Chapter Twenty Eight
Undergarments optional. But please refrain from touching or heckling the waitstaff.
My inferior undertakings came to fruition at last when I met Maxine Marr, a girl with a speech impediment—she was completely incapable of lying. The sweet thing had not one micrometer of malice in her slight little body. She had never heard the term "fashion trend", and had made no acquaintance with the monstrosity which was Main Computer's Superintelligence Highway—a fancy name for a vast system of lonely perverts connected by a common interest in pathetic trivial gossip. When she finally let me into her dormitory, I just sat there staring at her for hours. I stayed all night, learning that together we formed many delightful compliments. She was a pacifist and I was a socialist. She was Beggars Banquet and I was Exile On Main Street. She was a child at heart. and I, an old man, light in my eyes dimming by the hour.
When the sun came up I proposed, high for the first time on non-drug-induced infatuation. She agreed, but said I should know that she was unable to have children. It didn't matter. I told her I never wanted kids anyway, that I had a dream once where I'd fathered a Junior and he'd retreated from me like a NuFranc during the war. Children were little ingrates and when their lives began, yours ended. She looked vaguely concerned but accepted me as I was, promising me a real wedding that sounded nothing like the dark fluorescent ceremonies that haunted my dreams.
The last time I'd attended to a wedding it had been a joint occasion—the nuptials took place in conjunction with the 4,578th Annual Redscreen Awards. Instead of rings, the groom and the blushing brides-to-be had exchanged two-feet tall gold-plated statues. Then the three kissed, waved at the camera, and won a million credits which rained down from the ceiling. Come to think of it, I wasn't actually at the wedding. I just watched it on the redscreen; it was like having good-looking friends in my living room who I didn't have to talk to.
Maxine wore a fantastic green-gauze gown with rubber ducks on it. She had little white flowers in her glimmering hair and no jewelry. Standing on two-feet tall box clogs she was taller than me, but I was too in love to care. She was the knight and I was the errant. I would never keep secrets from her, and would never leave the house without first telling her where I was going. She, in turn, would provide all my nourishment and bring home the bacon, or beef jerky as it were, prime and tender from the ranch. Pigs were only fantasy creatures that someone had made up back in the 1800s.
#
"Okay, my turn. Um, how come you've got two different colored eyes? It makes it hard to tell when you're looking at me." Maxine and I sat on the porch drinking Moonshine by Petey and doing something Maxine called 'getting to know each other better'. We already knew each other, we were married and I'd seen her naked and glorious, her body good enough to rival any 4th generation celebrity-casing makeover.
"My mother's were green, and my father's were blue. Is this not a common occurrence where you come from?" she asked.
"Not normally, unless you have it fashioned that way."
"Tell me about where you're from," she said, her head resting on my shoulder as pieces of her long hair whipped against me in the wind. The air smelled like peaches and fabric softener.
"I come from a place where there is no day, only night. I come from a place where I'm blinded by light. It's very cold, no one's old, and anything you want can be bought for a piece of gold. Or credits, rather. That's an old poem I learned in school, before they stopped teaching poetry cause it's not really very useful."
"I was born here," Maxine said. "My parents hid while everyone was being relocated. They did grow old. Died more than ten seasons ago."
"My doctor could've given them new hearts, or fixed whatever the problem was," I told her.
"What are you doing here now? Change of scenery?"
"Not sure. Because I'm a Model Citizen. G.P.B. sent me up here to explore, and retrofitted me to report back what I found out about this place. Or because I inhaled one too many vapors in the NightChapel."
"You keep talking about this NightChapel. You said it wasn't anything like our wedding night."
"Nope, it wasn't." Our wedding night was the first time I'd ever had sex without ingesting any drinks, electrodes, or Infatuate pills first. I liked it even better, and I didn't like it at all.
That was the night that the tracking collar fell off. We had a terrible time trying to get it back into position, but ultimately decided it felt better without it anyway. We put it back on when we were done though, cause the damn thing wouldn't quit beeping the entire time. After it came off that first time by accident, we never were able to remove it again. Our bedroom was probably linked to a live feed somewhere—no one doesn't like free porn, especially government workers who do nothing but sit around all day.
I was possessive of Maxine and wouldn't share her with anybody, not even Danny K. Ricochet and his motor-axe.
Maxine and I purchased a home with the hunting credits I'd earned. Its structure was smart and solid, and it did not have a coffee grower/grinder/maker or a toast-o-matic. Max spent most of her days down at the ranch, and I took up cooking and began to decorate our new abode in colorful linens and artifacts. The last time Petey stopped by, he said that it looked like a geologist's whorehouse. Reds, purples, and crystal formations everywhere. We drank tea and listened to old Willehemina Holiday phonographs. Every 7th day we received a paper on the doorstep, and it was always blank.
Paradise was lost and found all in one 30-second interval. Grown men had the same hopes and difficulties with motor functions as toddlers, and women never took off their clothes just to feel worthwhile. Justice was served with a flick of the wrist and the occasional hanging, not one soul had ever heard of the word "litigation". Snow fell like sugar—frosting coating gingerbread houses, angel Pegasus gave us sacred meat and the ice plum harvest grew more prolific with each passing year. My heart was full—swollen with pride and the memory-erasing euphoria of fresh air and time.
# #
"We've got too many green cows," Old Peter Philistine informed Maxine and me just as a new one popped out right in front of us, limbs tangled in a knot and covered in earth green mother birth goo.
"We should keep him," Maxine said. "He's good luck. Don't you remember? The first cows that arrived after the war were green." She doused the little calf with cold water and gave him an instruction manual for making butter. He squealed in delight.
"I suppose you're right, but it messes up the aesthetic when they all stand in rainbow order—having a big green band in the middle." Petey and the new calf had already made eye contact though, instantly becoming lifelong friends. "This one will be one of our transport cattle—he looks like he can make a speedy delivery. Not for the stockyard."
The little calf shook his head, indicating that his time would come eventually, as does everyone's.
#
A Monday night, not even 7 p.m. yet and we had already gotten into too much of Old Petey's moonshine. We were in his den, slouched in fur-covered rocking chairs and safe indoors by the fireplace. Danny K. Ricochet was practicing his guitar upstairs—he wasn't any good, but he played softly and we were drunk enough that it was starting to sound okay. Petey held his mug steady while he rocked, burping soundlessly after every other sentence.
He was on his fifth glass, and wanted to hear what the underground women were like.
"Some have cotton-candy pink hair and chocolate skin," I said. "Others don't sleep any day of the week except for Saturdays. All of them have many opinions, but all their opinions convey the same thing. They want a fair deal." I paused, thinking of their bodies moving in liquid slow-motion. "Some have sharp, piercing angles. Some are men." Peter Philistine raised an eyebrow. "There was this one girl though. You should have seen her. Long, brown hair down to here." I drew a line across the small of my back. "Mischievous, big eyes, soft skin—the color of a beach that no one's walked on. Every part of her, every curve was flawless." I took another sip. "I built her, you know."
"Well how 'bout that," Old Petey said. "You must have felt like God." He tilted his chair back, kicking his shoes off and propping his feet up in front of the fireplace.
"Nah. Actually, I felt like a kid who'd just done something naughty. Waiting to get caught." I downed the last of my drink. "Hasn't happened yet."
"You just wait," Peter said. "Nay nay nay," he said. Burp, he said.
We finished the last batch, talked about international war, Renaissance art, how to place a winning bet, and what we could make come out of our noses, and ended up falling asleep where we were when the fire died, around 10:30 at night.
Chapter Twenty Nine
You're not abnormal. We just haven't found your target market yet.
There were five ways that the ranchers of Upper Terra managed to keep warm on the frozen surface.
1. Portuguese kissing long into the night.
2. Frequent spontaneous jumping jacks.
3. Wooly vests made from the downy soft hairs of Peter Philistine's underbelly.
4. Playing songs from the 60s. A turntable sat in the corner of every bungalow.
5. Friendly, but heated kung fu debates every Sunday.
The cold pricked at the corners of my eyes, making them sting. My toes were numb but my heart was on fire. Red oak and mint, melodies and mothers in your life past the age of 18. Sweet cocoa. Churned buttercakes. 24 hours of light. Popsicle mirrors on the ground reflecting the sun on your face, like the last day of summer camp at the lake where you learned how to swim.
That afternoon while giving one of the old yogurt cows the good and proper scrubbing she deserved, I discovered a yellow, crumpled up note in the wash basin. I let it dry while finishing my chores, and would have forgotten about it except the wind blew it in my face as I was leaving.
Dear Jonah,
I'm sorry for the time it's taken to get this letter to you. It took forever to find writing materials—they are in short supply in EastGen, as is everything else. I feel like I've been asleep for centuries. Your doctor is here. He sends his regards.
D.E.F. doesn't remember me, but I heard him talk about you once. He knows you were the one who bought him toys.
- Mari
Who was this Mari? My collar glowed yellow and beeped.
Sweet spun sugar. Violet eyes with no judgment behind them. Pink shell lips that had never uttered a word. Jewel-encrusted strands of flax and light that vanished the moment you looked at them. So warm, so solid, so unattainable. The girl with the glowing blue belly of my nightmare dreams was certainly a construction, a phantasm, a shape-shifter I had invented long ago in lonely hours of the morning, residual of a past life and fake, fake, so fake. Not a real person. She never could be. Real people aren't anything like that—there are no blue angels outside of the redscreen and Billy-Bobby era Roy Orbison tunes.
I'd been sleeping with no one but Maxine for almost six months now. And she was a great girl. But haunted still by what must be remnants of some teenage fantasy, I closed my eyes and frantically pulled myself off to the thought of the woman who couldn't speak.
#
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E53: Full Transcript. 10:30 P.M. Model Citizen masturbates to fragmented memory remnants of former ProProject partner Mari Alderon. Model Citizen orgasms within 7 minutes and 33 seconds. Sleep cycle. Downloading...A/V data from previous sync date to present. Analyzing...Model Citizen's corporeal functions have acclimated to tundra surface environment. Numerous subterranean modification installations in hibernation mode. Mood--Elevated despite lack of any recent psychedelic ingestions. Marital status—Wed according to local law to UNKNOWN, Maxine. Dependents—None. Employment status—Employed PT, local agriculture.
Subject: Philistine, Peter. No known diseases. No known medications. Mood—Calm and mildly euphoric whether free of toxins or imbibing homemade moonshine. Marital status—Wed according to local law to LookingGlass, LoveMother. Dependents—36 previous, all currently self-sufficient. Employment status--Chief of local AgBiz. Subject's secret to wellness and longevity—Unknown.
Analysis: Data collected to date from retrofitting of Model Citizen insufficient for thorough investigation of Group Ranchers, Upper Terra. Suggest 1 to 2 additional collection periods. If results do not improve, retract Model Citizen from Upper Terran environment and reassign to A or B.
A. Infrastratos Executive PenPush division
B. EastGen redhouses
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Chapter Thirty
Mourning dawns at last. After waiting for it for a hundred years, you'd think the poor bastard would finally be able to move on.
Maxine was married when I met her, to a man who had once been a painter but was now an accountant. But matrimony is always temporary and she reminded me of my mother, so I wooed her away from him with one simple trick—I appeared to hang on her every word while making lots of eye contact. Really I was just staring at the way her lashes cast faint shadows above her cheeks and how her dark hair fell perfectly against her shoulders no matter which way she turned. She talked about old movies that only I had seen—not your standard old hat like Casablanca, but real movies like that one where Mickey Rooney came back from the war with his legs cut off. She was a no-nonsense broad with a gentle spirit, a firm handshake and a killer rhubarb pie recipe. I should have left her alone from the get-go, then she could have stayed that way forever.
Many seasons have passed here on Upper Terra and WWI seems like a myth, WWII a blockbuster film, and WWIII a bad dream. Tankless and wireless I stood out in -60 degree weather and didn't freeze. Sometimes during slow hours at the ranch, I would design contraptions to make work easier and more efficient—a mechanical milker, a thresher—but Petey warned me against starting the Industrial Revolution. So I took it slow, placing one foot in front of the other.
Petey, Maxine, LoveMother and I sat around the bonfire, chewing sassafras and counting sheep. The night was crisp and shadow-filled and the fire crackled softly in mutating shapes. I wished it would make up its mind. Maxine rested against my shoulder. We had done a day's work and had nowhere else to be and nothing else we wanted to do except sit and let our bodies reach natural equilibrium and harmony.
"Tomorrow we'll take the Hecks for a romp, eh kid?" Petey nodded at me, throwing weeds into the fire. I smiled. We would ride, see new-old mountains and bright sun cracking sheets of ice into caverns, arabesques, and Picassos. Maxine would bake a thousand muffins. LoveMother would heal any wounds incurred.
It would all be done before gunpowder came raining down and created a metropolis.
#
Between every Sunday and Monday my mother would wake me in the middle of the night and take me to the 13th century. She made me perform illegal witchcraft with her—we would shock and awe the temporals with our technology from the future—waving multicolored SO-LED lights through the night sky and demonstrating lightweight rectangular devices with shiny square buttons on them, moving objects and creating sounds and images with the touch of a finger. Gave them magic beans that turned a town into a city. Then we'd take their coins and run back to our post-war millennium beds. This ritual carried on until my 21st birthday. On that day she vanished into the past, and I was left with an old broom and a lifetime supply of gold coins under my bed—heavy and outdated currency, weighing me down.
# #
"It's Thuesday," Maxine said, stirring something brown in an enormous pot.
"What does that mean?"
"It means the key is in the basement. Would you go down and get it?"
"Why of course, dear," I replied, kissing her cheek and squeezing her around the middle.
I took the stairs down, finding the cellar door secured by six combination locks and tied together in a lump with a purple piece of string. After five-and-a-half hours I managed to crack it—all the numbers were 0 and I'd been a wiz at untangling knots for years.
Inside it was pitch black save for a pinkish light emanating from the far corner, calming me like something old and familiar. I crept cautiously towards it.
Underneath a pink spotlight, a boy of about ten years sat in a wooden chair against the dusty wall. He had a light blonde beard which covered his entire body. Little glow-in-the-dark bats and other small woodland creatures popped in and out of holes in the beard.
"Hello. Hello," he greeted me.
He seemed to waver below the pinkish-grey halo lamp Maxine had recovered from the I-Ching Dynasty, as if some of his molecules were somewhere else. He tutted and folded his legs the other way—left one on top, Indian style—before speaking again.
"Been so long Jonah, been so long. I warned you about taking the Biochemical Brothers during the daylight. Didn't I, didn't I?" he said.
"I only took the more attractive one," I defended.
"You always do Jonah, you always do. When will you learn?"
"Who are you? I know you, don't I?"
"That you do, that you do."
"Why am I here? What day is today?"
"Today is the day we met. So many years ago. So many years. Not much time left Jonah, not much time." He fed a round nut to a bat who had flown down from the dusty ceiling and nestled in his beard.
"They're waiting for you Jonah. Remember. Remember."
From the top of the stairs, my wife called me for dinner. She held a wooden spoon in one hand and my tracking collar in the other, beeping and glowing red.
"Do something with this, will you? It makes such an awful noise," she said.
I turned my back on Ernest-Proto, ran up the basement steps, and retrieved the collar from her outstretched hand. Not sure what to do with it, I buried it under a mountain of couch pillows in our karma den sitting room. It didn't do much to silence the damn thing, I could still faintly see the infernal lights of the tracking collar blinking red and green in rapid succession underneath. I added more cushions to the pile. While rearranging them I found a yellow, crumpled up piece of paper stuck in between a square purple cushion and a round green one.
Dear Mr. Von Edinbarrow,
I've tried to keep from writing you, but I'm not sure what else to do. Work is hard. I've been signing lots of forms that I haven't read—too thick and the print is too tiny.
Each time I see mom, she's even thinner and paler than before. Duty takes precedence, and what we've been doing to her and the others is sanctioned, but when she looks at me with her sad eyes and tries to smile I feel like I just can't take it anymore. But if my Higher-ups find out that I've lessened or ceased treatment on her, there will be hell to pay. I may even get demoted.
Yours,
- D.E.F. G.P.B. A.B.C.
The collar's lights began flashing in an even more frenzied sequence. I felt compelled to put it back on, and did so reluctantly. The beeping slowed, then ceased. The letter disintegrated before my eyes—flicker-faded out and it was never even there.
Chapter Thirty One
Don't be alarmed. The sirens are on repeat. It's not just the noise in your head.
I couldn't get to sleep that night—the collar made me itch terribly. With no little amount of difficulty and with Maxine's help, I removed it once again. I examined it carefully—besides being fashionable it seemed quite a technological feat—compact and sleek, with high performance capacity.
As I looked it over it grew strangely hot in a matter of seconds, too hot to handle, and like a live wire it sprung from my hands. It wriggled away quickly, then turned and faced me, the red sphere in the center glowing and pulsating, catching me in its sight as if it were...an eye? Then it spoke—a processed, metallic twang.
"Hello, Jonah Von Edinbarrow. Please state your rank and purpose."
"Wha—who is this? Who's speaking?"
"Please state your rank and purpose. For the records."
"Um, Generik citizen, column A. My purpose is to...is to..."
"Blark!" The collar lunged at me. "Memory fail, memory fail, too many drugs. And not even G.P.B. issued ones!" It jumped into my pocket, retrieving a luminous, twinkling, gelatinous green pill. "Biochemical Brothers! Ernest Hemingway! Sabotage, treason, foolhardiness!"
The color of the sphere changed from red to blue, the pitch of its digital voice lowering about an octave. "This one will never be able to give you an accurate analysis of the rebels of Upper Terra," it said. "In fact, he might even like them! His data feed center is shot, purple Brother must have been consumed during the daytime. Mission abort!"
The collar made a series of evenly-timed electronic squeaks, then slithered forward, lashing at my ankles. "Traitor!" it hissed, "loser, dimwit." It gained a vice grip on my leg, cutting off my circulation. I sunk to my knees, unsure whether pain or confusion was winning.
Maxine, my lovely pioneer of a temporary companion, rushed over with a bucket of ice and dumped it on the ever-tightening Collar. It whistled like a tea kettle, letting out steam as it loosened from my leg.
"Noooooo! Ice is my only weakness!" It sputtered and died.
That's the thing about people and electronics. Everything malfunctions sooner or later.
#
"I have to go home," I told Maxine. "It's what the collar told me."
"I didn't hear it say that." She wasn't scolding me, just being matter-of-fact.
"It didn't say it out loud. Do you know where my tank is? The one I came with? I thought it was in the utility closet but it's not."
"Have you tried the barn or the basement?" She had that look on her face that women get when they're concerned but don't want to say anything—tight, drawn lips, arms crossed, eyes cast down to the left.
I went down to the basement wondering if I'd see Ernest-Proto again, but no one was there, and neither was my acu-tank. I'd been doing fine without it for months, but heading back to wherever-it-was I was supposed to go I figured I'd need it—better safe than sorry, so they say. I searched behind dusty cedar furniture and old Civil War paintings and still no old child lord or aluminum regulator. I sighed and turned to head back up the stairs. A small wombat waddled out from behind the staircase, came up to me and nudged my recently injured leg. There was a yellow, crumpled up piece of paper in his mouth. He flew up towards the ceiling in a zigzag haphazard war strategy maneuver, then paused, hovering in front of my face. I gently removed the note from his tiny jaws. When I opened it, a square blue chip fell to the floor. I squinted, trying to make out the messy scrawl:
—This will help get your memory back. Just eat it. Just eat it.
I picked up the chip and looked it over. On one side was inscribed, "BLUBROTHER MEMORY CHIP, V17. Engineering by E.P.H. Patent Pending."
Just eat it. I would at least need some water to successfully consume a metal square. I ascended the steps, calling out to Maxine for that sweet tea she had brewed last Thursday.
#
"Ahhh." I smacked my lips, using my hand to wipe away the remnants of sweet tea, lemon bars, and memory chip. I didn't feel anything except for the paradoxical lethargy and jitters which is the result of massive sugar consumption.
"I think I'll go lie down for a bit."
Maxine nodded imperceptibly, she was busy baking a 7-tier D-Day cake.
I glanced around the bedroom—satin bedspread, velvet throw pillows, warm pink light coming from the DayGlo fringe lamp. Sepia-toned photos of dukes and earls and western pioneers, the faint sounds of my wife humming malt-shop opera drifting in from the kitchen. Why couldn't I stay here forever? My leg ached and my stomach churned with failed digestion.
Suddenly, I lurched forward onto the bed face first, my jaw locked open and limbs spasming.
"BluBrother..." I gasped, "Memory!" Green and blue neon lights and a million semi-attractive bodies loomed in phantom before my eyes. Pills and tonics, screens with moving pictures, mobile devices chirping in ceaseless dissonance. Tanks and surgeries and plastic, metal and wires and not a fresh farm cow in sight.
"Ummpfft. Argh." The spasming slowed to a dull and not entirely unpleasant ache, ping-ponging through my body's extremities. Yellow ducks on a green gauzy dress. Smiling violet eyes. A blu-glo pad with reassuring words nestled in the center of a smooth, porcelain white stomach. Curious, young laughter. Twinkling green eyes not unlike my own. Then those same eyes, hovering above me in a sterile white room with bright lights, everything smelling of rubbing alcohol.
"G.P.B." I said quietly to myself. "Social experiment."
I slept for seventeen years.
#
White collar hell soup poured in intermittent drivels into my consciousness, each spark of displaced memory like a jolt of caffeine in the midst of insomnia. I swam through a dark blue ocean that never ended—no islands, no ships, no life float thrown my way or even a whale to kill. My dream was my life and I knew it would never end, but one thing bore down upon me amidst the strobes, caramels, high-heeled boots and electric guitars—responsibility. I had never known it, never wanted or needed it, but it sought to be mine all the same. Accidents in the paperwork and you're slated for glory. That's how the cookie crumbles.
Chapter Thirty Two
Be a Star with GeneriStar Videophone and PowerPack 6000! Do you have what it takes to be a Star? Then pick up the phone and call now!
Wednesday morning brought with it a brand new case of doubt and a thousand freshly hatched bad plans. I related them one by one to Maxine over breakfast. She patiently outlined the flaws in each as she buttered pancakes and filleted water buffalo.
"Plan Aone5."
"You don't have enough time."
"Plan 744."
"There isn't enough money."
I looked over the notes I'd made on a green post-it. "Plan B2KappaDeltaC5Krishna?"
"We can't produce that many cows in such a restricted interval."
As usual she was right, and I felt useless once again. I had not a cent to my name and not an hour on which to meditate. I would simply have to go down, down, down to the infernal darkness of hipsters and hypocrites, hyenas and humungous helmsmen of the State Hamburger House.
The jolt to my cranium and cardioid aftershocks were just of few of the unfortunate side effects triggered by the BluBrother Memory Chip. Like a computer chip virus form of LSD, it wrecked my software, destroyed my files, and sent error messages when I tried to eat red-colored foods, but it did help me get some of my memories back. I felt as though a large magnet was pulling me down towards the earth, some sort of bass-drum reverberation calling me to put my ear to the ground and seek out the old tribe. I remembered the colony, and how it had been split in half. Remembered the bright white lights in the upper rooms of Infrastratos, and the dim, liquid-slow strobes in the lower rooms of the NightChapel. And I remembered Mari, the nymph in the green-gauze dress. I hadn't seen her in a long time.
I packed every working, defunct, and malfunctioning piece of electronic equipment I'd arrived with and left practically everything else behind. Furniture and shelves and pots and pans and animals and vegetables and dry goods and my wife. The air was chill and crisp, spring blossoms on the branches of anything strong enough to avoid frostbite. Sun in the East and dire straits in the North. A sackful of wishes and a head full of lies, memories like broken pieces of a jigsaw puzzle trying to force themselves in the wrong way—edges smashing against indents that looked almost right, but hung loosely and then fell apart. Clad in leathers and furs and a double-barrel gun, I was under-prepared but steamrolling ahead anyway. My heart said it was time to go—it had printed it in black, monospaced type on a slip of paper and spat it out right above my nipple.
"Here. Some water buffalo jerky for your trip. Just ready this morning," my wife from this land said. "Remember to stay warm...is this coat thick enough?"
"Think so. I umm, I wish...I mean if things had been....You're really the only—"
"Have a good trip," she said. She looked like she knew all along that I'd be leaving, and returned to whistling while she worked.
"I'm sorry," I said.
I would miss her, but not as much as I would have liked to.
"I probably won't see you again," I said. "I don't know if, since we're married..."
"Our laws don't apply where you're going," she said.
"I'll try to remember that."
I kissed her twice and she was gone.
That afternoon I went to Petey and accepted one of the old Heck cows for a reasonable price—when in doubt, buy a cow. I loaded her up and headed out to look for a way down. The sun set in the West.
#
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JONAH trudges through the harsh climate of Upper Terra. There is no light to illuminate the surface--save for the dim green glow radiating from his pocket. He turns sideways, and the glow illuminates a small fishing hole in the ice. There is an abandoned fishing pole, lures, wires, and a cooler half-filled with prehistoric looking fish--tiny dragon wings and rainbow gills.
He steps up to the edge, dipping his foot in the water and swirling it around. The water ripples, giving off faint-neon hues, a subtle liquid psychedelia. He reaches into his pocket and retrieves the green, glowing Biochemical Brother pill, examining it for a moment before popping it into his mouth. The ice under his standing leg crumbles. He falls inside.
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