“Got a rule against that.”
“Your loss, son.”
In short, until Gunderson had taken a magazine assignment, gone to Mexico to drink emetic potions with psychotropic turistas, his opinion of hallucinogens was that you had to worship jam bands, or believe the army had planted a chip in your head, to really enjoy them.
He’d flown to Oaxaca with a glib lede to that effect in his laptop. He returned a converso. The tales of Hofmann, the stern brain play of Huxley had never enticed him, but puking and shitting on a dirt floor while Ramón kicked him in the balls and, later, sobbing while his dead grandfather Gilbert hovered nearby in a beer-can cardigan and told Gunderson why he, Gunderson, had such a tough time being faithful to women (Gunderson’s mother had hugged him too much, and his father was always on his high horse, and there was something about Gil’s side of the family being related to Barry Goldwater) — all this, in aggregate, did the trick. Later he discovered the crotch kicks were not traditional, but Ramón’s twist on the ritual. Didn’t matter, Gunderson was hooked. A few more doses over the next several months and he knew his place in his family and his place in the infinite, at least provisionally.
He also had a vision of the world in a few years’ time if the current course was not corrected. More precisely, it was a vision of North America, oil starved, waterlogged, millions thronged on the soggy byways, fleeing the ghost sprawls of the republic. He saw his sister gang-raped in an abandoned Target outside Indianapolis. The local warlord, nicknamed Dee-Kay-En-Wye for the runes on his tattered hoodie, cackled as he watched his clan work. They’d lived in Home Appliances their entire lives. Strangest of all, Gunderson didn’t have a sister. This added urgency to his vision. It wasn’t just about him, or his sister.
When he’d recovered and told the shaman what he’d seen, Ramón led him to a stone hut at the edge of the village. A satellite jutted from the woven roof. Inside was a sleeping cot, a computer, a bookshelf full of French Symbolists. The shaman, who to Gunderson resembled one of those carved-down distance runners he’d watched train near his father’s house in Oregon, slid out a large cardboard box with copper hasps from beneath the cot. Inside was a crumbling facsimile of the storied codex. He showed Gunderson the jaguar, the sickle, the long, solstistic loops. He pointed to where the reeds ran out.
“I thought the Maya had the calendar,” said Gunderson.
“Fuck the Maya,” said Ramón.
* * *
Gunderson had never been much for the astronomy, the math. His colleagues, his rivals, could offer the proofs, the ellipticals, the galacticals. Most of them used the Maya Tzolkin, and Gunderson suspected that Ramón’s insistence on this Mixtec forecast was just an intellectual property maneuver, but he didn’t mind. He was trying to save the world, and that included not just the plants and the animals and the majestic rock formations but the people, those meat-world parasites who’d built pyramids and written concertos and enslaved their brothers and sisters and performed clitoridectomies and gone to the moon and gorged themselves on war and corn syrup. Gunderson was a people person. We just needed new kinds of people. We had to start making them right now.
The other thing that had to start being made right now was a serious offer from the TV people. Gunderson was back downtown at his favorite organic teahouse, e-mailing a fiery message to his network, hinting there might soon be an announcement about a new interpretation of the codex, a revised time frame for the Big Clambake. That would light up the boards. His people didn’t need much prompting. Many were lonely sorts pining for genuine human connection or, short of that, a flash mob.
So if the series division kept wavering, maybe Gunderson could get some grass roots going. Grass roots. That had been a big word with his father. Still was, Gunderson guessed. He hadn’t talked to the man in years. Why? Ask the Jaguar. Gunderson didn’t know, except that maybe it was hard for men to talk to each other, especially fathers and sons, at least in this dimension. Jim Gunderson was handsome, brave, beloved, righteous. How did you talk to a father like that, a legendary activist, a lawyer for the downtrodden, ask him to read your magazine profile of a sitcom star, a charismatic CFO? Of course, Gunderson’s hack days were behind him. Why didn’t he call now? Because Jim Gunderson fought for a better tomorrow while his son, despite all his talk of collective action and personal evolution, was maybe just another doom pimp betting on no tomorrow at all? No, it was probably just the father-son stuff. The new times would not be so burdened. We’d be too busy line dancing with alien life-forms for patriarchal agon. Gunderson glanced up, tracked the dreadlocked teen behind the counter.
“Can I get more of this beetroot crush?”
“Of course,” said the girl. “I’ll bring some right over.”
“That’s not all you can bring.”
“Excuse me?”
“Damn, sister. Look at you.”
Gunderson had always subscribed to the practical man’s theory of seduction: hit on everybody and everything, crudely, constantly. His percentages astonished even him.
“Yeah, you know something?” said the girl. “I’ve heard about you.”
“What have you heard?”
“That you’re, like, a genius. But also a total pigdog. I don’t need that in my life right now.”
“You don’t need complete physical and spiritual liberation?”
“I need health insurance.”
“That’s the hologram talking,” said Gunderson, handed her his card.
* * *
Outside, the sun was nearly licking him. It really felt like that, the sun the tongue of a loyal dog. Extraordinary. He stood on the curb with his eyes closed, face tilted up. This was life, its only conceivable acme. Little Carlos knew. Sweet Carlos, who had once stared up at some darkening clouds and shouted, “Don’t rain, little sky!”
Gunderson was about to call Victoria’s folks in Maine, something he would normally never consider, but here was this sudden surge of Carlosity. He had to talk to his son on the phone. But as soon as he thought the word “phone,” the damn thing started to vibrate again.
“Jack,” said Gunderson.
“They’re pulling out for now. They want you to pitch again in a few months.”
“What? Why?”
“Who knows? They say they’ve got too much in development, but it’s anybody’s guess. Quality television works in mysterious ways.”
“Look, things are a little more complicated. We don’t have a few months. We’ve got to do this thing now.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The prophecy. There’s been a change of date. A little timing snafu.”
“I didn’t know that happened with prophecies. Aren’t they written in stone? Wasn’t this prophecy, in fact, written in stone?”
“This isn’t funny, Jack. This is real. I’ll do it all myself. I’ll get on my knees and beg Victoria for the cash. This has to happen right now. I’m through screwing around. I’ll get grass roots going. This is not about a television show. This is about life on earth. Hell, I don’t even know why I care anymore. Maybe it’s better if we all go up in flames.”
“Will you calm down? Let’s just wait and see what the series division has to say in a few weeks and then—”
“And then you can tell those pigdogs to shove it up their—”
“Jeez, will you relax? Pigdogs?”
“Relax? Are you telling me to relax? You sound like fucking Baltran.”
“Who’s that?”
“Never mind.”
“He’s not that little jerk repping at—”
“No, Jack.”
“I hope you’re not talking to him.”