Archaeopteryx

by Dan Darling

  “It’s simple.”

  I nodded a whole bunch. Even after I stopped, the room kept bobbing. “So, now that we know to be good, what’s next?”

  “We get you a shower. And donuts. And chorizo and eggs.” He looked me over. “Then we pray.”

  “Why don’t we hang around together for thirty-six or sixty-four hours first? If you stay up long enough, you can actually feel the planet wobble.”

  He squinted at me. “How long have you been awake, exactly?”

  “I’ve been exactly awake never until five days ago, when I woke up and decided never to sleep again.”

  “Is that when you painted your windows black?” he asked.

  “That happened while I was away. Atheists did it.”

  Tony flapped his hands at me. “Go take a shower. I’ll drum up some food.”

  I took my time in the shower. The hot water was like maple syrup straight out of the microwave. It lingered in every pore. I shampooed my hair three times until it felt like human hair again. When I was out, dressed, and had brushed the five days of moss from my teeth, I felt as focused and sharp as an aluminum hunting arrow. After a few donuts, two more cups of coffee, and a plateful of animal protein and grease, I was the fiercest, most acute warrior to ever live in the desert. I slapped Tony on the back a few times on his way out the door, assuring him that I was dandy and that I would have a good nap when he was gone.

  “You’ve got to be ship-shape for the big day. Operation Velvet Ant could happen any time.”

  “I’m okey-dokey,” I said. “Hunky-dory.”

  “You remember the signal?”

  “That’s a trick question, you sneaker. There is no signal because you’ll be watching. All I have to do is be myself and you’ll take care of the rest.”

  He smiled proudly. “Your plan is in place. We’re all set.”

  Once he’d driven away, I got the gun out my safe. I loaded it. I sat on my couch and made myself comfortable. I put the barrel in my mouth and released the safety catch. My mind was as clear as the turquoise New Mexican sky.

  he cold gun barrel tasted like outer space. I could sense an entire lifetime of disappointment in the vast hollowness of the bore. Beyond that emptiness, a bullet crouched in a nest of dynamite, ready to lunge into my mouth and erase me from the universe forever.

  I’d been thinking about this moment for a very long time. I’d resolved that I’d have to pull a trigger on myself when I was a teenager. I procrastinated for a while, pulled my death wand out of its safe a few times in my lost twenty-something years, then stored it in an out of the way corner of my mind during my thirties. This was the first time I’d cradled it with my tongue. The dull metal numbed my taste buds. The gun oil I used might even have been killing them slowly, as the world had been slowly gouging away at me.

  With the weapon cocked and ready, I felt like pulling the trigger would be pretty easy. I’d been laboring mentally with this moment for twenty years, and completed all the heavy lifting. I was ready to go. I probably wouldn’t even notice. I’d squeeze the trigger and then vanish. Some unlucky interloper would find my body with an extra hole near the top and the brains on the outside. Somebody would burn the mess up in an oven, and within a week or a month, no one would care except Ralph, who’d be crouching in a corner, trying to figure out exactly where his next meal would come from.

  My one reason to live: a spider. He was a stalwart friend, but hardly an anchor with enough weight to hold me on the surface of a planet where I’d never belonged.

  I didn’t rush it. I wanted to take my time. I took the gun out of my mouth and examined the ring of moisture around the end of the barrel left by my lips. The trigger, handle, and hammer would hold oil imprints of my fingers. Those swirls of pattern in calloused skin had been forged over years of touching objects in my world. No other person left the same ones. I had a vision in my head of all of the reptiles, amphibians, and invertebrates in my zoo, patterned with my fingerprints. I’d touched them all. They all wore my unique signature on their bodies, and I couldn’t even go peer at them through a pane of glass and feel depressed that we weren’t together anymore. We left our prints on everything we touched. They washed off easily, and then we vanished.

  I checked the chamber. Six rounds. Shiny and new. I snapped it shut. I put the barrel between my teeth again and angled it at about forty-five degrees so that the bullet would hit the part of my brain that counted. Maybe I’d get lucky and the bullet would knock the chunk out that stored memories of other people, leaving everything else intact. I’d pull the trigger, black out, and wake up with no memory of another living person. I’d experience a good couple hours of happiness until I set foot outside my house again and saw another human being. Then I’d have to go through forty more years of betrayal and humiliation before I shot another bullet into my memory.

  I settled both hands around the grip, closed my eyes, and let out a deep breath.

  A car door slammed. Feet tumbled down my stairs. The screen door whammed open and Dr. Charon exploded into my apartment. He wore his white lab coat, half glasses, jeans, and a white button up shirt. He looked as average as usual, except for his breath, which heaved exceptionally in his chest.

  “Scire mori sors prima viris, sed proxima cogi!” he gasped.

  I took the barrel out of my mouth. “Speak English. And be quick about it.”

  “You’ve obviously,” he said, panting, “learned the first happiness: to know how to die. It’s equally obvious that you haven’t learned the second: to be forced to die. Only the impetuous are eager to cross the river Styx and forget all they know.”

  “That’s exactly what I’m after,” I said.

  Charon took a step toward me and held out his hand. “Let me at least clean it for you. That instrument is probably covered with the blood of innocents.”

  “It’s a virgin.”

  “Give it here. I’ve been looking for something to point at the animal rights nut jobs as I leave the parking lot.”

  “You can have it when I’m done with it. This won’t take me a minute.”

  “Don’t waste bullets. Imagine all the resources that go into a bullet. Consider the planet. And all that garbage.”

  “Quit trying to stall me.” I put the barrel in my mouth, but took it back out. “How the hell did you know to come over here, anyway?” I put the barrel back in.

  Charon pointed to a corner of the living room. At first, I didn’t see anything. Then, after I squinted a bit, I spied a tiny tube half the diameter of a pencil protruding from a ceiling tile.

  “Eye in the sky,” Charon said.

  I spat the barrel out. “I should have guessed.”

  “Yep,” Charon said. “You should have.”

  “Lemme get this straight,” I said. “You were enjoying a normal day at Typhon Industries, torturing women and breeding demon horseflies. You were sitting there, watching me sit here. You noticed that I was about to blow my head off, and you jumped in your car and sped across the city to save me.”

  “Nope. I got a call. I was at the Chucky Cheese watching the dancing animatronic mouse and eating a pepperoni pizza. My phone lit up. John White gave me the lowdown. I sped a few blocks. I nearly broke a hip rolling down your stairs.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Only about Chucky Cheese. Let’s just say I was in the neighborhood.”

  “John White is watching me? Doesn’t he have better, more profitable things to do with his time?”

  “You are the center of John White’s attention. He watches you more than you might imagine. Besides, he’s not much of a sleeper, so he has a lot of time to get things done.”

  “Is he watching now?” I asked.

  Charon pointed a finger at the camera. “He’s right there. He wants to make sure I do my job and save your life.”

  “My life is not something anyone can save,” I said. “I’m a mortal.”

  Charon shook his head. “Most of us are mortal. But not you, Mr. Sti
ck. You’re a titan. You don’t understand―which is no surprise. You’ve been living in a morass of mediocrity. You’re up to your neck in the mud of human normalcy. You are extraordinary. You were destined for great things. What would you say if I told you that this entire sequence of events has been John White’s doing?”

  “I’d ask why he assassinated Esposita.”

  “Forget the turtle. I’ve heard all about her. This is bigger than a turtle.”

  Nothing humans did was ever bigger than a turtle. That we thought so was what made us so goddamned evil. The gun was getting heavy. I set it on my thigh, the hammer still cocked.

  “John White has done everything for you, Mr. Stick,” Charon said. “He’s had his eye on you for a very long time. There is no person he cares about more.”

  “That’s sweet,” I said. “How come he didn’t remember my birthday?”

  “We toasted to it. You’ll have to trust me.”

  “What does he want with me?” I asked.

  “It’s simple. John White wants to see you thrive.”

  “He’s not doing a good job so far. My life barely exists. It’s a fourth dimensional inch from vanishing altogether.”

  “Stretch that inch. Make it a foot. That’s all John White asks. He needs you for Operation Velvet Ant. Everything will become clear after that. This whole city believes they know John White’s motives. They think he’s after money, justice, fame. They think he’s motivated by racial prejudice or greed or philanthropic goodwill or ambition. Everyone is wrong. They’re wrong because no one thinks on the scale John White does. He’s doing something larger than a normal human imagination can match.”

  “Sounds okay, but can he resurrect my turtle?”

  Charon’s face twitched and a little corner of annoyance flashed. “Stay with us for one more day. If at the end of that day you want to swallow a couple of lead pills with your orange juice, go right ahead. He says he’ll even come and pull the trigger for you.”

  “He said that?”

  Charon nodded.

  “He’s intense, isn’t he?”

  Charon nodded again. “Being in the same room with him is like rubbing elbows with a super nova.”

  “When do I meet him?” I asked.

  “Tomorrow.” He smiled. “You’ll be one of only a select few people that have met him in person.”

  “Why not today?”

  Charon smiled. “Because today we execute Operation Velvet Ant.”

  “That’s a dumb name.”

  He shrugged. “Qui habet aures audiendi, audiat.”

  “Knock it off with the Pope talk, and tell me what John White has in store for me. I want to know what kind of a mess I’m getting into so I know whether to pack a lunch.”

  Charon grabbed my jacket from where it hung by the door. “I’ll spell out all I know about him in the car. We’ll have a half hour of silence to fill.”

  “That’s fine,” I said. “No tricks.”

  Standing felt like lifting a fallen redwood and balancing it on its severed roots. Five days without sleep hung around my shoulders like bags of sand. My knee joints were as brittle as archaeopteryx fossils. I thought for sure they’d crack from their moorings. But everything held together. Realizing I still held the revolver, I eased the hammer down, engaged the safety, and stuck the weapon in my pocket. I made my way out the door and up to the car, resolute in my mind that Charon would either tell me everything I wanted to know about John White or I’d grab the wheel and steer us into an embankment.

  Thus resolved, I crammed myself into his vehicle, buckled my seat belt, and passed out.

  I awoke in the middle of a military convoy. Charon’s car was at sea in endless black asphalt. Vans, trucks, and Humvees painted in desert camouflage giraffe patterns surrounded us. Men bearing military death sticks, their torsos bulky with Kevlar, bustled around and barked orders at each other. Reality and the deep dream I’d been roused from blurred into a moment of stupefying disorientation. The remaining dream state hung like ether in my senses in a living nightmare of soldiers descending on me for malicious purposes. When I’d shaken it off, I realized I was one of those soldiers. I wished I’d stayed in the nightmare.

  Charon turned to me from the driver’s seat. “Here we are.”

  There was no debating it. We were here.

  “This is the day we’ll look back on and say, ‘that’s the day it all changed.’ “

  Charon’s world was about to change more than he realized―if Tony’s people were doing their job. “Are you coming along for Operation Velvet Ant?’

  “No. I have duties here to attend to. But I look forward to seeing you upon your return. I’d like to think that we’re friends. E duobus, unum. Or should I say, de dos, uno.”

  “I’m tired of asking you to keep it in English, doc. My head can’t handle any other language right now. I’m not entirely convinced I’m even awake.”

  “Just some Spanish to show you my intentions are pure.”

  “Intentions are like candles on a birthday cake. A strong gust of wind and all you’re left with is wax in your frosting.”

  “I’ll see you on the other side,” he said.

  “You enjoyed saying that.”

  He grinned. “I did, actually.”

  “You see? English does have a few sayings that can compete with Latin.”

  “Good bye, John.”

  I opened the door and got out of the car. It was a lot like an arthritic giraffe climbing out of a telephone booth. Everybody took time out of their paramilitary exercises to watch.

  By the time I was as erect as I was going to get, the Captain had muscled his way up to my ribcage. “You’re pushing the limits as usual. We’re rolling out in five.”

  “I’m a pretty face. What do I care about your timetable?”

  “One of these days, the boss’ tender feelings for you are going to expire. That’ll be a nice day. We’ll be able to stop having these friendly little chats.” He didn’t wait around for a snappy comeback.

  Before I knew it, Ned, the guy who’d originally stuffed me into the back of a van with Cerberus, escorted me across the center of what I recognized as the Typhon Industries parking lot. I passed short diesel trucks linked to trailers of buzzing harpy hubbub. I passed a cluster of white vans that smelled like carnivore and blood and emitted the tortured howl of Cerberus, the bleat of Dracula, and the roar of Goliath. I caught sight of an orange ponytail through the passenger window of one of the vans. I banged on the glass. The round freckled face that turned toward me made my guts sink.

  Abbey rolled down the window. “We’re coworkers again.”

  She’d joined White Industries behind my back. That was why she’d been so mum when I’d last seen her. “You’re a turncoat.”

  “I fell in love. I can’t stop thinking about Dracula. I’m his personal caretaker now. He’s the biggest bat that’s ever lived.”

  A good person would have opened his mouth and told her to get out of the van. I knew what was coming. I owed Abbey―and I’d dragged her into this whole thing. A good person would have shoved his head in her window and whispered in her ear. I couldn’t bend that far. My body wasn’t made for sharing secrets.

  Ned hauled at my elbow. “Be careful,” I managed to stutter at her.

  She smiled and gave me a somber thumbs up.

  My Humvee spearheaded the convoy. Trucks on either side housed the sibilant chirp of the hydras and the squeaking gremlins. John White―or the Captain, or Charon, or whatever madman was truly in charge of this place―had mobilized the whole army of monsters.

  The Minutemen didn’t trouble themselves with a lot of preamble. Once I settled in, a couple dozen engines fired up and we rolled into motion. It felt nice to be riding in the front. My seat even had a cushion. Meat Shoulders, the young guy with the harpy sting I’d talked to on my first visit to Typhon Industries, drove our vehicle. I wondered aloud if he remembered me and spent a good couple of minutes laughing about it. Meat Shou
lders tried to laugh along at first but ended up clenching the wheel as if squeezing it hard enough could save him.

  We filtered single file through the security gate. Some of the less stoic boys in our cavalcade rolled down their windows and yelled words that everybody had heard a thousand times before at the rainbow of protesters holding up their tireless signs. The protesters yelled some words that everybody had heard a thousand times before right back. For some reason, everybody on both sides felt perturbed and insulted, as if they’d never heard anything like it before. Once we’d run the gauntlet, we immersed ourselves in the unspoiled Cibola wilderness, which had been growing for thousands of years longer than any of us had been able to throw words around and feel sensitive about them.

  My tired mind jumped like a record being played in the back of a truck on a dirt road. I found myself wondering if Dracula knew he’d sired young. I wondered how many would make it to adulthood and live long enough to suck the blood out of some misfit. Marsupial babies didn’t survive in good proportions. Many would die before they even opened their eyes, before their slimy skin ever bore the first tufts of hair, before they realized that they didn’t belong to this world. So many of us should have been more wary of being born into a land of normals.

  “Is there anything I should be doing?” I asked Meat Shoulders.

  “You just relax, Mr. Stick. Enjoy the ride.” His eyes flitted from the road to me and back. “You can take a nap if you want to.”

  “I don’t require sleep like the normals do. I’m special.”

  He chuckled nervously. He poked some buttons in the console between us. “We’ve got the satellite radio. What kind of music do you like?”

  “Polka. Mexican polka.” I laughed about that for a while. Meat Shoulders tried to smile along with me, but he wasn’t having any fun. After a few minutes of it, I thought I might cry instead.

  We fell quiet as the steel centipede of vans and trucks and trailers followed along the asphalt. The setting sun angled across the convoy and it shone like some Yellow Brick Road procession to Hades. We wound through the furrows and frowns of the Sandías. Humans named mountain ranges, but their words did nothing to quantify the eons that had twisted and stretched the land. Humans simply couldn’t fathom geologic time. The gravity, the rain, the snow, the runoff. The tectonics at work. The strain of the moon as it creaked by. The plant roots clenching and twining in the dirt. The force of wind and sun heating and shrinking the soil, beating the water into the air like an old lady whacking a rug. Humans liked to talk about the majesty of mountains, using their human words. No words should be spoken in the presence of mountains―or in any of the desert spaces that took so long to form and that we so cheaply reduce to maps, barbed wire, and language. I traveled through the mountains and I saw ages-old beings that had been tortured up from the earth by strife and chaos and were beaten back down by every force known to the universe. They were in a constant intermediate stage between birth and death, between being and nonbeing.