Coffee and Cocaine
There was an anticlimax to the download. The air crackled in expectation but then somehow, the muted boop of my computer failed to impart the gravity of the situation. It was a pleasing tone like any other and I could not know what it meant to me.VLC opened the file up and the first strains of Goodwill Of The Scar came floating out of my headphones. For 27 minutes I sat in the sofa of a coffee shop staring straight ahead and barely breathing. A few early risers walked past me with iced mochas in hand, giving me the slightly wary look and extra foot of room my glazed eyes demanded.
The Generic Brown Dog that boiled around the clients there was braver, stopping to lick my bare kneecap in an apparent gesture of friendship. I will have to remember that, the next time I meet someone new. Lick the kneecap, continue drooling. Even my freshly moistened knee could not drag me back into reality. The sounds coming into my ears had turned off my conscious mind and kept me staring at the menu in front of me.
No matter, I thought; this has happened before. It's just a really good record and it'll take you some time to get a feel for it. I continued on about my day and forgot all about the trance state of a Saturday morning coffee shop. Sunday afternoon I went after the album again. Here now is our brave reviewer walking down to the riverfront in Sellwood to get in the proper frame of mind. I needed water, lots of it, to put myself in the right place to listen to this album. iPod in hand I made my way down to the beach and put my feet in the river. 27 minutes later I am staring out at boaters passing by with no words, not one step closer to a proper review.
At this point I had become frustrated. Two days and no words. Was it writer's block? I shook my head at the possibility; I've long considered that to be the myth of writers who put too much stock in their first draft. What was it then? What quality of this record was making it so difficult to put into words?
I tackled the problem head on. Over the next week I found myself listening to it in as many different ways as possible. It was listened to on five different stereos, six pairs of headphones and once through a discarded tuba. I reversed the stereo channels, passed it through a guitar amp and listened to it in the bathroom. Each time I was emotionally overcome by this album; and utterly without words to describe the experience.
My world was being threatened. I am a writer, if I cannot find words to describe things I need to find a new way to occupy my time. Fear creeps in the background, a subtle terror at the prospect of the unreviewable album. I ran through my list of standard techniques. I shuffled the Oblique Strategies like a tarot deck, my hands guiding them into ley lines. Inspiration is a discipline. I repeat my mantra. Inspiration is a discipline.
The night passed slowly, every second ticking off my wrist and onto a floor littered with crumpled paper labeled simply; Tartufi: Goodwill Of The Scar. A thousand other works clicked into place around it as I hammered on my brain for words to match this record. A plot line falls out here, two poems get a polish and paint job they've needed for weeks, sketches for new stories pile up in notebooks all around me and I feel good. Until I pick up another blank piece of paper with the word Tartufi on it.
I leaped into the past, clutching Dirty Three's Ocean Songs to my chest and rocking in the morning sunlight after a cocaine night. My own words were scrawled across my wrists from some time in that dark night.
"Home is not a place. Home has never meant that to me. It is an idea, a fraction of myself told in bedsheets and cookware. So when the time came to leave it all behind and journey across the waters to a new life, I jumped at the chance.
The ship was tiny, cowering in the bay next to the gods and giants moored near her resting place. No matter. I wasn't looking for a luxury berth, I wanted to know the ocean like my ancestors did. I wanted, above all else, to feel the ocean in my bones and etch her songs upon my heart.It is a young man's game, I suppose, to throw oneself against the elements: to test your will against the cliff faces of reality.
A cry on board cracked across my reverie and I stowed my gear near the storehouses in the stern. For the next three months this cramped and fetid hole in the bottom of a cargo ship would be my home. Nested deep within the pile of clothes and notebooks was my most cherished possession, the icon of this journey. A violin. I had never been a rich man and this fragile piece of wood had cost me nearly every penny I had. If you want to know the core of yourself, it is best to strip off everything you drag around.
I lived and breathed salt air for endless days, hauling lines until my hands bled and eating the stale iron rations stacked high in the cargo holds next to barrels of tobacco and cotton. Each night I would secret away to my corner of the hold and coax my hands warm until I could feel my fingers playing upon the strings of my violin. It was the entire reason I found myself a thousand miles from the land of my fathers, blasted by cold waters, wracked by fevers and so tired that I could hardly sleep at night.
I sang with Poseidon, played symphonies of delight with the Sirens and conducted the winds to the call of cat gut and rosin. This was home, this was the sliver of myself that could never be found in cities or distilled from pastures overgrown with arrogance and the tyrannies of petty men. At last my home, sweet Atlantis.
I found myself at the end of my journey too soon. So that no one may forget this communion of wind and water I have recorded every note, every nuance, every endless storm of my life. May it stand as a sign post on your journey home."
Home. Is that the answer? I had not left my home for four days straight, subsumed under the weight of The Butterless Man, The Butterless Man, The Butterless Man, The Butterless Man Oh Gods Why The Butterless Man? I knew this could not go on for ever. I needed help.
# # #
J. Sheridan Osborn
J. Sheridan Osborn was not a nice person. I did not have him on speed dial and every time I called him I ended up regretting it. He did not play golf with me on the weekends, I did not know his wife, we did not chuckle about getting older over beers. He was not a man to invite over for a barbecue unless someone at your barbecue was possessed by demons and it's ruining the vibe. He was the only person I knew who looked at that kind of shit and simply said "huh" like it happened all the time. I never asked him why that was so and I will never get the chance.His taxi arrived at my house thirty minutes late as usual and started honking the horn ceaselessly until I stumbled out of the front door half dressed and bleary eyed, clutching my iPod and coffee. The rear passenger window on the Radio Cab rolled down and I could smell the cheap cologne curl out of the seat.
"I can't believe you'd call me for something like this. There is nothing weird going on here. You're just fucking terrible at what you do. You're lucky I have need of you. " I stared at The Bastard and shook his hand.
"Fuck You John." I could feel the camaraderie brewing.
I plopped down in the cab he laid out his plan. We were on the way to the heliport in downtown where an air taxi would take us out to the Pacific. From there we landing on a cutter that he had chartered for this exact purpose. "What purpose?" I asked. He just rolled his eyes at me and continued on.
"We're stopping off near Seattle to meet some more people and pick up provisions. Hopefully we'll be ready to roll within two days. Call your people or your agent or whatever and tell them you're on vacation for a few weeks. Call your mom, your attorney, your drug dealer or whatever and let them know you'll be out of touch. Here, use this phone."
The heliport was on top of the World Trade Center in downtown and the building had that remarkable style of New American Boring that every interior designer for the last 20 years has stuck in their heads. I could have been inside a shopping mall for fucks sake. Every single one of these places looks the same. I've always considered it a crime against aesthetics.
On the roof a sleek white helicopter and a bored looking pilot were waiting and moments later I was airborne and heading through downtown Portland with headphones clamped onto my headache and an asshole riding shotgun. He spent the hour flight regaling me with a long and complex narrative about his early helicopter experiences, his fathers obsession with neo-Kantian aesthetic philosophies and his family dog. I nodded in my coffee and enjoyed my headache all the way over the mountains to the ocean.
It was a typical Oregon day so I didn't see the boat until we were damn near landed. To even call it a boat seems wrong. At what size does a boat become a ship? I think right around the size of the Alexa. From the look of it I would have said that she was a luxury yacht but once we landed I began to notice differences. For one, there was no luxury.
As the rotors slowed down I was ushered off of the helicopter by a couple bored looking attendants off of the helideck and past a vast array of antennae and wiring being assembled on the top of the ship. I look to Osborn and pointed at the equipment. "What the hell Osborn, looking for ghosts?"
He levelled his gaze at me and cocked up his eyebrow, his hair remaining freakishly still in the stiff Pacific breeze. "Come on down below and I'll tell you what it is. We've got some booze down there and I need a drink."
The utter lack of luxury was even more apparent in the cabin. A pervasive smell of grease and burned solder was wafting through the air and all of the wall cladding was stripped off. The only seating to be had was on crates lining the walls and Osborn pointed towards one as he dug around in a cooler. Two beers appeared in his hand and one proffered to me. I looked at the bottle; Full Sail IPA. "Oh, you're fucking hilarious John. So what's the deal with the gear up top? What is all that crap?"
"That my good man, is an experimental stealth system on loan from some friends at DARPA. Essentially what it does it capture incoming radar signals, analyze them faster than realtime and spit back inverted waves to cancel out the signal. Fancy shit my friend, all very nütechi and officially non existent. It'll make sure we likewise won't exist according to government wonks and keep nosy ships off our back whilst we go about our business."
"Wait, did you say faster than real time?"
"Sure, the fast Fourier transforms needed to invert incoming radar waves require processing time. This has been the biggest stumbling block in creating an active stealth system for large objects. It's complex math and you can't do these kinds of equations fast enough to create an effective countermeasure. So, this particular system bypasses that problem. It simply does the math in a pocket of temporal dislocation. We send the problem back in time so the solution appears before we need it."
I pulled hard on my beer and looked over at John. "Are you fucking kidding me? How does that even work? Wait, never mind. Every time you try to explain to me how this weird shit works my brain threatens to go on strike. How about; What are we doing?"
"We're going to test out a new piece of shiny some friends of mine have cooked up. You just happened to present me with the perfect scenario. I'll let them explain it when we pick them up in Seattle. For now, you just kick back and enjoy this fine Pacific weather while I go get us under way. Oh, your gear is in this crate."
He pulled out a crate labelled "Nelson" from the stack on the wall of the cabin. A plain wooden shipping crate with Chinese stamps all over it slid to a stop a few feet from me.
"Open it up, familiarize yourself with everything inside. If you have any questions: too fucking bad." He laughed sharply and hoisted himself up the stairs to start yelling at his underlings.
I got familiar with the crate.
Inside I found three identical sets of navy TDUs, high visibility rain and floatation gear, a radio and a few other odds and ends for a long sea voyage. The bottom of the crate had something else entirely. A case containing a Chinese AR-15 clone, several thousand rounds of 5.56 NATO rounds and tactical body armor with helmet. Now, I am no stranger to firearms but there is a very big difference between a handgun and a selective fire machine gun. Especially when paired with combat armor. I stared at this for a while, just shaking my head and wondering why in the fuck I had called Osborn.
I was just about to go topside to spend some quality time yelling at him when his face popped into the cabin. "You found the toys huh? Yeah we're really hoping we don't need those but it's always better to be safe than sorry. Did you look underneath it?"
I pulled the gun case out of the crate and looked underneath. A waxed cotton sack looked back at me. Curious, I pulled the bag out and peered inside. Pants, shirt, hat, shoes all greeted me from inside the bag. It smelled like it had been stuck at the bottom of the ocean under a rotting kraken for a few millennia but everything seemed to be in good, if worn condition. Something was off here. I couldn't put my finger on it.
"Gods Osborn, why does this smell like it's been fucked by dead fish? And what the hell do I need body armor for?"
"Body armor? To stop bullets you fucking moron. As for the fishing gear; authenticity. You'll need to look just like a whaler where we're going and the smell is a big part of the scene. I'll let you know when you'll need that. For now, let's grab another beer and head upstairs. There's some folks I want you to meet."
Leaving that crate full of unknowable fuckery behind me I headed back up to the deck of the Alexa and was shocked to see the sunlight. It's mostly a myth to Portlanders. We don't believe in the sun. Alright, I was similarly shocked to find a full length dining table had been erected on the top of the deck replete with linen, silver and china place settings. I shot John a quizzical eyebrow. "Hey, I'm a classy dude. What can I say?"
# # #
Ladies and Gentlemen...
There was a considerable crowd of people assembled at the vast table. After we all found seating at the table Osborn stood up and cleared his throat. Once the din of voices died down he addressed the assembly."Good afternoon everyone, I am J. Sheridan Osborn. Some of you have worked for me before, some of you are new. All of you have been selected for this job for various reasons. First an foremost is your ability to keep your face shut. I don't think I need to remind anyone here of how seriously I take non-disclosure but I will."
"The last person to speak to the authorities about who I am and what I do has had their mind stripped of everything but the most basic rudiments of language and is currently enjoying a very long retreat at a mental hospital while they attempt to recover their pathetic personality. This may seem like an extreme measure. I don't really care what you think, you're all being rewarded quite handsomely for your silence so that should be the end of it."
I raised my hand slightly. "I uhhh..." He looked down quickly and whispered "Later man, I'll fill you in."
"As I was saying, you people are going to keep your mouths shut because I'm making you stupidly rich and I'll burn out your fucking neural structures if I even suspect that you'll double cross me. So now that we're all clear, let's introduce ourselves and our specialties."
People raised slightly from their seats an introduced themselves. A historian, sailor, surgeon, pilot, metallurgist, and so many scientists and engineers it made my head spin. One man stood out. Sitting opposite me at the table and dressed in a simple black suit he stood completely to his seven feet and slowly turned his head to survey the whole table. A bass rumble issued forth from him.
"Greetings everyone, my name is Master Ion Dragulin and I am a thaumaturge. Given the highly rationalist character of this gathering I expect some skepticism of my practice and prejudice towards my presence here. I will not tolerate this and my gracious benefactor Mr. Osborn has assured me I will have to suffer no ill will from any of you fine persons. If there is any among you who take issue with me and my arts let us hear it now."
A rumble of murmurs rippled through the assembled diners and one Dr. Dominic Graston rose to voice his opposition. The table quieted down a notch and he began:
"You are to do what exactly? Detect disturbances in the void? Cast spells of warding as we do the real work? I'll call it; you and your lot are a sham and a load of horse shit and I'm tired of your types showing up and making a scene every time we start to push the boundaries of physical reality. This is science you asshole. None of your theatrics or stage tricks will convince me otherwise. I have been to enough of these parties to know your type. You're just defrauding people. You disgust me and I won't be part of this mockery."
Dragulin looked down towards the table. "Is that how you truly feel?"
"Yes, you lying fucking prick. You aren't here to do anything except line your pockets "
Dragulin looked towards where John was sitting. John nodded towards the giant.
He sighed. He moved his hand towards Graston and spoke a word that I couldn't quite hear. My mind just turned the corner when I tried to understand it. For a moment nothing happened.
Dr. Graston laughed slightly, turning towards the rest of the table. "You see, what bu." At once he turned inside out. I don't know how else to describe it. It was like someone reached up through his asshole and pulled his head down through his body. The fountain of blood covered half the table and was soon matched in volume by myself and most everyone else at the table vomiting.
"Gagh, for fucks sake Ion you could have done something less messy." Osborn was wiping blood and viscera off of his glasses nonchalantly while I continued to dry heave into my hands. Ion looked calmly over the scene.
"My apologies Mr. Osborn it won't happen again. I trust that their is little doubt as to the effectiveness of my arts. As to my purpose, I am here to protect you from whatever comes through that gate you want so badly to open. Please pardon my mess.."
At that he sat down and looked around patiently as if anticipating the next person to speak. Not even a breeze disrupted the silence.
Osborn stood and replaced his glasses. "I think that's enough for now folks, we're all old friends now. We should be arriving in Seattle shortly to pick up the rest of our crew." He motioned for the deckhands to mop up the remains of Dr. Graston with a sweep of his hands. As the crew at the table broke off into small groups I moved over to the railing and started fumbling around in my pockets.
Fuck. I had quit smoking. There was no pack in any pockets and hadn't been for months. Double fuck.
Out of the corner of my eye a large hand holding a silver slim case of cigarettes appeared. "Mr. Nelson, may I offer you a cigarette? I do apologize for this unpleasantness. Please, take one." Ion Dragulin was towering over me looking exceptionally unruffled and wearing an inappropriately warm smile.
"There's uhh, nothing weird in these right? No fucking opium or powdered tiger dicks or any shit like that?"
He nodded, I caved. It tasted like shit. I coughed for a second but revelled in the pain. It was better than my recent memories. Dragulin lit up one of his own and took a long slow drag, exhaling through his nose into the sea spray.
"Mr. Osborn an ourselves have something in common Mr. Nelson. Unlike the rest of these people, we are in the habit of believing six impossible things before breakfast. I think we may work very well together, the three of us. These scientists have no imagination, no faith. They bore me."
I took another foul and delicious drag. "What makes you think I'm any different? I don't snap my fingers and turn people into hamburger for kicks. I'm just an underemployed writer who drinks too fucking much. I try and stay away from all this weirdness that John gets into."
"Ah, but you have the capacity my friend. Rationalists are always looking for strings, you and I are looking for the puppet masters. Trust me Mr. Nelson, I know what I speak of. In any case, we will soon be in Seattle and you will meet some of my associates."
I snubbed the cigarette out on the railing. "In Seattle with a pack of fucking necromancers. What. The. Fuck."
"I am not a necromancer sir, I am a thaumaturge. Although, there are plenty of them about. Would you like an introduction? I believe the county coroner in Clackamas dabbles in the evenings and I have her phone number.."
"No, that's alright. I don't want to know these things. Why the fuck do I ever call John?"
"Because I'm the life of the party Nelson. That's why you called me." I turned to see Osborn leaning on the railing and looking smug and wearing a fresh button down black shirt. "The three of us are going for a helicopter ride. We'll meet up with the boat in the morning. Good gods Nelson look at your clothing!" I looked at the vomit and Dr. Graston decoration.
"What about it?"
# # #
Call me Ishmael
"It was designed by Masons you know. A bunch of amateurs playing at sacred geometry. No wonder you can't get anything done there, the energies are all wrong, too controlled and tame. Now if you want to get some real Work done, try New Orleans. That is a town that runs on Magick my friend."Osborn was gestuculating wildly, bits of oyster flying off his cocktail fork and towards the surrounding tables. He had been stuffing his face with the ocean for at least an hour and he showed no signs of slowing. Everything fell victim; a plate of crabs, two whole lobsters, three bowls of clam chowder and now deep fried oysters had been sacrificed. Poseidon weeps.
Dragulin was similarly unstoppable. His face was perpetually hunched over the plates of crab he was consuming and apparently hadn't bothered to breath in some time. I had been mulling over my single bowl of stew the whole time. I have no idea how these assholes were capable of putting down that much food after watching, and in Ion's case causing, a man to unwillingly invert. I couldn't get it out of my head.
The newcomers to the table were a friendly and generally boring looking couple. They had been introduced as Amanda and Terence Cuthbert. Terence had a weak handshake, timid eyes and a retiring presence. he was nearly invisible. His wife was built like a fortress. She could withstand an assault by the British Armada and harbor the rebelling Americans in her bosom. Breasts like that have satellites. Her personality matched.
"We've never had any problems getting things done in the District dear Osborn. Perhaps you should leave the Magick to the mages and stick to writing obscure philosophy books? How do you think things get done in the federal capital? We have clients all over Capitol Hill. You'd be surprised how many heart attacks we are contracted for."
Osborn looked incredulous. "See, that's what I'm saying. A heart attack? That's not a Working, it's just lazy. I can do that with some potassium chloride and a little luck. Now the second Bush term? That was a work of fucking art."
"Well thank you kindly John. Mr. Rove paid us quite handsomely didn't he dear? Oh yes, a very good client. Although it was distressing having to use that many virgins to keep Cheney from succumbing to his condition."
I looked up from my soup. "What condition?" My dinner mates looked at me blankly.
Ion looked over from his crab graveyard. "He's a lich Eriq. He hasn't been truly living since the 18th century. How could you not tell?"
I shut the fuck up and ate my soup.
Osborn knocked back another beer and pointed his fork at Terence. "Now as much as I appreciate the pleasantries, you and I have business to conduct Terence."
Terence smiled and nodded. "Of course Mr. Osborn, I have the manuscript here with me." He reached under the table for his briefcase and pulled out a small rectangular package wrapped in black cloth. "First edition. There's just a hint of Mellville's DNA here on the outside cover. Looks like a bit of blood and some skin cells are still hanging around. I've brought him around twice using this and some other personal affects from an estate sale. Do you need any of them? I have a good seller in New York."
Osborn had wiped the savaged remains of his dinner off, slipped on white glove and was thumbing through the book entranced. "No Terry, this is perfect. Thank you so much, this will make the whole process much simpler. I'll have your payment arranged this evening."
I peered over at the book. Great Khalis Cunt I thought. That's a first edition Moby Dick. I started drooling in my soup. "Hey John, can I see that?"
He snarled and glared at me. "Fuck off, this is costing me more than you're worth. Yes, it's authentic. No, you can't touch."
What an ass.
As Terry began to thank John his wife blasted through his sentiment. "OH, you will pay us Osborn. I don't care how long we've known each other. That book is worth it's weight in Philosopher's Stone and we're due a nice long vacation after the last couple years."
"Yes, you'll get your money you shameless mercenary. It's a shame I can't bribe you both to come with us. I'm sure Ion would like the company."
Ion nodded. "It'll be a great ride Terry. Are you certain you can't be bought? Why not take your time off with us?"
"I'm sorry Ion. I promised Amanda that we'd take a vacation in this dimension this time. We're going to Scotland."
Dinner veered off in a thousand strange directions, conversation steered around me as if I was a navigation buoy. I excused myself early and left the table to head upstairs. Osborn may be a terrible prick but he's no cheapskate. The Boka restaurant is attached to a modern luxury hotel gem called Hotel 1000. It was good to travel with these paranormal Brahmin, they seem to have access to unusual amounts of currency. The room was lathered in Babylonian excess and I was set to indulge as much of it as possible. I spoke the concierge at the desk and had a bottle of ancient bourbon, a case of beer and a selection of cigars sent up. Excess is an art and I am an artist.
Morning cracked over Seattle in a pale silver wash. I pulled myself out of bed and into the shower just in time. Osborn started banging on the door as I stood surveying the results of the night in my towel. At some point last night a drug dealer had arrived bearing a considerable quantity of cocaine. It appeared to have been attacked by werewolves. Bloody werewolves ruin everything...
As I let him in Osborn shoved his way past me into the room and yelling. "Get your clothes on now, we're taking off in ten minutes. Don't ask questions."
"Wow, yeah. Good morning John. Nice to see you sir."
I yanked on my pants and shirt, snatching up my bag and stuffing my shoes on while cursing my endless headache. Osborn was vibrating nervously. "Hurry up fucknuts. It is time to GO."
"Fucking hell John, I'm not firing on all cylinders right now. I need coffee. What is so urgent?"
I looked up from tying my shoes. At this point I notice the blood dripping onto the carpet and the 9mm in John's hand. “FFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUU...”
"Let's go NOW!"
A blast from behind me threw me towards the door. A dust and blood covered Dragulin had been blown bodily through the adjoining suite and rolled to a stop in the middle of mine still smoking from the green fireball that had propelled him. Osborn grabbed my arm and shoved me through the open door and began firing into the hole in the wall. Ion had rolled up and was making for the door when the hole in the wall belched another green fireball.
Ion reached up his hands and speaking softly, rolled the fireball around him and through the window to his right. I had never seen Tai Chi used against green fireballs but I had little time to be impressed. The shattering of the hotel window filled my ears a split second before Osborn screamed into my face.
"RUN YOU IDIOT!"
We ran as hard as we could towards the elevator and I heard John roll off another clip behind us as we skidded to a halt at the end of the hallway. I turned quickly, looking behind me to see what he was firing at. Ion was knocked onto the floor again, blood oozing from his face and over him stood 12 feet of Nasty Fucking Critter. It was made of fangs. I don't think there was any flesh there at all. It was a dentists joke, a dental elemental. Just a twelve foot tall mouth with green flames licking out over the edge of its lips.
Well, I was wrong. It had eyes. It had just seen me and it let out a shit inducing scream as it started towards us. I ran. Fast.
The stairs blurred past us as we ran down them, John desperately trying to reload his 9mm and me only focused on getting as far away from the Whatever The Fuck That Was. I could hear it rattling around the stairwell as we burst into the lobby and past the front desk. I tried to look away from the front desk as it was covered from one end to the other in a fine red paste that used to be employee. Everything that wasn't shredded was on fire.
I threw the doors of the lobby open and ran out onto the sidewalk of a 10 AM Seattle just coming to grips with what was happening in the hotel. Evidently the green fireball had caused a stir. I could hear sirens bouncing around the concrete canyon as the Fire Department rushed to deal with the scene. John pointed me towards a waiting open car door and told me to get inside. I blew through the gawking bystanders and shoved my way to the car.
I collapsed into the back seat of the car as Osborn landed nearly on top of me and the car sped off. After we rearranged ourselves I lost my shit on Osborn wholly. I screamed at him until was hoarse and had run out of terrible things to say about his lineage, the nature of his sexual preferences (cattle if I remember correctly) and every other aspect of his being.
When I curse a man, I summon all of my strength. His indomitable hair bent under my assault, his glasses melted around the frame just a little bit. I could feel myself getting up to full steam. Finally his hand threw up a white flag and I relented.
"Alright, things got out of hand."
"Out of hand? No, my drinking last night got 'out of hand'. That fucking demon almost ate my hand."
"Look, I'm sorry alright. I'll make it up to you."
"No!" I screamed loud enough to rattle the windows. "You will let me out of this car, I'm going home. You and your mages and your weird shit can all fuck right off. I'm going back to Portland and getting drunk. You are fucking crazy Osborn."
He glared at me and picked up his cellphone. "Just keep your cool. I'm calling in backup. Hey Wilson, be sure to mask our exit."
The man who was driving our car nodded and remained silent while Osborn painted mudras on his phone. The driver was weaving us through Seattle traffic and strange turns steadily moving towards Madison Park. There is this special kind of driving that rests between fast enough to warrant attention and too slow to feel like escaping. The driver of this vehicle had managed to impress this delicate balance on his passengers. I was impressed. I was in the hands of a vehicular artist. I have often wondered if there is a special school for teaching this fine art. Some kind of Zendo dedicated to the Balanced Drive.
"So who's backup? The National Guard? Godzilla?"
"Orkin. You'd be surprised what kind of pest control they offer to the right clients."
"Why am I not surprised? Have you heard from Terry or Amanda?"
Osborn looked ill for a moment. “They’ll be fine on their own.”
I looked him dead in the face. "I'm out. I can't do this Osborn. It's too much."
He smiled slowly and leaned back in his seat.
"I guess that means you don't want to meet Ahab then. Fine."
"Wait, meet Ahab?"
The wheels crunched gravel into a stop in front of the docks. He opened the door, looked over at me and smiled.
"Call me Ishmael."
# # #
Project Silverlock
Evidently the Seattle Police don't take kindly to green fireballs erupting out hotel windows, hard to explain dead body pastes and the pervasive fug of Weird Shit hanging over a high end luxury hotel. There were choppers circling the downtown blocks with snipers hanging out of the doors. News copters followed them on every pass, shooting the 11 o'clock footage and making asinine comments. I wondered how this would play out in the media.Osborn was standing on the foredeck as we made our way into the line for the locks and laughing hysterically while playing with his phone. I walked up beside him and looked down. Twitter.
“We have got to go right now. It would seem that someone caught our little escapade on video and put it up on Youtube. Not cool, we’re leaving now.”
The constant drone of the circling helicopters was ramping up every moment that we stood there and I finally looked around to see why. The same white, anonymous helicopter that I had arrived on was landing on the other end of the boat. Inside was a piece of shredded beef that was formerly Ion Dragulin, Thaumaturge. People were piling towards the copter as the blades spun down and I joined Osborn in the crush.
He slouched out of the passenger seat and walked straight to Osborn. He slapped a bloody black cloth box into his hands. He wheezed “Your book sir.” and proceeded towards the deck at an alarming rate. Two young medics from the group rushed over and the crowd starting breaking apart as the vessel, set sail.
I looked at Osborn, who was staring at the book intently. “OK you dick head, no one seems to be trying to eat my corpse at the moment. Let’s have it. Who is trying to kill me, why should I call you fucking Ishmael and WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON HERE?”
Osborn looked flatly at me. “Right, we’ll need some drinks.”
Sitting down in the hold once more, Osborn passed me the bottle of vodka he had liberated from the galley.
“It’s time for a little story. We’ll be on the boat for a long time now. We’re heading for Panama, then on to Nantucket Island for a final check before we launch. You have been drafted into Project Silverlock. In fact, you very much are Project Silverlock.”
I slugged hard on the lowball vodka. “I’ll bite, what is Project Silverlock and why am I it?”
“Glad you asked. Project Silverlock is our attempt to access another reality, in this case a fictional one. You are important because you already have strong ties to that reality. We want to use your head as a conduit to enter Moby Dick.”
“But, fucking why?” I pleaded. “What good will that do?”
“None. This is a test. If it works well then we’ll keep ramping it up. We chose Moby Dick because it has strong ties to a real world location, it’s based in our version of reality on a true story and we happen to have that marvelous copy of the first edition available.”
I poked the bottle into his chest. “So what was that thing that tried to eat my face?”
He swilled hard and coughed. “Essexian Radicals. They’re a cult that surrounds Herman Melville and his relics. They have been after that copy for a long time before Terence got his hands on it. They were particularly pissed that Terence and Amanda were bringing Hermans ghost around to amuse cocktail parties in Georgetown. I guess they saw me as a weak link and picked this time to attack. Thank the eldritch horrors of the deep that Ion was around.”
“Yeah, that didn’t look like a classic literature nerd Osborn; it looked like a tooth fairy someone bred with a lawnmower.”
“Certainly you realize that some cults have honest to Shiva sorcerers in their ranks? One of their number must have called up some kind of critter from a child's nightmare, or a construct made from a dental office chair and some dead kittens. Ion will know. He’s conjured far nastier things and if I know him he probably called up something terrible to deal with their fireball launching breakfast ruining death machine.”
“Seriously man, I have no idea how you stay so cavalier about all this crazy shit. I’m starting to doubt my sanity over here and you talk about conjuring demons like it happens every day. What the fuck Osborn? What the fuck kind of life do you lead?”
He straightened up his back. “You really want to know? It’s simple. Think about electricity. Now you plug in a vacuum cleaner to the wall and it works. You expect it to, it’s part of your day to day reality. It is as invisible as the rest of the smoothly functioning techno organism we call society. This is not the truth of the thing.”
“The truth of electricity is that generating it, distributing it and keeping it from burning down whole cities is mind bogglingly complicated. It takes an enormous amount of people to force lightning to behave itself and power Playstations. There are engineers who spend their entire lives studying nothing but electricity and still know only a fraction of how it actually works. Shit, how much do you actually know about writing? From what I can tell you don’t know shit.”
I flicked him off and took the bottle from his hands.
“But see that’s my point. You still do it every day. We don’t know jack shit. None of us. Even people who appear to be completely in control of their knowledge are just skilled at hiding their ignorance. The only difference between you and I is that I stopped expecting reality to conform to my opinions of it a really long time ago and I gave up on knowing anything at all. I just look at it like electricity. Guys like Ion? They’re just master electricians. They don’t really understand how magick works, but they can damn sure direct it to turn you into a newt.”
I got up and walked across the hold, nursing the bottle against my chest and cursing.
“Alright you dick. Fine. So what’s in it for me? Why should I go along with this crazy shit just for a music review?”
Osborn laughed hard enough to rattle the cabin. “You mean this doesn’t excite you? We’re going to step into another universe and you’re worried about a fucking record review?”
“Hey, fuck off. You don’t have editors clawing at your nuts about deadlines and ‘buzz’. I need to get this done. It’s not just about the deadline, I can’t get it moving. It’s the first time in a decade that I can’t find the words to describe a record. I’m not thrilled about this.”
He smiled slyly. “I might have something to do with that.”
I was dumfounded. “What?”
“I had a friend place a psionic block in your head to make sure you couldn’t get the review written. I had to get you obsessed with Moby Dick. I needed a writer for my project. I told you, you are Project Silverlock.”
-To be continued, edited, revised, discarded, drug out of the trash and revised, beaten with reeds and possibly published.
