these nerds with their lightsabers, then other assorted characters, Boba Fetts and Han Solos, here and there an overweight C-3PO, the bikini version of Princess Leia, stumpy Darth Vaders, some sand people, someone’s dog dressed as Yoda. And Wookiees. Dozens of them. We had no way of knowing which Wookiee was Squid. As the parade marched past blasting its theme and waving its weapons one Wookiee broke off from the group and approached us. Really authentic-looking costume, about the same height as the real Chewbacca. When he spoke, though, it was a normal black guy’s voice.
He said, “You people are really screwed, you do know that, right?”
There was so much I wanted to ask, so I just started firing questions at him. Where was the Kirkpatrick Academy of Human Potential? Did he know Nick Fedderly? Why was he named Squid? What could he tell us about the weird document Erika had channeled? But he’d have none of it. He just shook his head, in a way you’d imagine a Wookiee would, I might add. Wyatt turned the painting around and asked if he’d painted it. Squid the Wookiee did a little hop as if we’d startled him. He asked us where we’d gotten it. We told him about stealing it from the cafe restroom and how the cafe owner had killed herself. I sensed that our ownership of the painting was a mistake. He told us we needed to destroy it immediately. I could tell he wanted it but Wyatt was holding on to it pretty tight.
Squid said, “Look, I’m not trying to be a dick. You guys just need to know it’s not safe for you to be digging into all this shit. Just leave it alone and walk away.”
I said, “I think you’re full of it. There’s no shady organization involved in some weird conspiracy. I don’t even really care about finding Nick anymore, to tell you the truth.”
Squid said, “We’re all in danger, dude. I’m putting myself on the line just talking to you. Do you want your writing back or not?”
Erika said yes and Squid/Chewbacca opened one of the compartments on his utility belt and handed her a tin of Altoids.
“It lasts about half an hour. He’ll know who you are. He’s expecting you. Just be humble and grateful and he’ll take care of you,” he said, then he blended back into the crowd, into a passing contingent of other Chewbaccas. We lost him. Erika opened the tin, which contained a single Altoid. To think we thought it was plain old LSD.
I still don’t know. I guess some kind of custom, lab-made psychedelic. Back at the house, the three of us sat at the kitchen table staring at the Altoid for a long time. I was worried it was a trap, something poisonous. Wyatt suggested we take it to a chemist. Erika thought that was too risky. Finally she declared what the hell, she was going to take it. We gathered some pillows and went out back to our garden. Erika had planted all sorts of flowers out there, installed a bubbling fountain. We put the pillows down on the flagstones and sat in a triangle. Erika placed the Altoid on her tongue and the three of us linked hands, following Huxley’s advice, making sure the setting was peaceful and the people involved were loving and supportive. We sat there for a good five minutes waiting for something to happen. Erika closed her eyes. Wyatt and I watched her. After a bit she opened one eye and snorted and said nothing was happening. “Maybe it’s just an extra-minty Altoid,” I said and we all laughed. Then Erika’s head snapped back and she was gone. She didn’t respond when we spoke or when we gently slapped her wrist. Wyatt checked her breathing and her pulse. She was breathing a little fast and her pulse was up but nothing too crazy. Kind of like she was on a run. Wyatt asked her what was happening but she just shook her head and waved him off. Her pupils were huge. I kept my eye on my watch. Ten minutes passed. Twenty. At thirty-one minutes she gasped a huge breath of air. Her eyes fluttered and she squeezed our hands really tight and then leaned over and vomited in my lap. Actually she vomited several times on me, squeezing my hand so tight I couldn’t pull myself away. Meanwhile Wyatt was squeezing my other hand so I was basically trapped there, one corner of a triangle, a vomited-upon hypotenuse. After about four blasts of this, Erika let go of our hands, wiped her mouth, and said, “Wow!”
She was completely normal. After she said “Wow,” she confirmed that whatever it was she’d dropped was definitely not boring old LSD. Of course, I wanted to hear all about the trip but I was covered in puke, so I stripped out of my clothes and went back in the house and took a shower. When I got out, Erika and Wyatt were holding each other on the couch in the living room. The scene radiated a supreme aura of love. Not love in a sexual way, particularly, but a profound energy field of acceptance and celebration. When I came into the room, Erika saw me and smiled, gestured me over, and hugged me. Then she told us the story.
The trip began with a vortex opening in the sky, like a tornado but made of shadows. This swirling portal summoned her and she let herself rocket up through the atmosphere into space. She traveled at an unfathomable speed through the sponge-like structure of the universe, a structure she sensed to be omniscient and acutely aware of her past, present, and future. She felt she was being watched with curiosity or amusement, like a human watches an ant bumbling along its path. The universe revealed itself to be unbearably and painfully gorgeous, to the point that she feared its beauty might kill her. Gradually she decelerated and the foam-like structure of the universe reconstituted itself into stars and galaxies. Floating in front of her was a cylindrical object, a craft of some sort, as long as the earth is wide but about the same proportions as a soda can. As she approached she observed its worn exterior, scuffed and pocked by asteroids. She came to a metallic orifice, an anus-like portal into the vessel, passed through it with little difficulty, and found herself floating through a long tunnel toward a pinprick of light. As she told the story to us back here on earth she said it reminded her of a drawing of Persephone emerging from Hades that she’d seen in a children’s book on Greek mythology. When she emerged she was sort of coughed up onto a field covered in the most spectacular wildflowers. Looking at each petal, each bud was like falling madly in love. Above her stretched a horizontal shaft of what appeared to be sunlight, threading the cylinder like yarn through a bead. She figured this craft must have been not unlike the one in Arthur C. Clarke’s
Like this, then.
The inner surface of the cylinder was lined with vast forests, plains, deserts, bodies of water, all rotating around a central axis, a filament that provided light and energy, like a fluorescent tube running down the middle of a larger cylinder. Erika kept using the words “painfully alive” when talking about this realm.
The figure spoke. “I hear you’ve got a nasty case of writer’s block.”
Erika nodded. She instantly recognized the voice but couldn’t place it. It was neither adult nor child, neither man nor woman. She asked the figure who he was.
“I’m Michael,” he said. “Come, I will heal you.”
She followed Michael through the forest to a stream over which an old tree bent its branches. From the branches grew fruits like she’d never seen, furry purple ovals. Before her eyes the tree blossomed and grew its fruit, which dropped continually into the stream, which bore the fruit, bobbing, away. Michael instructed her to catch one of the fruits and eat it quickly. She did as instructed, pulling apart the purple peel to eat the sweet, pink flesh inside. She said it tasted like nothing she could even begin to describe. When she finished, Michael took her hand and said that when she returned to San Francisco she’d be able to write again. She grew frantic. She had so many questions she wanted to ask him. She wanted to know if she had really been visited by extraterrestrials as a child. Michael said yes, this was so, and there had been contact between these visitors and earth for tens of thousands of years. For many centuries these extraterrestrials had been working to reprogram the human subconscious, preparing it for
