Year of the Rhinoceros

Chapter 24: Manny Loses It — Dropping The “Utopia Stone” — Up From The Slime-House-of-Saud Office Park — Hebrews, Hittites, Greeks, and So Forth

274 ~ Year of the Rhinoceros Chapter 24 Manny Loses It — Dropping The “Utopia Stone” — Up From The Slime-House-of-Saud Office Park — Hebrews, Hittites, Greeks, and So Forth 5:06 P.M. LONG AFTER LANEY’S MUTATION in the face of Counsel Madison, the Garden-of-Eden arrives at the Rosslyn metro station in Virginia to catch his bus, the 1Z. As he waits outside in the cold dusk of his whimsy, nine buses full of reality-phobes come slushing in from all over the target area, ablating the curbs in transit and coughing out hostages. Shivering on the metro jetty, Manny transcends reality and enters the realm of total transfiguration. Only how to concentrate? Mzz Dracos’ mental sclerosis has rooted him to an alien tableau: a darkening western sky slashed with a scimitar of moon, a mote in God’s eye gone fractured, hot, and listing between two office buildings rearing high in the Rosslyn twilight. While he watches, a black power cable sagging across the street rises up to meet the moon, edges the cusp, then eclipses a blemish or two. Moments later, a bit of gleaming lunar rind appears beneath the underside of the cable, unsheathing atom by atom. Experiencing his first “Earth turn,” Manny realizes that no realization could be more humbling or empowering. It’s one thing to learn of “turn” in a science book, quite another to come to an intimate knowledge by perception, struck with a notion of numberless days produced by rotating bulk—a poor excuse for Time. But no sooner does the weight of Time evaporate than a bout of terraphobia overcomes him. It stays with him until the Earth relaxes and becomes his possession. He can kick it, hug it, stroke it, enter it, even become contemptuous of it. In comparison to Earth, he is scaled to salmonella, or less, but still able to M. B. Neff ~ 275 plunge his fist down through sheathes of rock fat and earthmuscle to grip the hot magnetic heart. Never has anyone else been capable of such a feat. In seconds, Manny Eden sees the asteroid coming. He evolves to a concept of Earth-as-prison. He predicts nothing less than utter extinction, and as he does, a 24P bus mashes the ice before him into slowly thickening water. It grinds past to make for the ghettos of south Arlington, its husk loaded with the ferociously poor and late-of-dictator. It snuffs the new moon from his eyes and blunders on. Manny gazes through his own winter breath clouding the box-like buses passing by, the crowds of dull sheeple walking up from the depths of metro station, and he knows that a phase-by-phase renovation into utopia is inevitable. One way or another, he’d been planning it for weeks. In response then to Manny’s new loathing of all things, a godlike urge-to-surface rumbles into orbit beneath his feet. Groans of plate and hot core coagulations bore into his foremost consciousness, cajole him to create a leviathan obsessed with release, shrugging awake like a planet fetus within the womb below. From the Antietam cornfield to Selby Bay Marina, from the Germantown hollows to the wild acreage of Locust Shade Park, from Annapolis to the Glen Echo Hills, true utopia is now possible, and all because of him. Thank you for making paradise a child of rage, Manny Eden. * * * 5: 14 P.M. AFTER BOARDING THE 1Z to Arlington, Manny “Mr. God” Eden thinks it all over very carefully. He realizes the evolution of his utopia (The Most High Noosphere, New Erehwon, The Transhuman Consciousness, Manny Town, or whatever) must be conceived on the move—the flux of transfiguration energies gleaming and bold with supervision. Also, unlike the other ill-conceived “utopias” of America’s past (Woman-in-the-Wilderness, the Fourierist Phalanxes, Icaria, 276 ~ Year of the Rhinoceros Zoar, Orderville, the Bohemia Manor), this particular Eden of his god-philosopher vision will not undergo entropy or founder due to the influence of mammon, squabbling malcontents, or autocrat saviors who have achieved a state of self-delusion and distance. All potential glitches will be worked out in advance. The sheer size of his utopian pregnancy will smother any whiners who might seek to remain unhappy for the sake of unhappiness and the need for attention. NOTHING will be allowed to upset the scheme. Mr. God finds...