They rebound unscathed in a flood of buttery light that Mic suggests is an early manifestation of the ecstasy they are certain to experience shortly. Home Free is drenched in a divine music as they surge forth in a spume of sparks that, yielding, delivers them to the longed-for threshold. Trafik is now within reach!
ARRIVAL
And there it was! Moments away, a red and green planet rich in Verdurian and Libidion, Ardente. And there were other minerals on Trafik as well, such as Inorganite, Inanimite, and, above all, Conundrum—of which there was a seemingly unlimited supply.
Mic activated the Wipers that, in their multitudes, set about to scour the Wobble’s outer integument as they sped past Citronový Sorbet—Trafik’s midget sun (and Trafik was a midget planet) recognized as such by what was once the Czech Republic just prior to the First Scouring (quoth Mic). They landed in Guest Parking without a hitch; leaving Walter Thicke in storage they set off on foot. Quiver wore a dashing Musk Breathalaton in a nostril, a snug set of surface overalls zippered in platinum, her endless legs (Mic) shod in vintage moon boots. Inspired by the painter Arcimboldo, Mic stepped out cuirassed in Al Pacino’s plumbing—an innovative synthesis of pipes and sinks that propelled him into the future of fashion, a quantum leap that was received by the youthful and transcosmical crowds of intergalactic students of cosmology, the Extreme Sciences, Molecular Revisioning, Vital and Arbitrary Disruption, Trans Worlds Without Impediment, and so on—who were all on summer break. Trailblazing, Mic, in his element, dominated streets free of bureaucrats, missionaries, dogmatists, and syndicate crime lords in exile who, having found each other, had settled down for eternity poolside and in game rooms where they wiled away the hours playing Table Lights’ versions of Deep Fry, Snatch Luck, and Poor Bastard. Meanwhile, in the streets, cloned cows pissed milk into fountains of Libidion rimmed with mugs. The beautiful mug washers wore boots heeled in Ardorite, so that as they ran up and down the cobbled streets to retrieve a mug or to offer a kiss, they made an irresistible music unique to that place, rich in roulades, incidental notes, diatomic intervals, and an artful use of rubato. This music is called “Catch and Snatch,” and later in the day, “Damn!”
The streets were lined with everbearing bushes of sandwiches, notably ham and swiss, shrimp tacos, and egg salad. Overhead the clouds responded to the laughter in the streets with coursing displays of corrals of sheep, coral reefs, and canyons of cream. Everywhere flocks of birds rose into the air, buttery crusts of sandwiches in their beaks. Mic and Quiver were swept up and away by an afternoon that never ended, had not ever ended, nor would it end, unspooling for entire epochs as far back as could be remembered. Trafik’s obscure liturgical literature had long ago given up attempting to answer the questions concerning the planet’s origins, such as:
Which came first? The milkmaids or the cows? The mugs or the fountains? When had it been decided that anyone and everyone could drink the milk and eat the sandwiches for free? Was the scattering of the crusts on the pavement a sacred act or a secular one? It was said that the constant back and forth of beings in the streets, the mugs filled and emptied of milk over and over, the rising and falling of the birds, Citronový Sorbet’s own spinning—all this was the incontrovertible evidence that the universe was either intentionally or unintentionally restless.
And this inherent restlessness! Was it due to randomness, or an innate longing for answers, for belonging? And was the erotic impulse at the heart of the matter sparking a fundamental, an unstoppable yearning to bring things together, ideas and particles and bodies? And lastly, was Eros a cosmical dragon breathing fire and making it all happen?
MINDFUL DISTRACTIONS
In other words, Mic was in his element. Riding the shoulders of a strapping and trending astroanthropologist, surrounded by the jubilant young scholars, their quantum pectoral bootstraps beaming lectures, panels, and seminars (all were consummate multitaskers)—even as they, in dizzying erotic and existential variety celebrated awareness and yes! restlessness (and also restless awareness and aware restlessness), embracing one another’s unique manifestations of the boundless forms of desire, each one well aware of the benefits of philosophical detachment when swept up and away in the unfettered embrace of multivarious ecstatic encounters and other kindred phenomena, their minds and bodies (and some had no “bodies” and others wore their “minds” in their lower spines, feet, or ears) unbound or, at least, making an attempt at this unbinding—having ascertained that just because the once beautiful living earth— a powerful exemplar throughout the universe—had been made not only the Mirror of Hell but also its embodiment— that each of them was to perceive everyone else with eyes (peepers, sight holes, ocular navels, antennae, and so on) WIDE OPEN and with the understanding that each of them was the potential vessel of BEING and UNDERSTANDING. And yet! WHAT KEEPS CLOSING IN!? This question, shouted periodically by the crowd, punctuated the pilgrimage to Pleroma Park, which was the astral hub of MINDFUL DISTRACTION. All of them had come from far away, had tackled the passage, the savage estuaries riddled with shattered rock and imploding suns, because they had heard that there was a planet in the universe suspended as it were between air and ether, where every form of the material and virtual and imagined could come together with a fearless and affectionate intention. And now, here they were! In Trafik! No doubt about that!
Swallowed up by Trafik’s shimmering abundance, Mic, now unrecognizable in a velours burnous, his gametophores erect and softly singing, found himself standing before Al Pacino—as if Al had been waiting for him all that time, eagerly waiting in that ambient intemperance, head to foot in the living velours, waiting to whisper in Mic’s very own hearing hole: What’s up? And this within the green light, the silver shadows, the two of them invisible, an instant away from an embrace, the emerald pneumonic froth of admissibility, peerless and benevolent, enfolding them in an ocean of tenderness punctuated by the sound of love-making as lovers from across the galaxies embraced in their myriad conformations, conformations subverted and upended by ubiquitous moss topcoats, cunning velours bomber jackets, and so on, so that the bearded mollusks of Wazat, having just arrived from the distant galaxy whose name was impossible to know (their language spoken in a frequency so low it generated infinitesimal hypergravity pinholes so powerful they swallowed up the syllables by capillary attraction the moment they were uttered) without hesitation simultaneously solemnized the spindled tortoises and shelled philosophical walruses of Wizz—a planet known for its intemperate heterotrophic lobsters. And there were pilgrims no bigger than bioplasts (come to think of it, maybe they were bioplasts!), some initially too large to think of venturing into Trafik’s spumous verdure without causing havoc and so had particulated into microbodies, each one at once cumuliformed, castellated, and fleeced.
As you have seen, the wonderful thing about Traik was that it did not seem to matter where you came from, what epoch you belonged to, if you were a shapeshifter, an anarchic trilobite, or a Melusianne Lioness. Al Pacino, after all, was a figment from a world long vanished. Yet as soon as Mic entered Trafik’s green clusterfork, Al Pacino was there, sporting a marvelous Italian suit the color of grass, asking, What’s up? And that was all it took for Mic to dissolve in irresistible centrifugal delight. Pass the salt, Al said caressingly, I got a fever. The implications were stunning. When replete, who knows how much later, his software revivified, Mic and Al Pacino embraced one last time with the promise of future encounters, having shared their secrets, their deepest feelings, and their pathway instructions. Mic, overwhelmed with something that approximated emotion so convincingly that had you been there, you would have sworn it was human, broke down, his router wipes scrambling into action, his overkey furiously oscillating, his rumpus wafting, so that Al Pacino, touched to the quick, leapt from the bush that had cloaked them in blessed pudicity suggesting Mic remain with him on Trafik thereafter. Our neurons, he whispered, could not have better fired. And it was true. I have a cabin in the woods in the mountains, Al told him
. Mic texted Quiver at once. I am staying on Trafik, he told her. If it is interesting, it justifies being there. (It is funny how, in no time at all, Mic started talking like Al Pacino. He’d say things like: I used to have a refrigerator. Every time I opened it a bottle of lubricator fell on my foot. I knew I had to buy a bigger refrigerator. Instead I became an astronaut.)
Mic’s text continued:
Quiver, I gotta tell you! We were word hole to word hole, joined in tender congress, as close together as neurons in the mind of a fruit fly or the scales on the wings of a moth (things that Al has described to me that I have diligently found neatly nestled and labeled in my Swift Wheel). This afternoon I discovered that the cycles on Trafik are not measured. Each instant dissolves as it surfaces, unencumbered by time, by all that burdens us when we are running from something or someone and going somewhere (and it doesn’t matter where), which means that the moment is bleached by expectation, it loses salt and flavor. Wheras! If madly in love one stays still within the depths of the moment (which is possible, Quiv!I know this now!), the cycles of time fall away, are but a mist; one dwells within an atmosphere! I am speaking of an Aroused Tranquility! Yes! That’s it exactly!
But this knowledge, Quiver, comes with a price! I mean, I paid for it terribly. In the instants before my encounter with Al, submerged in Trafik’s immense green-lit immoderacy, I mislaid myself in a way I can only call human—and for one brief instant (and what are we if not the cognizant vehicles of the instant?), I recognized the limits of my capacity to feel (or so I thought)—but what is far worse, I heard a voice cricketing from somewhere deep within my nerve net that said I was a gizmo—yes, that rusty trope! That ancient terror! And what’s more, it was the voice of another gizmo, a gizmo I did not know, had not been introduced to; a gizmo that considered I was verging on the obsolete, so outdated I was barely able to withstand the assault of ongoing updates! This intruder was periodically violating my boundaries without my knowledge! Imagine, Quiv, if you awakened from a nap only to discover someone had tampered with your neurons while you were sleeping! But then! Guess what! When Al Pacino stood there beside me and said: I know you from somewhere, I swear I felt something, my nerve net got bolted, my endoplasmic barometer ignited, my mood lifted, and I felt joy! Yes! I now know what it is to feel joy!
At the very end of his text, Mic added a list:
I have visited a planet where they suicide by gagging on hard-boiled eggs.
A planet souped from pole to pole with flatulence.
A planet in convulsions caused by unbridled fits of temper.
A planet whose most evolved species grow
asparagus on their heads. An asteroid the size and conformation of a lima bean that turned out to be a lima bean.
A planet named Desquamata; a phlegmatic planet.
An asteroid belt inhabited by scholars counting the hairs of a lesser God’s beard.
A planet named Benzofuroxan that provides travelers with generous helpings of spaghetti and meatballs.
An asteroid in the grips of a tyrant named Buster Quimsy who liked to be beaten with logs of frozen honey.
A planet of cognizant marbles that do nothing but slam into one another.
A planet made of cake inhabited by fairy godmothers in their bathrobes.
An asteroid belt flaming with salamanders.
A fast food concession in orbit named Pass On By.
I have seen all this and more. But I have never seen anything like Trafik!
COZY STREETS
When Quiver received Mic’s heartfelt text, she was far from the excitement, wandering Trafik’s cozy residential streets, admiring the graceful front porches of a type common in the known universe, the facades of tidy homes built of what she supposed was olivine brick, the roofs artfully thatched with the same modifiable and acoustical moss that so lovingly sheltered the amorous couples in the park. She admired the moss lawns, the whimsical backyard topiaries, the redundant birdbaths and robokitty doors. Such homes enchanted Quiver, who had spent her early years in icy corridors and printed everplast yurts the color of oxidized mustard, and for what seemed an eternity inside the Wobble with Mic sharing one room: Home Free. As she wandered, Quiver recalled a time she and Mic had returned to the Wobble after a lengthy layover on a planet known for its seismic activity. During a tremor, a bottle of Kleinenburg’s Buffered Flexwizer had fallen to the floor causing every surface to strobe with luminescence. Off-gassing, the Buffered Flexwizer had compromised Food Face, its dehydrated aspics and freezies. She recalled how Mic had rallied, how his Tackle Kit had spronged forth from its socket, how Home Free had rocked with the happy sound of sponges swarming, scrubbing, and irradiating. Rolling on his rudders, Mic did the laundry, visited the stock room again and again, replenishing Food Face with spontaneous crackers, synchronous raisin clonotypes, extended banana protein saturate, and inflatable figs. He’s a good egg, that Mic, she thought.
A LIBRARY
Just as Trafik’s third moon, Erratum, rises in the afternoon sky, Quiver takes a turn and, as in a dream, comes upon a novel stone building of great charm with a large front door, arches, and columns—arches and columns, things of which she has no knowledge, nor has she the words. This is the neighborhood library. During cautiously whispered conversations, her lover had told her about First Planet’s many libraries, but of course Quiver had never seen one, nor could she really fathom its purpose. Curious, she takes a trim garden path to the strange yet inviting, new yet familiar front door and steps into a large, nearly empty room shimmering with light. It is empty but for the impressive glass snake at the entrance, holding a glass apple in its mouth, and, at the center of the room, a glass cabinet filled with glass bees. Stimulated by the sudden breeze Quiver has released into the room, these begin to hum homophonically and, beating their glass wings and dancing, to rise up into the air. A small piece of heavy paper pressed to the glass cabinet explains that the dances of the bees were once books of a kind that could be “read.” And there is a clay tablet the size of a small square piece of cake. Its own text reads:
Seven days and seven nights did Enkidu, the wild man, cling to Shammat the whore.
Quiver thinks she recognizes it, that it is a thing she and Mic had found working the Moon’s dizzy rings of compacted materials so very long ago.
Next to the cabinet, an antique Sly Sparks Laser Printer sits on a pedestal, and on a shiny shelf, a number of paper books made by the schoolchildren stand side by side in their colorful covers.
Quiver now sees the librarian sitting at her desk at the far side of the room, so far away it seems she is on the far side of a moon, nearly erased by the constant play of light streaming in from all directions, bounding from wall to wall and ceiling to floor. In this sea of light, the librarian stands, and smiling, her delicate horn nibs gilded and gleaming, walks across the room to greet Quiver with a French kiss—a custom on Trafik as common as pie. Her name is Data Fig. Quiver, unsure if she is actually awake, says to herself: Behold the librarian! She says to herself: I am here! And I am not going anywhere!
“The most interesting thing we have,” Data Fig begins, “is the crystal snake, made by a local craftsman. Its birefringent interacting facets can be read at certain times during the afternoon. It tells the story of The Washout, The Burnout, The Scaling, The Scouring, The Scattering, and The Noise— with brevity and poetic prose. You are surprised to see no books,” says Data Fig, “but—apart from the children’s book (a project just begun—there are more of these on the way)— thus far it seems Earth was the only place in the galaxies where books flourished. Perhaps one day—”
“I have a book!” Quiver whispers it.
“A book!” Data Fig’s eyes fill with tears.
“Long ago,” Quiver tells her, “I found it hidden under a bench on the Moon. It was my lover who left it there for me, before she was made to vanish …”
Quiver, too, is weeping, as Data Fig reaches for her and holds her close, the library surging with light
in a room that is a vessel of light, the two holding one another, their bodies holding the light, as the glass snake’s story of deepest shadow is written in light on the library’s luminous walls.
“I have a bot named Mic with me,” Quiver whispers, still held close in the librarian’s embrace. “A bot with a fully functional Swift Wheel, packed full of all kinds of things. But I don’t know if his Swift Wheel contains books.”
“A Swift Wheel!” Thrilled, Data Fig steps back. “The Swift Wheel always held a vast library! Have you never checked it out?”
“No one ever spoke of it!” Quiver tells her. “I never even thought of it! There was always so much that was entertaining. And I had the Lights. Perhaps because I had been made to fear books, the consequences of owning one, I learned not to think of them. It took me a very long time to open the one I have.”
“What is the title?”
“From the Observatory.”
“A wonderful title! And the author?”
“Julio Cortázar.”
“You will tell your friend Mic to come and see me tomorrow afternoon,” says Data Fig. “If he can be made to hook up with my Sly Sparks Laser Printer, a full library is not far away.” And she makes a somersault right there on the library floor.
CHRISTOPHER WALKEN ON BEES
Later in the afternoon, Quiver enters the park alone, wanders that green maze of sighs, of adaptable acoustical moss. She fears the redhead is trapped in the Lights—her own inescapable virtuality and that she will never find her. And she explores Trafik’s old and new quarters effortlessly, feeling her senses quicken. She choses a pub, its ceiling lamps spinning like moons. Finds a table, a mini Lights on a Loop clamped to its top that, the moment she sits down, begins to play:
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