The Gunderson Prophecy

THE END OF THE WORLD JUST MAY BE THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH, AND A WHACKED-OUT TRIPSTER IS FIRST IN LINE TO BE THE MC

This world would end. The brink beckoned. A bright guy might as well pick a date. Gunderson had. A revolution in consciousness, the peaceful dismantling of all man's cruel machinery, was, according to his interpretation of an inter­pretation of a pre-Columbian codex, half a decade away. But that was merely one unfolding. Alternate endings included fire, flooding, pox, nukes. Homo sapiens had a few years to choose. Was that time enough? Gunderson figured it was, at least for him. Tune enough for another book, some lecture tours, a premium-cable show. Time enough to sam­ple all the yearning young hippie tang in questing creation (or our limited perception of it). Maybe too much time. A guy could unravel. Gunderson hadn't picked the date out of his favorite alpaca hat. Januar)' 5 in the Julian calendar was a major day in Mixtec prophecy. These bejeweled dudes had played their proto-basketball to the death, worn the skins of enemy slain. Probably they'd known something. Gunderson didn't know much about them, really, but who cared? That their glyphs foretold an imminent global shift was dearly enough for Ramon, the shaman Gunderson had been visiting these last several winters. You could be damn sure it was good enough for Gunderson. Besides, he'd never claimed the earth would crack open, just that something huge was on deck and if we didn't evolve our asses quick, it would be bad huge. A reasonable message, if a bit vague. Surpris­ing how many preferred not to hear it. These were maybe the same folk who pretended crop circles were teen pranks, the fools who called him fool. Look around, he wanted to say, did say, to gather­ings in the many hundreds, to panting patchouli girls and home chemists, to consciousness pimps and wireless kabbalists, to, in short, all the nonfools, the happy excellent few willing to be deranged by their knowing, thrilled to press up to where Gunderson perched in loose lotus and designer tunic under the track lights of a bookstore or small theater, a rangy Buddha with new beautiful teeth.

"Look around," he'd say, and they would, as though exemplars of the encroaching gnarlitude were doing (continued on page 118)

GUNDERSON

(continued from page 108)

gobun dances in the very room. Look at the world, what's going on in the world. Oppression, repression, depression, the middle this, the Western that, everything melting, burning, sick. It's no coinci­dence, it's prophecy, and prophecy is no joke, no matter what some cool shill for the corporations might tell you. Trust me, I used to be one of those shills. Until I got my head handed to me on a plate. Or, to be honest, in a bowl. A bowl full of the foulest soup you ever tasted. Vision gumbo. Best gift I ever got. Six years, people. We've got six years to find the better path. Or we are guaranteed one of the utmost, outmost shittiness."

Once, one of die girls who invariably fol­lowed him home from these gigs (a Gospel of Thomas fen named Nellie, now his cur­rent sintern), while getting positively gnos­tic on his fun parts with ballerina slippers she'd happened to have in her bag, asked Gunderson if he ever looked out on the crowd, thought, Suckers.

"Never," said Gunderson, remember­ing the ballet school his mother used to do the books for back in Oregon, those Danskined dryads cavorting in the musty, light-shot corridor where he waited for his mother to drive him home.

"Never?" said Nellie, her insteps rub­bing him toward some murked glimpse of the Demiurge.

"You don't get it," said Gunderson, panting himself now. "This is no con."

"No shit?"

None at all, and he had to get the word out. He considered it his duty to reach eye­balls. A heads-up for species-wide calamity deserved eyeballs. So he was a little on edge, on brink. He stood at the counter at Gray's Papaya on 72nd Street in Manhat­tan, waiting for a call from his manager, who was waiting for a call from his agent, who was waiting for a call from the TV people. He'd pitched them like some puma-headed god of pitching a few days before, laid waste to that conference room, but now there were concerns. They wanted to be certain Gunderson truly believed in his vision, that it wasn't a gag. Otherwise, the Untitled Gunderson Prophecy Project would make for lousy television. But how could a rad Siddhartha who roved the earth quaffing potions in its most sacred places, and boning its most radiant crea­tures, not to mention rallying humanity for one last stand against its own worst urges, make for lousy television?

Bastards were insulting him, and Gunderson could feel that hunched, bile-sopped culture troll he'd been, that devolved little prick he'd pui'ged with iboga root and Jung, burble up. Fine and dandy. Burble on. pal. The old Gunderson, Gunderson knew, would never really go away. He'd just have to be endured, like

some incorrigible junkie brother everybody in the family hopes will just die already.

Even now the old Gunderson creature hovered close, craved, for instance, those glistening turd tubes on the Gray's grill rollers. A spot of mustard, some evil-spirit infestation, a medium coronary. De-lish. Meanwhile the street stinker at the coun­ter beside him—smeary duster, foam-and-twine sandals—wolfed down a jumbo, shot Gunderson one of those poi­gnantly exasperated looks homeless nut-jobs master, the one that says, "Wake me when they switch off the hologram." Orphaned schizo cast out by the corpo­rate state? Avatar of an ancient sage? Both? You never knew, but plenty of ava­tars were too burnt to be useful anyhow.

Some were as bad off as the old Gunderson.

Now the new and improved Gunder­son sipped his papaya juice. Fairly toxic, this stuff too, but he gave himself a pass. During a recent DMT excursion in his ex-wife's loft, while Nellie wept and shivered in the linen closet, the machine elves, or rather this one disco Magoo in particular, a squat, faintly buzzing fellow with scal­loped gold skin and emerald eyes who'd become something of a mentor to Gunder­son, ordered him to ease up.

"Relax," Baltran had said, slithered up from his usual crevasse in the sofa cushions. "You're doing great. You're on the verge of serious revelations. Highest clearance imaginable. But you're wound too tight. Get a massage or something. Rolfing's fun. Stay loose for the coming astonishments. Don't be a fuckrod."

He didn't intend to be a fuckrod. He intended to stay loose, stay on his toes, whatever Baltran and his kind required. TTiey'd chosen him, and this message was too important to be left to anybody else, no matter how much he lectured at various symposia about dialogue and communal deliverance. He had to be certain no fuck-rods lurked in his vicinity, either. Maybe he should fire his manager. No sooner had he thought the phrase fire my manager, than Gerry's name blinked in his hand. Coinci­dence was a concept for sheep.

"What have you got?" said Gunder­son, stepped out to the sidewalk.

"Everything's still in play," said Gerry.

Gunderson's eyes strayed to the Gray's sign on the building's facade:

WHEN YOU'RE HUNGRY. OR BROKE. OR JUST IN A HURRY NO GIMMICKS. NO BULL.

There was always a gimmick. The gim­mick here was you ate factory-sealed pig lips and the hologram never ended.

"Everything's still in play? That's a good one for your tombstone."

"And I trust your judgment in such a delicate matter. Anyway, the series divi­sion is still meeting, but my guy there, my mole, don't you love it, says there will be an offer by the end of the day. They no longer have the aforementioned

concerns. They believe you believe."

"Good."

"More than good."

"Do you believe I believe, Gerry?"

"I believe in solid, serious offers."

"Fair enough, Gerry. Because I don't care about the money."

"I know, I know. How about you take my cut and I take yours."

"I would, my friend. The money's not for me. It's for Carlos."

"How is the boy?"

"He's beautiful, Gerry. A beautiful child."

"Seen him lately?"

"Victoria nagging you again? I'm sorry about that. But you can't listen to all her crap. I see him plenty."

Now the reeking avatar staggered out of Gray's Papaya, waved his ragged arms.

"Hold on, Gerry."

Gunderson dug in his coat for some loose bills.

"Hey, buddy..." he said.

"Keep your papes!" screamed the avatar. Particulate of frankfurter and a fine gin mist sprayed out of his pink mouth. "I want your goddamn soul! Mean to munch it!"

"Pardon?" said Gunderson.

"Your soul wienie! That's the real-ass jumbo!"

Doubtless on the astral plane, or even just an outer ring of Saturn, this man was delivering space-riffling sermons to sentient manifestations of light, but on this plane, at 72nd and Amsterdam to be precise, Gunderson had to fucking go.

Maybe he wasn't such a bright guy. Victo­ria's divorce lawyer probably hadn't thought so when he brought Gunderson to ruin, or, rather, to Queens. His studio in Jackson Heights was suitable for the com­position of prison manifestos, but Gunder­son was long past garret-pacing histrionics. He'd already written his book. He'd been on the talk shows, the campus panels. A Rock and Roll Hall of Fame rock star kept inviting him up for a helicopter ride.

The Queens studio was fine for hippie tang sessions, but it wTas not the apartment of a generational touchstone. But here he stood within the chipped stucco walls of his Jackson hole, beneath the hideous chandelier. He was lying on the futon after smoking some of the alpha weed, a gift from one of Nellie's rich friends, when he felt an odd prodding in his spine. He stood, peeled back the mattress.

"Baltran."

The machine elf's head poked through the futon frame's cheap slats. Most of his body seemed morphed with the hardwood floor.

"What the fuck, Gunderson? It smells like sad, lonely man in here."

His buzzing seemed even fainter. His scallops bore an odd magenta tint.

"I'm behind on laundry."

"Are you behind on ass wiping, too?"

Things had, in fact, grown a wee degraded. That's why he still spent as much time as he could in Victoria's loft. Psychologists, probably, would ofler nega­tive explanations for Victoria's failure to change the locks, but Gunderson preferred to see it as evidence of her personal evolu­tion. Guilt for the skill of her lawyer, too.

"Look, buddy," said Baltran, "we have to talk."

"The TV thing? I'm dose. I think it has a real chance to be a wake-up call for-----"

"It's about the prophecy."

"What about it?"

"The math needs a little tweaking."

"Meaning what? It's not six years?"

"Not quite."

"What do you mean not quite?"

Baltran fell buzzless for a moment. This happened sometimes. Though his image remained, it was as though the essence of the elf were no longer present. He was perhaps being called away for an impor­tant sit-down in another dimension. He'd be back. Baltran always came back. But Gunderson wanted him back right now.

"What do you mean not quite?" Gunderson said once more, lunged. His hand sliced through light.

"Fucking watch it, pal," the elf said, here again suddenly. "You know I can feel that. It hurts."

"Sorry."

"It's okay. I didn't mean to make you nervous. You've still got a few months."

"A few months?"

"That's time enough. Why don't you patch things up with Ramon?"

"I've got no problem with Ramon."

"Besides the fact that you don't talk to him."

"He doesn't talk to me."

"It's your business, I guess. Now get out there and effect some goddamn evo­lution. Do me proud."

"How do I do that?"

But he was gone and left Gunderson to worry. Sure, money was everywhere as long as you didn't covet it, but there was the old Gunderson, that batshit moron. He might be coveting on the down low, screwing them both. Maybe it was the ves­tigial Gunderson who'd cut off Ramon when the shaman started asking questions about the television deal too. Probably just wanted a new roof for his hut. Well, unless Gunderson got the message out, Ramon wouldn't need a roof. Nobody would. There just wasn't time to waste working out the licensing on a prophecy.

Victoria was in Lisbon for a fado festi­val, and Carlos was with her parents in Maine, so Gunderson had full run of the pad he'd traded in for penile liberation. Part of the charge of pending apocalypse, he understood, was the knowledge that Victoria wouldn't get to enjoy this square footage much longer.

Maybe he wasn't such a bright guy for other reasons. The treatise one of his aco­lytes at Oxford had just sent him was dense going, especially in Victoria's desk­top's antiquated text format. Here were Isaac Luria and Madame Blavatsky, there a block of dingbats. Gunderson had hardly skimmed his philosophy books in college. "I get the idea," he would usually announce to his dorm suite after a few minutes' deep study. "Pour me a drink."

Psychoriaut was a silly word (Baltran said only chumps uttered it), and Gunderson had detested most of the heavy trippers in college. He'd taken hallucinogens just a few times, passed those occasions frying flapjacks, staring at their scorched, porous skins. The onlv acid eater he could ever

abide back then was Red Ned. a scrawny vet with a rucksack, who appeared at most major burner parties and who, in return (or some My Lai-ish confession and reci­tations from The Marx-Engels Reader, got free shrooms and beer.

Once, at a barbecue, Ned cornered Gunderson near the dying keg. stuck a bottle under (he younger man's nose, some murky homemade hooch he'd likely dis­tilled in one of the old bus station toilets.

"It's absinthe," said Ned. "The mighty wormwood. You will eat the devil's pussv and suddenly know French."

"Maybe later," said Gunderson.

"Maybe later," laughed Ned. "Shit, kid. Inter? Later my platoon will be here. We'll slit you at the collarbone, pour file ants in. Then you'll talk."

"I'm happy to talk now, Ned."

"You don't have anything to tell me yet. You haven't witnessed the blind piti­less truth of it all. But I have a feeling about you. What do you think?"

"I just want to get laid."

"I'm good to go," said Ned, gave Gunderson what might have been, in teethsome years, a toothsome smile. "You do tunnel-rat zombie cock?"

"Got a rule against that."

"Your loss, son."

In short, until Gunderson had taken a magazine assignment, gone to Mexico to drink emetic potions with psychotropic turislas, his opinion of hallucinogens was that you had to worship jam bands, or believe the Army had planted a chip in your head, to really enjoy them.

He'd flown to Oaxaca with a glib lede to that effect in his laptop. He returned a con-verso. The tales of Hoffmann and the stern brain play of Huxley had never enticed him, but puking and shitting on a din floor while Ramon kicked him in the balls and, later, sobbing while his dead grandfather Mort hovered nearby in a shimmering kimono and told Gunderson why he had such a tough time being faithful to women (it was because Gunderson's mother had failed to breast-feed him, and also took too much Valium, and there was something about being distantly related to Barry Gold-water), all this, in aggregate, really did the trick. Later he discovered the crotch shots were not typical but Ramon's "twist" on the ancient ritual. Didn't matter. Gunderson was hooked. A few more doses over the next several months and he knew his place in his family and his place in the universe, at least provisionally.

He also had a vision of the world in a few years' time if the current course were not corrected. More precisely it was a vision of North America, oil-starved, waterlogged, millions thronged on the soggy byways, fleeing the ghosted sprawls of the Republic. He saw his sister gang-raped in an abandoned Wal-Mart outside Indianapolis. The local warlord, nick­named Dee-Kay-En-Wye for the runes on his tattered hoodie, smiled as he watched his kinsmen go to work. They'd lived in

Home Appliances their entire lives. Strangest of ail, Gunderson didn't have a sister. This added urgency to his vision. It wasn't just about him, or his sister.

When he'd recovered and told the sha­man what he'd seen, Ramon led him to a stone hut at the edge of the village. A satel­lite dish jutted from the woven roof. Inside was a sleeping cot, a computer, a bookshelf full of French symbolists. Gunderson thought of Red Ned's bus station hooch. The shaman, who to Gunderson resembled one of those carved-down distance runners he'd watched train near his father's house in Oregon, slid a large cardboard box with copper hasps from beneath the cot. Inside was a crumbling facsimile of the storied codex. He showed Gunderson the jaguar, the sickle, the long solstistic loops. He showed him where the reeds ran out.

"I thought the Maya had the calen­dar," said Gunderson.

"Fuck the Mava," said Ramon.

Gunderson had never been much for the astronomy, the math. His colleagues, his rivals, could offer the proofs, the ellipticals, the galacticals. Most of them used the Maya Tzolkin, and Gunderson was pretty sure Ramon's insistence on the Mixtec forecast was just an intellectual-property maneuver, but he didn't mind. He was trying to save the world, and that included not just the plants and the animals and the majestic rock formations but the people, those meat-world parasites who'd built pyramids and written concertos and invented cotton gins and played video games and performed clitorectomies and burned up all the fossil fuels and gorged themselves on war and corn syrup. Gunderson was a people per-

son. We just needed new kinds of people. We had to start making them right now.

The other thing that had to start being made right now was a serious offer from the network. Gunderson was back downtown at his favorite organic teahouse, e-mailing a fiery message to his ListServ, hinting there might soon be an announcement about a new interpretation of the codex, a revised time frame for the Big Clambake. That would light up the old nethernet. His peeps didn't need much prompting. Many were lonely sorts pining for genuine human con­nection, or, short of that, a mob to join.

So if the series division kept wavering, maybe Gunderson could get some grass roots going. Grass roots. That had been a big word with his father. Still was, Gunder­son guessed. He hadn't talked to the man in years. Not since his mother died. Why? Ask the Aztecs. Gunderson didn't know, not really, except that maybe it was hard for men to talk to one another, especially fathers and sons, at least in this dimension. Jim Gunderson was handsome, brave, beloved, righteous. How did you talk to a father like that, a legendary activist, a lawyer for the people, ask him to read your profile of a sitcom star, a charismatic CFO? Of course, Gunderson's hack days were behind him. Why didn't he call now? Because Jim Gunderson fought for a better tomorrow while his son was rolling the dice on no tomorrow at all? No, it was probably just the patriarchal agon. The new times would not be so burdened. We'd be line dancing with metallic gnomes. Gunder­son glanced up, tracked the dreadlocked teen behind the counter.

"Can I get more of this beetroot chai?"

"Of course," said the girl. "I'll bring some right over."

"That"s not all you can bring. Damn, sister." Gunderson had always subscribed to the practical man's theory of seduction: Hit on everybody, crudely, constandv. His percentages were astonishing.

"Yeah, you know something." said the girl. "I've heard about you."

"What have you heard?"

"That you're, like, a genius. But also, like, a total pigdog. I don't need that in my life right now."

"You don't need complete physical and spiritual liberation?"

"I need health insurance."

"That's the hologram talking." said Gunderson, handed her his card.

Outside, the sun was nearly licking him. It really felt like that, the sun the tongue of a loyal dog. Extraordinary. He stood on the curb with his eyes closed, face tilted upward. This was life, its only con­ceivable acme. Little Carlos knew. Sweet Carlos, who had once stared up at clouds, shouted, "Don't rain, little sky!"

Gunderson was about to call Victoria's folks in Maine, something he would nor­mally never consider, but here was this sudden surge of Cariosity. He had to talk to his son on the phone. But as soon as he thought the word phone the damn thing started to vibrate again.

"Gerry," said Gunderson.

"They're pulling out for now. They want you to pitch again in a few months."

"What? Why?"

"Who knows? They say they've got too much in development, but it's any­body's guess. Quality television works in mysterious ways."

"Look, Gerry, things are a little more complicated. We don't have a few mondis. We've got to do this thing now."

"What are you talking about?"

"The prophecy. There's been a sched­uling change."

"I didn't know that happened with prophecies. Aren't they written in stone? Wasn't this prophecy, in fact, first written in stone?"

"This isn't funny, Gerry. This is real. I'll do it all myself. I'll get on my knees and beg Victoria for the cash. This has to happen right now. I'm through screwing around. I'll get grass roots going. This is not about a television show, Gerry. This is about the survival of the species. Hell, I don't even know why I care anymore. Maybe it's bet­ter if we all go down in flames."

"Will you calm down? Let's just wait and see what the series division has to say in a few weeks and then-----"

"And then you can tell those pigdogs to shove it up their-----"

'jeez, will you relax? Pigdogs?"

"Relax? Are you telling me to relax? You sound like fucking Baltran."

"Who's that?"

"Never mind."

"He's not diat little jerk repping at-----"

"No, Gerry."

"I hope you're not talking to him."

"I've got to go."

Gunderson had an appointment with Nellie at the loft. They were supposed to go over scheduling. Whenever they went over scheduling they tended to wind up naked on the carpet Victoria had bought on a trip to Tehran. Gunderson worried their juices might agitate the dyes. Victo­ria would have him jailed.

After the scheduling meeting he was sup­posed to meet the rock star for dinner. He'd get a call at the last minute regarding loca­tion. That's how rock stars handled sched­uling. This one was a refurbished 1970s icon, a boomer guru who had traded in his tiny spoon for a yoga mat. A few months earlier he'd attended one of Gunderson's talks at an illegal ayahuasca retreat in Santa Fe, stalked Gunderson ever since. People sneered at the rock star, his New Age cant, his music that was a parody of his old music. The man spewed platitudes, certainly, was a font of phoniness, but Gunderson still thought there was something fascinating about him. Or maybe he just liked being fawned over by a superannuated icon.

The one thing you couldn't sneer at was the man's bank. He'd invested his rock-star cash in computers back when it counted. He could probably, with his petty cash, feed the world. Would he spare some change to save it? Gunderson would put it to him. This could prove a fateful flight.

That Victoria was not in Lisbon but in what was now, and, truthfully, had always been her loft, hers alone, seemed some vicious ripple in the continuum, something no blood-streaked, rainbow-feathered priest could ever have predicted. That she stood now on the potentially juice-marred Per­sian with Carlos in her arms, bawling at a nearly naked Nellie, who had obviously let

herself in with the key Gunderson had given her and, in a perhaps not quite humorous enough surrender of pretense, shucked off most of her clothes in anticipa­tion of their scheduling meeting, signaled some kind of apocalyptic rupture in dark matter's latticework.

Not that Gunderson really knew what that meant.

"What the fuck?" shrieked Victoria as Gunderson came through the door. "This is where you bring your end-times gash?"

"What happened to Lisbon?" said Gunderson.

"What happened to your self-respect?"

"What happened to knocking?" said Nellie.

"Knocking?" said Victoria. "It's my house! I'm supposed to know my ex-husband is meeting a naked slut in my house?"

"End times is more of a Christian thing, honey," said Gunderson. "You know I don't subscribe to-----"

"What exactly makes me a slut?" said Nellie. "Because I have sex? That's pretty retrograde."

"Look at you," said Victoria. "The sec­retary. The home-office screw. Except it's not even his home anymore. Talk about retrograde. I bet you think stripping is liberating too. Is that what you think?"

"I think you're a shrill narcissist who couldn't keep pace with your husband's spiritual growth."

"Is that what he said while he rammed you with his world changer? His little salamander?"

"My what!" said Gunderson. "Both of you stop it. This is ridiculous."

"Damn straight," said Nellie. "I quit."

Nellie scooped up her clothes, seemed about to bolt, but then just stood there, quiv­ered oddly. Carlos squirmed out of Victoria's arms, ran to Gunderson, clutched his knee.

"Daddy!"

Gunderson squatted, squared the boy's tiny shoulders. His son, he saw now, had the most chaotic green eyes he'd ever seen.

"I love you, Carlito," Gunderson said, sniffed sharp diaper stink. The boy was long past due for potty training, and Gunderson wondered if it was his fault, all that trauma he'd visited upon his sons developmental years. "I think he needs to be changed."

"Oh, yeah?" said Victoria. It was the old challenge. Gunderson knew in his heart he wasn't up to it. He wasn't squeamish, but he'd always preferred changing Carlos when it felt like something fun to do, a larkish deployment of diaper and wipe. So. here was the deal. He'd never be a good man, a stand-up guy, a pillar, his father. His absence would have to be a sort of honestv from which the boy could draw some strength. Besides, Gunderson was a prophet, a prophet on the clock, a very scary fucking clock. Didn't that count for something?

"Oh, yeah," he said, walked out.

High above the night city, he knew he'd done right. While the rock star worked the stick and hummed his old hit, "Snow Cap Sister," Gunderson looked out through the chopper's bubbled glass, got trippy on the lit grid below. His strife seemed so squalid up here in die heavens, and gazing down on the bright sick city stirred him. Maybe we were doomed fools on a dying biochemical fluke, but we'd had a damn good run. Sure, we'd mostly murdered, tortured, burned, but once in a while we'd made something beautiful. And we'd tried so hard to love.

"Thus spake Hallmark," came a voice through his headset. "Cut the humanist rah-rah, friend."

Gunderson hadn't even been aware he was talking out loud. He was embar­rassed the rock star had heard him get so sentimental, and he turned with what he hoped was a semidetached smile.

"Will do, captain," said Gunderson.

"So, what's on your mind tonight, buddy? You don't seem yourself. Not that I know what that is."

"Do you really want to know what I'm thinking about?" said Gunderson.

"Hell, no," said the rock star, 'just name the number. My pockets run deep."

"You've mastered telepathy."

"Something like that. Or maybe I can just tell that you need my help, and I believe in your message enough to want to give it. I'll write the check, you lead us back from the abyss."

Gunderson smiled a true smile, felt a joyful melt in his belly. Screw Gerry, the television people. They had no part in this. What had to be done would be done by the secret society, his brethren in vision, this ludicrous geezer with the thousand-dollar T-shirt and spiked white hair.

Gunderson turned to dnank him, to tell him of the long march ahead and the beautiful

bond they would forge, was a bit startled to see the rock star slumped in his straps, the stick starting to list. It was difficult to tell exactly when the spin had started or how fast the buildings were roaring up. The rock star was definitely dead. Maybe it was all the cocaine he'd been sneaking off to snort dur­ing dinner. Maybe it was everything he'd sniffed and jabbed and swallowed for the last 40 years. Rock stars made millions sing­ing about their broken hearts, and then their hearts actually exploded. This guy was going blue in his helmet. .And he was not being a very good pilot.

Gunderson closed his eyes, saw the strewn green of his son's. He felt strange pressings on his body, was a boy again him­self, waking slowly between his mother and his father on their flannel sheets in Eugene, a happy little boat bumping up on warm sloped isles. Pleasant, primal enough, this memory, suitable for the final reel, the clos­ing clip, but it somehow seemed unfair. Didn't he rate ultimate revelation, every artifice falling away, the cosmos unmasked and Gunderson in receipt of the supreme briefing via transcendental brain beam? He guessed not, for here rushed the roof­tops with their colossal vents, their trans­national signage, penthouses lush with light and hanging gardens.

These last seemed to beckon him with pleasures he would never know again.

He"d been ready for the end of the world, but not the end of Gunderson. A plastic lie, this planet had become, but still, the beauty. There was Carlos, for starters. Carlos in sunshine too. Now Gunderson grew dizzy in his bubble tomb. He grieved. Death's smash and grab was upon him. He could feel a hand grip his arm, though it didn't seem to be the Reaper's.

"Sorry about this," said Baltran. "Not what we were expecting, is it?"

Light twirled in the gold weave of him. Somehow the shimmer steadied Gunderson.

"So, it's bullshit? The calendar? The prophecy? Dimensional interface? You?"

"No, it's not bullshit," said Baltran. "I mean, maybe. I don't know."

"So, you're just a figment?"

"Fuck you, figment."

"You told me to do you proud."

"You did me proud. I saw what you did."

"And now what?"

"I don't know. Maybe it still goes on."

"Maybe it does," said Gunderson. fell his phone vibrate in his jacket. He took it out, read the blinking backlit message: Serious offer. Geiry.

"Hey, shouldn't I be dead yet? " said Gunderson. looking over at Baltran. "This thing's been crashing for a while."

"No, just seems that way. Here it comes, baby."

"I can feel it," whispered Gunderson. "I can taste it. It's coming on sweet."

"That must be your lozenge. There is no sweetness. What comes is pitiless, blind to you."

"Aren't we all connected?"

"Yes, we are all connected." said Baltran. "but trust me, that's not really a good thing. For the record, I always liked you. Gunder­son. Adios. little buddy. Breathe easy now."

Gunderson watched his friend's frame collapse into a sprinkly nimbus.

"Connected how?" cried Gunderson. "To what?" But he knew what, had known for a while now, a few thousand years at least, back before his own shaman days on the shores of Oaxaca, longer, much lon­ger, back before his human days, back before his golden molting days, his wail­ing vapor days, back before anything you could call a day, when he was just another vector, another stray idea for being, dart­ing through great jagged reefs of anti-space. He'd known, but had he believed? Had he ever believed? Did it matter? Beyond the seal of this universe was a wet, blazing mouth. It slavered. It meant to munch. It had journeyed through many forevers to find what it existed to devour: the real-ass jumbo.

Gunderson began, or ceased, to dream.