The Bend of the World: A Novel (15 page)

Billy had claimed to know of a bat cave in the area. His family, like mine, was from the rich part of Sewickley, and they had a cottage in Ligonier. This cottage had six bedrooms, but never mind. In his telling, he knew the wild terrain of the area like back of his hand; he’d actually used that cliché, which should have been a clue to the truth. Close your eyes and describe the back of your hand. The closest you’ll get is that it looks like a hand. We tromped around in the woods for a while, with Johnny occasionally pulling out the camera to shoot randomly through the trees. What the fuck are you doing? I asked him. Establishing shots, he told me. This was before Steadicam and all that. I told him that shooting while we walked was stupid. It’s going to look like shit, I said. It’s going to be all shaky.

Don’t worry, he told me. I have a very steady camera hand.

We never found the cave, but we eventually found a little rock outcrop beside a small creek that seemed a promising spot to set up camp. Billy’s tent, which belonged on the side of Everest, proved too complicated for us to set up, so we left it in a heap of struts and blue fabric. Johnny had snuck a couple of bottles of whiskey into his bag, and Billy had something that he said was weed. The weed was doubtful, but the Jack Daniel’s was real, and after taking a few slugs each, we filmed some scenes. Headless (me), running through the woods. Johnny, dressed in camouflage, examining broken twigs and footprints. This creature, he said, this monster must be stopped before it rapes again.

What do you mean, rapes? I asked him between shots. I thought he was a murderer. We had already filmed several scenes of me killing Billy with, I thought, professional-level conviction.

He rapes before he kills, Johnny said. Like in
Deliverance
.

I’d never seen
Deliverance
, but it was the sort of movie that every teenage boy had heard about. Johnny had seen everything, because of Ben.

That’s stupid, I said. That’s fucking dumb. Why would he even want to have sex with a person? He’s not even supposed to be human.

Bigfoots haves sex with people according to Johnny’s crazy granddad, Billy said.

Shut up, Billy, Johnny told him. If bigfoot rapes anyone, it’s going to be you.

Whatever, Billy said.

The climactic scene was supposed to be a clifftop fight between Headless and Johnny, with both ultimately plunging to their doom. Billy, who’d been stuck on camera duty but for his death scenes, got pissed that he wasn’t getting more screen time. You’ll get producer credit, Johnny told him.

Fuck you, Johnny. I want to be
in
the movie.

There’s no role for you, Johnny said. What would you even do?

I don’t know. Maybe I could, like, put on the ape mask and become the hunter’s sidekick.

That’s fucking stupid. He doesn’t have a sidekick.

Then I could be, like, a wise forest creature who helps the hunter track down Headless.

We could do that, I said, mostly because I was getting sick of the movie. Also, guys, it’s getting dark, and we should get back to the camp and build a fire before it does.

First of all, you’re not going to play Targivad, the Wise Monkey of the Forest, or whatever, Johnny said. And second of all, Morrison, don’t worry. I have excellent night vision.

Targivad, I said. Where’d you come up with that?

Or
whatever
, Johnny said.

But we did go back. We managed to get a fire started. We managed to burn some hot dogs. Why did your Pap call us hot dogs? I asked Johnny.

I don’t know, Johnny said. He’s Pap.

We got drunk.

I threw up in the creek.

I was in my sleeping bag.

My head was spinning.

I remember drifting in and out of sleep; I remember the stars moving overheard through the trees; I remember that I’d worried that I’d be scared sleeping out in the woods like that, which I’d never done before, but I wasn’t scared; it was as if I could feel myself, many years later, remembering that I hadn’t been scared; I could hear everything in that immense darkness; I heard rustling and whispering; I heard Billy say, No, man, come on; I heard Billy say, Well, okay, I guess; I slept; I woke. We walked back to the state road and down to Ligonier, where we sat in the pretty square. Pap picked us up at eleven and took us to a diner before we drove back to the city. He looked me in the eyes and said, You look like you tied one on last night, hot dog.

What? I said.

He tipped his thumb toward his mouth and made a clicking sound. You’d better have some coffee, he said.

Coffee is gross, I told him.

He chuckled. Lots of things seem gross at first. Try it. Which I did, and I found, to my surprise, that the bitterness was pleasant even in my dry mouth.

I realized after he’d dropped me off at home that Johnny and Billy hadn’t spoken, hadn’t even looked at each other, for that entire day.

3

Another Monday. As had been promised, I’d received a call from Karla and gone off to Human Resources, a Strasbourg in Global Solutions’ medieval landscape, a free city at the crossroads of all the trade routes, with its own weird culture and amalgam language. I hadn’t been in HR since I’d first been hired. My colleagues, those who used their health plans and considered their retirements, were up here all the time filling out mysterious forms and pestering about reimbursements or withholdings or the rising cost of a monthly parking pass in the basement garage, but I thought the place was a bit spooky, full of hushed, confidential voices and bowls of candy and women who came and left the office in white tennis shoes.

Karla was the director of HR and by reputation a bitter, distrustful harpy who spent her hours nursing an evil resentment at not being considered a part of senior staff despite running her own department. I suspected this was more a reflection of the way my coworkers imagined that they would have felt in her position, because I sort of liked her. She wore her hair in an extraordinary crown of tiny braids, and her neck and wrists bore an impressive overabundance of bracelets and necklaces. You probably don’t remember me, I said. Peter Morrison.

Oh, you, she said. She waved her hand and her bracelets clanked. Come on in, Mystery Man.

She had me sign a series of forms. I asked her if I should read them. They all say keep your mouth shut and do what you’re told, she said. Also, they teach you the secret handshake, the passwords, and how to operate the decoder ring. Really? I said. No, she told me, but they do say that you’re an at-will employee and that either you or Global Solutions, its others, owners, licensees, assignees, and subsidiaries can, at any point, without cause or notice, terminate the agreement.

Termination upon the occurrence of certain other events, I said, principally to myself.

What? No, she said. There are no events. It
means
keep your mouth shut and do what you’re told, or they’ll fire your ass. Now sign this. It’s your status update form.

It listed my new title as Associate Director, Special Planning and Projects.

What’s an associate director? I said. Do we have those?

We do now, I guess. I try to tell them that the paperwork is a pain. We get audited, and they want to know where these titles come from. I tell them, don’t ask me, I only work here.

The salary is wrong, I said. I’d read down the form. It said eighty-five.

You’re damn right it’s wrong. A thirty percent raise? We’re supposed to be on a one percent annual right now.

No, I said. I mean, they told me a bigger number.

I’m sure they did. Was it Bates? That fool is supposed to be the chief
financial
officer, but I swear to Jesus he only understands one, two, and many. Every time he offers someone a promotion, he says one thing, and then he tells me something else. Let me be straight with you: the lower number is always the right number, so you can go upstairs and ask him if you want, or you can just sign off and I’ll get the raise into your next paycheck. Makes no difference to me.

I should just sign off, then.

Yes, she said. You should.

On the way out the door, she called me back. Hey, Mystery Man, she said.

Yeah?

I’ve seen this company go through one bullshit IPO and two private equity sales, she said. Bool-shit, she pronounced it, for emphasis. Let me give you some advice. Getting noticed is never the right strategy.

We’re not getting sold, I said.

She laughed. Nice try, she said. Maybe they won’t fire your ass after all. But please. I was born at night, but not last night.

4

Still, I had no idea what my new job was. That in itself was no big change. I contemplated calling Bates or Sylvia Georges, but they were not the sort of people that my sort of employee just phoned or emailed on a Monday morning. Instead, I called Mark. I had his business card, after all, and it listed a phone number. His voice said, Hi, you’ve reached Mark Danner. I’ll be traveling abroad this week and will return on April first. I’m available by email, or leave me a message, and I’ll call you back. I tried to write him an email, but I discovered that I didn’t know what I wanted to ask him. So I went back to doing what I’d been doing, which wasn’t much, and I figured that at some point, someone would tell me what it was that I was supposed to do instead.

I did bump into Leonard that week. Disconcertingly, I was down on twenty-three. I’d just come out of the restroom, heedlessly, since no one was ever around down there, and I nearly ran into him. He’d been texting or otherwise reading something on his phone. We both regarded each other suspiciously for a moment. Finally I said, Leonard. What? he said. You think you’re the only dude who’s ever gotta pinch one out at work? Jesus, I said with a laugh. Listen, he said, tell me straight up: Did they can you? Can me? I said. No, why? You got called upstairs. Marcy said they canned you. She said you got the nastygram this morning. Marcy’s full of shit. Shit, man, I know that. So you’re good? I’m good, I said.

He seemed relieved, and it gratified me. I liked Leonard. By the way, he said, I told my girl about your little close encounter.

Oh, man, I said. Really? I told you not to say anything.

Man, a successful relationship don’t have secrets.

Seriously?

She told me to tell you don’t worry. The UFOs, they got nothing to do with the end of the world. They’re a CMU thing.

Like the university?

Yeah, military, man. Psyops. Intelligence shit.

Well, that’s reassuring, sort of, I said.

Is it? I guess so. Personally, I’d take the goddamn aliens over the goddamn Nazis.

Nazis? I said.

Yeah, who do you think designed that shit? It was all back in the fifties or whatever, after the war. Some CIA dude and this German scientist they brought over to work at Carnegie Tech. I thought you were supposed to be into all this.

My friend is, I said.

Yeah, he said. Your
friend
. Whatever, my man. And then, whistling, he went into the bathroom and turned the latch in the door.

5

I’d also been visiting Johnny in the hospital, trying to piece together his little chemical walkabout. I mentioned the three a.m. phone call; I mentioned that he may have called Derek as well. Well, what had happened is that Johnny had reread
Fourth River, Fifth Dimension
. The psychic adept, it said in chapter fourteen,

has long been viewed by many cultures and societies as possessing the unique ability to see the future. There is a notion of time that dominates in our technologically advanced civilization. It imagines time in geographic terms. Thus the psychic has, in effect, sharper eyesight than the rest of us. In fact, time’s higher dimensionality cannot be visualized in three-dimensional terms, and the psychic does not see into the future so much as he momentarily substitutes it for his present. Scientifically speaking, psychics are able to transform their internal time equation, thereby deriving different time-point-slopes from various points along the time curve. Truly understanding these functions requires highly advanced mathematics that we will not delve into here. Suffice it to say that the psychic “dials in” on different times through a calculitic-arithmetical process in the mind-computer. He or she is quite literally able to remember the future and convey it via quantum tunneling into the past, creating what an electrical expert would call a Feedback Loop. Technical details, for those so inclined, are included in Appendix C.

The Project sought to enhance these abilities via chemical-cortical stimulation. Many supposedly primitive peoples (e.g., Aboriginal Dream Time) have a far more sophisticated understanding of the nature of the personal time index and have used traditional shamanic techniques and rituals to transcend present-index and participate in the holistic continuum of the time function. These techniques and rituals often involve a chemical component. Contemporary science has synthesized some of these miracle molecules, for instance DMT, the so-called “death particle,” as well as creating powerful dissociative anesthetics such as Ketamine. While prior Top Secret experimentation (viz. MKUltra) focused on the mind-control effects of the so-called classical hallucinogens (“serotonergic psychedelics”), the Project sought to tie mind control to time control via the recombinant properties of the tryptamines and the NMDA receptor antagonist family.

You got the sense, reading these books, that there was just an insufficient amount of truth in the world, that the neat parsing of probability and possibility down to the merely actual was just such a drag that the author had to admit every strand of improbable and impossible narrative to the tale as a hedge against the disappointing thinness and paucity of the real reality.

So you never quite got a hold on what they were trying to accomplish, really; or, you got the feeling that they were trying to accomplish everything—a new age or the end of the world or something in between. But there was a curiously self-effacing quality to the story, too. All these secret agents and psychics and UFOlogists leveraging their vast, secret power toward some odd end that, at last, had nothing to do with them at all.