. He didn’t know why Dan raced out of the apartment, wringing his hands. He didn’t recognize Faith barely breathing beside him. Finally the coffee-table, walls, and floor all spun into the void.

When Jay blinked, he sat naked halfway up a dune. Heat from the mustard-yellow sky baked the sand rust-colored. “Oh no.” An earthworm fell from space and landed left of him. It dug into the sand leaving a little hole. Another worm fell to his right and dug its own hole, too. Worms were falling like occasional hailstones in every direction as far as he could see. “Oh, no!“

He tried to stand, but his legs buckled. He rolled down the dune’s hot slope. Deeper sand was cooler and damper until he tumbled into a moist, shadowy gorge. He pressed his limbs against the narrow walls as he fell, but found little purchase with the sand. Falling sand revealed more tiny tunnels left by worms.

At the bottom of the gorge, Jay panted and desperately felt his body. No bones broken. Two arms, two legs. He counted his fingers. “One, two, three, four, five,” he counted on his left hand. “Six, seven, eight, nine, ten,” he counted on his right. This worried him. In a dream he was safe, but if he had ten fingers, he really was lost in a desert where the sky wasn’t even the right color and dropped worms on him.

He stood using the east and west walls of the gorge for leverage and looked north and south. To the north, the gorge steepened into an overhanging sand-cliff. To the south, the gorge expanded into a wide valley. He limped south.

As his hands traced the walls, Jay noticed more worm-tunnels. Some appeared to be dug by worms thick as wrists. Could this gorge be the collapsed tunnel of a worm four feet wide? The ground now seemed to undulate beneath him. He sprinted out of the gorge into the valley.

Safe from danger, he hoped, he sat on warm sand. The dunes still surrounded him, but the dune to his south was barely half a mile high with a shallow slope. Peeking over that dune was a red mountain’s rounded summit; to be visible from Jay’s deep vantage point and from many miles away, the mountain must have been titanic. Olympian, even.

As he rested, he noticed he was nude. This would be fine in a dream, but in this very real desert he would shrivel like a raisin. He also noticed he had no genitals. His crotch was round like the summit of the red mountain over the dune. He didn’t even have a belly-button, or nipples.

The idea made him anxious. A worm from the sky bounced off his back, and he decided to move. He stood and jogged up the southern dune, but he had to scramble on all fours as it steepened. The dune eclipsed a forty-degree angle halfway up, so loose sand flowed under him like a waterfall. He had to crawl like a meticulous caterpillar.

When he finally crested the dune, he surveyed the desert. He couldn’t shake the feeling he’d seen it before in a half-remembered dream. The red mountain sat on a mesa like it ruled the rippling sand from a throne. The sky was cloudless, and the sun seemed too small. It led two tumbling moons like misshapen potatoes.

Jay noticed a sky-blue triangle on the mountainside. He squinted, deciding if its rounded curves were those an animal or if its sharp angles were man-made. The triangle widened. Sapphire wings unfolded. The shape rocketed skyward on a burst of steam. “What the hell?” Jay put his hands on his hips and watched the shape surpass the red mountain’s peak on a vapor-trail. When the sound of liftoff reached him, it was a cannon-shot. He puzzled over the shape until he realized it was coming right for him. “Oh, shit!”

Jay jumped back the way he’d climbed up. He slid down the dune and steered with his hands to avoid the sharpest rocks. At the bottom of the valley, he turned to see if the shape had followed him. A giant bird with great green bug-eyes joined the mountain in peeking at him over the dune. The bird stepped into full view: twenty feet tall in billowing sky-blue robes, it glided down the dune on a forty-foot wingspan.

Jay backed into the gorge like a worm into its tunnel. He was deep in the gorge before he heard the thunder of wing-beats behind him. The bird landed without visible legs or claws, just robes-to-sand. It withdrew its wings into its sleeves and inserted its head into the gorge, but was too wide to follow Jay. It opened its squat yellow beak. “You’ve arrived with your worms stuck together so the Chain can be pulled,” it said, “although I thought you’d be quite a bit larger.” Jay retreated further. “I am the Heart of the Mountain. Be not afraid! I chose you specifically because your understanding should allow me to handle your worms without damaging them.”

Jay backed away until he bumped against the steep north wall of the gorge. “What are you?”

“I just said: I’m the Heart of the Mountain. It seems we’re speaking the same language, but my inflection is anachronistic and impenetrable to you. You’ll have to forgive my directness.” The bird’s body morphed under its robes. From its right sleeve, a blue tentacle puckered slimy suckers. “Your fate is with the Zephyrs in the Mountain.” The tentacle snaked through the gorge and wrapped around Jay’s waist. Jay clawed at the sand-walls, kicking and shouting as the tentacle dragged him away. “Speed is quintessential!”

Having said that, the bird flung Jay over the dunes. He screamed in an arc over the sand. The desert below was wrinkled like an old pink peach. The sky above was tinted honey-gold as he neared the zenith of his trajectory. The pink and gold spun so quickly he saw only whirling apricot. He shut his eyes and hoped his death would be swift.

A sonic boom opened his eyes. The bird zipped so close it caught Jay in its exhaust. Jay coughed and choked on the frozen fog. Through panic, he noted how lucky he’d be to die cold in a scorching desert. Anyone else would die of heatstroke or thirst, but he’d shatter on the red mountain like ice. An interesting first!

His tumbling stabilized and he saw the bird land in a foggy cloud. As Jay fell the final forty feet, he felt the fog compress beneath him like cream. The cold mist set him on the mountainside.

Before Jay could catch his breath, the bird snared his waist with a tentacle. It lifted Jay to show him the mouth of a cave. “Today you attain Zephyrhood!”

It tried to cram Jay into the cave. Jay braced his limbs against the hole’s rocky mouth. “No! Stop! Hey!”

“You’ll enter the Mountain so the Chain can be pulled!” repeated the bird. It mushed Jay against the hole. “Enter! It is your destiny to enter!”

The cave was so dark Jay couldn’t guess how deep it ran. He beat the tentacle with his fist. “Let me go! What did I do to deserve this?”

“I arranged for your arrival.” The bird blinked its green compound eyes. “Something is wrong. I expected you to swiftly accept this role!”

Jay struck the tentacle with a red rock. Four suckers released, and Jay squirmed from its grasp. The hard terrain hurt his feet as he ran. The tentacle swiped at him, but he leapt into lingering clouds of exhaust. He ran blind, only hoping not to fall into a hole.

The bird beat its wings to blast the clouds away. Jay sprinted to stay with the flying fog, but tripped. When he rolled and scrambled to his feet, the fog had fled. “Please, no!”

The bird loomed over him, and what had tripped him—a white fox with a fluffy tail. The Heart of the Mountain retracted its wings and demanded, “Who are you?”

The fox’s ears lay flat. “Where am I, is more like it.” On the red mountain, she and Jay looked down on mile-high dunes. “How’d I get here?”

“This is the Mountain. I am its Heart.” From each sleeve, the bird extended five blue arms of normal thickness but five times normal length. They plucked the fox by the scruff of her neck and pinned Jay to the ground. “Which of you is the Zephyr I prophesied?”

“Hey! Put me down!” The fox couldn’t shake the grip on her neck. “Help!” Her body turned to fine snow. The Heart’s hands slipped through her. She fell in a pile beside Jay.

“Time runs short! Which of you is the Zephyr? One of you should want to be buried!” The bird scooped the snow next to Jay and compressed them both in place with all ten hands. “What are your names?”

“Faith,” popped the pile. Snow flecked onto Jay.

“Jay,” said Jay.

“How did you get here?” demanded the bird.

“You threw me,” said Jay.

“No!” said the bird, “how did you get to the desert?“

“JayJay?” Faith’s eyes surfaced on the snow. “Oh, JayJay! We’re still sitting on Dainty’s couch!”

“Yes! That’s right!” Jay sighed in relief. “We smoked centipede-powder. We’re hallucinating. No wonder this is just like a LuLu’s episode.”

The bird blinked. The facets of its compound eyes disbanded, and most of them retreated into its skull. The remaining eyes scrutinized them both. “Centipede-powder?”

“Uh-huh. From Virgil Blue!” said Faith, “by way of Virgil Skyy, taken under the supervision of Virgil Orange.”

The bird relieved pressure from its palms. Jay squirmed away, but Faith couldn’t yet control her snow-body. “That explains you two,” said the bird, “but I called for a Zephyr who would accept invitation into the Wheel, and allow the Chain to be pulled! Where is it?”

“How should we know?” Jay stood and brushed dust from his body. He crossed his arms over his chest. “I’m not even sure what you mean by Zephyr!”

“Really?” The bird retracted its arms and became a sky-blue cloth cone, like a tepee. It regenerated its compound eyes. “We’re all Zephyrs, one way or another.”

“Virgil Skyy didn’t even mention Zephyrs!” Faith grew a slender limb and used it to shape a snout on her face. “He talked a lot about mountains, though.”

A sound like a gong bowled over Faith and Jay. The roar ruffled feathers on the bird’s head. It cast its gaze to the sky. “Ah, thank goodness! I knew the first one should be so large.”

Jay and Faith were awestruck by the Zephyr: a shiny brown sphere floating in the sky like a polished coconut. “It’s beautiful,” said Faith, the quivering snow-pile.

“It’s huge.” Jay couldn’t block it from view with both hands at arm’s length. Seams split open along the brown sphere’s surface to reveal a golden interior. “And growing!“

“Indeed,” said the bird, “but the Mountain will swallow it.”

“Cool!” Faith pointed her only paw at the brown sphere’s seams peeling at the corners and fraying into golden feathers. “Are those wings?” Yes, golden wings peeled from the sphere in sheets. When they flapped, the now-golden Zephyr drifted like an awkward dirigible. “How can you swallow it from all the way up there?”

“It’s not the only one with wings.” The bird unfolded its forty-foot wingspan. Faith oohed and aahed. The bird turned them both a stern gaze. “Don’t get into trouble.”

“What’s in this pit?” Faith used her paw to crawl to the cave. “Can we climb inside?”

“Only if you intend never to resurface.” Reconsidering, the bird stomped and the cave sealed seamlessly. Then it initiated liftoff, zooming toward the golden-winged Zephyr on thin steam.

Its exhaust flooded over Faith and Jay. Jay only fell, but Faith flew for meters like an autumn leaf. “Help! JayJay! I’m too aerodynamic!” Jay blocked the breeze with his body and Faith fluttered down safely. She shook out another forelimb. “Can you give me a hand? I’m having trouble making myself.”

“You want me to, uh…” Jay mimed squeezing legs from her bulk. “Like, play-doh you?”

“Wait, I’ve got it.” Faith waggled out two hind legs and kicked frost from their feet. “I like being a fox! We gotta smoke centipede more often.”

Jay was distracted watching the bird cross the mustard-yellow sky. “Sorry, what?”

“Centipede! We should smoke more!”

“Oh yeah. We smoked centipede.” He watched Faith shape her ears. “Smoke without me. I don’t like being bullied by a bird. This is like watching LuLu’s bug-eyed out of my goddamn mind.”

Faith gasped with glee. Kicking frost had left a fluttery tail behind her. “Oh, hohoho! Look at this!” When her tail left the lee left by Jay, she was almost stolen by the breeze. Faith huddled on her haunches in safety. “Can you sculpt yourself, JayJay?”

“If the wind blows you away, maybe I shouldn’t try. We’d both be blasted across the mountain.” As Jay spoke, the Heart of the Mountain met the golden Zephyr. Massive golden wings threatened to smack the robed bird from the air, but the bird barreled to narrow in. Blue tentacles spilled from its sleeves and wrapped the golden wings like vines. The golden Zephyr now allowed the tentacles to direct it, as if realizing some deeper purpose. “Do you think the mountain can really swallow that thing?”

“Bug-Bird seems to have a handle on it.” Faith watched the Heart of the Mountain lead the golden Zephyr through the sky. “Do you think Dainty and BeatBax can hear us talk?”

“Who?”

“Dan and Beatrice. They’re on the couch with us!”

“Oh. Right.” Jay wiped sweat from his brow. The birds’s tentacles slung the golden Zephyr in an easy arc. “I mean, we can hear each other, so we’ve gotta be speaking aloud. Yeah, they can hear us.”

“Wow!” Faith watched the golden Zephyr sail above them. Worms now fell out of it like light drizzle from a cloud. Each worm landed on the mountain and immediately dug its way inside. “Oh. Weird!”

The bird shot on a burst of steam to beat the golden Zephyr to the red mountain’s peak. Jay expected to bird to splat against the rocky cliff-face, but it phased in like a mirage. The ground shook. Rocks rolled off the mountain’s edge. Just before the massive golden Zephyr collided with the peak, the peak collapsed into a caldera. The caldera widened and the mountain wobbled. Jay stood to brace himself against the shaking. The golden Zephyr landed in the caldera like a hand in a glove, and the caldera deepened to drag it into the red mountain with world-shattering quakes.

“Woo!” Faith let volcanic convulsions throw her through the air. “Fun, huh JayJay?” Each ripple knocked Jay’s feet out from under him. A heavy fall snapped both his knees backwards. Jay screeched. “Oh! JayJay!” Faith landed beside him. “Are you okay?” Somehow Jay’s knees were intact and rightward bent, but he hyperventilated and then held his breath. His hands shook. “JayJay?” Faith raised a paw to his face. “Jay, can you hear me?” Jay retched and held his neck. He spasmed and spat a tooth on a line of saliva. “Oh!” Faith reared from the tooth. “Oh, no! Jay!” Jay hacked up three more teeth and spat blood. “Oh my gosh, oh my gosh.” Faith gathered the teeth, but they sank into her snow. She gave up and pat Jay’s shoulder with a paw. “Okay, okay, let it out,” she whispered. “C’mon, breathe with me, man, breathe with me!”

“I can’t—” Jay vomited a whole mouthful of teeth. Some were broken and chipped. “They’re—stuck—in m—” He coughed bloody shark-teeth. “My—“

“You smoked centipede!” Faith locked eyes with him. “This isn’t real! Hold onto yourself!” She looked into Jay’s throat. His esophagus churned with canines and molars. Shark-teeth swam amid the mix. Faith turned her tail to him. “Open wide.” She dipped her tail’s tip down his neck. The teeth soaked into her fur and she pulled them from his mouth. “There, is that better?”

Jay panted and gave Faith a thumbs-up. He rubbed his throat. “It felt like throwing up thumb-tacks,” he managed. “Maybe I didn’t drink enough orange-juice.” He spat more blood and closed his eyes to clear his tears. “Thanks, Faith. I don’t know what I would’ve done without you.” She was gone. Jay stood and looked around. He saw white steam rolling up the red mountain. “Faith?” He waved at the retreating steam. “Faith! Wait!”

The steam didn’t stop. With a sigh, he climbed the mountain after it, but Faith’s steam flew faster than Jay could clamber. Soon Jay lost sight of her. Having nothing else to do, he continued to trudge up the slopes.

The red mountain’s last digestive quakes forced Jay to drop flat and cling to the ground. He wondered if these rumbles were the golden Zephyr adjusting to its subterranean tomb. Why did he fear falling? When his knees broke, they righted themselves—but the sound of snapping tendons and the sight of inverted kneecaps had rattled him regardless. Even the mere thought of his great height made him feel teeth take root in his throat.

Then the red mountain was immobile. In the stillness, Jay appreciated the sky. Its mustard tone had melted to honey-gold as he climbed. The sun wore a blue halo which burned orange as it set, escorting twin moons below the horizon. Purple night blanketed the desert, painting rusty sand like crushed ruby, and the sky’s honeyed heights turned mud-colored, sprouting stars. Jay thanked those lucky stars as the air cooled and he knew he wouldn’t bake to death.

He counted his fingers. “One, two three, four, five,” he counted on his left hand. “Six, seven, eight, nine, ten,” he counted on his right. “I’m not dreaming. I’m awake right now.”

He stood and kept climbing, despite having forgotten why he was climbing in the first place. He’d already surpassed the red mountain’s steepest slopes, so now each footstep rose easier than the last. When his feet cracked thin frost near the summit, he jogged so effortlessly that each leap threatened to throw him into orbit. Since he wasn’t dreaming, he knew he must be escaping the planet’s gravity. He was high enough. He relaxed on the mountainside.

Above him, the muddy sky burned royal indigo. Stars drifted so quickly Jay saw the ebb and flow of galactic clouds. These cosmic eddies outlined a figure against the black background of space. This grand human shape crossed muscular arms over its chest.

Jay looked up from the purple robot on his T-shirt. He hadn’t moved an inch since smoking centipede. Dan had left his apartment. Faith had slumped into Beatrice’s vacant space on the couch. Jay stared at the birthday-cupcake until he could speak. “Faith. Hey, Faith.”

Faith wriggled against the left armrest. “Beatrice.”

“No, it’s me. Jay.” He rubbed his stiff neck. “Are you awake? Can you see me?”

She buried her face in the couch. “I’m flying through time.”

“My centipede had more space in it than time, I think,” said Jay, “but I’m back, here and now. Did Dan and Beatrice leave somewhere?”

“BeatBax?” Faith snuggled a cushion. “Beatrice…”

Jay gave up. His throat was too raw to carry such a one-sided conversation. He reached with considerable effort for the cups of orange-juice to drink their last drops. The citrus only tickled his esophagus.

The apartment-door opened. Dan entered pale, shaking, and teary-eyed. He leaned on the kitchenette counter and yelped when he saw Jay was cognizant. “You’re awake!”

“I think?” Jay counted his fingers: ten. “Yes.” Dan closed the kitchenette window-blinds. He doubled over the sink like he would vomit. “Do you have more orange-juice?” Jay asked. “My throat itches.” Dan brought the gallon of orange-juice from the refrigerator. He unscrewed the cap and spilled juice on the coffee-table. Jay took the gallon and drank directly from its mouth. Dan squeamishly wiped the spill with paper-towels. “Aaah!” Jay finished chugging. “I left half for Faith. Did Beatrice take off early?”

“Um.” Dan covered his face. “Yeah.”

“Faith misses her already,” said Jay. She hugged cushions to her chest. Dan sobbed. When he wiped his tears, Jay swore his nose slid away. “Dan, you’re melting.”

“You’re still hallucinating.”

Jay counted his fingers again. He had ten, but they lengthened and shortened with sickening sensation. “No… My hands, my hands are changing!”

“You’re hallucinating. I promise.” Dan sat on the couch’s right armrest and collected his breath. “Jay, I think I need to be alone for a minute.”

“Take your nose.” Jay passed him the orange-juice cap.

Dan humored him and traded the cap for Faith’s red card-stock pamphlet. “When you can read, you’re done hallucinating. Have Faith try, too.” With that, Dan limped to the bathroom as if internally wounded.

Jay squinted until he understood that the hand-drawn cover of the red card-stock pamphlet depicted a bird sheltering fledglings with its wings. He tried reading the cover’s title, but the cursive refused to cooperate. He opened the pamphlet hoping for more legible typography.

—

Three islands are the sole inhabitants of the area known as ‘Point Nemo.’ Stranded in international waters equidistant from New Zealand, Chile, and Antarctica, the Islands of Sheridan are at least a thousand miles from foreign shore in every direction.

During the ongoing fight between the Zephyrs and the Hurricane, the Biggest Bird descended from her Mountain on the original sun to build the Islands of Sheridan as her paradise on Earth. She taught the first man, Nemo, what to eat, and how to eat, and bore him sons and daughters from an egg. She declared Nemo the first Virgil Blue, leader of the Sheridanian congregation, and ever since, the title has passed from generation to generation. Lesser Virgils guide students’ understanding of the Blue Virgil’s sacred truth.

After leaving her islands behind, the Biggest Bird erected the rest of Earth. Thus, her influence is seen in art, ideology, and philosophy the world over. Virgil Blue’s monastery on the main island houses a library of texts from every earthly area and every time-period, annotated to outline featherprints from the Biggest Bird’s act of creation. Her wisdom is found in fiction and nonfiction. In physics and magic. In sand and sky. There are no coincidences.

Doesn’t that sound familiar, Jay?

—

Jay squinted at the text. Yes, this did sound familiar: this must have been the red card-stock pamphlet Faith claimed the monks gave her in Wyoming. But the art wasn’t Faith’s style, and the text didn’t sound like her at all. Did Beatrice help her fabricate a religion inspired by LuLu’s, just to baffle him? Was Dan involved, too?

—

Today the Biggest Bird resides on her Mountain on the original sun in the next eternity, where our worms will someday join her. It is therefore speculated that altitude marked her seal of approval when she made the Earth. Foothills grew beneath her flight-path and mountains sprouted where she deigned to land. This brands Sheridan as the holiest area on Earth: the main island extends from the seafloor to a permanent cap of clouds. Including its height beneath the ocean, it is the tallest mountain on Earth.

The Islands of Sheridan bear a population of sparse thousands, mostly ancestors of the egg-born. Almost a quarter devote years of their lives to monasticism. Virgil Blue’s monastery is home to a hundred students and a circle of lesser Virgils. Satellite-groups exhibit unique and varied practices like masked dancing festivals, deity-visualization exercises, and spiritual agriculture. Only three commandments assert themselves across all islanders:

Never harm or photograph birds.

Never consume centipede except when prepared by Virgil Blue.

Never climb above the permanent cloud-cover. Sheridan’s peak is always obscured. It must remain so.

Jay Diaz-Jackson, remember these rules when you visit Sheridan. We expect you shortly.

—

Jay closed the pamphlet and examined the fist-sized fledglings drawn on its front. He covered the left half of a fledgling’s face with his thumb. More familiar by the moment. “Dan, have you ever seen birds like this before?” He’d forgotten Dan had left. He was still in the bathroom, quietly sobbing for some reason.

Jay turned to the pamphlet’s next page. On the left side, hand-drawn crickets budded from soil just like in Faith’s cardboard-box. On the right side, the largest of three islands was crowned with clouds.

—

Tourists to the islands generally belong to one of three categories: those interested in bird-watching (but not bird-photography, we emphasize), those interested in smuggling bugs back to their home country (which we frown upon), and those whose international flights require refueling at our airport and who decide to stretch their legs along our runway. All three categories are impressed by the bounty of the Biggest Bird, including fresh air, breathtaking vistas, and tasteful gift-shops. We encourage you to visit our islands and discover your connection to the Mountain in the next eternity. One day all our worms will join the Zephyrs in the fight against the Hurricane.

That means you, JayJay. You must find the Mountain within you.

—

“Within you, within you.” Jay swore the crickets in Faith’s cardboard-box were chirping like chimes in the wind as their wings rubbed together. “Within you, within you.”

“Faith?” Jay shook her shoulder. “Faith, did you write this?”

Faith released the couch-cushion and stared blankly at the pamphlet. “I told you, JayJay, I got it from monks.”

“But look here. It says ‘JayJay.’ ” He pointed to the line in the pamphlet accosting him by her nickname. “Are you seriously telling me you didn’t write this?”

“Of course I didn’t.” Faith cuddled the cushion again and rolled into the couch’s corner. “I can’t even read Chinese.”

“Chinese? There’s no—” Jay tried rereading the offending statement. Symbols flickered between ten languages. “Oh my God. I’ve got to go to the Islands of Sheridan.”

“What?” Faith left the couch-cushion behind to pin Jay against the opposite armrest. She wrestled the pamphlet from him. “JayJay, you can’t!”

“Faith, even if you made up the islands, I’ve got to find them! Look, it says right here that there are no coincidences! If it’s commanding me to go to Sheridan, it’s commanding me to go to Sheridan! If it’s not commanding me to go to Sheridan, I misread it as commanding me to go to Sheridan! It can’t be a coincidence! It says so!”

Faith tried to unwrap Jay’s logic as she twisted to restrict his movement. “But JayJay, the islands are so far away!”

“I’ll take a boat, or a plane!”

“But you’ll be gone so long!”

“Come with me!”

“I can’t!” Faith released Jay from her grapple and leaned back against the couch-cushion. “BeatBax would never let me go to the Cricket-Centipede Islands! Just stay in LA and smoke with us!”

“No! I’ve got to find the Mountain within me, whatever that means!” Jay now struggled to find his name in any of the pamphlet’s ten languages. “Listen to your box of crickets, they’re singing it!”

Their conversation’s crescendo drew Dan from the bathroom. His gaunt stride silenced them at once. They made room on the couch for Dan to faint between them, red-faced and wet-cheeked. His mouth opened as if to speak, but he produced no words. Finally he shook his head and asked, “Can you read?”

“It doesn’t matter,” said Jay. “I’ve got to find the Islands of Sheridan.”

“Okay, you’re still bug-eyed,” said Dan. “Faith?”

“Gorgeous,” she cooed to the fledglings on the pamphlet’s front. “Just look at these beautiful birds!”

“Just about back to normal,” said Dan. “Both of you should eat. That’ll help you come down.” He slowly stood and carried Faith’s cupcake from the coffee-table to the kitchenette to cut. “Happy birthday, Jay.”

“Happy birthday, Dan.”

“Dainty! Cut it into fourths,” said Faith. “Then you and BeatBax can share with us, and we’ll all sing!”

“I… I’m so sorry.” Dan cut the cupcake into thirds and brought it back to the coffee-table. “Beatrice won’t be joining us.”

“Hm?” Faith finally realized the couch-cushion she’d hugged so closely wasn’t actually Beatrice. “Aww… That’s okay, Dainty!” Faith took her cupcake-third and ate it in one bite. “JayJay told you BeatBax might get called to the hospital, right?”

Dan nodded, both hands shaking, covering his mouth. He collapsed back on the couch. “Y-yeah, he did.”

Jay detected, from Dan’s anxious hand-wringing, he was upset by something beyond repulsing Beatrice as usual. Dan had shut the kitchenette window-blinds, but red lights flashed through the gap between them. “Um. Did they… send an ambulance to pick her up?” Jay asked.

Dan couldn’t bring himself to answer. The nauseated eye-contact between him and Jay made Faith look from one to the other, smile fading, until she noticed the flashing red lights herself. She walked to the kitchenette window. “Don’t!” said Dan, but Faith opened the blinds. Outside the apartment, black-and-yellow caution-tape surrounded the bus-stop. Two police-cars and an ambulance blocked most of Beatrice’s blood from view, but Faith still quivered at the sight.

“Is that—“

“I’m so sorry!” Dan said again. He bent his head between his knees and clasped his hands behind his neck. “It’s all my fault!”

“No—Dainty—It’s not! You didn’t!” Faith sat next to Dan and hugged him from behind. Jay hadn’t expected Faith to react to trauma by consoling Dan, but Jay considered he was traumatized, too, and he reacted to trauma by observing other people’s trauma-reactions. He pat Faith on the back, unsure of what else he could do. “Oh, JayJay!” She lifted herself off Dan to hug Jay, her face against his chest. “Oh, Beatrice!”

Behind Faith’s back, Jay counted his fingers: ten. He couldn’t believe this was real. “I’m so sorry, Faith.”

“We were planning to—” Faith sniffled and wiped tears on Jay’s shirt. “We were planning to adopt!“

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(A chapter of Akayama DanJay.)

---

The year is 2012.

The LuLu’s theme played over the end credits. Jay squinted at the screen, but the names of artists and animators squirmed and resisted interpretation like so many worms. He counted his fingers: ten. “Faith, I think I’m having a stroke.”

“No, JayJay!” Faith bent backwards over the couch to stretch to her full length, eating four vines of licorice at once: brown chocolate, red cherry, orange orange, and white mystery-flavor. “Being bug-eyed is making you paranoid. Just enjoy it!”

Jay licked his dry teeth. He reached for the remote and, struggling with the hieroglyphics, pressed the menu-button. “Oh, here’s the problem. The DVD was on Japanese by default. We didn’t even have subtitles on.”

“Ha!” Faith laughed until she ran out of breath. “That’s what happens on bug-sticks! But I think I got the gist anyway.” She collected herself back on the couch and finished her licorice. “So, there’s a slice-of-life going on inside the Wheel, but the anime doesn’t show it? What do you think it’s like for worm-vessels?”

“I wonder if they’d even know they’re in the Wheel. If they did know, how could they understand it?” Jay shook his head. He wasn’t in the right mindset to discuss anime canon. He swapped the DVD’s language to English, but didn’t start the next episode yet. “So, what’s up between you and Beatrice? Are you dating?”

“Well, yeah, but it’s complicated.” Faith looked away.

Jay liked how the two fit together. Faith was a bit of a boi-ish pixie, elevating Beatrice’s dowdier librarian style. “She carries that Bible everywhere,” said Jay. “Her family seems pretty religious. Does that make dating hard?”

“You didn’t hear it from me, but BeatBax breaks out the Bible for unwanted male attention. The guy I bought that bug-stick from? I only know him because he won’t leave her alone!” She stretched again, her head near Jay’s lap. Jay scooched to give her room. “She plays the pastor’s-daughter routine until boys get bored. In truth, she’s totally fine dating a girl, and hiding it from her parents. We’ve even talked about smoking bug-sticks before.”

“So what’s complicated?”

“Dainty likes the pastor’s-daughter routine,” she sighed, “and I like Dainty. I wish dating was easy. I just wanna hold all my friends in a big ol’ cuddle-ball.” Jay held Faith’s hand. Faith squeezed back and smiled. “Love you, JayJay!”

“Aw. Love you, FayFay.” Jay looked away for a moment. “Dan said he and Beatrice dated once. Can you tell me about that?”

“Oh, boy.” Faith sighed. “They dated, for, like, three weeks, in Middle School.”

“Those never go well, do they?”

“They tried,” said Faith, “and they were cute together. But earlier in the year, some stupid boy tackled BeatBax and made her kiss them. She told Dainty about it when he asked her out, and warned she wouldn’t be comfortable kissing him.”

“And he took it personally?”

“He was such a sweetie about it. Always asking, ‘are you comfortable with this?’ ‘Are you comfortable with that?’ But that put BeatBax in a weird spot, like, ‘where’s this guy going with all this?’ When she got fed up with it and said nothing at all, Dainty felt like the stupid boy who should’ve fucked off to begin with.”

Jay reached for more licorice. “I can see why he didn’t wanna explain all that to me, but I’m glad you could, at least.”

“Those three weeks helped BeatBax realize she might like kissing me, so I guess I owe Dainty a thanks.” Faith bit the opposite end of the licorice-vine Jay chewed. “Bug-sticks can help you open up, sometimes!”

“You know a lot about crickets. Are you sure you haven’t smoked before?”

“What are you talking about?” Faith couldn’t tell lies while looking at Jay upside-down. Her poker-face broke and she giggled. “You caught me. I’ve smoked a bug-stick before, but just once, I swear! I wanted to share the experience with you.”

“It’s really something.” Jay searched for words to describe being bug-eyed, but found none sufficient. He made sound-effects and exploding motions with his hands. “Where’d you smoke your first?”

Faith kicked the air. “You remember my uncle, right? He visited from Wyoming for our graduation.”

“Yeah, I remember.” Jay met Uncle Featherway drinking his third beer that night. “He asked if I believed in aliens. He had quite a bit to say on the matter.”

“Well, he is the black sheep of the Featherways. And you’re an easy guy to talk to, JayJay!”

“The inside of his fedora was lined with tinfoil.”

“Some people like tinfoil,” Faith insisted. “Anyway, after graduation, my uncle took me with him back to Sheridan, Wyoming, and that’s where I smoked my first bug-stick.”

“Your uncle gave you a bug-stick?”

“No, no. It’s a weird story, actually.”

“Hm. Hold on, then.” Jay left the couch and returned with a notepad and pen from his father’s office. On the way he let Django back into the house, because the cat was whining and clawing at the back door. “I want to practice performing interviews. You’ll be my first.”

“Interviews? For what?”

Jay shrugged. “I meet cool people when I travel. Maybe I’ll write a book of interviews for Dan to read.”

“Would anyone want to read a book which is just interviews?”

“I hope so. If they’re interesting interviews, maybe. I’ll try to include some action here and there, especially at the beginning to get people hooked.” Jay clicked his pen open. “Tell me about your crazy uncle.”

“Uncle Bob lives in Sheridan, Wyoming.” Jay wrote that down. “My mom sent me with him so he could show me the local college. I don’t know why—I already told her, I want to go to art-school somewhere in LA.”

Jay wrote that, too. It was hard to write this fast. “Could you go a bit slower?”

“That’s what I said to him! My uncle’s got a lead foot. I don’t mind him driving so fast when we’re on nice open roads, but Sheridan Cliff-Side College is halfway up the Bighorn mountains, so there were all these hairpin-turns. And he took ’em like this, too!” She leaned over the couch’s armrest like her uncle poking his head out the window of his truck. She turned an imaginary steering-wheel with one hand, the other hand holding a fedora to her head against the wind.

“Wouldn’t want to lose the tinfoil,” Jay muttered.

“Be nice! I’m glad he took me to SC-SC. The mountains are so pretty, and the valleys hold Bighorn National Forest like a nice big bowl of trees. Anyway, my uncle had a brochure listing events at the college that day, and one was a lecture from some visiting monks. There was a group photo: I loved how all the monks wore robes of one solid color, but each one of them had a different color. I didn’t know there were so many colors!” She picked up a handful of licorice vines and spread them to show Jay the wide variety.

Jay picked out another purple one. “Where were the monks visiting from?”

“You’ll never believe this: the Islands of Sheridan!”

“Islands? In Wyoming?”

“Not Wyoming’s Sheridan. The Islands of Sheridan are where crickets originally came from! They had a world-map in the brochure, but the islands were hard to spot, tucked in the corner with New Zealand. More space was used for a photo of these little flightless birds. The caption said the monks consider the birds sacred, and I totally get it, because they’re mad cute.” Faith stood from the couch and walked slowly, leaning side to side, palms pressed together, pretending to be a monk. She spun, flaring her imaginary robes. “I told my uncle I wanted to go to their lecture, and he was glad to. He said he wanted to share his theory with the monks.”

“The whole tinfoil-hat thing?”

“Yeah! He shared the theory with me, too. Eeeeven though I told him he’d shared it with me before, several times.”

“He shared a little with me, too, and I honestly don’t need to hear any more. Feel free to skip it.”

“There were enough monks to fill the first few rows of this great big lecture-hall. Not many other people were there. I think half the monks were women, but it was a little hard to tell, because they were all completely bald!” Faith held her short white hair to her scalp. “They had every skin-color I’ve ever seen, and some I’d never seen before. White, black, yellow, orange, brown, red, pink, sorta pale bluish? All there!”

“Wild.” Jay realized Faith was having lots of fun describing what she’d seen. He wondered if she was making this up because she was completely bug-eyed. Maybe she was embarrassed about smoking bug-sticks and was concocting a strange excuse.

“The main monk was in a wheelchair, cross-legged. They wore hooded navy robes and a silver mask, so… Age? Skin color? Gender-identity? I have no idea!”

“What was the mask like, then?”

“It was a bird! It had a beak and two looong feathers poking off the top.” She put two fingers in a V on her forehead. “But the craziest part was, even though this was the main monk, they never said a word! Another monk in sky-blue robes, easily the oldest guy there, took the podium. He walked with this crazy cane which looked like a giant bug-stick, ten black spots around a gnarly tip. I loved the way he started his speech: ‘Oran doran, doran dora!‘ ” Faith posed with one foot up on the couch-back, gesturing with brown licorice like it was a tall cane. “He told us the main monk, Virgil Blue, would give us their famous silent lecture, and then all the monks would leave forever and never come back.”

Jay squinted. Wasn’t Virgil Blue a character in LuLu’s? The mask and the cane sounded familiar, too, but he couldn’t quite place them. “A silent lecture sounds pretty boring.”

“It totally was.” Faith flopped back on the couch. “The only fun part was the very start, when three monks picked up Virgil Blue from their wheelchair and put them on top of the podium. After that, it was hard to tell if the Virgil was even breathing under all those robes. But my uncle was really into it! He was just lost in the bird-mask.”

“Now that I believe.”

“When I got bored enough, I left the lecture-hall and hung out by the cliff-side for a while. Imagine my surprise when that monk in sky-blue joined me out by the fence! He pointed his cricket-cane at the peaks of the Bighorns, talking about how these mountains were a ‘nice try, but they could be taller.’ He told me his name was Virgil Jango Skyy.”

“Jango?” Jay pointed his pen at his cat, Django. “Faith, are you pulling my leg?”

“No, I swear! I actually told him, hey, my friend has a cat named Django, and he said, ‘there are no coincidences!’ That’s why the monks, from the Islands of Sheridan, decided to visit Sheridan Cliff-Side College in the first place. ‘It’s a message from the Mountain!’ he said.”

“Sheridan is a common city-name, though. Like Springfield.”

“I told him that, too! Jango said, ‘Wyoming’s Sheridan has the highest elevation, and on the islands, altitude is considered holy. The main island is so tall, you can’t ever see its peak!’ ” Faith pointed at the roof, high skyward as she could. “I, um…” She crumpled back onto the couch and wrung her hands. Jay wrote that down. “I asked him if that was where the cute little birds lived, and I showed him the picture in the brochure. Jango didn’t like that at all! He went like this.” She sucked her index-finger scornfully. “Apparently the birds are so sacred you’re not supposed to take pictures. ‘The islands were built by a bird,’ he said, ‘so we have to respect them.’ “

“Whoever made the brochure messed up big time,” said Jay.

“Uh-huh. I told him ‘sorry, Jangster,’ and suddenly his eyes lit up! Er, one eye—the other eye had a serious cataract, like the moon. He told me he thought he recognized me, but he wasn’t sure until I called him Jangster.”

“You’d met the monk before? Virgil Jango Skyy?”

“That confused me, too. I certainly didn’t remember meeting him before. But he said he owed me a cricket! He said, ‘on the Islands of Sheridan, crickets are revered as a link to the Biggest Bird.’ He took the first puff to show me how, and when it was my turn, he guided my breath just like this.” She moved her hands like she was helping Jay parallel park.

“Faith, I can’t believe any of this. This native South Pacific islander, did he just, like, conveniently speak perfect English?”

“Yeah! Jango told me he was actually born in Kansas. When he was about thirty, Virgil Blue visited to invite him to the islands. Blue taught Skyy to smoke crickets in person! I was surprised, because I figured Virgil Blue was like ten thousand years old. Jango explained the title is passed from generation to generation, all the way back to the Biggest Bird, and today’s Virgil Blue was ‘two centuries young.’ Only Virgil Blue is holy enough to prepare centipede.”

“Centipede?”

“Like crickets on steroids. Sheridanians use them to join the congregation.”

Jay clicked his pen closed and tucked it behind his ear. “Faith, in the anime we just watched together, Professor Akayama becomes a giant bird and builds some islands where there’s a new kind of bug called a centipede. You’ve gotta be making this up.”

“I’m not, I promise! Centipedes are totally real! Maybe the anime is based on Sheridan. Virgil Jango Skyy gave me a parting gift, too: a red card-stock pamphlet about the islands. Ask me to show you sometime, it’s really a read.”

“Sure, Faith. Sure.” Jay sighed and closed his notepad. “Thanks for the interview.”

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(A chapter of Akayama DanJay.)

---

Last time on RuRu no Jikuu no Kasoku!

The year is 2420. The Hurricane exploded Earth, so Commander Lucille and her crew of ten thousand joined Akayama by combining ZAB and Uzumaki to make a giant space-robot called the Galaxy Zephyr. The Galaxy Zephyr’s ongoing Super Heart Beam is a weapon called the Wheel, which Akayama claims is reconstructing the principal components of Earth’s life.

Lucille used the Wheel to sever the Hurricane’s thumb. Can she keep up the offense?

—

“Who cares?” The Hurricane reached across space to reclaim its purpling severed thumb. It obviously cared quite a bit, because its wound poured pearly pulp which petrified into painful teeth. “Wheel or no Wheel, I’ll end you just the same!”

Lucille smirked and bit her own right thumb. “ZAB! Uzumaki! Let’s go!” ZAB morphed the Galaxy Zephyr’s pink Uzumaki Armor into a pseudopod which stretched far faster than the Hurricane’s reach. Uzumaki engulfed the severed thumb, and the whole volume returned to the Galaxy Zephyr as thick purple armor.

“Hey!” signalled the Hurricane. “You’re trying to ruin humanity! I collected all that mass myself!”

“We’re collecting it back!” Now Lucille commanded a giant purple robot twenty orders of magnitude bigger than the Milky Way had been. It wore pointed sunglasses like those of Lucille’s late father, Commander Bunjiro. The Wheel spun faster, increasing in diameter to match the Galaxy Zephyr’s new height. The Galaxy Zephyr would appear unfathomably large compared to anything else, but compared to the Hurricane, it was merely thumb-sized. Lucille pulled levers and stamped both her pedals. “Eisu, Fumiko, advance!”

Steam poured from the Galaxy Zephyr’s feet, propelling it above light-speed. The Hurricane swatted with both arms and uncrossed its legs to stomp with both feet, but the Galaxy Zephyr easily outmaneuvered those slow, clumsy limbs. When Charlie and Dakshi saw the chance, they swung the Wheel to shave flesh off the Hurricane. ZAB had Uzumaki absorb it to become even larger. “If we get much larger, we won’t be so agile,” warned Dakshi. The Hurricane kicked at them.

“Ora!” Lucille smiled fiendishly as the Wheel sliced the sole off the Hurricane’s foot. The Hurricane’s wounds gushed painful teeth. “If we get much larger, we won’t need to be agile!” They lingered too long absorbing the sole and the Hurricane stomped on the Galaxy Zephyr. In space there was no floor to be stomped against, but the Hurricane’s foot wrapped tentacles around them to scrape its wound’s teeth against their purple Uzumaki Armor. “Retreat!” shouted Lucille. Eisu and Fumiko pumped steam from the Galaxy Zephyr’s feet, but chomping teeth restrained them. Dakshi made the left hand blast steam from its palm, and Charlie swept the Wheel to slice tentacles. At last the Galaxy Zephyr freed itself and fled from the Hurricane’s reach.

Lucille hid silent tears as she assessed the damage. Bite-marks endless light-years deep almost severed their legs at the thighs. If any part of the Galaxy Zephyr had been bitten off, hundreds of crew-members would’ve been killed or, worse, preserved for eternity by an entity which hated them. Medical-personnel tended to injured crew, but who could repair the purple Uzumaki Armor and keep her crew together? Would the Galaxy Zephyr bleed teeth, too?

“Don’t worry,” said Akayama. “I’ve updated Uzumaki’s immune-system.” The wounds flooded with roaring rivers of liquid gold which quickly set and solidified. The Galaxy Zephyr was repaired like a shattered and restored vase.

Lucille laughed and wiped her cheeks dry. “Dakshi, you were right. Our size is slowing us down.”

“We just need to keep our distance from the Hurricane,” said Eisu.

“We’re getting used to its gravity, that’s all!” promised Fumiko.

Lucille wasn’t so sure. “We’re only gonna get bigger. Professor Bird-thing, how can we counteract our sluggishness?”

“The bottleneck is Uzumaki,” said Akayama. “ZAB is overseeing its hundred merged pilots, but we’re spreading them thin across our enormous volume.”

“So our armor needs more crew?” Lucille stared down the Hurricane advancing on them. “Everyone. Any volunteers to merge with our robot?”

“That won’t be necessary,” said Akayama. “We’re producing life’s principal components, remember? They’ll be our new Zephyrs. As soon as a worm-vessel is prepared, I’ll load them into my mountain.”

Lucille looked at the spinning Wheel. “Of course. We’ll add crew to our armor as soon as we’ve made them. What do we do?”

“Look closely.”

Lucille magnified the image on her main monitor. Her Wheel’s rim had blades like the teeth of a circular saw. As the Wheel spun the blades spun too, but a silver circle near the rim remained stationary. “Charlie, Dakshi, I need a better view. Turn the Wheel so its flat side faces me.” The silver circle was the first link of a chain. The next link was half inside the Wheel, which seemed impossible because the Wheel was almost two-dimensional and each link was light-years thick.

“Pull the Chain when I tell you I’m ready, and I’ll send one of life’s principal components to help direct the Galaxy Zephyr.” Akayama explained like a schoolteacher struggling to simplify something unimaginably complex. “We’ll start with low-hanging fruit: principal components which will readily accept their duty. The more unruly aspects of consciousness will take longer to process, because I can’t process them myself without corrupting the procedure.”

“Dumb it down another notch, Professor Bird-thing. How does this relate to that epic slice-of-life you mentioned?”

“I’ll pick a main-cast. When you pull the Chain, we’ll enlist a character as a Zephyr, and their stuck-together worms will account for a substantial proportion of the variation in Earth’s life. I’ll pick an easy character first, but at least one of the main-cast will be a serious nuisance to pull in.”

“I get it,” said Lucille.

The Hurricane spread its arms and clapped at the Galaxy Zephyr. Eisu and Fumiko barely propelled the robot to safety before the clap could crush them. Charlie and Dakshi swung the Wheel and sliced the tips off two fingers. The Galaxy Zephyr nabbed one fingertip to add to its armor, but the Hurricane caught the other and reabsorbed it. “You’re a pesky little thing, aren’t you?” it signalled with its eyes.

“Funny,” said Lucille, “I’d have said the same to you!”

“Quiet, you imp! I should’ve done this a long time ago!” The Hurricane melted its humanoid shape into a blob. The blob flattened into a sheet. “Escape this! You call that a Wheel? This is what a real Wheel looks like!”

“What’s it doing?” asked Fumiko.

“It’s surrounding us,” said Eisu.

“It’s catching us in a bubble,” said Dakshi.

“A bubble,” scoffed Charlie. “Doesn’t it know we could cut right out?”

“Not necessarily.” Lucille chewed her knuckles. “Our Wheel’s only so wide. The Hurricane might be too thick to cut through in one swing, and it’ll be harder to attack the interior of a hollow sphere than an enormous human body.” She tutted. “If the Hurricane had done this to begin with, it could’ve eaten the Milky Way without contest. Its pain-aversion protected us until now. We must really have it on the run.”

“What do we do?” asked Fumiko.

“We call reinforcements,” said Lucille. The Galaxy Zephyr held the Wheel with its left hand and its right hand grabbed the Chain. “Pick a character, Professor Bird-Thing! Make us a main cast you can wrangle!”

—

Akayama’s cockpit in ZAP was filled with more monitors than any other Zephyr—larger monitors, too—but they couldn’t compare to the visions she received through her tail from her bird-shaped counterpart, Nakayama. Inside the Wheel’s green haze, her compound emerald eyes watched her water-world from distant perspectives in countless time-periods. “Shouganai,” she whispered. Her compound eyes cried countless tears. “I had to intervene eventually.”

“What’s the hold-up?” Uzumaki thought to Nakayama. “What are you even doing right now?”

“To say it like the young Commander might, I’m channel-surfing through the Wheel’s epic slice-of-life. Choosing the right main cast means picking just the right character at just the right moment.”

“Picking them?”

“Off.” With one wing, Nakayama wiped tears from her compound eyes like dew from malachite.

“But—” Even enlisting ZAB’s help, Uzumaki wasn’t sure it knew what Nakayama was talking about half the time. “You said you’d touch worms as little as possible!”

“Strictly speaking, as the creator, I’m already responsible for the death of every worm-vessel in the Wheel. A tad harrowing, isn’t it? But I’m sure I’ve identified a main-cast whose characters can handle what I’m about to do. It won’t excuse my transgression, but at least it will keep worms narratively stable.” She let her tears drip from her wingtip onto the Wheel’s rim. One of its saw-teeth zipped back to the center prematurely. “Let’s see if that worked.”

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