3.2

The rest of the drive is an ordeal, ten distended minutes of awkward silence undergirded by the relentless and slobbery mastications of both Gary Jupiter and Mouse. A strobing kaleidoscope of emotion and sensation rock the crucible of my internal milieu, a carnival panoply of craving and aversion dancing across the billowing circus tent of my dilating meninges. I want desperately to stretch my quivering hamstrings, but I'd rather not inadvertently brush the pant legs of the glowering rabbit king sitting across from me. What I really want is to wallow in the wisdom-wisp dyad of sloughing-off and illumination. But it looks like we'll have to get David Vrunk into his WOMB before I can get myself into mine.

Tao Jones is pulling the limousine into the sand-strewn strip mall plaza parking lot in which Felipe Castillo hosts his operation. I instruct him to take the peep around back, and park it by the dumpsters and the loading docks. Of the many unmarked doors lining the back of this shopping complex, there is only one made of reinforced steel. I satyr-walk over to it, and rap my knuckles loudly upon the resonant metal. A moment later, Lipe opens the door just wide enough to poke his head through. His disembodied noggin looks like a ball of bronzed pizza dough topped by a thick veneer of shoe polish topped by a white cowboy hat. Lipe has the voluminous chin of a compulsive stress eater and dwells perpetually in a mist of his own personal humidity, but I know not to let his disheveled appearance deceive me: this portly yet handsome fellow is an outlaw-hero of the finest caliber. He smells vaguely of wisdom-wisps, inspiring a twinge of jealousy in me, jealousy that evaporates once I get a good look at the dark rings beneath his eyes. Those eyes are currently fixated on the sunbeam-yellow limo-peep.

“You wasn't kiddin',” he drawls.

“Am I ever?” I ask.

He scrutinizes me a moment before answering. “Most days, yeah.”

I wave my arm, beckoning the musicians in the peep to bring their charge over. “No autographs,” I tell Felipe, as Gary and Tao maneuver David Vrunk out of the limo.

“But...”

“None!” I say, warning him with a forceful index finger. “Discretion's the word of the day, Lipe. That over there is Walter Easter in the flesh, and boy, does he not wanna be here right now.”

“Well, that makes two of us,” says Lipe.

“Fuck Malkiss, dawg,” I say. “Nobody wants to be here.”

As the musicians approach, Lipe pushes the door open, revealing a darkened hallway lined with pale little LEDs at ankle level. “Howdy fellas, lovely to meet y'all, welcome to Felipe's. We've reserved one of the VIP suites upstairs for ya, and no one'll ever know y'all was here,” he assures the Basket Cases as they enter. “Unless, of course, they catch sight of that there giant yella peep,” he mutters to me as we follow them inside.

The warehouse that is currently Lipe's incubator was once one of the many micro-breweries (past and present) littering the scenic fun-time vacation getaway that is Hashton, Cololina. This particular establishment, like so many of its peers, failed to find footing in the lush urine-drenched loam of the boutique booze boom. The problem was sheer numbers. When two out of every three new businesses is yet another brewery, a saturation point is inevitable. Location became the determining factor in the sustainability of these pubs and tasting rooms. The micro-breweries that still exist are the ones in downtown Hashton, on Fiat Street in West Hashton, and in Larkazendy Park over on the northwest side of the Exodus Turnpike – i.e., the ones in pedestrian friendly districts. The breweries that closed down were those without sidewalks.

The year of peak saturation, right before the breweries began to die, will go down in infamy. An era of legend among the residents of Hashton, it has acquired many names: Roller Derby Royale. The Battle of the Bumper Cars. The Flight of The Kamikazes. The Big Shrieky. The Year of the Smear. Some of us stopped hearing the sound of screaming brakes entirely. Our adrenaline became background noise, a distant pain like the squeeze of a belt buckle drawn too tight and forgotten about. Others of us – the supra-sensitive, the amphibian-skinned, the un-numbable – they lost the capacity to drive altogether.

Finally, enough was enough. We citizens petitioned the city of Hashton to amend the law, to introduce a new ordinance sanctifying spontaneous acts of vigilante justice (within certain strictly defined parameters, of course). Free to wage war against day-drunk tourists without repercussion, we outfitted our cars with plated armor mods and all manner of improvised weaponry: hood-mounted harpoons, comically over-sized magnets, and all manner of grill spikes. You can always tell a local by the grill spikes. A Lamborrari with Fleorgia plates weaves out of their lane, and some rusty minivan equipped with a quintet of pitchforks steps on the gas. Once the spikes are firmly lodged in the back of the offending vehicle, the road pirate would steer their quarry to the nearest off-ramp. The charitable ones would deposit their catch in a parking lot somewhere. But every now and then, things would get somewhat macabre.

The tourists got the message. Drunk driving would no longer be quietly tolerated. And just like that, the brewery tasting rooms of the South Hashton Strip Mall Sand Dunes were emptied forever.

All the better for clever entrepreneurs like our Lipe. He's takes us now up a dark staircase to the second floor balcony, where we may overlook the interior of the nursery. The warehouse floor that was once gridded with vats of fermenting hops is now gridded with row upon row of bulbous pink pods. The Wizard's Om Meditation Bubbles, which look like giant astronaut helmets composed of pre-masticated chewing gum, are about five feet high and seven feet wide: enough space for the vast majority of humans to recline comfortably within. A couple of Lipe's people are moving through the rows, opening bubble hatches up and checking in on the sleepers inside. When the bubble hatches open, a little magenta light turns on inside the WOMB. In contrast, the warehouse lights overhead are a soft cobalt blue, which, when blended with the magenta inside the WOMBs, creates an entrancing aura of lilac purple. This otherworldly color scheme makes the people inside – stripped naked and, more often than not, fitted with tubes – look like aliens hibernating on a deep space journey. Which, in a sense, is exactly what they are.

Mr. Castillo guides our motley crew to an electronically locked door at the far end of the balcony. His passcode takes us through, and into a large room with seven more doors arranged in a row. At the far end of the room is an observation window looking in on a small sterile laboratory. Momentarily abandoning his human cargo to Mouse's confused but capable hands, Jupiter drifts over to peer inside.

“Please step away from the winda,” says Lipe.

“What the fuck?” the drummer asks, blithely.

“Nope,” says Lipe. “Ain't nothin' to see over there.”

“The fuck are those?” asks Jupiter.

“I'm sorry, y'all, I thought we was keepin' things on the DL,” Lipe says, a touch loudly. “Well, 'round these parts the DL's a two way street. I ain't askin' no questions, and I ain't givin' no answers, and I expect the exact same from y'all.”

“Gary, get away from there,” Easter snaps.

“Yeah, sure, but what are they?” Jupiter asks again.

I join him at the observation window, but I already know which one of Lipe's side hustles has captured his attention. There's several big tanks within the lab, and a series of smaller interconnected tanks within the big ones. Each of those smaller tanks contains an in vitro pair of bulbous glands the shape, size, and color of tangerine carpels, suspended in a nutrient broth and gently throbbing. A thin mycelial membrane grows outward from each gland, attaching itself to and then spreading along the bottom of the tank, until growing beyond the bounds of the individual containment space and penetrating into the various connector tunnels that link all the adjacent tanks together. There, in the crossroads, the mycelia merge.

“Well, those ones there are synthetic swine pancrea, and next to them are the artificial deer adrenals. And these ones here, closest to us? These are home-made bufo parotid glands,” I explain.

“...what?” asks Jupiter.

“Don't listen to him, ese. Mujo's jus' makin' up stories,” Lipe says.

“They're lab-grown replicas of the venom glands of the Punavongian sand-frog,” I clarify. “To get at that sweet glory hallelujah serum the frogs excrete, but without havin' to hurt a livin' bein'.”

“Those look pretty alive to me,” says Jupiter. “Wait, what's that you said about 'sweet glory hallelujah semen'?”

Easter loudly clears his throat. “Can we move this along already?”

Jupiter is slowly peeling himself away from the forbidden window. “Have you tried the hallelujah semen?” he asks me.

“Oh, Dobbs no,” I chuckle. “As I said before, I'm tendin' to a head injury. When it comes to blastin' off on the most powerful personal spaceship known to human-kind, this broken skull of mine's a no-fly zone. Interstellar take-off from a corporeal platform means simulatin' death at warp speed in the nervous system of an already badly traumatized mammal body. It's a dangerous affair, precarious at best. Now, I'm in no way a medical professional, nor have I consulted one. But unless I can restore structural integrity to my crumpled cranium – and someday I will, believe you me – smokin' that glory porridge is only gonna give me a seizure.”

“Uh-huh. Sounds like wook science to me,” says Jupiter.

“Wook science indeed,” Easter grumbles. “Why is it that every drunk, every spunion, every blow-pony, and every stoner thinks that being wasted is the same thing as earning a four year degree? What is it about ingesting chemicals that makes people mistake themselves for chemists?”

Lipe, meanwhile, checks a client manifest, and opens up door number five of the seven. Inside is a small room with a WOMB, and a round table with two chairs. Easter takes a chair, and so do I. Jupiter and Tao help Lipe and Mouse strip David Vrunk naked, and insert him into the magenta light of the WOMB.

“Whoa,” says Mouse.

“Holy shit, a catheter?” says Jupiter, cackling like a hyena. “Davey Dicktube!”

“Davey Dicktube,” echoes Easter. “Davey got a tube in his dick, cuz he got real sick, so we stuck him in a ball of pink bubblegum, whuh oh,” he sings. “It practically writes itself,” he mutters, penciling a melody into a notebook he pulls out of his back pocket. All the pages of the notebook have musical staves on them.

“He'll get fresh water, fresh oxygen, and a protein-vitamin slurry through the feedin' tube if ya think he'll be here for more'n twenty-four hours,” says Lipe, lubing up the feeding tube.

“If he's here for more than twenty-four hours, we DNR,” snarls Easter.

“Okay...” says Lipe, arresting his lubrications. “We'll also clean him off once a day, and massage his muscles to keep 'em from wastin' away too quick.”

“Focus on the hands. The wrists,” Easter demands, massaging his own with a sturdy thumb by way of demonstration.

Reading the room (or perhaps just asleep on his feet), Lipe opts out of the rest of his usual spiel, and places a release form and a contract (both in triplicate) on the table in front of Easter. Easter makes no move towards the legal papers. Instead, he sits and scowls, rubbing a long strand of his black hair between thumb and forefinger.

“Pen,” I whisper loudly to Lipe, whose head keeps nodding involuntarily towards the floor.

“Huh?” says Lipe, turning slowly to regard me with glassy eyes.

“Pen!” I whisper again. “Pen!” I whisper a third time, furiously pantomiming the scratch of an imaginary pen against my outstretched palm. “Tell ya what, I'll trade ya,” I say, handing him my wisdom wisp vape pen.

“Oh, right,” he says, shaking the sleep out of his head (only for it to immediately return). “Pen,” he says, placing an uncapped ballpoint on the table for Easter's use. One pen delivered and the other clenched in his teeth, Lipe stands back and totters nervously on his heels. Easter is scrutinizing him, and Lipe doesn't have the willpower to withstand his gaze.

“Got any caffeine?” I ask, trying to offer him some grounding.

“Huh?” Lipe asks, limp-faced.

“Caffeine,” I say.

“Amphetamines?” he asks, puffing on the vape.

“Caffeine,” I repeat. “You know. Coffee. Tea. Yerba mate. Yum-yum wake up juice. The parenthetical third ingredient that completes a successful wake and bake?” That was too many words. I think I just jammed up his brain.

“I don't like him,” says Easter, addressing me but scrutinizing Lipe's untucked flannel shirt. “He's got a history, I can tell. So what is it, cowpoke? Drugs? Jail time?”

It was both. “I think we better tell him the truth,” I whisper to Lipe. “Otherwise, he might walk. I'll talk, and you just nod and say cowboy stuff.”

“Fact is, I used to be a trucker, Mr. Easter,” Lipe says, electing to tell the story himself. He's coming up on that short term energy spurt typical of inhaled wisdom, and though the wisps might get him through the telling of this tale, I can't imagine it will do much to un-muddle him. “I drove a rig, and I specialized in deliverin' livestock. Cross country, rapid delivery. I was unofficial though, seein' as how I was a bit too tweaky for the unions. I'd drive all night, from Alabiowa to Utaho, cuttin' right 'cross the national parks and the native reservations. Fewer cops on the res, but a lotta other risks. That's what I liked 'bout it, though: the risks. I spent all my nights drivin' too fast, smokin' pulverized study aids out of a retort flask, and blastin' hair metal power ballads to inspire the steer for the long journey ahead. I wore a black cowboy hat – yes sir, I did – but I never carried a gun. And I weren't stoppin' for nobody, no how. I kept a bucket for pissin' in, and I'd dump it out the window without ever slowin' down. Neither the hand of god nor the call of nature could stop me. I had one water bottle next to me, and there was nothin' in it but vodka.

“Mr. Easter, I spent them years livin' in a visionary state. I had dreams that came true, dreams of lonely roads with no headlights comin' on, dreams of elk herds stampedin' all night long, dreams of buffalo gathered upon the Montanakota hillsides usin' their instincts and their magick to draw the clouds aside and keep the eye of the moon beamin' straight down upon me. 'Cause as long as the moonlight touched my truck, I could not be detected by the law. Now, sir, don't you ask me how it worked. It jus' did. The elk, the buffalo, the steer: I became a patron saint of migratory four-legged beasts. Nobody human respected me, but nobody human could stop me neither. So I began to believe that I was unstoppable.

“Then, one sweaty summer night, I was hired to drive thirty head of prize steer from New Zonico to the Yukaluska flats. Stolen steer. Across national borders. They asked me if I could do it. I couldn't, of course, nobody could. But I was bankin' on the moon to carry me, and so I said yes.

“Of course, the moon would pick that night of all nights to take a holiday. The clouds rolled in thick as I 'proached the northern border, dark as the devil's licorice and rumblin' with heat lightnin'. Yes sir, there was demons in that there sky, lookin' to call in a tab I ain't remembered runnin' up. Border patrol took one look at my dilated pupils and my lockjaw, and they told me to get the hell outta the cab. I didn't. I hit the gas and I drove like hell. They tried to run me off the road, but that's jus' what I wanted them to do. I was ready for that. Outfitted for it. They chased me 'cross that meltin' tundra all night long. Cruiser after cruiser kept gettin' caught up in the mud and the tall grass. But they kept comin'. And I kept smokin'. I had a full tank of gas and a hard-on that wouldn't budge. Up above, the heat lightnin' crackled orange and danced back and forth from cloud to cloud. But the moon was nowhere in sight.

“I came up through the valley and I topped over the hill, and there I saw my destination in the Yukaluska flats. But the law was movin' quick to catch me, their reds and blues drawin' in from all sides. I ran the numbers, and they didn't look good. But I pressed down on that gas pedal, and I drove, and drove hard. And somewhere, in all that drivin', I ceased to be me. I was floatin' over the cab, lookin' down at the cows all lined up in their stables in the bed of my truck. They couldn't see me – not with their eyes, no sir – but they knew I was there, for they all turned their heads up to regard me. I was nothin' but a shimmer in the sky up above, but they recognized my divinity, temporary as it was. The cows lent their strength to me, to my truck. We, all of us, became weightless. And that truck flew. I saw it with my own eyes, Mr. Easter, that truck flew. For one brief beautiful moment, I was one with each and every one of them steer. And somewhere, up above us, the clouds broke, and the moon returned to shine down upon me, yet again.

“Sir, we made it. The law didn't get their hands on me – not that night anyway – and I got paid and paid well. But I was done drivin'. Somethin' in me burned out on that run. I couldn't huff that flask no more, lost my taste for it I s'pose. I couldn't drive that rig no more neither. I needed to settle down, somewhere with a ceilin', somewhere where the night sky and the moon couldn't tempt me to do the things I ain't wanna do no more. I hung up my black cowboy hat, and I picked up the white. But my callin' did not change. It's still my job to line up all them wayward steer and take 'em on home. I'll help ya get yer steer home, Mr. Easter. Mark my words. I'll help yer boy get home.”

“Whoa,” says Mouse, in the silence that follows.

It's a hell of a story, and the telling of it is more than I thought he had in him. But he's starting to fall asleep on his feet. I can see his eyelids drooping. Easter sees it too, but he doesn't care. He's signing the paper, punctuating his name with two plump squares: his buck teeth.

“I'm not agreeing to this because that story was compelling,” Easter assures us. “I'm agreeing because even if I were to leave this second rate gum-and-shoestring sci-fi movie set and try my luck elsewhere, this whole damn town is stuffed to the gills with sprunkers, slunkers, sneaks, and freaks. There's not a chance in hell of finding someone sober enough to do an honest job around here.”

“Sobriety's only a construct,” I counter.

“Oh my god,” says Easter, wincing.

“It's a metaphysical ideal,” I insist. “More abstraction than fact. It can be approached, sure. But it can never truly be attained.”

“I'm sure you would know,” says Easter, standing up. “I need a smoke. No, what I actually need is a team of robots to perform my compositions for me, so that I never have to deal with another human error ever again. But according to the press, I'll have to wait until at least next year for artificial intelligence to finally replace animal stupidity once and for all. So I guess I'll smoke that cigarette while I wait. You have thirty-six hours, Morell. Fail, and you'll be the reason my magnum opus is never performed before a live audience. My fans will come for you with torches and pitchforks. They'll run you out of town, and they'll stalk you on the internet. Never will you escape the stink of your fraudulence as long as you live. And that will be the end of this preposterous little charade of yours.” Walter Easter snaps his fingers and departs, with Gary Jupiter and Tao Jones following at his heels.

“About that caffeine,” I say to Felipe.

“Huh?” Lipe replies. He's leaning his head against Mouse's shoulder and dozing off.

“Whoa,” says Mouse. He looks very concerned.

“I'll make enough for the three of us,” I say.