Year of the Rhinoceros

Chapter 13: Deputy From Luna Hell — Cosmic Epiphanies — Death of a Thousand Bites

M. B. Neff ~ 185 Chapter 13 Deputy From Luna Hell — Cosmic Epiphanies — Death of a Thousand Bites IN ACHIEVING HIS VERY FIRST PHILOSOPHICAL DRUNK an hour after Laney Dracos left Scandals, Manny mulled over the question of Big-Bang-God-Soul-Life-Love-Choice-Freedom-JusticeUtopia -Reality within a state of liquor-numbed nihilism—one which peremptorily inhaled all cosmic dilemma before flicking away the leftover imponderables like so many hotboxed cigarettes. As a result, he had reached a perfect solution before passing out in the subway train at midnight: Fuck it all. Too much booze, too little sleep. That’s why every sound in the office now drives a cold nail into his brain. As his senses wade into static, he stares out a sliver of office window, attempting to comprehend the meaning of “day.” Nearby bouts of OWC shop talk assault him, exaggerated and frenzied out of all proportion. He watches a small bar of sun fall near his toes, sips his coffee and imagines a race of beings devoid of flesh and bureaucracy, beings of pure light like tiny suns roving the galaxies, beyond Biblical prophesy and humanist dreams, beyond anything conceivable. Then he realizes, with a jolt of adrenaline born of fear, that an evolution of humanity to a state of ultimate light and intellect will result only in mass extinction. Let’s start over. The intellect in question (Photonsapien), satiated with all-knowledge, minus needs and emotions, will inevitably attain a condition of perfect ennui. In other words, it will BORE ITSELF TO DEATH. How can it not? We’re doomed regardless. 186 ~ Year of the Rhinoceros He imagines countless numbers of little lights blinking out somewhere beyond Andromeda, the memories of all humanity lost. He recalls that sci-fi book of E-Man’s, the one about the strange human being with the power to create utopia. OUT OF THE SILENT PLANET? No, not that one. Anyway—in lieu of pure ennui—he knows he can do a better job than the sci-fi character. To prove it to himself, he imagines scalding the earth free of poverty, disease, war, crime, government, office parks and strip malls. He replaces all tacky business zones with lakes, hills, and trees, and the asshole capital of the world, Washington, D.C., with Ideas alone—no more marble shacks for puppetcrats and politicians to hide in. Who can understand his disappointment? Laney Dracos? He takes another sip of coffee with shaking hand, and within moments , a transmogrifying radiation begins to leak from his conscious mind. Events, places far away, even solitary objects, gain in momentum. A circle of voices claps like distant audience about 8:30 A.M. They shout in chorus, “WHERE IS THE NEXUS?” before groaning away to soft thumps, like a sound of bad plumbing. Manny understands, and with a sense of epiphany, that he is rarely the same from one moment to the next, having existed not as one, but countless selves. He is The Becoming Self, The Vacillating Self, The Almost Republican Hypocritical Self, The Instrument of Pickering Disruption Self. He lives at the center of humankind’s most unfathomable creations, Time and Space, left with no choice but to wish for a little hair of the dog—perhaps a Bloody Mary or a Watermelon Shooter. Whatever it takes to cure this hangover. That morning, he’d noticed Becky Bergstein’s cell sprayed clean. Her old desk devoid of all sundry papers, moisture rings and ash fingers, even King Ludwig’s jewel dethroned from the partition heights. What could she have done? Mulling at the periphery of possibility jams the dirt of Ed’s Plant Emporium under his fingernails, and as a result, his arms lift and spread, bend back as far as he can bend them, his face turning up to the ceil- M. B. Neff ~ 187 ing till he begins to lift, ever so slightly. He wants to rise, higher and higher, to the Chesapeake moon, the rainbow world where the American sword goddesses hold sway—a magical place, like Valhalla or Olympus. They will understand him. They will set things right. Before he can meet with them though, THE BOGIE comes into being. It bawls out with a sexless voice from a deep hole on the other side of the building: “THAT IS NOT PROTECTED!” Following this pronouncement, a crush of shrieky and garbled ejaculations . Next, all objects...