(Today we conclude our look at the ongoing saga)

“Nixxy-Smonnix”

Of all the wonderful Gorth creations the Traveller might be the best. Technically biological life created through artificial means, Travellers are the Gorth’s emissary to other worlds. Spaceborn and essentially immortal, Travellers best resemble a two dimensional silver veil about two meters square, but they too often contract into tiny orbs as do the probes. Travellers cannot directly “speak” to anyone save for probes, whom they also must speak through when time comes to make Contact. Infinitely wise and capable of opening several consciousnesses at once, Travellers are likely to become the most advanced lifeform in the galaxy, if they aren’t already. (Travellers are considered female because “it” is an impolite pronoun and “he” is being used.)

But even the brightest can be hoodwinked.

It was fitting that Mimi and the Traveller were both thirty light years (give-take) from Earth yet in different directions. It symbolically underscored both their personal views, which left Earth, figuratively and literally in the middle. Still, as it goes with people, both were a little more wrong than they would admit, but none of that was writ in stone.

The Traveller knew something was “off” about the probe who sent her both an unannounced message and a tractor beam that attached her to one human mind the instant the communication arrived. The Mighty Probe only needed a millisecond to attach the beam. If Traveller knew it was coming she could have avoided it. But once locked, Traveller knew that she was going to go to Earth no matter how she felt about it.

Travellers have varying personalities and names of their own choosing. Her name was Callie; not really but it will have to do. Callie had tremendous humour and was not quick to lose her patience. Therefore she was bemused and amused by the transmission: WE HAVE DISCOVERED A WORLD AND REQUIRE YOUR PRESENCE. NOW, PIG FARMER! This was signed, YOUR MASTER, THE MIGHTY PROBE.

Three contacts back, the residents of the world, which lay five centuries in her past had a word for a condition that rarely yet sometimes developed in their own AI’s, a treatable dementia they named “nixxy-smonnix.” Callie had never encountered “space happiness” in a probe before, but in the universe anything could happen.

But that notion went back burner after she had traced the probe’s recent history (all things Gorth are at a Traveller’s disposal, a constant history, whose arrival is a lot like a sacred mystery). There was nothing in the probe’s past to suggest trouble (oh, he occasionally expressed the typical resentment for Travellers, but they all did that). Interestingly, however, this probe had briefly gone offline recently, about sixty light years away. It was as though it had exited the universe one place and returned at another much farther away than it should have been. Moreover, Callie saw that the region it had vanished in was mainly inhabited by the Krell. You needn’t the brain power of a billion minds to see the two plus two of the situation. The equation was made even simpler after Traveller examined the data that the probe thoughtfully included in his transmission. It told a tale of a burgeoning, lively, artistic world that was still too shabby around the edges for Contact. And yes, they had split the atom first, which was not as much a concern to Callie as it was to most other Travellers.

But none of this was as important as the introduction of the consciousness of one Holliday James More in her mind. Callie “experienced” Holly moment by moment, starting with the night of Bokay,  but being multi-conscious, she could also have her own thoughts. She saw what he saw, felt his various pains and even allowed herself to dabble in his drunkenness, which, in one form or another, existed everywhere. Callie knew his past as incorrectly as he recalled it, but, unlike Holly, she had the ability to access the memory banks in his brain for accurate pictures. But individuals are not built by accuracy. She regretted that she could not communicate with him. She understood that he had a vague awareness of her and had accepted it.

The measurement of time means little to the everlasting, but it is understood because it means everything to short-lived creatures like Holly More. It would take thirty-two of his years for her to reach him, and, of course, The Mighty Probe, whom she was dying to speak too (but the little bastard had disconnected his link to her after he’d sprung the booby trap). Considering the strong element of self destruction in his personality, she figured there stood a good chance that this young man would be dead well before her arrival. But the beam, Callie knew, was of the sort that consulted “time bubbles”–those subatomic conscious cells left over from the Big Bang. Not even she knew how they worked, but many items regarding the future, mainly the existence of certain living beings, could be gleaned from such. Another sacred mystery. Apparently, or at least as Callie assumed, this Holly person would still be around when she got there.

In the meantime, all she could do was enjoy the ride.

End Chapter Four: End Part One.

(Note: Yes, this was once a stand alone short for those five or six people who recognize it–LA)

“Elbows With Fishes”

-1-

Holly More first got drunk at the reasonably late age of eighteen. On a late summer Saturday night in 1977, he dropped in on a pair of college classmates who shared a shithole studio apartment at the base of Seattle’s Capitol Hill. The roomies extolled the virtues of “Bokay” apple wine, which sold for sixty-nine cents a bottle. Ritzy nectars such as Boone’s Farm, T.J. Swann and, Allah-forbid, Lancer’s were too fancy-pants pricewise for students who earned $2.10 an hour at Work Study jobs. That left MD 20/20, Night Train, Thunderbird and Bokay. Since the first three were what the Pioneer Square bums drank, the guys went with the Bokay. Holly later found out that Bokay was the wine of last resort amongst the Pioneer Square bums.

“Elbows with fishes,” said one of the guys, named Brandon, as a toast. It was an in-joke taken from an Anthropology prof who always went to great pains to remind his students that all peoples share humble origins. “We’re all just fishes with elbows.” Brandon liked the soul of the phrase better the other way around. It was just something he said–His catchphrase, same sort of thing as his roomie Jerry’s annoying habit of calling other guys “honey” even though in all other words he made his heterosexuality indisputable public knowledge.

The Bokay tasted like gasoline. Holly might have spat it out if that hadn’t been the same moment that the string The Mighty Probe had sent to the Earth hadn’t fixed to his mind and opened a one way link from him to Traveller thirty-two light years away in the direction of Sagettarius. Of course, it wouldn’t have mattered if he had rejected the wine. Holly’s DNA made alcoholism a mortal lock. Anyway he kept it down, drank more and “got wasted” as such was marked in the idiom of his society. And although he was not actively aware of the connection, he understood that something wonderful had just happened to him. Holly thought it was the Bokay.

“Holy Jesus, fuckin shit’s awful,” Holly gasped, yet he was already lifting his glass for more.

“You get used to it, honey,” said Jerry.

“Same way the damned get used to hell,” said Brandon. “Elbows with fishes, gentleman. Let’s have some fun.”

And it was fun. Few of life’s pleasures are fun the first time round. Even at last dispensing with one’s virginity is a greater source of worry than it is anything else. But there ain’t nothing like that first hit. Ain’t nothing like watching those legendary doors of perception iris open; ain’t nothing like falling through the looking glass; ain’t nothing like “discovering” a mountain that was already old news to the local Indians back when the world was new.

About three glasses into the night, Holly found himself deeply in love with Farrah Fawcett. He seldom watched television and didn’t know anything about Charlie’s Angels. But he knew beauty when he saw it. And there she was, a radiant goddess in a one piece red bathing suit, smiling like a quasar in what time has judged the greatest cheesecake poster in all human history (“iconic” as said by persons who have no idea what iconic really means). In 1977 that poster was everywhere you found males best described as guys. Couldn’t walk into a wall that didn’t have one. But Holly never paid the poster much mind because Farrah was one of those rare persons too perfect to fantasize about–he figured that his slouchy self esteem would throw up its hands in despair and say “Yeah, right” if he dared to “invite” someone like Farrah Fawcett to his mental theatre. Yet the strengthening Bokay urged Holly to look into it.

There was nothing, or at least little, sexual about this. Although that might prompt the “Yeah, right” response from the reader, it was true. Both Farrah and Holly had amethyst eyes, the sort you find in a Siamese cat. Her paper and print eyes met Holly’s and he fell into a memory. He was very young in the memory; he’d just once again awakened from the dream in which there was no anxiety, no pre-schizophrenic mother making oatmeal in the kitchen, no cramps in his belly caused by an urgent need to pee. Although he had had the dream countless times between ages six and eleven, he could never remember it. But he knew every time it had again happened due to the great emptiness he felt upon its departure and his unhappy return to an existence that was harshly over-lighted, mindlessly noisy and seemingly dedicated to tending to one little pain just to immediately contract another. Something in this woman’s eyes spoke of that dream; he could almost remember… “something from ahead–a memory from tomorrow…”

But fucking Jerry clumsily killed off Holly’s musing. “You’re sweety’s nippin’, honey,” he said, filling Holly’s glass. “I’d do her the favor in a pinch, but I’m partial to brunettes,” he added, motioning at a poster of comely Linda Ronstadt in a cub scout’s uniform. Beside her, Stevie Nicks was lying flat on her stomach atop a corvette.

“Had a dyke sociology major come by once to borrow a book,” Brandon chimed in. “Called us chauvinistic swine–you know, the typical hairy-pit patter, after she got a load of the posters. Told her these girls posed for these of their own free will and for a pretty penny to boot, no doubt. Told her I thought that none of them were dumb enough to think that they were agreeing to do something that was going to hang in the fucking Lourve.”

Holly had wanted to punch Jerry for the interruption, but he wasn’t a fighter. And just prior to taking the tipping point swallow of wine, after which such things didn’t matter anymore, he wondered what in hell possessed him to drop in on these guys. When Holly was five, his father did the old “going to the store for a pack of butts” routine and hadn’t been seen (or missed) since. Holly grew up without a male presence in his life, which had been far from unusual in the neighborhood he grew up. Maybe he didn’t hate men as much as he always felt uncomfortable around them–even “guys” like these two, who were men in only the technical sense. Holly wasn’t gay–far from, but his only real friends were female. The best friend he’d have for life often told him “You’re a lesbian trapped inside a man’s body.” He used to think that was a joke, but in time he had to wonder.

As life needs death to give it meaning, Saturday Night needs the same from Sunday Morning.

-2-

Holly woke the next morning still seated in a beanbag chair which had begun to spin sometime after midnight. There was this nasty dampness which spread from the crotch of his jeans to his lap. He’d either peed his pants for the first time since he was a baby or had vomited pure alcohol on himself in his sleep. Holly found the vomit theory the least disgusting of the two, so he went with it, even though he did not need to urinate.

Few things are more forgiving than a healthy eighteen-year-old body. Alas, few things need forgiveness more than Bokay fortified apple wine–as well as the decision to willingly imbibe it. It’s called intoxication for a sound reason. Regardless, Holly’s eighteen-yearishness had already shrugged off most of the poison whilst he slept, and he’d be rid of the lingering after effects much the same way the summer sun dismisses fog well before noon. Yet there was something else, a purity of pain which clung to his mind and stayed on longer, a hushed indescribable sadness; a prophecy unveiled.

A grotesque yellow light shone through holes in the drawn shades. It made everything it touched ugly and infected. Jerry was snoring face down on a rescue sofa held together by stains and stenches. Brandon was either dead or passed out in a lawn chair across the room. So moveless had Brandon been that an unsmoked cigarette which had ashed from tip to filter was in his hand. The ash curled slightly forward at the top, yet held steady. They say in baseball you’ll see something in every game that you’ve never seen before. The same can be said about the world of drunkenness: Although Holly never smoked (which placed him in a tiny minority), he remembered that ashed cigarette for life, and not once did the trick ever repeat itself.

And that ruthless yellow light peered into Holly’s memory of the night before. That was, and always would be, the worst part. Even after years of experience tantamount to worldliness accumulated in his being, he never got over a drunk’s tendency for the astonishingly casual spilling of dark secrets. On that first Saturday Night, he had spoken freely of his mother’s suicide to guys whose names he had a hard time keeping straight–an off-limits topic he steadfastly avoided sharing with the few people he’d loved for life. What felt like freedom, had in fact been a cheap escape, fool’s gold put to words and music. And those tears he had shed were just a part of the act; tears that were dishonest and shameful accomplices in a naked grasp for attention. In time Holly came to embrace Fitzgerald’s definition of dissipation: “the act of turning something into nothing.”

Holly rose and tied the windbreaker he had worn the night before around his waist to conceal the stain. Before going, he approached the Farrah Fawcett poster that had almost revealed the only secret worth knowing just a few hours before. She remained every inch smiling perfection–so flawless that it somehow detracted from her perfection. Yet her eyes still spoke to him, this time not of was and when, but of a strangely attractive disquiet within; a certain philosophy that had patiently waited until conditions were met. Holly understood. Despite the gray ugliness of the morning he liked the way Bokay made him feel.

“I know what you’re thinking,” he whispered, gently tapping Farrah’s forehead. “Elbows with fishes.”

And at a point much farther away than the wildest rovings of the foot-freest of angels, someone listened and understood.

End Chapter Three

Chapter Two

The Mighty Probe

The Krellic string left the sleeping probe just shy of the Moon. His automated systems kicked on and eventually placed him at a point away from the Earth just beyond the farthest of the worlds’ primitive satellites. When he awakened, seconds later at Earth, on what most of the inhabitants called 13 and 14 August 1977, the Krell’s programming instantly enhanced his personality.

No longer a humble “it” probe that dutifully served the Gorth and was a second class citizen compared to the Traveller, he became a male named The Probe, a long oppressed slave who’d finally had it with his masters, and, even more so, with “walking boss” Traveller. Although there were a quarter million probes and thousands of Travellers, Mimi had made him and his nemesis singular. She also deleted all ties he had with other probes and Travellers. She also selected male for his gender because her small study of the planet informed her that it was still guided by ancient instincts that were slow to dissolve.

Now the definition of self confidence, The Probe made an initial scan of the Earth and laughed. “Just the shithole I’ve been looking for.” And he was all smiles and sunshine inside when he thought about the “special beam” attachment he’d be sending to “asshole” (Traveller). The smiles and sunshine inside increased while The Probe digested the data from the blue world below.

One of the key components to the alteration of the probe’s personality had been a command that kept him from looking too hard at certain things–mainly anything that had to do with the Krell. Mimi knew that her little jest could easily fall apart if he began to compare the present to the past or located something in her actions that ran contrary to the probe’s fundamental programming. He knew about her but did not think about her in relation to the present. A simple deflection sub-program fixed that.

The new and improved Probe easily hacked the satellites and devoured the planet’s crude radio and television transmissions. In intelligent mammal lifeforms there are only so many possible languages; these tend to repeat themselves, not in symbols per say but in context. The Probe was equipped to understand languages of the seven types of intelligent life (so far located) in the galaxy. He was neither confused by context nor easily surprised.

In an effort to cut back on all the blather, The Probe eventually selected a single television station in the planet’s northern hemisphere for serious examination: KXKVI Channel 14 in Seattle, Washington, USA. On the day of 13 and 14 August 1977, non-affiliated KXKVI broadcast six straight hours of something called “Superstar Wrestling.” Other than noting that the Nuclear Age had already begun on Earth and yet there was virtually no sign of integrated circuit technology, what aired that day on KXKVI only bolstered The Probe’s certainty about his plan.

Superstar Wrestling that won his heart. It was something new that existed only in this world. The Probe understood it was not “real” but was a strange theatre that most people looked down on (or so those people claimed). Probe was all in for wrestling and happily discovered that it was broadcasted from all over the world. After listening to several wrestler interviews (the best featured Lumberjack Luke who called the audience a bunch of “pig farmers”) he began to refer to himself as The Mighty Probe. At the end of the show, he quit KXKVI and began the “mark protocol.”

According to The Mighty Probe, the Traveller was thirty-two light years away. Although the string beam would reach her instantly, Traveller was the same as an organic lifeform and could not go faster than light speed. The time frame of thirty-two years meant nothing to the Probe or Traveller, who had been in service for tens of thousands of centuries, but for the stunningly short-lived creatures on the world below it was a long time. The deal was the same for Traveller, who, despite being kidnapped, would experience even far less time due to relativity. Still, it pleased The Mighty Probe that his actions were dictated to her by him and that she had no choice but to obey. Lovely word, obey, as long as one is on the right side of it.

For one brief moment, “probe” almost resurfaced as he marked the beam. The return to a mundane task almost caused his former self to reconsider the situation. But Mimi protected the project from that sort of thing with an image of Traveller laughing at the silly probe. She knew that probes had a much bigger grievance against Travellers than they had ever admitted to. Actually it was more of a hunch, but a good one.

He imagined Traveller laughing at him, daring to  call The Mighty probe a pig farmer. Oh fuck no! The precaution worked even better than Mimi had dared to dream. And it was The Mighty Probe who laughed as he finished preparing the loaded beam, bounced it off Earth, “caught it” and flung it to Traveller.

The beam was merely information, much like an email, but it came without the usual announcement, which allowed the tractor beam concealed within the millisecond it needed to latch onto Traveller before her reaction system could do anything about it (a sort of spam filter). And also within the beam was a link to the consciousness of a single human being. Trickery is almost unheard of in space, this made the whole affair (which the Mighty Probe believed was his idea) especially tasty.

Upon completing his task, the Mighty Probe settled down to watch more wrestling, which went well with the glow of his magnificence.

On a side note, of interest only to Earthlings, radio waves were shredded from the beam when the back end of the string snapped shut, way the hell out, about two light days from where he had launched the thing. If he had set it to snap where he was the entire planet would have run like a bell due to space warpage. All that came back was a normal, meaningless “leakage” of radio waves that replicated the coordinates. And although little came from it, The Mighty Probe would later be pleased because his actions had caused the famous “Wow! Signal.”

End Chapter Two