“Sit the fuck down or everyone dies!” a she-demon’s voice thundered and there was something in her voice that left no doubt in the mind and no room for argument. That’s when I clocked who it was: Baby motherloving Brown!
Sofia and I sat back down and turned to look at each other. That damned song popped into my head again. Man, I should have been paying more attention. I was high when I wrote, recorded and signed away the rights to that shit. KKK ain’t no joke. Thank God I gave that shit up, for real.
I pulled my baseball cap down low over my face and hoped she didn’t see me. The problem with being famous though is that Sofia and I were seated right where we would be best seen.
I wondered what Um? would say about all this. Earlier tonight, backstage, I saw he, she, it, or whatever, talking to Mr Fin, that creepy hood Legs has been dealing with recently. What in this world or the next would the two of them have to talk about?
Mayor Obvious Beastedy
Fuck! This can’t be happening! Just before I got on stage, my head of security whispered that xombies had been spotted in numerous locations across the city. I didn’t want to cause a panic and Special Forces were on the case so I said nothing. With any luck we’d be able to cover it up. After all, this wasn’t the first time xombies had made it past our defences though never in so many numbers. Those damned tunnels were too numerous to be mapped. Now the side of my head is throbbing with pain and bleeding thanks to Babylove Brown standing with a gun pointed at my head and I can hear death knocking at the door.
Dear God! This is happening. I’m going to die right here. I can feel it. Unless one of my men can take her out before she pulls the trigger. Maybe if I make a move and distract her...but who am I kidding? I’m frozen here, sweat dripping down my face and there’s a sudden itch in my balls I need to scratch real bad.
“Ladies and gentlemen of the one percent. My name is Babylove Brown and I’m here to play a game. It’s a simple game really. You see, one of you is sitting on a bomb. Now don’t panic. It’s a small bomb and is only going to kill the person sitting on it. Those to either side of our lucky volunteer might get a little singed but I promise you’ll live with no scars a cosmeticon couldn’t fix in a jiffy. Now, the rules of the game are simple. As we live in a democracy, all of you get to vote. Who lives and who dies? The choice is yours.
“What I want is a simple ‘boo!’ Either ‘boo’ yourselves or ‘boo’ the mayor. Whoever gets the loudest ‘boo’ wins a one way trip to the next life. Are you ready?”
“Now wait a minute!” I shouted. “That’s not democracy! What is this, a demonstration of craziness? You’re insane!”
“Maybe, maybe not. Let me ask you this, what are your objections to our little game?”
“That someone might die,” I spluttered, then regained my composure. “Listen Miss Brown. I’m sure we can work this out. We all understand you come from a deprived environment. That you were failed by those entrusted to protect you. We have all heard ‘The Ballad of Babylove Brown’. But believe me, this isn’t the way.”
“We all die mayor. Those are the rules of the game of life. And you make decisions that cost the lives of countless people all the time.”
“That is my job young lady! To ensure the safety and well being of as many people as possible. Do you think that it’s an easy task?”
“Someone put a gun to your head and forced you to become mayor?” she asked. “All you politicians are corrupt and all you rich motherfuckers who hog the water and the wealth while the rest of us suffer and die are just as culpable. You know you couldn’t be luxuriating up in the clouds without the broken backs of the common folk to stand on.
“Whatever, time’s awasting. This is just the first part of the show and you don’t want to miss what comes next. If you don’t play this game, we all die. There’s another bomb hidden somewhere in the building and it’s got enough juice to wipe us all out.
“On the count of three, ‘boo’ if you feel that one of yourselves deserves to die. Ready? One two boo!”
There was a single solitary “Boooooooo,” long and low from somewhere in the back followed by a smattering of nervous laughter like static electricity.
“Hmmmm. Not looking good for you there Obvious. Not looking good at all. Just be steady, it’ll all be over real soon. Now everyone ‘boo’ if-”
“Wait! This isn’t fair! These elections are rigged! You can’t ask someone to choose another’s life over their own,” I interrupted.
“I thought you were a believer in the prophet. Does it not say in the Holy Word that ‘unless a leader is willing to sacrifice all for his people, he is not fit to enter the kingdom of heaven?’ Were you lying when you said you were a man of the people but a servant of God? Or are these fine folk not worth the sacrifice?”
Did the prophet say that? I honestly couldn’t remember.
I realised then that my team wasn’t speaking to me via my earstud. Had Babylove Brown murdered my personal staff? She smiled like she was reading my thoughts. “I don’t believe God wants anyone to die here today,” I answered.
“Well, we’ll have to see about that.”
The strangest thing happened to me then. I had nothing to say. I never have nothing to say. I’m the mayor of this motherloving city not some chump. Who did this bitch think she was?
“Cat got your tongue?” she asked, not even bothering to look me in the face, the gun never wavering.
“You kn-kn-know what young la-la-lady, I’ve had eno-no-nough of y-y-y-your lip,” I stammered in rage.
“What you gonna do? Spank me?”
“No. But you know this is a waste of time don’t you?” I asked, stalling for time, wondering why someone hadn’t shot the bitch yet. “Do you really believe killing anyone in this room will change anything?” Do you really believe the secret rulers of the world are hanging out at an awards ceremony? Foolish child! We are sacrifices to their dark gods, nothing more, nothing less...
Babylove Brown
“Save it. Interrupt me again and I wi-wi-will put a bullet in your head. Go ahead, call my bluff. Now on the count of three, whosoever believes the responsibility for our failed city state lies with our fearless leader say ‘boo’.
“Remember...in the old days, when shit was just, life fucking up, you know, kinda like what’s happening to the world, the King sacrificed himself to appease the gods. So let me ask you fine upstanding citizens, when you look upon our devastated world, is it not clear the gods are pissed the fuck off? Okaaaay, here we go...”
I bit down hard and repeated my secret mantra to myself in my mind activating the neutrino bomb then I began my countdown. As the word ‘two’ emerged from my mouth, a sniper’s bullet entered the top of my head, bored a hole through my brain, nasal cavity, and mouth to emerge and unhinge my jaw as it blasted through to embed itself in the floor, now splattered with blood, bone, and meat, that formerly resided inside my skull.
In my final moments of life I thought of my parents and wondered who they were and why they abandoned me as a baby. They were probably babies themselves, like so many on the streets, addicts of one description or another, fated to a life of cheating, robbing, whoring, and killing, all for the right to mainline another hot-shot of the Amerikan Dream, the greatest drug ever designed by man.
A moment later, the Shadow Theatre and Opera House vanished from the face of the planet, taking everyone within her on a one way trip into the unknown, leaving nothing behind but a dark smouldering hole in the ground.
The Xombie formerly known as Obram
The xombie formerly known as Obram walked through tunnels made of rough-hewn stone embedded with crystals. He was one of many xombies making their way through these ancient arteries that connected to the sewers beneath the city.
All the xombies could feel the energy of the people above. It was what was calling them. For what purpose they knew not but they were drawn inexorably onwards and upwards, ever closer to their cousins on the surface.
Even
tually they came to a ladder that led up to a grate. There were people walking past above. A xombie stepped up to the ladder and began to climb followed by others. Soon they pushed the grate aside and emerged onto the street. They swarmed forth from the sewers to stand under the dusk sky and newly lit streetlamps.
A few people stopped and stared but there was strangely no panic. Obram looked at the huemen around him and saw their connection with the other huemen on the planet like a fine network of fungi, winking as luminescent as otherworldly fireflies. He felt their suffering. He could see their fears and cravings riding them. He could smell their demons and angels waging war. He could hear their souls crying out to be set free. Not all of them, but the majority.
A few were different. They were...Om be; not xombies but neither were they like the rest of the huemen either. Their presences were unclouded. They were not to be touched. As for the rest, they were zombies feeding on the bounty of the planet and giving nothing in return.
Their brains were filled with such a variety of exotic illusions and waking dreams that the xombie formerly known as Obram couldn’t help but wonder what they tasted like. After a moment, he decided to find out.
He approached a middle aged man of average height with sad eyes, dressed in a suit and tie, standing at a bus stop. The man flinched when he realised that Obram was a xombie before dying a moment later from a single blow to the head that caved in his skull like a bullet striking a watermelon.
As it happened, a ferociously bright little light exploded and swirled deep within the grey mass of the xombie formerly known as Obram’s skin, like a dying star or a galaxy being born, spreading out to fill his ultra-dark skin with Fibonacci spirals all colours of the rainbow. The greyness vanished in an instant and his skin was suddenly fire and smoke, clouds and nebulae, galaxies and stars, infinite worlds in a simple yet complex design wrought by no mere mortal hand.
The xombie formerly known as Obram looked at the pineal gland he had plucked from the man’s head. It was calcified, a third eye blocked from seeing the light by mankind’s clever poisons.
The truth was as clear as the light this man had once seen as a new-born baby, before being corrupted by Babylon. It wasn’t worthy to feed on. None of them were. It changed nothing however. Their time had come. He crushed the pineal gland to dust in his fist and moved on.
Soon people began to panic.
Gaia
Ecila, DevilDog, and Tealson, stood on the edge of a cliff high above the clouds. The van they had recently leapt out of was still plunging down the side of the mountain and had yet to hit the bottom.
Behind them and all around stood a thick forest. The air was a little thin due to the altitude and in the distance a glowing dragon flew across the early evening, a sliver of rainbow colours snaking past through a sky ablaze with a fiery sunset, like an epic poem.
Ecila looked at the strange machine in his hands then at the other two; the man with the mechanical legs and the girl with the broken wings. They looked as bewildered yet exhilarated as he felt. It was the air. It was so fresh it was almost unreal. Like he had never truly breathed before this moment.
In the far distance, a column of smoke rose into the air. Devildog wondered who they were and if they had any food. She was suddenly starving.
To Tealson, it smelled like gunpowder and blood.
Then Ecila looked up into the evening sky and suddenly he was laughing and weeping. The early stars were rising and he recognised them. There was the Butterfly and there was the Cosmic Trixter. He was home. Not in the village, but back on Gaia. Wherever this mountain on which they stood was, it was on the same world as Chi and he was going to find her.
That other woman in Paradise City who looked like Chi, she must have been a sign from the Ancestors and Orishas that they were soon to be reunited. The shaman of his village always claimed that huemen were but shadows of the gods.
Whatever dance they were performing that had flung him to strange new worlds only to return him home with no rhyme or reason he could discern, he was grateful. He whooped with joy into the sky as his two companions turned to look at him as if he was insane.
Maybe he was, a part of him thought. Maybe his insanity was so powerful it had finally come to life. For all he knew, he was this moment walking through the desert, having chosen to flee into the interzone and brave the wasteland rather than stay in the rotting cyborg corpse they called Paradise City.
Peace on Terra
The Xombie Apocalypse took the huemen of Terra by surprise. Within a few months, they were wiped out save for the few whom the xombies considered as Om Be. Many of the elite attempted to flee and hide but the xombies were relentless in tracking them down and not even the deepest nuclear bunkers offered any protection.
Afterwards, the survivors turned away from the corrupt ways of the last huemen and began the slow but steady process of living once more in tune with nature, as true huemen. After thousands of years of civilisation, huemanity finally learned that love was the answer all along.
They focused their attention on permaculture, silent contemplation, renewable sources of energy, mental technology, laughter, new genres, artforms and meta schools of dreams, styles of music and dance that were integrated into games and sports unseen and unheard of before. The innovation of artistic, physical, and mental acts of spiritual creation unfurling like petals following the rising sun, revealing the exploration ever deeper into the fractal depths of transcendence, ever pioneering towards new frontiers, ever refining, ever vibrating higher towards at-one-ment with the Most High.
Over time, life awoke in the wasteland until Terra was, once more, a veritable Garden of Eden.
The xombies, their purpose fulfilled, returned to the desert and became one with the landscape of the planet that had spawned them, their skins fragmenting into multi-coloured fractals which scattered onto the wind and disappeared as suddenly and inexplicably as the xombies had arrived, as if their fractals somehow merged into the fractals of the world and thus vanished from the world, to enter into the myths and legends of the peaceful inheritors of the world.
Epilogue
“Welcome to your new life,” Miss Took said to a certain intrepid young reporter, “I’m happy to see that you survived the xombie apocalypse, but the journey has only just begun.”
The two women took a moment to gaze around them at the field filled with thousands of folk; men, women, children, negroes, vampires (though in the post xombie era they were no longer called such), and other hueman races, mutants, and a few visiting aliens, all awaiting the solar eclipse.
Some were sat on the grass while others were running, leaping, levitating, throwing and catching balls, boomerangs, frisbees, sticks and other objects made of fire, water, other elements and forms of energy; or relaxing on magic carpets powered by their own mentally generated forcefields, drinking floating bubbles of fresh water, healing herbal teas and delicious blends of juices; or smoking holy chillums in circles and chanting sacred mantras, surrounded by larger circles of dancers moving to the rhythmic pluckings, tappings, poundings and auralisations of improvised tunes, weaving around primordial standards on strange new instruments.
“Huemen are now aware that in addition to the three dimensions of space and one of time they are so familiar with,” Miss Took continued, “time also possesses three dimensions. I am happy to see that more huemen are gaining control of the third spatial dimension and overcoming gravity with the power of their minds.
“Linear time is analogous to moving forwards and backwards, though of course the vast majority of huemen can still only move forwards. You are learning to bend time though, which is very good.”
As she spoke, the young lady responded by slooowwwiing down time and Miss Took’s words stretched out without losing coherence, but rather subtle nuances could now be heard that revealed all the sounds around them as being dialectic with her words.
“Stay aware and focused in the present moment. Remember that Here and Now are all
that exist. You are eternal... you can touch infinity...”
A flock of birds arose from a tree in the distance and spiralled out, moving as one being towards the sun.
“Access to horizontal time or the fifth dimension gives one the power to move between parallel realities, some hellish, far worse than the empire or Paradise City ever were, others akin to ‘paradise on earth’. The sixth dimension or vertical time allows one to actually ascend to the realms of the gods or descend into the hells.”
Miss Took was silent for awhile, her eyes focused on a flying red kite swirling and twisting through the air in the deft hands of the wind and her accomplice, a young laughing boy floating in the distance, one of many gambolling through the air. As expected, the youths were learning to fly faster than the adults.
It was such a beautiful day, the sun high was in the blue sky, smiling upon the wide open field of grass dotted with people and a few trees, and flowers all colours of the rainbow.
Miss Took smiled and breathed in deep as she took it all in.
“What of the seventh dimension? And how many dimensions are there?” the young reporter asked after a while.
“The seventh dimension is a door, but to cross that thresh-hold, one must let go completely,” Miss Took answered, refocusing on her young friend.
“Let go of what?”
“Everything. Especially that which you hold most dear to you.”
“What’s on the other side of the door?”
Gutter Dice smiled as he listened to the women speak. He passed the joint he was smoking to the indigo furred ape who sat on its haunches to his left, toes nestling luxuriously into the earth.
“The answer to your second question. To all questions in fact. There are an infinite number of dimensions where the ancestors dream and the arch-angels sing. We are their dreams and we both inspire and dance to the divine tune. On the other side of the door, your higher self awaits you in your true home, and the beauty and mystery of it all is that you are already there. Now all you have to do is walk the path.”
“The path?”
AfroSFv2 Page 46