CATACLYSMAL

by Adrian Glass

  “A date?”

  “You could say that...” Mia replies.

  Twenty minutes later Jansky exits the bar, she looks up trying to get a glimpse of the stars above, faintly she sees what could be Orion, tempted to lift up her cellphone and check it against the phones star-map. She resists, knowing that she would look at the attached letter from the astronomers in relation to the Artifact's core structure. Not reconciling? Fuck, better check what they've written. Jansky lifts her phone

  “Elly!” A female voice is heard, Jansky turns around as Mia walks towards her smiling. She places her cellphone back into her bag.

  “So the cocktails, were they good?” She asks

  “Yes, really good...not to sweet and you can taste the spirits. That's important.”

  Mia looks down at her cellphone as she request a cab. “That's right it's all about the balance...Ok, cab is five minutes way.”

  “So how long have you been working at this bar?”

  Mia looks over her right shoulder in the direction of the Diecast bar. “About six months, it's great place, good idea setting up a speakeasy style bar. Someone acts like an asshole, you just ban them from making another appointment. Doorman does the rest. Cool management, relaxed...but no pickups?”

  “Pickups?” Jansky asks as she sees the cab approaching the curb.

  “Not dating customers,”

  “But we ain't dating” Jansky replies smiling

  Mia nods with a cheeky grin, as she opens the door allowing Jansky to sit, she then moves to the opposite side of the cab getting into the passenger side. Closing the door, the cab drives onward.

  “My place is about ten minutes away...So can I ask you...What is it?”

  “The Alien-Artifact...” Jansky peers out of the window at the neon lit street. She the looks at Mia, a woman in her late twenties, dark brown straight hair, her features have that racially mixed native American appeal. The cab nears the curb, pulling up along side a small apartment block. “...We think it is structural but not what would be deemed as a structure within our current understanding...A lot of brilliant people are working in it, I've been the conduit. Cleaning up the equations, smoothing out the theories. I think we're very close to understanding the Artifact's physics.”

  “Ok, this is my place.” Both Jansky and Mia exit the cab, with Mia leading towards her apartment block entrance.

  “Nice place, ground floor too.”

  “It suits for the time being, moved across from Carlsbad my mother is part Kumeyaay Indian...My dad, don't know, left me and mom when I was born...Anyway come in...” Mia opens the entrance walking towards an apartment door to the left of the security entranceway. Taking out her keys she opens her apartment door.

  “Want something to drink?” She asks as Jansky looks around Mia's apartment, a darkened interior with various collections of objects styled like a Wunderkammer, cabinets and shelving lined with various interesting objects, Jansky notes the collection of geology, ethnography and archaeological objects. She walks towards some stone pieces along the top of a shelf.

  “Tea?”

  “No just soda water if you got it...”

  “Hey! I'm a mixologist...”

  “That's right and I was going to ask for a shot of Tequila” Jansky replies while looking over a meteorite sample.

  Mia pokes her from out of the open kitchen area. “If you like, but, you do psilocybin good to leave the alcohol out of the mix. If you don't want to feel sick or worst.”

  Jansky turns and smiles at the young bartender. “Just joking...This is a nice piece.”

  “Argentinian from Campo del cielo...”

  “The Fields of Heaven...” Jansky replies studying it's composition. “...Octahedrite iron.”

  Mia returns to her living room. “ Yeah...I love this, some pieces are dull, but this is heavy, feels powerful. Like an iron fist from the cosmos. Apparently it's four thousand Earth years old.” She hands Jansky a glass of soda water.

  “And probably three billion years old from the Universe's time frame. Thank you.” Jansky says sipping form the soda water.

  “Please take a seat. Best sober up a bit then we'll head out.” Mia checks her wristwatch noting that it's 11:30pm, she leans back into her couch. “Got off early tonight, worked three hours over my shift last night. Like I said earlier the management are really cool, the guys that run the bar. Feel grateful working for them.”

  Jansky sits down on a smaller couch opposite Mia. “How did you get the job?”

  “A lot of knock backs from various places, resorts, hotels. First step worked on my resume, second, refine the mixing repertoire, third, confidence and I just sold it.”

  “Well done.”

  “Thanks...”

  Mia reaches across to a small cabinet near where she is sitting, opening the small glass doors she takes out a slender ceramic jar.

  “Indian?” Jansky asks

  “No...Friend of mine made this, she's from New York.”

  Mia lifts off the small lid and reaches into the jar taking out three capsules. “Medical grade psilocybin...Better than drinking the mushroom juice. Just swallow one of these...” She holds up a gel-capsule. “...That's it!”

  “So where do you take it?” Jansky asks

  “Not in here...We'll try down at Tierra Del Sol, about thirty minutes from here...” Mia lifts her cellphone. “...Got this cool app, checks for clear skies over the Tierra Del Sol for star watching. Looks all clear. Alright...” She stands as does Jansky. “...Lets go.”

  Tierra Del Sol,

  San Diego

  “It's a beautiful night.”

  “Sure is,” Mia replies driving down a blackened road briefly looking up at the masses of stars above. “This thing...We can view it without telescopes, right?”

  Jansky peers out form the passenger side window looking up at the night sky. “Apparently...Tell you the truth I haven't seen it visually like this...if we can actually see it without a telescope, I've only seen the calculations and embedded diagrams of the object. Also the infrared and Ultra Violet images from military and civilian satellites and my friend Jensen's...”

  “Your friend that passed away?” Mia asks in a respectful tone.

  Jansky nods as she feels a moment of sadness with it's memory of loss. She then turns and smiles at Mia. “Yes...he was a conceptual artist, Jensen created an incredible artistic rendition that is the Alien-Artifact. We need his work for the upcoming conference. To visualize theory, particularly astronomy we need artistic impressions. The same applies to when we discover new exo-planets and solar systems in the Milky Way, but what Jensen created falls under his philosophical theory of Xeno-Structuralism.”

  “We create the alien concept...I've heard of it,” Mia replies looking ahead down the darkened highway.

  “That's right, a philosophical belief that we devise the alien worlds within our imagination...” Jansky notices a shooting star streak across the night sky. “...It's the only way that they can exist...” She continues looking up as the small meteorite evaporates into the darkness. “...Anyway, all will be revealed in three weeks, as far as his conceptual art of the Alien-Artifact. So, tonight, I'll try and view it with the naked eye, but it may be unlikely...I suspect whilst taking a psychedelic drug everything may seem strange. Right?”

  Mia smiling, whilst concentrating on the road ahead, with her left hand she makes a thumb of approval.

  Jansky checks her cellphone for new messages, she notices several unread messages, one is from her sister. She closes her eyes knowing that she must focus on this experience, something she wants to witness. Trying to slow down her thoughts, the stress of the last few months. In someways Jansky knows she has to turn off from everything around her. As chance would have it within these points in time, her only cynosure is the company of a young bartender who has psilocybin capsules. That, according to Jansky's new acquaintance, are used in clinical trials for cancer patients. She looks back up at the night-sky, staring through
her own reflection from the passenger side glass window, Jansky thinks of her mother.

  “So what direction is it located?” Mia asks as she begins to slow down the small jeep pulling up along side a clearing off the main road.

  “It lies directly in front of what was is known as a Globular Cluster, the Fornax constellation, positioned between two other constellations Eridanus and Phoenix in the southern hemisphere. Within that configuration, is now one of the largest voids. An almost empty part of Space...”

  “Alight this is it...from memory. The small clearing here!” Mia interrupts Jansky in an excitable manner as she points in the direction of the jeep's headlights, the only light that illuminates in this darken area off the main Tierra Del Sol road.

  “Footwear?” Jansky asks pointing at her ankle high boots whilst remaining seated in the passenger side of the jeep

  “Should be ok, not that many scorpions around here.” Mia replies opening the car door, leaving the interior of the jeep, keeping the headlights on, she then opens the back passenger door reaching across lifting up a torch and small rucksack. “...Actually I don't know if this is the place I tripped out at last time.” She points the torch to her right-hand side noticing a small dirt road that veers further north into the desert. Mia gets back into the driver side, turning around she places the torch and rucksack back onto the back seat. “We'll drive a little further down that path. I guess it would be wise that we stay off from the main road.”

  “For any reason?” Jansky asks looking around at the pitch black desert environment.

  “We're both going to trip, last time I did it someone I knew was keeping an eye out. So...y'know probably good to have a quieter spot.

  “Yes that would makes sense,” Jansky replies as Mia steers the jeep further down onto a smaller dirt road which turns off from the Tierra Del Sol roadway. After several minutes, Mia stops the jeep, pulling up near where a small group of boulders lay closely scattered in the dark. “I'll light a fire, I've got a pop-up camper on top of the jeep...blanket for the bonnet, sit and watch the stars. It will be great.”

  Moments later Mia sets up a small fire near her jeep, she then climbs atop of the bonnet, where a padded camping bed has been placed, she then pulls over a blanket covering both herself and Jansky

  “Ok so, here...” Mia hands Jansky a small gel-capsule “...Just swallow like a normal pill.”

  Jansky takes the pill placing it in her mouth, she sips some water from a bottle swallowing down the psilocybin, Mia does the same.

  “How long?”

  Mia leans her head back onto a small cushion that she has propped up onto the window of the Jeep. She doesn't answer rather she just looks up at the night sky, Jansky still looking at the young woman feels the effect of the trip take place.

  “Wow...here we go,” Jansky says as she looks at the patterns of light that are being reflected onto her and Mia from the small camp fire and dimmed headlights of the jeep - a pleasant distortion of specular illumination as it attains it's prism glow, around her she sees objects, barely visible in the dark, begin to stretch and warp. “Shit...” Jansky whispers to herself as she looks up at the night sky, the masses of stars swirling, some expand and then contract. The darkness of Space looks liquid in it's incomprehensible vastness. Yet it seems so close. She looks over at Mia again, she is smiling looking around at her surroundings, Jansky stares back up at the stars. Returning her gaze to their immediate surroundings, she squints trying to fathom the car bonnet that they are both sitting on as it looks as though it has been stretched, at the far end sitting further away from her is Ava Mia.

  Perception being warped, hard to focus and become analytical. The effect was so quick, very intense, yet feels normal. Not frightening. Blissful. Jansky closes her eyes Even in the dark with her eyes being shut, she sees the livid colors, like electricity passing within the Stygian. She opens her eyes again. Everything seems alive, interacting with reflections of light. Always the scientist. Jansky reminding herself in her self-analysis, despite the psychedelic experience, trying to understand the effects of the hallucinate and it's impression of her mind. This effect is incredible. Jansky lifts up her left hand wiping away the stars in-front of her, as though she smudges them against the blackness, only to reform and remain as illuminated specks - thus is the influence of psilocybin on her visual perception. Causing a reconfiguring of reality, but yet despite the wonder of it's visualization the experience doesn't seem abnormal. No stress, no anxiety. Aldous Huxley was right, it's a reduction of perceptual experience, not an activation of brain activity. It's filtering, highlighting and distorted reality. Making it more so. Jansky holds up her right hand, trying to pinpoint from memory, despite the mass of stars and her inability, under the influence of a psychedelic - to gauge the cardinal points. She tries to see where the Fornax constellation is located, Jansky sits upright turning her head South East. In the direction of where the Dwarf Spheroidal would be situated within the Fornax constellation. Once again, everything seems stretched and elongated, lights flicker on and off, stars appear then disappear. Yet within the hallucination there is a precision, once a focus has been achieved inside the darkness and it's submergence of Space and time. There, it's gone. All the stars are gone, the Clusters, the Galaxies...All gone, just darkness.

  “You see?” Jansky points as Mia turns and looks in the direction of South East into it's darkened skyline.

  She then turns and faces Jansky smiling. “It's so beautiful, it's alive, everything the stars, the lights.”

  “But do you see that abyss? It appears so close, like, it's right there,” Jansky replies now feeling the full effect of psilocybin. Her young acquaintance, with an expression of serenity, leans her head onto Jansky's shoulder.

  There is nothing. I have to focus. Professor Tori's equations. Jansky closes her eyes, what she sees are unfathomable shapes, indistinguishable concepts of reality. It's an engine, Jensen's Xeno-Structuralism, it is part of the machinery. Jansky opens her eyes, she then leans back as does Mia onto the windscreen of the jeep.

  “Did you find an answer?” Mia asks while she holds her hands up in-front of self, spreading her fingers looking at the light reflecting off her rings.

  Jansky nods, her expression blank as she stares up at the night sky, looking below the Fornax constellation at the Horologium constellation which sits beneath what is now an abyss. Jansky is transfixed on the solitary bright star R Horologii which by astrological terminology is described as an Mira variable - a pulsating red star. “I know what it is,” she replies as a single pulse, in an hallucinatory vision, is emitted from the red star. As though it is communicating directly with Elly Jansky.

  ***

  “Goodbye mom.” A signal tear rolls down Elly Jansky's right cheek, she wipes it away with her left hand, staring at the small ceremonial stone placed into the wall of the cremation area of the cemetery. Behind Elly, her sister Katy Jansky is crying whilst being held close by her partner Shannon who is consoling her lover.

  Jansky turns and walks towards Katy, both women embrace. “You gonna be ok?”

  Katy nods, holding a tissue she gently wipes both her eyes.

  “Yes I'll be ok...It was just so sudden.”

  Jansky bows her head exhaling. “We'll talk soon.” She hugs her sister again and also embraces Shannon. “Thank you,” she says to her sister's partner, who in a respectful manner smiles.

  “Take care Elly,” Shannon says as Katy, who is still distraught, leans against her partner as she is being held close.

  “I will”

  Later that evening back at Jansky's apartment she sits looking at her computer screen display. She was unable to attend the final briefing with her colleagues in San Diego before the conference in Boston, as due to her mother's sudden passing. The priority was to be with her sister and attend the funeral. She feels overwhelmed, tired, worn and broken. In the last two weeks she has lost two people who were close to her, it has been more so the loss of her mother that h
as impacted on Jansky. Despite attempting to prepare her mind for her passing, of recently when her friend Jensen Denlas passed way suddenly - it is that feeling of loss and despair which associates itself with the death of loved ones. With Jansky's busy schedule in the the last year it has been hard to spend time with her terminally ill mother. She begins to feel the guilt and that hollow feeling of worry that she let her mother down. Jansky closes her eyes and begins to cry, she feels that she had allowed herself to become preoccupied with work, neglecting responsibilities. Her family. Now there is just Katy, her sister. “I can't continue,” she says to herself looking at the paper that she has been preparing for the conference in a week's time.

  “You were hesitant in coming here?”

  Elly Jansky nods. “Yes, it's just, you think that it can be carried. The burden, I work hard, push myself. Then...” She pauses.

  “...it hits.” Carrie Kassie says finishing Jansky's sentence. A psychologist that works for her small practice in downtown San Fransisco.

  Jansky leans back. “You could say that, but what has happened to me happens to other people or worst...”

  “Stop there Elly, I know that you dislike self-pity, which is important and correct to understand that pity does not help with recovering from trauma. But, in saying that the memory of pain and it's mental state is unique, the emotion is your's and no body else's. You push it down not accepting it, the stiff-upper-lip, the soldier. Only suppresses pain, but doesn't remove what is residual. What remains suppressed and now, which are the reasons why you are here with me, have surfaced.”

  Jansky leans her head down closing her eyes, with her right hand she gently rubs her left temple. Acknowledging that her psychologist is right.

  “Yeah, it's been hard. Work, being a scientist, the analytical...” Jansky looks at Kassie. “...You've watched the news, I'm considered a celebrity of sorts. The responsibilities, my obligations as a cosmologist to study and understand what we have discovered. But at the same time what we know, our perception of the Universe which includes all that we have learned about physics and ourselves. It could all change.”