Decline and Fall of Alternative Civilization

  ~ ~ ~

  Immediately after sunset and under a moonless sky, June walked out with him to raise what he called "mirror pods." Three tripods atop which sat small white domes, they were arrayed in a triangular pattern, each 200 yards out from the shack. She set up and secured the tripods; he positioned and adjusted each dome, connected them to electronic cubes which he attached to their bases, and activated them. Only a few more minutes of twilight remaining, they were back under the roof of the shack. He handed her a pack of AA batteries. "Your energizer should be good for another 24 hours but, here, just in case you need them later." He set up another, smaller, pod-like device a few yards out from the building and aimed it in the direction of the abandoned Jeep. A switch was thrown and he announced, "Curtain rising. Begin Act Two." Switching on another unit in the car's dash console, the radar screen showed the Jeep's blip with a subtle pulsation as its engine engaged via remote control.

  A twenty-minute wait, then he started the big V-8. "Last chance to hit the bathroom for quite a while." They walked out into the darkness. Back at the idling car, he grabbed her and said, "Last chance to be emotional," and concluded a long kiss with, "OK, I'm powering up and?countdown." His suit was engaged; he lowered the hood of her suit, pulled a black shroud from his pocket and was slipping it over her head.

  "Wait!" She resisted. "You didn't tell me about this."

  "No, I didn't."

  "Oh geeezzz. Why am I not surprised?"

  "Because you already know it's for your own good." He lowered it all the way and cinched it around her neck. "Sorry I have to do this, but you can't see where we're going." Lifting her hood back into place and giving a firm slap to her ass, he guided her to the passenger door. "Get in the back and keep down. And this time don't forget to use those harnesses to strap yourself in. You'll definitely need it. Now it's time to drive the cat crazy."

  Muffled, she responded, "Sir. Yes, sir," and saluted toward his voice, scrambled over the seat and dropped into the back compartment. One door shut, then the other, he put the car in gear and released the clutch. Sightlessly finding her backpack, she stashed the batteries while they bumped along the desert floor. With nothing left to do but stay hidden, she strapped in, probed the panels and folds of her suit and?there it was. She tugged at the pouch and discovered the stitching that held it in place just front of her left hip. Closing her eyes, her vision got no darker. The night was already black and she was lying in the dark with a black bag over her head. "National security," she murmured. Shifting her body, an arm came to rest on a foreign object that hadn't been there before. Using the Braille method it was?a?goddam distributor cap. Her brain decided it had slid out from beneath the front seat and she shivered because she was going home. Yes, that's it. She was going home and nothing else mattered.

  The road was smooth, a few lumpy sections at low speed. He called back, "Stand by, my friend. We're about to tickle the dragon's tail." The IR screen showed the false heat point meandering some miles away, and the idling Jeep engine was generating a second and third point-one true, one false. The radar screen showed the blip parade originating from the Jeep, and he manipulated a rotary knob on one of the stealth boxes. No sign of either the Ford or their bodies on the IR, nor on the radar screen, until he engaged a second box and the electronic fur began to fly. A dozen or more blips focused from the fray heading eastward in random patterns. He dialed in a few settings on the boxes, hit a button and shouted, "Damn. June, you did a great job setting up those tripods." They had become part of the confusing array. One more button and, "Hold on tight. We're 'bout to kick their asses."

  She didn't want to see what was happening. Even under belt restraints an explosive acceleration bounced her into the back bulkhead. The engine growled fiercely and she could only wonder if they were biting rather than tickling the tail of the beast. The jostling lasted a good fifteen minutes and, dizzy from sense deprivation, she passed out. Regaining consciousness, the vertigo induced a horrible stomach agitation. The road was smooth and they were moving at a blinding clip. She tried her damnedest but?"JHH!"

  No response.

  "JHH!" Louder, "HELP!"

  "WHAT?"

  "I think I'm about to puke."

  "Can you hold it?"

  "Please, no?"

  "Hang on." An instantaneous burst of speed, a hard and quick swerve, the big brakes took hold and they stopped. She unbelted, a hand grabbed her arm and pulled upward. "C'mon. We gotta make this quick."

  "Mmmm?"

  She was dragged over the seat back and into the night air on rubbery legs. He hustled her over an uneven patch of ground and, "On your knees. Lean forward and grab the fence." He lowered her hood, unfastened and removed the shroud. "You're clear. Let it out." An acidic torrent spewed out into inky darkness. A few more heaves and she coughed and spit and spit again. He had walked away and returned, holding a bottle of water to her lips. "Here. Don't swallow the first one." A big gulp swished around her mouth and she spat it out. The next gulp she swallowed.

  "Omigod. Thank you."

  "No time to waste." The shroud slipped over her head and the hood was raised again. She was manhandled back to the car, into her hiding place. The big side-oiler rumbled and the Ford swerved back onto the unseen road, G-forces compressing her into the bulkhead. "Are you OK?" he called back.

  "Just peachy."

  "Good. It's about to get rough. Hold on."

  "Oh boy."

  For hours there were washboards of vibration, rises, dips, smooth road, and never-ending stretches of rude accelerations, downshiftings, brakings and tight lateral swervings, but, thank god, no more puking. Eventually, a yowling deceleration and he parodied, "Ladies and gentlemen, we are beginning our descent to a ground-level pit stop. Please keep your seat belts fastened until we have come to a complete stop."

  When the car halted and the engine shut down, she criticized. "You'll never be a flight attendant if you forget about putting the seat backs and tray tables up."

  "Doggonit. Forever damned to be a pilot. C'mon. I hope you can pee with that mask on." He snickered as he helped her from the hold. Wherever they were, it was magnificently quiet and airy. He guided her to a civilized toilet, with paper; they relieved themselves in adjacent stalls; then to a hard, outdoor bench where she bathed in the sounds and smells of refueling. The hood of the car raised, shut, there were sounds of fidgeting and adjusting things within the cockpit; he came and sat next to her, pressing something against her mouth. "Slip that under your mask. It's water. And by the way, end of Act Two. I think we did it. We're far past the perimeter. I still can't tell you where, though."

  "I guess that's OK." Her shaking hands worked the drinking tube to her lips and she sucked in the cold fluid. Removing the tube, she burped, then entwined her arm in his and leaned her head against his shoulder.

  After ten minutes of rest he urged her upward. "You're almost free but we've still got a ways to go. On to Act Three?"

  "Act Three!"

  Over the seat back again and strapped in. The big 427 blasted back to life and smoothly sped them away from wherever they were and back onto the highway. Without sight all she had was motion, like tumbling on streams of uncertainties-hands on the wind, wings on the water, wishes on the voids between attractions. Thoughts of freedom no longer mattered. The throb of a well-heeled American V-8 massaged her and a contented grin spread across her face. Whether beyond a blue or black horizon, travel and motion were divine. The rivers of Mark Twain and proud steamboats were also the rivers of desperate slaves and gasping swimmers, and there, but for misfortune, flows life itself: evaporations, dissipations, all that rises, all that converges, and all that are welcomed by her dear Uncle Kevin.

  The Road, though misunderstood, is always there, and no amount of cleverness can remind travelers they have not discovered anything new. They have simply revisited the past and the so-called poets among them smoke away at their thoughts like a carpenter sands away at a piece of w
ood. No splinters. Just dirt, direction, and degrees. An eye might think to look for significance in the spaces between chickens and eggs. In the modern world of perceptions, chickens cluck like squeaky sewing machines. Eggs witness silently to noise and industry and await a gravity, a growth that keeps them from containing any ideas that can fill them. They are beyond the expert alterations that can save nine stitches in one, such perceptions belonging only to farmers measuring the secret dimensions of time.

  Strapped in, sightless, June began dreaming and a band played in her head. A large band with horns, bass hung around her neck, she was hitting strings with her thumb, one note to another, a connect-the-dots lacework of wrought iron surrounding the stems of incredible roses. A guitar player fretted soft, aching chords while a tenor man stretched into a love supreme and reached for notes that cried names he did not know. The tenor man played a tune for June in keys of E?. Her eyes walked and stumbled over the B natural scale, notes so slippery. Potatoes were thrown into the street to be kicked about by feet that didn't know the difference between a famine and a feast and the trombone played a tune for June in a muted hush of reflected lights on brass. In a cavity of noisy trains, whistles blew passengers to the next stop while wheels on the tracks clacked out a rhythm for June among the hope of dreamers whose thinking is thought that thinks otherwise. A stupid cupid flew over a cuckoo's nest to ride upon light that landed on the bell of a perfect spiraling C# C# C#. But thinking what she could, the bass clarinet played a tune for June in the still of a night where rest can set neither tempo nor thought of why the notes cannot be read from paper. Thinkers thought they knew what the sun would bring before darkness would cry the name that eluded them. Fools. She heard the bluest of notes in the bell of the horn, in the silver resolve of a man bent to reconcile the night against the advance of day.

  Roses, she smiled, and felt the strings throb against her heart.