When I all but passed out after five days of PAX and PAX-related activities I knew that I had only one task before I hit my hotel pillow of questionable purity. I had to make sure I landed on the right side of my face. For when I gazed in the mirror just moments before at the fleshy-but-gaunt face with days of TSA inspired stubble, I saw visage staring back at me the likes of which once drove Harvey Dent in to permanent psychosis. Half of my face was burnt, beaten by the sun into a color resembling a generous coating of Sweet & Sour sauce. I reached up to touch the partial stranger in front of me and recoiled with pain. The hours spent standing on line both outside and inside had taken their toll beyond just blistered feet and frustrated longing.

Sleep came easily; oblivion wrapped my conscious mind like a cloak, detaching myself from myself. An unknowable amount of time passed, somewhere between a moment and forever, before the curtain of dreams parted and a joyfully cruel re-imagining of the weekend’s events played out, top billing in the infinite theater.

I floated down in to a city pitched on an angle, landing at the base of two great trees felled by some mighty force. There was something up on a hill in the distance, radiating in an unknown color. Drawing me towards it, I labored at a deliberate pace to reach it. At a moment at rest, I looked up. There in the heavens flew the winged serpent Quetzalcoatl, who flew in lazy circles before swallowing the sun.

The darkness was immediate and total, but as abruptly as it came, it was gone. The sun had returned with a vengeance, and I was just steps away from my destination. My objective was surrounded by people, all different, arraigned like the rings of a gas giant. I joined their joyous orbit, and the eternity of endless light and heat passed like time spent in Elysian.

Soon the beast awoke, and drank the people down in one endless swallow. One long Soylent Green linguine noodle was sucked in happily. If this structure was once born of steel and concrete, it had now become so infused with life as to take on sentience.

Inside of its cavernous interior, the people were performing some sort of ritual. A blue sphere was being bandied about their up-stretched arms, and the higher it went the louder the chanting got. It reached a fever pitch, and once could only guess if it was going to open the sky and bring life, or crack the ground and render devastation. Just when it was going to reach the peak, it stopped. The ball split itself into two in a violent mitosis. One sphere continued its journey; the other approached me quickly, halting inches from my face. It rotated once and a great wide mouth full of fat white teeth opened up. It spoke in an unfamiliar language that I understood instantly.

It told me that the creature had gorged itself on people, but it seemed ready. Agents forged out of unforgiving darkness dispensed order with surprising efficiency. The teeming mass, of which I had gladly joined, had become one with the creature and followed its commandments, and were to be rewarded.

It showed me the creature’s newborn gods and wonders. It shared the creature’s ancient wisdom for a new age. It drew me toward the creature’s song, and I lost my self in joyous noise and frenetic, geometric dance. But it wasn’t all pleasant. It forced me to watch mask of anonymity fall, and while it revealed the face of friendship in most, it revealed the face of shame on others. For those who would disparage others from afar now had to face the targets of their derision. It then flew off, back into the cavern, leaving me forgotten.

As time passed the amount of people grew and grew, and soon the creature was moaning and straining at the load it was carrying. At the height of its life, it sputtered and died. The people cruelly ejected onto the hard streets of the slanted city. We gazed longingly at it, but didn’t not weep, for the small seed it planted began to fester once more, and when the creature grows back, larger and stronger, we will answer its call anon.

I awoke with a start. It was daylight again and the dry taste of stale air coated my mouth. I pulled myself painfully from the bed and sniffed at the seven-eighths empty liquor bottle on the side table, and relearned the lesson about paying the price of pleasure. I started the shower, my flight leaves in 3 hours.

This is my stop.

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Comments? Questions? E-mail me at seth410@gamertransit.com. Complaints? To Sleep, Perchance to Dream; ay, There’s the Rub
Back of the Bus is © 2006 by Seth “4:10” Robison, used with exclusive permission by gamertransit.com. Reproduction without permission is prohibited.