THE NATURAL STRANGER :: BOOK 1, "THE AEON" :: CHAPTER 6, EPISODE 1

"It's me! It's me!

Out of January's dark, more whining slicing over phoneline, skull scraping at Fortune's door... adamants harder than flint... shining voice I recognize as one more tenant of the Skin Hotel.

"Me! It's me!

"See what that is," Bud grimaced, handing the phone across like a dead snake. Our Wasconshire number's supposed to be secure, though he's leaked it to every Eighth Avenue scalper with New Orleans Superbowl tickets.

"Who?" I say.

"Me!"

I count, timing the loop. Seven seconds exactly. Jersey has simulated a program for massive brain damage; its subjects pile up a world and collapse it in seven seconds. "Our brains have Central Processing Units like any computing engine," Dr. Ventura told me during rehab, seven years ago, "perhaps several. We see rivalries, alliances. The thalamus normally rules the cortex, pulvinar prioritizing input and suppressing irrelevant feeds. The social ganglia inhibit, but also inhibit inhibitions, exciting the cortex to prepare to receive information of special importance. Rather like widening or narrowing a spigot of attention."

"Is this Paul? Paul Leonard?"

Six... seven...

"I've run away from Dog School. Pick me up!"

"Are you at the station?"

Eight... nine...

"Yeah..."

"Grand Central?"

"Wait under the big clock." I hang up, call Manny... I'll get the silent treatment for the rest of the week.

But it's worse, this time; Manny lasts only half a day before demanding I remove Paul from his hair. Kid doesn't even have a coat, hitched down from Dog School in some truck, found a ride to the Village. "Said he had turkey sandwiches then got fucked... I say right on, man, but it wasn't that... got picked up by queers. Fucked his ass bloody then fell asleep, Paul drifted uptown playing arcades until the faggots' money ran out. Not even a jacket, only some T-shirt with flies..."

So Manny brings him over Sunday morning, it's colder again but some hostages are finally being released. I talk to Sopher, waiting for Paul to be delivered... he's heard a billion gold, five more in paper. "No arms," he adds to spike liberal rumors. That end to remain the province of certain persons of initializing...

Iranian cash soon to glut the markets; I remind myself to call Fabian Orr to see what Uli's take is.

"We see many signs," the car radio tells me on the way back from Bud's hockey at West Point. "Some are funny signs, some are fact signs, some signs give warning. But how many do we actually notice? The ones that are important to us... or the ones that are important to others? When you see this sign, remember... it's the sign of the handicapped place. This message has been brought to you by Easter Seals' Society." Weak, neglected antifreeze in the stratosphere of Daimons who interpret prayers and sacrifices of mortals and gods' commands.

I hold Zamora's gift tonight, the Pyrate's Bone. Xul's campesinos overcame the generations of machines, no matter how many Senior had jailed or shot. Have I said the trail from the highway to the old walls used to hold a tree of bees and crosses slashed by electric cable... cut and bound to ward off the evil winds of current? This was so. It's gone, now (too many tourists I'm told, with all of the frostiness of Xul) but, even in the States, you'll find apocrypha in supermarket tabloids about housewives and repairmen contracting cancer from electric power lines... sterility, astereopisis, deformation of tadpoles...

In '68 or '69, between Doug Wolf's monkey ranch, the lottery car and dope trip, I don't know how many siestas Jeff and I wasted turning over miscegenic cards... tarots and bicycles... the greedy Eight of Wands, a Pyrate's Fool from Aratus... "the Phrygian youth who pours forth water brings no clouds into Heaven's severity..."

A magnetic wave of bugs brushed seaward by a bandit's wind, one more Atlanta body found. Qabalist fleckery, spook-breath... "Me!" The pleating of woundedness and weakness a veil across the stars... "It's me... it's me... Me!"