I know what you’re thinking. It’s written all over your faces—dude’s seen too many Romero films, read too many books by David Moody and Eric S. Brown. You’re thinking Hollywood nightmares have fed my delusions, right? But that’s only because you haven’t been through the Eye of Aeons, man. It’s because you’re not willing to admit, even for a fraction of a second, that this cosmos is far stranger than your narrow little minds give it credit for.
You cling to linear time, you bow before the altar of flawed science and religion, and subscribe to this view of reality that society has this unspoken pact to accept The Way Things Are. Once you’ve stepped outside those prefab boxes, once you’ve risen high enough to tell it’s not even a box at all, not really, then—and only then—can you start seeing the true nature of things.
You guys are even worse than your average citizen. You know why they used to call you black and whites? Because that’s the way you see things, man. In the eyes of Johnny Law, everything is either right or wrong, good or bad. It’s rigid, inflexible, and not at all in accordance with the natural order of things.
There’s all these gray areas, see? All these ethical dilemmas that just aren’t as clear-cut as your ordinances and statutes would like them to be. Out there, in the real world, things get fuzzy really fast, and you just kinda bumble along, trying to do the right thing as best as you can.
Say for example you got all the money in the world. I mean, you’re so loaded someone could swipe a card down your crack and your ass would spit out hundreds. So you’re just loungin’ around the mansion one day, doin’ whatever the fuck obscenely rich people do, and there’s this knock on the door, right? Turns out to be a bunch of pasty scientists out there, and they’re sayin’ how they’ve had this breakthrough… they’ve discovered the cure for cancer or some shit, dig?
But they ain’t got the funding to distribute this miracle drug to the masses, so they’re going door to door, selling these boxes of prepackaged brownies to raise money. Yeah, that’s right… they’re having a fundraiser just like the fuckin’ girl scouts. This is a parable, man, so roll with me, okay?
So anyway, as I was saying. You know you’ve got enough bread that you could single-handedly scarf up every box they have to offer. Your billions could rid the world of one of the worst blights ever known to man, but there’s a catch, man… there’s always a catch. See, you happen to know—through your various business contacts—that the tasty treats these geeks are hawking are produced in some third-world sweatshop. I’m talkin’ the type of place where they’ll lop off a finger if they even suspect you might be carting some of that product home via armpit express to feed your starvin’ family.
So what do you do? Do you condone child labor and so many human rights violations that even Amnesty International would say whoa, man, now that’s fucked up? Or do you condemn millions of people to a drawn out, agonizing death?
Now that’s a morally ambiguous brownie, man, but that’s the weight of the decisions I’ve carried around on my fuckin’ shoulders, see? That’s the shit I’ve gotta deal with and yet you have the audacity to sit there and judge me? To write me off as some damn lunatic who can’t tell the difference between the fantasies in his mind and what’s real.
Well fuck you, man… fuck you. I know which way the wind blows and I know it’s blowin’ with the fires of Hell and it’s gonna consume us all. Burn us down, man, to cinders and ashes. And we’ll be the lucky ones, oh, you better believe that. The people who come after us? They’ll only wish they’d had such an easy death.
So what did I decide, then? I decided to buy those fuckin’ brownies. You choose your battles and I picked the devil I knew, man. I mean, I’ve been in Ocean’s head, dig? I’ve heard her innermost thoughts, all those little secrets we’d never dream of telling another soul, and I’ve seen her for who she really is.
And if there’s any way that I can spare that poor girl even a fraction of the bullshit and pain she’s been through… if there’s even the slightest chance I can save her ass, you better believe I’m gonna take it. I mean, I love her, man.
Don’t look at me like that, you sick bastard. Jesus, she’s can’t be older than fourteen, man. I don’t mean I love her in a hey, I’ve got some free candy and puppies in the back of my van kinda way. It ain’t like that at all. I wanna protect her, see? I wanna make sure she never knows heartache or loss, to shelter her from all the suffering and sorrow and regret. I want her to laugh and play and run. I want her to be a fuckin’ kid. Is that so wrong? To safeguard the ones you love? If it is, then lock me up and throw away the key, dude ‘cause I’m guilty as friggin’ charged.
Being dimensionally unstable gave me a way that I could help her, see? When you’re not restricted to past, present, and future you get the big picture. You see things develop like a time-lapse film. You witness how everything falls into place. And that’s how I learned about the seven signs, ya know? Because I’ve been all over that timeline.
Clarice fuckin’ Hudson. She was just one of the brownies in those boxes, man. She was a threat to Ocean, ya know? To humanity, for that matter.
See, I was in the Dollar Bonanza… you know, that place in the mall where you can get just about anything for a buck? Yeah, the one right between the shoe store and that shop with all the goth kids milling about. That’s the one, man.
Anyways, I was in Dollar Bonanza trolling for victims, right? Shit, dude… I’m just fuckin’ with ya. You shoulda seen the look on your faces. Priceless.
I was there looking for shaving cream, man. Razors and shampoo. Normal stuff. I was wonderin’ if there would be some way I could take one of those little glass penguins or a kid’s book with me through the Eye of Aeons, ya know? Inside, I knew it was a losing battle since even my own body couldn’t cross over. But it was a nice thought, dig? One of those things you’d like to do, but know you never will.
So I’ve got my basket hangin’ off my arm and it’s practically overflowing with junk. Most of it I didn’t really need. But you know how those stores are. You go in for the bare essentials and come out with a miniature zen garden, three shot glasses with snotty little bunnies on ‘em, and a DVD or two of old Kung Fu flicks. I take my place in line and at first, I’m just looking around at the candy and the sunglasses and shit. Taking a few steps forward every couple seconds and then finding something else to divert my attention.
Something about the clerk caught my eye, man. Not in a sexual way, either. Don’t get me wrong. She was cute and all. Had these stawberry blond ringlets wisping over this round face with high cheekbones. Eyes like sapphires. And even beneath that lime green smock you could tell the bitch had a nice rack. So okay, maybe at first I was a little aroused. I mean, I’m a man, ya know? I respond. Even against my better judgment. So I’m checkin’ out her tits and I can’t help but notice the name tag pinned to her apron: Hi, my name is CLARICE ask how I can help.
But then I noticed how she had these little beads of sweat on her brow, right? I look a little more closely and I notice there’s these wet stains spreading across the armpits of her white blouse. Wasn’t long before I realize her entire body was practically shimmering in a sheen of sweat. The strands of hair hangin’ down the back of her neck? Drenched, man. I mean, they’ve got the air conditioner pumped up so much I’m practically fartin’ ice crystals. I got my sleeves rolled down and the woman in front of me is trying to warm herself by rubbin’ her hands up and down her arms while she talks to her husband or boyfriend or whatever. We’re all fuckin’ freezing. But this chick? She’s sweating like a whore on payday, man.
Let me tell ya, I lost that chubby real damn quick.
See, that’s the first sign, man. The infected… their bodies are undergoing changes at a molecular level, see? You know how much energy it takes to alter just a single sequence of DNA? You could power a small town for a week. Energy excites molecules, right? Hopped up molecules create friction and friction builds heat. On top of all that, you’ve got your own body tryin’ to fight this shit off. The infected are like these walking nuclear reactors… and they sweat. Good God, do they sweat.
I get my ass outta that line real quick, believe you me. I just sit my basket on the empty counter to my right and hightail it out the door. I don’t want her touching my shit, man. I don’t want her fingers all over my can of shaving cream. I mean, I’m gonna be sprayin’ that foam out and spreading it all over my face, ya know, and then scraping a razor across it? One little nick and next thing I know I’m buying stock in Degree antiperspirant, if ya get my drift.
But at the same time, I keep thinking about Ocean. I see her driving that tire iron into her mother’s skull, feel her confusion and pain and emptiness. All the conflict raging inside her, justification versus guilt and all that shit. And it pisses me off, man. No kid should ever have to experience that.
So I get to the little brick wall on the other side of the waterfall and I get this idea in the back of my mind. A way I can help that poor little girl, and maybe everyone else at the same time, man. The future is malleable, man. Things can be changed if you’ve got the balls to see it through. I was positive of that.
So I kinda lean against the wall with the spray of water splashing against the back of my neck and I watch this chick, man. I mean, I really study her, ya know? I see how she drags the items across the scanner and stuffs them into the open mouths of the plastic bags like a mama bird feeding her chicks. I watch as she keeps mopping her brow with the sleeve of her shirt, fanning herself with her hand when she can catch a moment. I keep picturing all those nasty little bastards surgin’ through her bloodstream, eating away at her humanity, slowly changing her into a harbinger of death.
I’m not a psycho, ya know? I’m wrestling with myself. I’m thinking she’s got a family, dude. She’s someone’s daughter. There are people out there who fuckin’ love her. And this other part of my mind? It just sees a biochemical playground, a spawning ground. It stares at her the way you’d look at a maggoty slab of meat when you were expecting steak. And those scientists are just knocking on the door of my mansion—hey, mister, wanna buy some brownies?
You know what really made the decision for me? It wasn’t even Ocean, if you can believe that. Nah, man, it was all these people around me. It was the harried looking mother running after the kid in the blue overalls. It was the teenagers makin’ out in front of Dark Desires without a care in the world. The janitor emptying trashcans. The rent-a-pig giving me the hairy eyeball from over by the escalators.
I looked around and all I saw were these decaying carcasses, man. These rotters, to use Ocean’s word for it, pushing their strollers and laughing in small groups while an orange balloon slowly drifted toward the ceiling. They were all dead, each and every one of them. And they had families too, right? They had people who loved them as well.
So right then and there, I decided to shell out the cash and buy every fuckin’ box of brownies being pushed at me. I’ll take them all.
But I had to be sure, you know? I didn’t want to condemn this shop girl just because she maybe had a glandular issue. Or a touch of the summer flu. No, if I was gonna do this thing I had to be absolutely certain.
There are seven signs, man, and before I did anything drastic, I needed to make damn sure she had each and every fuckin’ one