Chapter 16: More Exposition! Can you Handle It?!
“So, how exactly do you know all these people, and why are they scattered all over creation?” Erin was looking out the window of an econobox hydro-cell car… well, “car” is pushing it, but I guess since it had four wheels and a motor, it barely qualified. Just like Stain to give me some suburban overweight mother’s mall-hopper, I thought Ah well, at least it’ll be inconspicuous… Hardly, with the Mountain to deal with.
“Well, darling, It all goes back to the creation of the Open Bar.”
“For you, it always does, doesn’t it?”
“Let me finish. That project was both the nucleus of our little organization, and the last time all of us saw each other in a single group. We realized that we had done something unbelievable, and that we would be the focus of intense Official scrutiny. Being rampant Individualists, we all had our own ideas about how to avoid being noticed. But it was both the gnome and Stain who came up with the idea of using Sticking Apart as a battle strategy.”
“The gnome.”
“Yup.”
“Wait… you mean like midget?”
“I have no idea. No one ever really saw him. It’s kind of hard to explain, but he was really good about keeping hidden, and disguising his voice. No one is ever sure where or who he is. But he’s a good friend of that pookah we me at the café, fluffy.”
Erin groaned. “Please, no more of that. I don’t think I could take it.”
“Don’t worry; the esoteric portion of this is over. Pretty much. I think. Well, maybe I shouldn’t promise that just yet. But I will promise that if we do get into any heavy occultism, I’ll couch it in a hell of a lot of quantum physics theory.”
“Charming. So, you were saying…”
“Right. The Sticking Apart idea came from an old, old book that the so-called Discordians—”
“--Who you claim to be part of--”
“—Right. There was a passage in there, a joke, really, that instead of the people in their religion sticking together--”
“—They should stick apart. Ha, ha. Very funny. You all go in for some pretty stupid humor, you know that?”
“You should have seen us before the Big Takeover of 2011. No one took anything seriously. We all thought that not really caring about society and the world was cool, and we would make stupid jokes and infantile pranks, thinking we would somehow disrupt the system. Until, of course, the System got out ahead of us.”
“How do you mean?”
“To be honest, I’m not really sure. Some say we just weren’t paying enough attention to the slow progress from hedonistic and decadent to diseased and corrupt, but others claim that what eventually became Government, Inc stumbled upon some new innovation or invention that propelled their information and communication abilities far beyond what anyone ever suspected. A lot of us are trying to figure out what happened.
“Anyway, after we lost and Doubtless Incident and the Illegitimate Son of God… I know, I know, don’t look at me like that. They had weird names. Leave it at that. After they got taken in by the Cops and beaten to death, we realized they weren’t complete fuckups anymore, and we had to actually crack down and get shit done. We couldn’t agree on any one project or tactic or plan, which is when the gnome and Stain, independently of each other, came up with a practical application of Sticking Apart.”
“Go on… I think I can see where this is going.”
“Well, think of it this way: If you have an opponent who has more manpower, and with analytical skills off the charts, the only way to get around their counter strategy is complete randomness. The night we created the Open Bar, we decided to split up, and never openly talk about our main objective, the one thing that we could all agree on, to a greater or lesser extent… to bring down Government, Inc.”
“What? Bring it down? Pretty tall order there, mister.”
“Don’t knock it ‘till you’ve tried it. So, we split up, each of us trying in our own way to beat the System, but with no direct communication about our short term tactics or goals. Stain opened up his Pizza parlor, Mal had her café, Mangrove became attached to the Open Bar and decided to befriend it, and so on.”
“Wait… If everyone split up, how is it that you know all these people?”
“They just like me, I guess.”
“I find that very hard to believe.” Erin cracked me a wry grin, and I could feel myself respond. You know, down there.
“Very funny. Ok, we’re approaching the outskirts of The City. You better open up that tequila. It’s an hour to the base of The Mountain, and I don’t want you freaking out before we get a chance to meet Noodle.”
“Who?”
“Noodle. Of the Mountain. Nice girl, but deadly.”
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Erin cracked open the bottle, and took a swig. She made a face.
“Yuck. This is awful.”
“Could be worse, could be Jose Cuervo.”
“Ugh, never mind. I’m starting to get jittery. Let me just drink.”
“That’s some good thinking. See if you can lean the seat back so you’re just staring at the ceiling.”
She was able to recline the seat to its optimal horny-teenager-getting-it-on-in-Mom’s-car position, took another slug, grimaced, and closed her eyes. I tried to find something good on the radio, but all I could find was propaganda, and the latest Brittany Spears clone. Man, when are they going to stop that shit? She died in a plane crash 15 years ago, and each replica is just worse than before. Surely her DNA has run out by now.
The shitheap of a car cleared the city limits, and as usual, I was struck with a wave of vertigo as the psychotecture came to a sudden end. It was as if the entire landscape became a barren, emotional plain. When you live with artificial manipulations of your nervous system 24/7, the sudden absence of the distorted empathic pressures makes you feel like your head is about to spin off your neck while a nest of snakes bursts out of your head.
I reached over to Erin & grabbed the bottle of tequila from her. “Hey, she said weakly. I was just—”
“Keep your pants on, I just need to clear my head,” I said, taking a swig & handing it back. An amber smokiness took a joyride down my throat as I felt my belly warm to the welcome intruder, and my vision start to return to normal. I gripped the wheel more tightly and frowned at the road which, devoid of neurological manipulation, was just a road. The mental silence was crushing, but I could see the muted green of the treeline, skirting The Mountain, beckoning us.
The Mountain. Geologists have spent entire careers trying to figure out how it got there. Imagine everything around you being flat, and then an alp-like, craggy looming monstrosity juts up from the earth like out of some Lovecraftian wanna-be pulp thriller. No volcanic activity, not on a fault line, it’s just… there, like the granite tooth of some monstrous beast. Throughout the generations, because of its lack of scientific explanation as to its presence, loony and whacked-out religious nuts have tried to set up shop in the craggy caves of The Mountain, only to return to civilization in a few months, perhaps a year, starving, freezing, and muttering of inexplicable, random events that no one could figure out. Sometimes, they never did come back.
I suppose that’s why The Mountain appealed to Noodle. I mean, besides the fact that she was the smartest one of all of use for getting the hell out of The City when she had the chance, let’s not forget that she is utterly and completely, an inexplicable, random event. No one’s sure when she showed up in our little group, she was just there one day, looking fresh off the bus, and wielding a field hockey stick. She left the same way, too: Silently, quickly, and without a trace. It was only several months later that we heard about what was happening up on The Mountain. Noodle had apparently taken over some pseudo-monk’s cave and had quickly transformed it into a full-body-contact Zen sanctuary/dojo. In no time flat, she had the hook up to all the best society has to offer, and none of the downfalls of The City. Sound like paradise, right? Well, the turnover rate is pretty high, not to mention the body count… But it makes sense that she would be the one who would carry the Somax 2350. Hell, a girl’s gotta have some fun, right?
Erin had come to the end of the bottle. She tossed it aside, and reached for the other. “Whoa, hold up there, darlin’. You’re not supposed to pass out on me.”
“Shut up. I can hear them screaming.” Erin’s face was pale, and tight, like she was using her facial muscles to keep her brain from exploding out of her skull. “How… how long until we get into the trees?”
“We’re already there. Relax, take a few minutes, I’ll let you know when you should start looking around.” With that, the first of the horrifically twisted trees began to pass by, and soon the base forest swallowed the car into its murky half-light.
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