Fractured

It was Mr. Mongoose, a 300 pound man, who tipped the scales resulting in a fracture in time. Mongoose was a mobster/businessman who owned The House of Blue Lights where Miss Silica Wayfarer sang for her supper. She was a frail damsel in distress. When she wasn’t singing the blues she was selling her body at cut-rate prices. It was an addiction. Perhaps, Silica was a victim of abuse; maybe she was under the influence of powerful subliminal suggestions; or, perhaps, she simply loved sex. Mongoose knew the story and he catered to her addiction with the glee of a 14 year old boy; but it wasn’t sex he was after… it was control. Mr. Mongoose was driven by the compulsion to have power over everything: people, sex, drugs, and money. He wanted the whole mega-metropolis to kneel down before his mighty girth. He was nicknamed The Coyote because he slinked through the city always ready to pounce.

The blue lights in the house were iridescent and alive with radiation. Mongoose enjoyed toying with his customers. He irradiated them to make them more receptive to robocalls and subliminal messages.

Silica was propped-up on stage. Her naked body glistened in the blue lights. Smoke poured off her reinforced breasts as she fornicated to the electronic beats. The audience was transfixed by the blue emanations streaming from cell phones and computer screens. No one watched the stage. Everything had to be an offshoot of the original. The ideal launching pad was six degrees from reality. Mongoose was in his element, controlling the masses. He wanted fodder for his new endeavor: destruction on a mass scale. He would have to harness the energy of a particle accelerator. It would give him control over Time itself; but even in his addled brain it seemed like an outlandish plan. Mongoose wondered if he was being controlled by some entity outside himself… that was his worst nightmare. He often had dreams that featured blue aliens — three creatures that looked like puppy-dogs except for their color, Yves Klein Blue. In the nightmare, the aliens crossed the barrier that surrounds Earth. At first they appeared like fluffy balls of light… Mongoose was not an easy man to scare, but fluffy balls of light horrified him. He had to bring his bizarre plan to fruition in order to save himself from the aliens.

Music was always a distraction. It was supposed to calm the patients, but it often had the opposite effect. The music sounded like cats drowning in a barrel. The voice of Silica Wayfarer overflowed in atonal waves from the loud speakers. Patients began to riot. The only person who sat calmly and quietly was Pomeroy-Zen. He wasn’t certain if his name was fiction or non-fiction; but he subscribed to his apparent name with the entirety of his mental capacity. Pomeroy’s life was festooned with riddles. He wasn’t certain if he was in a hospital or jail. He didn’t know if he was a slave to a corrosive addiction which may have resulted in his incarceration; or, if he simply slipped from the moorings of reality with a nervous breakdown. He relied on his digital Sidekick for answers. After meditating in the midst of the riot, Pomeroy questioned his Sidekick, “where am I?”

“Thomas,” the Sidekick always addressed Pomeroy as Thomas, “you are in a Transpersonal Environment built from the expectations of a majority of disenchanted Homo sapiens.”

“Why am I here?” Pomeroy tweeted.

“People have been brought to this node as a protection from the harm they may cause to themselves, other people, or institutions. A legal precedent has just been uploaded and approved.”

“Is there a way out?”

“There is no way out, but there is a way In. The further In you go, the more distance you will travel from the current situation.”

There was never a clear-cut answer about anything. It was frustrating, but also illuminating in a Zen kind of way.

Pomeroy hooked up with Silica Wayfarer. No sex was involved. The hook up was purely for practical considerations and survival was a top priority. They had reasons to escape the current situation. Mr. Mongoose and his thugs appeared at every intersection.

The besieged couple had credentials (facsimiled by Pomeroy’s Sidekick). For their own protection they became different people, a married couple, Mr. and Mrs. Arturo and Monica Bracket — no longer addicted to sex or Zen. Consequently (for all intents and purposes) they were archeological explorers purportedly searching for an ancient artifact known to be buried in the Amazon Jungle. Previously they lived in the city of Amazonia, not far from the jungle. All the evidentiary facts fit like a glove.

Mongoose was discouraged. He got sidetracked by other concerns, devastation being his main objective. The scales were already tipped and Time was running out. The aliens, whether real or imagined, yapped and barked like feral dogs.

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In 2018 a digital article was published stating the mathematical proof of Time Travel and the possibility of building a Time Machine. All that was missing were the exotic materials necessary to construct the device. In the ensuing years, new exotic-materials were developed and made available.

Mr. Mongoose was a businessman with a bad comb-over. He was an interloper who lusted after power.

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Arturo and Monica were having tea on the veranda. They were visiting Professor Kulio’s country home in Patagonia.

“We have to settle our accounts before heading off to the jungle,” Arturo whispered to Monica.

“Yes, darling. We are lucky the professor has agreed to back our expedition.”

“He loves antiquity. He believes the past is buried in the Amazon along with a key to our very survival.”

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An end is another beginning (Zen Koan).

We are plagued by funerals. We aspire to slip into a future beyond death.

The jungle is riff with dangers. There is always a man with a big gun.

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Arturo and Monica Bracket checked the want-ads through the Talking Drum Network in order to find a guide. Harry Numumba fit the bill. He was a member of the Baka tribe of Pygmies. He had a degree from Oxford and he was well versed in myths concerning lost cities and ancient artifacts. Harry was well traveled and he had a map of the Amazon tattooed on his back.

The Brackets conscripted several native bearers and a boat ironically named, The African Queen. They set out on the seventh day of the seventh month at the seventh hour.

“The artifact you seek,” Harry Numumba succinctly spat out the words, “is most likely located in the lost city of Akuna Gimba near the mouth of the great Amazon River.”

Arturo and Monica were shocked and surprised. They heard of Akuna Gimba. The name translated as The Land of the Dying Sun.

The river boat excursion unraveled like the slippery back of a giant sea serpent. Nights on the river were fierce with the maniacal sounds of predators and the glistening lights reflected off the eyes of beasts along the river’s edge. The journey on the African Queen wound down to a stuttering silence as Lands End rose from the murky depths.

The group disembarked at the mouth of the Amazon. Several of the native bearers were too frightened to continue into the rain forest. The native word for devastation was repeated again and again.

The remaining group traveled through a jungle-web of intolerable conditions. Harry led the way. Monstrous plants seemed to rise up and attack the group with poisonous thorns. Mosquitoes the size of fists pummeled the group with unrelenting stings. Two native bearers succumbed to the devastating perils. Monica suffered from a bout of life threatening dysentery. Arturo was put out of commission for several days after wrenching his back. Thereafter he had to be dragged along on a makeshift stretcher.

In the early dawn of the seventh week the ruins of a city rose out of the blue mist. The city appeared to welcome the remaining travelers, but it was a grisly welcome. Death was all that could be seen. The city was a tomb consisting of shattered buildings and petrified bones.

Arturo and Monica continued undaunted to the site of the artifact rumored to be a network or large cave shielded by a pitch black monolith. The stone marker was visible from where they stood. The monolith offered protection (or a warning), but the entrance into the cave was unobstructed.

The inside of the cave appeared to glow with an acidic blue light. The source of the light could have been the luminous fungus that covered the walls of the cave, but that was not the case. There was a sarcophagus in the middle of the floor. It wasn’t made of stone. It was metal. It was stainless steel and it glowed blue. A clear glass visor covered the top of the sarcophagus. A face was clearly visible behind the visor. It was a face out of Time, from a long lost century. Monica and Arturo stared at one another as Time began to unravel. They turned back to the machine. They recognized the face of the 300 pound man, the man who fractured Time.