He’s crazy. This PhD student we’ve got in our place. Granted, we are living underground, in an abandoned missile silo, so we all have our eccentricities. But this guy has really lost it. We think he’s acquired a real missile–a fucking nuclear powered atomic bomb thingy. He keeps playing with the control room, like he’s setting up for something.

Days later:
He’s done it. This place is on lockdown. There’s apparently no way to stop the bomb. The whole system is rigged on a death-lock. If anyone tries to tamper with it, the missile goes off immediately. We’re certain he’s got it aimed at Moscow. He’s going to trigger the doomsday scenario. He’s on some kind of ‘world must reset itself’ binge. Bunch of fucking philosophy major bullshit. The whole world knows. It’s on the news. NATO was alerted that a formerly deactivated launch center has triggered an offensive attack and it’s gong down in the next two hours. Seems like a long time. Maybe the government will be able to break into the silo and stop this thing. Maybe they have a backdoor into the system and they can stop it for real. I’m kidding myself, of course.

I’m not certain but I suspect he thinks the russian defense system won’t work, like it’ll be delayed a few hours in responding. Just enough time for the US of fucking A to take full offensive and finish the job in fear of the final retaliation. He thinks some people will survive this thing. We don’t even try to argue the ecological impact that will undoubtably carry radiation and death to every door of the world. Even if half the world is destroyed. We are all members of a fragile web. He’s fucking with the web.

The radios are all scatter-cast. They hiss and jibe in a frenzy with broken reports and speculation. The World is onto this place. Everyone is kissing their loved ones. Ready for the end of the world.

He likes me. Some kind of comrade in arms thing. We’re bunkmates, telling stories of our childhood and fucked up upbringing. We know each other’s secrets. I should have known he’d go ballistic on the entire world. But he has some kind of escape mechanism.

We are going to the moon. He’s got this advanced military device that can teleport (or some crazy science) us to the moon in no time. I don’t know what to say but he’s invited me to watch the end of the world on some odd little secret military base with him. Before I know it, we are beach-towel-laying on the moon, just outside of the base station, staring at Earth and the whole thing just looks so sad and fragile. I ask him about space suits and he says he didn’t have time to pack them but the air filtration and ventilation system inside the base will allow us to breath outside within 20 feet of the entrance. It’s just blasting us with oxygen, faster than the void of space can rip it away from us. My hair is in a permanent wind gust pattern the likes of which Morrissey has never known.

I’ve got to get back home. This moon-base is freaking me out. It’s a dome that looks like something out of a James Bond casino scene. There’s a Jukebox and a sassy waitress, booze and billiards. I feel like throwing up. I jump for the transporter while his back is turned.
One of my housemates reminds me that I have an experiment brewing. It’s a form of nano-machine powered ectoplasmic fluid that will melt through just about anything, even heated enriched uranium, releasing safe, eco-friendly waste into the air. The missile is right in front of me and I drizzle the beakers all over it. The cap melts, revealing a super-hot plasma sphere. Canisters of all kinds of deadly crap are sitting inside the missile, melting together into the ultimate weapon. I don’t know what to do but I keep splattering the fluid all over the device. The timer is ticking. It’s getting hotter in here. I can see that if I continue to eat through the material, this whole place will fill with such heat and fire that all the oxygen will burst into flames. We will all die. I prod the goo, trying to get it to work but something in it has just given up. It’s just laying there in spatters like inert spit–a worthless affront to the inevitable. Like the whole of physics has just flipped a middle finger to this crazy species.

I envision the end of the world. The ecto-acid goo isn’t preventing the apocalypse. I can’t stop the timer. My flatmates are hiding themselves in self-flagellation, coming the form of last minute video game victories and alcoholic drinks–they’ve given up. I can hear the military, with their best men, banging on the top door. They want in–knowing full-well the best they can do is put a bullet in my flatmates and me. I can’t open the door from the inside. It’d be worth a try to give them a chance at stopping it. This is happening. We’re all going to die.

The timer counts down and I can hear, through the distant crackles of the kitchen radio, the cries of mothers holding their young. The missile fires. We watch it go up into the air and all we can do is hold our breath.

Russia has a hand on the trigger. The US has the same. Everyone ready to kill and die but not willing to fire until it’s set in stone. Thank fucking reason for that. Nobody in the face of the earth breathes for a long time.

The missile keeps going. It goes up–and when it should be turning toward Russia, it doesn’t. It just keeps going up, through the atmosphere and into space, off to detonate somewhere else.

I gasp for air as all the oxygen in the planet moves in and out at once.

So I’m taking a walk through the desert last night. It’s warm. Most nights are a bit on the warm side in Albuquerque during the summer. I like this. It brings out the insects. Wherever you go, the air is thick with the chirps of cicadas and the ground is swarming with beetles, ants and all kinds of other things I can’t identify.

The sun sinks away, leaving behind a sunset that lasts for hours. I swear, it’s almost midnight and the sky is still a little blue.

Now, I’m looking at the moon, which is unusually bright tonight, when this thing comes swirling out of a gap of light that just sort of appears in the middle of the sky. I’m not sure if it’s a robot or a suit of armor for some kind of intergalactic octopus but it comes up toward me, followed by a little hovering ball that keeps bleeping and flashing little fuzzy plasma lit signals.

This is when the big one speaks in a deep gargled metallic tone, telling me that Cthulu’s army is being manufactured in a nearby layer of this space-fabric-thingy and that I should prepare for the oncoming horde that will enslave all of my kind. I don’t reply right away–more like I just stare at it–which seems to cause confusion amongst my visitors. While the robot monster is looking back and forth between me and it’s little floaty ball friend, I make the loudest cicada call I can muster.

The desert rises up like a tidal wave and descends.

You can hear them, but until you see the swarms of desert insects combine into Optimus Megabug, you have no freaking clue how many are really out there. The exposed tentacles dangling below the hovering robot armor go first, chewed away and replaced by countless flapping wings. Flames spew out of the exhaust-pipe-looking-things on the robot’s shoulders. I don’t think they are supposed to do that. The little flying ball is totally losing it’s shit. It’s zipping around, apparently weaponless. Must just be a scout or something. It zooms back toward the horizon and vanishes into a wisp of light that peels back the sky. I don’t know if it’s going to warn the others not to come or fetch reinforcements but it’s gone now.

With the octopus beast eaten, all that remains is the robot shell. It’s a pretty cool piece of machinery so I cover it up in the sand, marking the position for later retrieval. Bring it on Cthulhu. Send your beasts. We’ve got insects.

My friendships have been relegated to my dreams. I worked late last night, sleeping only to see my friends.

“Thanks for the book.”
“oh, yeah, glad you like it.”

Then we have a discussion on personal education philosophy and practices.
Sometimes, lately, I’m not sure if I had a conversation with a friend or if all happened in a dream.

“Didn’t we go to their house last week and play cards or something…?”
“No, it’s been a while.”

Optimistically, at least I remember having good times.

I used to lie awake, in bed, thinking about time travel, cause and effect, logical fallacies, the history of the universe, the microcosmic dust and the macrocosmic crust–anything unknown that needed a good hypothesis.

Now, I lie there thinking about innanities, filling out forms, paying bills, the state of the economy, work, work and more work. All these worries and obsessions, so human, are so restrictive.

I just can’t find it in me at the moment to become creative about beurocracy. This makes it difficult to sleep.

I used to start dreaming to fall asleep, starting with something abstract and twisting it until it was even more difficult to articulate. Soon, all would be a haze of dream and random thought stream.

I need this again.

Zombies are walking the streets. I’m gathering wooden stakes and plunging them into the heads of the infected. It’s not working so well. Blood is spattering everywhere and I almost get covered in the disease. The stakes are proving ineffective anyway. Some zombies are wandering around with the wood protruding from their sculls. I’ve torn out big chunks of their heads but they don’t stop.

“We need to get to a Costco!” I tell my friends.

“OK, but first we need to stop at someone’s house.”

“Who? Why?”

“She’s a neurologist; she’ll know what to do.”

“…OK.”

On our way to her house, we stop at a school to pick up someone’s kid. In one of the classrooms, textbooks are flying through the air, having grown large teeth, attempting to bite the children.
“This isn’t just a zombie infection! This is some sort of magic.”
“That’s great news!” Says one of my cohorts, “It’s not a disease! We just need to find a magician.”

One of the men traveling with us knows where to find a magician and he takes us to his house. Surprisingly, this magician doesn’t know anything about the zombie attack. He believes us anyway and takes us into the ocean. “There,” he says, “we will meet another magician who can help you.”

In the depths of the sea, we find many new life-forms that we have never heard of before.

A cube shaped fish with bioluminescent saturn-like rings around it swims by. It’s gathering energy kenetically from other fish and creatures swimming in the water. It floats into a school of fish who twirl around the cube frantically. The cube gets brighter. A shark comes, pushing energy into the water as it feasts upon the swirl of fish. The cube and it’s rings get brighter and more energetic.

“It’s like an alien.” I say.

“How do you know it’s not?” The magician replies.

————-
OK, this dream really does go on forever so I’m going to leave it at that. To remind myself of the rest:

* Cubic alien beast becomes a flying carpet under the sea.
* Old lady magician under the sea, threatens attack but recognizes the traveling magician as a former lover.
* Infiltrating the military and fighting the attack.
* Vines growing out of the ground to consume the army.
* An unused field with chained up trees, under attack of consumption. To rebuild or let die?
* Pretending to be a woman and using the restroom at a closed down supermarket.
* The creepy janitors
* The Costco is closed
————-

Let’s sum it up with a Common Craft Zombie Guide:

I’m writing a book and I’m holding a virtual stack of 300 pages. There is easily another 200 pages to go. I take a break to look around the attic of some old, mysterious house I’m sleeping in. It’s late, probably just about dawn. My wife walks in the attic and sees me with a typewriter and a stack of pages, none of which are actually present in reality. I’m mixing space on my virtual console.

“It doesn’t have to be good.” I tell my wife. It just has to be complete. I need the whole story out on paper.

Somehow it’s just pouring out of me. I’m not even reading what I write so I’m sure it’s mostly garbage. I’ll have a hell of a time trudging through it later and marking down relevant sections–if there are any. I get this bad feeling that it’s all just dreamtext, phrases that sound fantastic when you are sleepwriting but which, upon conscious reading, turn out to be complete drivel. But, again, I am washed with a sense accomplishment. Crap or not, I’m writing a novel.

I’m a child, playing out a piano piece written by some old composer. He’s standing there watching me, making sure I’m doing it right.

“Ah, good, that part there is a little fast but it’s good that way.”

Many years later, I am an old man. I see the composer in a coffee shop, looking not a day older than when I was a child. It is apparent that he must die. He is the enemy, an agent from another faction. But I am old. What can I do? I befriend him. We discuss the changing scene of classical composition in modern times. He invites me over to his yacht where we drink and laugh about the past.

My family is with me now. We are all old. This is our vacation in some undisclosed European country.

“If he’s here, we need to run.” My wife suggests.

“We could catch a plane tonight. Grab only the items that are already packed.” I tell them. “I am going to see if I can finish this first.”

I head out to the yacht, uncertain of what I will do. Upon arrival, I see a figure leap from the mast and fall into a mesh of chain and rope in the front of the ship. It is the old man. He has hung himself on the bow. My arms fly into the air in a victorious flail of triumph. He is dead and I didn’t even have to kill him!

Interpol comes racing in, surrounding the scene. I scream at them. “He’s dead!” I laugh. “I didn’t do it but he’s dead. He’s finally dead.” I follow them over to the body and one of the agents grabs ahold of the man hanging from the chain.

“He isn’t dead yet. There’s breathing.”

My heart sinks into despair.

I’m in an old house, trying to sleep but I wake up to the sound of water dripping from the ceiling. There is a giant circle full of nearly ready drops of water, waiting to splash down.
“It’s from the rain.” Someone says.
“But it’s not raining…” I reply.
Downstairs, I’m in the kitchen, trying to get a drink of water and I notice that the middle of the kitchen floor is full of moss and clovers growing out of the ground. I seem to like it and decide not to try to remove any of it. At the sink, there are insects flying all around and I see one that looks like a swan. It’s about the size of a dragonfly but it’s softly feathered and has a long curved neck. It warps a little and now appears to be a small flying woman with no arms. But then I see she is only holding her arms up and over her head. I smile and move out of the kitchen, into the living room and stare at the ceiling, where down here too there is a big circle, dripping water and filth onto the floor. The water seems to be pooling up and soaking into the floor, then trickling down floor by floor.

Outside, I head to the bookshop, where many people are speaking about historical texts and how they relate to religion in modern times.

There is a boy who is studying Abraxas but he starts to follow a path that is being generated in front of him. A large stepping stone appears inches from his feet and as soon as he steps onto it, another appears in front of that one. He keeps this going until he is almost all the way around the world, traversing oceans and mountains with the steps rising and lowering to fit the terrain. When he is almost around the world the steps begin to go upward at an alarming pace, the boy just barely able to climb up to each next step. Before long, he is walking outside of the atmosphere, no problem breathing, circling the earth.

Narrowly avoiding the boy, a space Winnebago cruses into orbit and slams into the atmosphere, prepared to land in the city where I am watching this. The robot gets out of the machine and now it’s me. I am the robot. I am from space, looking for a new ride. Mine is old and won’t get me back into space.

On the next block, I see a real, honest space missile full of tourists, prepared to take off. It also looks like a Winnebago but when I sneak inside and the thrusters start up, i realize it isn’t as spacious as mine. There is only one seat I can fit into and it’s crammed up against a steering wheel. Nevertheless, I shoot up into space.

The missile doesn’t make it all the way and we land in the ocean near Russia. Swimming through dark waters, we find ourselves near ocean oil storage. There are vast pools of crude oil just floating in the waters, held together only by the chemicals own attraction to itself. When fish swim through it, the disturb it’s purity and get coated in the black sludge. A tanker is on its way to siphon some of the oil. It doesn’t matter how pure it is. It will get whatever it can and sell it at a discount.

We board the barge and when we get to land, everyone is fighting. It’s night and all I can see is fire and red hot pellets whizzing by our heads, shot from the pistols of the enemy. We have archaic weapons but they fire quickly. I’m reaching a tube into my pocket to fill it with tiny pellets, to reload my gun. It fires rapidly, randomly, into the wall of men. Like a fully automatic minuteman, I’m taking them down in seconds. We continue to march, just walking straight into the line of fire, gunning for the front line.

When the smoke clears and the bodies fall, we find ourselves in a theme park. The boy following the trail of stones is here. I tell my group we should go see an attraction that I remembered from a dream I had a few months ago. Behind one of the members of my group, I see floating islands with fortresses on them and a pair of noblemen battling each other on one of the island edges.

“There it is!” I point.

Shimmy-down the syntax.
Print-out a verbal fax.
Dish-out the dealy-O.
Spit-cast the buffer overflow.
Out-cast the PC lingo.
Bypass the verbal underpass.
Make way for the super-flyway.
Pepper-spray the secret-sauce.

I’m up in a skyscraper that scrapes the ionosphere. It’s mostly under construction on the bottom of the tower but it’s all finished and full of people up top. There are escalators everywhere and I’m running down them. My Heely skate shoes come in handy as I round the corner and glide down one of the special wheelchair ramp escalators. It’s totally flat but it moves me faster than I can run. When I hit the bottom of the ramp I grab hold of a metal bar encircling the next escalator and I jump up through the opening that separates the pedestrian walkway from the pedestrian freeway. Now I’m flying. My feet tap every fiftieth step on the electric stairway, just enough to keep my momentum but the angle of descent is enough for me to nearly free-fall down dozens of floors.
Although I’m going fast, I know they are not far behind me, Yakuza, gokudō, but not bōryokudan–this group isn’t violent by nature. I think they just want to question me, why, I don’t know but I’m running anyway. It’s not that I mind answering questions, I just like to answer questions with all my fingers intact at the end of the conversation.
In almost no time at all, I’m nearing the underdeveloped part of the tower. The are no longer any escalators and I must take one of the large elevators they use to cart equipment. It also carries a lot of people on sometimes, like tonight, where countless tuxedo and gown clad citizens celebrate on the roof, gazing at the less distant stars, getting drunk off of the high altitude.
For a second, I worry that they may have someone stationed in the lift. Luckily, they had flown in and landed on the roof. They must not have had anyone come from the ground, yet. The elevator takes me all the way down to the basement level, my ears popping all the way. In the lowest level of the building, there are even more people than on the roof. They are getting ready for a Cirque performance of some kind.
I grab a seat, trying to be inconspicuous. The show starts and immediately I am unimpressed. They have giraffe unicycle magicians catching fine pieces of cloth, which are being projected out of thin air, but I can see a black gloved hand throwing them from behind an even blacker drapery. The contortionists are weak and the jugglers falter.