Further Adventures (40 page)

“No. It’s different. In
here
—” I drummed my fingertips on my forehead. “It isn’t just chew & swallow in here. Human beings evolved different from fish. The sparks in my brain they’re ideas. My memories. Individual personal brain waves and…and if that doesn’t add up to my immortal soul then you can tell me what
does
.”

“Nothing does.” He shook his head very low.

“The ancient Egyptians had the idea also the Greeks. And 2,000
years before the Hebrew people took it for granted everybody came with a soul inside them. Before that too. In China.”

“People always want to deny the basic facts of life. In particular how it’s so short.”

“That doesn’t prove there’s no such thing as a soul. I think it proves there is.”

“You’re right Ray,” very sad he agreed. “It doesn’t prove anything.”

“Everything real in the world starts out as something imaginary. A building does. A baseball game. A mathematical equation. Take E = MC
²
—it’s imaginary but it’s something real in the world too. You see it everywhere you look.”

“Keep working on it Ray. It’s a promising theory. I wish I could believe there actually is something else standing between the grind of our lives and this mortal fear I’ve got that there’s no point to a single minute of it.” Dr. Godfrey wiped his damp forehead on the heels of his hands. “But you can’t really say anything like that has much of a survival value can you.”

“I tried to give her the kiss of life,” I answered him even if he did not ask. “I didn’t know what else to do.”

“You did the best you could do in the circumstances. Did you know she was asthmatic?”

“Usually she’s got her medicine with her in a little bag. But since she’s at Mount Holyoak the nuns don’t let her carry it with her uniform.” I said it the way I remembered it. “So it got left in her locker when I picked her up.”

“If you want me to tell her father you can give me his number. Or would you rather?”

“No. Tell him. Special Agent John Newberry. His office is the F.B.I. in Albuquerque. He can find me at home.”

“Whatever you want Ray.” His Voice was infected by my sad tone. “You spend 31 Years in this business and you think sooner or later you’ll get used to it. But it’s worse when you see a child go. It hits me harder. I swear to God when it stops affecting me like this that’s the day I’ll retire.”

“Me too.” From the door I said, “I’ll go back to my apartment and wait for him.”

Anything that is made you can not destroy it either Matter or Energy it can only change. This is a Scientific fact this is a Law of Nature. Ergo when I use this gun my manly form is going to change so much you will not recognize it anymore. All I have to do is fire a bullet & that is it The End of me.

SO WHAT I am very happy about this eventual fate. By me Death is only the end of one thing & the beginning of something else nor this is not just wishful thinking either. There is plenty of Evidence & data on this Theory there is plenty of proof from the realm of Science.

Look at a banana. From a green bud to a yellow piece of nutritious fruit to being brown & rotten just a stain of starch & sugar Molecules. That is the Life Cycle of a banana. Or a boulder for instance. Time will grind it down into a pile of sand on the beach. Or even my dear Raymobile started out shiny in the Ford showroom & today it is a junkyard rustbucket. Nothing in the world can avoid this Condition every item you can name has to disintegrate in the earthly Oxygen.

And look Beyond besides. A Human Being is small potatoes compared to the Stars and a Star does not last forever. The Sun is going to boil down to its smallest parts at a certain time. Down to its Molecules & further down to its Atoms and that tradition applies to a person the same.

I consider this amazing fact & I am calm all over. How I am made out of Atomic Particles from the opening day of the Universe. The cells of my flesh & blood they are just a different Arrangement of the original Atoms of the Big Bang. I have the seeds of that explosion in every part of my body those violent Atoms are buzzing in my trigger finger this minute. Maybe this is the explanation of Violence in the world it is the Past breaking out of us.

Nor the Stars can not escape their Doom so how can I? A star will repeat the Past when it runs out of gas—BOOM!—it collapses it explodes it disintegrates & sprays out its mortal remains but that is not the end of the Story. Clouds of Stardust float out in empty space and then the effect of Gravity takes over.

Some Particles cling together by Magnetic Force & roam into the Gravity Field of another burning sun which attracts them & turns them into the core of a new Heavenly Body. Or other Atoms will attach in the right conditions in the cosmic dust & ignite each other and then there is the core of a new Star. In the future new Stars will cover the sky in new patterns which is a sight I regret I will not live long enough to see.

Here is my personal Conclusion—

I believe there’s a force inside every Event in my Life in every different sensation—what I heard & saw what I said & did every Past Episode which stays in my Mind—and they add up the same way Microscopic coral animals add up to a reef. Everything I remember. The Atoms of my Being. I preserve them all together in my Brain Waves I believe my Soul is located there. (Dr. Godfrey write to that doctor in Sweden! See if his Research agrees with my ideas!)

It is a Medical fact when I die my body will lose its grip from head to
toe nor my brain will not have any strength left. So it can not hold in my individual Atoms anymore & they will rise out fly apart & travel upward into the Air & Beyond. Up there they circle around in the Gravity Field of the Earth & all of my Particles will mix into the millions of millions which rise out of other people’s ended lives.

The sight of Annie walking down the hall in the Liberty Building—When I ran into Amelia in the Blackout—My Voice of The Green Ray saying, “Captain! I can’t
wait
to get my hands on Horvath!”—When John Newberry poured me a cup of coffee at his kitchen table—Dolores training her lizard—all of these specks of time will float & sparkle above. In the solid blackout of Space around us they reflect the Invisible Light.

By the Law of Gravity those particles will attract each other & join up like a strand of beads in new Combinations different Atoms of different Human Beings. I do not know how many have to be there but when they weigh the perfect amount together they form a new Soul. Which is heavy enough & Gravity pulls on it again pulls it back to Earth.

Newberry I THANK YOU for this wonderful chance to come back to Civilization! I feel like a new person just thinking about it! So hurry up already I want to go.

Furthermore when you broadcast Radio Waves they travel out in Space forever nonstop. According to this idea all of the Episodes of The Adventures Of The Green Ray are still going strong!

I hope by some possibility they can change the course of a few Human Particles before they return. Thereby I can still be a healthy influence on young people. For instance my fearless example of manly
behavior when I followed the clues that had to lead me face to face with Lionel Horvath for the Final Time. How I acted to the uppermost degree I did not shrink I fought him to The End.

I remember what is going to happen—

I hate him. I know what the only item was between them I know what Connected him to her. MONEY.

MONEY is the Electricity.

MONEY is the blood of the world.

Blue skies smiling at me Nothing but blue skies do I see

Here he is. I can hear him outside down below by the patio chairs. Coming from the Pool Area. I thought so.

This is the Climax of my Life & I am sitting on the floor in my pajamas with the business end of a loaded gun in my mouth & a rotten bastard maniac tapping his silver razor very polite on my window asking me if I could please open the front door! Well FUCK ending up this way FUCK being his helpless victim! The hell I am going quiet! I am coming to the door all right!

I AM COMING BACK—

JON STEPHEN FINK
is the author of the novel
A Storm in the Blood,
which is also available from Harper Perennial. His poetry has been published in the
Chicago Review
and
The New York Quarterly,
among other magazines. Born in Philadelphia and raised in Los Angeles, he now lives in Great Britain, where he is working on his sixth novel,
The Return of The Green Ray.

Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.

“Extraordinary…. The novel that’s surprised and impressed me most [this year].”

—Douglas Adams, “Books of the Year,”
The Guardian
(London)

“Dazzling…. Never loses [its] light touch…. Fink not only faithfully re-creates the old world of radio serials but also brings his naïve main character into the morally ambiguous 1980s and gives him a sad, stubborn dignity.”

—Chris Petrakos,
Chicago Tribune

“Marvelous…. [Its] two plots, past and present, trot in and out of the ring like trick ponies, carrying an impossibly colorful but appealing cast of characters….
Further Adventures
makes for a swift and thrilling ride. The plot is as absurd as it is intricate, yet the characters, though types, are never cardboard…. It recalls such faux-pulp classics as Nathanael West’s
Miss Lonelyhearts
and Charles Portis’s
True Grit
. Like the classics—like its hero—it’s fun and sad at the same time.”

—Terry Bisson,
Washington Post

“A freewheeling, high-energy tour de force…. Breathtaking in its juxtaposition of wisecracks and tragedy, with a veritable Don Quixote running loose in the American Southwest: a distinctive debut.”

—
Kirkus Reviews
(starred review)

“Impressive…. Fink has a fine ear for dialogue [and] Ray Green is a truly original creation.”

—Dominic Wells,
Time Out
(London)

“Uses Green’s semi-literate style to beautiful effect….
Further Adventures
is creative, wrenching, even funny—an intelligent look at pop morality taken to its logical extreme.”

—James Poniewozic,
New York Perspectives

A Storm in the Blood

If He Lived

Long Pig

Woke Up Laughing

Cluck! The True Story of Chickens in the Cinema

Cover design by Robin Bilardello

Cover illustration Peter Richardson/Getty Images

FURTHER ADVENTURES
. Copyright © 1991, 2009 by Jon Stephen Fink. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

Adobe Digital Edition September 2009 ISBN 978-0-06-194290-7

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