THE NATURAL STRANGER :: BOOK 1, "THE AEON" :: CHAPTER 12, EPISODE 5

Some Germans, Harry Stone was told at Farm Hall, followed Asclepius... believing the Cybele stone from out of space, shaped by the hand of Midas, to have been carried by the Goddess, in person, ninety years before most accounts. At Rugen, Tess collected grateful tribute... boxes of Conan books and comics... like all Soviets, he places Cybele with the Triple A's... Artemis, Apollo and the Amazons... all north of the Black Sea, rather than south. "This fellow your young people admire," he waved one Hyperborean pulp... "he was no Celt, but from Crimea. Soviet science most confirms this!" Tess served a stint at the famous Soviet spoonbending academy, against which General Johnny competed before taking command of America's Dogteam... Soviet psychics say ghosts leave their impressions not only on computer tape but anything made of iron. Fat lot of good that did them at the Games!

"But conventionally," Gunter disagreed, "from Ovid and Livy, among other sources, the stone was almost certainly removed at the close of the Third Century BC as a victory offering for the Punic Wars.

"For ten years, Rome had fared poorly. As you may know, the city had a substantial Trojan population... the Attic wars were more or less Hector's revenge... even the Sibylline books show Turkish influence. Well, with Africa at its Alpine doorstep, Greek and Trojan Rome had to cast old difficulties aside and, when the Oracle suggested transfer of Mater Idaea from Pessinus to Rome, Attalus, the Phrygian king was approached."

"A Roman ally!" I'd remembered.

"Ally as he may have seemed, Attalus was loathe to give up the protection of the Goddess until Cybele, herself, communicated her intent through earthquakes. The Turks relented; Cybele arrived April sixth, two hundred four BC... except, of course, in the version that Germans tell... and was housed in the Temple of Victory on the Palatine, near the hut of Romulus. The Africans were thrown back and, on April tenth, one hundred ninety one BC, the omphale was relocated to the Metroon during the rites of victory. Eighty years later that temple burned, but the stone was miraculously unharmed; a new temple constructed upon the site of the old survived until the ascent of Christian emperors, after which obscurity descends. Nothing remains but ruins... however, the site is marked by an enormous oak and so," the artist speculated, "some say that the very seat of the Church remains under the fiat of mutilated shepherds."

I wish Gunter could have been with us when Daimon was tested last week. It still needs a protector... or protectress... the Sons of God ascend even plateaus upon Confusion's slope, their daughters descending the odd. Peter Bach's ingenuity and Manuel's hired hands having disposed of Aeon's rubble, a frame had been erected at the nethermost level, water poured and frozen over a huge wafer of dry ice, creating billowing tentacles of cold fog. A sixty-foot bar, walnut and leaded glass, had been installed at the level nearest this frigid Pandaemonium upwards... back bars nearer the entrance to the cave, a sound system... even nine trite, but indispensable, reflective balls shooting pale, purple shadows through the fog, hanging suspended like the nine moons of Saturn (or nine condemned criminals). Those of the Aeon staff who wished a return Peter hired, other slots filled by defectors from Lone Star, from Ouefs and Danceteria, following sweet wads of ready cash.

All such preparations... yet, since only friends and the best of our own customers were invited to alpha test a week ago, what can be said about their ineptitude on ice?

"Well this looks like success... or something," Mitch had sniggered when he and Fanny arrived with the Martyns. Though out of the private sector, he's busier than ever, running up the leg of Big Circuitry like a randy dog. Sees billions in digitizing television... he has printouts deriding the Democratic incumbent as "a captive of the old age home of analog"; he'll press for alternating standards of 60 frames per second (which produces an image for thirty frames, a window of equal duration). Kazelka's voice drops... "I know what goes on between frequencies and I don't care who claims to be losing their civil liberties... the public has a right to television programs of their choice and free enterprise the right to occupy its interstices. Only those with something to hide harp upon privacy."

On page nine of the Post, the incumbent Congressman replies that his Brooklyn district still benefits from the postal sorting facility he'd secured back in '62.

Korbel, an active, proselytizing Libertarian, has pledged a quarter pound of gold to secure Kazelka's place on his party's ballot... he sees Mitch on Liberal, Republican, Conservative and Libertarian tickets. Mitchell is smart but not that smart. "Let me get back to you on that," he says. Gold spooks him... ghetto gangs who bop to Grandmaster Flash and pornographers wear gold. It's a pornographer, in fact, who... with a philanthropist and a conspiracy crank... plan to set up backyard fusion plants on Staten Island, and Mitchell is suddenly worried about bad photography rising out of history's swamp; especially that depicting him in the company of bare-chested, gold chained pornographers.

And he has very un-Libertarian sentiments involving getting government into the thick of standards battles which have mired the US and Japan in the middle between most of Europe and the French... which side Mitch falls on depends, I suppose, on where the francs or deutschmarks fall. Euromoney is so much friendlier than ours, it would be criminal to digitalize Mozart's marks, Debussy's francs... not to speak of the violence against their Golden Mean. Again, I'm awed by the bloodletting the French stock markets countenance... the continent is, in fact, Valhalla for leeches. And Mitchell cooks with methane gas... smells like Dodge City after dark but packs a wallop.

"Everybody in America will have to throw out their old analog TVs and upgrade!" Boom! and a Boomf... Zip! Zing! sing the strings of cash registers!

"How about upgrading your personal revolutions per second," I invite him, gesturing towards the ice... I'd been practicing. "No thanks," Mitch rewarded me with a politician's smile. The test was off limits to press - I specifically didn't want to encounter Flagler or any of his aliases - but Kazelka seemed terrified that someone's smuggled camera might capture him the moment he tumbled on his wannabe Congressional butt.

The bar was open... time and alcohol working their voodoo on inhibitions, legal drugs to free we brides of Death from higher resonances. Since the Rangers weren't going to the playoffs, I'd hired one of their zamboni wizards... a grizzled old fellow from the Bronx with a squint and cigar who recognizes Mitch from his pictures in the Post... "that's the bum, wants to be Congressman from Sucklyn?" I try to make conversation with the Martyns, using the arrival of Korbel in a red and white sweater with a blue scarf. "Michael's promised to develop a special skate even beginners can use," I suggest. "Nuclear powered. When we turn off the lights it glows in the dark."

"We wanted you to be first to try it, Wally," Korbel teased.

The agent played with the lapel of his camel-hair overcoat - it's May outside, February here. Models from Trinka's shiver in their computer chip skirts and vests. "Too old, I'm afraid. Is Bud round?" I make a motion as if asking 'who cares?', Cynthia asked if Geneva would join them at their table. Eileen points across the rink and shrieks... she's stoned again... happy!... she's found temporary love, she greets Geneva singing praises to Italian soul... "he's a northerner, mi bella Milanesa! Almost Swiss!" Geneva waves and guides Cynthia onwards... moon shadows of dark, buggy disco balls crisscross their backs the way they'd backlit dark cops doing their duty in Zone trailers after Duck called in reinforcements those last, evil days in Utah.

Our bullet-pockmarked trailer was, of course, clean... Jeff had second sense about his guns, his crank, his stolen property cached in caves all the way to Cedar City. So the police found diddley, trashed the trailer, of course, but it was rented, Uncle Sam's loss, not ours. Still, Jeff was pissed.

"Someday, he swore, "I'm going to kill a lot more people. A whole lot." The moon witnessed his vows, it was Thursday, always a Thursday, the Devil's own day. "Going to make Charlie Fucking Manson fucking look like Howard Fucking Cosell!"

So it was also Thursday... on November's day of death, celebrated south of the border... that the telegram of regrets arrived. Actually, only a notice, tacked to my door like a bum Lex Luthor's Thesis, informing me to hike twelve blocks through the barrio to a government office where the real telegram waited.

The rest of that night is one of those blessedly lost times, but I did go into work Friday, coping until the mercado suffered an infestation of holy people with tambourines and cowbells, orange robes, some cult of customers shopping for carrots... a carrot cult?... and I started to cry and couldn't stop until Bumberger asked if I was on drugs.

I said I was only sick, and Libby finally took me to a People's Lawyer, Mister Sennett... which was why I was paying her back these few weeks later, driving through twisty streets of stardom (most seemingly named after dirty New Jersey towns that the starmakers escaped out of) and, while Cassius Clay on the radio announced he'd joined the Black Muslims, I found a parking place.

We're directed to a waiting room filled not only with Twenty Questions? hopefuls and disappointed Margareteers but auditioners for half a dozen other daytime dungeons of drek... kid performers with smoking, slapping stage mothers, squirming, defecating animals with their mournful handlers, a couple of old sots dolled up as Marx Brothers, swapping Borscht Belt stories. Some under-assistant promo man gave Libby forms "the tax people need", un-understandable... she signed them blind, threw them back at him.

Finally we're invited from the waiting room to audition in the studio, only it wasn't an audition, it was the real thing. "We're on an emergency schedule here," the Man Himself, Dennis DeFranco apologized, "anybody seen the show, understand the rules?"

"Sure," Libby volunteers before five other prospects open their throats, and Dennis waved her towards the contestants' podium, a place between a Jordanian student, defending champion, and a jolly housewife from Arkansas who spieled on about how she was extending her vacation because she was so sure of winning...

"Can the corn, sweetie," said DeFranco, gesturing to the booth. Quickly he informed his three contestants that shows were taped... gratuitous promotion would be cut as would, of course, obscene or editorially incorrect asides. "Your friend's only on because someone decided saving the world from Vietnam or civil rights was more important than winning," the assistant assistant forewarned us. "All that gets cut out, and, if Dennis gets pissed, you go home without parting gifts, even... you wouldn't want to jeopardize your mother's parting gifts by crying at the wrong time, would you?" he bullies Jenny, and myself by implication. No, we didn't and DeFranco, styling and profiling, started to read off a stack of cards.

"Hamid!" he addressed the Jordanian. "Our category: Current Events... your first question..."

"Is war in Middle East?"

A buzzer sounded which I had to strain to hear... it sounded so much louder on television.

"Good guess, Hamid, but no." A bell sounded, the big "20" in lights winked and was replaced by "19". "Contestants," said Dennis, "remember... truth sometimes is achieved by revelation, but more often approached by degree. Contestant Two... Libby... our hometown favorite!... Question Two for ten big dollars..." and our surprisingly small audience was encouraged to whoop it up... I correctly figured that their reaction would be enhanced.

"The current event is... it takes place in the Northern Hemisphere?"

Bing! went a bell.

"Northern Hemisphere," Dennis DeFranco repeated sagely. "For fifteen dollars, Question Three..."

"The current event's principal man is," Libby hesitated... "he's a man!"

Dennis DeFranco flashed hand jive to the booth and got a reply back over his earphones. Bing! "For twenty dollars...

"Two men," Libby shouted, "... or more. The current event involves a group of men."

Bing! "Two or more men, a group, we'll take that." The Arkansas lady looked like she'd bitten cow pies, waiting her turn. You see the parallels to Dogs and Dominoes, I hope, Egg... set parameters, identify qualities of the environment, focus, draw in the bull of solution, then twist the sword. Neil's adapted the game to marketing research, says his Dogs will behave, "they'll even have name tags, quite visible."

Unlike Carlo's dog tags... in some jar in the Rhode Island cottage still, I think...

Twenty Questions rewarded its contestants by progressive five-dollar increments... five, ten, fifteen, fifty dollars for the tenth Question, a hundred for the last. It continued until someone solved the problem, or the Twenty ran out... in which case nobody won anything. The maximum haul for a round was $1,050... which wasn't paid in cash, of course, but applied to "shopping sprees" where overpriced prizes in the studio would be bid on until the contestant exceeded their winnings. Because Libby had been watching so long, she knew to string her answers out, racking up Bing!s and dollars until on the final question, Libby smiled and said, "Is the current event... the golf playing Masters at Atalan... no, Autista?"

Bing! Bing! Bing! and the game was over, Dennis smiling yes, we'll take that, and because Libby had strung the process out, so was the show, after her shopping spree - $1,045 (max, less the fiver the Jordanian had blown). Shopping spree prices were steep for '65... $470 for a home entertainment center (TV, cabinet and hi fi, not even stereo), $358 for bedroom furniture... and she went over on an $280 personal spa where she had only $217 left... under the rules she forfeited both prize and money and Dennis simpered... "sorry, Libby, but you know... hey... bathing was banned in Europe well into the 18th century by edict of St. Jerome... glad He's in Heaven aren't we? Anyway, you look and smell terrific, and you'll get another shot tomorrow when we play... Twenty Questions! Anything to say..." and he held out his microphone.

Libby looked proud enough to burst, like one of Popo's balloons. "For the first time in my life, I feel like someone important!"

"Well isn't that what all of us need... to feel important?" Dennis DeFranco chuckled and waved. Libby in the contestants' box, Jenny and I in the gallery. Carlo at war, LBJ, even the bad skaters trying to appear better than they were at Daimon.

Everybody wants to stand out under the moon, Bill Streich said last year, informing me of his upcoming contactee convention in Minneapolis... "I was never too full of myself to associate with mechanics," he said, "a lot of enlisted men were former bus drivers... these Trailways people, they get around... they hear things."

Sennett, the lawyer Libby took me to, took my forty dollars and referred me to the VA, saying that there was a veterans' widows' support group but its people were in Chicago... having their convention. All subsequent calls went unreturned.

So I think the computer of the future will be something soft, a social myth - something in pants or even miniskirts - its cricket circuitry replaced by whirring evasions, not necessarily lies. And I think about Roberto, a farmer outside Xul who asked me what to do with the electric oven that his son had sent from Arizona. Thanks to Fico there was no electricity and I couldn't help him, but he was envied and, I think, secretly relieved when someone stole it.

I set my widow's eyes forward, tuck in the fangs, throw Aphrodite some Russian potatoes, glowing like mutant military citadels. I am an institution in New York, under Xul's moon I'm hunger institutionalized.