Planet Fever (19 page)

But here we were, and I thought back to Agent W’s spiel to Art B. Well, the radio host, about an operation that was in fact trying to do just that. Do they really change the past or just
our perception
of it? Was this Interrogator asshole trying to get into my head to change
my
memories? To make void my past?

“I’m not sure,” I answer, both his question and mine.

THE GONDOLA
pulled into the bay atop
Marconi Peak
and we disembarked. The late afternoon breeze whispered cool reminders of the night’s approach as the sun headed down. We walked over to a large three-story lodge where the few people lounging on the deck waved at Fillono.

“This is a more tranquil peak and lodge. Mostly-a-writers, painters or people who just want peace and quiet stay here. Also our library/rental shop is here. I thought you would-a-like it.”

“Looks nice.”

He pointed out the modest library along with a cafe and a mini ski-shop housing a cute young woman who read a book about cryptography. “This is Lisa. She is the caretaker and librarian of the
Marconi Lodge and Library
. Lisa, this is the writer Edward Bikaver, Jr. He will be-a-staying here for a bit.”

Lisa smiled a courteous one and nodded as we exchanged a polite handshake.

“
A Farewell Letter from a Sentient Artificial Intelligence System to the Human Race
—I liked that story. It had heart,” she quipped.

I was impressed that she had heard of me, and was more impressed that she was unimpressed by me: that meant she knew good writing, or at least didn’t care to know
bad
writing—which was most of my writing.

I stood there—a complete schmuck. “Oh. Thanks. Yeah….”

“Nice meeting you. See you around.” She resumed reading her cryptography book.

“Yeah—you too.”

We walked over to a staircase and climbed up.

Fillono unlocked the door and we entered my quarters: a cottage-style suite on the third story of this large log-cabin ski lodge. Cozy and comfortable, big but not preposterous and outside rested a patio-deck with a Jacuzzi overlooking the mountains. Fillono gave me the brief tour: kitchenette, bathroom, lounge area with a TV and fireplace, and the bedroom. Wooden, simple and classy.

The afternoon’s light was quickly turning into evening’s darkness, and an orange-purple hue commandeered the sky with a golden overlay: the quality was quite hallucinatory. Fillono made a few cups of cappuccino with a loud machine in the kitchen, and we went and sat out on the deck and sipped.

I kicked back. “So that’s it. You woke up and found yourself Dean and Mayor of Utopia in the Colorado Rockies.”

“Yes, Eddie. You know, the Designer he works in-a-crazy ways….” He breathed and sipped his cup. “Eh, so what happened to you?

“I don’t know. I think I woke up in some sort of hospital or something. Everything was foggy. They pilled me up on some strong meds for a while. Nothing made sense.”

Fillono sipped and listened. “Ah, yes Eddie—many things they-a-don’t make sense. We edit it together and make it the story so it will have-a-some kind of sense to us, even if it is all nonsense.”

I thought about the word “nonsense,” which prompted me to think about Froward Moroni—the madcap ringleader of the company of the carefree willing rogues, also known as the Free-Thought-and-Will Champions. “What about Moroni, whatever happened to him?”

Fillono sighed and pondered.

A little blue jay landed on the railing and scoped for potential crumbs.

Fillono tore off a tiny piece of his croissant and waited for the bird to approach. “The franchiser of the disenfranchised … the giver of-a-voice to the voiceless … the great re-treader. I was going to call my film about our artistic adventures ‘On the Road with Retreads,’ but the fire destroyed all my-a-film. Sad. He was a nice man … many of the people in the group were-a-wildflowers, with no past they wanted, no place society would embrace them, and nothing to-a-look forward to. Moroni pointed them to-a-something, and gave them—us—a place to belong. I am glad for-a-the man to have been in my life.” The bird nipped a bit of the bread from Fillono’s fingers and flew off.

“I had the same take, but I recall having a sense of unease about him that last night … as though we had all gotten taken by a con-man or cult leader,” I said.

Fillono nodded as he mulled over my statement. “Yes Eddie, maybe he was-a-tricking us. But for what? For money, from a bunch of artists and-a-bums? He took nothing from me, I never signed anything with him, and we were free to leave if we-a-wanted. I think the reason you-a-think that is because
he
did not produce any
tangible
work that you could-a-touch, or read or view like a play or poem or music. He was a composer of people, of us—
we
were his notes, his actors, his paintings. He-a-produced us and the whole thing was like a living, continuous piece of art that itself produced life and art. He-a-manipulated us maybe like I manipulate an actress to show a certain emotion for a scene in a movie I make. He conducted us to show
our potential.
For that, I am-a-glad. Now Eddie, I am not a complete idiot: what were his
motivations,
his-a-large-scale intentions? Those I cannot know because I have not-a-seen him or-a-heard from him since that night. Imagination can go anywhere about what he was-a-doing, because one thing is certain: he was a
mastermind.
”

The blue jay returned for a second helping. Fillono held out another piece. This time the bird approached with confidence and bravado.

I concurred with Fillono’s assessment: nothing could be proven about Moroni’s intentions. I went off gut-hunches all my life and that got me rot-gut drunk and nowhere most of the time.

But the itch wouldn’t go away: Moroni
was
a mastermind and did have some intention and I knew
it was big. My own notes pertaining to the man featured words such as “subversion,” “funny business,” “rebellion,” deception,” “revolution,” “the galactic hornswoggle” and “the system” used in association with him. His intent was clear to me and that was this: to subvert THE SYSTEM.

Which system I didn’t know.

“And he vanished like a phantom,” I said.

Fillono nodded and gazed into his cup. “I tried to locate him a few times. Theories abounded: he was a communist operative from-a-the former Soviet Union, he was a CIA ‘change agent’, he was a Vatican assassin, he was-a-from the future, an alien, or he didn’t exist—that he was a ‘shared memory’ implant. That is what the poor souls in the asylums and skid rows told me when I asked about him. Sad.”

The blue jay took off and I closed my eyes and relaxed. A gentle wind brushed through me and I shivered.

We sat and sipped our drinks in silence for a bit as the sun set.

“Eddie, you-a-relax. I must go and teach a class. Later maybe we-a-get dinner. We catch up more, yes?” Fillono finished his cappuccino.

“Of course, yeah Fred. Thanks. This is a great place.”

We stood up and shook hands.

“Moroni as an alien. That’s a good one,” I said.

Fillono winked. “Ciao. I will-a-call you in a few hours.”

With that, he walked back into my room and then exited from the place. I sat back down and marveled how fast it had gotten dark.

“SPEAKING OF
aliens, I recently learned that the pronunciation of ‘inalienable’ is not ‘in’-‘alien’-‘able’, it is ‘in’-‘a’-‘lien’-‘able’.” A voice with the confidence of a game show host cut through the lean air.

From the shadows appeared a large-grinned, glint-eyed sturdy man in dark military fatigues, rappelling down from the sky onto the deck. His name-patch read:
Col. P. West
. The very man Fillono had gone into business with. I could’ve sworn I had seen and met this man before, but when and where?

He landed and stood before me as casually as though he didn’t just come from the sky. He unclipped his harness and seated himself at the table and continued his spiel: “…the term has to do with ‘liens’, not aliens, so when we say we have ‘inalienable’ rights it means no one can put a lien on anyone else’s inherent rights. In-alien-able would work, though, for I see it as we all have rights that cannot be made ‘alienable’, or alienated from us. So this would be like a heteronym—same spelling, different meanings, different pronunciations—but could still connote a loosely similar concept. Fascinating, eh…? Are you cold? Should I turn the AC down?”

My eyes transfixed on what was just moments prior the dark outline of the top of the mountain beneath the starry night sky but was now a painting of that same mountain beneath the same starry sky, a painting which hung on the wall behind where Col. West sat, which was behind a desk inside what was apparently his office….

I felt a million miles away from my prior location, as though I had been
raptured
from the Rocky Mountains to wherever this office was in the twinkling of an eye.

What the hell just happened?

Col. West stood and approached me. He snapped his fingers a few times in front of my face. “You with me, Bikaver? You zoning out on that painting or what?”

My reflection stared back at me in his mirrored sunglasses. “Where is Fillono? Where the hell am I?”

“Oh—you were
there
again. Must’ve been the painting. Buddy, you are in my facility, having another episode. Can I get you something?”

“Uh, yeah. I could use some water.”

West snapped his fingers and pointed them at me like a pair of six-shooters. “You got it.”

He walked to his mini wet-bar across from the couch, where he sat and whistled while pouring a glass of water. He poured himself a glass of ginger ale and high-shelf Scotch over a few ice cubes.

For reasons I cannot comprehend I wondered if the good Col. had ever snorted cocaine in the back of a cab on his way to a Tijuana whorehouse, taken peyote, or ever passed out in a gutter. I attempted to imagine him—this man with precise hair, pressed military get-up, shiny teeth and happy-go-lucky “awe-shucks” disposition—in any “compromising” situation. I couldn’t, so I filed it into one of those “blind spots” of the imagination, like fathoming your own parents screwing. I’m certain he could never envision me putting a knife into an enemy combatant’s chest or repelling from a helicopter into a hot war-zone.

Like a radio transmission tuning in, a manic voice reverberated from a back room of my mind, a voice I thought I had heard before but could not remember from where: “
Bikaver—Ron Reagan here. Do not forget, he’s the enemy, man—you’re in the lion’s den and don’t you forget it! He will try to mind-hump you!”

I pushed the thought aside, wondering where the hell it came from. Something someone had mentioned back in a cabin—about speaking inside my head in the voice of Ronald Reagan.

The Colonel handed me a glass of water and resumed his at-ease position behind his large oak desk. He straightened a small bust of Aristotle and blew some dust off the computer keyboard, then readjusted the placement of the small Samurai-sword sitting next to the monitor.

“Eddie, we have been developing unmanned air vehicles that will be able to take out an entire wedding-party via remote-control, and at a fraction of the cost. Foreign weddings are the enemy.” He sipped his Scotch and smirked. “I’m kidding, of course. The future is now. Imagine neutralization of enemy combatants without so much as costing one human life: we will do it electro-chemically. But….” he snapped his fingers “…delivery systems are the hitch, so we’ve tested different vectors with yo-yo results: intravenous injections, water-supply dosage, aerial spraying, bio-engineering it into the food—the human mechanism is one resilient unit.” Another small sip. “What acts as a pacifying agent in one person might cause another one to go berserk.” He polished off his drink, tipping his glass back to slide an ice cube into his mouth.

What was this pitch all about?

I couldn’t figure out how I’d gotten there, why I was there and for what reason I seemed to have landed right in the middle of this pitch on experimental drug weaponry systems by this strange self-styled “renaissance Colonel” of the United States Air Force.