The Galaxy Zephyr flew a safe distance from the Enemy Hurricane. Lucille surveyed the warped Wheel in her monitors. Where the lightning had struck, a great green bulge blemished the Wheel’s perfect surface. Near the bulge, the Wheel had no saw-teeth. “Charlie, Daisuke, can you fix it manually?”

Charlie pressed with the Galaxy Zephyr’s right hand, but the bulge inverted to protrude from the left. Daisuke pressed with the Galaxy Zephyr’s 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. “Bird-thing!”

“Hai!” The bird-pilot of ZAP saluted with a wing.

“You’re wirelessly connected to the professor, aren’t you? How’s the Wheel look on her end?”

“Not any better,” said the bird-pilot. “If you pulled the Chain, centripetal forces would shred the Wheel to pieces.”

“Well figure out how to fix it!” said Lucille. The Enemy Hurricane seemed to know the Wheel was busted, as it swiped tentacles with impunity. Eisu and Fumiko evaded with the Galaxy Zephyr’s nimble wings. “Any time now!”

“Wait, I’ve got it!” said the bird-pilot, “give me a wing!”

Lucille pulled a monitor displaying the Galaxy Zephyr’s schematics. “Charlie, Daisuke, 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.

“Jya.” Lucille tapped the touchscreen. “Bird-thing, it’s yours!”

One wing recoiled into the Galaxy Zephyr’s back. It snaked out the left pectoral into the Wheel. “This will take time,” said the bird-pilot.

“We can’t keep this up forever,” said Daisuke. 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. “Oi! You!” The Galaxy Zephyr’s Hurricane Armor translated her shouts into eye-signals for the Enemy Hurricane to see. “Did you know my mother, Princess Lucia? Did you know my father, Commander Bunjiro?”

The Enemy 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 as Eisu and Fumiko dodged the cosmic slap. The white wing wrapped the Wheel to dress the bulge like a bandage. “My parents were born decades after you fled Earth. You’d know them only as pilots of Zephyr-Blue, robot protector of the Milky Way!”

The Enemy Hurricane grew legs to kick at the Galaxy Zephyr. “That robot destroyed thousands of my planets!”

“Your planets were homogeneous and identical!” The Galaxy Zephyr deftly dodged each kick. “Did destroying them even matter?”

“Of course! My planet-sized cells were humanity’s best! Your parents murdered humanity thousands of times! I only destroyed the Earth after saving everyone worth saving!”

“Sou, sou!” The Wheel had three white wing-spokes. “Were my parents worthy? Are they trapped in your disgusting consciousness?”

The Enemy Hurricane smiled disingenuously with a thousand mouths. “They are!”

Daisuke 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 Enemy Hurricane. “Hontou? If you claimed my father, he must have survived his self-detonation. My mother—well, how’d you nab her?”

The Enemy Hurricane thought. “She was given a space-burial, ejected outside the galaxy. I resurrected and assimilated her. Inside me, your parents beg for your surrender!”

“Impossible,” ZAP’s bird-pilot told Lucille. “If the Hurricane could resurrect people, I would know!”

Even the Galaxy Zephyr’s Hurricane Armor chimed in. “I’ve Danced with the Spheres a hundred times. If your parents were in our enemy, they’d be in me as well, and I’ll tell you they are not!”

“How horrifying,” said Lucille to the Enemy Hurricane. She faked a sob while grinning ear to ear. “If you’d relinquish them, I’d do anything. I’d even surrender!”

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

“You have my word.” Lucille covered her heart with her right hand and bent her left arm up at a right angle. “Eject them for me to inspect. They must be ordinary, breathing humans, and they must not be represented in your consciousness afterward.”

“Commander!” said Fumiko.

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

“I accept your conditions.” The Enemy Hurricane spat two human bodies from its slobbery maw. “Inspect them at your leisure.”

“Those are forgeries,” said ZAP’s bird-pilot. “Our allied Hurricane taught the enemy this trick when it let them bicker over a false copy of my body.”

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.

“I command you to move!” ZAB reluctantly propelled itself through the Hurricane Armor into the vacuum of space, leaving the Galaxy Zephyr behind. Lucille saw through her windows that the Wheel had six white wing-spokes bandaging the bulge. “Halt.”

ZAB stopped a hundred yards from the bodies ejected by the Enemy Hurricane. “Can you see, now, these are only crude facsimiles of your parents?”

“Scan them. Do they have a pulse?”

“They’re pretending to have one, at least.”

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.”

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

Lucille had seen photos of Bunjiro and Lucia in history books. The Enemy Hurricane had reconstructed them well, though their faces were obscured by oxygen-masks. They wore their red and blue bodysuits. Bunjiro even had sunglasses. They both seemed unconscious.

Lucille held her breath, tore off her oxygen-mask, and ripped Bunjiro’s throat out with her teeth.

Bunjiro’s body convulsed. His arms and legs turned into tentacles which grappled Lucille, but she kicked off his chest. As she drifted toward Lucia, her supposed mother peeked and saw Bunjiro choking on his own blood. Lucia panicked and her limbs turned into tentacles. Too late: Lucille bit her neck and tore her throat open. Both supposed parents went limp.

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. “You’ve done it now,” said ZAB. “The Enemy 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.

Their Hurricane Armor translated the Enemy Hurricane’s violent eye-signals. “You ungrateful bitch! You just murdered two of my copies, two whole copies of humanity’s best!”

“Don’t flatter yourself,” said Lucille. “Even if those were really my parents, I’d tear their throats out ten thousand times just to spite you!” The white wing totally enveloped the Wheel, compressing the bulge and restoring their weapon to perfection.

“You’ve annoyed me for the last time! I wanted to assimilate you, but now I just want you dead!” The Enemy Hurricane launched ten blood-red projectiles each larger than the Galaxy Zephyr. These projectiles shot faster than the Galaxy Zephyr could fly. As the Galaxy Zephyr moved, the projectiles followed.

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

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

“Bird-thing,” said Lucille, “is the Wheel ready for us to pull the Chain?”

“Mada da!” said the bird-pilot. “Use the Wheel, but don’t pull the Chain! We need more time! Just have faith!”

Next Section
Commentary

“Geez. That’s really the last episode released?” Jay wiped his eyes. “This show’s more emotional than I remembered.”

“Eh.” Dan shrugged. “We’ve already seen Lucille’s parents die. I can’t get worked up over it twice.”

“But now Lucille condemns them herself,” said Jay. “Even though they’re just copies, the pain is redoubled through Lucille’s perspective.”

“I think the viewer takes Charlie’s and Daisuke’s perspective,” said Dan. “We know for sure Bunjiro and Lucia are dead and gone, but we’re worried Lucille doesn’t believe us. Then we’re relieved because she’s two steps ahead in accepting impermanence.” Jay nodded doubtfully. “What do you think, Bob? Was your first episode emotionally resonant?”

Bob blinked. “What?” Both 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. He stuffed his apple-pie in his mouth. He spoke as 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, that’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 could use some air.”

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

“Bob, how’s your internet out here?” Dan sat up. “I bet I can find you the first episodes of LuLu’s dubbed online.”

Jay stepped out on Bob’s back-porch, a concrete step overlooking grass. In the distance, a forest crawled up the Bighorn Mountains. Stars flocked around a full moon.

Jay 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. The fox stepped over the forest onto the 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.”

“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.

“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. Got a lighter?”

Jay lit the roach with an orange lighter as Faith held the butt in her muzzle. “Faith, I don’t think you’re on Mars.”

Faith had obviously practiced smoking as a fox. She tongued the roach over each canine to make space to blow smoke. She let Jay take the roach. “What do you mean, JayJay?”

“I think you’re dead.” Jay puffed. He’d seen cockroaches before—mostly in Eastern Asia—but he’d never smoked one. It was spicy and harsh. “No offense.”

“None taken. That makes sense.” 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 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 tell you what I remember.”

Next Chapter
Commentary

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 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 his shirt over 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 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.

“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.”

When Dan next woke, he was 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. The stars were out when they arrived at Bob’s house near the forest. “My place is a little small,” said Bob, “but the view from the back-porch is phenomenal. You can see trees creeping up the mountains to the college.” Dan and Jay followed Bob inside. Bob pointed at the couch. “There’s the couch,” said Bob. “It’s a fold-out.”

“Thank you for your hospitality.” Jay hadn’t changed from his funeral-attire. He hung his jacket and loosened his dark purple tie. “Can I buy you dinner? What’s your favorite restaurant near here?”

“We’re pretty far from town,” said Bob. “I don’t wanna drive those icy roads in the 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’ll 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 that he ate his hamburger on the walk back. It reminded him of the goat-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 looked where the chicken had come from and saw the poultry-farm. Jay wondered how just one solitary chicken had managed to escape. The poultry-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 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 braided the wings. Jay put a box of fries and some packets of ketchup on the coffee-table for him. Dan nodded without looking from the cricket.

Jay sat left of Bob on the couch. “Have you smoked bug-sticks before?”

“Yeah, when I was younger,” said Bob. “Sometimes kids smoke in the woods nearby. Their bug-sticks don’t look nearly as nice.”

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

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

“Sure,” said Dan.

“What’s on?” asked Jay.

“Service is a little sub-par ’cause I cover my satellite-dish in tinfoil, but 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 smiled like he was meeting celebrities. “Wow. You’ve both smoked centipede? What’s it like?”

Jay distracted Bob by blowing smoke-rings and 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.”

“It’s in Japanese,” said Bob. He passed the bug-stick from Dan to Jay.

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

Next Section
Commentary

 

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

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

“Sure, sure. I’ve got time ’til my train comes in.” Uncle Featherway ordered 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? How?”

“Like…” Uncle Featherway put down his beer to wave a hand. “Like they were revealing secrets of the universe.”

“Learn anything?”

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

Jay spun his pen. “Hearing nothing from Virgil Blue confirmed… what, exactly?”

“You know cargo-cults?”

“I’ve heard of them, yes.”

“All religions are cargo-cults. When aliens created us, we didn’t understand what we were seeing. Over generations, our explanations became religions.”

Jay sensed the conversation had drifted off topic. “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 the notepad and pen over Dan. Uncle Featherway put the notepad on Dan’s back so Jay could watch him draw.

“See, it had big criss-crossed bug-eyes. It had a bulbous snout with a straight mouth. And it had two long antennae to receive cosmic waves.”

“Huh.” Jay took the pen and drew his own rendition of the Blue Virgil’s 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-crossed bug-eyes?”

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

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

“At the funeral, you said there were different kinds of aliens,” said Jay. “What kinds are there?”

“Oh, all kinds. You’ve got your gold-miners, your mind-readers…” 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 present?”

“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 in contemplation. “Someone at the college must have arranged the monks’ lecture. Maybe I could contact them.”

“Sorry I wasn’t more helpful.”

“You were very helpful. Thanks for taking 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 lower lip. “Would I be a bother?”

“Any friend of Faith 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.”

Next Section
Commentary

“Then what?” asked Jay.

“Inside the red mountain it buzzed like hornets and locusts. Everything was green.” Dan struggled to hold his head off the bar. “The white wing became a path to the green distance. I tried to walk that path, but the green sky flickered. The noise was so loud I covered my ears—my elbows felt wind, pushing back on my left and forward on my right.

“The wind was spinning me. I walked against the wind and the the green sky separated into yellow and blue, like videotape of a propeller syncing with the frame-rate. The desert’s yellow sky was above me and Earth’s blue sky was below me.”

Jay thought. “So maybe the wing was spinning, and you counteracted the spin by walking at an angle?”

“Or maybe the skies were spinning,” Dan murmured. “I don’t want to think about it.

“On the green horizon between yellow and blue, I saw a white light like the sun. As I approached it, the buzzing died down. But the path veered away! I left the sun behind and the buzzing returned.

“Another white path stuck out of mine like this.” Dan shook a hand diagonally. “Next thing I knew, I was walking up that new path directly toward the sun. The buzzing died down again.

“Objects orbited the sun. Their periodic shadows made it look like the sun had a heartbeat. I couldn’t tell how big the objects were, or how far away, so I was surprised when one smashed on my forehead. It was an egg. There was a blue fledgling inside. The fledgling’s head had a beady eye on one side and a hundred human teeth on the other. I couldn’t bring myself to look away from its gaze, or even wipe yolk from my face.

“The yolk slid off my skin. The white shell, scattered in three dimensions, scattered back around the bird. The egg kept orbiting like nothing happened. I kept walking to the sun.

“Just before I stepped into the fire, I heard a voice. The big blue bird stood behind me and restrained me in its wings.

“The bird told me that inside the red mountain, you see all of reality at once. The sun in the center is the origin of all things—the `indefatigable meristem,’ they called it—and if I’d touched it, my sentience would’ve scattered across the cosmos. Somehow I understood reality’s shape is an infinite-dimensional torus, circles swept in circles swept in circles and so on.

“When I turned to see the bird, I woke drooling on my couch. My throat felt painful and raw, so I drank six glasses of orange-juice and puked. I cleaned the bong for an hour. It wasn’t dirty,” Dan slurred, “I just felt dirty inside.” He slumped over the bar conclusively.

Jay capped his pen and closed his notepad. “Dan, that’s fascinating. When Faith and I smoked centipede, we had a similar experience—and that experience is an awful lot like parts of that anime, LuLu’s.”

“Naturally. The mechanisms of cognition are fundamentally similar from person to person.” The sentence was almost incomprehensible through Dan’s drunken slur. “We have different personalities, but underneath, everyone is alone in a desert. Maybe the person who wrote the anime was a bug-head who got the idea tripping. I don’t care. I haven’t smoked centipede since, and I never will again.”

Jay pat him on the back. “You don’t have to. I won’t even ask you to visit Sheridan if you don’t want to.”

“Take me to Sheridan, Jay. Please.”

“Okay.”

“But… tell me… honestly… When you and Faith came to my apartment to smoke centipede, was Beatrice actually on-call at the hospital? Or did you three conspire to give her that excuse in case I made her uncomfortable?” Jay didn’t answer. “That’s what I thought.” Dan clenched his eyes shut. “I’m hopeless. Hopeless!”

“You’re not hopeless, Dan.”

“Did you know I’m a virgin?”

Jay shrugged. “So am I, but I don’t mind.”

“That’s different. You’re trans.”

Jay pursed his lips. He’d respond, but Dan was now snoring.

Uncle Featherway entered from Faith’s funeral. Jay waved him to a stool.

Next Chapter
Commentary

Without the white fox, stillness pervaded the scene. Every sand-grain was nestled impeccably against the next. The worms’ puddle sat tranquil on the mountainside.

The puddle shimmered. The fox’s exhalation had laced it with a fern of frost. When frost-leaves melted, the puddle rippled. This rippling was the only motion in the ocean of dust.

The last melting frost-leaf left bubbles of foam on the puddle. From the foam, a human arm emerged. It felt the puddle as if to shake numb knees awake, but could not find them.

So it slapped the puddle to make more foam, from which it squeezed another arm. The new arm was a right arm as well, so the first arm mushed it back into foam and sculpted it again. The new arm was a left arm, and the arms set to work.

Together they sculpted froth into a human head.

Then the left arm made left legs and the right arm made right legs. Together they chose the best legs to pair. They mushed the extra legs into a torso.

The arms attached the head to the neck, attached the legs to the thighs, and attached themselves to the shoulders. They dribbled the remaining puddle-water over their body and scalp to become hair.

The whole body stood shakily because its head was on backward. The arms reversed the head and dotted the eyes with pupils.

Dan was whole again at last. The agony was over.

He lay on the red mountain. Where was the bird? Where was the fox? Dan watched the horizon for them.

Why was he here? He recalled cleaning a bong and wondered if combining crickets and liquor could produce delusions. Or perhaps the powder in Leo’s bowl was cricket mixed with centipede—or pure centipede! Maybe Leo knew Dan would take his bong, and had prepared centipede to punk him. Dan tried not to think about it. He pretended this was reality, because it felt real, and the idea of being trapped in a hallucination made his throat itch. Dying alone on a mountain would be for the best.

A white cloud appeared on the horizon. Dan couldn’t remember why he was watching the horizon, so he was afraid. Dan ran.

He hid behind rocks and watched the cloud pop like a bubble of snow. The snow sculpted itself into a fox. The fox clawed at the red mountain.

A cave opened. The giant bird emerged from the mountain and greeted the fox with a wave of its robes. Dan couldn’t hear their conversation. The fox dove for the cave, but the bird blocked it with a wing. The fox relented and waited.

The bird pulled, from within the mountain, the tip of a wide white wing which lined the cave like a thick rug and heavy curtains. The fox and bird entered the cave, treading only on the white wing. Fluffy feathers barely bent beneath the fox’s weight.

Dan crept up to the cave. It breathed like a beast. The white wing adjusted like an uncomfortable tongue. Dan debated entering himself, until he realized the cave was closing. Then he threw himself on the wing. The red mountain swallowed him like a pill.

Next Section
Commentary

The man-sized amoeba bleated and struggled on the red mountain, boiling with teeth. Molars mashed the amoeba’s guts. Canines spun sadistically. Triangular shark-teeth swam like fins at sea.

Teeth ground down the amoeba until all that remained was like a cramping gonad the size of a soccer-ball. So many teeth bit the flesh-sphere that it seemed made of teeth and nothing else, even while sensitive gums suffered silently inside. The teeth swirled on the surface as if conveyed by convection. A deep whine from the center increased in pitch and volume.

The tooth-ball bulged. A narwhal tusk, spiraled and spinning, drilled three feet skyward before the tooth-ball rolled and stubbed the tusk on the mountain. Still the tusk grew longer and thicker. Its thickening cracked other teeth. The cracking of teeth was the source of the whine, which had become a shriek.

The tusk stretched gums until they snapped. Broken nerves burned in dry air.

When the tusk surpassed twenty screeching feet, the tooth-ball shuddered, then expanded and contracted like a lung. The teeth retreated into the gums, leaving pores which gasped for air. Each wheeze pulled the tusk back into the ball until it was totally hoisted within.

Finally the ball of gums breathed easy. It relaxed into brown slime which spread in a muddy disk.

Then pseudopods danced from the mud like goop on a sub-woofer. The longest pseudopods grappled and merged where they met.

The merged pseudopods wriggled like earthworms. As more worms formed, the mud became clearer. When the mud was just a puddle of water, ten thousand worms were tangled in pandemonium.

The tangled worms wriggled as one. The dusty red mountain disturbed them, and they yearned for soggy soil. They crawled to the edge of the mountain and felt sheer cliff-face. If they jumped, the impact would be painful, and the sand would cut like hot knives, but then they could dig into moist darkness. They leapt!

“Nice try!”

A white fox bit the worm-heap like it was a venomous snake and dragged it back onto the red mountain. She threw her head to toss her prey and chomp again with greater grip. The worms tried escaping, every-worm-for-itself, but they’d tangled too thoroughly to separate. The fox beat them senseless against the ground.

“Now, how to do this…”

The fox exhaled. Her breath froze the pink worms white and blue. Then she sat on her haunches and closed her eyes. Her body evaporated to join her tail’s misty mass. Her cloudy form descended over the worms and swirled faster and faster until she lifted them away from the red mountain, into the desert.

Next Section
Commentary

Dan slept on his arms, so in the morning, they were painful and numb. Faith was unsympathetic. “If you’re awake, it’s time to leave.”

“Huh?” Dan managed to sit up. He surveyed the wreckage from the party. Empty liquor-bottles cluttered counter-tops. “How’s Beatrice?”

“BeatBax is waiting for you to leave so she can come out for breakfast.” Faith folded her arms. “In case you forgot, you tried to start a fight last night. We don’t appreciate that atmosphere in our apartment.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Damn right.”

“That guy,” said Dan, “Henry. Don’t you recognize him? He’s Leo, from high-school.”

“I know,” Faith sighed. “He’s my cricket-dealer. Or he was, until I saw that tattoo. Now I don’t I want him around anymore, either.” She pulled Dan by the arm. “C’mon, Dainty. Get outta my house.”

Dan lingered by the door. “Can I come back another time? Beatrice and I didn’t finish our cricket together.”

“You want cricket?” Faith took Leo’s bong and pressed it into his hands. “Scram!”

---

Back in his apartment, Dan put the bong on his coffee-table. The bong was a glass cylinder a foot tall. Brown water clogged its two internal chambers. From the bottom chamber, a sliding glass tube stuck out at an angle to hold a bowl of powdery bug-bits.

He pulled the sliding tube and soggy bug-bits slopped out. Dan pinched his nose—he couldn’t risk a whiff. He almost set the tube on the coffee-table, but worried it would soak the wood with stench. He shuddered and lay the tube on a pile of napkins.

He donned rubber gloves to empty the bong into his sink. He retched at the unleashed odor. He donned a surgical-mask.

The glass was almost opaque with crust. Looking into the top chamber he that saw the bong filtered smoke through five slotted glass fingers. No wonder Leo never bothered cleaning the complicated interior—it was a Sisyphean task, a punishment.

So Dan began.

He filled the bong with tap-water and emptied it. This barely affected the congealed crust, so he tried a hundred more times, but that didn’t help either. Before he resorted to acid and bleach, he realized he should be careful of chemicals in the instrument he’d inhale from. Internet research suggested the proper solution was rock-salt and isopropyl alcohol.

He put the bong in the sink and poured salt in its mouth, then opened one of his many, many bottles of isopropyl. He sniffed the alcohol through his surgical-mask. It made his nose burn, which he hoped spoke to its pipe-cleaning power.

He emptied the whole bottle into the bong. It seemed impossible that the bong could hold such volume. He heard trickling liquid, and realized the bong leaked from two holes in its lower chamber: the hole for the sliding tube, and a smaller hole meant for plugging and unplugging to control airflow. Embarrassed he hadn’t noticed them before, Dan covered the holes with saran-wrap and finally filled the pipe with alcohol.

He saved the powdery bug-bits from the sliding glass tube in a tupperware container. He filled a plastic-baggie with more salt and isopropyl and sealed the glass tube inside. He put that baggie in a bigger baggie so nothing leaked.

Then he stood over the sink and shook the bong in his right hand and the baggies in his left. He shook them for fifteen minutes, just looking out the window waiting for time to pass.

When he emptied the bong, he absentmindedly sniffed the toxic runoff. He’d already burned nose-hairs on the isopropyl, so he should’ve known the foul process’ byproducts would smell even worse.

But two-thirds of the crust sloughed off. He refilled the bong and baggies with fresh salt and alcohol and vowed to shake them for half an hour.

His arms tired after twenty minutes. For motivation, he imagined the pipe was Leo. “Save the whining for your daddy.” The salt swirled in Leo like spiky snowflakes.

He emptied the bong and baggies, but this second cycle took only flecks of the remaining crust.

Dan refilled the bong and baggies with salt and alcohol, but frustration didn’t provide enough energy to shake them for long. He was still drunk and hungover. He decided to let it soak while he slept through the afternoon. He took off the gloves and surgical-mask.

---

He must have been more tired than he realized, because he slept through the night.

When he woke, he emptied the bong again. The gunk slipped into the sink with a satisfying sound and the glass gleamed. Dan slid the glass tube into the lower chamber and poured the powdery bug-bits from the tupperware back into its bowl.

Cleaning the bong had taught Dan how to fill it with water for smoking. Fluid poured into the top chamber flowed up the five glass fingers to fill the bottom chamber. Enough water remained in the top chamber to cover the glass fingers’ slots, so smoke would have to bubble through them.

Having the rest of Sunday free, Dan sat on the couch and toked up.

---

Some kind of amoeba bubbled and blopped on the red mountain. The amoeba was translucent orange and the size of a man. It wriggled like it didn’t want to exist.

Its core spawned white specks. The specks formed flecks, which collected into flakes. The white flakes tore the jelly of the amoeba’s belly. The amoeba groped with blind pseudopods in impotent agony.

A shadow passed over the amoeba. An enormous bird landed with thunderous wing-beats. The sapphire bird in sky-blue robes watched with emerald eyes as the flakes in the amoeba turned into teeth. Molars and canines were torturous instruments tearing the amoeba’s innards. The amoeba smacked the ground wetly.

“You’re a big one. Congratulations for finding the Mountain.” The bird withdrew its wings into its robes. “But I cannot collect you. You’re obviously a novice smoking beyond their limits, filled with shrieking teeth.”

The amoeba curdled with nerves for the teeth to tear through. It bristled with pleading eyes which were swiftly blinded by blood.

“I cannot help you.” The bird marched up the mountainside. “My assistant will take you to Anihilato.”

Next Section
Commentary

Dan sipped the last dregs from each pint. He’d started slurring, so Jay elected not to buy him another. “I think I’ve met Leo.”

“Of course you have,” said Dan. “He was in our homeroom in high-school.”

“I meant more recently, but continue.”

Dan buried his face in his gloved hands. “Leo never got to beat the smug out of me. I attended college where my dad killed himself, since the University was financially supportive and let me live in his old apartment. I didn’t see you or Beatrice or Leo for years, but Faith took art-classes on campus, and we always ate lunch together. One day she invited me to a party.”

---

Faith lived with Beatrice on the top floor of a beach-side apartment. The first floor belonged to a frat-house whose brothers streamed up the exterior steps in a vertical zigzag of bed-sheet togas. Dan made no conversation as he climbed. Instead he watched the stars.

On the top landing, toga-brothers filled the balcony overlooking the ocean. Faith leapt from the crowd and hung from Dan’s neck. Her cheeks were flushed. “Dainty! You made it!” She kissed him before he could protest. He smelled beer on her breath. “Isn’t this great, Dainty? The whole apartment is up here!”

A door burst open and a boy in a blue bed-sheet ran out to puke over the railing into the sea. Dan almost vomited at the sight. “Are these guys friends of yours?”

“They’re so nice! We go on hikes with their chapter. Hey, you want a beer?”

“I don’t drink. Where’s Beatrice?”

“She’s not into parties.” Faith dragged Dan to the railing and kissed him again. “Don’t you love this view of the ocean? I wish I could fly over the waves like a bird!”

“I thought you’d want to be a fox.”

“I’ll be a flying fox.” Faith licked Dan’s teeth. She was a foot shorter than him, so she really had to reach for his molars. “Are you into this? Am I bothering you?”

“Does Beatrice drink? I can’t imagine her drinking.”

“Oh, Dainty.” Faith released his shoulders. “You could have everything anyone ever wanted, right in front of you, and you’d still chase BeatBax to hell and back just to make awkward small-talk.”

“Well, you’re her girlfriend, and you’re kissing me.”

“BeatBax and I have an understanding.” Faith considered kissing him again, but smiled mischievously and pulled a bug-stick from her pocket. “But since I’ve kissed you, it would only be fair for you to kiss her, right?”

“Huh?”

“Share this bug-stick with her.” Faith kissed the butt of the cricket and put it between Dan’s lips. “It’ll be just like smooching. So don’t say I’ve never done you any favors!”

Inside, half the guests were girls who chatted on couches and drank beer from plastic cups. A portly man in sunglasses and a pink toga taught the crowd to smoke powdered cricket from a water-pipe. “Sometimes I grind centipede and sprinkle it on top. Gives it a kick, you know what I mean? But that costs extra.”

Drunkards clogged the hall waiting for the bathroom. Dan squeezed past and knocked on Beatrice’s door.

“Come in?”

He did. “It’s me. Dan.”

“Oh. Faith told me she invited you.” Beatrice was reading her bible in bed. “Is that her lipstick on your chin?”

Dan wiped his chin. “Sorry.”

“It’s alright. We have an understanding. Shut the door, okay?”

He did. “Faith wanted us to share this bug-stick.”

“Oh. Cool.” Beatrice put down her bible and cast off her blankets. She wore footie-pajamas with bunny print. She pat the bed beside her. “Sit down.”

He did. “I’ve never smoked before. I don’t even have a lighter.”

“I’ve got one. Faith and I have smoked bug-sticks since high-school.” Beatrice lit the head of Faith’s cricket and puffed until its eyes glowed red. She blew smoke out her open window. “Do it just like that. If you want to, I mean.” She gave him the bug-stick.

Dan inhaled. “Whoa.” He coughed.

“Like it?”

“Where do you get these?” He passed her the bug-stick.

“I don’t know. Faith buys them.” Beatrice puffed and tapped ash into the trash. She passed it back. “Dan, you’ve been staring at me gormlessly for as long as I can remember.” Dan puffed and stared at her gormlessly. “All I ever do is tolerate you and you’re infatuated, like life wouldn’t have meaning without me. Why? You don’t know anything about me.”

“I know you like birds.”

“That’s just it, though. All you know are tidbits. I don’t even like birds that much, anymore. I prefer rabbits and bunnies.” Beatrice took the cricket and blew smoke out the window. “And I only know tidbits about you. You barely talk, except to try endearing yourself to me. I don’t know the real Dan.”

“There’s nothing to know. I’m a pillar of salty guilt who can’t stop looking back.”

“You’re at a party. You should just be salt and alcohol.” Beatrice passed him the bug-stick. “Do you really think kissing me would make you feel less shitty about yourself?”

Dan nodded while he held smoke in his lungs.

“Oh, please.” Beatrice kissed Dan and inhaled the smoke from his chest. Dan collapsed back on her bed. She blew hi smoke toward the moon. “There. Now you’ve got no excuse. Get over yourself.”

The door opened.

The man in sunglasses and pink toga took several seconds to shut the door behind himself as he fumbled with drunken swagger. When he turned to Dan and Beatrice, he almost dropped his bong in surprise. “Oh shit! I thought this was the can.”

“Two doors down,” said Beatrice. “Didn’t you see the line?” The man sat on the bed between Beatrice and Dan and offered his bong to her. “No thank you. We’ve already got a bug-stick.”

“Sweet.” The man took the cricket and inhaled heartily. Dan stuck his tongue out like he tasted something terrible. “But I’ve got centipede. It makes crickets look like cockroaches.”

“We’re not interested,” said Dan.

“My name’s Henry.” Henry extended a hand for Beatrice to shake.

Dan shook it. He noticed Henry wore his toga higher up his chest than any other frat-brother. “I’m Leo,” said Dan. “Isn’t centipede hugely illegal? More-so than crickets?”

Henry gave the cricket to Beatrice. She wiped off Henry’s saliva with her sleeve, then passed the cricket to Dan. Dan inhaled until the whole cricket was ash. He gave the butt to Henry, who tried to suck smoke from it but failed. “All bugs should be legal,” said Henry.

“American bug-law definitely needs revision,” said Dan. “The war on bugs was always a farce, and crickets seem harmless.”

Henry smirked and tried to pass his bong to Beatrice, who ignored it. Henry eventually toked from the bong himself. He finished smirking to blow smoke in Dan’s face. “I bet you’d want bugs to be taxed, too, huh.”

“No one likes paying taxes,” said Dan, “but I’d wager crickets would be taxed like many other luxury goods.”

“Pfft.” Henry shoved the bong into Dan’s hands, daring him to toke. “I don’t need Uncle Sam stealing my tax-money to build roads for poor people.”

“But you came here on public roads.” Dan held the bong but didn’t smoke.

“Don’t you know roads were better in the 20s, when private companies paved them?”

“What’s that have to do with what I said? If you use a service without paying for it, you’re a thief.”

“But I do pay for it, with taxes!”

“No you don’t! A second ago, you said taxes were stolen from you—you don’t pay a dime! You can’t have your cake and eat it, too! Make up your mind!” Leo flinched. “A penny saved is a penny earned. If you don’t protect your property from theft, you rent it at the mercy of thieves. You claim your thieves are the government, so you rent at the mercy of the state.”

“…Cause if I didn’t pay taxes, they’d kill me!”

“What’d be so bad about dying on your feet as a free man? Better to light a candle than curse the darkness. Your cowardice has made you a closeted communist, and a whiny one.”

“You’re the communist!”

“I’m taxed when I choose, because I make my own decisions. I hope you get here someday, Comrade, but I’m not holding my breath waiting for a pinko in denial to escape their mental gulag.”

“Fuck you!” Henry snatched his bong and stood from the bed. “Bugs are wasted on hippies like you, Leo!”

The man in the pink toga stormed away. Beatrice huffed and crossed her arms. “Thank goodness he’s gone. What a weirdo. Why did you provoke him?”

“I’ll be back.” Dan stood from Beatrice’s bed, left her room, and jogged back down the hallway.

“Dainty!” Faith waved him to a couch. “Have you seen this guy’s bong?” Henry, smiling at the crowd around him, didn’t notice Dan sit beside Faith. Faith whispered in Dan’s ear. “What happened? I figured you’d wanna talk with BeatBax for a while.”

“Can I have a beer?”

“Um… Sure.”

“Put some liquor in it.”

Faith stood and stumbled to the keg to fill a plastic cup. Dan watched Henry grind bug-bits. “Here, Dainty.” Dan drank the beer in one gulp. Faith giggled when he asked for more. “You smoked that bug-stick, right? Take it easy. Crickets and drinking don’t add, they multiply.”

“Anyone wanna buy a centipede?” Henry unscrewed a jar and made a girl smell it. She grimaced. “I got these from a guy who smuggled `em off an island somewhere. Primo stuff—I sampled some before I drove over. You know, the secret to driving high is to go faster than you think is safe.”

The crowd couldn’t tell if that was a joke or not. Dan examined the centipedes. “It looks like your source got the better of you,” said Dan. “He gave you centipedes with no antennae.”

Henry finally noticed Dan. “Everyone knows you don’t smoke the antennae, idiot.”

“The antennae are the best part,” said Dan. “It’s biology: that’s where the pollen is. Don’t be salty just because you got conned.”

“Dainty, what are you doing?” Faith held his hand.

“You wanna take this outside?” asked Henry. “Cause I don’t mind takin’ this outside.”

“Why bother?” Dan stood and whipped off his shirt. The party-goers murmured. “Fight me right here.”

“Dainty, what the hell!”

“You serious, bro?” Henry put his bong on the coffee-table and stood. He was an inch shorter than Dan, but twice the weight. “Can’t you see I’d beat the shit out of you?”

“All I’m worried about is cutting my knuckles on your sunglasses.” Now the crowd spoke behind their hands. Frat-brothers in togas were ready to tackle Dan to the floor. “So if you wanna fight, take `em off.” Henry took off his sunglasses. His eyes were bloodshot. “The toga, too. I don’t want you blaming your bed-sheets for tripping you up once you regain consciousness. Because I’ll knock you out,” Dan said, in case it wasn’t clear.

“Dainty, please! Sit down!”

Henry was hesitant to open his toga, but seeing men in bed-sheets prepared to take his side, he shrugged it off and stood bravely in his boxers.

The crowd went silent. All eyes were on Henry’s swastika tattoo, which was big and bold and professionally inked—he’d obviously doubled down since high-school. Henry shook, deciding whether to draw the toga back over his chest. Instead he raised his fists to fight.

“He’s not with us!” promised a man in a bed-sheet. “I’ve never seen him in my life!”

Three men in togas tackled Henry. “Get off!”

The frat carried Henry to the door. Dan didn’t care to watch them chuck Henry off the balcony into the ocean. He sat next to Faith and put his shirt back on. “Faith, I don’t think I can drive home. Can I sleep here tonight?”

“On the couch,” Faith declared. “I’m sleeping with my girlfriend. You can leave in the morning when you sober up. Don’t wait for us to show you the door.”

Next Chapter
Commentary

…Faith surprised Dan from behind. He jumped, and books bounced in his backpack. “Faith, don’t scare me like that!”

“Sorry Dainty.” They walked the halls of their high-school. “Wanna eat lunch with me and BeatBax and Jilli?”

“I’m gonna spend lunch in the library.”

“Aw, too bad. When you’re near, boys quit trying to pick us up. You know that guy in our homeroom who always wears sunglasses?”

Dan blanched and scratched his nose. “Yeah, I know him. Leo.”

“What an ass. He hit on BeatBax yesterday and it was totally awkward.” Faith giggled behind her hand. “He did push-ups on our lunch-table and we all ignored him. He offered BeatBax a cricket, and she flipped to random pages of the bible and pretended passages prohibited smoking. When he wouldn’t take the hint, I pulled BeatBax close and we made out. He was so mad!”

“Wow.” Dan blushed imagining Faith and Beatrice kissing. “I’ll bet.”

“Anyway, have fun hitting the books!”

---

Dan enjoyed having the library to himself. With the librarian busy at the front desk and the rest of school out to lunch, Dan could walk each aisle inspecting spines without worrying about being watched. He pulled five books off the shelves and claimed a table in the back.

His first book’s cover showed a temple from Thailand. Its front wall wore two swastikas, one facing clockwise and the other facing counterclockwise. Dan hid the swastikas by opening the book so the cover laid flat on the table. He admired a two-page photo of a forty-foot Buddha carved in a cliff-side. A hundred alcoves hid smaller statues of aspects and avatars.

Someone slapped him on the back. Dan released an embarrassing yelp. “Don’t do that!”

“What? It didn’t hurt.” Leo sat beside him. He wore sunglasses and a buttoned shirt hugging his corpulence. “What’re you reading, Danny-boy?”

“Nothing. Don’t touch me.”

“I’m just being your bro,” said Leo. “I can’t change who I am.”

“If you can’t be yourself without hitting me, be yourself at a different table.”

“Whatever, man.” Leo leaned in his chair. “Hey, you know that chick with the tits, right? Name starts with a B.”

“…Beatrice?”

“Yeah, yeah! What’s her phone-number? She was all over me yesterday. I gotta seal the deal with a dick pic.” Dan pretended not to hear. “C’mon, don’t cuck me!”

“What does that even mean?”

“You know. Cuck. Cucking. You’re cucking me, you cuck.” Leo croaked the word like a toad. When Dan shook his head, Leo grunted. “You know. It’s when someone keeps you from getting what you want.”

“Really? Is that what it means?”

“Forget it,” said Leo. “I’ll get B’s number from someone else. I bet she puts out all the time. Half the guys here must have her cell.”

“So bother one of them.”

Leo wouldn’t leave. “C’mon, what’re you reading?”

“Hey, quit it!”

Leo lifted the cover of Dan’s book and grinned at the swastikas. “Don’t get caught with this, Danny-boy. Liberals will eat you alive.”

Dan pressed the cover flat against the table. “Swastikas have different meanings in different cultures.”

“Hey, I get ya, Danny-Boy.” Leo peered left and right over his sunglasses. “Do you ever feel like…” He pushed his sunglasses back up his nose. “Like we should get all the gays in one place and just…” He mimed firing a gun. Dan had no words. “You know, shoot `em. Am I right?” Leo raised his eyebrows like he’d told a joke and expected Dan to laugh. When he didn’t, Leo shook his head. “Whatever.”

“Why would you say something like that?”

“I said whatever,” said Leo. “Hey, wanna see something cool? I did this myself.” Before Dan could answer ‘no,’ Leo unbuttoned his shirt to his sternum. He had a tattoo in the center of his chest the size of a man’s palm, with lines thinner and weaker than pencil-lead. It was supposed to be a swastika, but Leo had reversed two spokes—he must’ve had trouble inking his own chest in the mirror. He’d tried correcting a backward spoke, but it just looked like a capital T. Leo seemed proud of his fragile snowflake, but Dan thought it resembled a crude firearm with a hair-trigger. “What do you think?”

Dan hesitated. “Anyone admiring Hitler should bite a bullet in a bunker.”

“C’mon, can’t you take a joke? I can’t be a Nazi, I ain’t German! I was born and raised in So-Cal! I don’t even like swastikas, it’s just funny to see people so upset. Besides, everyone knows Hitler only killed himself ’cause his bitchy wife made him.”

“He was married just forty hours. Still, that’s better than you, right? You’ve never had a girlfriend, have you, Leo?”

“Hey, neither have you!” Leo folded his arms, but couldn’t cover the swastika. “And Hitler was awesome when he wasn’t being a lefty. You’d know that if you did any research!”

“Get away from me,” said Dan.

“Huh?”

“I said fuck off, but I’ve thought better. I’m leaving.”

“Look, Danny-boy.” Leo stood with Dan and followed him between bookshelves. “Don’t you know stuff like this pushes me to the alt-right? People like you make me who I am.”

“That’s literally impossible.” Dan reshelved a book. “The conceit of the alt-right is personal responsibility. If you move to the alt-right, it can only be because you choose to, by definition. Blaming me for your political views just shows how humiliated you are.”

“I’m not humiliated!” Leo buttoned his shirt to hide his tattoo. “My only political belief is freedom!”

“Freedom from what?”

“Stop looking at me like that!” said Leo. “Freedom from whiny bitches like you, and taxes! Obviously!”

Dan reshelved the rest of his books. “Is taxation theft?”

“Yes! Duh!”

“Who’s responsible for protecting your property from theft, and what pathetic excuse did they give you for their failure?”

Leo said nothing.

“You’re too lazy to live free. You talk a big talk, but your power-level’s not worth hiding.”

Leo stomped. “Shut up! My dad is rich, I know what I’m talking about.”

“Your dad’s taxed, too. My dad’s not taxed. Why would anyone believe your overblown rhetoric when you obviously don’t believe it yourself?”

“So you’re telling me to shoot the taxman?”

“Patrick Henry said ‘give me liberty or give me death,’ not ‘give me liberty or I’ll whine and scrounge for pity-points.’ A coward’s a Communist no matter what their government allows or requires them to pretend to be instead.”

“What, you want me to go full Waco?”

“You mean kill your family in a fire? Yes, please. Do the world a favor.”

Leo clocked Dan in the jaw. Dan’s head hit two bookshelves as he fell. Leo turned and made sure his collar concealed his tattoo.

“Hey.” Dan, crumpled on the floor, produced a crisp twenty dollar bill from his wallet. “Get a swastika on your forehead. And go to a professional, or you’ll get infected.”

Leo refused the money. “Why?”

“So everyone knows to look at you the same way I do.”

Leo looked over his shoulder to see if the librarian was near. “This summer, Danny-boy? I’m gonna beat the smug outta you.”

Next Section
Commentary