(An excerpt from the forthcoming Yerba Maté- a Novel. What fun.)
“I just want to be who I really
am,” Michael Nitrous said aloud, giving voice to his thoughts of just a
moment before. It was hot, he was alone, he was in what looked like
a desert, and he was carrying a backpack. His clothes were
completely different than what he had just been wearing.
Pasteybottom Joe and Jerry Grogan were nowhere in sight. There was
no grove of trees. No yerba mate and no bombilla.
He was in a desert, it certainly
seemed. He had never been in a desert before, although he had seen
pictures of them, and he had seen the movie “Raising Arizona,” so
he pretty much knew all there was to know about desert culture. This
was a good thing. Unbeknownst to Michael Nitrous, he was at that
very moment in the state known as “Arizona,” and he was walking
away from a large city known as “Tucson” toward a place called
“Mount Lemmon.” All of this would be lost on Nitrous, however,
and the details wouldn't really make all that much difference. He was in a different aspect of existence.
A quick word about the plant
known as the “cactus” would be appropriate at this point. The
cactus is known as a “succulent,” and while most people think
that this has something to do with the water-retention ability of the
cactus, it is actually due to the wonderfully rich and decadent taste
that the cactus has. Cactus makes a succulent little dish. If he
had been thinking about it, Nitrous might have drawn the connection
between the plants around him and the nopalitos tiernos that he had
eaten with Jerry Grogan at el Taco Muchacho just a few hours ago. It
seemed like days, or weeks. It seemed like it never happened.
Cactus makes a succulent dish, though. Mmmmm. Can't you just taste
it?
The cactus is covered with
spines, of a sort. You might call them needles. You can call them
whatever you might want to, but in any case they are sharp, spiny
little devils. My brother-in-law sells these beastly plants out of a
little shop that he runs. They are not all grown from little babies,
either. Some are plants that he buys and re-sells (at a profit, of
course – this is America). I have always thought it would be the
strangest thing to be able to tell people that my brother-in-law is a
used cactus salesman. Michael Nitrous would have thought it to be
the strangest thing, as well.
The cactus is a very prehistoric
plant, and was brought to this planet by extra-dimensional travelers
from an extra-dimensional planet called Mookie – a lovely desert
planet not terribly far (in existential terms) from Bezelda. No one
was around on the planet earth to see the first cactus planted in the
Sonoran desert.
“What do you think?” asked
the first extra-dimensional traveler as he put the cactus into the
dry, sandy soil.
“Move it a little to the left,”
replied the second.
After that began the virtual
salad days for the cactus. They were the only game in town, aside
from a scabby little Joshua tree here and there and maybe some aloe
vera, whose value would not be discovered for thousands of years yet.
That is probably enough of the
quick word about the plant known as the “cactus.”
Nitrous felt good. His legs felt
springy and the warm desert sun and the dry desert air on his skin
was something he had never felt before. He wondered for just
a moment what was inside of his backpack, but in but a moment he
realized that he already knew. In fact, he could
perfectly recall the pack's contents as though he had packed it
himself. Which he had, of course. He just couldn't remember having
done so in this particular aspect of existence.
He continued up the highway,
wondering exactly what piece of geography he was climbing (it was
something called “Mount Lemmon,” as previously noted, but Nitrous
had no idea that was the case, and it would not have made a bit if
difference if he had). He was walking along, kicking at a little
piece of asphalt here, a little stone there, when suddenly he took
what is known in some aspects of existence as a glope-step.
The glope-step is a step that
stops midway and allows a pause for reflection from the person taking
the step. To the outside observer of the glope-step, nothing looks
the least bit different. The person taking the glope-step looks as
though they are just walking right along. To the person taking the
glope-step, however, everything is different. The world stops. Time
stops. Forward motion temporarily ceases.
I would tell you to go and try it
for yourself, but I can't. You never quite know when you are going
to take a glope-step, and they come on rather without warning.
Incidentally, it was rare for a extra-dimensional traveler or one who
is experiencing an alternate aspect of existence to at
the same time experience a glope-step. Michael Nitrous was one of
those rare, fortunate few, though.
His left foot went up in the air
(fitting, as it is the weaker of his two legs, and he was only at the
beginning of something great and good), and it paused within the
layers of two of his aspects of existence.
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