King of the Worlds

by M. Thomas Gammarino

  “I see.”

  “I have to rescue her, Erin. I have to. Look at this letter. She says right here that I once saved her life. Well now she needs saving again, and who’s going to save her if not me? No one else even knows she exists.”

  “Okay, Dylan. I don’t know where you’re really going, whether you’re having an affair or what, but I’ll try to get my unconscious to believe you even if my conscious mind still thinks you’re fucking with me.”

  “God damn it, Erin! I’ll bring you a rock, how about that? They’ll murder me if I try to take a picture, but I should be able to pocket a rock, I think.”

  “Fine, Dylan. We’ll have a long talk when you get back.”

  “But I’m telling the truth!”

  “Good for you,” she said, clearly believing none of it.

  At any rate, she would let him go. And he really did have to.

  • • •

  So Friday came and went and Dylan QT’d to Reno Spaceport. As arranged, the captain met him in Arrivals, just outside the frequent flyer lounge. He was a distinguished-looking, middle-aged gentleman in a blue jacket with yellow wings decorating the sleeve. It occurred to Dylan that he himself might now be called “middle-aged.”

  “Hello, Mr. Greenyears,” he said with some kind of Anglo accent. “Very long time, no see. How have you been, sir?”

  “I’m sorry, have we met?”

  “Indeed we have. I had the pleasure of taking you up on your first jaunt some years ago.”

  “Ah, yes, of course. Good to see you again.”

  Dylan had no memory whatsoever of having met this man before. The loss was his; he’d been too full of himself in those days to take any real notice of the bit players who got him where he needed to go.

  The captain ushered him into the posh lounge, which they evidently had to themselves.

  “Nice,” Dylan said.

  “Don’t get too comfortable. We’re just passing through.”

  The captain approached a grand piano in the corner and played an unlikely melody until a secret panel opened in the wall. He showed Dylan through.

  And there it was, in purple lights: that sleek, steampunk rocket ship erect on its pad, like some great brass vibrator for a Titaness. It was still far classier than anything NASA or PASA or any of the private space companies had come up with.

  “She’s just as I remember her,” Dylan said.

  “Why then your memory is good,” the captain assured him. “Remarkably little has changed. Top-notch engineering. Leave it to

  the Germans.”

  He led the way up the mobile staircase to the hatch. The interior too was just as he remembered it, insofar as he did at all: red velvet seats, a mini bar, an old-school plasma TV.

  “Would you care for some champagne?” the captain asked.

  “Not just yet,” Dylan said.

  “Feel free to help yourself should you get the urge. There are some snacks in the cupboard as well should you get peckish. We’ve got full Omni access until we get to the Grotto. The restroom is in the back there. I’ll be up in the ‘Brain’—that’s what we call the command module—pretending to pilot this hunk of junk, though the truth is the trip is fully automated these days, so if I can be of service to you in any way, don’t be shy. You just press this here orange button. I even have a fully operational androslut I could fire up for you if you can’t hold out the ten hours it’ll take us to get you to the real McCoy.”

  “I think I can make it,” Dylan said.

  “Wonderful,” the captain said. “I’ll go fire up the engines then.”

  “Great.” Dylan settled himself in. The engines rumbled to life, and by and by the rocket blasted off. It was getting a little hot until Dylan discovered the thermostat on the wall and kicked on the A/C.

  Traveling by rocket ship was categorically different from teleportation. In short, it took time. However much Dylan might have understood QT, subjectively speaking it entailed a mere flicker in his consciousness, whereas rocket-travel was a wholly continuous psychological experience and as such invited all the mythopoeic trappings of “voyage,” “journey,” “travel,” etc. It wanted, in other words, to mean.

  Even so, any experience that might have passed for a narrative “event” during Dylan’s journey transpired solely in his head, because for nearly the entire trip, all he did was to stare out the nearest porthole at the stars. The truth was, while it was certainly intellectually stimulating to know he was in outer space, and while there was an initial rush when the blue faded to black and he saw his home planet from on high again, it was nothing he couldn’t see via omni. Besides, it wasn’t as if he was all that much closer to the stars, so they looked pretty much the same as they looked from Earth, just crisper and in greater profusion. Still, contemplating the stars for ten hours on end was—or ought to have been—a profound thing. If the universe was infinite,38 then not even Kolob could be dismissed as wacky; anything and everything could be out there. At the same time, it was an oft-repeated truism that the light reaching his eyes at that moment had in some cases left its source millions, even billions, of years ago; the source might, in fact, have died long ago. Not only can you not repeat the past, the stars seemed to be saying, but it might be a very long time before you can even see it.

  38_____________

  A big if: Whether the universe is infinite or not was one of few questions to which Omni invariably answered “TBD.” The most high-profile of these questions, naturally, was “Is there a God?”

  Once they arrived, the captain summoned Dylan up to the Brain, which separated from the rest of the ship and four-wheel-drove them through the air lock.

  The hatch opened and they climbed down. Who knew he would ever find himself in this place again? It was all so familiar, and so much like a dream: the tropical air against his skin; the dappled light dancing on the cavern walls; the lapping, susurrating waves. On the other hand, what if everything that had apparently happened to him since leaving this place was the dream? What if his tinnitus was just a stray frequency picked out by his sleeping brain from the white noise of the waves? For a moment he let himself believe it: that he was young and immortal again; that his big wet brilliant wishes were so squarely within the realm of possibility that they might justifiably be called “plans” instead.

  Then a heavyset older dude—Brando? Deluise?—came lumbering along with arms outspread. “Dylan Greenyears!” he beckoned with some sort of European accent. “Let me be the first to welcome you back to the moon.”

  The captain excused himself and returned to his vessel.

  “Thank you kindly,” Dylan said. “I’m glad to be here.”

  “We never had occasion to meet,” the dude continued. “I detest the American cinema, but I greatly admired your work on The Fears of the Night. In my opinion, Mister Cameron sawed off the branch on which he was sitting.”

  “Thank you very much,” Dylan said; inasmuch as he understood the sentiment, it felt good to hear someone say it.

  What did not feel so good was suddenly realizing who this guy must be. Dylan had watched him play Cyrano de Bergerac in World Cinema during the few weeks of college he’d actually attended, and he’d seen Green Card more than once on late-night TV. He remembered him as a lantern-jawed, hulking stud, a kind of oafish, bulbous-nosed Fabio, but if he was right, then the poor brute had devolved into a weirdly cubist caricature of himself. He was no longer larger-than-life so much as just large.

  “You’re Gerard Depardieu, if I’m not mistaken?”

  The actor smiled.

  So there were no dreams anywhere. Now if he could just save Jade and be on his way back home…

  “Come take some wine, which I have brought from my vineyard. We can toast the death of the film d’auteur.”

  Dylan thought about inquiring about Jade right away, but he didn’t want to
arouse suspicion, so he followed Depardieu past a posse of Illuminati and CEO-types to a picnic table near the beach, around which sat a gang of aging mafiosos whom Dylan recognized either from Reservoir Dogs, Goodfellas, or the old US Congress, as well as Nicolas Cage, Snoop Dogg (whom Depardieu informed him now went by “Snoop Kraken”), and a handful of younger guys Dylan was too out-of-the-loop to know. At Dylan’s approach, everyone stood and gave him a round of applause. It was weird.

  “Thanks, everybody. Thank you very much. It’s good to be here again.” He’d only ever really starred in one film—clearly he didn’t deserve this.

  “So what have you been doing with yourself?” somebody—maybe Joe Pesci or Harvey Keitel—asked.

  “I’m a high school teacher,” Dylan pronounced. “And I’m married with three kids. On New Taiwan.”

  There. Rather than try to dance around the truth of his banal life, he had simply come out with it. At every juncture, he felt he had made the best choice available to him. He had nothing to apologize for.

  De Niro seemed to agree: “Good for you, kid.”

  “Fo’ shizzle,” Snoop Kraken concurred.

  That was the thing about some of these hedonists. They had such free access to pleasure that they could be remarkably clear-eyed in their priorities; the road to the moral life was paved with jollies—they weren’t mutually exclusive at any rate.

  Depardieu poured Dylan a glass of Bordeaux.

  Dylan sipped slowly, not wanting to dull his senses. It would be so easy to surrender to all of this, but he was here to serve a higher purpose this time, and whether they were complicit or not, his incredibly gracious hosts, being Jade’s captors, were the enemy. For her sake, he needed to stay sharp.

  Nic Cage was sitting beside him, wearing an aloha shirt and dopily grinning. They’d met before at some Hollywood party or other.

  “It’s good to see you again, Dylan,” he said, so earnest as to seem almost sarcastic.

  “You too, Nic. You’ve hardly changed.”

  “Would that that were true,” Cage said, taking a joint out of his breast pocket. He lit it and took a healthy puff.

  “How’s the industry treating you?” Dylan asked.

  “Oh, I can’t complain. Do you not keep up with things at all?”

  He offered Dylan the joint, but Dylan declined.

  “Suit yourself.”

  “To be honest,” Dylan said, “I haven’t seen a new film in about twenty years.”

  “Well then you won’t recognize too many faces up here, will you?”

  “I guess not.”

  “Shall I take you around and introduce you to some of the new blood?”

  Dylan recognized his chance—he’d rubbed enough elbows to get away for a bit, hadn’t he? “Actually, Nic, there’s someone in particular I’m hoping to meet. Maybe you can help me?”

  “I’ll try.”

  “She goes by the name of Jade Astrophil.”

  “Jade? Sure, I know Jade. Everybody knows Jade. She’s a sweetheart. Heard good reviews, have you?”

  “Something like that.” Dylan winced. He did not know Jade’s status exactly—how willingly (or not) she was up here, how she was compensated, etc.—but surely whatever was going on was too psychologically complex, if not out-and-out exploitative and beastly, to reduce to “good reviews!”

  “Cool. Well, she’s usually pretty booked up, so the sooner you get on the list, the better. I’ll take you over there. I didn’t realize you were an S.”

  “That’s me,” Dylan said, not sure exactly what he was admitting to. He finished his wine and began to get up as inconspicuously as possible. As man of the hour, however, Dylan’s stirring did not go unnoticed. Cage explained for him, “I’m going to show Dylan here to the bungalows. The poor guy’s been a faithful husband for years.”

  “Hear, hear,” any number of them said.

  Were men really like this? Was he really like this? Was he really a man if he was not really like this? Who said he was not really like this? Who really said he was not really like this?

  So Cage walked Dylan down to the snickerdoodle shore and over to a small bamboo hut marked “Astrophil.” An old-fashioned clipboard was pinned to the door.

  “You’re in luck,” Cage said. “Just two names ahead of you—Ryan Hollister and Theo Pan—and it looks like they’re in there together. Hollister’s a hot shot. Blond hair. Pretty face. Talented too. Does lots of historical space opera stuff. Not sure who Pan is. It’s getting so crowded up here, not even I know everybody anymore. Chinese maybe? Like Moo Goo Gai? So I’ll sign you up for the next slot?”

  “Great.”

  “Unless you want to join them? We could always ask. Jade’s got at least one hole free.”

  “No, no. Next would be fine, thanks. I can wait. I mean, I can’t wait, but I can wait.”

  “That’s to your credit. I always get all antsy when I come over here. In fact, if you don’t mind, I think I’m going to head over there to Jezebel’s hut. I’d see Jade with you, but I’m more of an M frankly, and that’s not Jade’s forte. She’s better at licking boots than getting them licked, if you know what I mean.”

  “Sure,” Dylan said, doing his damndest to seem unfazed. So they were talking sadomasochism—at least that was cleared up.

  “We’ll catch up some more later, then? Maybe head over to the racetrack? I’ve got Detective Comics 27 on the Venusian panther.”

  “Sounds good,” Dylan said. “I’ll come find you.”

  “Awesome,” Cage said. And then he went off to lick some boots, as it were.

  • • •

  So Dylan found himself seated on a bamboo bench before Jade’s hut, again questioning the reality of all this. Could it really be that he had all but penetrated her mystery? That he had searched the Omniverse over for her and now they were separated by a single membrane and however-many minutes?

  He reached down, picked up a pebble from the lunar sands, and tucked it away in his pocket. It wasn’t all that weird-looking. Erin would probably think he’d got it in Hawaii or wherever else she imagined he was having his affair. Well, at least he’d tried.

  Tennis balls pwocked on a nearby court, fire crackled from tiki torches, the surf respired, and it was several minutes before Dylan made out a sound from inside the hut. Once he’d tuned in to these more bestial frequencies, however, he could not stop hearing them: squeals, grunts, moans; percussed flesh; a whole symphony of sportfucking that at once grieved him and seduced him like siren song. He felt sick to his stomach even as he got a hard-on. Oh horrible. Clearly he could not let this go on.

  So he got up and approached the hut. A cloth curtain with a slit in the center veiled the entrance, but when he peeked his head in, all he saw was a narrow corridor leading off to the right. In order to get a good look at the sanctum sanctorum, he was going to have to commit. So he nonchalantly surveyed his surroundings and, finding no one, parted the veil and headed on down the hall, telepathizing all the while Hang in there, Jade, I’m coming for you.

  The sounds grew louder, and he could hear the heavy breathing now too. He gumshoed his way down the hall until he arrived at a door. There was no scanner of any kind, just an old-fashioned brass knob—it had been years since he’d seen such a thing. He reached out and turned it as quietly as he could manage, pushing the door open with his shoulder just enough so that he could peer through.

  His instincts quickly shut his mouth and clenched his nostrils—he hadn’t anticipated the stench.

  “How lovely,” a man’s voice intoned.

  Dylan didn’t have a clear view, but now he could hear everything.

  “And don’t you worry, Jade, there’s plenty more where that came from.”

  “Thank you,” a voice replied. Dylan could hear the annals of pain in it.… And then he heard what sounded like a fart.

&nbs
p; A man laughed, applauded, and called, “Bravo!”

  “Marvelous, Jade,” the first voice went on. “Music to my ears. All right, Ryan, tell me again where we’ve been. I like hearing it.”

  “Sure thing,” a third voice began, “So we started down south with an Alabama Hot Pocket and a Birmingham Booty Call. From there we headed north for a Cleveland Steamer. Then we went a-globetrotting for the Dirty Sanchez, the Eiffel Tower, and the Flaming Amazon. We took a break for a Golden Shower and a Hot Lunch. Then we had some laughs with the Indian Cock Burn, the Juanita Special Bean Dip, some gentle Kick-Fucking, and a Landshark. We did our little experiment with the Monroe Transfer, and then we proceeded to the New-Jersey Meat-Hook and a nice cold Oyster. Just now you gave her an elegant Pearl Necklace, then blew air in her twat and got her to Queef for us. Which brings us to R.”

  With the exception of the queef and the golden shower, Dylan didn’t have a clue what any of those things were, but if they were in a league with something called “kick-fucking,” they couldn’t possibly be good. His suspicions were confirmed: this poor girl’s body was now being exploited as a cum dumpster for the rich and famous.

  “And we’ve still got another twenty minutes, correct?” Pan said.

  “That’s right.”

  “So, speaking of music, Jade, I wonder if you’ve ever played an instrument?”

  “I took piano lessons when I was little,” Jade replied.

  “Of course you did. You should be a quick study, then, while I teach you a new one. It’s called the Rusty Trombone. Are you ready for your first lesson?”

  Dylan let go of his nose, forced himself to ignore the reek, and cracked the door a few more inches. It squeaked, but then Jade did too, so neither of her tormenters seemed to notice.