Planet Fever

by Stier Jr. , Peter

  Evel jumped over twenty buses.

  EZ stopped writing and looked over at me. “You mind me asking you a question?”

  “Go for it.”

  “You said you met Col. West one time before. When?”

  “I don’t know. I had a tripped-out mescaline vision of meeting him right before I met you, but I think the actual meeting was well before that. I can’t be sure.”

  “They probably had you pilled-out when you originally met. You recall anything he said to you?”

  “He called me a hero.”

  “And lemme make certain I got this straight: this recent time he gave you the song and dance of you’re-a-guinea-pig-for-an-experimental-psychotropic-drug-and-everything-is-a-figment-of-your-imagination.”

  Knievel cleared some more busses. “Yup. That about covers it.”

  EZ fiddled with his pen. “Man, what is his gig?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “We both know the Fillono angle is a ruse; he’s using Fillono for different fronts for his secretive enterprises. And he’s probably trying to track down this Moroni fella. But what’s he roped you into?” He shoved a Cheeto into his mouth and wiped off his finger with a handkerchief he had in his shirt pocket. He was more thinking aloud at this point than talking to me. “Maybe he thought you and Fillono together might have sparked some collective memory jive and fleshed out some more intel on this Moroni cat. Then he came to nab you … for what? Dial in a new program probably. He didn’t remove your tracer, so he wants you to do what you are doing. Maybe I am part of it … maybe I’m also who he’s trying to smoke out. But for what reason? Can’t tell right now unless he moves in on me.”

  “One more thing that might interest you.”

  “What’s that?”

  Evel Knievel revved up his cycle for a big jump over a large fountain in Las Vegas.

  “He asked me if I had ever heard of somebody called Atoz Al Ways. At the time, I hadn’t. I actually thought I had misheard him, that he’d asked me ‘what was the day.’ Anyway, while I was out there in the desert, Atoz Al Ways bungee-jumped into my reality, which was actually me going into his reality, and notified me he was the author of this reality and told me I was supposed to save the universe by finishing my book.”

  EZ Buck’s face registered slight dumbfoundedness.

  Evel Knievel crashed hard.

  I gave EZ the rest of the lowdown on my strange briefing I had with Colonel West: the morphing of the room into what I perceived as a “time ship,” the paralysis and inability to speak, the entire tale. Then I told him all about the encounter with Atoz Al Ways. I waited for him to either: a) promote and corroborate my story with a supplemental cockamamie quadruple-twist spy yarn requiring hyper-distention of the mind to figure out, or b) that I was in need psychological help.

  He did neither. He just sat there and thought.

  THE FOLLOWING are the contents of one Edward Bikaver’s head as he sat in bed, ruminating in the Vagabond Inn Motel off I-70 in Grand Junction, Colorado. (Note: edited by the Author for clarity).

  All right, Ed—you got this. You can reckon this shit out. Your man EZ is here to help. Who are the players? Colonel West, that’s obvious…. File him in the antag. (“antagonist” truncated) category.

  Dr. Götzefalsch—my “mind technician”—cash is on him being in the employ of West. He’s the wind-up toy tech. antag. Damn those Cheetos look good.

  Fillono: a well-meaning—hate to say it—rube, also being used by the Colonel but not as nefarious. More like a business deal but Fillono either knows he is dealing with some shifty dudes and chooses to look the other way or has no clue because he is so wrapped up in his art-institute gig he just thinks he got really lucky. Either way, non-antag….

  Mona: damn. She’s a wildcard. Worst-case scenario: probably in the employ of Dr. Götzefalsch and the Colonel. Remember what my pops always said: coincidences are like the poop of a unicorn, son—you don’t smell em’ ‘cause they don’t exist. But I seem to have fallen for her. Oh well. I’ll just file that one in the token “I am a fool for love” category.

  Froward Moroni: another wildcard. My hypotheses is that he is either a deep-cover change-agent working for or with the Colonel or was working for/with them and went off the reservation, like EZ said.

  They want this “book”—this Planet Fever, or want me to finish it, or give up the rights to it; and they want to know whether I am familiar with this dude named “Atoz Al Ways.” Atoz Al Ways: obviously an enemy to them, and a player of significance and weight. They think that if I know him, or about him, then I have some information that is of value to them. That reminds me of that hippie couple that was in front of the liquor store a while back, and they handed me a pamphlet with an airbrushed interstellar, shades-wearing guy (who looked very similar to Atoz) with the words “A to Z, Always” on it…. Poop of a unicorn, son. No such thing as coincidences….

  My conclusion: I am being tracked and hounded for some coded or valuable article that is in this “work-in-progress”—obviously also of importance to this Al Ways—and I don’t know why, this is just some piece-of-shit novel I’ve been cobbling out in between bouts of insanity, writer’s block and blackout drinking. Now that I’ve “found” this book of life out there in the desert, what’s next? Is that the missing piece of the puzzle? Damn, those Cheetos look good.

  “WHAT’S THE deal with this book of yours?” EZ asked.

  “Just something I’ve been piecing together since I don’t know when.” I chewed on a thick piece of jerky. “It’s a farce. It’s a testament to my procrastination. Most of all, it’s a mess.”

  I hoped EZ didn’t ask to read it because I found it embarrassing to talk about that thing. How could I explain a work that made nonsense, had no coherent storyline, and was never going to be finished?

  “You should finish it. Starting tonight. Then see what happens.”

  What EZ prescribed was ludicrous. The thing was in various notebooks scattered in areas I couldn’t remember—that’s the problem with being a drunk on pills. I couldn’t recall where I had left off, if that even mattered. I let EZ know these things.

  “Be right back.” EZ stepped out of the motel room.

  I chewed the same piece of jerky. Damn this stuff took a while to masticate.

  EZ returned with a little black box that had a lamp on top and wires protruding from the side. He set it on the table in front of me.

  “This little invention of mine I call the Strobe Enlightener,” EZ said.

  “What’s it do?”

  “Do? It’s gonna help you, my friend. Do me a favor and kick off the tube.”

  I turned off the TV as EZ plugged in his apparatus and hit a toggle switch on the side. A light flashed, stopped, flashed, stopped, flashed…. Radio static and hum permeated into my ears and overlapped into my field of vision in the form of blue, green and red phosphene globs dancing in front of my eyes, which began to flutter.

  I was going into a trance….

  SO EDDIE Bikaver found himself, once again, in a trance-like state. How many times had he been in altered states? Too many to recall. He needed stickers like on the back of an RV with all the states he’d been in, all of them in the mind and under various circumstances; sometimes intentionally via the use of recreational and not-so-recreational drugs, other times via hypnotic suggestion, yet other times unbeknownst to him that it was happening at all. Psychiatrists, psychopathic military men, weird inter-dimensional beings, vagabond artists, boyfriends of girls he had tried to hit on, men in gas-masks and black suits—all of them shared one commonality: they had delivered him into an altered state of one kind or another. Now it was EZ Buck’s turn via some sort of hypnotic-strobe device. It worked.

  EZ’s voice entered Ed’s mind. “Mona Malena.”

  A blonde woman with compassionate blue eyes arrived into his thoughts. She painted on a canvas—Eddie couldn’t make out what she was painting. She smiled—she was glad to see him. His heart flutte
red. He hadn’t seen her since when? Who knows. But he was glad to see her.

  But: they were not alone. The doorknob to the bathroom jiggled and the door opened. Out strutted a man wearing a pearly-white grin along with khaki shorts and a Hawaiian print shirt. The man was Colonel Parley West. You could say Ed was perplexed.

  “How the hell do you two know each other?” Ed asked.

  Mona set down her brush. “Try to remember.”

  Ed watched as Colonel West strolled across the room. He sniffed a beer mug, then poured some orange juice into it. Ed zeroed in on the beer mug and flashes of memory sparked in his mind: a bar … the blonde, Mona … a discussion about a plan … Ed’s memory needs to be erased … Colonel West gives Ed a pill … Ed takes the pill with his beer … West smashes a fake “stunt” beer mug over Ed’s head and the rest is history.

  “Sonofabitch! You two have been behind all this!” Ed shouted.

  “Yes, Eddie, we have. And we’re going to give you the low-down as to what the gig is. No Bull.”

  At this point Eddie Bikaver smelled bullshit everywhere, but he decided to entertain the tale Colonel Parley West and Mona were about to tell….

  HERE’S THE story Colonel West told to Eddie, with Mona interjecting where necessary:

  Eddie Bikaver was a drunk, hack writer who needed money. He spotted an ad in the back of a weekly rag stating “Clinical Trials—Easy $$$” and called the 800 number. He made an appointment for the physical and interview, and a week later he went there. He passed the physical (barely, his blood pressure was on the verge of being too high) but was generally fit to be a professional “guinea pig” for a new drug that was being developed primarily for military use but also for research purposes. The drug was actually “nano-robots” that went into the subject’s neural pathways and proceeded to map-out everything in the subject’s mind.

  That was phase one.

  Phase two, the nano-robots created a holographic “map” of the mind, assessed it, then fed the data into a computer.

  During phase three, the computer relayed new information to the nano-robots, which in turn created new electro-chemical “sparks” which would—in essence—create a matrix of new perceived thoughts and surrounding realities for the subject. While this was occurring, the subject was to keep a journal of his perceptions, thoughts, emotional and physical states, as well as anything else that came to mind. The researchers compared the technical data with the subject’s “creative” data to see what did what when where and how in the subject’s brain.

  This was the big and highly secretive “mapping of the mind” project.

  And certain bigwig business interests—working with certain advanced research military interests—had a lot at stake. And a lot was riding on Subject Zero: one Edward Thomas Bikaver and his journals, aka his “Little Book of Life,” and its compendium:Planet Fever.

  Technically, Eddie “owned” it (because of a clerical error, they had forgotten to give him the paperwork where any writing he did while part of the trial was their property), so—ahem—they would really appreciate it if he would hand over the stuff and sign the paperwork, please.

  What about Froward Moroni?

  He was a former researcher, venture businessman and entrepreneur who helped jumpstart the program, but then had ideas of his own to make the drug “open source”—that is—allow anyone and everyone to have access to it. He felt there should be no monopoly on the mind, or the manipulation thereupon—and that anyone and everyone should be able to do whatever they wanted with what was their own property—their mind. The bigwigs (as well as the top brass) disagreed—they thought such unbridled, unmonitored access to such a powerful drug would cause chaos: everybody would literally be living in their own world, or worlds. Not a good business plan, nor a viable military strategy.

  Since Moroni already had flown the coup with a large supply of early incarnations of the drug, they reckoned they would use Subject Zero—Edward Bikaver (so far the only “official” subject) as a lure, to see if Moroni would approach him, and they could monitor and/or subdue the man before he spread too much chaos.

  Phase four integrated with the plan anyway, since it entailed field research, meaning the subject (Eddie) was to “live” outside the confines of the facility and in his natural habitat—the “real world.” That’s how they tracked back to the Moroni “art camp,” where they found that Fillono, Chuck “the Born Again” Poet, Lustra Love-Joy, and Marcel “the Champ” had been given a steady regimen of the drug by Moroni (and so were currently under varying degrees of observation and treatment, by the way; Chuck and Lustra at the facility in Vegas, Fillono at the facility in the Colorado Rockies, and Marcel “the Champ” at a top secret joint in the Antarctic).

  Mona Malena was an aspiring actress originally from Akron who worked part-time as a nurse/assistant at the clinical trials lab. She took the job to help pay for her student loans and to pay the bills, and the hours were flexible so she could go out on acting auditions. By signing on as an employee to the lab, she tacitly signed herself on to the “project” and became a de facto “military/intelligence” asset. Because she was an actress and had rudimentary nursing skills, they figured she would be a perfect handler and monitor of Eddie while he was “out in the field.” She was bound to secrecy by virtue of her de facto military/intelligence status (and this project was and is Top Secret, mind you), and had to fulfill her role as “girlfriend” of Eddie or risk severe penalties of money and prison. Upon fulfilling her role, she has been promised a lucrative career in the movie business.

  Oh, Eddie, but she really does care about you. Believe it or not.

  The powers that be needed Eddie to sign the paperwork now, please, and hand over the documents, so they could wrap up this project and send him on his merry way.

  EDDIE HEARD a loud “click” and snapped back into the motel room. EZ unplugged the “Strobe Enlightener” and wrapped up the cord. He put the contraption back into its box, set the box under the table, grabbed the Cheetos bag, looked inside and was happy to see one left, which he promptly ate.

  “You have got some intriguing stuff cogitating up in that dome of yours, that is factual.”

  Was that real? Or had Eddie just invented it as another fabricated piece of fiction?

  EZ perceived his concern and said, “We should get back to Whynot and nab some more intel on West and pick Fillono’s brain. I smell BS somewhere and can feel the breeze of a fan getting close to the pile.”

  EZ wadded up the Cheetos bag and tossed it into the little motel wastebasket.

  “All right. Let’s stare at our eyelids for the night. Bright and early tomorrow we grub at the diner I spotted across the way, then hit the road. We’re only about four hours away.”

  EZ grabbed the bed closest to the door and Eddie took the other one. Eddie turned off his light, wished his companion a “good night” and fell asleep, to dream about driving a car into the ocean and rolling along the ocean floor. The car filled up with water but it didn’t matter, because Eddie realized he could still breathe. He wasn’t worried. That’s about all he can remember before being awakened by the sound of an annoying and rough buzzing: the motel alarm clock.

  In the morning, they got up, flossed, brushed their teeth, slapped on deodorant, dressed and packed their few belongings, then headed for Candi’s Diner across the road.

  The sun was just poking over the Rocky Mountains to the east, and it was cool but not cold. Not a cloud in the sky.

  Inside the diner, a few truckers sat at the counter sipping coffee and BS-ing with the waitress or the hash slinger in the back. As EZ and Eddie entered, the other patrons checked the duo out with relative indifference then resumed their banter. EZ and Eddie took a few seats at the end of the counter and checked the laminated menu.

  Eddie was reading about the various ingredients (up to three, $.50 for each additional one) included in Candi’s Famous Omelets when he caught it out of the corner of his eye: a boot wrapped with duct tape
walking in his general vicinity and then its owner taking the stool to Ed’s left at the counter.

  It was none other than the movie-going trucker he had met back at the Free Diner outside Los Angeles: Woods.

  He had on his trademark flannel, ball cap, shades, and Cheshire Cat grin. He stared down at the menu, aware of Eddie and perhaps waiting for him to say something.

  Ed obliged. “Holy shit!”

  Woods nodded his head, but kept staring at the menu.

  Ed turned to EZ, who was perplexed by his outburst, and asked if there was a guy with ball cap, shades, flannel and duct-taped footwear seated to his left.

  EZ looked around to Eddie’s left, checked off each article he had mentioned to himself, then said, “Uh-huh.”

  Ed looked back at Woods and said, “Woods.”

  Woods said, “Yup.”

  “What the hell are you doing here?”

  “Made a run to Grand Junction from L.A., going to head back today,” he said, then looked up at the waitress. “Coffee. Black.”

  Coincidence? Eddie didn’t think so.

  “Pretty wild, meeting you out here, at this time. What are the odds?” he said.

  “You summoned me,” he said, then slid the menu back into the holder. “Bacon and eggs, over easy.” He unfolded the movie section of the Rocky Mountain News.

  Ed turned to EZ, who seemed to be either thinking hard or was perplexed by the scenario transpiring.

  “Do you have any clue about what the hell’s going on?” Eddie asked, a tad bewildered.

  EZ shrugged his shoulders then ordered French toast and sausages.

  Eddie took a break from the scene of perplexity to order an omelet with Swiss cheese, mushrooms, bacon and spinach.

  Woods was circling movies with his highlighter.

  What the hell was going on here? Eddie had no recollection of summoning the mysterious truck driver Woods. As a matter of fact, he had no recollection of ever having in his possession the means by which to summon him. He had never gotten his number or address.