Vicious Aliens (continued)

Cycle 8

CYCLE 8 

Prithee, my dear

Why are we here?

Nobody knows

We go to sleep

As breathing flows

My mind secedes

—The Pixies, I Bleed (Surviving Fragments)

The Jellopod elites study wormwholes as if they were tree rings, each one giving an indication as to the age of the interdimensional topography that they use for transiting between nodes. Picture me standing totally naked, snow angel style, my mind and body blurring and duplicating like Davinci’s Virtuvian Man within the ‘Tuning Bell.’ The deep groove of the music resonates to the universal frequency, a rhythmic drone transcending pleasure and pain, crushing the teeth beneath my smile. I’m here, there and everywhere. Rivers spread and dry up as countryside morphs into urban jungle. I’m watching Greenwich Village fly by in standard time. Bohemians and writers transform into hippies and beatniks. I see musicians, tourists, shopkeepers, vagrants, businesspeople and punks. Through an iris the colour of amnesia I watch as people appear and disappear in peacetime and in times of war, decay and famine. Generations elapse before me. There are hut dwellers wearing gas masks and refugees from a nameless plague. I’m travelling without moving an inch. It’s sensory overload. I struggle to recall my mission as I am folded frontwards and backwards in time, losing all sense of direction. I’ve taken a hit of quantum heroin and am falling deeper into a tranquilizing trance. My mind splinters into a thousand pieces as I tunnel through interstellar space. Objects before me accelerate as I try to grasp hold of something, anything, in my peripheral vision. Finally, the outline of a set of buildings warp across my field of view, enveloping it. I begin to recognize where I am. It’s been years since I set foot in my old military academy but memories come flooding back. The room gradually gains volume before the breaks slam on every nerve ending in my body. I feel extreme pain as I come smashing into a new universe. After a few minutes in which I vacillate between thinking that I’m either Schrodinger’s living cat or his dead one, it dawned on me. I had come to a complete stop.