An elderly bald man squatting in San Quentin eventually obtained the dried ejaculate. He used a letter opener to scrape and fleck the hardened cum onto an ornately decorated dinner plate. His small hands moved feverishly as he hummed a gospel tune. Eventually, the shavings were sprinkled about the plate. He smiled to himself as he stood up to admire his work and then undid his pants. He proceeded to urinate on the plate.
An incandescent light spread over the San Francisco Bay. People around the area, especially those who had been watching the sunset from the Berkeley marina just moments earlier, gasped and gawked, puzzled as they were by the wispy strands of moonlight flooding the Bay. A flock of bats at least ten thousand strong descended upon Coit Tower. The bald man in San Quentin looked up toward the ceiling of his adopted cell with fear in his eyes. He finished his business just as quickly, although a few drops of urine dripped onto his boxers and pants.
The soft, pale light continued to seep through the clouds. A bemused necromancer hesitated to speak when asked why the earth was being besieged by ungodly wraiths. What good would it do? The citizens of the Bay Area seemed to have simultaneously lost their minds. Mass schizophrenia? Collective hypersensitivity? Who knew? Certainly not the necromancer. All he could do was keep from laughing out loud. He walked slowly toward Union Square so he could get a better view of the sky.
Winking transvestites riding painted donkeys made their way down Market Street waving to the frightened, mesmerized sky-gawkers. Wicked wise worthy women washed waste while wondering why winsome wanderers won’t wish well. A boy cruised down East Fifth guffawing heartily. In Jenny’s kitchen, little mean Nina offered Peter ripe squash. “Tom unloaded Veronica’s weighty xylophone,” yammered Zack.
The eerie, pale light remained. Those still watching turned to stone while the rest of the Bay Area fell asleep wherever they were. Golden Gate Park was littered with sleeping vagrants, homeless bud merchants, families, elderly couples, tourists, travelers, cyclists, and pedestrian commuters. The sidewalks of every city and town throughout the Bay Area were covered with dozing individuals. Cars, buses, and motorcycles slammed into one another, rammed into trees, houses, buildings, cyclists, pedestrians, fences, signs, dividers, and all manner of objects. Airplanes and trains crashed. Construction workers building high rise condos and office buildings fell to their deaths or simply slumped to unfinished floors. Those in their houses and apartments fell asleep wherever they were, at kitchen tables, on couches, chairs, floors, toilets, bathtubs (with many drowning), and, for those truly fortunate, beds. Couples and threesomes and orgies dozed in one another’s arms, crotches, sex swings, and the like. More people than you might imagine died from autoerotic asphyxia.
The places and positions of those falling asleep ran the gamut of human endeavors. Hiking trails, hospitals (patients dying during surgery and even some doctors dying from falling on scalpels and bleeding to death), supermarkets, banks, retail stores, restaurants, and more. Fires blazed throughout the city as sleeping smokers dropped their cigarettes in highly flammable places. Other fires started from electric and gas stoves left alight or crashes from cars and planes. The carnage from the apocalyptic scene would have led to mass panic were anyone awake or not turned to stone. The entirety of the Bay Area became a stone and sleep zone.
The only person who did not turn to stone or fall asleep was the bald man in San Quentin. He lowered himself to the floor, crossed his legs, placed his hands on his knees, closed his eyes, and began to pray. Within minutes he experienced the first of many visions. Before his mind’s eye appeared Wanda, an elderly woman who lived alone in Jerusalem. She had no family, no friends, but had enough money to hire a manservant to take care of her daily needs, whether it be grocery shopping, cooking, running a bath, laundry, and so on. She spent most of her time daydreaming, wondering when the hegemony of the United States would subside.
She imagined a world where each country had an absolute equality of sovereignty and international power and influence. Her imagination created not so much a utopia as merely a different reality. Mixed capitalism (in the vein of economic theory) was global. Each country had exactly the same labor, environmental, and business regulations. Zoning laws in each country were precisely the same. Each sovereign nation had the same government structure, election processes, legal systems, and bureaucratic institutions. Economic and monetary policies mimicked one another. Financial markets had no distinguishable differences. The same television shows and radio programs existed in each country.
There was one global language spoken by everyone and every document, book, magazine, newspaper, website used it. It was not a language that anyone else alive had ever heard spoken or seen written. It existed only in the mind of Wanda, an imaginary place that had a reality that could not be measured or denied. Every culture throughout the world was exactly the same as every other culture. Beliefs were uniform and the primary belief was that science was the only reliable source of knowledge and understanding of the world, the galaxy, the universe. Every aspect of human nature and relationships were believed to be solely determinable by science. The philosophy of science was the global religion and there were no variant strains, just one uniform philosophy that dictated how to believe in science.
The infrastructure of every nation was gradually transformed to resemble the infrastructure of every other civilization. Each individual the world over thought, felt, and acted almost identically with the primary difference being when and where they thought, felt, and acted. The thoughts, feelings, and actions had a range from one to a billion and at any given time no two individuals ever reproduced the same numerical combinations. It was this that produced diversity in the world and scientifically it was known that the only uniqueness that existed was human. The recognition of this uniqueness by each and every person around the world led to an unprecedented respect, tolerance, and sympathy for each and every other person in the world.
The architect of all of this was, of course, Wanda. This world existed within her, she a universe unto herself. But she was in relation to all other universes throughout time and space. Until the bald man of San Quentin, not one person in the world ever became aware this universe within Wanda. There had been no scientific discoveries of this existing universe that seemed so readily accessible. Wanda, though, kept the universe of her imagination hidden from the world, from science, and from each and every person. By doing so, she maintained the integrity and continued uniformity of the world she had created, delighting herself by watching individuals shift from one numerical combination of thoughts, feelings, and actions to another each and every moment. The possible numerical combinations within each individual was calculable but enormous; the potential combinations within each individual combined with the potentials within each other individual was so great that Wanda had considered hiring a mathematician to figure out the total number of combinations at a given moment. But, as it was indeterminable how many would die and be born each day it was possible the combinations could be infinite over time. That was Wanda’s determination. She never consulted with a mathematician because she was concerned her universe could be discovered and irreparably altered in a way she did not believe would suit her.
The man from San Quentin wept as he experienced this vision of Wanda’s earthly being and her universe of imagination. He had become privy to one of the great mysteries of the universe he lived within, the universe contained within Wanda, a mystery that no one had ever considered mysterious at all.
The vision lasted for only a moment but within the universe of the vision the vision lasted hundreds of thousands of years. The bald man knew exponentially more about Wanda’s universe than he did of the universe recognized as existing by 21st century science. He had been filled with great wisdom, the wisdom of Wanda, the God of her universe of imagination.
Wanda, during the 21st century moment of the bald man’s vision, realized that her universe had been discovered. She sensed that a being, a God from another universe entirely, had viewed her universe’s territory, her universe’s mind. She shrieked to her man-servant to provide her with ayahuasca so that she might enter into a trance that would allow her to translocate to this alternate universe so that she might confront this nosy God who had spied her empire.
Unfortunately for Wanda, she transported herself within her own universe and became a person within it. This Wanda-within-Wanda was a hairdresser living in London. She was 34 years old, very pretty, married to a handsome man who worked as a manager at a department store, and she had three children, two girls and a boy, between the ages of 4 and 11. She lived her life as others in this world did, experiencing different combinations of thoughts, feelings, and actions each moment. The Wanda of the 21st century, meanwhile, became an invalid.
The bald man of San Quentin had another vision within seconds of the ending of the first. In this vision, he saw a man named Bob who defecated into a small black bag whenever he couldn’t produce sound from his trumpet. This vision contained nothing more than that. There was no way to discern where he lived, how old he was, whether he liked marmalade or not … nothing. The only thing the vision allowed was the knowledge that a man named Bob shit into a bag whenever he couldn’t successfully produce sound from his trumpet.
The man of San Quentin began to open his eyes as he was confused by the second vision. Once his eyes were open he saw he was no longer in a cell in San Quentin. Instead, he was sitting at a table in a very cozy kitchen. The air was thick with the smell of peach cobbler. A woman the man knew was named Jenny turned to him. She wore an apron and carried a small plate of cobbler. She smiled at him as she placed the plate in front of him. As the man looked at Jenny he noticed that she seemed to be in her 40s or possibly even her 50s. She was slightly heavyset but attractive nevertheless. As he stared at her, Jenny’s face changed its expression. She asked the man what was wrong. He averted his eyes and looked down at the cobbler. “Nothing. Sorry, nothing’s wrong.” He saw a fork next to the plate, picked it up, and cut into the cobbler.
“Careful! It’s still very hot.” The man looked up at Jenny and nodded his head. Jenny smiled, patted him on his head (which now had hair, the formerly bald man noticed), and turned to walk out of the kitchen. She untied her apron before she did and let it fall to the floor. The man had followed this progression with his eyes and wondered why she had just let the apron drop. He shook his head and turned back to the cobbler.
He looked around the kitchen as he ate. He noticed the window above the sink with the pink see-through half-curtains that looked out to a blue sky. He saw the walls were painted pink as well. He looked over at the apron which was also pink. The table cloth was pink, the same shade as every other object of pinkness in the room. The refrigerator and stove were white but scummy. It was clear that they hadn’t been cleaned in some time. The cupboards and drawers were all painted pink. The linoleum was also pink but worn to a greyish pink in high traffic areas around the sink, refrigerator, and stove. “The woman likes pink,” thought the formerly bald man.
After he finished his cobbler he rose from the table and walked to the apron to pick it up. As he did, he became dizzy and fell, banging his head hard against the floor. He lost consciousness within moments.
When the formerly bald man woke he was in a teepee. He was covered with blankets, his head was propped on a fur, and there was a fire burning in the center. He realized he was the only person in the teepee as he looked around. He removed the blankets, saw that he was naked, and stood up. He found a pair of blue jeans, a button-down long-sleeve shirt, a long brown leather jacket, and a pair of leather boots. He also noticed a cloth that he could fold and tie as underwear as well as a pair of wool socks.
After he dressed, he opened the flap of the teepee and stepped out. There was snow on the ground. There was no wind and the temperature was not terribly cold considering the snow. The sky was overcast. The man walked away from the teepee and turned in a circle. In every direction there were mountains. He was in a valley, one cleared of trees. When he looked back at the teepee he noticed that there was a snowmobile behind it. He could only see the front end of it from his angle, but he walked to it.
The snowmobile seemed relatively new, in good shape. The man climbed aboard and gave the ignition a try. It started up and the man put the machine gear. He had no idea which direction to go and he realized he didn’t even know what he was looking for. He decided to simply head in the direction the snowmobile had been facing.
He was nearing the tree line at the base of a mountain when the snowmobile suddenly plunged through the snow. The man lost contact with the snowmobile and reached out with his hands to try to grab onto something, anything that might keep him from falling further into the hole. There was nothing, though, and so the man fell … and fell … and fell. As he was falling he wondered first if he had hit a sink hole but as he fell further he wondered if it was a mine shaft and as he fell further he wondered if what he was experiencing was real.
The man fell for what seemed to be hours. It might have been only several minutes but there was no way to tell. The man closed his eyes and screamed with such desperation that he lost touch with time and space altogether. It seemed as if he was in a gravity-less state, no longer falling but suspended in sensory deprivation. This state seemed to last an eternity and perhaps it did.
The man, after this possible eternity, awoke. He was lying on ground, partially in a puddle and partially on grass and dirt. He opened his mouth and as he did a soft, pale light emerged. The man shifted his eyes downward to look at this light emanating from his mouth. As he did he saw an extraordinarily tiny urban landscape mixed with what appeared to be areas of brush and teeny tiny stalks of green and brown grass that resembled eucalyptus and Redwood trees. On all side of the puddle were little developed areas resembling towns with roads and buildings and houses. The man noticed that the puddle went indefinitely underneath him, that most of his body was in a puddle that seemed to get progressively deeper as it neared his feet.
The man saw what he thought were little fleas buzzing about very slowly but as he squinted his eyes he saw that they were tiny planes. As he realized this, his mouth still agape projecting the same incandescent light, the bug-planes all fell to the ground, some in the water making teeny tiny splashes and others on dirt and the small grass making the tiniest of orange sparks as they hit the ground. He could hear faint buzzing and a sound like a baby crying a hundred meters away.
The man felt himself urinating and as he did he saw flecks of dried cum falling from the sky. In awe, he tilted his eyes upward, trying to believe it was snow even though he knew it wasn’t. His mouth opened wider and wider and the light continued to pour out of it. The man rolled onto his back and as his eyes looked upward he saw a familiar sight: the ceiling of his cell in San Quentin.
A guard came to his cell door and opened it. He looked down at the bald man and asked him what the fuck he was doing. The bald man sat up, disoriented. The guard extended his hand to the man. The old man grabbed it and pulled himself to his feet. He asked the guard what day it was. The guard looked at him wearily. “You know what day it is.”
The old man looked nervously at the guard. He was worried and he could feel his anxiety rising. He made himself speak. “No, I don’t know what day it is. Please tell me.”
The guard took a deep breath and leaned into the old man, his face coming closer and closer until they were touching. The old man looked into the guard’s eyes looking into his own and he saw his own terror located somewhere within them. The guard spoke. “Today is the day before the soft, pale light.”
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