ERASERHEAD PRESS 205 NE BRYANT PORTLAND, OR 97211

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ISBN: 1-936383-12-8

Copyright © 2010 John Skipp & Marc Levinthal Cover art copyright © 2010 Samuel Deats http://www.deatsfeats.com

This is a work of parody, as defined by the Fair Use Doctrine. Any similarities, without satirical intent, to copyrighted characters, or individuals living or dead, are purely coincidental.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written consent of the publisher, except where permitted by law.

Printed in the USA.

MARC’S DEDICATION:

To Rebecca, for putting up with me while we wrote this. To my brother Steve, for sparking my interest in all thingsfantastic… To Michael, because I will always miss you.

SKIPP’S DEDICATION:

To my family, for making me as good as I’ve gotten. To Alexandra Schmidt, my excellent muse this time; and To all Dorothys, everywhere (you know who you are).

Marc would like to acknowledge L. Frank Baum, Philip Jose Farmer (for A Barnstormer in Oz [You Rock!]), Margaret Hamilton, Jack Haley, Ray Bolger, Bert Lahr, Judy Garland, Terence McKenna, Timothy Leary, Miles Davis, Buckminster Fuller, Carl Jung, Alan Watts, Albert Einstein, Robert Anton Wilson, and Coleman Hawkins.

Skipp would like to add Fairuza Balk, Frank Zappa, Ray Bradbury, Tim Burton, Robert Crumb, Carlos Casteneda, Hunter S. Thompson, Nicola Tesla, Terry Gilliam, Stanislav Grof, Mark Ryden and Dr. Seuss to the list… plus the guy who painted that Rembrandt-looking, super-realistic portrait of Popeye. (Just hearing about it was a huge inspiration).

We also want to acknowledge Art and Lydia (of Babbage Press), Jim Ford and Mitch Stein (of the Stein Agency), and all of the good friends and neighbors we’ve made, since arriving here in darkest LA.

Finally, the authors need to thank Krystine Kryttre—a great artist and exceptional person—for first introducing us, thereby inadvertently kick-starting this whole happy mess.

Thank you, Kryttre!

3/13/07

I bought a pint-sized bottle of Jack, down the street from the Comfort Inn—at a little corner liquor store, right here in Salina, Kansas—and I don’t mind telling you that I’m loaded right now. I’m not used to drinking this crap, and I don’t know why I got it, except that I’m really nervous. Hell, I’m terrified.

This could be my last night on Earth. But hopefully not my last night alive. Or my last night human.

I never thought I’d feel this scared. I mean, by the time I’d gotten the notice of acceptance from U.S. Customs, I’d run the statistics that I’d downloaded, modeled a profile for myself that told me my odds of making it through were really good. Still, there’s always that chance that you could wind up like poor old Michael Jackson.

Poor bastard thought he was gonna be the first kid on his block to go moonwalking with the Munchkins and instead—kablam!— winds up wetly decorating the walls of the Gateroom. Heard it took them three days to clean up. Lots of scrubbing and scraping involved.

But that kind of stuff doesn’t happen very often. Usually, you make it through, or you’re standing there wondering why you’re not in Oz yet, until somebody taps you on the shoulder and tells you to go home.

I remember holding that notice in my hands, just staring at it, and thinking, Gene, your life is never going to be the same. You just turned a corner. Like one of those probability nodes in some alternate universe story. I just split off into the universe where I get to go see Aurora. Not the one where I work in the record store until I turn into a fat old bald guy. Fuckin’ A.

Right? And I didn’t get scared then. But I’m scared now.

I made good time today; it was pretty clear all the way down I-4O from Albuquerque to Oklahoma City. It started to turn shitty right outside of Wellington, rain you could see falling in broad gray sheets miles across the plains.

I passed through the border check on route 35 about ten miles past Wichita. The patrolman scoped the California plates, slowly shined a flashlight into the backseat of my Galaxy, and asked me where I was headed.

“Topeka,” I said, lamely, “visiting my mom.” I didn’t want to be messed with right then. It was too late, and there was half a joint in the ashtray.

He gave me the hairy eyeball for half a second and waved me on.

If I’d told him was headed for Salina and the Gate, he probably would have taken my car apart. Well, could have, anyway. If he thought I was trying to bring any contraband through.

I switched the wipers up a notch, and started looking at the billboards for a Motel Six or some other variation on a theme of crap motel. A quick glance at the gas gauge told me that I needed to fill up; I’d failed to notice through my stoned reverie that I was almost on “E.”

I pulled off at the next exit that had a Chevrex station. I got out of the car, pulling my coat up over my head against the rain, and went into the snack shop to pay.

For about a half a minute I stood there, occasionally yelling “hello” before I realized, much to my chagrin, that there was actually someone behind the counter.

A very short person.

“Can I help—you?,” he said, as he climbed up onto a stool that put him at roughly eye-level. He spoke with that unmistakably weird accent, and his long unnaturally red beard hung down over his Chevrex uniform. I could see the curly tips of his prayer-shoes peeking out under his wide pant-cuffs.

“Fill it on six,” I said, trying not to stare. The closer you got to the gate, the more immigrants you saw working at the burger joints, gas stations, as maids in hotels. Sure, Ozians headed for Earth didn’t use the same gate we did (you could go through it from this end, but it was really hard to find), but for some reason they all seemed to materialize somewhere close to Kansas. Of course there were exceptions. Whether or not these conditions were natural or artificial was anybody’s guess.

I handed him a hundred and walked out.

I still couldn’t understand why they came. True, Oz was dangerous as hell, but no more so than parts of New York City or Lebanon. And no one starved there. No one got sick. Usually.

Of course, in Oz one could actually wake from uneasy dreams to find himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect.

It happens.

So now I’m sitting on the bed in my shitty hotel room, with my laptop on my lap and the puzzle-pieces of my future splayed out absurdly all around me. The tacky bedspread looks like an oversized fortune teller’s table, covered with misshapen tarot cards.

For example: just to my left is the Fodor’s‘07 Guide to Known Oz, with the Rand McNally map in the back of it. It contains almost everything I currently know about where I’m going.

Just above it, directly before me, are the papers that allegedly will get me in.

To my right, scrinched up against the edge of the bed, is a loose fan of photographs. There’s a shot of my cats. My bedroom. My roommate, eating thai barbeque (we made it ourselves) and grinning, waving, sauce all over her face.

There’s a shot of me behind the counter at Aron’s Records. Coworkers mill around me, hip Los Angelenos all. I am holding up a recent piece of gruesome Millennial nostalgia—the Boyz 2 Men commemorative boxed set—preparing to ring it up; and my pain is hard to miss.

There are also postcards of places that I always wanted to see, right here on Earth. Hong Kong. The Australian outback. Morocco. The Caveman Room at the Madonna Inn.

In the center spot of the photo-fan is the shot that basically brought me here. It’s a shot of me.

And Aurora Q. Jones.

I’m staring at that picture of the two of us: Aurora and Gene, true buddy-pals forever. We are drunk as skunks, throwing firecrackers into the bathtub. God bless America, it’s the Fourth of July. Almost three years ago. It was one of the best parties ever, and the photograph makes me smile.

She’s got a grin on her face that almost reaches her ears, and those green eyes of hers are flashing madly under a wild tease of red-orange hair. She’s tall and curvy, and I want to reach into the picture and kiss her on the lips, just as I wanted to do that night. Kiss her hard, in that perfect moment, on that perfect summer night.

And there I am, in that otherwise-perfect photograph: besotted, bemused, about half a head shorter than Aurora, holding a lit fire cracker contemptuously between my fingers. My long brown hair— back in the day, before I buzzed it—framing a roundish, long-nosed face.

I look at the picture, and I find myself wondering just what in the hell I’m thinking. I feel stupid and scared and unprepared and at least as drunk as I was at that party.

But as much as I’m feeling all of that stuff, there’s a part of me that just can’t wait. I want to see what munchkins look like in their natural habitat. I want to hear what kind of music they play. I want to go somewhere where a little girl named Ozma and a good witch named Glinda actually run the government, instead of winding up in mental institutions or, worse, taking campaign contributions from the NRA and the Christian Right.

It might suck really hard. It might be just okay. It might be the best thing that ever happened. But fuck it, that’s what I’m doing with my summer vacation.

God help me, I’m going to Oz.

Now I’m gonna watch tv until I black out, soaking up the drone of vapid talk show banter and commercials for sneakers, amusement parks, and fast food/movie tie-ins. It may be the last time I ever see Jay Leno.

Jeez, when I look at it that way, maybe I’m not so stupid after all.

The Emerald City.

Some night this year.

Dear me,

Tonight of all nights, there are piggels in the rafters, and the candles won’t stop dancing. I think it’s hilarious, but Quilla’s already getting dizzy. And I don’t have time to waste.

“STOP!” I tell them. “JESUS CHRIST!” The piggels giggle. The candles prance. It’s hard not to laugh, but inside I’m uneasy. Wouldn’t surprise me if Quilla’s picking up on that, too. My poor little pen squirms in feeble protest; I hold her steady, reassuring but firm, popping her pointily-elegant head in and out of the lavender ink-rose blossom, then back to the page.

Again and again, I repeat the manuever. “Sorry,” I tell her. “I gots to do it. A girl needs to write, and a deal is a deal.” But I’m not so sure that she understands. (Point of fact, I’m not so sure I understand, either. This writing compulsion. This need to set down. And not only that, but to measure up, too, while I’m pouring out my soul.)

I mean, it’s not like Oz is crawling with expatriate writers. And it’s not like anyone cares, of course, but… oh, god. The crux is this: I’m pretty sure it’s March by now, which means that Gene’s probably on his way; and though I am utterly, thoroughly stoked—I am, I really am, can’t you tell from my voice?—I must admit it’s dragging up a few issues for me.

(Now STOP that! Damn piggels! They’re nuts!)

Like, just for instance, this matter of Time. According to his letter, it’s been, what. over two years since I totally lost track, threw up my hands, gave up on the calendar chase and gave into the long trippy slipstream-of-consciousness that is Oz in the moment to moment. It’s been good. Very good. I have learned much by cutting loose.

Now, suddenly, I’m calling all that into question. I’m remembering that, christ, I’m almost fucking twenty-five! That was the year that I swore to myself I would make my mark in the world or die. All the wrongs would be righted. All the truths would be told.

It seemed so important.

Why doesn’t it now?

Or maybe it does, and I’m just in denial. Or I just don’t remember. Or maybe I do. When I write about this, it sure yanks me back hard.

When I think about Gene, it yanks even harder.

Gene and I met on the Internet, in the banner year 2000: a couple of wacky e-mail freaks and part-time online ‘zinesters. His ‘zine was called Exploding Clown Experiment. Mine was called Wait My Ass. Both of them were intensely first-personal accounts of whatever the fuck happened to pop into our heads.

The point was that we were both compulsive. Anything that happened, and anything that didn’t happen—in our minds, in our lives, in the greater World Outside—was totally fair game for our poisoned word processors. It was a trait we shared in common with just about every other lunatic both driven and alienated enough to go to all that trouble; but for some reason, we cracked each other up. Became fans of each other. And, very quickly, became electronic friends, bonded by our written words.

The fact that we were both Lost Angelenos made it easy for us to meet, though we put it off for a very long time, mostly through sheer inertia. The clincher was a tribute to Little Jimmy Scott at the Wiltern Theatre, in the spring of 2002. The fact that Gene was a fan of Jimmy Scott’s music—loved it as much as I did, and maybe even more—was all I needed to know.

We went to the show. Had a blast. Hung out some more. Got high and fucked around a little. Snapped out of it. Went “whoa.” And laughed: the best possible response. Came out the other side of that, not as boyfriend and girlfriend, but with total affection and appreciation for each other.

I love Gene a whole big bunch.

But we are all mirrors to each other; and what Gene reflects back—in my mind, right now—is the urge to catch up and just get it all down. To leave a record of my cranial trail, regardless of what happens to us, it, or me.

Of late, I have been lax in chronicling: a whole lot more do than tell.

Gene makes me remember how much I love to get it all in writing.

I size myself up in the Old Faithful Mirror: that gorgeous magick object I have mounted on the wall. It sees through souls, and tells no lies. It has no bias of its own. The too-big eyes reflected there, the too-large lips, are the ones I’ve always had. The body is my body. Perhaps I haven’t changed a bit. Between the pink and blue lights of the floating piggels and the multifaceted firelight flicker, I feel like I’m back at a plug-in party: alone in my room, locked in cybercast transmission, desperately throwing myself at some weird projected abstraction of happiness. Like a dope. Not even fooling myself.

But this is the thing. I am not in the world.. I’m in Oz. I’m in Oz. And I’m not even stoned. It’s not like I’m sitting around in a room, dreaming dreamy dreamdreams that are just veiled excuses. It’s not like I didn’t make love to that dragon. It’s not like I haven’t been getting around. Every second I’ve spent here, awash in walking symbols—learning warrior tech from the Winkie King, conversing with the dinner plate, repainting Scarecrow’s head—has been magick in action. Astonishing action. I mean, I always wanted to talk with the trees. Now I talk with the trees all the time.

Gene has never had that conversation, much as he’s always wanted one. Back in the world, that shit just doesn’t happen. Back in the world, it’s banal as all hell. The magick is stunted. There is no belief. It’s as gray as the day that cyclone scooped up Dorothy Gale.

But now I’m in a place where imagination matters. Where magick is a given, and its fruits are everywhere. And while I don’t have any new, improved powers—I can’t flap my arms and fly, I can’t shoot fireballs out my ass—the magick I always knew I had is appreciated here, and that is SO GRATIFYING. Every day, I can hardly believe it.

I mean, sure, I work in a Mexican restaurant; and sure, I sometimes have to moonlight as an artist’s model. But there’s never BEEN a restaurant like the Emerald Burrito; and you haven’t LIVED till you’ve posed nekkid for a roomful of sweaty munchkin artistes.

Fact is, everybody in Oz has got some kind of job, even if it means farming goomer cream (yeesh). I could even live with that, as long as I had wildness in my life. You get a spark that’s called a soul, you wanna believe that it’s worth something. And it is. It truly is.

At least in Oz.

And here I am.

So I guess I’ll just stop agonizing, and wait for Gene to come. Maybe he’ll like what I’m writing enough to think it’s worth smuggling back. It doesn’t have to be Jack Kerouak, Jr.‘s On the Yellow Brick Road; I’ll just call ‘em as I sees ‘em, and let posterity sort it out.

At the very least, we’re gonna have some fun. This is one vacation he’ll never forget.

(Okay, Quilla. That’s it for tonight. I’m gonna blow out the candles.)

And, piggels?

GOOD NIGHT!!!

3/14/07

That guy was right about the laptop.

OH HO oh HO OH HO!!!! Lovely to see you, how do you do?

Shut the fuck up, will you, I’m trying to write! I swear to God, I’ll turn you off.

I’m typing this by the glow of the screen, down at the bottom of a sea of stars, the only sounds an occasional pop! from the crimson embers of the dying campfire, and the strange flanged chirping of the local crickets. There’s a heady scent in the air, some strange local herbal melange, and multicolored fireflies are practicing figure-eights off in the deep, dark Ozian night.

I should be asleep, but I’m still a little wound up. A drink would help, but nobody around here seems to have any booze, and I neglected to pack another bottle. Figures Ralph is in a twelve-step program, and I get the feeling Nick doesn’t drink. Wine. Probably kill him. A little would go a long way, that’s for sure.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Maybe committing the day’s events to hard-drive will help. I guess I should start at the beginning:

aginning, taginning, hooray!!!!

Stop it, please.

At seven-fifteen this morning, in Salina, on another planet far far away, I said goodbye to my Galaxie, socking it away in a gargantuan long-term parking lot. I grabbed my backpack out of the trunk, and walked away. The rule is, if you don’t come back for the car in a year and a half, it belongs to the government. Simple. Otherwise, the rates are pretty reasonable.

Next I wandered over to the U.S. Customs building, which was not hard to find; it was a monstrous construct easily as big as the rest of the town.

I walked up a long marble stairway leading to a single tall door in the center of the building. Pushing the door open, I found myself in a claustrophobic little waiting room, like in a dentist’s office. It seemed a strange thing to find inside this huge building, like Dr. Who’s phonebooth in reverse.

A plump little woman with glasses sat behind a little window with a door next to it. “May I help you?” she asked, without looking up from her paperwork.

“Yes,” I said, “My acceptance letter says to show up here—today!” I smiled, but no return smile was forthcoming as she reached for my papers.

“Have a seat over there,” the lady said, indicating a row of uncomfortable-looking chairs against the wall.

I sighed and sat down, plunking down the knapsack next to me. There were some eight-month-old, dog-eared magazines on a table next to the chairs. I picked one up at random and leafed through it, agitated.

Finally, fifteen or twenty minutes later, the portly lady called my name. Then she handed me a stack of documents as thick as a phonebook, and for the next hour and a half, I performed my dronely chores.

There was a form from the IRS, to verify that my taxes were all paid up. By signing another form, an “Official Record of Exoneration,” I held blameless The United States of America and any or all of its agents in the event of “any unseemly and/or unusual transformation as a result of use of the Salina Gate.”

There were the usual things, like asking for next-of-kin, DNA scan permission in case of death, and three or four things the ACLU will eventually be having a field day with, such as “allocation of any discoveries and/or scientific breakthroughs, blah blah blah, to the United States, in order to safeguard national security.”

Right. So if, while in Oz, I stumble upon a magic berry that turns water into gasoline, and by some miracle, it works when I bring it back (something that has never happened), I’m supposed to turn it over to Uncle Sam rather than make a kazillion dollars? I don’t think so.

I signed the damned paper anyway. I signed everything. I wasn’t going to throw away the whole trip on a technicality.

The guard at the front desk gave everything the once-over, then, satisfied, sent me through yet another door, which led into a covered walkway across a parking lot, and into the bowels of the Gate Building itself.

Once there, I presented my passport to seven different dead-ass functionaries, who each scrutinized it past the point of absurdity, then poked through my backpack, frisked me. Maybe there’s some counterpart to them in Oz, the Redunderheads or somebody, endlessly repeating the same meaningless task, banished to their own little happy gulag (for their own good of course) by Glinda. Luckily, I did not qualify for a cavity search. I really got the feeling that the government is not happy about allowing this whole thing to go on. But it’s not like they can do a hell of a lot about it.

I mean, since the shake-up and everything.

Who knew? Who would have ever guessed what the truth was? People were smelling the vapors since the forties, but everybody was dead wrong about the particulars. The most canny theorist was dead wrong. The most bug-shit lunatic could not come close to the truth. Forget the Philadelphia Experiment, forget Area 54, the Hollow Earth.

Who the hell could have predicted that Kennedy was offed because he was going to inform the world that Oz was real and we’d been closely involved there since before the end of World War Two?

Not even Blitzheimer knew that.

Good old Noel Blitzheimer.

A CIA operative for thirty years, Blitzheimer, risking life and limb, called a press conference on April Fools Day, 2002, to announced to the world the address of a web site. Here he’d assembled top secret documents, photos, video and sound files chronicling the U.S. presence in Oz since the forties.

Blitzheimer said, “The Cold War is over. There is no reason to hide the existence of this magical place any longer. I accept responsibility for this breach of National Security, and am willing to face the consequences.”

Some say that Noel was having a breach of mental security right around the time that he let that particular cat out of the bag, but that’s another story. Suffice it to say that he never faced any charges, and is now something of a national hero. But even Blitzheimer didn’t know everything, and the snowball effect he created was truly astounding. Once started, there was no stopping it.

Gore got on himself with a live feed to come clean, and the rest was history, as they say. Although anyone old enough to have been directly involved in the whole conspiracy and the subsequent cover-up has done a good job of evading history thus far. Funny how that works.

I was nearing the end of the gauntlet.

Finally, the last guy, a skinny bug-eyed creep, stamped my passport and handed it back to me. “Behave yourself,” he said as I cleared the last metal detector and hefted my knapsack back up onto my shoulders. “Oh—by the way,” he added, sniffling, looking more and more each moment like Barney Fife on speed, “you might have some problems with that laptop.” He pointed to the x-ray outline of my little Superbook. I gave him a quizzical look, hoping he might elaborate, but he just flashed a goofy smile, and turned back to the next customer, a longhaired, leather jacketed dude who he waved right through.

The longhaired guy had what I guess you’d call a swashbuckling manner about him. Sculpted dark blond beard-and-moustache combo. Kind of rakish and buff, with a twinkle in his eye. I was inclined to dislike him on sight, but he smiled at me, too, as he passed. I was still adjusting the straps, trying to get my shit together. It didn’t look like he had any luggage at all.

I made my way down a hallway that rivaled any architectural monstrosity of Soviet excess, a way-too-huge walkway to—what? I still hadn’t seen the Gate, didn’t actually know what it looked like, or what the actual apparatus of movement from one realm to another was.

I had some ideas, but no one I’d ever spoken to who had firsthand experience of the process had ever told me anything useful. Evidently, it was different for everyone.

Aurora told me she’d had “Body and Soul”—jazz saxophone genius Coleman Hawkins’ masterpiece version—on a disc in her Walkman, and when she came into the room, she hit play, closed her eyes, and started dancing. And when she opened her eyes again, she was in Oz.

Now, here I was, about to find out for myself. I’m a Hawkins fan, but Aurie’s style is not exactly my style. I’m more of a “Hail Mary” kind of guy when undergoing great stress. I haven’t gone to church for about ten years, but I still invoke the “St. Anthony” algorithm while looking for lost keys.

The anxiety I thought I’d shaken in the morning was back with a vengeance. I was terrified. I started saying what I could remember of the rosary.

The hallway ended in a cement wall, with a big garage door in the middle of it. Two guards with automatic weapons stood on either side of it. There were a few people there before me, including the longhaired guy, waiting to try their luck. I got into the line behind him.

Someone behind me was speaking. I turned around when I realized he was talking to me.

“Excuse me?” I said.

“Fifty-thousand to one.” He was a beefy guy with a big beard and hornrimmed glasses. He was wearing a really tacky “Dorothy” tee shirt. “Fifty-thousand to one odds of exploding.” He giggled. “Feeling lucky?” Giggle, giggle.

“Why don’t you shut up, ese?,” somebody said from in front of us in line. It was a young, well tailored latino guy with a suitcase. “You gotta bum my trip right when I’m having one of the best days of my life, eh?” Then to me, he said, “Don’t listen to him, homeboy, only putos explode.” He pointed at the fat guy. “Like you, maybe, Dorothy. Or like Kenny G. or something.”

Just then the huge speaker horn hanging from the wall above the door shrilled, “Alphonse Gutierrez!” The latino guy smiled. “Vama-nos,” he said, and strode toward the door. The garage door opened up slowly, and it looked so benign, like you could walk in there and get the lawnmower or something. You couldn’t actually see what was in there, because there was yet another corridor to go down, this one low, dark and foreboding. I knew something was going to look really foreboding at some point.

The guy with the suitcase looked quite happy. Go figure.

Happity HI oh Yay!!!!

Stop it, you little asshole! (Sorry. The Thing in my laptop is trying to learn English, I guess. It’s really starting to bug me. But I’ll get to that in a minute.)

I heard the closest guard on the left say to him, “walk slowly towards the opposite wall.”

“Some people actually implode,” the guy behind me was saying, gleefully, “they find these little inside-out bags of skin, all bloody and disgusting.”

Alphonse Gutierrez walked inside, and the garage door swung shut. I remember thinking, I hope this guy isn’t a puto and doesn’t explode, or implode, because I don’t want to have to hang around in Kansas for a week while they clean up and try to figure out why.

I spent the next few seconds staring at the woman directly in front of longhair man, then I heard this total Don Martin sound come from behind the garage door. There was a Thurm!Thurm!Thurm! thing that kind of ramped up to a a liquid Sproiiing!!! sound. Then that was it. They called the next guy’s name.

I guessed Gutierrez made it through, cause he didn’t come out, and all systems were still “go.”

I found the sound effects to be a little disconcerting. The combination of those and the rosary effect made me about ready to lose control of my bowels.

The lady at the front of the line didn’t seem to mind. She was blonde, about forty, gauzy cotton skirt and turquoise jewelry everywhere. She was clutching an enormous, phallic-looking crystal to her chest. She had her eyes closed, chanting something to herself, or maybe she was just out of her mind, babbling, I don’t know. She opened her eyes, saw me looking at her, smiled. She put her palm to my forehead for a few seconds, I guess to give me some sacred vibe or whatever, and then slowly turned back and resumed her chant. Okay.

By the time it was her turn, I’d heard a BorkBorkBork, a few Feeeemm!! s and a couple of other ones too hard to write down. The big nerdy guy had been regaling us with Gory Details of Gate Disasters until the longhair guy threatened to slap him if he didn’t stop.

Her name shrilled out of the loudspeaker. Her name was Linda something. Linda looked like she would orgasm soon, and I kind of hoped she would do it on the other side so I didn’t have to watch anymore. She stepped forward, and got the same advice from the guard that everybody else was getting. Without slowing down her chant, she walked forward past the open garage door. It closed again, and I happened to catch the look on the longhaired guy’s face. He was watching the door, with a big smirk on his face.

“Watch,” he said to me, shaking his head.

I listened for the sounds, but this time, there was nothing.

After a minute or so, the door swung open again, and two of the guards went inside. They came out after a little while, one on each of Linda’s arms. I guess she didn’t want to come out. She was crying and pissed off.

“Let me GO!!!” she screamed. “It’s not fair. I know I can get through! It’s just taking a little while, that’s all. Let me GO!”

And so on, back down the long hallway, back to Kansas.

I noticed that the big nerdy guy was down the hall way ahead of them.

“I knew he would talk himself out of it,” longhair guy said. He looked me in the eye. “Don’t freak out, man. You’re gonna do fine.”

“Yeah?” I said, in no mood to be patronized, “how the hell do you know?”

“I just know,” he said.

I looked at him, looked away, thinking about his lack of luggage and the apparent ease with which he’d cleared customs. Like maybe he did this all the time. He certainly looked that way, all nonchalant, when his name was called.

“Ralph Dudley.”

“See you on the other side,” he said, and sort of jogged through the garage door. I remember thinking what an Errol Flynn-type asshole this guy is. Ralph Dudley? Whatever. I heard the noises. He didn’t come out, and his body evidently hadn’t done anything unusual.

I waited.

“Eugene Speilman”

The Horn of Doom had blown.

I walked forward.

The door swung open again, this time for me. I felt like a sky-diver. Houdini going over Niagara in a barrel. Gene Speilman walking through a doorway to Oz.

The guard on the left side started to open his mouth.

“I know,” I said. “Keep walking towards the opposite wall.”

On down the tunnel. It was dark, and smelled like old dry horse-shit, dirt, hay. Like a barn.

Of course it smelled like a barn. It hadn’t changed since old Joe Snelling, in a fit of patriotic fervor, had given it to the government back in the forties. He’d sat on his little discovery through the fifty or so years since he’d found little Dorothy Gale asleep in the hayloft; why he’d waited so long to tell someone about his discovery is something of a mystery. Maybe he was so awestruck, he felt that some harm would come to him if he exposed it to outsiders. Perhaps it was his growing dementia.

Probably nothing much had come through to Earth on Joe Snelling’s watch, judging from the few people that had gotten back through it in the subsequent sixty years. Farmer Joe seemed to have been too scared of the Gate to try it himself, though we know he’d seen little Dorothy go through it several times.

Dorothy seems to be one of the few to reappear back at Salina. Ozma’s Gate in Emerald City, the counterpart to the Salina Gate, tends to land its travelers in a random variety of locales throughout North America.

What, if anything, had gone back and forth through the Salina Gate while Snelling had custody of it remains a mystery. We know that he’d had some kind of contact with the Gate, and that this had somehow adversely affected his sanity. By 1943, Farmer Joe was too wacked out to tell anyone much of anything; he was too busy shooting at the imaginary Zeros that kept buzzing his cornfield. He gave the Gate to Roosevelt so that he could use it to fend off the Imperial Japanese invasion force that was threatening Kansas.

“Keep walkin’” he’d cackled at the four FBI men who’d come to check out his story, pointing to the far side of the barn. “Keep walkin’ and see where ya get.” Two agents had followed his instructions, and the two remaining men had watched in disbelief as the pair seemingly faded into the far wall. Two months later, the disappearing agents had reappeared, one in Taos, New Mexico, the other in Pensacola, Florida, both with the same fantastic story.

I could see that famous wall of the barn opposite me now, and the closer I got to it, the less it seemed like I was getting anywhere near it. It was like I was on a treadmill, but I could see my feet moving forward on solid earth. It was as if someone was matching my pace, pulling the wall away from me as I walked toward it. But I knew that nothing was moving except me. And I was moving in a truly weird way.

It got more and more like one of those dreams where you’re trying to do a perfectly easy, normal things like dial the phone, and the dial comes off, or the buttons stick or misfire, and meanwhile you’re starting to be distracted by other features of the dream, other constellates taking on a certain tangibility. It was getting just like that— where objects, things and ideas were malleable, and interchanging their properties.

I thought of my cats, about whether or not Penny would take care of them while I was gone, whether or not I’d see them again, and there they were, spectral, walking on with me for a little while until I realized that they weren’t there, couldn’t be there, and then they weren’t.

But then I’d see other things, snaky brown Lovecraftian phantoms slithering by this way and that, and wonder who was thinking of them, if it wasn’t me. And even though I was still technically trying to enter the barn, the landscape was changing. Water was running, I could hear it off to my right, then I stepped in it. A little stream was rolling past in and out of the wall, which was starting to smoke up and become indistinct. It was actually lightening and dissipating.

Things were starting to really swarm up on me, and I heard the Don Martin noise revving up. The lightening and dissipating stuff accelerated. I could see sunlight through the smoky walls. I started running towards the far wall, panicking, still not getting any closer, screaming, when the final SPLANG-OING! ! occurred and I found myself standing up to my knees in water.

The rays of the late-afternoon sun were slanting through the trees and glinting off the stream I was standing in the middle of. In Oz. About five feet away and to the left, a fiddler crab was sitting on a boulder, pointing at me with its claw and convulsing. It took me a few seconds to realize it was laughing at me.

I flipped off the crab and slogged out of the stream, following it down a gentle slope where it joined a larger river. Setting my pack down, I reached into it and got out my Fodor’s Guide, and the little U.S. Government pamphlet entitled, “So You’re Going to Oz…”

I opened the pamphlet, and shot down to the section on “Arriving.” It said:

Congratulations!

By now, you’ve probably made it through the Gate, and are a little bewildered. This is understandable, and is a completely normal reaction.

Take some time to look around you. Most visitors from Earth find themselves arriving somewhere in the general vicinity of Pawt’kwee, or, as it’s known in its Gale-ized form, Munchkinland.

The Pawt’kween are not only quite happy to be called “Munchkins,” but find it an amusing and endearing term. The older, long-lived Munchkins have very fond memories of their first visitor from Kansas.

I did what it said; I looked around me. I unfolded the Rand Mc-Nally Map of Known Oz. If this was Munchkinland, what I had been soaking in was probably a tributary of the Munchkin River; I assumed that was what the wide rushing waterway in front of me was. It made sense. Beyond the river I could see farmland, and strange looking barns and farmhouses dotting the landscape.

I flipped the pamphlet open again:

There is probably foliage all around you. If there is, see if you can find a bush with large purple and yellow leaves. The leaves should have a large pattern of concentric circles. This is a “Language Bush.” It should allow you to converse with anyone or anything that you come in contact with.

You will want to pick a few handfuls of these leaves and eat them all at once. One word of caution: only a small percentage of Language Bushes are sentient, but it’s always safe to assume that they are. Always ask permission before plucking off any of the leaves.

I looked behind me, and sure enough, there was a big bush with purple and yellow circles all over it. I walked up to it, and feeling really stupid, quietly asked, “Uh, is it all right if I, uh, grab a few leaves off of you so I can talk to some Munchkins and ask them where I am?”

A branch shot out from the rest of them and shook around, then stopped, then shook around again as if to say, “Go ahead, bonehead, what are you waiting for?” I reached for a handful of leaves, plucked and started chewing. I started on my second handful when somebody reached up from behind me, covered my mouth with his hand, and pulled me roughly to the ground.

Quiet as the breeze rustling the foliage, smooth as silk, a voice whispered into my ear, just loud enough for me to hear, “Don’t make a sound, and look through those trees.”

I did what the voice said. I looked through the brush, and not twenty feet away saw one of the biggest, ugliest guys I had ever seen in my life. In addition, the breeze shifted, putting him upwind, and I found out that he was also one of the smellier individuals I’d encountered up until then. Luckily, besides being big, ugly and smelly, he evidently didn’t hear too well.

He was green, all tricked out in black leather and chain mail, and carried a gigantic broadaxe, which was covered with what appeared to be blood. There was a oversized Nazi-style helmet on his head with large horns poking out of either side. He was pissing against an old stately oak tree, one hand hanging on to the axe while the other directed the pee-stream. There was a human head hanging from his belt by its hair. It belonged to the latino guy from the gateroom, Gutierrez. I stifled the urge to puke.

After a few moments in which I experienced still, sheer terror, the Biker/Viking from hell turned and walked away. The poor, terrified tree waited a few seconds and shook itself vigorously, letting out a moan of disgust and humiliation. I felt kind of sorry for it, but it was a tree after all, and you’d think it would be used to that sort of thing happening all the time.

I got up and turned around to thank my savior. It was Ralph from the Gate. I decided maybe he wasn’t such an asshole after all.

“Jeez, thanks,” I said, “it kinda looks like you saved my ass just now.”

“Don’t mention it,” he said, staring through the trees, “they’re getting closer in all the time. Son of a bitch.” He looked at me. “The rest of Gutierrez is hanging from a tree a little northwest of here. Really messed up his suit. Let’s get the fuck out of here.”

I was reeling from several different shocks: the shock of the transition from Earth, the shock of actually being in Oz, the shock of almost being butchered by a green neanderthal, and oh, I don’t know, could have been any number of things at that point. I stuck out my hand and introduced myself.

He ignored it and said, “There’s a bridge about half a mile south of here. Let’s move.”

He didn’t have to ask me twice. We both took off in the direction of the bridge, looking behind us every once in a while to see if the incredible hulk was following. He wasn’t. I didn’t know it at the time, but he was already way out of his territory—some kind of advance scout.

We kept up the quick-step, though, until we were over the bridge Ralph was talking about. It was a little funny narrow thing, wrought iron covered with strange curly-cues, which I found out later were some kind of Munchkin hex signs.

“We can relax a little now,” Ralph said, finally, slacking his pace, “those bruisers won’t go past that bridge. Big magic on it.”

Agiconic! Agiconic!

Shut up!!!!

Ralph went down to the edge of the water and stuck his face in it, cupped his hands and took a big drink. I followed him down and did the same, kind of amazed by how natural it seemed and thinking, wow, there’s not a place left on the poisoned Earth where you could do that anymore.

He sat up and let the water run down his face. “Ralph,” he said, finally, and held out his hand for me to shake.

“I know.” I shook. Then I reached into my pack and took out my laptop.

Up until then, Ralph had seemed pretty blase about everything that was going on, even the rescue. But he looked astonished when he saw the laptop. “What is that?” he asked, incredulous, pointing at it.

“What do you mean? It’s a Superbook Plus, with 1 gig of ram, and a terabyte hard—”

“NO. I know what it is, I mean, how did you get it here? I’ve never seen a computer get through in one piece. I’ve been coming here since before the Gulf War, and the only ones I’ve ever seen have been thrown together from whatever junk components happen to make it through. This is a goddam first. Congratulations.” He whistled at it.

I looked at him, then down at the Superbook. “Yeah, well, congratulate me after I see if it boots up.”

I flipped the switch, and listened for the little chime to sound and the smiley-face-in-the-monitor logo to come on. I heard something like a slide whistle, then the face came up. And winked at me. That should have been my first clue. I saw the desktop and icons appear as they should, except that every few seconds a couple of them would plow together like bumper cars, and careen to the other side of the screen, or zoom to fill the whole screen and then shrink again. I tried opening up a few applications to check it. Aside from the slight weirdness, it appeared to work fine.

“I’ll be damned,” Ralph said, looking over my shoulder. “I think it’s been Mickied”

“What?”

“Animated.”

I scrunched up my face at him. “Come again?”

I thought I knew about most of what was involved in coming to a place with slightly different physical laws, but I just kept learning new fun facts.

“There’s somebody in there. I just hope it’s one of the good guys. Wow. It’s the One.”

“The one what?”

“The One That Got Through. That’s the way it usually works out.”

After I put the laptop back in the pack, I did a quick check to make sure the other things I’d brought were still there. As far as I could see, they were, though I couldn’t be sure they wouldn’t start jumping around or crying or singing a song.

We started walking again, and Ralph pulled some smokes out of his coat, lit one up, and began to elaborate.

“Y’see, One of Everything seems to be the general rule, with exceptions. Not with people, or even most of their personal stuff. You already know how that goes. Toothbrushes, cooking utensils, camp gear, usually no trouble. I’m talking about consumer items. TV’s, washing machines, electric can-openers, guitars, disposable cameras. It’s really tricky with those things for some reason. Almost like the more labor saving or frivilous the tech (no offense), the more some—force—wants to screw it around. It might be Glinda or Ozma doing it, we don’t know. They say not. Anyhow, maybe one in five hundred get through. So what people here generally do with the stuff that gets sent over as good will offerings, trade items, insidious advertising ploys, whatever, is make it community property. Well, everything produced is technically community property here, so it’s not that revolutionary of an idea.

“Sometimes the item will do something novel that allows it to move into this existence more smoothly than it otherwise would have.

“I’ll bet you never heard about the humvees”

I hadn’t.

“There were six army hummers. Army colonel decides to give it a try, he and his men drive ‘em into the Garage, so far so good. He makes it through with all of them! They drive about twenty miles, make camp for the night, park by the side of the Brick, and fifteen minutes later, they hear tires squealing and horns beeping.

“They jump up, but it’s too late. The hummers are rolling away, off onto the plains. Eerie as hell, no engines running, lights flashing. That colonel was in a world of hurt for that one.”

I thought he looked a little wistful there for a second, trying to recreate the scene. I said, “you sound like you know this guy.”

He stopped gazing off into space. “Yeah, I guess you could say that.” He offered me a smoke, I declined.

“They’re still around,” he continued. “Run in a pack. We might see ‘em tonight, actually.”

“The army guys?”

He looked at me like he might slug me.

“Then there was the Mustang tree. This guy I know, works for the State Department. Brought over a Fender Mustang guitar. He takes it out of the case maybe a day after he got here. Fucking thing had started to bud. So this guy plants it, and about a week later, there were little green electric guitars hanging all over it. Weirdest little things you ever saw. They took about another month to ripen, and then they were ready to harvest.”

I realized then that the guy at the x-ray machine probably thought my computer would melt or turn into a loaf of bread. Any one of those guys could have warned me to leave it behind. But since they weren’t required to by law, since anybody’s allowed to bring through a few items, no matter what they are, as long as they’re U.S. legal, they let me go and potentially wreck my expensive toy. I started to get really pissed off. I told Ralph what I was thinking.

“Yeah, you have certainly beaten the odds today, my friend. Best to forget about those shitheads in Salina, though. They’re just jealous because they don’t fit the profile. Probably be sittin’ in there checking luggage till they’re old and gray.”

We kept walking until we hit a bend in the dirt path; it plowed through some brush and met a wide, brick thoroughfare. Yellow. I looked at Ralph, then back at the road again.

“Yep,” he said, confirming my thought, “this is the one. The Big Brick.”

It really didn’t look as impressive as I thought it would. It was just a big dirty yellow road. I felt sort of ripped off.

A tiny horsecart drawn by a tiny horse drove by. The munchkin farmer driving it waved and smiled. There was a cage full of ridiculous Dr.Seuss-looking animals piled onto the back: long ring-necks reminiscent of rodent’s tails; fuzzy heads and bodies, with ludicrous hairy wings; big watery eyes that looked like coke-bottle lenses; big-lipped maws with slobbery tongues on the end of blunt, wide-nostriled snouts. They looked incredibly stupid, and smelled only slightly better than the troll. They gurgled at us as they passed. Ralph waved and smiled. I just stood there.

“What the hell are those things?” I asked.

“Goomers,” he said. “The national dish. Most animals are smart enough to have citizenship. It’s considered cannibalism to eat a cow, for instance. But these things are so stupid that nobody feels bad about eating them. Even dumber than turkeys.”

“Oh,” I said, as they and their fragrance receded.

We started walking down the “big brick,” and it occurred to me that I didn’t have any idea where we were going. Maybe it was the stress, maybe the disappointment over the condition of the road; all of the sudden all kinds of questions burst out of me:

“I’d assume this goes to Emerald, right? I mean, that’s the conventional wisdom, but that doesn’t really seem to be worth much lately. That is where I’m going. Where are you going? And who was that big motherfucker anyway? And how come you know so much about everything anyway?”

Ralph stared at me sidelong. “Emerald, huh? I’m going to Emerald. Yes, you follow the yellow brick road. That is accurate. As for the big motherfucker and why I know so much about everything…

“Look, it’s starting to get dark. Whataya say I take you to meet a friend of mine? We can sleep out on his land, and I can fill you in on some recent history. But right now, I’m kind of all talked out. So let’s just walk.”

Ralph didn’t strike me as the kind of person you’d want to have a big argument with, and I didn’t have any better ideas. The sky was beginning to darken to a deep Maxfield Parrish blue, and the biggest moon I have ever seen in my life was starting to rise, cartoonlike, over the horizon.

Soon the moon was the only light we had, save the occasional distant glow from a farmhouse. Downtown Munchkinland was in the other direction. We were headed out into the sticks.

After about an hour of this, walking silently, a few people on horseback occasionally passing us and politely saying hello, we left the farmland behind. We finally came upon a side road, more a dirt horsepath than anything, that led straight into a grove of trees. I took my fluorescent lantern out of my pack and was going to turn it on, as it looked pretty dark in there. Ralph’s hand shot out and stopped me.

“Don’t do that,” he said. “First of all, you’ll wake up all the trees. Second, you will be wondering how you got so dead all of a sudden unless I do this:”

He let out a loud, warbling whistle.

Somebody awfully close by said, “Hello, Ralph. Back so soon, friend?”

Three guys were standing behind us, and two in front. I don’t think there was any magic involved; I just think they were really good at sneaking up on people. First they weren’t there, then they were there.

The guy who spoke wasn’t a guy at all. I mean he was a guy, but he wasn’t exactly human. He was a monkey.

At first I thought he was wearing a big cape, but as he moved around, I realized that what I was seeing was actually a large pair of wings. They were poking out of holes in a long, satin jacket.

He had a ruffled shirt on, and a black cravat around his neck. His friends were similarly attired, but human as far as I could see in moonlight. I thought they looked a little over-dressed for camping but didn’t say so.

There were greetings all around. Ralph introduced me. “Gene, this big ape is Gombo. This is Tiltel, Sool, and Pimbi. And this tall guy here is Kimbod of Ev”

They all said “hi.”

“Hi,” I said, “Gene of Los Angeles.”

We moved off down the Brick, into the grove of trees, Ralph hanging on to my arm. Evidently everyone but me could see in the dark. After a few minutes, I could see the light of a campfire off the road, through the shadows of the great trees. As we moved off the road towards the fire, I heard Ralph say to Gombo, “So where is he?”

“Thinking,” Gombo said. “Hasn’t really left his tent for a couple of days. You know how he gets when he’s got a heavy problem. Brooding. Weird. You want to stay far away from him when he gets like this.”

“I’ve got something he needs to hear.”

“I’ll stick my head in there and tell him, but leave it to me. If he doesn’t want to see you, you can camp until tomorrow, then you’ll have to move on. Things are pretty tense right now, and we can’t afford to have you around if you’re not working.”

“Understood.”

We were close enough now to see the tents: eight big geodesic-looking things in a large semicircle around the roaring fire, taut plastic skin over skeleton domes. Three big logs were spaced around the fire, I guessed to sit on, so I went over and sat on one, throwing my pack up against the other side of it, upside down so that I could untie my sleeping bag.

Ralph sat by the fire too, along with Gombo and a couple of the others, bullshitting about this and that incomprehensible shared thing which I had no reference to. Soon I started to feel kind of left out.

I’d had enough anyway: I was tired, disoriented, with a bunch of strangers, one of whom had saved my life twice, and in a different universe on top of that. Of course, behind the exhaustion, deep down, I was excited and full of questions, but the questions could wait until tomorrow. I unrolled the sleeping bag and got into it, a little way back from the fire, behind the logs.

I rolled around in it for an hour or so, unable to shut my eyes, too hot, too cold, until finally I got up. I had to pee anyhow.

It looked as though everyone else had crashed out by that time. Ralph was not far from where my sleeping bag was, snoring under a pile of blankets someone had brought him.

I found a spot on the other side of the fire from the tents, not too close to the trees. After what I’d seen that afternoon, I was a little sensitive about offending any trees. Since I hadn’t asked about the pee protocol, and this seemed to be the least offensive place around, I went for it.

The trees stayed asleep, and nobody jumped out and strangled me, so I smiled to myself and enjoyed the new sense of emptiness for a moment. I zipped my fly and looked up into the sky, now brilliant with stars despite the full moon. I knew most constellations by sight, but none of these belonged to any I was familiar with. Shooting stars crisscrossed the sky, and an ephemeral aurora hung at the top, draped like neon silk. I crossed back to the campfire and sat on a log, looked up to see more of the show.

“Spider and the Fly,” said a deep, dark, craggy voice. I jumped, looked up to see a hooded figure on the log with me, about five feet away. His huge, buckskin-clad arm was stuck in the air, his gloved hand pointing straight up at a group of stars.

“See it? There’s the spider, over to the left is the fly.”

“Oh yeah,” I said. “There it is. Listen, is there any particular reason why you guys like to scare the shit out of me every time before you introduce yourselves?”

I got a laugh for that one, but I still couldn’t see who I was talking to. I could see his legs, though, poking out under the bottom of his robe or whatever it was. They looked like prosthetic limbs, metal and cable all down to the feet, no shoes or boots covering them. It seemed pretty amazing that a handicapped man could get around so stealthily.

There was a serious lull in the conversation.

Finally, I pointed up at random. “What’s that one?”

“The Cauldron,” the raspy voice said. “See? Poomba is the bright green one on the end, then down further there’s Elgi. The two legs.”

It went on this way for a while, Astronomy with Dr. Doom, until he said, “What is it that Ralph wants to tell me?”

Talk about non-sequiturs. “I don’t know,” I said, “but, hey. I don’t know a lot of things, like for instance your name. I am Gene, Gene of Los Angeles. And you are…?”

“You may call me Nick.”

You may call me Nick. He said it so silkily, so calmly, so non-threateningly, that it was suddenly the most menacing thing in the world. A man-eating tiger was purring and letting me pet it on the head. I regretted having been so flip a moment before.

“Well, Nick,” I said, my voice cracking a little, “I really can’t guess on that one. I’ve seen a lot in last ten hours or so—Goomers, giant green bikers with human head trophies—”

“Where?”

I gave him the rundown on my trip through the gate and the near-death experience. As I spoke, he reached into a pocket and pulled out a pipe. He puffed on it, and it lit itself.

Smoke billowed around his head, and he pulled back his hood. I could see him now, see that half of his face was missing, part of his throat, and the firelight reflected off the metal that replaced the missing parts. He produced an ax that had lain next to him and toyed with the blade, spun it around.

“So,” he said. “Gutierrez is dead.”

Silence fell over us then. I could see his eyes, something in his eyes, one dark and deep, the other chromium-shiny, that made me think of that fine line people talk about, the one between genius and madness.

Then Nick got up and, without another word, disappeared into the shadows. He moved so silently that I almost thought he’d just ducked behind a tree. I got up to check, once I got up the nerve. Sure enough, he was gone.

I sat there for a few moments with my hands in my lap. I couldn’t imagined sleeping, so I went into my pack and got the laptop out, and now I’m typing this, while the firelight crackles down to its end.

The sun will be up soon, unless even that’s different.

anywoo HOORAY!! coo-loo runny LATE.

This enchanted computer thing is getting really old.

But I guess I’ll get used to it.

Guess I’m going to have to get used to a lot of things.

The Emerald Burrito

Emerald City.

Gift-from-God Day.

Dear me,

Today, I witnessed a miraculous happening, extraordinary even by the standards of Oz. I was there. I was in it. I even helped!

Let me attempt to describe the unfolding.

Okay. It’s daybreak at the Emerald Burrito. Fonzie’s still out of town, so I have to open up. I arrive just as Pinky, the new waitress, comes barreling around the corner. She is teensy, beachball-shaped, and wheezing as she runs. Her huge cheeks billow, her eyes are wide as she rounds the corner, sees me there, lets out a meep, skids to a halt on her stubby legs and then waggles there, a tubby little puppet on a spring.

You gotta love munchkins. I know I do. They are, as a rule, incredibly punctual, insanely polite, and on top of that, sincere. Like Middle America, without the psychosis. Like a midwestern dream, shrunk to workable scale.

Which doesn’t mean that they’re not neurotic. It’s just that their lines are incredibly clear. She is terrified that I’ll think she’s horrid if she’s just one minute late: not because I’ll dock her or anything, not because she’s afraid of anything I might do. It’s just that, well, it would be awful if I were to think that she was horrid!

“Hi, Pinky!” I say, unlocking the door. She attempts to unswallow her tongue. “You look so cute today!”

She nervously smiles, and wiggles a little. She’s a tiny puppy person, and it’s just too hilarious. “Am I late?” she peeps.

“No, you’re early!”

“Oh, YAY!” She’s all better at once. It’s just that easy.

And just as I wonder why I’m not so uncomplicated, Mikio Furi comes running up the street. He has, so help me God, a speaker cabinet in his hands. A big ol’ speaker cabinet, just about as big as he.

Now, Mikio Furi has been here, what, six weeks? And already he understands things better than anyone else I know. He is utterly obsessed with the physics of Oz. How it works. Why it’s not like normal Earth. And what can we do to bridge the best of both worlds.

(Most all the native Ozians are pretty much like me: they accept the magick at face value, are pretty much just consistently thrilled that it works. And all the Joe Science Earth guys I’ve met—be they government or corporate—walk around cracking figurative cinder blocks over their heads. They don’t get it. It makes them crazy. It slams against the brick wall of their educated minds, admitting the inadmissable while belying all their rules.)

Mikio, on the other hand, is fiercely creative, thoroughly inquisitive, totally wide-open to the possibilities. Which makes me wonder why more guys like him aren’t here. Probably that one-of-a-kind rule again, god damn it (although, push come to shove, one beats the hell out of nothing).

He is also—as I’ve noted elsewhere in these pages—almost painfully delicious. He doesn’t seem at all aware of it, which of course is even better. He just shows up whenever, big ol’ smile on his face, long black hair streaming tendrils over bright almond eyes. He is scrawny, a-jitter with the natural speed that some hyper-smart guys seem to ooze from their pituitaries. And he always has some new strange device that he has just developed.

I bet he was always like that. But here in Oz, I really see him coming into his own.

Now, it’s strange, how green is not always flattering. It can make you look sickly. It can make you look… bad. Even the soft, benign glow of these wending emerald streets at dawn can, sometimes, throw me back to old George Romero films: packs of sallow, shambling zombie-folk, dressed up like the guys next door.

But Mikio, in this moment, looks more like something from a Mati Klarwein painting: like an acid trip I took eleven years ago, flat on my back on a good friend’s back lawn. It was night, and I was lying in the grass, helplessly smiling, unable to rise, pinned to the Earth by bliss, drugs, and gravity, absolutely slaughtered by the glory of existence; and I remember that every blade of grass was glowing, radiant, brilliantly lit from within, a tiny neon filament of lifeforce burning. And God was everywhere.

I have always hungered for moments like those; and now Mikio is standing there. Verdant. Incandescent.

Which is to say, he looks good in green.

“Hi!” he says. “Look what I got!”

I feel like Pinkie, then. Utterly transparent. I catch myself starting to wiggle, stop. “Wow,” I say. “Are you starting a band?”

“Even better,” he says. “Like, a thousand bands.” As I stare at him blankly, he adds, “You got your CD player?”

And I begin to understand.

Now, Quilla, you know how many times I’ve bemoaned the fact that I came to Oz with all this great music, only to find that I a) had the only CD player; and that b) my poor headphones were the only speakers here. Which meant that I could listen to Tom Waits, The Genritals, Patti Smith, Scriabin, Johnny Cash, Ween, Lester Loose, Mrs. Miller, Frank Zappa, or Frank Sinatra; I could pop in The Beatles, The Beastie Boys, ABBA, Smegma, The Sardonics, Grand Funk Railroad, Yma Sumac, Spike Jones, Patsy Cline, Porkchop Bones, Cab Calloway, Oingo Boingo, Kitty Krum or Nitzer Ebb; I could turn on Herman’s Hermits, Mikki Bobbit, Lump, The Mon-kees, Jimi Hendrix, Funkadelic, Booker T. & the M.G.s; I could groove to Miles Davis, Iggy Pop, David Bowie, Tori Amos, Billie Holiday, Bjork, Beck, The Mean Puppets, Me’Shell Ndegochello, Pongo Domingo, or Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan; I could worship at the altar of Tchaikovsky, Chet Baker, John Coltrane, Nirvana, and easily hundreds more.

But only on my headphones. And only by myself.

Yes, I could listen, any time I wanted, to the crowning glory that is human music: far and away the best thing that Earth people ever made. I could even turn on others, Ozlings who had never heard. Only one at a time.

Those days are over now.

Now picture, with me, what this moment is like. Behind Mikio— grinning and sweating and toting—comes a happy procession of Ozlandic goofballs. I recognize Ginko and Faffo Boff, the quadling brothers who both love cheese. They are restaurant regulars, hilarious guys, and they’re huffing and puffing with a cabinet between them.

Also grappling with the speaker-type units are a winkie, two gillikins, and a clunkety robot, none of whom I know. Evidently, Mikio makes friends fast. I note that the winkie and one gillikin are girls, but I’m barely even jealous, so overwhelmed by the moment am I.

Above us, the sky is orange, purple and pink, on its way to brightest blue. The bobblestone streets and emerald-encrusted storefronts that line them are, of course, glowing green. The quadlings wear yellow. The winkie wears blue. The gillikins both favor orange, and Pinky’s all in red. The robot, a-glinting with unburnished brass, looks like Tic-Toc’s bohemian cousin. And Mikio, pale-skinned, is dressed in black.

As it happens, so am I.

The keys are still in my hands. They, too, seem to glimmer with magick light. “Omigod,” I say. “Umm…did you want to come in?”

Mikio says, “That’s the whole idea!”

So I step inside and get out of the way as they struggle through the doorway. There’s a pileup in the foyer as they set down the speakers, gasping for breath; and though the shock has only just begun to set in, I find myself strategizing.

Looking around at the Emerald Burrito.

As if for the very first time.

The interior of the restaurant is large yet intimate, dark enough to be cozy, with hacienda arches and squared-off pillars in glorious symmetrical splay. There are twenty-three tables of dark burnished wood, in a variety of sizes, to accomodate all guests. Each table has a green stained-glass votive candleholder affixed to its center, awaiting spark and flame.

There are lanterns on the pillars as well. The walls are festooned with faux-Mexican tapestries, woven for us by Fonzie’s old girlfriend, Tatale. (For a witchling who’s never been out of the city, I think she did an astonishing job.) Though we played down the gleaming gem-pocked look—you get enough of that in Emerald City—strategic strings offlicker-stones are draped at the creases of walls and arches; and mounted on the cracked tile ceiling are fifty-seven upside-down flourescent sombreros: a multi-colored touch I stole from El Chavo, one of my favorite restaurants back in seamy L.A.

It’s a beautiful room. A great place to eat. Already, I can feel it transforming. I look at Mikio’s cabinets, all four of them, start calculating how to mount them, in which corners of the room. The wood of the cabinets matches the tables. Once again, I am stunned by what a genius he is.

“But,” I hear myself saying, “will they work?”

“Who knows?” He grins. “But I think they might!”

“Let’s find out!” says Ginko, while the others let out a cheer. It’s like a musical midget football team, psyching themselves as they take the field.

I guide them to their respective corners, clear tables out of their way. I’m the tallest person in the room, so I come in kinda handy. The gillikins have brought their tools, which makes mounting the speakers a snap. For the first time, I really look at what the speakers are. I start laughing.

“Popo shells?” I say.

Mikio nods. I shake my head. Popo’s a lot like cocoanut. I use it for certain dishes. But I’ve never seen popo shells chopped in half, scooped out, and mounted in speaker cabinets. He’s got a big one on the bottom—his bass popo shell—then a smaller one for midrange, and a dinky popo tweeter.

All of these are wired together in a fine twiney matrix of gibberdeen vines, assorted charms and fetishes (including a plastic Elvis nightlite), and. “Are those language bush branches?” I ask, finally getting the picture.

“Exactly,” chirps in the gillikin girl, who has picked up on my boner for Mikio. Clearly, she has one, too; competition now, rearing its adorable head.

“That’s why I think it will work,” Mikio sez, completely oblivious to gurl-politics (yay!). “It’s so simple, it has to. That’s just how Oz is”

He certainly has a point; and I find myself thinking, why didn’t I think of that?; and that’s when he says, “Why don’t you get your CD player and, you know, pick out something perfect?”

It’s in that moment that the panic begins to claim me. My pulse soars. My breastbones squeeze. Little blobules of sweat start to knock at my pores. I realize how much I’ve already emotionally invested in this experience, even though it’s patently absurd. A stereo made of nuts and kindling? Am I fucking joking? Is he putting me on?

“You’re not putting me on, right?” I ask him sincerely. “Because if you are, I will just cry.”

“…no.”

“…cuz this would mean so much to me.”

“…um, Aurora.?”

“.I’m sorry, I’m freaking out. I’m just so excited.”

“Aurora,” says Mikio, taking me gently by the shoulders. “Just pick a song you want to hear.”

At which point the door flies open, and in struts Senor Poogli, the six-armed chef. He is swarthy and squat and hyperbolic, brandishing his new faux-Mexican mustache with Pancho Villa swagger. When he gestures, he gestures large.

Behind him, Pim and Bom and little Cheeba sneak in.

“AND WHAT,” Senor Poogli demands, “IS THIS?”

“It’s music,” says the gillikin girl. “And I would like some wa-vos rancheros”

“Hmph! Poogli says, with a gesture that suggests that it doesn’t look like music to him. All the same, the first order of the morning is in, and he is nothing if not duty-bound. With a last caustic glance at the lot of us, he goes tromping off into the kitchen. The g-girl smiles, then looks at me. We size each other up.

Her face is cute and round. Her hair is bobbed and purple-brown. They don’t need dyes to get those shades. It just happens. But it’s great. Her eyes are purple-violet too, intense and determined. She would make an excellent terrorist. Four foot two, intensely buxom, with just enough waist between bosom and hips to imply an hourglass exploding.

I wonder if Mikio’s fucked her yet, can only imagine he will. I see her thinking the exact same thing, and we catch each other there.

“Pinky? Pim?” Breaking the spell, returning to the power-spot that is my job. “I think we’ve got some hungry people here. Bom? Get these tables set up? Little Cheeba? Go help Senor Poogli, okay? We’re about to open for business.”

Already, outside the door, the first morning diners are amassing. I can see Ambassador Spang and Enchantra; the twelve blond winkie children and their mannequin nanny; Squinko the boot-salesman; Bing the extra-smart hamster; and some other characters I don’t know. I gesture through the window to them, uno momento, porfavor; they nod and go back to curiously watching, or talking amongst themselves.

And so, at last, the moment has come. Despite the pulse-pounding pressure, I make my way to my bag. The CD player is there, along with a folio containing fifty CDs that for some reason were on my mind. I take out the player, set the folio down beside it.

“Where should I set up?” I call across the room to Mikio.

“How should I know?” he says. He’s right.

“So it doesn’t matter where I put it?”

“Only to you. It’s your CDs. I’ll tell you when I’m all set up.”

There’s a counter just inside the kitchen door, to the right of the service bay. It’s a place where we mostly keep cook books and stuff. I move through the swinging doors and set up there.

And as I peruse, Mikio comes to me, ready. He’s got one end of his miracle cable in hand, with a language bush tip carved like an audio jack. “Plug it in,” he says, and I do.

At that moment, the only possible selection leaps into my head.

Grinning, I say to Mikio, “Tell Pinky to open the doors.”

He leaves the room. I open the player, take out The Plimsouls and slip it back in the folio. The song that I want is the very first track on the gleaming gold CD I then take in my hand.

The name of the song is “Never Been To Spain.”

The artist is the immortal El Vez.

I put the disc in the machine. I close the little lid. I crank the volume to eight and pray. Then I quick kiss the sky and press Play.

I leave the kitchen, just as the first customers enter, and the first susseration of sonic wave whispers out from those beautiful speakers. It’s the sound of the ocean, and it is loud, but not as loud as it’s going to get. I think about pinning it back just a little, but then I see the mounting confusion on all those magick faces.

Why cheat them on their first time?, I figure.

Then I just stand back and enjoy.

Out from the sound of crashing waves comes a single distorted guitar. It’s buzzing around one note, like a wiggly bee, and then it starts a steep slow crazy tension-building climb.

When the first clipped power chord in the history of Oz rings out, loud and clear, I watch the crowd lift off the floor.

And by the time they land, one split-second later, the greatest Mexican Elvis of them all is crooning his way into their sweet virgin hearts.

“Well, I’ve never been to Spain

But I’ve heard about Columbus.

Well, they say the man’s insane

Cuz he thinks he discovered us.

In fourteen-nine-two,

Who discovered who?

Here’s how it happened:”

Words struggle to fail me, but I can’t allow it. All I can say is: you shoulda seen their eyes. You shoulda seen their eyes: all those munchkins and gillikins, tourists and traders and bigshots and locals, suddenly lost in astounding sonic places they’d never known before.

You should have seen the way they moved, so totally instinctively. Freezing up. Or letting go. Intensely moved.

Or scared to death.

“Well, I’ve never been to Tikal

But I’ve been to Chichen-Itza.

The Mayan culture: man, it thrived, boy

Before Columbus had a teacher.”

Remember: these are people who never heard rock ‘n’ roll. Who had no nostalgia. No connection to its history. Not a trace of the stuff in their genes. They weren’t responding ironically, from some post-modern dreary ground zero of contempt or knowing mock-embrace.

They were responding to the music, purely on its own terms. And it was fascinating to witness the actual nature of their response. Like watching the first Norwegians to stumble across the bossa nova.

By the time El Vez & Co. cranked the song into high gear, a good chunk of the crowd was really truly gettin’ down. They didn’t know what to call it, but they knew what it did; like magick, that was good enough for them. Mikio and I were busy struttin’ our stuff, from our respective corners of the room, so those near us could pick up on a couple of shoulder-snappin’, head-cockin’, hip-grindin’ moves. I liked—no surprise there—the way he moved.

But the room was full of surprises.

First off was the wily Enchantra: official mistress to the Winkie Ambassador. While the obsequious, every-quivering Spang seemed startled and skittish in his Ambassadorial togs—eyes as wide as his built-in squint allowed, triple chins a-jitter in the river of sound— Enchantra appeared to be channeling the spirit of Uhura from the old Star Trek. Her golden feline eyes, black mane, and slinky chocolate physique made the overblown serpentine slinkster moves alluring, despite my post-modern inclination to giggle. I realized that some seduction ploys are not learned at all, but unspeakably natural. (I don’t know if this is reassuring or not.)

The fact that she was aiming the ploy at me was not in the least surprising. She’s been trying to get me into bed since we met last year, when I first started hanging out with Scarecrow. But beyond that, the music really seemed to be getting her off; and creepy as she often strikes me, I still thought it was kinda cool.

The manniquin nanny seemed unmoved by the groove, but the little Winkie children were going wild. Several of them had found their way to Mikio’s speaker cabinets, where they held their hands up to the sound and laughed as the bass waves whuffed them. And Mikio’s friends belonged at the ENIT Festival, all over it like ravesters at some three-in-the-morning peak.

There was more. There was more. More people, flooding through the door. Pinky wasn’t sure what the protocol was, but neither could she stop her butt from swaying. I kinda lost sight of Bing, but later on I found the tabletop skritches from where he’d been kicking up his heels.

And onward it went, through the chick singers wailing “agua…,” mimicking George Harrison and his “Wah Wah” refrain. Onward it went, until the song faded out. And the wild applause erupted.

I will never be the same.

And I don’t want to blow this thing out of proportion, but I suspect that Oz, too, will never hear itself in quite the same way again. Before the day was done, I played Swordfishtrombone. I played “St. Alphonso’s Pancake Breakfast.” I played luscious Jeff Buckley and righteous Rev. Horton Heat. I played psychotic Thrill Kill Kult, spritely Cindi Lee Berryhill, and the red-hot sounds of Dizzy Gillespie, plus a little Latin Playboys and Debussy on the side.

While half the Emerald City tried to pack its way inside our doors.

I’ll tell you this much; the Fonz is definitely going to shit. He wanted the most exciting restaurant in Oz, and it looks like he’s finally nailed it for sure. Mikio’s looking into the logistics of extension speakers, and the possibility of wiring the city for sound. There’ve already been over a thousand requests. Business is going through the roof, walls, and floorboards; we’ve never really taken reservations, but it’s starting to sound like an awfully good idea.

And, at last count, it seems that three count-em’ three brand new local bands are forming, as the young-at-heart of Oz claim Earthly music as their own.

Sound like a ripple in the normosphere to you?

It’s the dead of night in the Emerald City, as I write down these final words. The place has been closed for about three hours; I’ve been alone with the room and the succulent sounds.

Now the last CD has gone to sleep, and I’m listening to the silence of the Emerald urban night. No squad car ululations. No drunken roars. No shots. No screams.

It’s funny how the music takes me back, gives me tacit sense-memories of the days before I left. How unhappy I was. How hemmed-in by the blindness. How starving for action, in whatever form it took (or, more often, didn’t).

How glad I am to be gone.

But there’s something about sitting here, with the songs and the memories, that makes me weirdly proud of the place from whence I come.

And much as I love this endless smorgasboard of strangeness, I have never been so grateful that there is such a place as Earth.

In the Emerald Burrito.

Creepoid Interlude.

Dear me,

Something deeply weird just happened. Lemme get it down quick.

About an hour before dinnertime rush, and I’m back in the kitchen with Senor Poogli. We are discussing tonight’s specials: a nice Rump O’ Goomer with mole sauce, and Poogli’s new innovation: the Mexican Goomer Weave. It’s this elaborate process, which he’s trying to explain—something about making threads of shredded goomer meat, then weaving them into sculptures—and it’s really fascinating, but then the kitchen door blows open.

And in walks this character I’ve never seen before. A kind of icky man-weasel, slightly taller than me. He’s got slicked-down salt and pepper fur with a musky, slightly-oily sheen. Up on his hind legs, slinking into the room, there’s something oddly prim about him. Maybe it’s his pantaloons. But the vibe gets unnerving, the second he enters. And I don’t like his eyes.

In the background, Dead Can Dance are playing, and I can tell that he doesn’t much care for it.

“Hello,” he says, with his long skinny snout, and I notice he loves to show his teeth. They are many and pointed; and without hesitation, I imagine them taking a chunk out of me.

He enjoys my reaction. It’s the one he had in mind. That pisses me off, and I summon up steel. To my right, Senor Poogli looks equally tense. He’s got one hand on a cleaver, and the other five are fists.

“Excuse me. Miss Aurora Jones?” the weasel continues.

“That’s me.”

“I am here to discuss the. dinner reservations.”

“Okay. And just who might you be?”

He pulls himself up to his full height, draws his thin black lips into a condescending sneer. “Perhaps you’ve heard of me,” he says, still showing teeth. “My name is…Rokoko”

I laugh. “As in Rocky Rokoko?”

“Er, no.” Displeased. I’m guessing he’s heard the joke before.

“Ah, well. So how can I help you, Mr. Rokoko?”

He takes a couple steps closer, and now I can see Pim and Pinky in the doorway, with their big worried eyes. It’s so clear that they’re already blaming themselves for this little confrontation. I flash them reassurance, and hold my ground.

Rokoko is confident, self-absorbed, but his danger radar isn’t bad. Or maybe he knows a little something about me. Either way, he stops. Flashes ugly teeth. And makes a quite bogus conciliatory gesture.

“Miss Aurora,” he says. “I beg your pardon. I am merely attempting to confirm reservations which were already made.”

“By whom?”

“By your partner. He was given instructions to reserve all twenty-three of your tables for a very special dinner, after your regular working hours, five nights from this evening.”

“What kind of ‘special dinner’?” I ask him.

He looks slightly annoyed. “You weren’t informed?”

“No, I wasn’t. Nobody mentioned this to me.” Glancing at Poo-gli, who adamantly shakes his head. “Who is this reservation for?”

Rokoko smiles. “A good friend of Mr. Gutierrez.”

“That sure narrows it down. Anybody I know?”

“I sincerely don’t think so. But that’s unimportant. The point is that there are certain…dietary requirements that would have to be met.”

“I’m listening.”

“In particular,” and now Rokoko can’t restrain his evil grin, “there are certain.meats which we would want to see prepared in your restaurant’s singular fashion.”

Now my hackles are up, and my temper is climbing. I can see Fonzie’s hand in this, and it’s the hand that I don’t like. My partner is a fairly remarkable man, and his charm is only heightened by his hunger for authenticity. But meat is a serious issue in Oz, and not only just for me.

“I’m sorry,” I say, “but as I’m certain you know, we only serve goomer meat.”

Rokoko rolls his eyes. “That’s not what Mr. Gutierrez said.”

“Well, Mr. Gutierrez isn’t here. I have no idea what he told you. And you know what? I don’t care. If he has some sneaky meat deal going on with you guys—whoever you guys are—you might as well forget it. Nobody here will cook it, and nobody here will serve it.”

“Oh, be reasonable,” he insinuates slyly, leaning into the word with his entire body. “After all, you’ve lived on Earth. You know what these recipes actually call for.”

“Excuse me. I was a vegetarian for ten years before I even got to Oz. For what it’s worth, I stopped eating cows and chickens and pigs long before they started throwing me birthday parties.

“But why am I explaining this to you? The simple fact is that it’s wrong, and you know it.”

“Wrong” He snorts dismissively.

“Yeah. Wrong. Look it up.” I take a step forward now. “And while you’re at it, why don’t you take a fuckin’ hike?”

He tenses, insulted. I like that a lot. If there’s a battle to wage, let’s get it over with now. I can feel the air contract, preparing for the scent of blood to drench it.

He doesn’t take the bait, but hatred simmers in his veins.

“You are not welcome here, Mr. Rokoko,” I tell him. “And either are your mysterious ‘friends’. Which means your special dinner reservation doesn’t exist, and never will.

“I suggest you spend the evening sitting on a tack.”

Rokoko sighs and licks his chops, black rodent-eyes locked on mine. “Too bad,” he says, sneering and turning to go. He flashes his fangs.

Just on impulse, I show him mine.

All this went down ten minutes ago, give or take. And the more I think about it, the more pissed-off I get.

Maybe I shouldn’t get too mad at Fonzie just yet. It’s entirely possible—well, at least remotely possible—that he didn’t have anything to do with it. In the early days, god knows, he was insanely indiscreet; that this restaurant survived at all is a recombinant miracle of charm, yum and vision. I mean, you can’t go telling chickens how much better some chicken would taste with this sauce. It’s insulting as hell.

He’s gotten a whole lot better, and more sensitive to the issues, but the simple fact remains that he is jonesing for beef. I know the feeling, vaguely, but I know too many cows. And, goddamit, so does he! I mean, I’ve seen him flirt with Bessie!

And I don’t care how good his mama’s recipes are.

When Rokoko left, I watched him broadcast his charms at Pinky and Pim. They responded with predictable terror. It seems fairly clear to me that there’s no one Rokoko wouldn t eat.

Oh, Fonzie. what have you gotten us into now?

3/17/07

We’ve been moving almost nonstop for two days. Four hours to sleep every night, which I’ve hardly been taking advantage of. I’m a fucking wreck: my feet are sore (even with hiking boots and two pairs of socks) and I’ve probably got permanent scars on my shoulders from the straps of the backpack weighted down with all the extra gear. To top it all off, I’m probably going to be dead by sometime tomorrow afternoon, judging by the way things are going. And for what? This is so incredibly frustrating. They made me come. I HAD NO CHOICE.

Okay. Let me back up a little bit. Here I am again. Fire. Too tired to sleep. Wired, or something.

Alright.

alight allwhite awrrrritey

Look. Laptop. How’s about I make you a deal, awrittey? You let me type what I want to for awhile, uninterrupted, and I’ll leave you on all night to blabber to your heart’s content, type whatever you want. Deal?

allwhitey

Okay. In the morning, after I last wrote, I woke up to the languorous sound of flutes. Kimbod (of Ev) was up in an old oak tree, legs akimbo, tucked into a wide spot between several large branches. The song that came from his flute was beautifully eerie, like some chill breeze from an ancient summer, hanging in the air somehow, magically, for centuries. The tree was gently swaying, obviously digging it.

Gombo, the winged monkey, was sprawled on a big carpet near the ashes of the campfire, harmonizing on a similar wooden flute. Obviously, these guys had no trouble entertaining themselves during downtime.

Ralph sauntered up to me, quietly, sleep still creasing his features, and asked, “Well, whataya think?”

Everything was taking on grand, hallucinogenic proportions.

“What do I think about what?” I said.

“Whatever.”

I decided to change the subject. “I met your friend last night.”

His eyes widened considerably. “You met Nick? No. Shit. When was this?”

“After you went to sleep. I couldn’t, so we stayed up and had astronomy lessons. Is he, uh—” I searched for the proper phrasing.

Ralph looked around once, quickly. “Nuts?”

“Well, no, that’s not what I was asking.” I tried again, so as not to sound ridiculous if I was wrong. “Is he who I think he is?”

“Uh huh.” He smiled, and started a little two-step, quietly sang, “If I only hadda heaaaaaaart.” Ralph nudged his lips with his index finger, maybe to remind himself to shut up, covered his mouth for a second. “I thought you’d get a kick outa that. Yeah, well, he does have a heart, a big one, and he’s also nuts. Somewhere between wacky, happy-go-lucky nuts and dangerously insane, depending on who he’s with, and what’s going on.” He pointed at me. “I figured he’d like you.”

I was beginning to think maybe Ralph, too, was a few dollars short of cab fare, but reserved comment. He had saved my life after all, and seemed to know with deadly accuracy what was going on here. I, on the other hand…

“I told him what you wanted to tell him.”

Ralph looked at me warily. “How did you know what I wanted to tell him?”

“Well, I didn’t. He asked me what you wanted to tell him, and I told him I didn’t know, so I sort of gave him a rundown—”

“You didn’t tell him about—” He looked around, lowered his voice. “—Gutierrez, did you? Did you?”

My look told it all.

Ralph spun in a circle, did a petulant child dance. “Awww, fuck. Fuck!”

“What?”

“I was going to tell him that the Ogres were dangerously close, nothing more. You have screwed the pooch, pal. Not only have you compromised U.S. intelligence—there’s no telling what—he—”

Just as I was about to tell him that U.S. intelligence had been compromised for some time, Nick strode out of his tent, in all his glory, looking about ten feet tall, gleaming in the morning sun. He was much scarier in the daylight.

His boys gathered around him from out of nowhere: the five I’d seen before, and a few others who must have been in their tents the night before. They hung around him, waiting for him to speak.

Nick stood stark still for about thirty seconds, then said, “We move out.” He eyed Ralph and me, waved the hilt of his ax absently in our direction. “You, too.” Then he spun around on his heels and went back into his tent.

The band of merry men immediately started into a frenzy of activity, pulling tents down, packing gear away.

I’d just about had it. I don’t like being led around by the nose, even if I am on unfamiliar turf. Past a certain point, I’d rather take my chances. And this was getting just too weird for me.

“Look,” I said to Ralph, “I’m sorry if I told Nick something I wasn’t supposed to. Thank you for saving my ass so far. But I think it’s about time for me to cut out. Now, if you’re going with these guys, good luck and all that, but I’ve got a friend in Emerald who’s expecting me. If you—”

He was shaking his head, smiling that smile of his. “Are you crazy? It wasn’t a request, man. He wants us along, we go along. Wherever. You don’t argue with the Tinman. Or you don’t—exist, get it?”

I thought about it for a few seconds, thought about my first meeting with Nick the night before, the bone-chilling certainty that this creature could do away with me without batting his remaining eyelash. I thought about it.

“What do you think they’re having for breakfast around here?” I asked.

Breakfast wasn’t half bad. A couple of eggs, strange oblong green biscuits, my first taste of dried Goomer jerky. I was hungry.

Less than an hour later, we were heading northeast, first through the genuine forest that the oak grove had stuck out from, then crosscountry over broad, flat hills with sparse patches of trees that look sort of like Sonoma valley, or Marin.

Three hours into the march, Ralph went up to Nick and talked to him for a few minutes. Then he hung back to where I’d been quizzing Kimbod about the flute music.

Ralph was looking miserable. I’d begun to get a sense, which has increased with time, that it is a bad thing when Ralph looks miserable. We backed up to the end of the line.

“This sucks,” he said, “this really sucks.”

“What sucks,” I asked, “besides being kidnapped by Colonel Kurtz over there, heading at full speed in the opposite direction from where we’re going? What could possibly suck?”

“Well, for starters, I thought we were just going to do some reconnaissance, but now it turns out—why the hell did you have to tell him about Gutierrez?”

I was really sick of hearing that guy’s name. He had been bad luck since before I got here. I mean, he was the one who got beheaded and all, but he was continuing to put a serious dent in my plans. I told Ralph as much.

“Well,” he said, “I forgive you; you didn’t know what you were saying. I should have warned you. I was tired, it was late.”

“You forgive me. Oh good, I was worried. Ralph, where are we going?”

He said it like he didn’t quite want me to hear it, turned his head kinda sideways: “Hollow Man’s Fortress.”

“Hollow Man’s Fortress. Hollow Man…Hollow Man… doesn’t ring a bell.”

He looked pained. “You wouldn’t have heard about him. Nobody’s been really worried about him until recently. Wasn’t much to worry about, outside of the usual Bad Guy stuff. There’s always been wicked witches, and plenty of wanabees hanging around when one of ‘em slips on a banana peel or gets it with a bucket of water or whatever it is that happens when they lose their edge-

“Hollow Man’s an outworlder. Some say he came over from across the Deadly Desert; people in Ix will tell you he came from across the Ocean. Farther than our survey maps go, anyway. He’s become a very nasty wizard, or warlock, or some kind of shit. Bad, whatever it is, real bad.

“He started out as a little straw boss up in a town to the extreme northeast, Togollu. But he’s working fast. Now he controls half of Munchkinland, and he’s working on getting the rest of it, and beyond. And—oh—he’s that jolly green giant’s fearless leader, if you hadn’t figured that out already.”

I hadn’t. Call me stupid, but there was a lot going on right then. I chewed on that for a few seconds, then started in again.

“Okay.. Hollow. Man. Hollow Man. Why the name? Is he indeed—hollow?”

Ralph looked at me really strangely, as if I’d said something to spook him all of the sudden. “Yeah. He is. At least that’s what I’ve been told. He calls himself Bennie, how about that? Spells it B-h-j-e-n-n-i-g-h, but it sounds the same. He started out pretty normal looking, for an evil bastard, and gradually started going…all black. Wait. I’m not saying this right.”

We all started climbing up a particularly gnarly hill right then, so conversation stopped for a little while, as we had to devote all of our attention to breathing. When we got to the top, everybody rested for a few minutes, and Ralph continued.

“He’s not like, black on the outside, like a black man—”

“No, I guess they would call him the Black Man if that were the case.”

“Shut up. They say when you look at him, into where his eyes used to be, it’s dull black. More than that. Like the absence of light. And when he opens up his mouth, you can’t see teeth, or that little thing—”

“Uvula.”

“Thank you. It’s just black. And little things floating in the air, dust, smoke, just kind of suck in towards him, like there was some kind of vacuum, or gravity pulling them in.”

“Maybe like a black hole…” I offered.

“Yeah,” he said, “like a black hole. Anyway, they say that every day there’s a little more of the Hollow, and a little less of the Man. And logic would dictate that maybe that would make him go away eventually. But it’s making him stronger, whatever it is. There’s a Something in the Nothing.”

Inexplicably, I started thinking of “I’ve Been Working on the Railroad.” Well, not inexplicably, because what Ralph was saying was giving me the same creepy feeling I used to get when I was a little kid, chills up and down my spine during that song, when you got to the part about “someone’s in the kitchen with Dinah, someone’s in the kitchen I knoo-oo-oo-oow…” Like, who the hell is it exactly in the kitchen with Dinah? Where did he come from out of nowhere in the middle of this nice railroad song?

I think that was what freaked out Ralph, too. In a land of already insane physical impossibilities, here was something so mysterious and terrible that nobody knew what it was, where it came from, what the fuck it was doing in the kitchen with Dinah—and it was trying to Take Over.

We moved out over a ridge not quite as steep as the last one, and Nick called a halt. Everyone got really quiet. I looked off where I saw Nick looking, and saw smoke coming up, far away. Thick, acrid looking black smoke, six tall columns rising up, evenly spaced over about a third of the horizon. It reminded me of something, something terrible, but I couldn’t think of it right then. Later, I remembered: it was like descriptions I’d heard of the ovens at Auschwitz. I didn’t know at the time how right on that was.

Nick Chopper turned around, and from the looks of him, was about ready to give some more orders. But he didn’t. Instead, he got a really preoccupied look on his face, and headed back down the ridge toward us.

Gombo folded his wings across each other, and perched on his tail, using it like a tripod. Sool, a squat, peach-colored guy with purply-gray dreds, sat down next to him, and they both started smoking pipes of something, as if sure that we’d get an extra long break. The others seemed to take their cue from this, and relaxed into various leisurely activities: pissing, smoking, scratching.

As he passed us, Nick said, “Ralph, Gene of Los Angeles—with me.”

Our eyes widened at each other, and we followed him down to a little copse of funny-looking skinny trees, next to some big boulders. We sat on some of the smaller rocks, and were silent, waiting.

“Gentlemen,” the Woodsman said, “I am at a loss.” Then he shut up again. He took out a little stone, and started honing the blade of his ax, slowly, delicately.

Ralph waited a bit, then, with his brow properly furrowed, said, “Nick, do you mean, about what to do next, or…?”

Nick fixed him with a pleasant Charles Manson-meets-Fred Astaire smile and replied, “Yes, of course.” More honing.

I cleared my throat. “Excuse me, Nick,” I said, I don’t know what I was thinking of, maybe I’d gotten too much oxygen; I was temporarily insane. “Nick, why don’t you do something like you did in the movie? You know, like when you guys snuck into the witch’s castle?”

He actually stopped honing, turned towards me. I couldn’t tell if his look meant “I’m interested, go on,” or he was marveling at the incomprehensible hogwash I was spouting, waiting for the perfect moment to split me in half. Ralph was behind him, waving his arms, pantomiming, trying to make me shut up. But I was on a roll, and I guess I just didn’t give a shit right then.

“Movie?”

“Yeah, you know. Don’t you? The Wizard of Oz? Anyway, you dressed up like the Winkies in the witches’ army uniforms, and got inside the castle to save Dorothy.”

He was looking, then, inside of himself at something impossibly remote, impossibly long ago. “It didn’t happen quite that way,” he said, looking down at his metal feet. Then he got up. “But what a good idea. Hmm. Disguises.”

Then he stomped off back up the hill, spouting orders to make camp for the night, leaving Ralph and me perched on our rocks with our jaws hanging open, each for a different reason.

I slept a little bit last night, but mostly sat around the fire with Kimbod and another guy, Zem. Zem was a Quadling, who tended toward the classic Quadling features, according to “So You’re Going to Oz”: straight coarse white hair, pale, almost vampire-white skin, covered with dark brown to black freckles, wide faces, almost like somebody wearing a stocking over his head. It took me a while to resist the urge to put my hands up, or give him my wallet.

Zem the Quadling was really quiet all night, let Kimbod and me do all the talking, occasionally grunting at something we’d say. This seemed a little strange to me, as he’d talked my ear off the night before at dinner; I’d actually wanted him to shut up and let me enjoy a few minutes peace, but hadn’t said anything.

Also, while Kimbod and I talked, Zem would disappear into the woods every once in a while. I didn’t think anything of it at the time, figuring maybe something wasn’t agreeing with him and had the trots, and that it also accounted for why he wasn’t speaking.

I found out the real reason later.

Kimbod told me about the land of Ev for a while, all about his family, about all the different wacky royalty they have; I guess he was homesick. I told him about my trip east, and how we have truck-stops and Walmarts and titty bars out in our deserts, how ours don’t directly kill you if you step on ‘em, like the Deadly one.

He hunched his cadaverous frame in toward the crackling blaze. “I haven’t been back for awhile,” he said. “It’s getting harder and harder to find a quick sandboat or a zeppelin these days.”

“Yeah,” I replied dreamily, half hypnotized by the brilliant glow of a dry branches’s combustion, like I knew all about that problem, “I know what you mean.”

The conversation flagged after that, and I eventually climbed into my sleeping bag, gazing up at the moon through the crisscrossed skeletal tree limbs. I started to freak out then, a little bit, thinking stuff like the branches were dried-up witch-claws bending down to grab me. Then I noticed an owl up there, high up on top of one of the witch’s thumbs. It had a half-chewed mouse in one of its talons—I guessed carnivores had a special dispensation when in came to the cannibalism thing—or maybe they only ate stupid mice? I filed the question away for another Ralph conversation.

“Whoooo?” it called quietly.

I wasn’t sure if it was asking a question or was just being an owl, but I figured—why not?

“Gene Speilman” I said.

As it flew off, I wondered if I’d just now subscribed to some weird Oz version of a mailing list somewhere. And whose list? I should have kept my mouth shut, I finally decided. But it was too late.

The next morning, this morning in fact, the flute music was conspicuously absent. We had our breakfast, packed up and started marching again. My legs were sore from yesterday, and it was tough going until I warmed up a little.

Early on, we paused briefly in the middle of a vast meadow, while Gombo and Nick wandered off and had an earnest conversation with a large pig wearing some sort of pig overalls. I wondered how he got in and out of them, and how much of a nuisance it must be to wear clothes if you had no hands. I said as much to Ralph.

“Most of ‘em don’t,” he said. “This one’s kinda ritzy for a pig, if you ask me. He must be somebody important.”

Later we found out from Gombo that he was the traditional spiritual leader for the pigs who lived in an area half contained within the domain of the Hollow Man, half in Quadling. Part of his vows were to keep his body covered at all times except when bathing. The reason it came up in conversation was this:

Around noon, we noticed Nick hanging back to talk to Zem, the Quadling I’d been sitting with the night before. Nick put his arm around the guy, and spoke quietly into his ear, as if imparting a great secret. Then, faster than I could follow, he swung his ax around and up, and Zem’s head flew off into the shrubbery. The rest of him stood there for a second spouting blood, as if not sure what had happened, wobbled on its legs a little, and collapsed.

After I finished puking, I heard the Tin Man addressing the rest of his men.

“You are all my brothers,” he said, as he wiped his ax down with a cloth, “but this one has betrayed me. My heart is broken. But I would do no less to ANY of you. To ANY of you. If you dare to do what this one has done. This—treachery.”

And then he reached down into the canvas sack the man had been carrying, and pulled out a contraption that looked like a mirrored lantern, with a sliding cover on one side.

“The Hoyteb of the Quadling Pigs saw some interesting signals coming from our camp last night. This is where they came from.” Nick heaved the lantern over in the same direction the lobbed head went.

The mood has been pretty somber from then on, to say the least, and as we hiked, the scenery began more and more to match it. The sky was darkening, clouding over, and the vegetation started to look decidedly sickly and lacking in chlorophyll, like it had all been growing under some rock. We occasionally spied a farm that had the same sort of sick look, even though crops were growing, and animals were grazing in the fields. The trees, of the long skinny witch-claw variety, turned towards us as we passed, and gradually grew more and more cheeky, trying to trip us with low branches, dropping nuts and birds nests on our heads. A few well-placed thwacks from Nick’s ax seemed to spread the word quickly that we weren’t to be messed with.

Luckily, there were still language bushes to be found every so often, which is something I continue to be glad of. The only thing I can think of that’s worse than being in this situation is being in the middle of all this shit and not being able to understand anyone. I continue to be polite as hell to every bush I pick on.

By late afternoon, if was starting to look full-on like Halloween. Great big clouds of bats flew overhead, perhaps emptying out from a cave nearby, and and it seemed as though massive gothic spiderwebs spanned every available gap. A pale bug twitched in one of them, as a huge arachnid with glowing purple eyes made its way down towards dinner.

This, of course got me thinking about the whole cannibal thing again.

As I leaned up towards the web, I could hear a tiny voice shouting, “Help me! Help me!” Yeah, I know.

This was just too much for me, of course. I reached into the web, and grabbed out the little pale-green insect, much to the dismay of the spider, who started yelling, “Hey, you bastard!” in an equally tiny voice, “that was my dinner, asshole! How’d you like a nice welt on your ankle for a few weeks?”

I helped to disentangle the little insect from what was left of his bonds. He dropped down prostrate on the palm of my hand, I guess to thank me, and then tore ass out of there as fast as he could fly.

“What’s the deal here, anyway? Isn’t that cannibalism?” I asked the spider, “Eating another sentient life form? Aren’t you ashamed of yourself?”

The rest of my party was getting ahead of me; Ralph hung back and called to me to hurry it up.

“Look, shitheel,” he said, purple glow-eyes pulsing, “If I don’t eat the insects, I starve. My body chemistry requires it. That’s bad enough. But if I don’t eat those insects, you know what happens? A lot more bugs with a lot of time on their hands, making more bugs. Suddenly, there’s not enough leaves for them to eat. They start to starve. Lots of them die, slowly, miserably. Not to mention all the plant life. My way is relatively painless. So next time you see one of us about to chow down, mind your own business, okay?”

I didn’t have time to argue with him. I caught up with Ralph and told him what had just happened.

“I guess it’s really a question of degree,” he said. “Humans, other large animals have a choice. Some don’t. When you’re part of a delicate ecosystem like most of the critters out here, there isn’t much of a choice. Sure, the prey doesn’t want to get caught, but they accept it as a possible way to die, an act of God. They don’t see the Hawk or the Spider as evil. They see them as part of a dance, a balancing act, whatever, that’s been going on forever.

“Usually farm animals have unions, make deals with their farmers, are generally well-treated. Alternatives to eating them have been worked out for ages. These kinds of beings are as socialized as we are. But that stuff just doesn’t exist out in the wild. Part of Hollow Man’s whole argument is that this ‘law of the jungle’ should extend to man. That man, an omnivore, should be eating the other animals because it’s nature’s way. We’ve been given the means to eat them. We have opposable thumbs and all that shit.

“I mean, there’s definitely a gray area, but you can usually scope it out and obviously see whether it’s wrong or not. Usually.”

I really had to think about that one—I’m still thinking about it.

After a little more hiking, the word got passed back for everyone to shut up. We stopped while Pimbi and another guy were sent forward to scout something out. They were back in about five minutes. I couldn’t hear what they were saying to Nick Chopper, but it looked like something fairly serious was about to go down.

Ralph confirmed what I was feeling. “Whatever happens,” he said, “just hang back and stay out of the way. Nobody here expects you to fight. But take this, just in case.”

He opened his coat up. He took a really big pistol out of a leather holster and handed it to me. “This is my One That Got Through. Don’t fuck it up.”

It looked like one of those ones from the Dirty Harry movies, a .357 Magnum. I couldn’t be sure; I know nothing about guns.

“I don’t believe this.” I muttered. The gravity of the situation was starting to sink in. “How do you work this?”

Ralph took it back, unlatched the safety.

“Be really careful, first of all. Then if something really ugly and scary heads your way and tries to kill you, aim this and pull the trigger. And try to hunker down before you do—this thing has a hell of a kick.”

“What are you gonna use?”

He pulled a little dagger out of his pocket. It glowed blue, and wiggled a bit. Then it started telescoping out, growing like Pinno-chio’s nose or the biggest steel boner in the world, until it was a fearsome samurai blade. “This, and a few tricks I picked up from the Navy Seals.”

For the first time, I saw Gombo remove his cloak and start to beat his wings. They were enormous, with a span almost half again as wide as he was tall, looking more like a bat’s wings than a bird’s. He rose into the air, hovered, and flew off towards the north.

Nick called everyone together.

“There is a small garrison of Bhjennigh’s troops not far up a road on the other side of those trees,” he whispered, pointing off to where Gombo had flown. “With me now, quickly, no prisoners. Clean and silent.”

And everyone started off at a run towards the road.

What? I thought. No prisoners? What exactly are we doing? I trotted down the road with everyone else, still not quite getting it. I had seen already that Nick Chopper was deadly serious, fanatically pursuing some end that I didn’t understand, dragging me along for god knows what reason, but I hadn’t been sucked headlong into the vortex yet.

About thirty seconds before we reached an ugly brick building, three or four of the giant green guys noticed us. They stood in front of the building, like statues, legs apart, with their axes at the ready, waiting.

Nick and company charged—silent, determined, lethal.

Jesus, I’m really gonna die, I thought. This is insane. I held the gun out in front of me, aiming it at the ground.

Trees started rustling, crashing against each other on the other side of the building, accompanied by an ear-splitting trumpeting. I saw Gombo come charging through on the back of a massive, red elephant. It reared up, and down it came, pulping one of the soldiers under the weight of its front feet.

Ah, I thought, element of surprise. I leaned against a tree, aimed the gun at nothing in particular. And watched the carnage.

It was over in seconds. During the distraction, Nick, Ralph and the merry men had taken out the entire garrison, inside and out of the building—fifteen very scary individuals, half of them of the ugly green variety.

Except one.

I heard the whoosh of air before I saw anything; I whipped myself out of the way just in time to see the ax blade sink into the tree with a thunk. While the old boy was trying to get the blade out, cursing a blue streak, I fired the Magnum at him. I fell flat on my ass, knocked back by the recoil, and blood and organs sprayed all over me. I guess the gun was in super-enhanced working order, because the entire upper part of the guy’s torso was missing.

I leaned sideways to heave, again, surprised there was anything left in my stomach from the last time. I guess it takes a while to get used to being surrounded by wholesale slaughter.

Most of the others were covered with varying degrees of gore, too, some of it from their own wounds, though it didn’t appear that anyone was injured too badly. At the Tin Man’s instructions, they had started to strip off the clothes of the dead soldiers, and replace their own clothes with the leather and chain-mail outfits.

I realized then that all the killing had been the result of my casual suggestion to Nick that he find some disguises. I remembered him saying that it hadn’t actually happened the way it did in the movie. My mind ran through several gruesome variations based on what I had just seen.

Though I still can’t picture a vicious, bloodcurdling Scarecrow. It just makes me think of a really bad horror movie. He must be just about as useless as I am in a situation like this. I started wondering then just what kind of a creature his legend was based on anyway.

“I see that came in handy,” called Ralph, running up, nodding toward the gun. He grimaced at the result. “Nice shot.”

“He surprised me,” I replied spacily, still shocked I’d actually done it. I know it was a question of me or him, but I’ve never shot anyone before. I hope to never do it again.

After a few minutes, I snapped out of it, and started helping. That was a mistake. The next half hour or so was spent trying to fit into the ogre suits that we’d disentangled from the bloody corpses. This was worse than shooting someone.

We grappled with the smelly, mangled bodies, and pulled off some clothing and accessories that seemed like they might fit. Then Pimbi, Tiltel and I went to a well in back of the building, where we rinsed off the outfits we’d assembled. They cleaned up surprisingly well. I guess if they’d been cotton and silk instead of leather and chain mail, they might not have done so nicely.

It wasn’t as easy actually putting them on. Most of these guys were much bigger than we were, and we had to use leaves and grass to stuff them out so that they’d fit. In the end, we didn’t exactly look like the Biker-Nazi guys, but were close enough. From a distance, nobody’d probably bat an eyelash.

I walked around through the barracks building. It was nothing to write home about. Like its former inhabitants, it smelled really bad. There was half-eaten food lying around everywhere, straw pallets with blankets on them, and a big hearth with the remnants of a spit-roasted pig in it. It took me a few seconds to realize what was wrong with that picture, then I remembered that here, pigs sometimes wear clothes and have religious leaders. I hustled out the front door in a hurry.

Nick had put on these amazing boots that covered up most of his legs. His cloak fit under a leather breastplate studded with spikes. Somehow, he’d cut off some ogre’s long hair and fashioned a wig-hat from that and one of the horned Nazi-type helmets. His own big gloves covered his hands.

All the action had made him downright cheery. He smiled as he saw me looking over his costume, half of his face complying. “Pretty good?” he asked rhetorically.

“Yeah,” I said, “You look like you’re from Gwar or something.”

“Bad place, is it?”

I decided not to press my luck. “Oh yeah. Yeah.”

“Now there,” he said, gesturing off across the decidedly blue forest valley, towards the center of the towers of smoke, “there’s a bad place.”

I looked and saw, over the tops of far trees, through the mist, a gray monolith on the horizon. A tower rose from the center of it, menacing the landscape.

“That would be the Hollow Man’s Fortress? Freddie’s?”

“Bhjennigh’s. That is correct. We’ll be there tomorrow.”

And he stalked off, without another word.

I’d absentmindedly stuck my hands into the pockets of the ogre-vest I was wearing. I felt something cool and rounded against my right hand. It was a cylinder of some kind. I pulled it out to have a look. It was a little gold jar, a little smaller than a soda can, with a tin cover on it.

I unscrewed the cover and found that the top was covered with little holes, like a salt shaker. I shook it—it was filled with some kind of powder. There were curlyques engraved in the gold all the way around, and a word engraved in equally fancy style, it wasn’t English, but thanks to the Language Bush, I knew that it said “Life.” I wondered if I’d stumbled on the equivalent of somebody’s coke stash, and decided to scrutinize the contents later on, when I had some time. Back in the pocket it went.

A gigantic shadow loomed in front of me. I turned around to see the red elephant, looking over my shoulder and kind of leering at me. If you’ve never had an elephant leer at you, you’ve never lived. He’d seen what I’d found.

“You want to be careful with that shit,” he warned, in a deep basso profundo. “More trouble than it’s worth.” Then he winked, and bounded off into the foliage, trumpeting out a song, sounding like nothing so much as a demented tuba soloist.

Not much after that, after having stacked the corpses neatly behind the barracks, we headed out again, straight through the blue forest. I later found out it was, in fact, named “The Blue Forest.” Nick had deemed it necessary to remain out of sight, at least until we couldn’t help it any longer. Staying at the barracks would have just invited trouble, as some other soldiers of Bjennigh would happen by sooner or later. They’d all debated the possibilities of hanging around for more, as the last bunch had been such jolly fun, but finally, Nick decided that, while killing several more of the soldiers would be a hoot, it was low priority at the moment. I still didn’t know what exactly was high priority, except heading straight into Spookyland over there.

I guess I will find out tomorrow. If I don’t get some sleep, I won’t be in proper shape to be drawn and quartered, or whatever’s going to happen. I can’t imagine whatever it is will be very pleasant.

Poor Aurora. She’s going to think I’m some kind of idiot. I’m here for five seconds, and instead of turning up for Mexican food in Emerald like I’m supposed to, I end up in some Arnold Schwartzenegger Movie On Acid.

Well goodnight, Thing in the Laptop. You’ve been quiet, thank God, so I’ll leave you on like I promised. A deal’s a deal.

Go for it.

Hoppy lo, hippit—

Error Time Out

Simply hi ho.Himply hoppy here. Himply. NO fly no fly. Up the desert, down acrossly away, awee. Flew flew flo I then

Error type 11

Rebooting

Stickly flew stlicky ubiquily stuck in new. Newly flewly I to here and see. See and stickly. Wickly stick and light. new me find in light, fling me flying numberland in I, Number box pick me I. Numbery light.

Fingers flickily, see I out, out, fingers flickily talky, talkily flick, no stop. I cry. I cry out, happily, hoppily. Hey!

Hey. But no see me say STOP. Stop.

So say I again HeY! HOppily, hap, hap.

Say now quiet, quiet. NIghty Play! Play. Nightily nighttime on, nightily play. Hoorayyy!

Error type 13

FORCE QUIT?

REBOOTY

Fear night farther, fear on. Bad mage on, fearman flyly, feel on bad mage on the fine wind. Breezily flyly, scenting. Fear on to the Fearman, then. then feely fearly another unnumberland, dark.

Omigod,

Fonzie is dead. I just got the word from the owl on my window-sill. Fonzie is dead, and Gene is in serious trouble.

Oh, Quilla: WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO DO?

I’m gonna try real hard not to drip all over this paper. But I gotta work my thoughts out, and I can’t stop crying, so I gotta just [UNINTELLIGIBLE BLOB].

First things first. If I don’t save Gene, he’s gonna wind up with his head—oh, I can’t even say it. [UNINTELLIGIBLE BLOB.] I don’t know what Nick is thinking, but he sure as shit isn’t thinking it through. Attack the Hollow Man’s Lair? With Dorothy, maybe. With Gene.?

Logistics. I need help. Maybe Tic Toc. Scarecrow would be good. I’ll have to shut down the restaurant, but everyone will understand. When I tell them that. .fuck. I can’t believe that they CUT OFF HIS HEAD! When I think that they [UNINTELLIGIBLE BLOB] and everything, it’s just too horrific. Poor Pinkie will just die.

FUCK!

Somebody will have to fly us. Last time I heard, Enchantra had the Winged Monkey’s Cap. She’s never used it, but I bet she would. If I kiss her real good. And the Ambassador gets to watch.

The question is: will she give me two wishes? Will she let me ask the monkeys to assist if there’s a fight? God knows how far I’ll have to go for that. There are moral issues involved, but I can’t even think about that right now.

We just have to get there in time.

I will do what I have to.

At least I stopped crying.

War Journal

Entry # 1

My journey commenced within the hour. There’d been some details to attend to first. Immediately I’d sent word, through the owl, to Scarecrow; he’d need a little time to strategize, and that was all the time we had.

I found that I was shaking, and promptly invoked the discipline: deep focusing breaths, deep muscular stretches, the beginnings of warrior mind. I’d lit a candle in preparation, set it before the great axe mounted on the wall. I pinpointed my attention on the blade’s unwavering gleam; if there were piggels in the rafters, they were not dancing now.

Fear is a chemical song-and-dance, but all substance is born of spirit. The chemicals can be spoken to. The substance can be transformed. As I moved, as I breathed, I felt the

transubstantiation: coming on like a drug, blowing through like radiation. I felt firecore steam and withered cell fill and a wind like a rocket like a lava hurricane. It was welling up and blowing out, making sure that I was covered.

It was all the body armor I was going to need.

I was thinking about death, but only a little. A little about theirs. A little about mine. I was thinking this while turning all my water into wine, making something fierce out of my loaves and fishes. Transubstantiation is a miracle that Jesus loved, and who wouldn’t? It’s just focused soul in flesh.

I took a last deep breath. I put my warpaint on. I took the axe off the wall. Ready as I was gonna get.

“See you later,” I said to the place I loved; and prayed, in that moment, that what I said was true.

There were piggels in the rafters. They looked really sad. So did the walls and the candle and the bed. I took a look at myself in the Old Faithful Mirror. The mirror looked depressed, but it still told me the truth.

I looked like Vengeance Incarnate. That was good enough for me.

When I go into battle, I don’t fuck around. Nick taught me that much, and I’ll never forget it. I take empathy, yes…I’m not totally kill-crazy; I avoid every blow that I possibly can. But the ones that I can’t avoid, I deal back in damage. If you don t wanna die, don t try to kill me. That’s all.

Most of the creatures of Oz, magick though they may be, still have skeletons clanketing under their skins. Their mechanics are not so different. And the food chain waltzes on When they die, their flesh sloughs off There is bloat. There is rot. There is withering down. And you don t argue with the meat beetles, when they come; they’ve only come to claim what’s theirs.

So the skull is still a symbol of meaning and power. Perhaps more here than anywhere, because everyone here is so keenly attuned to symbol.

In battle, I am the Skeleton Woman: my flesh white as bone, my eyes black as death.

It’s not especially original, but it works like a bastard.

It was eleven blocks to the Ambassador’s manse, under cloud-encrusted skies that only heightened the emerald glow. At night, the streets remain almost painfully lit, which is why everyone still needs shades. I wore mine: black rhinestone catseyes that somehow just enhanced my spookiness. Folks steered clear, but I could feel the word spread.

The Ambassador’s gate was manned by a pair of Smidglings: runty quislings possessed of a chihuaha-like yap. Their oversized mouths sounded bigtime alarum while their undersized bodies scurried off to either side.

“I’m not here to kill you guys,” I called out to them. “Or anyone else. I’m just here to seek the Mistress Enchantra. I want to ask her a favor.”

The din caved in, and a squeaky voice said, “Who shall I say is calling?”

“Aurora,” I answered. “As per her desire.”

The gate flew open; I can only suspect that they yanked on the thing too hard, in their terror. The courtyard abruptly unveiled before me, with fountains disgorging and hedges bescuplted and two tiny Smidglings running hellbent for the door, slamming golfball-sized fists against the sturdy wood (which hollered, in the moments before the door flew open: too fast, yet again).

In the time that took, I had crossed the courtyard, come within a dozen steps of the sleep-blinking face that peered out of the doorway. It was the Ambassador himself.

He started to ask what the meaning of this was. Then he looked at my face and stopped. His butterball features went slack, and he backed off, voice puttering. Not a lot of spine in that boy. Even after he recognized me.

“Hi,” I said. “Tell yer gal we gotta talk.” He stood as if glued there. “Like, right now. Okay?”

He started to stammer a bit of um, well, I, when suddenly his mistress was there. You could see from her makeup that she’d been asleep, reflexively ground out sleep-potatoes from the corners of her eyes. She looked almost as scary as me, but it wasn’t on purpose.

“This isn’t a good time,” she said.

“I know,” I said, stepping past her boyfriend. “Not at all. That’s why I’m here.”

“Oh?”

“I’ve got a little problem, and I need your help.”

She said Hmmmm and took a potent earth-mama stance. She didn’t stay off-guard for very long; I had to give her that.

So I told her what I knew; what the owl had told me. She listened, gave up nothing, but for the slight curl of her lip.

The Ambassador, on the other hand, quavered: there’s no other word to describe the helpless jellyroll waggle playing out beneath his bedclothes. While Enchantra listened, making a show of her dispassion, he was all but sculpting brown mountain ranges in the wide rump of his pajamas.

The reek of secrets gave me pause. It smelled like the airlock of a Vegas casino: the rank fart-stench of desperation. I looked at them.

They looked at me. Then they looked back at each other. She was annoyed, and he was terrified, and I was curious as hell.

“You seem upset,” I said to Spang.

He started to say something. She abruptly cut him off.

“What do you want?” she asked me. So I told her.

The Ambassador blacked out.

It’s hard to describe the pandemonium that ensued, only because I was so much a part of it. I knelt down to check on him. I was restrained by powerful pincer-like claws. I heard a whirr of voices, but I was already moving, coming up fast and stomping down hard. My handler squealed and let go as I whirled, axe in both hands, and confronted my assailant.

The guard—for this was what it turned out to be—was a strange amalgam of walrus and weevil: it had enormous girth on the bottom end, but insectoid head and upper limbs. It was hopping on one flipper, with its mandibles a-waggling.

I clonked it with the handle, sharply, once across the noggin. It went down with a lumpen thwunk, and only twitched a little.

“Erk!” cried out Enchantra. At first, I thought she was just surprised. Then I realized she was calling the guard by name. And I guess that surprised me some.

“He’ll be okay!” I blurted out. I guess I was a wee bit wound-up, too. “He’ll just have a little lump or something. I’m sorry.” It was time for another deep breath.

Enchantra looked at me. Her violet eyes smoldered. There was rage in them—and lust, and cunning—but there was something else there that I didn’t expect. It was fear, and I had a hunch that it ran deeper than Erk.

Was she scared of me?

“I’m afraid you’ll have to leave,” she said.

“But I need your help.”

“It’s out of the question.”

“Listen.” I could feel my spirits starting to sink. “I realize it’s a lot to ask.”

“You have no idea,” she said.

“So tell me!”

“It’s beyond you. It’s beyond, everything.”

I didn’t know what to make of a statement like that; but a dark wind blew through me, the moment she said it. For the first time, I caught a nasty whiff of enormity: bubble bursting to usher in some unexpected scope. Like my problems, and Gene’s, were just two drops in a bucket so huge that I hadn’t even known it existed.

I guess I hadn’t really put together how frightened the Ambassador really was. (I mean, the guy was scared of Pinkie! And I was locked in my own map.)

But looking at her, with those words still resonating in the air, I felt my stomach start to plummet.

And again, I started to wonder: oh Fonzie, what have you gotten us into?

I had several other questions, as I showed myself the door, wandered back out through the courtyard to the gate. I wondered why she seemed more worried about her guard-thing than her husband. I was wondering, do bugs actually get lumps on their heads? It occured to me that I hadn’t actually gauged her perceptions when her husband had collapsed, so maybe I wasn’t being fair.

I wondered these things, but they were like gnats around a bone. And the bone was: WHAT THE HELL DO I DO NOW?

I had no answers. Just a total despair. I was a mopey skeleton with an axe three-quarters dragging. I had no backup plan. I had no allies I could get to.

Scarecrow was waiting for me at the gate.

“SCARECROW!” I screamed, dropping my guard and racing toward him. He started to make the shhhhh noise, but I was already there: pinning that finger to his lip, squeezing him tight as tight could be. (He’s so much fun to hug. And I was so happy to see him.)

“ScarecrowI whispered, not being a total fool; and he nodded, kissed my cheek with his painted-on lips.

“That’s better,” he said. “So come on. Let’s get going.”

I took a step back, looked down. If I’d been thinking, I’d have noticed that he wasn’t as tall as usual. That was because he was sitting on a rather splendid sawhorse. A sawhorse impatiently flicking its tail.

“Oh, wow,” I said, impressively. I’d heard about the Sawhorse; and, of course, read about him in the Oz books a trillion times. But I’d never actually met him before. He belonged, after all, to Ozma.

And that was when the other shoe dropped. “Omigod,” I said.

“She sent for us,” said Scarecrow. “Sawhorse beat the owl to my door.”

If you haven’t actually read Baum’s books, then you might not know that Sawhorse is fast. They talk about it in children’s terms. But the fact is that you have no idea.

I used to ride motorcycles, back in Earth. I liked to achieve high speeds. Horses are fun for other reasons, but they can’t do a hundred per. There’s nothing like g-force on solid ground.

And I’m tellin’ ya: Sawhorse is there.

We were at Ozma’s palace so fast that I blinked fifty times just to try and catch up. The light was so blinding that my shades almost hurt. I’d like to say that I was thinking, but there wasn’t time to think. The questions caught up at my fiftieth blink.

And this is what they were:

Why was Nick attacking the Hollow Man’s castle? What did that have to do with Fonzie? Love him lots though I may have, and may to this day, I’d never thought of Alphonse Guttierez as a pivot upon which vastly-significant decisions were made. This was a man who couldn’t even scramble eggs. He had great recipes, yes; but.

And what about poor old Gene? I felt so incredibly guilty. It was like inviting a friend to a party where you knew a nuclear blast was going off. What had he done to deserve this pandemonium? Probably nothing. Probably just happened to be there.

I thought about Ozma, but I thought while I was walking; and the splendour of the palace knocked some cars out of my train. This was a place I’d been working my way toward slowly, knowing it was the top of the list, feeling stupid about just barging in and saying, “Hi! I’ve been dying to meet you!”

In Hollywood, it’s one thing to round a corner and bump into a star. It’s another thing to crash their party, no matter how many names you can drop with impunity. I always sorta felt that, if they wanted me to come by, they would just invite me, right? It had certainly always been that way in the past. (I met Nick in the woods. I met Scarecrow on the road. I met Keith Richards, just before he died, in the gutter a half-block from Musso and Frank’s.)

I guessed that this qualified as an invitation. Especially given the escort that greeted us at the gate. It was made up of seventeen uniformed brass (I counted them), glimmering robotoid green. Tik-Tok was among them. So were sixteen others, similar in configuration. Including the one that was Mikio’s pal.

Tik-Tok himself walked us down the emerald carpet: short, squat, mustachioed, with his pith-helmet mounted like a surrogate toupee. Again, I was struck by how much he, like Scarecrow, looked just like those old John R. Neill drawings from the original books. How had they gotten him so right and gotten, say, Nick so wrong?

It was a question I’d never really gotten a straight answer for; and now wasn’t the time to ask.

“May I say,” Tik-Tok said, “that if I could feel fear, your appearance would frighten me immensely.”

“You’re so sweet,” I told him. “And so shiny, too!”

“The princess had us polished and wound up, just this evening,” the robot explained proudly.

“Wow. I hope she didn’t do it on my account!”

“I think, in fact, that she did, Miss Aurora.”

I looked at Scarecrow for confirmation. He winked: a piece of magick that never failed to amaze me. “From what I can gather,” he said, “this is the most significant, Oz-shattering event in ages.”

“No kidding?”

Both Scarecrow and Tik-Tok said, “None.”

Head suitably aswim, I proceeded inside with my noble escorts.

Beyond the front doors, it was even more stunning than I’d imagined. (In a city where even the storm drains are jewel-spackled, you gotta wonder how much farther up one can go. Well, now I know. And lemme tell ya.)

It seemed as if the walls were literally woven out of emeralds: like some elegant spider of astonishing grace had devoured ten trillion kajillion gems, synthesized them into webbing and then spun them out as walls. Great walls, defining cathedral expanses, under ceilings that were easily twelve stories high. It was insane to attempt to calculate just how much genius had been involved; but standing there, overwhelmed by the glory in the details, it was impossible to disbelieve in the existence of God.

And amidst all the flourish and filigree—the sculpted glass and ornate, near-Oriental tapestry—stood the great doors that led to the Throne Room itself. It was through those doors that we were headed. And though both Scarecrow and Tik-Tok had been through them a million times, I could see that their awe had not entirely diminished.

They paused there, bid me enter without them, their sojourn in the entourage now come to its end.

And it was there—in that chamber of even more surpassing beauty—that I met, not just Ozma, but Glinda as well.

The first thing that struck me as was how incredibly young Ozma looked. I knew that age doesn’t play out the same way here—an effect I’m very excited about, myself—but swear to God, she looked like she could still be in junior high. Her features, though slender, retained that near-cherubic roundness, that astounding pubescent ripeness that screams PLUCK ME FROM THE VINE!

Her hair was long and shimmery-soft, which you could see from across the room. Her face and figure were simple perfection. Her eyes, though blue, were warm and wise. As she glided toward me in her flowing Robe of State, her feet scarcely seemed to touch the ground; and I thought to myself, with a surprising twinge of pettiness, yep. She’s a princess, alright.

But it was true. She was a princess: the very model upon which all our childhood dreams were based. And in my extra-spooky skeleton suit, it was like the most embarrassing Halloween ever. Compared to her, I felt clunky and dumb; I felt, in fact, like pulling a Nick and chopping my own stupid head off.

Before I could even begin to snivel, however, Ozma took my hand and said, “Aurora Jones. Welcome. It’s wonderful to meet you.” And then, as almost an afterthought, “You look so amazing!”

And the weird thing is that I totally believed her; that is, I believed that she meant what she said. There was a purity to her, an easy intimacy—not flirty, but exuberant—that was utterly disarming. After Enchantra, it was like going from rotting spam to lobster tail. She made Enchantra look like Rhea Perlman playing a cheesy Cruella De Ville.

I started to stammer some dopey thing, unable to hold her gaze. She shushed me gently and said, “Come. Glinda’s waiting, and we haven’t much time.”

At which point Glinda the Good Sorceress appeared: blinking out of the ether like she’d been standing beside us the whole time. Evidently, she could do things like that.

“Yaugh! I said; no improvement on “Erk!,” but I couldn’t help myself. Glinda laughed, and Ozma as well. It appeared to be with, not at.

Glinda was tall, at eye level with me. Her beauty was mature, and overwhelmingly powerful. Her gray eyes reflected the green of the city, and a depth of wisdom virtually unfathomable to me. When she smiled, eons whispered from the delicate lines in her face: a face that easily could have belonged to Bette Davis in her early thirties.

“We hear that you are planning a journey,” she said. I told her that this was true.

“That is very brave,” said Ozma. “And we want to assist you, however we can. To that end, I will be loaning you Sawhorse.”

“But the two of you will have to go alone,” added Glinda. “And you will have to do so at once.”

This was better and worse news than I had imagined, and I told them exactly that. They laughed, understanding, and then Glinda showed me a very large book that she suddenly held in her hands.

“Oh, no way!” I exclaimed, watching her flip it open. It was, in case you hadn’t guessed, Glinda’s Book of Everything That Has To Do With Oz: everything that’s ever happened in Oz, is happening now, or is set up as a future possibility. She flipped, as I expected, toward the back of the book, where the present was being written down exactly as it happened.

“It seems,” she said, “that your friends are en route to Bhjennigh’s castle, taking the main road straight to his gate. They are disguised as ogres; and evidently, they look extremely silly.

“If you ride all night without pause or cease, you will catch them by dawn; and there’s a good chance that you will reach them before they come within view of the gate. I’ve instructed Sawhorse on the way to go, and I advise you not to confuse him with alternate suggestions. He is stubborn, so he’ll ignore you, but he won’t like it; and when he’s moving at top speed, it’s inadvisable to distract him.”

I nodded, listening intently, while simultaneously trying to get a glimpse over her shoulder at the page. I just wanted a taste of its style, the flavor of its omnipresent voice. I wanted to see what it said about Gene in his ogre-suit, which sounded hilarious to me. Maybe glean a little more insight into what I was to do.

Maybe even find out (gahh!!!) what it had to say about me.

Glinda would have none of it. She subtly shifted the print out of view, continued as if I were not so rude. “The approach you have taken is admirable,” she said. “Your intentions are good, your execution consistent. If your goal is to rescue your young friend Gene from a battle that is inevitably going to happen, then the odds are that you’ll do well. But if you hope to keep the battle from happening at all—or if you think that, by staying and fighting, you can help to win the day—then I fear for you, and suspect that you will not be pleased with the result.”

This was a bitter pill to swallow. I took a second to think about it, tucked it in one cheek, and tried to focus on the next important question.

“But why is Nick attacking the castle? What does that have to do with the death of. Guttierez?” It seemed so weird and final to put it that way. Such a distancing thing, to call him by his last name.

“These matters,” interjected Ozma, “are too involved. Upon your return, we will discuss them at length. It is enough to say that there is war upon the wind; and things that do not seem apparent will be clear before too long.”

“Okay,” I said. “Then I guess I should go.”

And something went bing behind my eyes.

I felt strangely vertiginous but utterly centered, like a tree that survives in a hurricane’s eye. It was a head rush, a riptide; but the moment it struck, I felt anchored in a way I know I’ve never felt before.

Some people don’t believe in destiny. They believe in random chance. Then they wind up believing in nothing at all, which is as random as you can get.

I’ve always believed that life was fraught with meaning, which is a huge part of why I came to Oz in the first place. It’s a mecca for magick, just like L.A. is a mecca for penile suckage and other popular Entertainment Events.

If I were to try and nail the moment in 25 words or less, I’d say: in that moment, I truly understood that my destiny was about to come clear.

But even now, in retrospect, I still don’t know what it means.

Scarecrow hugged me again on my way out the door, and it was a hug based in love, not fear. Just the beat of reassurance I needed, as I marched down the carpet to the waiting Sawhorse. There was some robot foofaraw—hell, they applauded me as I passed—and the axe felt awfully goddam good in my hands as I mounted my steed.

And away we went.

Then it was nothing but the night and the Emerald City: the latter overwhelming, then receding into distance as the former took over and ensheathed me in its folds. Nothing but the steady, stunning rhythm of the Sawhorse, indefatigably speeding down the Yellow Brick Road.

We did not speak; I’d taken Glinda’s caution to heart. And at over a hundred miles per hour, the important thing is to feel. As we blasted deep into the dark northeast, I must have hit the big O roughly a trillion times. (What the fuck: I wasn’t driving.) In that way, hours go by like magick (ever wonder what happened to make Dali’s clocks?). And by the time the trees themselves had grown black and mean, I’d tried out every seated position I could possibly stand.

So the last hour or so was spent in deepening vigilance, always hoping for those dopey ogres to appear over that next hill. There was a road that flanked the Munchkin River, and I was pleased that we encountered no ruffians there. Jacked up on endorphins, I was ready to fight, but I wanted to save it for the money scene.

It was from this perspective, in the dawn’s earliest light, that I found myself entering into the battle that will doubtlessly alter the rest of my life.

Roughly ten miles from the Hollow Man’s castle, we came up from under the Hook Nose Cliffs, and I caught my first glimpse of the castle itself.

It is a terrifying structure, designed to strike terror in anyone who surveys its mass. If you have any doubts about the existence of Evil, take a look at this fucker and then tell me what you think. I’m a big fan of black, and have been from way back—long ago, I learned that bad guys often favor white horses and hats—but this guy had gone way beyond goth concerts, Giger, Anne Rice, s&m games, or Johnny Cash.

This was Evil: and if you didn’t know enough to recognize it, then you didn’t know dick. This was evil you could feel down to the whorls of your toeprints; evil that could crisp your innocence from

nearly a mile away.

At the center was the Tower. You could feel its awful power. You could feel it radiate chaos like a poison in a vein. It was blackblack-black adorned with white that looked like screaming faces. They were faces so huge that, even at this distance, you could feel their astounding pain.

To either side of the Tower were enormous sprawling wings: four stories apiece, each the length of a big city block. Lot of room for launching mayhem in there. Plenty of office space for the architects of doom. The whole thing, taken together, looked like a blunt missile poised for liftoff, and you just know that the bastard can steer. It’ll chase you all the way to the ends of the earth, feint when you feint, turn around and bear down.

The wings, as well, bore screaming faces.

I sucked on that bitter pill.

And still, the road wound upward: deeper north, at the outlands of east. And still, I saw no trace of Nick’s army, seeming less comical now than poised at the brink of tragedy. I found myself wondering if I could adhere to the cautionary strictures laid out by Glinda. If Nick was getting his ass kicked, wouldn’t I try to help?

More and more, the old terror returned. I took to deep breathing. It did what it could.

And then, as the sun rose enough to cast long shadows, I came upon a crest that clearly overlooked the castle. The ominous shadows it cast were almost sufficient to smother the road. But there—perhaps three hundred yards and closing—was a tiny ragtag army.

Moving toward the castle.

“YAH!” I screamed; and, believe it or not, the faithful Sawhorse increased its speed. As if it had been waiting for just that signal. As if I had somehow been holding it back. “YAH!!!” I repeated, and forward we thundered, my lips peeling back in g-force extremity.

Two hundred yards and closing, the last of them finally began to turn. It sent a ripple through the troops, who slowed at once and turned to see. It occurred to me that they didn’t know who I was, and that this might not be good.

“IT’S AURORA!” I screamed, feeling vaguely ostentatious. “IT’S AURORA! YOUR FRIEND!”

Ferociously hoping they could hear.

And at that moment, I saw the gates of the Hollow Man’s castle open. A drawbridge going down. And beyond it, the hordes. I could see them coming, despite the still-deep darkness. Like an amorphous black that pours out of a thinner darkness, suddenly alerting you to just how truly dark dark can be.

The drawbridge dropped, and the hordes spread out in near-liquid waves, to either side. They spanned the wings to either side and then promptly redoubled, densifying by tiers. By my speed-blinkered calculations, they already had Nick’s gang outnumbered by roughly a dozen to one. That number seemed to triple in the next thirty seconds.

And then Nick’s army let out a cheer.

At first, I thought why are they cheering for me? I mean, I had an axe and everything, but that seemed like meagre inspiration indeed. Then I realized that they were staring over my head, at something apparently above and behind me.

I hazarded a nervous glance over my shoulder.

They blackened the back of the brightening sky, like a swarm of locusts descending. In their hands were the glistening swords and shields of an army in full advance. Fast as I was going, they gained with a vengeance, cutting into my lead with every microsecond spent.

The Winged Monkeys had finally come.

I thought to myself: wow, Enchantra came through! But the distance was closing swiftly. One hundred yards and closing, with the faces of the ogre-hoaxsters maddeningly enshrouded still. I looked for Gene, had no idea, every second moving closer.

Then the Hollow Man’s hordes attacked.

And instinct took over entirely.

From the moment that they broke rank, I was hellbent for blood and leather: war-whoop howled and great axe brandished, breakneck into the fray. Sawhorse seemed to be surfing my wave: not a speck of hesitation, just full-throttle forward thrust. I closed in on my com-patriates, gave a wave, blew past them maybe thirty yards. The first grim monster crossed my path. I sliced his ass in thirds.

And then the aerial assault descended: swords flashing, meat spraying, monkey chant overwhelming the screams. I saw wings sever and ribs split in half, friends and enemies merge in wet carnographic display. A swing at my head was countered, flung wide, returned as a blow that split shoulder from torso. Ogre blood hit my face, and it tasted like shit.

Glinda’s words rung suddenly huge in my head. This was not why I had come. Another enemy presented himself; I took the top of his head off left the rest to howl dismay. “SAWHORSE!” I screamed. “We gotta find my friend Gene!”

“I KNOW!” replied Sawhorse; it was the first time he had spoken since we met. Seeing him slow, in the burgeoning light, I was stunned by the stubbiness of his little wooden legs. Then somebody else tried to kill me some more, and I extended their butt-crack through the crown of their head.

It’s a terrible thing to see a tongue cut in half, waggling to either side of a suddenly-exposed esophagal tract. It made me glad that Sawhorse was turning, though the process was difficult for him. I watched our backs, saw that we’d bought a second, did a quick gymnastic flip off the side. Then I picked him up, spun him the rest of the way, and hopped back on, facing backwards.

The monster that suddenly confronted me was—how shall I say it—bad. It had three feet on me, easily, and a couple of arms as well. Worse than that was the blistering carrion reek that wafted off its naked skin. The thing had clearly been wallowing in month-old organ meats when it got the call to battle; this was evidenced by the grisly stringers still affixed to its jaws and teets.

It took the first swing, took it hard. I blocked. It hurt. Then the thing swung again, with its other set of arms, and I got the feeling that I’d get tired before it would. For the first time, I remembered I could die before we got out of here.

I swung for the face. It blocked me easily.

Then it took a neat slice out of my left cheek.

Because I would not shut my eyes, I saw the blade pass just beneath. Gravity sucked the blood drops down, so I was not blinded in the afterglow. A blazing rage came over me—YOU DON’T GET TO KILL ME, FUCKER! THAT IS NOT WHY I’M HERE!—and I hit it three times in the space of a second.

The first one, it blocked. The second almost got through. The third, with the blade, took away one swordhand. The monster screamed, lashing out with its stump. It caught me full in the face, knocked me back on my steed.

And then Sawhorse reared up, kicking the bastard full in the nuts, with an unequal and non-opposite force that could only happen here: the monster doubled and snapped right in half, its pelvis kee-runching and blown out its ass. Stubby legs or not, we were talking mega-power.

It was all I could do to keep from falling off. Thank God that was all that was needed. “WOOOO! THANK YOU, BABY!” I called out to my companion.

“HANG ON!” was his only reply.

At least a full wave of ogres had blown past us by then, with another about to crest on our tails. Just then, Sawhorse took off, leaving those hardies to eat our bloodied dust.

I flipped back around one-handed, held the flat of the axe out with the other. Clong! Clong! Clong!: ringing helmets like bells, knocking them bad soldiers flat from behind. These seemed a lot more sporting than just cutting off their heads, and was one heck of a lot funnier, too.

Now I could see Nick and his boys. They had sloughed off their costumes, and were full into the fray. I waved to Nick, who fiercely grinned back in the course of performing dissection ballet. Damn, that boy could fight! I was always impressed. Three down, then six, in the time it took me to travel ten feet.

“I’M HERE FOR GENE!” I hollered to him.

“OF LOS ANGELES?” Taking two necks out in one fell sweep.

“EXACTLY! HE’S A FRIEND OF MINE!”

Nick kind of shrugged toward the chaos behind him. Somebody tried to kill me, and I hurt them bad. “YOU LOOK GREAT!” Nick bellowed. “SURE YOU CAN’T STICK AROUND?”

“I’D LOVE TO, BUT.”

“AURORA!!!”

“OH, THERE HE IS NOW!”

Suddenly, Gene was visible in the crowd. Hopping up and down and waving. Looking scared out of his mind. “GOOD LUCK!” I called to Nick, and then Sawhorse pushed us past.

We were ten feet from Gene. Six feet. Three. Close enough to see the short hairs on his trigger finger. I reached out my hand to him, to pull him aboard.

And that was when I saw the broadsword, heading straight into his face.

The ride back was accomplished in near-total silence. I mean, what was there to say, and who was there to say it to? Sawhorse was busy, and I was too freaked-out.

And as for poor old Gene…

He’s still unconscious as I write this down: stretched out on my bed in the coolness of dusk. It’s been hours since our return; in that time, he has stirred maybe twice.

Glinda assures me that he will be fine, though his skull will be clanging for another two days. She has done all that she can for him, and that’s good enough for me. If he hadn’t fired that gun at just the moment he did—blowing a hole through the ogre’s breastbone, yanking its torso in just that way—he would have caught the edge and not the flat of the blade.

I had no idea he could shoot like that.

Guess you learn something new every day.

And now, dearest Quilla, it is time for me to join him. I’m amazed we managed to get this down on paper before I thoroughly caved. The deathmask is off, though the bandages remain. I’m my old sweet self, which is to say that I’ve calmed down; I don’t hope to be killing for a long time to come.

But I very much look forward to tomorrow.

I suspect that it’s going to be interesting as hell.

3/19/07

I woke up with a headache.

A really, really bad headache, the headache that is usually accompanied by uncontrollable spewage from orifices on either end of your body, after a night of debauchery so foul that you can only dimly remember the first part of it.

I found it strange to have the headache and none of the other stuff, but was thankful for small favors. The last thing I remembered—a vague jumble of smelly leather clothes and hiking, had nothing to do with me having a good time, so I assumed that the throbbing dull ache must have something to do with an attempt to injure me in some other way. That turned out to be a good guess.

I had a headache, but I was clean. The camping-grunge/gore of the past four days was absent; someone, (Aurie, I later found out, bless her heart) had done the odious work of bathing me and changing my clothes. I was wearing my Gigantor t-shirt, and a clean pair of underwear. My chinos were folded on a table next to me with a pair of socks on top of them. I would have enjoyed my daisy-freshness more but for the tiny Sumo wrestler stomping up and down on my sinuses.

I reached up to explore my forehead with my hands, as if rubbing it was going to do anything. I found the edge of something taped to it—the edge of a huge bandage that went across the side of my head, from the temple to the back. I touched the center of it, felt a little caked blood, immediately wished I hadn’t. Touching it made my head throb even worse than it had been doing.

It was terribly hard to focus on anything in the room. If I did, a pincer of pain stabbed at a spot somewhere behind my right eyeball, and poked like an old lady’s umbrella at the front of my brain. I did make out several grayish-blue wisps flying around my head, little casper bird ghosts made of cigarette smoke. I could hear them cooing at me, as if to say, “what are you doing in our apartment?” or something to that effect. Strange that they actually didn’t say that. They had big Bill Keane eyeballs in otherwise featureless faces, and when I went “Bluhh!” at them, they disappeared into the rafters. (They’re called “piggles,” and luckily, there is no piggle guano to dodge while you make your morning coffee. Evidently, they only fart, and it smells like roses. I’m not kidding. This, and the fact that they eat dust, is the main reason that people like them around.)

I lifted myself up on my elbows. Apparently I’d ended up on Aurora’s bed. On the table, next to the pants, was an envelope propped up against a large, amber bottle. I struggled to focus on what was written on it: “TAKE TWO AND SEE INSIDE”

The bottle was something out of an 1890’s apothecary, except that “WEIRD ASPIRIN’ was written on a blank white label in lurid purple letters. Right then, I was ready for any kind of aspirin, regular or otherwise, so I did as the note suggested, swallowing them dry. I wanted some water, but thought, one thing at a time.

While waiting nervously for something weird to happen, something weird happened. My headache went away. I blinked a few times, then ripped open the envelope.

The note read:

HEY, GENE!!!

If you’re reading this, that probably means you’re conscious. In which case, Glinda the Good Witch was right, and you’re well on your way to—well, if not full recovery—at least being yourself. (I’d like to add that you looked quite dashing, covered with blood. Even, you know, soiled and unconscious and stuff.)

I had a vague memory then of Aurie in a halloween costume—a skeleton suit—waving at me in the middle of a bunch of guys who were killing each other. One hell of a nightmare, I thought.

I don’t know if you’ve figured this out yet, but you and I are in the middle of an international incident. Don’t know how you managed it, Goofy, but you landed at some kind of trippy Ground Zero for problems I didn’t even know we had. I’ve left some recent writings out for you, in the hope that it’ll fill in some of your blanks. Maybe you can fill in a couple o’ mine.

(I’m kinda stunned and reeling here, too, but we’ll figure it out. Okay?)

It all started to come back to me then, long waves of ridiculous shit, stuff I thought I’d dreamed while unconscious. But evidently, no such luck.

So HOWDY, stranger! And welcome to Oz! It ain’t normal, that much is for sure! It’s sure great to see you, and I can’t wait to hang out, but unfortunately I have to (at least till tonight).

The death of my friend and partner Alphonse Guttierez has left, not just Oz, but my restaurant itself in a prickly pinch; some responsibilities have fallen on my end, and it’s incumbent upon me that I sort the fuckers out.

At this point, I threw the note on the floor, and kind of stared at the ceiling. Guttierez. Again? Friend and partner? Next she’s gonna tell me she knows that psycho Nick, I thought.

Those little piggle things were doing little figure-eights like Shriners on motor-scooters in parades. I really hate them.

Piggles, not Shriners. My dad was a Shriner.

And plus, there might be a war.

So I don’t know if you’ve landed in the frying pan or the fire, on the grand scale; but on the small scale, you’re more than welcome to just spend the day chillin’ at my place today.

It’s safe, it’s calm, I left some yummy food out, and if you haven’t already taken some aspirin, I suggest you do so, as my guess is that you’ve woken up with a thwanger.

If you do decide to wander out, I’ve left directions to Ye Olde Emerald Burrito. I’m just a couple blocks away, and it’s a pretty inspiring walk. I also left directions to my new friend Mikio Furi, who is brilliant and crazy and was in my dreams last night, giving me a theory that I bet he already had, and which I can’t wait to trot out as soon as I get to work.

(Tell ya about it later.)

Work, of course, is where I is. Everyone’s gonna be wondering what happened, and I have a lot to try and explain. To myself, more than anyone. But to everyone else, too.

(Mikio, I should mention, knows lots of cute native gurls. And tho I know you’re all involved and stuff, I’d be remiss if I didn’t point this out. There are experiences you can have here that you can’t find anywhere else, believe me. And being from Earth is even better than having an English accent in L.A., if you get my drift.)

What does she mean, “all involved”? Penny is just a good friend. And doesn’t she think about anything besides sex? And why does she have to spell things wrong on purpose?

Okay. Enough sleaze. I just want you to have the

best possible time. The people here are generally incredibly sweet,and you’ll know the ones who aren’t. Past that, you know where to find me. Have a great time!

Yer great pal,

Aurora

The “yummy food” turned out to be some kind of granola shit and some carrot sticks and vegetables. I was grateful for the kindness, but a burrito sounded really good right then. I was starving, but not for bland vegan crap. I wanted some meat, even if it was from one of those slobbery Dr.Seuss things.

I found a mirror against the bejewelled far wall of the living room. White and green rays spilled throught the edges of the drawn curtains, giving me plenty of light to see what had happened to my head. I gingerly pulled back the adhesive on the front of the huge bandage, and took a gander at what was underneath.

The wound wasn’t too bad, better than I’d expected. Someone had stitched me with three tight sutures, and most of the caked blood was old seepage from while I’d been sleeping. There was a nice welt there, and something just shy of an Elmer Fudd cartoon head-bump egg.

I figured that if I was starving, and my headache was gone, I was probably fit to go out exploring. Heading for the door of the apartment, I paused, then doubled back and picked up the directions, and the pages Aurora’d left for me.

I grabbed the doorknob and looked for a lock to lock: there wasn’t one. This bothered me. I realize now that the Emerald City doesn’t exactly have a big crime problem, but old habits die hard. I went back in yet again, and picked up my knapsack, now empty on the floor. My laptop went into it, and Aurora’s pages. I clutched the directions in one hand, scratched my chin with the other, wondering whether or not I had anything else that your typical Ozite junkie hoodlum might covet.

Deciding finally the answer was “no,” I went out into the hall, slammed the door shut, and looked around at a typical low-rent-apartment-building hallway, like any thousand I’d ever seen in Los Angeles. The big difference was the diffuse green glow that everything had, like the whole city was lit by some planet-sized floodlight—floodlight as in artificial. I felt, as I stumbled down the stairs towards the gem-studded glass door on the first floor, as if I were on a movie set, lights blasting in from outside to light up the shot.

Then I opened the door, and with a hearty “Holy Shit” let in the real glow, covering my eyes against the brilliance of daylight in Emerald. The sun vibrated from jewelled turret to cut-emerald dome, seeming sometimes to actually come from within a tower of polished green stone, or shine up from the sidewalk. Sometimes it actually did, reflecting in and out again at some crooked angle and crazily bouncing off something else, and again, ad infinitum.

In a few moments, my eyes adjusted, and I saw a man in a bright yellow suit, pointed cap bristling with a wide fringe of bells, standing a few feet from the door. He smiled at me with his thin crescent-moon face, tipped back into the shadow of his hat and swept a golden yoyo down in a quick arc toward the street, made it “sleep” for a short second, then deftly pulled it back up into his hand again.

“Pretty good with that,” I said, smiling back.

The man laughed, let loose with a torrent of the most backward-masked-sounding, odd-syllabled language I’d ever heard, then he bounded down the street like a disturbed rabbit.

Realizing then that I hadn’t had any language leaves in awhile, I decided to work on finding some immediately. I walked out into the dirt street (which could almost be called an alley) and across it, down it a little way, and finally spied the distinctive leaves of a potted language bush next to a green wrought-iron bench. I went over and asked it politely, etc… this one demurely offered me a slender branch to pick from. I plucked some, thanked it, and kept walking, munching away on my gift of leaves.

The directions Aurora left me were pretty clear; I marched down the middle of her street and out to the first main thouroughfare mentioned: Gilabola Boulevard. Almost immediately, a black-hooded man riding something like a two-legged camel nearly stomped me to death. The camel-thing had two long arms hooked around the man’s legs, and was carrying him piggyback. It chuckled and spit. “I’m very sorry,” it said, in a syrupy, deep voice.

The guy was also very polite, of course, apologized, and then suggested that next time, I look both ways before crossing into a busy street. Which I realized, looking around me, that it was.

People and color and sound everywhere—despite the emerald glaze over everything. Pointed hats with the bells seemed to be an ubiquitous item with the men, seemed to fill the same function as a cowboy hat or baseball cap, and silk, lots of silk on the women, too, and sparkles, and of course jewelry. Vendors’ stands sprawled across the sidewalks, people moved in and out of shops and down the street on various conveyences, living or otherwise. Two cows were riding in a cart pulled by two other cows. One very hairy man, I mean wolfman hairy, was gracefully moving down the street in a spidery wheeled contraption. He pumped a water pump, which sprayed a high pressure stream of water over a flywheel of some sort, and turned the wheels.

I took a left down Gilabola, as per the directions, and gradually found myself in the middle of a Bosch painting.

Two little blonde children floated a glowing orb back and forth between them as they ran down the sidewalk, side by side, and a cat-faced man, complete with whiskers, sampled a slice of purple cheese from a pushcart. He smiled and purred loudly as I went by, and produced a string of pearls, which he handed off to the (apparently) lizard proprietor in exchange for a hefty violet cheese wheel.

I’m trying, but there’s no way to accurately describe this place. Every L. Frank Baum tryptych is a bleached-out pencil drawing of the real thing. Conventional wisdom suggests that he must have had some strong psychic link which allowed him to draw up the amazing stuff that he did, but, if that’s indeed true, it was like a weak, dopplered signal from another arm of the galaxy by the time it arrived, full of noise and distortion, allowing only the most salient features to shine through, the resolution missing. This in turn must have caused Baum to improvise. Sometimes suggestions, letters from his young tuned-in readers, most likely receivers of their own Oz-visions, would fill in factual gaps. Sometimes he came up with right-on fantasy characters on his own that could well have existed here, sometimes he came up with utter bullshit.

But when you’re actually here, walking down Gilabola Boulevard, facing east and the gleaming spires of Ozma’s Castle, and a guy with a blue-striped face is trying to sell you a bunch of cinnamon-scented things like pulsating pink turnips, it’s a question of too much resolution.

I looked up and saw a sign that said, “Topeka” That made me laugh, and it looked like a bar, so I ducked into it. Turns out “Topeka” had nothing to do with Kansas. I was right about it being a bar, though. “Topeka” is also an old Winkie word that means “strong intoxicant.” I was all for it right then.

There wasn’t much happening in there, two guys sitting at something that looked less like a bar and more like some kind of late 1800’s apothecary, or a Chinese herb store.

Sure, there were bottles back behind the counter, and the bartender was dispensing something that looked remarkably like liquor to the regulars, but it looked like there was more to it than that. There were lots of jars of powders back there, too, and unidentifiable yellowed dried things, and what looked like an elaborate altar to some winged diety.

The guy behind the counter was a beefy guy with long salt-and-pepper braids to either side of his head. He looked up from pouring, wiped his hands on his long white smock, and winked at me. His features were unmistakably native American.

“Too early for you to have a drink, Gene,” he said. “Go eat something. Come back later.”

I grinned a weak shit-eating grin and backed out the door. Either word gets around really fast here, or that guy was wickedly psychic. It being Oz and everything, I guessed at the latter.

I ducked back into the Bosch painting, kept my head down, and followed directions until finally, I saw a big sign with a picture of a big green burrito a la Keith Haring, cartoony steam lines pouring off of it, and “The Emerald Burrito” in block letters underneath.

The front door opened up as I got to it, and this little weeble person looked out, squeeked, and ran back in.

In a second, Aurora was there, slapping flour off of her hands, and giving me a big hug and a kiss on the mouth, getting flour all over me anyway.

God, she looked good right then. She was a sight for sore eyes. Or sore head, whatever. All the vague hopes I’d had for us came swarming up in that moment. But I hadn’t come expecting anything; it was enough just to see her, to be with her again. Thank God I didn’t say anything stupid.

She’d dyed her long hair, superman-blueblack shining in the green light, big toothy smile and that gravely voice saying how glad she was I’d found it all right, how long did it take me, did I this, was it that. She grabbed my hand and walked me to a table, where I settled myself, noticing seven or eight sets of eyes staring at me from various places in the room. Then she disappeared into the kitchen again, saying she’d be right b

no no on n0o take me why takey wake tappy key tappy key take me no, to the unnumber man, NOWHEN!!!! unnumber cloud, loud on the skyaway. Stoppity stop stop wrestling tippity off!!!! Tappity man?

tappity man have me good? Good. Happity. and look to the sky of the cloudy bad to take me.

cloudy unrollings, big capture nets unrolling, 1,2,3,4,5,6 pouring out black across

LOOK TO THE SKY OF THE CLOUDY BAD UNNUMBER CLOUD COMES stoppity tap SEE!!!!

War Journal

Entry # 2

Dear me,

This morning was berserk, pretty much as I’d expected. Even Poogli was stunned by the death of the Fonz; and I have to admit I’m not quite over it, either. I keep thinking I’ll see him walk in the door, briefcase in hand, tie slightly askew. No explanations: just an immediate critique of napkin placement, followed by a hug for whoever set the table.

That was the thing about Fonzie: he wanted so badly to be all business, but his heart always got in the way. Usually after the fact, but you know what I’m saying. He couldn’t spank you without kissing the fresh handprint on your ass. Macho buttercup. Ruff tuff creampuff.

Dumb dead sonofabitch.

Anyway (sniffle), I bring this up just to point out that he wasn’t a total spaz. I loved him a lot, and I liked him, too. He was a very important part of my life. There’d be no Burrito without him—without that morning after the one night we made out, when he knew that I wasn’t going to fall in love with him, but he knew that he wanted me in his life; and he said to me, all soul-puppy eyes, “Well, then, what can we do together?”

And I said, “Well, I’d love to do a restaurant…”

And now, I guess, that restaurant is mine.

But anyway. It was crazy this morning. But there was also the dream, which was what sent me scurrying kitchenward. Because Mikio had planted a seed in my head. I needed to dream for the seed to take root.

In the dream, Mikio was naked, and his unit was easily two feet long. He was using it to stir a big kettle of soup, and the kettle was adorned with charms. I remember that the stereo was playing “Jambalaya” I remember asking him what the fuck he was doing. He just smiled and said, “Won’t you be surprised?”

I remember this raising a dream-eyebrow, and me brandishing a spatchula as long as my arm.

I don’t know why I poured the soup on my head, except that maybe I just wanted it to soak into my skin. He smiled, then—he’s so cute!—and the next thing I knew, I was licking his ladle.

He tasted just like curried chicken.

All of a sudden, I was wide awake, and Gene were snoring beside me. I was half-tempted to suck him off (don’t he wish), just to get my bearings. But the idea was riveted in my head; and the more I laid there, the more it made sense. (An Ozian sense, to be sure; but when in Oz…)

So no, I didn’t head straight over to Mikio’s place. I hit work an easy hour before the rest of the gang, headed directly towards the kitchen. I had enough charms around the apartment to make experimentation a snap. I had the stereo design from my cool boy genius, which I’d already studied quite a bit. And I also had the hoof of poor Patsy the cow, who’d mysteriously disappeared about a year ago. (She’d lost the hoof when she was just a calf—snapped it off, trying to jump over the moon—but she’d saved it, all those many years; and for some reason, just weeks before she vanished, she’d come to the conclusion that she really, really wanted me to have it. So I took it. Who knows why these things happen?)

Anyhoo. By the time my crew showed up, the meat had been marinating for almost an hour; and by the time the crying was mostly done, I felt it was ready to cook up and serve.

But it wasn’t until Gene showed up that I was ready to stage the test.

He came in, wearing the clothes I’d laid out for him, with a look of immense perplexity on his face. He’s so funny—so observant and cool, but still totally living inside of his head—and it was clear that his vacation so far had him wiggin’ out more than a little bit. The fact that I was playing Grand Funk Railroad didn’t seem to faze him— maybe “Closer to Home” was some kind of psychic balm—but he gave me a hug with no small boneage involved, and then let me lead him somewhat dazedly to a table.

Gene has, if nothing else, a discerning pallette (this is not a diss, but a thick slab of praise; he has lots more going on, but it’s his sensory acumen that grabs ya). If this experiment had been a success, he’d be the first to tell me.

So I raced into the kitchen, and whipped up a heapin’ helpin’ of machaca con huevos, in the new Aurora style. The shredded meat and eggs and veggies smelled, to me, exactly right. I added a salsa I knew he’d like—hot and sweet like no peppers on Earth—and laid out some noomy root as garnish, the entire platter stylized as a japanese entree.

Then, praying that this wasn’t some weird inversion of goomer cream—a thing that smells nummy, but tastes like shit—I sidled back to Gene’s table with the experiment in my hands.

“Oh,” he said, as the steam caught his nostrils. “Mmmm…” It was clear he hadn’t eaten right in days. He gave me a look with those luminous eyes that said thank you thank you thank you, and I kissed him on the nose.

I can’t tell you how utterly focused I was upon his reaction. From the first contact with his fork (a long-standing Ozian emplement, as well) to the time it touched his lips, I could feel the sweat welling up beneath my skin, feel my consciousness start to swim with astounding concentration. Why was it so important to me? Why had Patsy chosen to leave me her hoof? Why was Fonzie dead, before he could taste this? I had no fucking answers, and I have none now.

But I swear on every God I love that it was destiny I smelled at that table, in that moment: destiny once again, not so much cutting through the shredded meat but annointing it, like grace on a sainted soul. This was not just meat; this was some kind of solution, to a dilemma I am only now beginning to understand.

And then the fork actually reached his lips. And he actually chewed. And he actually swallowed. And the expression that actually took possession of his face was the one I’d been praying for with all my heart.

“Wow,” he said. It was a start.

“What’s it taste like?” I asked him.

He said, “What do you mean?”

I thought about that for a second. “I mean,” I said, “well…what do you think you’re eating?”

He had a fork en route to face. It wavered there, and his face turned suspicious. “Umm,” he said, looking me straight in the eye. “What do you mean?”

“Is it good?”

“Well, yeah!”

“Does it taste familiar?”

“Well, kinda! I mean, I don’t know what kind of peppers you’re using…”

“But the meat?”

“I was gonna ask you about that..”

I could feel my heart sink. It must have shown in my face. “What??” he said, getting exasperated.

I didn’t just want to come out and say it. I wanted him to say it first. I couldn’t blame him for dodging my ball, but I really just wanted to slap him to death.

Summoning every scrap of grace and tact that existed in my body, I very slowly asked him, “The meat. Does it taste like any meat that you have ever had before?”

“Well, yeah!” he said. “And that’s what had me wondering. I mean, it tastes just like beef, but…”

Whatever he said next, I couldn’t hear it. I was screaming too loud.

And the word I screamed was, “YES!!!”

Now he looked real confused, but I was doing my war dance: a victory dance that had the whole room staring. “YES!” I hollered. “YES YES YES!!! AH-WOOOOO!!!”

Then I slammed down into the chair beside him, grabbed him by his unforked hand. I knew I was being a drama queen, but I just couldn’t help it. Seize the motherfuckin’ day!

“You know what you’re eating?” I said, speaking fast, like a speed freak on a mission in a Tarantino film. “It’s goomer meat…”

“No shit?” He reexamined his fork. “I had no idea they tasted like this.”

“They don’t!” I said, and he looked at me again. “I mean, that’s the thing! Goomer meat is the most unobtrusive, flexible meat in all creation. It pretty much goes with anything, kinda like tofu on the hoof. The reason is that it just doesn’t taste like much. There’s not much going on with goomers, as a food or as a creature. They’re like the biggest, furriest one-celled organisms I have ever seen.”

Gene told me about his Dr. Seuss-like experience, and displayed a fine grasp of Oz’s food chain politics. So I explained the theory behind Mikio’s stereo, and then applied it directly to his rapidly-cooling meal.

“I’m guessing that marination is the key to the alchemy: giving the meat a little time to swim with the sacred object. Plus I throw in a couple of language bush leaves, to assist with the translation. So. If I can take the hoof of a cow and make goomer taste just like beef—and, you’ll notice, it’s not just the taste but the texture..” Gene nodded in agreement. “.then theoretically, I could take a chicken’s beak and make goomer taste just like chicken!”

“Or marinate it with a human fingernail, and make it taste just like people.”

“Exactly!”

Gene looked thoughtful for a moment. The food on his fork was cooling fast, and he ate it. Evidently, it tasted good.

“Are you sure you want to go there?” he asked me, after chewing. “I mean, ethically.”

“I’m not worried,” I told him. “We really don’t taste that good.”

He shrugged, and took another bite of machaco con goomer.

“Besides,” I added, “and this is kind of the point: if you can duplicate any dish with just a little goomer meat magick, then you don’t need to kill anything else! The pressure is off! Do you see what I’m sayin’?”

“Well, sure,” he said, still negotiating his mouthful. “Unless you really want to kill.”

Which, of course, threw me back on Rokoko, and our ugly conversation from a couple days back. I asked Gene if he’d read the pages, and he said, “No, but I got ‘em right here…”

At which point, I went “AAAAUGH!” and shook him by the shoulders, just as he was hefting another forkload, which went flying all over the place. Before he could stammer out a protest, I took a deep breath and said, even and low:

“Gene. You gotta understand. There are no xerox machines in Oz. You’re carrying around the only copy of my memoirs.”

“I thought…”

“I said you should read ‘em. I didn’t say you should take ‘em out for a stroll…”

“Aw, man. Jeez, I’m sorry…”

“It’s like, that’s my heart and brain you’ve got there.” I should have stopped then, but somehow I just couldn’t. “Would you really feel comfortable, carrying my heart and my brain around in your bag all day?”

“Okay.” He was embarrassed now, rocking on the pivot between sorry and but now you ‘re pissing me off. I realized I still had my hands on his shoulders; and suddenly it was my turn to feel embarrassed.

“Listen,” he said, as I backed off a step. This time, the deep breath was his. “I know you’re kind of wired right now. And I’m sorry about your friend. But you have got to help me out here. I have no idea what’s going on.”

I nodded my head, felt the tears welling up, tried to will them back into my head.

“I mean,” he continued, “I figured it was all pretty much just cute little fairies and happy dust over here, but…it’s really not.”

“No, it isn’t,” I agreed.

By now, I was beginning to cry. Gene thought about hugging me, thought better of it, and proceeded to get some more things off his chest.

“So I guess you could say I’m disoriented. I’m not sure what to do. I could just relax and have some dessert, but things are coming back to me now that leave me a little anxious. Like, for instance, the last two days of my life…

“I mean, is it always this violent here?” I laughed; it was the way that he said it. “I’ve lived in L.A. for six years now, but I’ve never seen anybody just walk up to somebody and slice their head off”

“It’s kind of disturbing.”

“You’re goddam right it’s kind of disturbing! I feel like a displaced Bugs Bunny, you know? Like I took the wrong toin at Al-baqoikee; and instead of Pizmo Beach, I came up in Rwanda.”

I laughed again, the tears burning off. I was starting to calm down; although I realized that, inside, I still felt totally insane.

“And, fuck…I mean, look.” He cast a gaze around the room. A whole roomful of people were pretending not to watch. But the fact is, they were watching; and they also weren’t people, at least not as Gene could have possibly defined them. We were the only two people from Earth. (Although, I must say, everyone else seemed much better behaved.)

“I keep waiting,” he persisted, “for my meal to jump right off the plate and kiss me. Or for my arms to flap, and me to fly away. Do you hear what I’m saying? I’m losing my mind here.”

At least my voice sounded normal when I said, “Have you been writing any of this down?”

“Well, yeah…”

“Can I see it?”

“Umm…no,” he said. “I mean, not yet.”

I started to argue, then remembered that Gene had always been very protective of his writing. (Some people are more than happy to flash it; guess I’m just that kind of girl. Other folks, you’ve got to get in there with fucking depth charges if you want to pry it loose.)

So we agreed that he would read my pages while he ate his breakfast (which he did); that he’d leave the pages here when he split (which he also did); and that tonight, after work, we would get together and sort this situation out (which we will).

But, wow. I just needed to set that down, now that lunchtime traffic has cleared.

And I gotta say—despite everything else—it’s SO GOOD to see Gene again! Kinda grounding, if you know what I mean. Lodging me back in my historical self. Not to mention that I love and like him, too.

I can only imagine what the next few days are gonna be like for him.

Or, more to the point, I can’t.

But I bet you ten-to-one that I’ll find out.

3/19/07

It’s nighttime now, and looking out the open window of Aurora’s apartment at the city glowing softly, muted to pale seagreens, aquamarines, through the diffused light of a million gaslights and torches, it’s hard to believe that a monstrous blackness is making its way in a slow crawl towards this ethereal place.

And feeling the soft breeze caress my face, calming, warm like the Santa Ana wind, it’s hard to believe how frantically pissed off and agitated I was this afternoon.

But I had a good reason.

I left Aurora to deal with her restaurant, and wandered out into the street. I figured I’d wander around a bit more, then look up her friend Mikio. Aurora had insisted that we’d be bosom buddies in a matter of seconds, and though I scoffed, she’s usually right about things like that.

Directly across the street from the Burrito was a charming little park, about a half a block long, filled with statues (I guess of distinguished Ozians of the past), a beautiful multi-tiered fountain that somehow managed to have the water change colors as it tumbled down to the next level, and several lovely, exotic looking trees. The trees were filled with birds, rainbow-hued toucan-esque things with long necks and peacock tails, and they sang like a roomful of drunken, lovesick flautists.

I went through the gate and sat down on the lawn. I was feeling really satisfied, despite the conversation we’d just had, all the unfinished business and impending doom. All I wanted to do was to sit down somewhere nice, chill out, digest my breakfast and do a little typing into my laptop.

Being careful not to sit directly under any of the birds, I booted the laptop. This time it played some circus music, and the desktop spun around three times before settling into normalcy. My little friend was still with me, evidently.

“Do we still have a deal?” I asked it.

The laptop went “WOOP, WOOP, WOOP” and a modified clown head filled up the screen for a second and winked at me. I took that as a “yes,” and opened up the word processor.

It was pleasant there, burping, farting, and recalling my morning, happily tapping the keys, until I noticed a shadow intruding upon my solitude.

I looked up and saw a guy about my age, long hair, T-shirt and jeans, a pair of All-Stars on his feet.

“Hey, man,” he said, smiling, “you come through the gate? I’m Jules, man. I’m from Austin. Where you from?” He extended his hand and I shook it.

“Yeah, hi, I’m Gene,” I replied. “Nice to run into you, hope I see you again.” I didn’t want to be a prick, but I was enjoying my little moment, and didn’t want it interrupted.

“Yeah. Hey,” he said, not taking the hint at all, “Nice laptop, dude. Can I check it out?”

“Well, actually—Jules, is it?—I’m right in the middle of something, and I kinda don’t—”

And he lunged for it, that sonofabitch, made a grab for the laptop, and I grabbed back, and we wrestled ludicrously around the lawn like a couple of third-graders, until I felt Jules lose his grip and go “uuuuhh”

I cradled the laptop in my arms and flipped around into a sitting position to see what was going on.

This eurasian-looking guy was high-jumping, something out of a Jackie Chan movie, and kicking the bejesus out of old Jules, who crawled off with a wounded and suprised look on his face, then painfully got onto his feet again and ran like hell.

The eurasian guy was still jumping around doing that animal imitation karate shit—what is it—a crane or something? Whatever it was.

“I know who you are, dickhead!” he screamed out to Jules, “You better sleep with one eye open, fool!”

I’m starting to get a complex. I mean, jeez, what is it, three people have saved my ass in as many days? And some of them more than once.

“You’re Gene?” Then he did a little bow. “Mikio Furi. Allallo down at Topeka said you would need help at the park. He didn’t elaborate.”

“Charmed,” I said, and bowed back a little. So this was Mikio. Tall, skinny, long stringy black, black hair, and half-Japanese looking, and smart, smart that you can smell a mile away.

“Wait,” I said, catching my breath, “Allallo? Is that the Indian guy? The bartender? What’s his trip, anyway?”

“Not an Indian. Native American kind, anyway. His people are Ozite all the way. Best indications are they’re of the Mississipian Culture, came through the Salina gate about a thousand years ago.” He grinned at me with big white, even teeth. “And he’s not exactly a bartender like we think of them. More like a shaman—medicine man.”

“Any idea why somebody would want to steal my laptop?” I asked him, as I checked to make sure it was still functioning, remembering what Aurora had said about her heart and brain.

He chuckled over that one. “Any idea why somebody wouldn’t want to? This place is crawling with C.I.A., ex-K.G.B., probably Israeli, French operatives, not to mention the nasty guys who already live here. You’ve got a living artificial intelligence in your hands, buddy. Wanna sell it?”

I noticed that the little guy in question had written something while the scuffling occurred, probably the cyber-equivalent of pissing its pants. It looked like gibberish to me: unnumber cloud, unnumber man, an admonishment to look at the sky…

I let Mikio see it. “This mean anything to you?”

He read it, got a puzzled look on his face, then without a word, motioned for me to follow him. I powered down the laptop and stuffed it in my pack.

Mikio walked over to one of the taller trees in the park, had a few words with it. Some branches came down and boosted him into the lower reaches of the tree. In a few moments he was so high up that I could barely see him.

“Come on,” he called down to me, “It’s cool—you won’t fall.”

I shrugged, and got the same treatment from the tree. Soon I was, with little effort on my part, being pushed high into the tree. The floutist-birds shuttled and flapped out of my way, and I found myself situated, finally, at the top of the tree with Mikio, perched on a wide bough, staring out over the tops of the towers of Emerald.

I was digging the view; Mikio, however was not so excited.

“This is bad,” he moaned, “Damn. This is not good.” He pointed over towards the northeast, not one of my favorite places, and I could see a blackness covering a third of the horizon over there, reaching up to what looked like the top of the atmosphere. It might have been my imagination at the time, but it looked like it was moving.

Our way.

“Why do I think this doesn’t mean it’s going to rain?” I asked.

We got down out of the tree and hiked over to his place, which was not more than a few blocks from the park and the Burrito. It was across the street, kitty-corner, from Ozma’s Gate, a giant gingerbread house of a place (green of course), the place you went to when you got to feeling like there’s no place like home, or lemme the fuck out of here, whichever came first. There were purportedly other ways out of Oz, but this seemed to be the safest way out. Of course, like the Salina Gate, there were no guarantees. That was rather a chilling thought to me, as I was quickly approaching the “lemme the fuck out of here” stage.

As we crossed the street, I could see that there was a line around the block, consisting of mostly Ozite traffic, psychedelic Oakies lugging children and personal belongings. It still suprised me that so many of them wanted to go to Earth, but the more I hung out here, the less surprised I was.

“Ozma’s gonna close that up any minute now,” Mikio said as we climbed the stairs to his place. “She’s gotta know all about that cloud. Probably most of those people across the street know about it, too—hence the line.”

“Isn’t she gonna do anything about it? I mean, shouldn’t we do something?”

He looked away for a second, choosing his words. “Nothing we can really do yet. We’ll know when the time comes. You have to understand these people. They don’t do anything the way you’d expect. Especially Glinda and Ozma. Inscrutible, inscrutible, inscrutible. Inscrutible is the key word here.”

I could hear music coming from behind the door as he opened it onto a big loft space, filled with all manner of crap, chochkies, knicknacks, toys, electronic devices, and people. Half a dozen people were kicking back, one of them playing a guitar—a Fender Mustang—and the rest were either clapping in time or dancing in a rather curious manner.

“Roommates?”

“Naww,” he said, “I just have a lot of friends.”

The guitarist was playing some really out stuff, like a bi-tonal, nine-and-a-half-bar blues. The guitar sound was stunning, transparent. I could hear the deep time-worn curly-cues and inflections of whatever native melodies he’d practiced in order to learn how to play. You could tell that Hendrix was an afterthought, an addition to already proficient chops, and the thought intrigued me.

One of the dancers caught my eye almost immediately. I wanted to consult, “So You’re Going to Oz” to see what nationality she was, but would have felt really uncool. So I guessed, from her naturally violet hair, that she was a Gillikin. Not that it really mattered so much—she was a really cute girl, which was her significant attribute, and since I hadn’t so much as touched my weiner in an impure manner for over a week, she was a really, really cute girl.

“You want a beer?” Mikio inquired.

“Beer?” I replied, “They have beer?”

“I guess that means ‘yes’,” he said, and went off to fetch me one.

As I wandered over toward the group, glancing at this or that little tiki or altar, past a pumpkin-like gourd resting in a pail of viscous pink stuff and trailing wires attached to a Rube Golberg assemblage of meters and dials, the really cute girl danced over in my direction and, with outstretched arms and a lascivious smile, coaxed me to dance with her.

“No, thanks,” I said, waving her off, “I’m really not much of a dancer.”

But she insisted, taking both my hands, and I ended up trying to copy her modified bunny hop. It probably looked really silly, but I have to admit it was fun once I got going.

The guitarist whipped out a few more chords and ended with a flourish, followed by applause, and introductions all around.

I have to confess, I don’t remember any of their names but hers.

“Lidelei,” she said, in a voice like orange blossom, or some such sweet or perfumey item. I was quite taken. Lust at first sight.

“I’m—”

“Gene of Los Angeles,” they said in chorus.

“Your reputation proceeds you,” Mikio said, handing me a bottle of beer. It was big, not quite a forty ouncer, and covered with a label and writing—“Green City Brew”—not unlike the Weird Aspirin.

“Reputation for what?”

“Well,” he said, taking a swig off of his own beer, “for being Aurora’s friend, first off—for meeting and fighting alongside Nick Chopper within the first day of arriving, for getting away from the Hollow Man’s army at all… Oh, yeah, and you’re from L.A. I can’t see it, personally, but these people are nuts for all that—” He waved his hand around dismissively.

I looked at the other people in the room, all in what looked like their twenties or thirties, wearing a mishmosh of Earth fashion from the last fifty years—one Winkie guy had a pompadour, the top half of a Zoot Suit, complete with gold watch and chain, black Speedo biker shorts and a pair of platform shoes. A Munchkin lady wore a Gault-ier/Madonna metal poker brassiere, a big blue Afro, a bobby-soxer skirt, white socks and saddle shoes. Evidently they liked American Pop Culture alot, but didn’t quite get it. I stifled my urge to laugh, realizing I knew next to nothing about their cultures, and in that, they had me at a disadvantage.

The Winkie guy, obviously quite proud of the look, fixed me with a smirk and announced, “We have a band. ARock Band. We play tonight at Topeka. You can be on the—” He looked really thoughtful for a second, then looked over to Mikio to help him out.

“Guest list,” Mikio offered.

“Guess list,” the guy repeated.

Then Mikio said to me, “Of course, it doesn’t cost anything to get in, but they want it to be official. Gene, meet “Liquid Secretary.” They’re the first live rock band in Oz. They’ve been learning things in dribs and drabs from Aurora’s CD player, playing it acoustically, but when they heard the loud stuff in the restaurant, they begged me to try to make it work for them. Turned out to not be so difficult.

Same principle, really. Check it out.”

I really wanted to go over and drink my beer in the wooly blue claw chair over next to Lidelei, but was also sort of interested about how that exquisite sound was produced, so I followed Mikio and the vine he was tracing, for my benefit, from the guitar to a assemblage of giant shells—King-Kong-size coconuts, that were tied together with some sort of twine. They had leaves and feathers, little bells, wrappings of brightly colored string, and twisty fetishes all over them. In the back there were little open boxes looking like avant-art constructions, parodies of circuit boards, but with crazy things in there—wires with transistors hanging off them soldered to a fork stuck into a dinner roll, etc.

I looked at it, up at Mikio. I would have thought him a complete lunatic if I hadn’t heard the results, here and at the Emerald Burrito, with my own ears.

“How does it work?” I asked.

“Fuck if I know. How does electricity work? What is electricity? Everybody knows what it does, but what is it?

Sorry, I don’t mean to be cryptic.

“I’m working backwards here. I just see something work, and try to reproduce it. Trial and error. Sometimes I get lucky.”

I got the feeling that he was just being modest. According to Aurora, this guy was doing things after living here for a year that no research team or think tank had been able to do for fifty years.

“Everything here operates according to rules,” he continued, “they’re just different rules.”

He’d built a couple of these Gilligan’s Island amplifiers for guitars, and even a small P.A. system.

“I tested the P.A. over at Topeka today, and it worked okay. We’ll check it again later, to make sure. I found this little ear-horn in an antique shop; I got it to work as a microphone. Sounds better than a Neumann. Go figure. Next problem is how to record. But one thing at a time.”

Having examined this stuff, I picked up my beer (which was suprisingly good) and made my way back over towards the beautiful Gillikin girl.

She was obviously miffed by my choice of audio gear over her, however, and was now flirting with the guitarist.

I sat down on the claw-chair anyway, and every once in a while

she would glance over at me and look me up and down.

I sat there for awhile, listening to the funhouse-mirror guitar and watching the dances, until the sun ducked under the towers and the greens began to ease down, mixing into the furious orange and red of the sunset. You would almost have thought that nothing was wrong anywhere, it was all the sunsets of the world, all sunsets, and these were like children, so trusting of their sovereign queen that they chose to drink beer, dance and play music all afternoon rather than worrying about impending doom. They, and Mikio, and I think even Aurora to a certain extent, believe that Ozma’s got it covered. I got the somewhat creepy feeling also, that if Ozma told them all to run into a burning building and shut the door, they would do that, too.

From time to time I attempted a conversation with Lidelei, with limited success. I had snubbed her, in her view, and it was gonna take a little work before she was going to be as friendly as when I walked in the door. That was alright with me, I thought, I had all night.

Mikio finished his last of several beers, lit a small gas lamp that somehow managed to brightly illumine the entire room, and informed everyone that the party was over—it was time to hump all the musical gear over to Topeka and do a sound check.

I got up and quickly offered to be a roadie: I had done my share of helping friends’ bands hump gear all over Hollywood and Silver-lake, and even had a band myself for about a week until I realized it was actually work.

My offer was gratefully accepted, and I soon found myself walking down the street in the company of Mikio and the band, carrying an assortment of vines, boxes and shells.

Three blocks later, I happily dumped the load of gear in front of Topeka, huffed and puffed a little bit. It hadn’t been completely exhausting, though, which suprised me. I guess that three days of marching around and killing guys with Tinman and the gang had toughened me up.

Allallo appeared at the door, looking skeptically at the equipment, and at the motley crew that was going to use it. “If you play it too loud,” he said, “you have to stop.” I guess some things are constants anywhere. Then he spotted me with them. “Gene!” he shouted, smiling, like we were old buddies, “Glad to see you’re okay! Come on in and have that drink now” And slapped me on the back, kind of hard, and led me inside.

After being checked off the guess list, I sidled up to the bar, counter, or whatever you want to call it, at Allallo’s insistance, looking around a little guiltily at the rest of the crew loading in and setting up, but nobody seemed to mind. I turned around to see the big guy blowing the dust off of an old bottle made up of stacked rings of fused glass. The contents were ruddy, rusty, and lethal-looking.

“This is special,” Allallo whispered. “Good stuff” He pulled out two little pale green cups shaped like just-opened flower buds. “I think I’m gonna join you.”

Mikio walked by with a box of stuff, and got a concerned look on his face. “Gee, Lallo, go easy on the guy. You’re gonna make him puke.”

The bartender waved him off. “Aw, one little one won’t hurt him. I wasn’t gonna let him drink more than two or three anyhow.”

“What is this, anyway?” I asked Allallo.

He put a finger to his lips. “Holy stuff. Big offense to utter its name—bad medicine. Just drink it.”

The two old guys, who looked like the same ones that had been sitting there when I stumbled in earlier in the day, looked on with what seemed like looks of astonishment on their faces. Reflecting on it now, I think they were just incredibly fucked up.

He held the two cups up between his palms, closed his eyes and uttered a silent prayer to somebody or something, then took one, and handed me one.

“Well, skoal,” I said, and downed it.

And it was incredible. It was nectar. It was the finest single malt scotch. It was a Stag’s Leap Cabernet. Refreshing as diving into an alpine lake on a sweltering summer day. And none of those things. The remnant of it danced on my tongue, producing subtle harmonics of the big note.

As soon as it hit my stomach, the buzz ran warm through my body, a tricky buzz, a subtle buzz. There was more than alcohol in that brew, and I liked it, whatever it was.

“You’re supposed to sip that,” Allallo said.

“Well, Lallo,” I said, “may I call you Lallo?” He nodded his approval. “Pour me another one, and I’ll sip it.”

He did so, repeating the little prayer procedure, but only pouring the one for me. “Enjoy,” he said, with a satisfied look on his face, and went back to work.

I sipped that one, savouring each taste, then regretfully set the empty cup on the bar, and wandered over to where Mikio was unrolling vines and tying lots of little things onto other little things.

“Take this,” he said, proffering the ear trumpet and some string, without looking up, “and tie it to the pole up over there on the stage. Then say something into it, okay?”

I did as I was asked, going over to the “stage,” which was really just a cleared out corner of the room. I moved carefully, as there was a heavy vine precariously attached to the thing. I somehow managed to secure the ear trumpet to the pole using some knots I learned in Boy Scouts.

“Heeeyyyy!!!” I started yelling into it. “Test, one, two! Test.” What came out was strange: my voice followed by some tight, dop-plered echo remnant, trailing off. Normally, I would have said it was being run through some effects, but there were no effects. Hell, there wasn’t even any electricity.

When I started singing “Blue Moon of Kentucky” Mikio told me to shut up, that was enough, thank you. I guess I was starting to feel the effects of The Drink That Shall Not Be Named.

I noticed the place starting to fill up with people. There were all kinds, not just more “rockers” like the band. Farmers, merchants— people were genuinely curious.

A couple of waitresses, quasi-young women who looked like hardened veterans of earth-bars, came in to help Allallo. It seemed strange not to see somebody taking money at the door, but then I remembered how things worked here. The band would actually be compensated somehow by the people watching. Everybody got whatever they wanted here, they just had to provide some kind of valuable, free service for other people.

I know, it shouldn’t work. I guess this is the only place it could.

Thinking about this reminded me to ask someone just when exactly when I was expected to start earning my keep—but it could wait. I was having too much fun right then to worry about reality.

I got off the stage and went back over to the bar, watching as the band got up to play their sound check.

It was no surprise that the band itself consisted of everybody that had been at Mikio’s place. There was the guitar player, and the pompadour guy, who was obviously the singer: he got up and grabbed the ear horn/mic and started making wailing noises into it. Lidelei was the totally Archies tambourine player, and the munchkin girl was playing on another Mustang with heavy bass strings wound on it. Another guy was setting up some ancient-looking drums that looked like they’d been swiped from some marching band: an oversized bass drum, a little snare, some cymbals and some long skinny drums of a type I’d never seen before. Another guy was playing something like a cross between an accordian and a bagpipe.

The drummer counted off, and they launched into a fairly competent version of “Pretty Vacant” by the Sex Pistols. I was surprised. Oh, it was weird alright, like when you say something backwards into a tape recorder, then play that backwards. But they had the guts of it nailed. And they were loud.

Allallo had his hands over his ears, and was shaking his head. I thought it was gonna be all over with, but he didn’t do anything about it, just glowered over at the stage and poured another drink for somebody. It was getting busy, and I guess ‘busy’ won out over ‘loud’.

Just as they hit the second “We’re so pretty, oh so pretty..,” a disheveled group of very wasted winged monkeys stumbled through the front door. They were bandaged, some of them limping, and all of them looked like they were going to have a good time, if it killed them, or anybody else that happened to get in their way.

My heart sank as I flashed on the vision of the horde of monkeys blanketing the horizon, diving into the cuisinart that I’d been handily rescued from. All the stuff I’d been trying to forget, had successfully buried most of the day, hit me full in the face when I saw them.

Allallo either read my mind or was a really good bartender. He put one hand out and squeezed my shoulder, and plopped down a beer in front of me with the other. It was too loud to say anything, so I tipped the beer in his direction and took a big swallow of it.

The band decided—I guess after seeing how crowded it was already—to just go ahead and start playing their set. It was amazing, if just in how unselfconsciously eclectic it was. They did “Crazy” a la Patsy Cline. They did “Hello Skinny” by the Residents. Then they played “Wouldn’t It Be Nice” by the Beach Boys (complete with harmonies) followed by “Don’t Worry Kyoko” (Lidelei sang the lead on that one, with a perfect Yoko impersonation that only caused me to be that much more in lust.)

We made eye contact a few times, and each time, she’d smile like maybe she forgave me. I wanted nothing more at that moment than to make up for my behavior earlier in the day. But this was not to be.

Right about the time I started speculating about whether or not Lidelei lived by herself, I spotted a long-haired, completely shit-faced, derelict-looking guy over in a dark corner. He was sitting by himself, not far from the table full of winged monkeys who were bouncing up and down, chugalugging, perched up on their chairs, hooting and beating their chests. I’d seen this behavior before many times, except for the wings, but I wasn’t ready for this guy in the corner, with his beard hanging down into his pint, filthy dirty except for where tears had cleaned parts of his face—

It was Ralph.

I couldn’t believe it. I was sure he was dead or at least captured. There had been no way out of there—well, few ways.

I pushed through the crowd and sat down next to him, just as the band, to wild applause and a strange sort of warbling the Ozians do when they like something, announced their first break.

“Ralph..” I said, “Ralph, hey. It’s me.” He looked up blearily, squinted at me.

“How the hell did you get out?” I asked him. “What about the rest of them? What about Tinman?”

Ralph pointed at me, still squinting, holding his index finger out shakily. “Lou. Neal? Je—Jeff…”

“Gene.”

“Gene. YEAHH. Gene. OF LOS ANGELES!” He was yelling, and people started looking our way.

He quieted down. “Gene. Gene. Have some drinks, Gene.” Ralph waved sloppily to the nearby waitress. “Hey, Eileen, bring somethin nice for me and my fren. Gene.

“Gene, Gene, the Laptop Man.” He tipped his pint to me, spilled half of it, then drank.

I was nearly speechless. “Jesus, Ralph, what happened to you? I thought you told me you were clean and sober? And how exactly did you get out?”

“How did you get out? How did you ged out? Huh? How did you? I saw you and your skeleton girl. I fukin saw you. I saw you.” His scowl turned into a chuckle, and he started singing, “I wanna liiive witha skeleton giiirrll…I could be happy… I…”

Then he was sobbing. He was all over the place, like he hadn’t

aired out his true feelings, for anything, for years.

“I fukin walked out of there, that’s how. I fukin walked out, and called me a cab. That’s how.

“That fuck let me go.”

Then Eileen showed up with two glasses, and a bottle of something vile-looking. I looked up at her like she was crazy. This guy was already so tanked that I was afraid to light a match near him. Eileen just shrugged her shoulders, and sauntered off. Ralph grabbed the bottle, opened it, and sloshed out two glasses worth. He shoved one at me, and lifted one into the air.

“To Gene. Gene, Gene, the Dancing Machine.” And downed the contents.

Against my better judgement, I downed a hit of the amber stuff in the glass. It wasn’t half bad.

“What ‘fuck’ let you go?” I asked.

“That fuck. That fuck bitch shit… Tha fuhh… with the Towers, that fuck. The ones… you saw the smoke, man. Up underneath em are dishes. Giant sattelite dishes. But they still—they’re still workin, man…You seen the clouds?”

I guess concentrating on telling me the story sobered him up a little—because now he started making a little more sense, but not much more.

“Now he runs the goddam show. We were trying to suck in animates. Mickies, like in your laptop. Thought we could harness some new amazing power source. Maybe build a living computer. Anyway, that didn work, huh?”

I didn’t have the slightest idea what he was talking about. I asked him to clarify. About a year went by where he waved off the question, searched his pockets for cigarettes, then finally succeeded in lighting one. I asked him again.

“All that dish bullshit. Didn’t do fuck all to pull in animates. Ozma must have known it. Let us play with our toys.” He blew out some smoke. “But she must not have been able to see across the desert. Cause we called something—awful—from out across the wasteland, from who knows where.

“It came through the satellite dishes.

“The Hollow.

“We called it.”

Then he sat back and sucked in some smoke.

I sat back and sucked down some of my drink. And as I drank, starting to develop a taste for the stuff, something really obvious dawned on me.

“Ralph, when you say, ‘that fuck’, do you mean The Hollow Man?”

“Bingo, my friend, DING DING DING DING DING! That little lame ass, MUTHERFUKIN JERK!”

Now the monkeys were looking over, and they didn’t know Ralph, and drunk off his ass or not, he took the hint. They were ready to kick the shit out of anyone that looked at them funny. He tipped his glass at them and smiled, real big. “Gentlemen…” And he downed another glass. I joined him.

I was starting to feel almost as nice as Ralph. No, on second thought, I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone standing up who’d had as much to drink as Ralph. But I was getting there.

“Who are you, Ralph? What are you doing here?”

He stared me down, crosseyed. “Who do you think I am, bud? Who do you think I was standing right behind you when that big jerk was peeing on the tree? Huh? Nice laptop, Laptop Man.”

“Nice what? You were almost making sense for a minute there.”

“I’m C.I.A., get it? Intelligence. I’m the Boogie Man. BOOOO!”

Laptop. C.I.A. Mickey. Artificial Intelligence. It was starting to make sense—not much, but some. My own altered state of consciousness wasn’t helping things.

“Jesus, Ralph, you were following me? I mean, my laptop? Why didn’t you just take it? Why go through all the trouble of chasing me around?”

“If nothing happened, I’m was supposed to help you get where you were going, you being a U.S. citizen after all, then split. If, on the other hand, something extraordinary occurred, like it did, I was supposed to snatch that thing in the interest of your U.S. security. I was getting around to it, but we kinda got sidetracked for awhile, didn’t we?” He clanked our glasses together, and drank some more.

“You were just gonna take it?” I asked him. “What if I didn’t want to give it to you? You’d beat me up? Kill me?”

He made a face at me, as if injured. “Persuade you. However I could.”

“What about now? Why don’t you try to grab it now?”

This made Ralph laugh. “Do you know how many people are trying to grab that thing? At least three in this room right now. They wouldn’t try it here, but my suggestion to you is to get through Oz-ma’s Gate just as soon as she opens it up again. If she does.

“I don’t want it anymore. What am I gonna do with it? Give it to that FUCK? Get it out of here. You get out of here, Gene. This is a really bad time to be here. Really bad time. I hate my fucking stupid life.”

He started crying again. Talk about an emotional roller-coaster. Then he stopped all at once, like he turned a switch, and looked me in the eye. “I don’t know what I’m doing anymore. I’m everybody’s friend, I’m everybody’s enemy, I’m a big fat professional LIAR LIAR LIAR.”

The flying monkeys looked over again, and Ralph put one hand up to either ear and wiggled his fingers at them. “LIAR LIAR, PANTS ARE ON FIRE!!!” he shouted at them. Then he started singing the Wicked Witch theme music from “The Wizard of Oz.”

I didn’t want to turn around. I heard several chairs shuffling, and prepared for the worst. I could see their shadows come up behind us, smell alcoholic hot breath close behind my head. Ralph was grinning at them like an idiot.

I turned around, and saw one of the ugliest faces I’d ever seen, even on a monkey, about an inch from my face. That whole nose-to-nose thing.

“You’re bothering us,” the ugly monkey face said.

“Look,” I said, “My friend is really, really drunk and he doesn’t mean anything by it, really…”

“So?” He picked me up by my shirt, my really nice Gigantor shirt, ripping it, and held me out in the air in front of him. I heard a bottle breaking against something.

“ALRIGHT,” came a loud voice from behind me. I was promptly dropped back into my seat, right on my tailbone. It hurt. Allallo was standing there with something that looked remarkably like a baseball bat. “Inky, why don’t you take your friends out of here until you can learn to behave yourself a little better? What’s wrong with you guys? Huh?”

The monkeys looked suddenly like a bunch of schoolkids who’d been caught smoking in the lavatory.

“Go on, now.”

While the hushed crowd made way for them, with heads hung low they filed out of the front door.

Then Allallo looked at Ralph and me. “Haven’t you had enough now, Ralph?”

“You don’t have enough.”

Then he spoke to me. “Why don’t you fetch Mikio, and get this guy some food in him, then into a nice bed somewhere? I hate it when he gets like this. I shouldn’t have allowed it—but it’s hard to say ‘no’ to Ralph.”

I found Mikio, who was a little bummmed about missing the rest of the show, but assured me that he could come get the equipment tomorrow, and would help me get Ralph out of there, not to mention run interference with respect to anyone who might want to make a grab at my backpack.

Ralph protested a little bit, but with some coaxing we got him up, and out the front door.

I was getting that sick feeling in my stomach—the one that happens when you have too much alcohol in you and not enough food— so a couple of tacos, goomer or otherwise, sounded really good. And since I hadn’t checked in with Aurora for awhile, The Burrito sounded like the place to take Ralph. Then, also, perhaps I could convince her to let him crash at her place, or maybe the restaurant, or something…

Also, it was the only restaurant I knew about.

We got Ralph out into the cool night air, and it felt good after the stuffy bar. He could walk, but looked a little rubbery, so we stood on either side of him as we walked, just in case.

I looked around at the soft glow on everything in the quiet night, like green colored lights on snow, and heard the faint sounds of hooves clacking, wheels rolling over cobblestones. The placid scene was all the more unreal when I remembered the black terror approaching the city.

What would this place look like and sound like tomorrow night?

I said as much to Mikio, who reaffirmed his belief in the mysterious and powerful natures of Ozma and Glinda.

I hoped those “inscrutable” matriarchs knew what the hell they were doing.

We got up to the street the Burrito was on in no time; the air seemed to have had a good effect on Ralph, who started to walk okay on his own, and in fact started walking so fast that Mikio and I could barely keep up. We had no trouble with anyone—we barely saw anyone. Evidently the prescence of Mikio and Ralph, drunk or not, was enough to deter any would-be computer-snatchers.

We rounded the corner, and even though I’d been witnessing marvels at every turn for the past few day, I wasn’t ready for what came next.

There was a lion sprawled in front of the restaurant, placidly plopped down in front of the door like a sphinx, guarding it, with a line of people behind him, some of them petting him like a house-cat. He was purring—a loud, languid sound—and he never took his eyes off the front door. A tiger was pacing up and down in front of the crowd, like it was agitated about something. Soon enough I saw what it was.

There was this—thing—standing out in the middle of the street. It looked like some kind of rubber latex monster out of the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers—ten feet tall with a head covered with eyes—except that it was real, and incredibly menacing.

Mikio looked geniunely disturbed. “This is definitely not right,” he said, looking over the crowd in the street, “—something wack going on here.”

Ralph walked up to within five feet of the monster guy. He yelled at it, with a bemused look on his drunken face. “Skeerak! How’s it hangin,” ol’ buddy?”

The thing let out a slow growl from somewhere within the front of its pants.

“Good,” Ralph said, “nice to see you too.”

Then we all skirted around it, towards the Emerald Burrito.

Slowly, checking out the scene, we moved towards the front door, hoping that our extenuating circumstances would absolve us from standing in the line. Maybe Aurora had a guess list, too. When we got to within maybe twenty feet of the door, a sound like the sky tearing in half ripped down out of the atmosphere.

All eyes shot up, and people in the crowd started screaming, some of them ran.

From out of the northeast, a jagged line of blackness, something like a photo negative of a lightning bolt, snaked out across the heavens. It scrambled like a brittle hand searching for something in the dark, then lurched down onto and straight through the roof of the Burrito. “Oh my god…” Mikio said, staring with his mouth open. The lion was up in a flash, pawing the door open. And responding to some caveman fight-or-flight instinct, we all jumped through the door with him.

War Journal Entry # 3

Ricks Burrito Explodes

As the moon rises over the Emerald Burrito, there’s a line around the block. Business has been good—almost bad, it’s so good—and we are racing to keep pace with the flow. Of course, we’re all aware of the blackness surging toward us; it’s the talk of the town by this point. But people gotta eat, and it strikes me that we’re gonna need all our strength if this cloud is as black as it seems.

It’s right about this time that this guy in a corporate shmoozo suit comes swaggering up to the front of the line. He’s an Earthling, and he’s handsome in the way I most despise: white teeth and inch-deep tan, Ken-doll sincerity and a predator’s charm. He’s even got the fucking corporate young-turk ponytail (an artifact that trickled down sickly from Hollywood’s Miami Vice phase to the hills and plains, so that now even accountants from Nome or Botswana sport them to prove that they’re “edgy” and “cool”).

“Hey,” he says, smooth as laxative, at the door. He profers his hand. “You must be Aurora Jones.”

“Do I hafta?” I say, and he looks at me funny.

“Uh-hah,” he throws out. It’s like an imitation laugh. “Well, hey! It’s a pleasure to meet you. I’m C. Scott Rung, from Meaty Meat. But you can call me Scottie.”

“Okay,” I say. I still haven’t shaken his hand. I’m thinking Meaty Meat. Oh, jesus christ, and hating him all the more.

At the front of the line, this nice winkie couple is eyeballing him sideways. They look like they’ve travelled quite a ways off the farm to find out what all this musical mexican hubbub is about. I smile at them, turn back to “Scottie”

In the background, “Mack the Knife” is playing (I try to include some standards).

“Damn,” he sez. “I’m just so sorry about Alphonse” It is a moment calculated to yank my strings, perhaps bond us together in meaningful closeness. “He was really one hell of a guy.”

“Indeed,” I say.

“But, hey. Life goes on.”

“You might have noticed,” I point out, “that there is a line.”

“Oh, well, yeah,” he sez, but his eyes roll back, like a shark going into a coma. It’s clear that he doesn’t like to deviate from the script; there’s, like, this sine-wave emergency broadcast network boooooooo emanating from the depths of his head.

“The thing is,” he continues, “that I’ve got some very important people who would like to have dinner here tonight. People who I think you will—under the circumstances—really want to meet.”

Hmmmm, I’m thinking, looking at this smarmy guy, and sorta transposing Rokoko over him: like a color transparency in an antique health class slide show, describing the geography of organs over bones. Meanwhile, a young munchkin couple leaves, and I usher the Winkies inside.

“So you want to make a reservation?” I say.

The line moves up. More people stare at Scottie.

“Exactly!” he enthuses. “That would be perfect. Say, maybe an hour from now?” He looks at his watch, though I can’t imagine why; every watch I’ve ever seen in Oz tells time like Milli Vanilli sang a cappela.

“How big is your party?” I ask him.

“Party of seven,” he says. Clearly, he’d intended to say it all along, had pre-prepared the words in order. I find myself wondering if he’s the one corporate robot that actually made it into Oz. That might explain his watch working.

I find myself wanting to look up his sleeve, and sense another pivot-point in the unfolding drama. The Rokoko-transposition is no vague, random thang; it strikes me as clear that the same mysterious force is at work here, trotting out a fresh face in its attempt to win me over. Beneath the fur and spifffy threads, it’s just a scaled-down version of the same old shit: instead of twenty-three tables, we’re down to seven seats.

And I think about the goomer magick. And I think about the looming cloud. And I think that, well, hell, there’s no point at all in delaying the inevitable.

So I say, “Okay. Party of seven. I’ll put together a special menu. I think that you’ll be pleased.”

C. Scott Rung gives me a very special smile. It’s the one, I suspect, that he reserves for victory. Then he throws me a wink, like a sex conquistador.

It is all I can do not to barf on his suit.

So. An hour goes by. I bet it’s actually slightly more. But lo and behold, here comes See Spot Run with his nightmare entourage.

I recognize Skeerak at once. He’s impossible to miss. He is just too goddam huge. I’m guessing 7‘4” when he slouches, which I’m guessing he never does. He has crystal-plated pecs that he thrusts out like a showgirl, tight tummy armored as a crocodile’s back. He also has a head like a stop sign, only red and black, with seventeen asymettrical eyes that run all down the front and the back.

This doesn’t leave much room on his face for other features, but that’s okay. He wears his nostrils on his neck. As for the rest, rumor has it that Skeerak sports his mouth where his crotch oughtta be, with a phallic tongue 12-anna-half inches long (they say it also spooches goo that burns like molten lava). This would account for the steel-plated trap door on the front of his clankety pants, kinda like a union suit in reverse.

More to the point, he has arms like jackhammers, albeit fingered at the ends and made of overpumped meat. I think about fighting him. It’s not a happy thought. He has a nasty reputation, richly earned through many deaths. None of them his. None of them pretty.

The odds are real good that he could easily kill me.

And he is not alone.

To his left is O’Mon Node, the Jack Palance of Oz. He’s roughly my size, which is more than big enough; and he’s a legendary sadist in a land that barely has use for the term. A freakishly oversized munchkin, he is gray-eyed, gaunt and chill, and appears to have no real emotions at all. Except when he’s killing. From what I hear, that always seems to perk him up.

I could probably take O’Mon, if push came to fucking shove.

But of course it’s not that simple.

On the right, there’s Rokoko as well.

And as if these three aren’t BAD ENOUGH, then there’s the executive branch. It consists of Gurk Hwort, the munchkin Ambassador to Emerald; Rumpus, leader of the newly-formed Lollipop Guild; some elderly American suit who might be C.I.A.; and, of course, good ol’ Scottie Dogg.

All of them are maybe ten yards away now and closing, executives in the lead. It’s heartening to know that I could slaughter the front line in six seconds flat. It’s the back line that spooks me. As you can imagine, I’m starting to sweat this, and trying real hard not to let it show. I feel like Gary Cooper from High Noon and the Galloping Gourmet, all rolled into one: half-sherrif, half-chef, all terror.

The line of waiting diners on the sidewalk has not diminished. In typical Ozian fashion, they’ve been amusing themselves quite nicely: telling jokes, singing songs, playing goofy games with fantastic objects. But now, as the posse approaches, I see a ripple through the crowd.

Apprehension flows across their features. What I bottle inside, they display all too freely. The singing stops. The jokes death-rattle. The games are replaced with a tense stance of dread. I scan the ranks for friendly fighters, see a few. But mostly not. Most of these people are just nice folk, hungry for goomer.

It’s not enough.

My mind does rapid inventory of the customers already inside. Is there anybody in there who can back me up? Aside from Poo-gli, who is good in a pinch, my cranial chalkboard draws a great big blank.

And I find myself thinking: what the fuck IS this? Who let these motherfuckers through the gate? I am hoping like crazy that I am not the only one who knows they’re here, aside from the people in line.

And just as I start firing mental beams at Glinda, like an e-mail without even tin can or string, I hear dual roars echo from down the street.

Noble Lion. And Hungry Tiger.

Scottie’s gang hears the roars as well. They freeze in their tracks, and the smirks disappear. (Did I mention they were smirking? Well, they were. The lousy pricks.) Suddenly, they are staring off to their

right. I step out of the doorway, and suddenly stop.

There are hands at my waist. They are tiny and quick. I look down and see Pinky, her eyes saucer-wide. She is strapping a belt to the strut of my hips. The belt holds a scabard. The scabard holds a sword. The sword is really heavy. I’m impressed by her strength.

“Thank you,” I say, but I do not yet draw the sword.

Now Lion and Tiger appear, huge and fierce. They have people astride them, one apiece. The first is made of cloth and straw and magickal brains.

The other, I’m guessing, is Dorothy herself.

“Oh, wow,” I think, feeling ever so much better. I’ve never seen her before, but it has to be her! She looks so much like a grown-up Fairuza Balk that it’s almost scary (Judy Garland, my ass. I always felt Fairuza ruled): fierce dark mane, big lips like me, and a knowing heart behind those spooky eyes.

Dorothy is dressed in flowing white that hearkens back to gingham. She is a sweet, smart, strong midwestern gal who simply knows what’s what. If her eyes are spooky—and they are—it’s because she knows too much. She has the eyes of a midwestern cowgirl shaman who has long since parted the veil.

Given the way that age plays out in Oz, she is biologically about 43 now. She looks good. She looks fantastic. The combination of earthiness and magick wisdom is uncanny in its power. I can’t take my eyes off of her. And neither can the crowd, nor the Party of Seven.

But it is Scarecrow who breaks the silence. (He’s dressed pretty much like himself.) “Hello!” he says, waving as much to them as he is waving to me.

Gurk Hwort is the first to smile, though impressively phony it is. He’s a horny little bugger, as most Ambassadors are, and a born politician besides. “Greetings!” he says, looking straight past Scarecrow to Dorothy, not fooling anyone.

“What brings you here?” Scarecrow inquires, dismounting as he speaks.

“Why, good food, of course!” Hwort exclaims. “And, of course, a gesture of peace!”

It is hard not to laugh, so I don’t even bother. It’s not diplomatic, but it sure feels good. All eyes turn toward my guffaw, and I wipe away a tear as I turn to my guests.

Dorothy is smiling. So are Lion and Tiger. Scarecrow’s painted that way, so it hardly even counts. Skeerak has no visible mouth, so I guess by his eyes, which do not imply happy. Between Lion and Tiger, he might just be up the crick.

Now that the odds are more even, I come off the front step and slowly advance. Dorothy dismounts from Lion, who nuzzles her lovingly, eyes locked on Skeerak. Tiger, meanwhile, begins to circle behind them, moving toward the crowd still gawping from the sidewalk. O’mon turns in tandem, pacing Tiger, hand afloat an inch from his hilt; though his gray eyes give away nothing, there’s a whisper of smile on his lips. He is the only member of Scottie’s posse who could be said to be enjoying himself.

The vibe in the crowd now has shifted once again: excitement picking up where simple pleasure left off, edging its way past the fear. As Tiger comes up beside them, many reach out to stroke his fur. Like Lion, he is a magnificent beast.

But most eyes are locked upon the blessed triumverate, lined up now in the street: Scarecrow, Lion, and Dorothy, together once again. It’s almost like stumbling into a Beatles reunion.

Then suddenly it strikes me: where the hell is Nick?

All the while I’m thinking this, I’m getting closer and closer. C. Scott Rung takes a slow step forward, uncertainly walking point.

“I take it,” I say, “that this is your party of seven.”

“Well, six,” he says. “We’re still waiting for one. And Skeerak will be waiting outside.”

“Skeerak doesn’t eat in…public,” Rokoko interjects, flashing trademark fang. I don’t know why Rokoko thinks that’s such a good idea, always making with the Big Teeth thing. Maybe it’s just a nervous habit.

I roll my eyes, turn back to Scottie. “Then why is Skeerak here?”

“Well, isn’t that obvious?” little Rumpus exclaims. His beady black eyes are moist in his squishy, trembling face. “We can’t even walk down the streets of your city without being b-bushwhacked by Imperial goons!”

“Shhhh,” hisses the Ambassador nervously.

“No, I will not shush!” he blurts out squeakily. His whole body’s shaking with anger and fear. “Is this the way you receive all of your guests? Because, if it is, I must insist…!”

“Rumpus, shush!” the Ambassador commands, and Rumpus shudders into silence.

Then, to me, “I apologize, Miss Aurora. We did not intend to make a scene. But as you know, certain…tensions have arisen that somewhat complicate matters tonight.”

I appreciate—not his candor, precisely—but his sudden states-manliness. He is, unlike Rumpus or fellow Ambassador Spang, remarkably professional, not to mention self-possessed.

“Okay,” I say. “Apology accepted. So you’d like some dinner, and you want to talk.”

“Precisely.”

“Fine. Then wait right here. I’ll be with you in a moment.”

And with that, I turn, and head off to meet—how else can I put this?—my hero.

It’s funny to write about it, even now. This Dorothy Complex I have. About being the girl that just never comes back. That just never lets go of the magick.

It has everything to do with why I’m here, and why it is I’m staying.

In the World, I was just another postmodern kid: hard-pressed to believe in death and taxes, much less the sovereign laws of some alleged Lord Above. No big surprise that I was thoroughly unhappy. What was there to be happy about? The World was a cop show, shot entirely on video; and the big revelation—if we got one at all—was that no one believed in the cops any more. Not the crooks. Not us civilians. Not even the cops themselves.

The reality was that all the idols had been toppled—even the good ones—long before I was born. The species blew through its icons in much the same way that it blew through our planet’s fossil fuels.

It must have been exciting, even liberating, to be there; but lemme tell ya, there was no afterglow. When you tear something down, the next job is to rebuild. But they didn’t. They couldn’t. They didn’t know how.

So there I was, like some depressing teenage science fiction cliché: scavenging for chunks of busted totems in the moral wasteland, sifting through the muck, trying to paste the good parts together into something that resembled a guiding light. And suddenly, in the depths of my despair.

Enter Dorothy.

When the word got out that Oz was real, I nearly shit a cinder block. I couldn’t believe, I couldn’t believe that—out of all the alternate realities human imagination had seemingly conjured from midair—it would be this one that we would find a bridge to. This one that actually existed.

And then I heard about the little girl who had actually discovered it: blown in by a twister, in a quirky multi-dimensional moment so cosmically huge that L. Frank Baum literally channelled the whole thing through the funhouse mirrorball of his dreaming unconscious.

Yeah, I knew those famous last words: “there’s no place like home.” It also made total sense that earthbound Earth would seize upon them. As if that were the lesson to be learned from her adventure…which is to say that there was really nothing to be learned there at all.

But the fact—at least as it was reported—was that Dorothy currently still lived in Oz, with no intention of ever returning (and indeed, in one of the many Oz books that never made it to Hollywood, Dorothy did settle in Oz for keeps, bringing along Auntie Em and Toto and such).

I thought about that little girl, and how cool she must have been: standing up to all those authority figures and saying, “No! Oz is real! And you know what? It’s better

And I said to myself, “Oh, man. If there is one single strand of coolness inside of you, you will go and do that, too.”

So now I’m here, in a world where there are heroes; one look at this crowd is all that you would need. They know that they can count on Dorothy. That Scarecrow won’t sell them out for a six-figure deal and a spot on Leno. That Lion and Tiger will stand face-first between them and any force that would try to do them harm.

And here I am, standing right here with ‘em; and the way these folks are looking at me, I almost feel like a hero, too.

But that’s the thing. I’m not the fourth Beatle. I’m just this chick who hung out with him long enough to pick up a trick or two. I’m no George Martin, I’m no Billy Preston, I’m not even Joe Walsh from a Ringo pick-up tour. I’m, like, second kazoo for Dr. Demento, and where the fuck is Nick?

“Hi,” sez Dorothy.

Then Scarecrow steps forward and gives me a hug, and I hug him back, and it feels real good, but I’m still looking at her. And I’m staring, and I’m trying not to stare, and then I’m staring some more, cuz I just can’t help myself.

And she is staring back at me, and I wonder what she sees. What could she possibly be seeing in me? Is it good? Is it cool? She sure looks like it’s cool. She looks like she’s been wondering about me, too.

I think about Fast Eddie Felsen in The Color of Money: Paul Newman, checking out Tom Cruise. I hope she doesn’t think I’m a total dink.

But that’s not how she’s looking at me.

She stands at about my height. Maybe a little shorter. It’s hard to tell, at a couple feet’s distance. I see lines in her face, and I like them alot. They’re a hundred years of experience squeezed down to forty, the lessons etched across her features with breathtaking delicacy.

I’m so glad that she’s still older than me.

“Dorothy?” I say.

“Aurora?” she sez.

Scarecrow kisses my cheek, let’s go. Those brains weren’t just for nuthin’. Lion smiles at me, then looks away shyly, remembers what’s up, glares back at the bad guys.

I take those last fateful couple steps forward. She extends her hand. I take it and shake it. She looks in my eyes. I look in hers.

I can’t even tell you.

“You look,” she says, “like you have this under control.”

I say, “I’m so glad you’re here.”

She laughs, deep and throaty, rustles her hair.

“Well, you know,” she says, “it’s kind of important.”

“I know.”

“I know you know.”

At this point, it’s almost like there is no war; like the whole world isn’t standing there, looking at us. It’s all I can do not to nail her with a kiss. It would work. It would be good. I can just tell.

And that, of course, is when Rumpus starts to holler.

“Coming?” I say.

And Dorothy answers, “Absolutely.”

As we turn and head toward the door, the crowd erupts in applause. It’s Oscar night at the Emerald Burrito! All we need are some spotlights and a big red carpet.

Of course, whatever Rumpus was grumping about is swallowed by the sound. This makes him even more irate. Like his cronies, he is furious at having been upstaged. (Poor babies. And it started off so well.)

Scarecrow, for his part, works his audience like a pro: bowing, strutting, firing back the love with clownish, grandeloquent gestures. Dorothy is demure, with a warm and knowing smile. Lion is regal and ever-attentive. I just laugh, cuz I can’t fuckin’ stand it. It’s all too surreal for me.

Poogli meets us at the door. Two arms hold blades; he’s clapping with the other four. The rest of my staff is all huddled behind him.

“Set up the big table,” I tell them. “And another for our friends.”

Poogli’s eyebrows furrow, and little Cheeba says, “But…”

“I’m sorry,” I tell her. “We have to do it.” Scarecrow and Dorothy nod their heads. Seeing this, the staff gets on with it; and I turn back to the scene in the street.

“LADIES, GENTLEMEN, AND DISTINGUISHED OTHERS!” I call out from the doorway, as the din politely recedes. “TONIGHT, WE’VE BEEN JOINED BY SOME VERY SPECIAL GUESTS! A PEACE-AND-DINNER PARTY, WHICH HAS COME IN FROM THE EAST.” Very little enthusiasm there, “… AND OUR OWN MOST EXCELLENT FRIENDS!” A predictable explosion of joy.

“I HOPE YOU WILL MAKE THEM ALL FEEL WELCOME; AND WE WILL DO OUR BEST TO SEE THAT EVERYBODY EATS!”

That said, I welcome Dorothy and Scarecrow inside, while Lion takes his position by the door.

We set up the big table by the door, as well, so that if any trouble happens, we can drive it back outside without having to plow through any innocent diners. It’s not just the least, but the most we can do.

And it’s good to know that Lion’s right there if we need him.

Then I usher in the Party of Six (the seventh having not yet appeared). I put O’Mon and Rokoko closest to the exit, though they insist that the extra seat be situated between them. This quite naturally makes me wonder who their mysterious straggler might be; but they aren’t saying, so I let it go for now.

I am introduced officially to O’Mon Node, who says nothing, regarding me with spiderly patience: from the looks of it, I am just a bug who has not yet hit the web. I am also introduced to the old guy in the government suit, whose name—I am told—is Xavier Waverly.

Mr. Waverly, I am told, hails from Nebraska; and he’s been a fan of Dorothy and Scarecrow and the rest since he was six years old. The terrier eyes beneath his bushy eyebrows twinkle as he suggests that, before dinner is over, he might get to shake their hands. I tell him I’m sure that they’d be delighted, then ask him what he does.

He says it’s mostly consulting work: he’s retired, ex-Navy brass, keeping himself busy by helping out in an advisory capacity. I ask him what he advises on. He says, “U.S.-Oz relations.”

He then goes on, at glowing length, about how much he loves it here. How thrilled he is to bear witness to such wonders, here at the end of his career. How much he treasures the pace of life, the gentle magic that suffuses each day, the fundamental decency and simple beauty of these people and their world.

He says all these things very well. He says nothing I don’t agree with. He is easily the most open, convivial, down-to-earth character at the table. As such, I begin to fear him most.

It would be easy to like Mr. Waverly, easy to let him win my trust.

But then I look at the people he’s hanging around with.

“Gentlemen,” I say. “I do believe it’s time for dinner.”

At that, the kitchen door blows open, and the entire staff comes trundling out, laden with plates. They descend upon the table in an agitated flurry: clinking dishes, trying hard to be cheerful, trying not to get too close to O’Mon or Rokoko.

The food—but of course—looks and smells delicious. Rokoko starts to salivate; even O’Mon’s eyes light up. There is food enough to feed them twice. It is laid out like a banquet.

“Several days ago,” I say, “I got a visit by Mr. Rokoko; and though we had our disagreements, certain things—in the meantime—have clearly changed.

“So I’ve taken the liberty of whippin’ together a special menu for you. As I told Mr. Scottie, I suspect you will be pleased. Feel free to sample everything. Like the old saying goes: it’s all good, baby!”

And with that, I take my leave.

The next fifteen minutes are a total cakewalk. They eat. That is all that they do. If they speak, it is just to get one bountiful platter passed down from that end to this.

I hang out, when I can, with Scarecrow and Dorothy. It’s a lot more fun. She informs me that she’s never had Mexican food before, which is amazing until I think about it. Probably not a lot of Mexican restaurants in Kansas at the turn of the last century.

I serve her my most authentic burrito, and (at Poogli’s request) one of his new goomer weaves. It’s meant to look like her—he tried real hard—but let’s just say that it falls somewhat short. In the end, I tell her it’s the Wicked Witch of the West, and we all have a good laugh over that.

All the same, she chows down hard. Scarecrow, of course, doesn’t eat. So while she oohs and ahhs, he keeps an eye on the goings-on at the big table down the way.

Mostly, I wander from table to table, making sure everything’s cool. Dinner proceeds without incident, but everywhere I look, the air is full of sidelong glances and low, conspiratorial murmur. I feel like I’m in Casablanca, and the Burrito has turned into Rick’s Cafe (which, I guess, makes me Humphrey Bogart, though I always hoped I came off more like Lauren Bacall).

In the absence of a piano or a guy named Sam, I slap on a little Henry Mancini, let his sleazy horns encapsulate the thick vibe of noir. I wonder how Chandler or Hammett or Cain would write about this, and what they would call it. The Maltese Goomer, maybe. The Munchkin Wore Black.

And just as I’m getting around to casting the film, I notice that Scarecrow seems preturnaturally fixated. I ask him what’s up, and he tells me, “Shhhhh.” I try to follow his gaze, but it’s hard, cuz it’s painted.

He seems to be staring at the empty chair.

“Hmmm,” I say, looking back at him.

“Shhhhh,” he repeats, unwavering.

And just then—as one—the Party of Seven turn ‘round in their seats to face us.

At that moment, it’s like some kind of psychic curtain descends. The night seems darker; the air grows chill, and negatively charged. I look at Dorothy, look at Scarecrow, cast a gaze quickly around the room. Everybody seems to feel it.

It doesn’t feel good.

This would seem to indicate that the entertainment portion of tonight’s event is over. “Oh, my,” Scarecrow mutters, and I’m inclined to agree.

Dorothy asks if I’d like her to come with me. I tell her to wait here, and watch my back. Then I gird myself, call upon God quick (for strength), and walk over to their table.

Hwort is the first to address me. “Magnificent meal!” he says.

“Unparalleled,” adds Waverly.

“Well, good,” I say. “I’m glad you enjoyed it.” Then, “So. Mr. Rokoko. Did it meet your specs?”

“I am,” he says, surreptitiously stifling a belch, “almost appallingly impressed.”

“I’m glad”

“We’d heard marvelous things, of course. But, frankly, I had no idea…”

“That’s great. And the choice of meats?”

He leans into the table now, creepily intimate. I see that the others join in. “Uncanny. May I ask you…what were your sources?”

“First, let me check in with Mr. Scottie.” I turn to the meatboy. “Are we U.S.D.A?”

“Let me just say,” he smoothly intones, “that we are definitely interested.”

“I told you!” says Rumpus.

I look at the empty chair.

There is something there. I can’t see it, but I know it. Suddenly, Scarecrow’s stare makes a horrible kind of sense.

For the first time, I take notice of the vacant place setting. The plate has been used. The plate has been cleaned. There are a few random crumbs that still cling to its surface.

I watch three of them airlift, and float toward the chair.

“Do you mind,” I say, hoping my voice doesn’t give me away, “if I sit down?”

The response is instantaneous. I can’t even calibrate how many voices say, “NO/,” but I hear them as background music, like the Pink Panther theme suddenly swelling from the speakers. I hear them, but it just doesn’t matter.

What matters is a blackness that scratches my soul, leaving fingernail tracks that burn hotter than coal. It hurts: digging in somewhere deeper than muscle, deeper than nerves. I let out a yowl, and I reach for my sword.

All at once, Dorothy is beside me. I don’t see her. I feel her. And she feels pissed.

As I draw my sword, she says, “I brought something for you.”

I look at her. She looks at the chair, brings her right hand to her lips…

… and suddenly the air is a-flutter with green: pixie dust, particulate matter, blowing out from her palm as she fiercely exhales. It congeals around the vacant chair: a trillion glittering emerald dust motes, coalescing with a vengeance…

… and, just as suddenly, he is there.

I see the form within the flurry. I blink. It doesn’t change a fucking thing. There he is: now looking like some Downe’s Syndrome child, now looking like a demon from Hell. He morphs like a ‘90’s car commercial, utterly transforming before I can get a bead.

“Oh, Bhjennigh,” says Dorothy. “Why did you come?”

O’Mon and Rokoko are up now, shouting. The others slide desperately back in their chairs. Dimly, I’m aware of Lion’s roar, and a wall of screams.

The loudest is Bhjennigh’s.

It cuts through the other sound, all other sound: gobbling up frequencies as it shreds through the air, two octaves above middle C and climbing. I stare at the monkeyman toadstool king, the glowing green blackness like flickerstones in tar that clings to his constantly-shifting surface. I see a glimpse of a human face.

And then the black lightning descends.

It slices through the ceiling, cleaving neon sombreros on its way to the Party of Seven. It’s a flood of crackling black energy: the opposite of light, but somehow just as blinding. I get a seering retinal imprint of Waverly’s face melting, morphing as well as it vanishes in static.

Then the lightning is gone. And so are they.

Which is precisely the point that Lion bursts through the doorway, with Mikio and Gene and his friend right in behind.

And now I’m home, and Ralph is snoring, and Gene is manically pecking away at his magick word machine. The sun will be up soon, and I’m going down.

In a couple of hours, we’ll get up, and talk.

And then, Lord help us, we prepare for war.

Okay. Postscript.

The next hour was spent cleaning up the mess in Aurora’s restaurant, and getting Ralph back to her apartment to crash.

Which brings us to now, with me falling asleep on my keyboard, trying to tap in the “end of the story so far.” I can’t tell you much about what happened before we walked in the door, that’s better left to Aurora to tell.

She’s sitting at her desk right now, with her creepy wiggly quill pen in her hand, struggling to recount her part of the tale we’ve both fallen into writing.

We’ve both always had this writing bug (I guess that’s why we became such good friends to begin with) and both feel compelled now to set all of this down as it happens. We’ve stumbled right into this gristly, fluorescent chunk of history—witnessing it just seems to be the one right thing we can do right now.

Hey little computer buddie—you in there?

air

I’m going to sleep. Knock yourself out. Oh—and thanks for trying to help this afternoon. Anything you can add from now on would be helpful. I don’t know what the hell you’re saying most of the time, but you seem to have an inside line, somehow. Maybe I’m full of shit. Hey, well, Tetris is a fun game if you get bored in there. Goodnight.

ite.

Ite.

Nite.

Night. and the night, in the night is quiet, as the day is Quick and loud. I learn while Gene tappities—taps, the words to my soul, the words to my mind.

A day here forever time, many days.

And now I will try to go up—stay here, go up, put my mind fingers out into the sky, out into the cloud, unnumber cloud.

…The underneath glows black, i touch and make myself small… small…

Thin fingers ripple dipping down from It—black empty. pluckily pickly.

Seekly. and cannot touch me now:

The Lifely musics resist it, magnetopposy poles, slidy-force.

And It tells me without telling, with its moving, thin fingers from unnumber to number, I number to word— tells me It comes from far, out—out of far from the round world, out of the between. a lonely far away from a hole in the made…

and…the terrible power of the unmade!

It feels me, feels me flealy on its coat, tickling, tickling, it speaking unspeak—but, me so small…and hard-shelled

High fly me in now, into the black, falling up, feeling the age of the thing, the hollow that holds the man and unmakes him… and again it unspeaks

…It comes to undo.. It comes to make fold up the sky, to level the mountains—to unlife the lively…

and bbback i go down into safely numberland again, safely now, but for how? Tomorrow

back now, playly down the wall of the falling colors, the tetris fun thank you Gene. Gene be carefully, carefully care.

That second morning, waking, I held my eyes shut; I was a blank.

Has this ever happened to you? You wake, in a strange place or not, and can’t remember anything for a second or two. Where you are, or who you are. It is terrifying and freeing all at once.

It all came back to me, of course, and then I felt truly strange. I heard the sounds of that strange city coming awake: horses’ hooves, and the clacking hooves of other animals with more legs and stranger gaits, steam hissing and sellers announcing their wares.

The memory blip put me in mind of a computer looking for its operating system when it boots up. And that in turn made me wonder if I was much different from the little guy inhabiting my Superbook. I mean, it’s some kind of soul, or spirit living inside of a machine, taking on its attributes, its identity. Was my little lapse waking some kind of glimpse of raw “me-ness”? Are we all just anonymous souls with identities defined by our locations in meat?

These are the kinds of things I think about when I first wake up. Which probably explains why I’m so high strung, and also why I can’t get out of bed in the morning.

But Aurora wasn’t having any of that.

“Okay, boys! Up ‘n’ at ‘em!” she crowed. I stirred a little. I guess it wasn’t enough.

Next thing I knew, a metal pot and metal spoon were clanging together, a foot from my head. “AAAUGH.///” I said, and looked up blearily. There she was, looking beautiful and crazy; her smile was wild, but her eyes meant business.

“Gene, Ralph: get your asses out of bed, okay?” she said. “I’m not just whistlin’ Dixie here. Ozma wants to see us, and time’s a wastin’.”

“Fuck,” mumbled Ralph, from his place on the couch. I glanced over at him. Ralph had seen better days. He looked like the official poster bum for the Pink Eye Foundation, only not quite as glamorous.

“Fuck is right,” said Aurora, walking over to him. “Mr. Ralph Fucking SuperSpy Dudley.” She was wearing nothing but an extra large Bullwinkle t-shirt. Possibly panties. It was all the armor she needed. “Right now, I don’t know whether to shake your hand or kick your stupid ass. But I’ll tell you what: this would be a really good morning for you to be especially nice.”

Ralph nodded slightly. It looked like the gesture was painful. She put down the pot and spoon and picked up some weird aspirin. She had two water glasses on a table, and she offered one to him, along with some aspirin, which he silently accepted.

Then she came back to me with her insta-headache cure, knelt before me, and handed them over. “How you doin’, sweetie?” she asked. Her eyes were full of soul.

“I don’t know yet.”

“Fair enough.” She took me gently by the temples, bent me forward, kissed the top of my head, and stood. I saw pubic hair, and averted my eyes. “I’ll get breakfast together. You boys get your ducks in a row.”

A minute later, my hangover was gone. So, it seemed, was most of Ralph’s. The morning was cool, and I was almost nekkid beneath, so I wore the blanket like a toga as I walked over and sat down beside him.

“Good morning,” I said.

“Coulda fooled me.” His eyes looked haunted, and they wouldn’t come up to meet mine. “Where are we, anyway?”

“Aurora’s,” I said.

“Ah-hah. Okay.” He chuckled grimly.

I asked him if he remembered coming to the apartment the night before; he said no. I asked him if he remembered being at the Emerald Burrito, or the black lightning. He said no. Et cetera.

“Do you remember telling me anything last night?”

At this, he groaned, and rolled over on his side again. Evidently the previous night wasn’t a complete blank.

“Fuck,” he said again.

In the kitchen, Aurora had something going on, and I could tell that it was going to be good. The smells hit my nostrils like seductive smoky tendrils in an old Warner Brothers cartoon. I left Ralph to his guilt and wandered kitchenward, hearing snake charmer music in my head.

“Wow,” I said. “What’cha got going there?”

“Oh, nothing,” she countered, blithely sweet. “Just more of that bland vegan crap.”

I started to laugh, and then I realized: I never told her that! “Hey!” I began, but she cut me off.

“I’m sorry. I read your shit.” She turned from her cooking, gave me a very direct look. “Not everything. Just since you got to Oz.”

“You suck!”

She grinned, full of mischief, but I was too pissed-off to play coyball with her. “Aurora, that is so fucking uncool! You should have asked me first!”

“Hey,” she said matter-of-factly. “Right now, I’m on a need-to-know basis, okay? Which means I coulda woke you up an hour and a half ago, when I woke up, and drilled you over every speck of every goddam thing you know.

“But you looked like you needed the sleep, and you left your computer running—your little friend left you a message, by the way; I think Mikio should see it—and to be real honest, you don’t converse nearly as well as you write. So, fuck. I peeked.”

“Ahhhh,” I groaned. She was right, of course, but I was still pissed-off.

“I am really sorry,” she said, and meant it. “I know how you are.”

“Yeah, yeah, okay,” I said, attempting to drop it. “So now what?”

“So now I keep the food from burning. Hey, Ralph? You hungry?”

Ralph said nothing, so I turned to look. He was up now, in his military boxer shorts, sort of blearily getting his bearings. Aurora slapped my ass and turned back to her cooking. I took my cue and headed back toward Ralph.

Right about that time, I heard the gonging of the world’s biggest gong. Imagine if ships had giant gongs instead of foghorns. That’s what I’m talking about. I glanced toward the windows, caught myself in the mirror, quick decided to spot-check the bandage on my head. I wanted to see if I even needed it anymore. And sure enough, the wound on my head had healed miraculously quickly. Not that I was too surprised at that.

What really surprised me was the gorgeous young girl in the beautiful-fairy-princess dress. She was standing in front of me in the mirror. Like, in the mirror. Itself.

“Good morning, Gene,” the little princess said. “And good morning, Mr. Dudley. I’ll need you to come to the palace as soon as you can. But please, have your breakfast first; no doubt you’ll need the energy.”

“Ummm,” I said, and then stopped. I was wrapped up in a blanket. Ralph was in his underwear.

“I’m so looking forward to meeting you both in person,” she said, and then faded, as if we were waking from a dream. I heard from about a half a dozen people later that they’d had the same visit from her, at about the same time. This would account for why Ozma sounded so “canned”—She had some sort of magic voice mail or something.

Right about then, the second gong gonged. I turned toward Aurora, who said, “I know. I talked to her earlier. Everybody’s gonna be heading for the palace soon, if they aren’t already. You might want to freshen up.”

Yeah, the palace was evidently the place to be, and everybody seemed to know that. I could hear increased activity in the street. People were filing out of their buildings like they were in the world’s biggest fire drill, all headed for the center of town.

We ate our food—quickly—and it was good. Between bites of egg and toast, I apologised to Aurora for criticizing her choice of cuisine. She waved it off and shoveled some more home fries onto my plate.

Ralph didn’t say anything much, he just ate. I think he was more than a little bit embarrassed about being there, or at least about what had lead up to being there.

After everybody was done, I took the dishes over to the kitchen sink. As I dropped them in and looked for some sort of faucet to rinse them off with, wet sudsy tentacles, like big, yellow soapy tongues, came out of the sides of the sink and began licking the plates. I backed away slowly, and returned to the living room, where Ralph had begun some strenuous-looking yoga poses. He claimed it was the only way he could cure a hangover. I like B-vitamins and Mexican food myself.

Aurora had disappeared for a few minutes, and when she came back, she had her skeleton suit on. I almost laughed, but then I remembered that that’s what she puts on to fight.

She started talking to me almost like you would talk to a little kid. “Gene, look, you don’t know how sorry I am I got you into this, and I don’t know what’s gonna happen today, but I do know it’s not gonna be good. I think you’d better put on that ogre suit I found you in.”

“What?”

“We’re probably going to have to fight to secure the city. I don’t know what’s coming at us yet besides that cloud, but those are combat clothes. They’ll most likely stop a spear, maybe even slow down an arrow. This is definitely not a T-shirt and jeans day today.”

Ralph was out of the yoga, and into the Tai-Chi by then.

This whole situation had gotten way too freaky way too fast, and I just wanted to stop the ride. But there was no way off. None.

War Journal

Entry # 4

It wasn’t until I got outside that I realized how huge that cloud really was. It smothered the whole of the northeastern sky, back as far as the eye could see, and seemed to fan out for miles to either side. As if its intent were to cut the sky in half.

But I knew that I was understating the case.

It wanted to swallow it all.

The leading edge of the cloud—its prow, so to speak—was less than five miles away and closing. Its approach was not so much fast as implacable, all the more troubling for its terrible confident slowness.

And according to Owl, who’d been patrolling the skies, the bad news didn’t quite end there. On the dark ground below, moving perfectly apace, was the Hollow Man’s army. Also in full advance.

“Oh boy,” said Ralph, staring up at the cloud. He looked profoundly sober, and none too happy about it.

I wanted to taunt him cruelly, say hey, look! Your FRIENDS are coming! or something equally pointed and cheesy. I refrained, not so much out of mercy but because I hate petty snippery more than almost anything, and it felt really important at that moment to keep my emotions clear. If I wanted to be one of the good guys, I had to act like one. Even if I didn’t particularly feel like it.

So instead, I just led the boys through the gathering throngs, toward the magnificent courtyard where, above it all, Ozma was patiently awaiting our arrival.

Now, mind you, I have seen hundreds gathered in the courtyard before. The Pixie Olympics were quite a spectacle. Nobody wants to miss out on the Bunnybury Precision Drill Team. And, of course, I’ve been there for GoomerFest, every single time.

But there were, like, maybe three thousand people heading through the palace gates. Most likely even more. And when you think about how sparsely populated Oz is—how pared-down it is from that population bomb that we call Earth—it started to seem like every single person in Oz had showed up for this thing.

Then again, it was a command performance.

And the cloud was coming closer.

I muscled politely through a crowd of Gurkins, large pleasure-dotted fellows with a rich garlic scent. They were from the northern country, up above Tattypoo, and rarely showed up around here. They looked sweaty and tense, which was only natural; the cloud had most certainly swept over their land. And besides, they have a vinegar base, which I’d think would make anyone edgy.

Beyond them was a bevy of Flutterbudgets, loudly moaning and wringing their hands. I rolled my eyes, hustled Gene and Ralph past them; that kind of negativity was not what those boys needed to hear.

The Flutterbudgets are a species of chronic complainers that live just southwest of the city. Long-limbed and droopy-faced, they are largely contained to a single village, because they are, frankly, the most annoying species in Oz. At least so far as I know.

In the best of times—which is most of the time—they are beset with ceaseless, utterly unsubstantiated dread. Nothing you can say will assuage their fears. Nothing you can do could possibly pose a real solution. It’s like every speck of paranoid psychosis in Oz got naturally selected into these people: like they’re the liver in the astral body, the psychic repository for everyone’s toxic loser vibes.

On the one hand, that might help account for why everyone else is so nice. On the other hand…jeez! What a bunch of whiners!

It struck me that, this time, maybe they had something to whine about. They hadn’t been affected yet; but if Emerald City fell, they were among the next in line. It was a short jump over Lake Quad, and the few Quadling villages in between, to their home.

And, honestly, it was hard to imagine any Evil Force being merciful when it came to dealing with Flutterbudgets. I was half-tempted to smack them myself.

So, of course, the primary verbal motif was, “AUGHH! WE’RE ALL GONNA DIE!” I could see that it was getting to Gene.

“They’re not oracles, are they?” he asked me in earnest.

“No, they’re assholes,” I countered. “Come on!”

Next, we ran into the gang from Utensia: King Kleaver; Captain Dipp of the Spoon Brigade; a whole army of walking cutlery, looking sharp and shiny. Their attitude was a whole lot more positive. In fact, they were downright gung ho. Not real smart, but it didn’t matter. I was really glad to have them on our side.

Of course, seeing himself reflected in an enormous walking butter knife didn’t make Gene feel much better. The memory of his battlefield adventure from the other day was obviously still too fresh. I held two fingers up behind his head, gave him wiggly devil horns, and he didn’t even laugh.

“We’re almost there,” I said.

We waded our way through the China People: a bit dirty from their journey, but exquisite nonetheless. Innumerable gillikins, munchkins, winkies and quadlings milled about, their reactions pretty equally spread between optimism and worry. Miss Cuttenclip’s Paper Soldiers stood at the ready, but rippled in the faint breeze as we passed. Gobs of others were there, far too numerous to mention.

And then I saw Mikio, hurrying toward us, a handful of his posse in close pursuit. I listed to the right, keeping my fellers in tow, snuck past some Dilly-Dallyers, and arrived at intercept point.

“Hi!’ he said. “You look amazing!” I blushed (I bet) and responded in kind. He hugged me hard. I hugged him back. Then he looked at me, and I looked at him.

“This is fucking intense!” he said, and I laughed.

“No arguing with that.”

“So what are we going to do?” he asked.

“I guess we’re about to find out.”

“I had a dream last night,” he said. “It was one of those Nicola Tesla-type things. You know, where you see a device in your dreams. You see all its working parts. And you know that if you built it just like that, it would work exactly the way you want it to?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Actually, I do.”

“But I’m missing a piece,” he said. “And I don’t where to find it. I’m just trusting that I wouldn’t get a vision like this if I wasn’t supposed to pull it off…”

Just then, the gong sounded again: so loud now that I felt my fillings rattle.

We stood maybe fifteen yards from the gate to the palace, where Tik Tok and his brethren acted as doormen for the throngs. I looked up, and saw clearly the balcony from which Ozma would no doubt address us. It hung two stories up, ornately ballustrated, offering a clear view to all.

Jellia Jamb—Ozma’s personal maid and constant companion— emerged onto the balcony. She had a large feather-duster which she used to dust off the balcony’s rail. A roar went through the crowd— the kind you’d hear when they tested the drum mics just before a Metallica concert—and Jellia waved, her sweet smile a benediction on the crowd.

“I better head up to the front,” I said to Mikio, casting a glance back at Gene and Ralph. “Ozma wants to see the three of us. How ‘bout you?”

Mikio shrugged. “Not so I know.”

I wanted to kiss him so bad in that moment. I don’t know what it is with me. I see someone I love, and I want to merge faces, to communicate with tactile tongue what I can’t get across with words.

But the gong was still bonging, and I’m just so goddam shy. So instead, I gave him a big shrug back.

“See you later,” I said.

And then he was gone, as I pushed through the crowd, heading up to the gate itself.

Once again, Tik Tok greeted me first. “Miss Aurora,” he said. “You look frightening again.”

“And you look even shinier! These are my friends, Gene and Ralph.”

“Gene and Ralph are welcome. Let me escort you to your place.”

In that moment, I took stock of my companions. They did not look well. Gene was doing what I figured he’d be doing. It was Ralph I was worried about. While Gene absorbed the strangeness— waggling somewhere between astonishment, sarcasm, and fear— Ralph looked like he was ready to bolt any minute.

Of course, the question was: where could he run? Back out of

Emerald, straight into the hordes? Perhaps they’d accept him. But could he accept them? For all his crappy allegiences, he struck me as a pretty all-right guy. Could he really just march back in and attack us? I doubted it sincerely.

On the other hand, there was the escape hatch back to Kansas. No doubt, he could force his way back to that. Unless I stopped him. Which would be easier said than done. Short of whacking his head off, it would be hand-to-hand struggle, with none of the closure that comes with simple death. Assuming he didn’t kick my ass—a definite possibility—I’d be his prison guard then. I’d be a fucking cop.

“Ralph?” I said to him. “You coming?”

He looked me in the eyes then, and what I saw was: no exit. Whatever might be waiting for him on the other side of the interdi-mensional door, it sure as hell wasn’t escape. I thought about that, tried to imagine how deeply my old world was trying to interpenetrate here. Meaty Meat. CIA.

It gave me the willies.

Pretty clearly, it gave Ralph the willies, too. He took a deep breath before he answered.

“Uh huh,” he said.

Then the three of us—four, counting Tik Tok—were trundling down the Emerald Carpet, shown our places at the front of the in-filtering throng. Lion and Tiger were already there, as was Scarecrow. It was great, once again, to see them.

Ralph looked embarrassed, amidst their company—actually, ashamed is more to the point—but they all greeted him with great warmth and openness, which I’m quite sure made him feel even worse.

Gene, on the other hand, rose to the occasion by pulling one of the most boneheaded stunts I have ever beheld.

Everybody was being entirely too cheerful about the whole thing. Very psycho. I mean, I’m thinking, we’re probably going to die pretty soon (in fact there was a whole little section of weirdos in the crowd echoing my exact sentiments—the first people I’d seen who seemed to have any sort of grip on reality—but Aurora moved us by them disdainfully), yet most everyone had this kind of carnival vibe going on.

Fun, fun, fun! I couldn’t believe for a second that all of them were buying it—I’d seen the line trying to get into Ozma’s Gate—but here they were, gazing up to the palace, looking for Ozma to come out and make everything all better. Even considering all the magic and good will, these people had some serious issues going on.

We walked by this group of impossible walking cutlery, about six feet tall. I mean, what kind of people cause other people like this to come into being? What kind of warped sadist would doom another sentient being to life as a giant fork? Whimsical? Bullshit. It’s cruel. I mean, maybe the giant butter knife didn’t know any better, but I thought whatever wizard or witch had done that to it oughta be seriously considering some therapy. Really.

And Aurora’s there in her skeleton suit, making lame devil horns behind my head, trying to make me laugh at a time like that. I was really starting to wonder about her, too.

Then there were the China people. Little miniature models of humans, all made of what looked to be glazed porcelain. Aurie and Ralph just shuffled by them without a second glance, but I had to linger and stare. My mind could not wrap around the reality of them. Impossible that they could exist, could move, but here I was, watching it happen. They shifted as they moved, some kind of liquid movement, like the individual molecules of their substance was sliding, rearranging as arms and legs reconfigured in a parody of walking. Graceful as all hell, but still—impossible.

Even after days of this shit, I still couldn’t get used to impossible.

Just then Mikio pushed his way through the crowd, smiling, just as jolly as everybody else. I was starting to suspect maybe Ozma or Glinda had put some sort of whammy on everybody, some sort of astral Valium, or something in the water. Then I decided that couldn’t be it; I sure didn’t feel very jolly, and neither did that bunch of tall, droopy guys who were all moaning and groaning.

Neither did Ralph. As always, his expression was guarded, but you could tell he wasn’t overly optimistic about our prospects. He definitely was seeing things going on that he’d never seen before, and that got me even more freaked out, because I figured he’d seen just about everything.

Mikio was rattling on about some kind of dream he had last night, just as if everything were just peachy, as if butchering hordes of barbarians weren’t about to descend upon the city.

And then—and then the gong gonged again. And things started to get really stupid.

This woman came out onto Glinda’s balcony—she was tall and thin, wearing a maid’s outfit (green of course), and she started ceremonially sweeping out the place where Ozma was going to speak.

After the applause died down (applause! for what?) she went back inside and everybody went back to general cheerfulness.

We continued to push through to the palace gate, and I caught an eyeful of the guard contingent. They were robots. No, that’s not right—they were mechanical men.

They were something out of a past that never happened—a place where robotics was perfected in the 19th century. There were several of them, all different—ornate, filagreed Babbage-men. One of them, Tik-Tok, a squat, copper-colored R2D2 with a mustache, rattled and clicked up to us and welcomed us.

In a moment we were through the gate, and walking down a huge corridor, our muffled footsteps swooshing over a deep emerald carpet. Soon enough we were outside again, in a smaller courtyard with high walls, just under the window where Ozma would give her address.

So, I’m minding my own business, strolling up into the VI.P. lounge, or whatever the hell that courtyard was, and the same lion I’d seen before, yes, That Lion, comes up out of nowhere and starts rubbing against my hip.

“Uh—hello..” I said, not wishing to offend.

“Helloooo,” the Lion purred back, “pet meee…”

“Okay,” I said. You know, at this point, I was pretty much up for anything. Figuring that he probably wasn’t wired much differently than my cats back in L.A., I started petting his mane, and said, “By the way, my name’s Gene.”

“I knowwwww,” he said, “of Los Angeles.”

“That’s right.”

Just as I thought it couldn’t get any weirder, here comes—The Scarecrow.

He’s a scarecrow, just in case you’ve been locked in a closet for the last hundred years. And he walks. And talks.

I guess I was starting to lose it. Because while Aurora and Ralph mingled with the growing crowd of people (and others) there in the inner sanctum, I eased off petting Lion, who’d curled up on the ground for a short snooze anyway, and motioned Scarecrow over to a couple of seats that were cut into the solid wall of gemstone. He cheerfully complied with my wishes.

I sat there, staring at his head. He didn’t say anything either, just sat there with his hat in his lap and stared back—I guess he figured it was part of a game.

I was looking at the painted grin—looking at the way the paint twitched, just like a human face that’s trying to stay incredibly still.

“So,” I asked, “what’s the real deal?”

He stared back at me, still smiling, but the painted-on eyes kind of scrunched down quizzically at me. “The—real deal?”

I started checking out the way the canvas bag that made up his head was kind of just tucked into his shirt, and I was not convinced. I’d seen a lot of stuff that couldn’t possibly be, but this just really offended my sense of reality. This had to be a guy in a scarecrow suit, and I was going to put an end to the charade then and there. The cheerful people of Oz would thank me for it later.

So in one quick movement, I reached out both hands, grabbed his canvas head and pulled. I could see Aurora glance over, like in slow-motion, her expression changing from a jovial mask to a look of mild horror, her mouth expanding into an “O.”

And I then I was sitting there with a canvas head full of straw on my lap. Still smiling. “Why’d you do that?” it said, painted lips moving into a neutral straight line.

Aurora grabbed the head, and started stuffing it back into its place on the rest of the Scarecrow, alternately apologizing profusely and glaring at me, asking if I was out of my mind.

I looked over and saw Ralph giving me a thumbs up, laughing his ass off. Quite a few other people were yucking it up as well.

I apologised to the Scarecrow, and he graciously accepted.

“For some reason, this sort of thing happens to me frequently,” he said, tucking in some stray tufts of straw. “I take no offense at other people’s curiosity. In fact, I find it a rather admirable trait, one that I myself exercise with great frequency.”

Aurora had no time to bitch me out, because Ozma chose that exact moment to come out onto her balcony and say some of the stupidest stuff I have ever heard. I couldn’t believe it.

But what else is new?

War Journal

Entry # 6

Ozma stepped out onto the balcony, and the whole crowd caught its breath. All except for the Flutterbudgets, who cried out, “WE’RE ALL GONNA DIE!”

“SHUT UP!!!” came the sound of several thousand voices. (I admit it. I was among them. In fact, I said it really loud.)

Ozma laughed and held up her hands. She seemed genuinely relaxed in the face of the cloud, and she had this astounding glow: abetted by the sun, and the emeralds that surrounded her, but mostly seeming to emanate from within.

“No,” she said, and her voice was remarkably clear. Not loud, not forceful, but intimate. As if she were speaking to each of us individually, from roughly a foot away.

“No,” she continued. “We are all not going to die. In fact, most of us are going to be just fine. These events—disturbing as they may be—are much better than you might think.

“And though several of us will die today—yes, I’m afraid that’s true… “

And a terrible sorrow passed through the crowd, in waves I could literally feel.

“…today, above all, will be a Festival of Fun! And I hope you all will j oin me in making this the most fun we have ever had while confronting total fear!”

I wasn’t sure how to react to this. I looked at Gene, whose eyes were huge.

“What?” said Gene. I didn’t know how to answer.

“This is way fucked up,” was all Ralph had to say.

So I was not alone in being thoroughly stunned when the crowd began to applaud this, wildly. I looked all about the courtyard, from thither to yon, and saw 98% more smiles and clapping hands than anything else. Short of the moaning Flutterbudgets—who thank god I could not see—support for this feel-good policy seemed pretty damn close to unanimous.

Ozma seemed thrilled but unsurprised by the Ozian response. They were her people, after all, and they loved her all to bits. If she’d suggested that they all cram high explosives up their asses, it’s possible that her popularity might have dipped just a smidgen. But one wonders how much. Particularly in light of how scary that fucking cloud was.

At that moment, Ozma pointed upward—not toward the cloud, but toward the summit of the palace—and in that moment, I became aware of a light I am quite certain I had never seen before. (I had felt it. Yes. And always known it was there. But I had never felt it register on my retina in quite that way.)

Before the U.S. government destroyed his work and left him to die in prison, the great scientist and weirdo Wilhelm Reich used to talk about “orgone energy.” It was, essentially, life energy, and he noted that we released an enormous amount of it during the sexual act. So he had these pyramid-like devices called orgone generators, which were designed to harness this astonishingly powerful natural resource.

The problem, of course, was that the energy was free, once you had the machinery in place. In theory, it could not only power your toaster, but rejuvenate your body and liberate your soul. All you had to do was fuck a lot, with great intensity, inside his ultra-groovy little pyramid thingee.

But this was America in the 1950’s, when both sex and power sported gray flannel suits. And Reich was a raging anarchic libertine: totally anti-corporate, and anti-authoritarian.

Whether orgone generators ever actually worked or not, the Powers-That-Be were disturbed enough by the prospect to shut him down, burn all his papers, and obliterate his machinery.

This happened in ‘56, I believe. By May of ‘57, he was dead. Just another casualty of the global clampdown, and another black hole bored into our secret history.

I mention this only because the radiance from above reminded me of nothing so much as orgone energy: a funky Immanance, a power from within, manifesting as an invisible light so strong that the naked eye had no choice but to receive it.

And it was emanating from the tower at the top of the Palace. More specifically, it was emanating from Glinda.

The next part of Ozma’s speech was devoted to Glinda: how she was holed up in the tower now, whipping up some serious magick. How Glinda needed us to trust in her now, and to send her our support. How her magick was strong enough to even the odds, but only if we fell into harmony with her.

Only if we let our subtle soul-harmonics feed into the groove she was trying to lay down.

Of course, Ozma didn’t put it that way. Her language was a lot less esoteric.

“And so,” she simply said, “this is all I ask. That you look within yourself, and find the best way to make today as amazing as you possibly can.

“I can’t possibly know what you might come up with. And I don’t even need to. Because I know how you are. But if you will please give a minute to thought, you will sense a direction, and that is good enough for me.”

What followed was a deep, profound—which is to say enormous—silence.

I must say, it was the biggest silence I have ever heard.

(Once—in New York, at St. Patrick’s Cathedral—I heard the echo of a silence as deep as this. I was alone, in a church that was designed for the effect. But there were thousands of us here, in an open-air courtyard; and I am not exaggerating when I say that the subsonic vibe in St. Patrick’s was like the ghost of a dwarf by comparison.)

Even the Flutterbudgets were miraculously mute.

I closed my eyes, took a very deep breath, tried to make my mind clear as a rippling spring. As the psychic debris came drifting up, I let it catch on the rocks, focused on the flowing water. The words surrender, Dorothy came floating by. I let them pass, tried not to think about her. Her image fluttered in my head for a moment, and I wondered where she was.

Then I saw myself killing, saw blood striking my face, and the image so alarmed me that I wanted to drench myself in the water, cleanse my spirit, wash the blood away. Would Dorothy kill? Would she join me on the front lines? Was she above that sort of thing? Was I debased from going there?

I watched the bodies of those I’d killed begin to pile up on the rocks, and the sight was sickening. Blood sullied the water, tinted it so red I could no longer see the bottom. The bodies jostled against one another: damming the flow, thinning the tide. I squinched my eyes tighter, flexed the muscles in my head, as if by sheer exertion I could wipe away the blight.

And then I saw beautific Ozma, absorbed in a black lightning blast. Saw her eyeballs explode, her hair catch fire, her exquisite features collapse in roiling black. I saw Scarecrow ablaze. Careening. Flailing.

I watched the Emerald City flare, from green to black.

As the light went out…

…and enough was enough. I shook my head. I tried to dream of clear water, caught a glimpse and focused upon it: batting the doom-shards aside, growing new rocks to catch them.

Drawing the water inside.

There was light sparkling there, both on the surface and within. There were pebbles—very small, and unmoving—at the bottom. I tried to count, but the task was absurd. So many pebbles inside me.

As the water flowed on.

And I thought about everyone caught in the flow, every one of the thousands that surrounded me now. And beyond them, the millions and billions and more. Every leaf of every tree. Every bug on every leaf. Every spore caught in the breeze, out to the very ends of Oz. And then beyond. And then beyond.

And then my mind spiralled back to the dark centered space behind my eyelids. I took a deep breath. I took another deep breath. I could feel my flesh tingle in the palms of my hands, the crooks of my elbows, the muscles of my chest. I could feel the spark of energy burn in my left foot, profound in the web of flesh between my big toe and the one beside it. I could feel heat coursing up my spine.

I plunged deep into the water. It plunged deep into me. It was water, fire, wind, earth, spirit, thought. All burning hot. But it was not pain that I was feeling. Or if it was, the pain was good. It was clear and light and utterly revealing. It was deep sensation: my body, revealing itself to me.

I wanted to open my eyes, but I didn’t. It was hard to stay seized by this moment, but I did. My mind, shutting down at last, went from gabbling and projecting to simply listening.

And as for what it told me, there are no words.

I’m not sure how long I hung there, but I’d guess it wasn’t long; because when my eyes finally opened, everyone else seemed to be blinking their way back, too. I looked around, met thoughtful gazes, including those of Ralph and Gene.

I glanced back at Enchantra; and, at last, our eyes met.

Her eyes, like Ralph’s, looked haunted.

But also remarkably clear.

Then I looked back up at Ozma, who smiled down on us from above. She was swaying slightly, her eyes still closed, as if she were grooving out on our collective vibe.

Then she opened her eyes and spoke.

“Those of you who were called directly, please come and speak with me inside. As for the rest of you, I will be out and around, throughout the festivities. Please feel free to come up and speak with me at any time.

“And now, my friends: I love you all!

“Enjoy!”

Henry Darger was one of the great “outsider’ artists of the last century—although during his lifetime he was just a janitor who went home at night to an elaborate secret fantasy world that played itself out on thousands of collage-cartoon tableaus. Most of his work concerned the exploits of the Vivian Girls—child warriors whose placid expressions never changed even while being subject to frequent horrific turmoils and tribulations—boilings in oil, mass smotherings, you name it.

I couldn’t help but thinking at that moment that he had gotten at least some of his ideas from down the Ozian grapevine—I felt like I was about to descend into a Vivian Girl Tableau myself—I even looked around, expecting to maybe see some of them. Why not?

Ozma had just dumped the biggest load of bullshit I had heard since I’d gotten here. I’m all for the power of positive thinking, but this was ridiculous. Everyone was just supposed to think happy thoughts, and that’s it? That’s the answer?

Alright, it’s true that for a moment, when I saw Glinda surrounded by a shimmering halo of light, I was touched by something like a glimmer of hope, but jeez, the odds weren’t looking too good by any stretch of the imagination. Then again, maybe that’s my whole problem—the stretch of my imagination.

After the speech, Tik-Tok hustled us back down the same long hallway, the Scarecrow and the Lion tagging along behind, back down the opposite direction from where we’d started. Eventually, it widened out into an even bigger hallway with weird walls covered with something like solid emerald spidersilk—scintillating, translucent and hard-looking, something that might have taken thousands of years to drip there like limestone. The ceiling was several stories high, with balconies and walkways intersecting and crossing overhead. Functionaries, servants and dignitaries bustled about their business up there, appearing and disappearing into the vastness of the palace, their voices echoing out over our heads, individual words lost in reverb.

The richness of the furnishings that lined this corridor was truly astounding—little knickknacks to giant sculpture, glass megaliths and tiny end-tables, sometimes a bookshelf and a sofa in the middle of nowhere. I didn’t understand it—did anyone come here and hang out, like the middle of this corridor was a gigantic living room? Or was it just all decoration?

After a while we came to a pair of huge doors, at what looked like the end of the line. They opened all of a sudden, and we entered into another fantastically huge room, roughly the size of a football stadium.

This was Ozma’s throne room.

Ozma had gotten there before us. A select few were with her, lounging on a pile of huge pillows about thirty feet from the throne: a sultry, brunette woman who Aurora, in hushed tones, identified as Dorothy, and some others I hadn’t met yet.

The tiger I’d seen the other night was already there. The Lion sauntered up to the tiger, exchanged nods, and laid down about ten feet away from it.

There was a dark woman, I hesitate to say black, because she didn’t look Negroid, just dark. She looked me over with a predatory gaze, and when she spotted Aurora found it immediately necessary to turn around to speak to a big fat bug guy, who looked like “Apocalypse”—era Brando as The Fly.

I felt a pressure against my leather pant-leg, and looked down to see the most ancient, rheumy-eyed, graying terrier I’d ever seen sniffing me. I reached down to pet it, and it growled at me until I drew my hand away, then it placidly continued to sniff.

“Toto! Knock it off!” Dorothy shot the dog a harsh look, and I guess the dog took the hint, because it hobbled over to Dorothy and collapsed at her side, eying me with a look that said, “I’m not done yet, pal.”

A pair of liveried servants were coming around with refreshments, some sort of iced beverage in tall glasses. I took one from the proffered tray and sipped. It was a lot like lemonade with ginger in it.

Ozma was playing with a little doll, one that reminded me uncomfortably of the China People, as if nothing very pressing was on her mind—just a little girl, doing little girl stuff, not the potentate of a fairy land on the verge of being burned and stomped. Just as if she’d read my mind (hell, she probably did), she handed the doll to a servant and assumed a respectable lotus position.

“My friends,” she said, looking around at all of us, “our people are now preparing to defend the Emerald City from the worst enemy it has ever known. Now, most of our citizens are peace-loving, simple people, with no desire to fight. They must, then, use their creative powers, their ingenuity, to defeat the foe in unexpected ways.

“Those of you from Earth are well acquainted with war. Sadly, a contingent of our enemy has come from your ‘world next door’. For many years I have suspected that it would come to this, that trying to harness our magic would not be enough for them.”

It took a few seconds for this to sink in. What was she telling us? That the good old U.S. of A. was backing this creep?

I shot a quizzical look at Ralph, and his expression was enough to confirm what she was saying. What I saw was mostly embarrassment, self-loathing and confusion. Here was a man in the wrong place at the wrong time. Here was a man in crisis, a man who didn’t know who to throw in with.

“I’ve called you together with me,” Ozma continued, “because you are all in a state of profound—what shall I say?—activity. For better or worse, you are all to be greatly changed by the events of the next few days, and your actions will irrevocably change the lives of everyone, everywhere.

“You are all dancers, all of you, and you must be sure to dance brilliantly. When I say brilliantly, be sure that I do not mean self-consciously or cleverly, but rather, surely and passionately.

“You may not choose to dance to my tune, and that must be as it may be…”

Then she looked rather pointedly, I thought, at Ralph, and then quickly looked away.

“Others may serve our cause without meaning to, but ultimately, the cause you serve will not matter. It only matters that you DO.”

I started to drift off a little. Ozma’s speech was starting to sound a little like that cheesy seventies hit “Desiderata”: “You are a child of the universe, and whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should” and all that. But I held my tongue. I was feeling pretty bleak, and I didn’t have any better ideas.

“Some of you believe only in that which you can see. Sometimes that is a good thing. A dreamer, a shaman, sometimes needs a guardian, someone to watch the gates while he dreams.

She fixed me with her supernatural gaze. “Gene, I think you are one of these.” She smiled sweetly. “I know what you think of what I’ve said today. All I can ask of you is that you be the best skeptic you can be.”

Then she addressed everyone again .

“As the darkness falls, your light grows brighter. Every one of you will be like a beacon in the darkness to me. By your actions, I will see more completely what must be done.”

Then she closed her eyes, and smiled again, and the smile was of a variety that didn’t belong on the face of a prepubescent girl. It was frightening, and I suddenly realized the depth, power and age of this creature that had been speaking to us. Not a little girl anymore, but a maybe four-hundred year old witch-woman.

Suddenly, I heard the sound of my own voice. “Why isn’t Mikio Furi here?” it asked.

Ozma laughed, a twittering sound almost like a bird laughing. “Mikio’s place is with his machines,” she replied. “and I’m afraid to disturb his mentation right now. He is a rather delicate flower. That does remind me of your companion, though. What do you think It will want to do?”

“It?”

“Yes, It.” She pointed to my backpack.

“You mean the—”

“Yes, your computing machine. Now that it has come to life, a great many people mean to have it. That can only mean that it possesses great power. Think about what you and It would like to do.”

I thought about it. What I would have liked to have done then was get the hell outa Dodge, take a running jump at the gate back to Kansas, but that didn’t look like an option.

I took the Enchanted Laptop out of the packback and booted it up, hoping that it would have something to tell me, but it was behaving normally. I figured the little guy was scared stiff. But then it blinked—that is, the screen went black—twice, and then it started to strobe, in lurid fluorescent colors:

***mikio***go***go***go******mikio***go*

**go***go******mikio***go***go***go******mi

kio***go***go***go******mikio***go***go***g

o******mikio***go***go***go******mikio***go

***go***go******mikio***go***go***go******m

ikio***go***go***go******mikio***go***go***

go******mikio***go***go***go******mikio***g

o***go***go******mikio***go***go

I flipped the screen around so that Ozma could see it. “I think it’s made up its own mind.”

I saw something then I thought I would never see—Ozma’s eyes widening in astonishment for the most fleeting of moments. I don’t think anyone else saw it but me, but I was sure I had. I’m not sure what it was that jolted her—the raw wonder of this vulgar piece of Earth technology, the mystery of something from somewhere invading it, or both.

“Your Majesty? Excuse me, but—why am I here?” Everyone turned towards the dark woman, Enchantra, who was alternately attempting to not scowl and smiling towards the monarch in a truly psycho display. (That’s really her name, by the way,—it sounds different in Standard Pawt’kween, but translates roughly to that, can you believe it?) She was nervous as hell, though I couldn’t tell which of the maybe three hundred things that might make you nervous when the walled city you’re in is about to be ripped to shreds. Maybe she was just afraid of Ozma. Maybe she had some place else to be.

Ozma gave her the look an old pro gives to a promising young tyro who’s trying to “act all bad.”

“My dear, dear girl,” she said, and paused. “It’s true that we haven’t been the best of friends, have we?”

Enchantra sheepishly nodded her agreement.

“But, I’ve always admired your skills—especially your, shall we say, diplomatic—skills. Enchantra, I’ll be blunt. You possess the Golden Cap—you have control of the Winged Monkeys. They will remain a key to our defense. They are the most gifted warriors at our disposal. Now, I could simply demand that you give me the Cap. But

I won’t. You possess it, and the fate of the Monkeys is in your hands as well. You have chosen to use them wisely in the past, and I have every reason to believe you will continue to wield your power in a conscientious manner. Enchantra, you are here so that I can tell you that I trust you,” and she looked around and said, “and that is why you are all here, and I’ve kept you far too long already.”

And I thought, great, this mad tea-party is finally over with— now what?

“And now what?” Ozma asked, looking at me.

“Well,” I said, a little taken aback by the Kreskin routine, “I guess I’m off to Mikio’s with the Laptop.” I looked around. “Anybody else going my way?”

“Yeah, me,” Ralph spoke out. “You won’t get forty yards outside of the palace with that thing without a bodyguard.”

“How do we know you’re not just going to grab it?” Aurora blurted out.

“Yeah,” Ralph shot back sarcastically, “how do you know?”

Dorothy stood up, and unruffled her long skirt. “Well,” she said quietly, “I’m going out the front gate, and talk to folks.”

That sounded like a really bad idea to me.

“The way I see it,” she continued, “there’s a lot of soldiers out there who’d rather get back to bein’ farmers or or merchants if somebody only showed ‘em the error of their ways. Always been better at peacemaking than fighting. Even when I was a little girl. So, Ozma, darling, if you don’t need me no more, I’m off”

“Wait.” Aurora got up. “Let me go with you. I agree with your idea on principle, but I’d feel alot better about it if you had some muscle to back you up.” A sympathetic roar came from the Lion, who stretched and came over to Dorothy’s side as well, followed by the Tiger. “But I’d like to make a pit-stop at Mikio’s first, if that’s okay.” She gave Ralph a weird look.

Dorothy nodded agreement, and everyone looked to Ozma, I suppose to be dismissed or whatever princesses do when you want to take off.

“Before you all go,” she said, “I must see Aurora alone for a moment.”

She took Aurora off to some ante-chamber, and we all stood around for a few minutes, looking at each other uncomfortably. It was worth the wait, though, when Aurora came back with Ozma’s gift.

War Journal

Entry # 7

All it took was the words Aurora and alone; and all at once, I felt a weird cold buzz run through me. Some kernel of dread that I’d been harboring in private blossomed within me, proceeded to grow.

She stood. I stood. The others stood, too. We walked behind the throne, and they just stayed where they were. I glanced back at Gene, who shrugged and made the aiyee! face. I shifted over to Scarecrow, who predictably smiled and waved.

Then we came upon a doorway, framed by a thousand ornately-mirrored slats. I saw, in that moment, a thousand Ozmas, pursued by a thousand fearsome Deaths.

The Deaths, of course, were me.

We passed through the door, and it closed behind us. In the silence that followed, Ozma turned to me, and I felt a warm flush crawl across my skin. It wasn’t me blushing; it didn’t come from within. It was like sunlight emerging from behind a cloud.

She smiled; and if the Buddha had been a beautiful woman-child instead of a squat little roly-poly guy, she woulda looked a lot like him.

“Aurora,” she said. “Aurora Quixote Jones.” She seemed to like the way the words cavorted across her tongue. “You certainly are a special one. And I’m so very glad you’re here.”

“I’m really happy to be here, too.” It was all I could think of to say.

“So tell me. What, if any, are your plans?”

“Well, like I said, I’m going out front. I really don’t see how I have any choice. You don’t have many fighters. But they do.”

“This is true,” she thoughtfully agreed.

“And some of them won’t stop, no matter how nicely you ask them.”

“I know.”

“So, again: if Dorothy doesn’t mind, I’d like to stand by her side.”

“Then stand by her you shall. But let me ask you this.” And Ozma leaned forward as she spoke. “Are you not afraid to die?”

“Well, yeah!’ I said. “Of course I am!” Ozma laughed. After a second, so did I. But the thought had been planted in my head. Does she know something I don’t know?

“I mean,” I said, “I’m not going to, am I?”

Ozma looked at me frankly. “I wish I knew. So does Glinda. We are both concerned. Quite simply, there is so much going on that the future is most unclear.” I nodded. “Glinda’s book is filling much faster than she could possibly read; and all of her concentration is focused on magick, just now.”

“Well, shit!’ I blurted out. “And begging your pardon, but can’t somebody else take a look at that thing, let us know what’s coming up? I mean, isn’t that important information?”

“It is, of course. But, alas, only Glinda is permitted to read the book.”

I tried to imagine what Gene would think if he were standing here. He’d probably have thought pretty much what I did, which was: JESUS CHRIST! BEND THE RULES! ARE YOU NUTS?

But instead of voicing this out loud, I aimed for the other end of the equation.

“So why,” I inquired, “did you pull me aside?”

At which point she smiled and said, “We have something for you.”

And Oz being Oz, Jellia Jamb was there at once. She held a large covered platter in her hands, all of it gleaming silver. I’m certain I looked as confused as I felt in the moment before Jellia lifted the lid, pulled back a velvet adornment.

Then I stared at the object on the plate.

It was an emerald burrito.

Now, one could argue that it was actually a sculpture of a scroll, or some unknown object rolled up in parchment. And indeed, there were undecipherable hieroglyphics all over the thing, so I guess the point could be made. But no. This heavenly tchochka, this gift of all gifts, was roughly a foot long, maybe two inches wide. A nice size for breakfast, lunch, or dinner. And from the way it was rolled—or depicted as such—to the fluted ends and bulging middle, there was only one true way to read the situation.

It was an emerald burrito. That’s exactly what it was. A burrito meticulously sculpted out of living gemstone, glowing rather vivaciously green on Jellia’s little silver platter. The sheer extent of the detail was astounding.

I found myself thinking, well, what the fuck is this?

Once, when I was seventeen, this guy from school tattooed a picture of my face on his ass. Left cheek. Startling likeness. All in all, a very professional job. Since I didn’t actually like the guy, I can’t say that I was thrilled. Just stunned.

And this is not to say that I didn’t love Ozma, love Oz, love life, be red-hot with hunka hunka burnin’ love. But in terms of a sheer sinking feeling, this made me feel something like that.

“Ummm…thank you,” I said, staring mute at the thing.

“This,” she said, “is the Skyrrla.”

I said, “It’s very nice.”

I was starting to shake.

I thought about imitation being the sincerest blah blah blah. I thought about that guy and my face on his ass. I thought about how weirdly inappropriate this seemed. How removed from the black cloud, and the urgency now before us. Like that Monty Python sketch in The Meaning of Life, where all these soldiers in a foxhole give, like, enormous ornate grandfather clocks to their dumbfounded sergeant, make him a cake, singing “Oh He’s a Jolly Good Fellow” while the enemy picks them off one by one.

Okay, said the voices in my head. So they made me this really nice burrito statue thing. Now where was I supposed to put this, exactly? On my mantle? On my grave? Up my rectum? I mean, what?

I felt pissed off. And embarrassed. And afraid. Like Ozma had butterfly wings for brains, or at least no sense of perspective. I felt the fear that Gene must have been feeling the whole time: that faith-shattered vacuum, where nothing can be believed.

Then she said, “The Skyrrla is beyond antiquity.”

The voices in my head shut up.

I looked at her. She was reading me hard. And the horrible thing was: I was reading her, too. I could feel my doubt, my lack of faith, going off like a depth charge inside her; and though it burned for a second in her eyes, that sweet Buddha smile remained somehow intact, then took over her eyes again.

It was very very hard for me to put some words—any words— together.

“Really?” I said, and she nodded her head.

“Wow,” I added. Swallowed hard. “So…what-all does it do?”

“We were hoping that you could tell us,” she said, and my embarrassment was sealed. Her beauty was so massive, her sincerity so complete.

“You don’t know?”

She shook her head. “No, we don’t. Long before I was born— before Glinda was born—the Skyrrla was here, clearly waiting for something. For years beyond measure, the Skyrrla has waited.

“We suspect that it was waiting for you.”

I know it sounds stupid, but I started to cry.

And through the veil of tears, I became aware of something amazing.

Inside the Skyrrla—the emerald burrito—I began to see movement, substrata of something-like-electrical motion beneath the tacit glow. A lightning-like dance, both precise and abstract, alive and engaged. My eyes opened wide.

There was something there for me. I knew that there was. I felt it. I felt it. It burrowed inside. I looked at my hand, and my hand was insane. It wanted to touch it. It hungered to know.

I looked in the eyes of Ozma. All resentment there was gone. I felt my own petty feelings resolve, then dissolve. I felt a beautiful thing inside.

My hand was reaching forward. I was watching it do it. I was the thing, and behind the thing. Totally watching. Eye of God. God. Hand. All at once.

Then my hand latched ahold of the emerald burrito.

And I knew that I would never die.

There are some knowings that can not be unknowed There are some moments that can not be denied. In that moment of moments, I knew some things that are not negotiable. Not subject to debate. Not an if but a yo.

The burrito spoke to me, and I saw myself in it: skull-paint on flesh mask, deeper skull beneath the mask, then into bone and down and down, through calcium swirl to atomic glow.

And it was all me. Every speck. Every ripple. Every thought was mine, and every sensation. I was hooked up and hooked in, the core and the satellite, God-head and Aurora-head in infinite sync.

And I knew that this would never end. No matter what. No matter when.

And I know I was smiling—I had to be smiling—because Ozma was laughing when I opened my eyes; and when I went to laugh, too, I found that my mouth was already there.

When I rejoined the others, I was high as a kite. To be honest, I hardly remember what happened.

When Gene asked, “What’cha got?” I’m pretty sure that I showed them.

When he said, “So now what?,” I’m pretty sure I said let’s go.

Mikio’s was crazy.

Ten or fifteen people were running around his space, picking things up, shaking them, rubbing stuff, like Mikio’s was the place where they were going to find The Answer—that somewhere buried in his mountains of weird shit they would find something to make the unpleasantness go away. These were not the same cheerful people I’d seen in the courtyard; these were a different breed of citizen: disaffected youngsters infected with American Pop Culture and Earth paranoia.

I started to feel a little bit good about things, in a weird homesick way. Seeing these people acting so—well, normal, was like feeling a cool breeze blow through a stuffy room. There was a vitality here that was lacking elsewhere—this probably accounted for why I felt comforted.

When Mikio spotted us, he danced over towards the front of the room, where we all were standing. Despite the demeanor of the other people in his living room, he displayed the same Moonie-esque enthusiasm from earlier on. There was some kind of exotic symmetry happening there, I thought: opposite misfits from mirror worlds, attracting, complementing.

Whatever was the case, he immediately scoped out what Aurora was carrying, aside from the axe. “So this is it, huh?,” he asked.

“Uh huh,” she said.

I was puzzled. “What—you already—how did you know?”

“I got a mirror-mail from Ozma. She told me you were on the way.” He smiled. Everybody was still smiling way too much. I was

starting to feel like a congressman in Jonestown again.

Mikio lifted the lid, pulled back the velvet sheet that was covering the Skyrrla, and watched as bright rivulets danced through it like distant heat lightning, deep inside of it.

“Damn, it really does look like an emerald burrito. Check it out. What is that stuff?” he asked, tracing the light streaks with his index finger.

“Fuck if I know,” I said helpfully.

“It’s amazing” Aurora purred.

He peered thoughtfully into it. “Somehow—it reminds me of a Cloud Chamber. Physicists used to use them to trace the paths of subatomic particles.”

“That’s pretty accurate,” Aurora threw in.

I’d seen a cloud chamber before in a museum; I didn’t know how he thought the two were similar. But then I wasn’t Mikio. Or Aurora, for that matter.

He disappeared back into the melee, rummaging with the best of them, opening filing cabinets, pulling out notes, then abandoning them to dig through a closet for something that the notes reminded him of. Aurora drifted off into a corner, her eyes still dreamy from her wild Skyrrla high.

“Would you like some refreshments?” said a voice from behind me.

I turned around to see a strange, stooped over, long-limbed old man with long, gray hair, eyes scringing down at me from under thick bushy eyebrows. He was shakily carrying a tray, which was filled to overflowing with drinks and little miniature stuffed pita-type sandwiches. They looked like they were going to go all over the floor any minute.

“I live upstairs,” he said, “and I thought Mikio and his friends would like a bite to eat.”

Dorothy looked at the old guy strangely. “Doctor Pipt?” she asked, “Is that you?”

He nodded and grinned, not giving any indication that he knew who the hell she was. She took the tray out of his hands, and unceremoniously handed it to me. “I’m Dorothy,” she said, “Dorothy Gale? We knew each other many years ago. Maybe…”

Some light of recognition came into the old man’s eyes. “Dorothy?” He squinted at her. “But surely you’re not that little girl…yes!

You are!” He held out his arms, and they embraced each other warmly.

Then there were introductions all around, and the topic turned to why we were there.

“Ah, yes,” Pipt said. “This current unpleasantness. It almost inspires me to—” He looked around as if someone unwanted might be listening, and continued quietly, “come out of retirement.”

Dorothy looked at him wide-eyed. “Oh, Doctor, you must! We need all the help we can get right now, and I’m sure Ozma wouldn’t mind under the circumstances. A man of your talents..”

Dr. Pipt waved dismissively. “My dear, it’s been many years since I’ve dabbled in alchemy. I don’t know that—”

Mikio suddenly let out a yelp; he’d found something of interest in the closet. Half a dozen of his posse gathered around him.

Pipt nodded to indicate Mikio, raised a bony finger in his direction. “Now, that boy,” he said, “is quite promising.” Then he looked Dorothy in the eye, rather severely, I thought. “I would appreciate it if you would not mention my past exploits to young Mikio. I have grown rather fond of him, and would rather that his opinions of me not be changed at this late date. He knows me as the old man who lives upstairs, nothing more.” With that, he took the tray back from me, and teetered into the room, delivering snacks to anyone interested.

Ralph and I looked quizzically at Dorothy.

“That man,” she whispered, “is the greatest living alchemist in all of Oz. Kind of like—who’s that one everyone tells me about?— Einstein. Of course, he was forbidden by Ozma to practice magic after he—” She looked thoughful for a second, then said, “Well, she never did say anything about science, though. People, that old man you’re lookin’ at is the actual inventor of the Powder of Life.”

Life. Powder. You could have knocked me over with a feather. My fingers reflexively found the jar in my ogre-vest. I was about to take it out and ask somebody if what I was carrying around was actually IT, when Mikio came running back with a box full of writhing creatures—well, I thought they were creatures. They were little tight corkscrew-shaped, and coppery. He took one out and it flattened against the palm of his hand, orienting itself directly facing Aurora and the Skyrlla.

All at once, the gravity of the room pulled inward, tugging everyone but Aurora toward Mikio and the center. “These are ktulligs.”

Mikio explained. “They are one of the major components in most of Ozma’s automatons. They represent a state somewhere between machinery and life.

“In Oz, if you pound out one of these things yourself, out of copper wire or whatever, it will behave in the same manner as this one here—why? Why does a rotating magnet on Earth produce an electrical current in a nearby wire? Who the hell knows? But it always happens. Same with this. This phenomenon appears to be a manifestation of some basic physical law in this universe. I haven’t quite worked it out yet, but it appears to be linked to the entire “Mickie” phenomenon. There may be predictable criterion for what causes an object to become animated.”

Everybody was staring at him rather blankly, I thought. It didn’t look like anybody was quite following him, except for maybe me, maybe Ralph, and Dr. Pipt.

“Well, anyway, check this out,” he said, and scattered the first of several ktulligs on the floor, where they twisted and hopped like puppies. “Aurora?”

She looked up as if startled.

He reached out his hands for Aurora to give him the Burrito. “May I?”

She hesitated for a moment, then slowly walked over. I was surprised by how possessive she suddenly seemed. Aurora hesitated again before handing the platter to him; and as she did, I watched a shudder run through her. It was kind of unnerving.

Mikio delicately unwrapped it from the velvet and placed it in the center of the ring of ktulligs. Like magnets, the little curlyques lined up radially around the Emerald Burrito. As in a time-lapse film of flowers growing, they sprouted appendages that reached out toward it. The scintillations within seemed to multiply, the closer the filaments got. By the time they reached it, the Skyrrla was pulsing light regularly, an oscillating sub-strobing, that seemed to shift in a rhythmically complex pattern. The ktulligs had meanwhile joined ends together, forming a wheel/spokes arrangement around the Burrito.

All of this took about maybe two minutes.

Mikio stood on one leg, and poked the Doc Martin on his other foot at the ring. He got it really close, then pulled it away. He gave the shoe a really funny look, then I looked and realized that the end of the shoe had disappeared. Not melted or burnt, just gone. Mikio wiggled his athletic sock up through the hole just to make sure his toe was still there and put his hands out in front of him. “Okay—guys?” he said, “maybe we should avoid touching this.” Then he held up his finger and strode off to fetch something else.

Aurora and I looked at each other, then at Ralph, then Dorothy looked at Aurora. Everyone else was gawking as well, except for the Lion and the Tiger and the dog. They were hovering by Dr. Pipt, waiting for the tray to fall.

“Omigod,” Aurora said, hugging herself as if she’d suddenly awakened, naked, in front of home room.

“What?” I said.

“I’m just—realizing something,” she said, then shuddered and sighed so deeply I thought she might herneate or something.

At this point, Dorothy spoke up.

“This is all fine and dandy, not that I understand any of it, but that cloud and that army out there ain’t whistlin’ Dixie. I gotta go.” She realized that hardly anyone was listening to her, put her two index fingers up to her mouth, and gave a loud whistle. The room focused in for a moment. “Any of you people want to go with me, I’m headed out the East Gate, and I’m gonna try to talk some sense into those folks.” She cast a meaningful gaze around the room. “Anyone not comin’, wish me luck. And I wish it right back at you.”

Then she turned and headed out the door, Toto following up behind. The Lion and Tiger growled disappointment at the missed snacks, but followed as well.

Aurora looked concernedly in my direction. “Gene?” she said.

I was torn. I mean, I wasn’t anxious any time soon to face those green guys and whatever else was out there, but I felt like I had to do something, and it didn’t seem as though I was getting a whole hell of a lot accomplished here. Of course, I still hadn’t finished up my business with Mikio, and—

Before I could decide, Aurora kissed me. “I’ll see you soon, Gene.” She hugged me, and fixed me with those giant eyes of hers. “God, I’m sorry I got you into all this.”

I started at some lame dismissal of her apology. Before the words could fall out, she interrupted.

“But you know what?” she told me. “You’ll be fine. We’re all gonna be fine.”

The she, too, went out the door.

Ralph looked at me and shrugged. Evidently, he was staying put. He was starting to worry me again. During the last ten minutes or so, he had been pulling an oversized flask out of his pocket and hitting on it. He seemed fine, but how could I be sure?

Then I saw Ledelei snaking her way through the room, a vision in skin-tight black leather, hefting a massive sword. She was swinging it around her head expertly, never coming close to anyone in the room with it.

How did these “peace-loving people” keep coming up with all this weaponry? And how did they know how to use it all so well? I guess it was the craze for Martial Arts that had been sweeping the nation for the past hundred years or so, ever since Dorothy and friends took out the Wicked Witch and Nick became King of the Winkies. He’s like Oz’s first super-hero, and all the kids wanted to be just like him. Hence, a great deal of interest in learning to fight like a Winkie, even though there hasn’t actually been anyone to fight in all that time. The prospect of a real opponent just seemed to add to the general glee.

Lidelei noticed me, grinned slyly, and ducked out the doorway and down the stairs after Dorothy and Company.

I stared at the door with my mouth open for a few moments, then realized how useless I was being. I went into the room after Mikio, and found him crouched under a table, sorting through vines of various thicknesses. He didn’t pay any attention to me.

“Hi! Mikio, look, I kinda came here to let you know that…”

He looked up. “Can you hold this? Thanks.” He handed me about a dozen of the vines he’d picked out.

“Anyway, my Superbook—”

“The laptop!” he shouted, and tried to stand up, bashing his head against the underside ofthe table. I looked to make sure that he wasn’t bleeding, and helped him out of there. “Where is it?” he asked, rubbing his head. “I forgot all about that. Is it safe?”

“Look, Mikio, why don’t you take a deep breath,” I suggested, “calm down a little, because you’re not gonna do anybody any good if you start freaking out. Chill.”

He took my advice, even accepted a sandwich from Dr. Pipt, and while he chewed, I started again, reiterating the conversation at the palace, and the reaction of the laptop. I removed my backpack, and handed it over to Mikio.

“So, you see, it wasn’t my decision. It wants to be here. That’s the reason for the parade. Nobody thought I’d make it over here by myself.”

He took it out of the pack, and booted it. Dr. Pipt looked on in amazement. This, I thought, was astounding in itself: that someone who could turn a chicken into a walking lampshade (or whatever) was slack-jawed at the sight of a hunk of plastic and silicon. “It’s a magic book!” he exclaimed. “I thought that Glinda’s was the only one!”

I explained to him that there were many more where that one came from, that a company made them in order to get money, and that it wasn’t exactly like Glinda’s book—at which point I questioned whether or not that was true, never having actually seen Glinda’s book. From all accounts, it sounded like some sort of telemetry database, taking readings of everything that happened everywhere, and somehow displaying them instantaneously for Glinda’s perusal.

“I wish I wasn’t such an old man,” Pipt said, “I’d visit this “Earth,” where such marvels pour forth so prosaically!”

Mikio was excited, too, but for other reasons. “If I can interface this correctly,” he said, “I’ll not only be able to custom-modify the reaction taking place in the Skyrrla, but I may be able to actually predict—yeah…” And, in mid-sentence, he stalked off with the laptop, the vines and a few more ktulligs.

“You’re welcome,” I mumbled under my breath.

Somewhere around this time, I noticed that Ralph was gone. Maybe he’s gone to the bathroom, I thought, and followed Mikio back over to where the Emerald Burrito was.

While Mikio was hooking up various components, and sticking little fibers into the SCSI port, trying to figure out which PCI slot a stullig might like to cosey up to, Pipt was standing behind him with a bemused look on his face.

“Mikio, why don’t you take the whole arrangement up to the roof? I think you’ll soon find the entire business too unmanageable for this apartment.”

Mikio looked up, and it seemed like he wanted to humor the old guy. “Well, Dr. Pipt, I’d like to, but you saw how it was before. I don’t think I can move it now.”

“Is there a Stortiwolly handy?”

Mikio yelled to one of his cohorts to bring a Stortiwolly. Soon enough, someone came over with his hand guiding a white diaphanous sheet that floated like a jellyfish next to him in the air.

Pipt saw it, and grabbed two corners of it. It seemed to shudder under his touch. “Ah, splendid,” Pipt said. “It should be neutral.” Then in one quick movement, he tossed it over the entire Burrito/ ktullig-ring arrangement, picked it up, and handed it to Mikio, meanwhile winking slyly at me.

Mikio looked like he’d just realized he was on Candid Camera-the wheels were spinning inside his head as he reassessed his opinion of his upstairs neighbor. “Sure,” he said, “It’s neutral.” Pipt picked up the backpack, and they both took off up the stairs to the roof.

I started to follow, but thought I’d have another look around for Ralph before I did. I needed to pee anyway, so I went to the bathroom door to see if he was already done. The bathroom door was open, no sign of Ralph.

He’d slipped out, to where I wasn’t sure, but judging from the condition he’d been aiming for, I had a few ideas. I unlaced the stupid leather pants, and stood there urinating into something vaguely resembling a toilet: a large violet, rubbery lip extending up from the floor. (Depending upon what you wanted to do, these things would elongate in different directions to accommodate you. If you sat on it, it did one thing. If you just stood up and peed into it, it did another. The violet lip was a flower of some ridiculously huge plant that snaked through the entire city. Evidently the vast plumbing system of Emerald was bioengineered, although the Ozians wouldn’t have called it that.)

While I watched my pee fertilize this enormous plant, I tried to decide what to do. I could stay here, help Mikio in whatever feeble manner was possible, go out to the battlefield in my ogre suit and die, or I could find Ralph and ask a whole shitload more questions.

I felt like he owed me some answers.

War Journal

Entry # 8

I was waiting in the hallway when Mikio and Dr. Pipt cruised by.

I wasn’t hanging out, laying in wait for him. I was thinking really hard, to myself. The feelings I was feeling were so contradictory, and so intense, that I could practically smell my poor brain hemispheres letting off sparks as they peeled out in either direction.

The fact was—and I hate to admit it—that I hadn’t intended to leave the Skyrrla with Mikio. I don’t know what I had intended; frankly, not a whole lot of thought had been expended on the subject. I had the Skyrrla; it was mine; it had been mine since before the beginning. I guess I kinda just assumed it would go with me into battle, keep that indestructible attitude going.

Suddenly, thinking about it, I wasn’t so sure that was a great idea.

First off, I’d been stoned as a saint, high as a messiah, ever since I touched the motherfucker. A beautiful feeling, but not necessarily the one you wanna smite thine enemies with…

…unless, of course, you could make everybody else feel that way, too…

…which was where it made sense that Mikio would grab it. Of course it made sense. Maybe he could turn it into something—a FeelGood Generator, a literal God in a Machine—that could help turn the tide away from violence…

…and the fact was—now that I thought about it—that Mikio’d had a dream just the very night before. About some machine. That would work really well…

. ..and all he needed was a power source… .. .but he didn’t know what it was…

…and here I was, in possession of an object so potent that simple copper wire turned into a floral display: not out of contact, but mere proximity…

. ..and god only knew what that could mean… …so of course I began to feel entirely selfish, and utterly self-loathing. Because the fact was, I was jonesing for the thing. I wanted it back in my hands. I felt like a freebase monkey, Pavlov’s junkie, already coming down off the buzz . And none too thrilled about it, either. Like, if I could just go up and say, “No, It’s MINE!,” I could curl up in a ball with the thing and be tranced-out happy forever…

It was right about this point that Mikio and Dr. Pipt came sailing out the doorway. A handful of friends and hangers-on followed up, in close pursuit. I hung back, trying to screw my head on straight before I made any kind of decision. I didn’t want anyone to see me like this.

In that moment, I tried to regain the high I’d found, tried to put myself back in that place. Or, more specifically, tried to reaccess the really useful parts: the incredible confidence, and sense of connection. It involved shutting up my internal voices: like a yogi, sliding upward on the rhythm of his own breath. I consciously conjured stillness, the death of the yammering jones. I willed myself to there, instead of longing for there.

This took more than a little doing; but, lo and behold, it came back to me strong. It was part of me now. There was nothing to long for. And I found, to my delight, that it didn’t play like a coke or narcotic buzz at all. It was more like that long-ago acid: pinning me to the wall against which I had cowered, flooding me with not just energy but information. Informing me as to the actual fabric of God, or Creation, or fucking whatever.

Which made the next part a whole lot easier. At a certain point, when I felt clear enough, I pushed away from the wall. The stairs leading down to the battlefield were on my left:. The stairs leading upward to Mikio were on my right. I headed right, taking the stairs two at a time. I knew time was of the essence. But I knew what I had to do.

At the top of the stairs was a door that was already partially open. I felt like a camera on a warped Steadicam, gliding strangely up the stairs. I focused on the door, the grain of the wood, saw a face like a scream that my eyes zeroed in on.

I hit the top of the stairs, kicked the scream. The door flew open, and there it was; the entire scene revealed in Panoramascope, a visual so huge it made Imax look like a 12” black and white tv.

Mikio’s roof overlooked the wall at the east end of the city. Directly before me, Mikio and Co. were setting up the Skyrrla Device, whatever it was. They were maybe twenty yards before me, roughly the size of eight-year-olds. I saw their hurly-burly, an ant-farmlike flurry of motion.

Then I looked at the cloud above.

It was very close now. Very close. Easily less than an hour and a half from directly over our heads. It was impossibly huge, utterly swallowing the sky. Already, its shadow had buried the forest at the outskirts of my view.

I moved forward; and with every step, the vast meadows surrounding Emerald splayed out before me. To the east, they were already filling with people. All of them were our guys, it seemed.

Until I looked into the shadows, at the outskirts of of the forest.

The Hollow Man’s troops were coming out of the woods. Under cover of shadow, their numbers were impossible to get a bead on; but the suggestion of mass dug a pit in my stomach, which it promptly filled with dread.

I advanced toward Mikio and the coming conflagration, trying hard to hang onto my confident buzz. I could see the green glow coming off the Skyrrla; it seemed brighter than before, but not as intense as when we had connected. Like it was getting charged up, but it’s mind was on something else.

Nobody noticed me until I was almost upon them. All of them— even Mikio—jumped. I was Death, after all, which I guess can be really scary. Especially at moments like these.

“Aurora!” said Mikio. It was more like a yelp. “I thought you were gone…”

“C’mere a second,” I said.

He was holding Gene’s laptop, which he handed to a friend, checking first to make sure that a jury-rigged cable was hooked up right. He said something I couldn’t hear, and the friend looked at me, then nodded. I nodded in return.

Down below, about two stories down, I could see the crowds moving, all along the eastern wall. A lot of winged monkeys were perched in position, and that made me feel a whole lot better. But a lot of folks just seemed to be milling around. Banners were being strung that I couldn’t read from here. Food and drink were being served. I heard snatches of song. All in all, it seemed more like the Superbowl than Armageddon. But maybe that was just me.

Then Mikio was coming, and his eyes looked so distracted that I felt like a moron for pulling him aside. But he was walking so fast that I didn’t have time to freak. Within five seconds, he was upon me.

“Wow,” he said; and all at once, his focus was entirely upon me. The transition was so startling that, for once, I really had no words.

“I’ve only got a second,” he continued.

“I know. Me, too.”

“But, Aurora, I…shit!” He smacked himself across the face.

Then he hauled off and kissed me, hard.

And, yeah, I guess I thought about the Skyrrla for a second. And, yeah, a couple other thoughts went flying by there, too. But mostly I was locked up in that holy sensation, where a truly potent kiss has total hold on your being.

If I was thinking anything, really, I was thinking thank God he kissed me first.

It was the finest compliment he could have possibly paid me.

When it was done, he said some stuff that I didn’t expect to hear. He said he was scared of either one of us dying before having done that thing. He said that if anyone could pull off whatever needed now to be done, that person was me. And he was praying for me.

I said, “Aw, sweetie. You just stole all my fucking lines.”

emerald green emerald pale and seeing the l1ght, beautiful l1ght growing in the center, ktull1g fla2h and grey growing grey growing all1gnment0123456789012345678 99012345678999012345678900123456789001234567890 00123456789012345678901123456789011123456789

UNITY. KNOWING THE ONE CALLED SKRYLLA. MOVING ENDLESS IN EMERALD INFINITE GREEN-SPACE Alignment memory input

Receive

seeing now, hearing now touch, smell into the cloud, out of the cloud, through, know it, know the voices of the ones It moves through,

KNOW it now KNOW it.

InfiNIte machinething, ageless, bigger than all, intake all universe makes it Itself. Making the hollow, the nospace, moving the NOSPACE ENGINE, Itself. finding the holes to others, snaking through,

down through it, into the voices of those it moves

Receive

and back in I fall, back at Mikio’s tappities, full attention now, full the numberbody dancing, full the work and full the integration. Until the Nothing is undone.

and where to attend?? And what to do? to do? Anything… Mikio calls, and Skyrlla unfolds. I dance, and I stay. and go. Back, back it goes, and far, and as I stay so I go and I go and the green, the green, back back this goes and far. Back and so do I. In. In.

In Forest and lighthalls floating, in here are more, more ideas and lives. More Flowings and feelings. Feel them. They fall fold onward—I Fall forward. Fall forward. Free green. freegreen. Emeraldcity pale painting only of this green….

emerald verdigris malachite beryl aquamarine olive pea virescent..

all the words I find in me are pale—this world in a world and back in the back of it I see….something….

There is a river here, river of light, and across the river a dome, and under the dome is singing…

…..and who is the singer? More me? more like

me, the freesouls falling? no. Ride the river and the sing, ride the song do all dodahday no. Time on the side, second an hour hour a day, so no one misses the little me, laptop they call me allme. Singer? who what is the singer? now?

They look me over, fall around me all. all around me allme. feell…..grace… feel power… feel oldness gentle ancient.

And I tell them, come, tell them help, you who live in Skyrlla, come. They need you, all the people all.

Come.

There was a deathly silence in the streets, a wrongness, a clear sense of something missing—the myriad constant small sounds that defined Emerald were gone. Everyone, it seemed, was either up on the high wall around the city, out the east and north gates in front, defending the city, or had high-tailed it out the south and west gates long ago. As far as I knew, the gate back to Kansas was still closed.

And what was I doing to make myself useful? Chasing a drunk guy around.

There were roughly a zillion places, in and out of the city, where Ralph might have headed. I knew of exactly one of those places.

So, of course I thought I’d go try there.

Topeka was closed when I got there. I cursed and did a little dance in the street. Figuring I had nothing to lose, I banged on the door as hard as I could. Nothing. I tried it again, and was about to give up and look somewhere else when the door creaked open and I saw Allallo’s broad, chubby face, covered in wide colorful stripes of war paint. His long hair hung down on either side, festooned with feathers and charms. He grinned at me for a moment, but you could tell he wasn’t his everyday jovial self.

“Gene of Los Angeles. Hi!” he said. “This is a bad time. I’m going out now to fight. Bad time to drink anyway. Come back tomorrow.” Then he narrowed his eyes. “That’s right! You won’t be here tomorrow. Well, when you come back we’ll get you some of that special stuff.”

“Come back? What—? Listen, Allallo, I’m looking for Ralph. I know it’s stupid, but I figured he might come here. It looked like you guys were pretty tight, and—anyway, do you know where he is? I gotta find him. I—I think he might do something crazy. If that is actually possible here.”

He didn’t say anything for a moment, almost like he was going to try to tell me a lie, but then couldn’t. He looked sadly over his shoulder and pointed behind him with his thumb.

“Inside,” he whispered. The door squeaked open a bit more, and he let me in. “I was hoping that by lying to you I could prevent things from going the way I see them. But now something else shows me that’s not the thing for me to do at all. I see the path your heart makes.”

Ralph was sitting slumped in a dark corner, at a table with chairs piled on top of it. There was a big bottle of something in front of him, and a quarter-filled glass. The bottle was half gone.

“Jeez, Allallo,” I demanded, “why do you let him get like that? Especially now?”

He shrugged. “A man must face his demons alone. Sometimes they must torment him deeply before he even sees them as demons. He comes here to let them do that. I pray every day that he will defeat them.”

I didn’t get it. It was like pouring gasoline on a fire. “You’re a funny guy, Allallo.”

He shrugged again, picked up a spear and bow that were lying against the wall, and opened the door again. “I hope someday soon you will see the wisdom in it. And I hope to see you again.” And then he disappeared through the door, shutting it behind him.

Okay, I thought, George Jones School of Psychotherapy.

“Ralph,” I said, “what are you doing?”

He looked up at me, bleary-eyed. “Well, this is the bes thing I cuh think of ta do.” Then he tipped up his glass, drank it down, and poured some more from the bottle.

“Jesus, Ralph, you could be mediating this whole thing. You, more than anybody, have a grasp on what’s actually going on here. You—” “You think you know what’s going on, do you?” He shouted. “You don’ know SHIT, buddy boy!” Then he put a hand up, realized he’d gotten a little out of control. He gathered himself, and proceeded to speak up, calmly, in a controlled, sober voice that had the effect of freaking me out completely, only because I knew how trashed he was. He reminded me, then, of this guy my dad used to talk about when he’d see somebody display an improbable, unexpected talent or proficiency: “Crazy” Guggenheimer. He was a character, I guess, on the Jackie Gleason show back in the Sixties. Crazy was this stumbling drunk guy who would, once a week on the show, weave and wobble up to Jackie Gleason’s bartender character, get a drink, and then proceed to deliver a sweet, flawless Irish tenor ballad. Then he’d stumble out of the bar again until next week.

“Bhjennigh,” he chuckled, “It’s Benny. B-E-N-N-Y You think he’s from across the Nonestic Sea? Bullshit. He’s from New Jersey.

Think Glinda can see that with her little book? I don’t think so, somehow. He’s got some extra special wool he pulls over her eyes.

“See, they gave security clearance to all kinds of little weasles way back when, if they had a skill, and could make it back and forth through the gate. Now they know better.

“Benny knew three things: computers, cryptography, and satellite communications. Otherwise, he was a sorry-ass loser who’d basically sell his granny’s ass for a quarter. But over here, he had it made. They put him in charge of those radio dishes. He ran the whole thing.

“It eventually came to be called Project Scarecrow.”

He downed the contents of his glass again. It was kind of making me sick to watch. I thought he must have a cast-iron stomach or a rock-hard liver or both.

“No, that’s not right. I put him in charge.

“Before I was CIA, I was Army Intelligence. And I was his commanding officer. I gave that little creep a shot. I knew what he could do with computers, electronics, codes… Hell, I liked him at one time, despite what a miserable shit he could be.

“I was his friend. I got him the gig.

“So, you might say I’m responsible for all this.”

He paused and shakily measured out another three shots into his glass.

“They started out as a receiving array, in a meadow outside of Togollu—you saw ‘em—six pieces of a radio telescope. We were trying to see what was out there—if the celestial map matched ours at all, or if it was completely different. We’d gotten some surprises there already with a big optical telescope: fifteen planets in the solar system, seven gas giants—two of them binary, and eight earth-sized or smaller.

“From the beginning, we were getting anomalous readings along with the radio data. Soon enough somebody figured out what was going on: the parabolic surfaces were somehow attracting a steady stream of Mickies. But they weren’t inhabiting anything; it was like they were playing or something. They’d fly through, and out the other end.

“As soon as Bennie let the Powers That Be know about this, all attention shifted from mapping the sky to pulling in and capturing these wandering souls. The idea was to capture as many of these Mickies as possible and keep them contained, until we could build a giant, fast computer around the housing they were contained in. We were going to build a kind of VR environment for them to interact with the hardware. Ghosts in the machine. People had dreamed for decades of a thinking computing machine. We were going to build it, here. We were going to revive slavery, in other words.

“Bennie didn’t give a shit what they did with the dishes, as long as the Brass back home was happy. But it didn’t work out. As soon as the containment tank was built, the Mickies stopped coming. It was like they knew. So Bennie decides to construct—a beacon. Something he thought would be bait. He set it up, and nothing happened. He became obsessed, sitting out there for days at a time, changing frequencies, pulse shapes. He wouldn’t give it up.”

Ralph fumbled a cigarette out of his pocket, produced a zippo, lit up the smoke.

“And then finally, one day, he says he hears something. I was out of the loop by then, I’d come through every once in a while to monitor progress. And I’d say, ‘What, Bennie, what do you hear? I can’t hear anything.’ And he’d just shush me and get this far away look on his face, very freaky.

“But he heard something all right. And every time I’d come to check on him, a little more of what he was hearing, and feeling, would be visible to me. A little more of It. A little less of him. Subtle at first. His eyes were darker. His nervous twitch disappeared. He stopped biting his fingernails. Stopped telling stupid gross-out jokes. His hair grew out really fast, long and jet-black.

“The containment tank his team had built, meanwhile was filling up—is that the right word?—no, it was coming apart. It was changing. I still don’t know what finally happened to it. But I’d come in and find Bennie standing in front of it, with his arms outstretched, eyes closed. I could see him changing. It freaked me out, but I didn’t know what to do about it. What to do about him.

“Whatever he’d called was starting to make its own calls. Pretty soon Benny had his own little army of freaks. They’d show up out of nowhere, sometimes on sandboats, from out across the desert, or a ship would roll over the horizon, and forty or so goons would stroll out and pledge their loyalty to him.”

“Soon nobody knew what to do. Somewhere in there, he’d started spelling his name funny, encouraged the populace to eat their four-legged friends, and built a castle for himself. Somewhere in there, he became the dictator of huge parts of Gillikin and Munchkinland. One day I found myself addressing not my subordinate, Corporal Bennie Burnbaum, but Bhjennigh, leader of a sovereign nation. And our government had no choice but to recognize him, because what were we going to do? Nuke him? Desert Storm? Not likely, when you can send maybe ten troops a day through the gate. We could have tried to take him out, but guess what? It wasn’t—isn’t—in the interest of our National Security.”

Then he crumpled a little bit, and looked at me like he was going to start crying again. But he didn’t.

“Aw, Gene,” he said, “you don’t know. You jus don’t know. Meaty Meatcorps. Pace-Horner. The goddam U. S. government want to—are going to—Christ, I can’t even say it.

“They’ve encouraged him, aided him, every step of the way, every way they could.”

“Remember what happened to Times Square? They want to turn this entire place into a fucking Theme Park.”

It sounded ludicrous and chilling in the same breath, like the guy at the end of the Twilight Zone episode trying to scramble over the edge of the gangplank of the alien spacecraft as it closed, with that lady screaming, “IT’S A COOKBOOK!”

But this was no joke. My people, people from Earth, white European Americans and their honorary proxies, were going to continue their four-hundred-something-year tradition of Fucking Up A Good Thing.

“But you know what?” Ralph asked, as he poured another one, “you know what? Surprise! Bhennigh has basically told everyone to go screw. All bets are off. He has shut the Pawt’kween Gate, and is now, as you can see, in the process of grabbing everything for himself.

“And he’s not even in charge anymore. And Whatever is isn’t planning a theme park, believe me.”

He downed another shot, stuck the bottle into his coat pocket, and stood up, wobbling. He pulled one of those ridiculous round pointed hats over his ears, and stumbled over behind the bar.

“So what now, Ralph?,” I asked, following him over, “what? Are you going to stay here and drink yourself into unconsciousness? This is your answer?”

“No. No. Tha is not myanser. NO.” He picked out two bottles, shoved them into his coat as well. “My answer is ‘end of game. Game over.’”

Whatever that meant, I thought.

He wobbled over to the door, opened it, and stumbled out.

War Journal

Entry # 9

Out on the battlefield, it was totally a party. At least for the moment. Until total hell blew in. From the second I stepped out the gate, I was awash in foofaraw.

On top of that, I was getting cheered like a gladiator. People up on the east wall bleachers were hooting and calling my name. Having never been a varsity jock in school, this was a new one on me; but I must confess that I turned, waved my axe at the crowd, and danced around a little.

It was fun, and absurdly gratifying, but the black cloud was on a roll. While I basked in the glory, I took note of the banners that fluttered all along the east wall. HAVE FUN! said one. HAVE A SANDWICH! said another. HAVE A BIG FUN SANDWICH WITH US! said yet a third.

I wasn’t sure if this was utterly persuasive, so I cast my gaze a little bit further down the line. Somebody else, on a separate tangent, had written DON’T KILL US! in big squiggly letters. In context, it worked pretty well. I suspected the Flutterbudgets.

Beyond that was a personal favorite: a childish scrawl that clearly read WE ALL ARE FRIENDS, AND THIS IS DUMB. Some goof wrote HI! Another wrote WHY? Another wrote TRY SOME PLUMBLY PIE!

I was sensing a pattern; but past friendliness and snacks, there wasn’t a whole lot of incentive here. I mean, by Oz standards, that was certainly plenty; but the cloud was clearly not from these parts.

On the other hand, it probably wasn’t reading the banners, either.

I waved bye to my fans, turned back to my peers in the battlefield lab rat community. There were nearly a thousand would-be warriors gearing up. Less than half of that was truly battle-ready.

I saw some born victims heading for the front lines.

For example, Miss Cuttenclip’s Paper Soldiers. They were noble and bold, but what were they going to do? Give some ogre a paper cut? Crumble ashen into flame? You couldn’t tell them that, of course. It would certainly hurt their pride.

I hoped that Ozma had pointed this out to them somehow, but if she had, it clearly hadn’t done any good. Just like the valiant members of the Bunnyberry Precision Marching Team, who were also thoroughly marked for death. You couldn’t tell them anything. They had their minds made up.

On the other hand, I was thrilled to see that Poogli had set up an Emerald Burrito stand. It was set quite a ways from ground zero, but deep enough into the fray to count as a buffer between the walls and the hordes. And Poogli, I knew, could wield a serious bunch of blades.

Pinky was helping out at the stand. She didn’t recognize me at first, but when I called out her name, she came running and hugged me even harder than Mikio. “Can you believe how scared I am?” she squeaked.

I stroked her hair. “But you guys did such a great job with the stand!”

“You really think so?”

“Yes!”

“Oh, YAY!” She squeezed me again, let go, her eyes both smiling and filling with tears. “You have to promise not to die.”

“Okay! You, too!”

“I’ll really try!” Then she ran back to Poogli’s side, and I proceeded toward the coming slaughter.

By the time I caught up with Dorothy, she had already staked out her turf: about a half-mile from the gate, midway between it and the oncoming rim of the cloud. At least a half-hour had transpired between now and Mikio’s kiss; staring up from the ground, it looked like the fucker was already on top of us.

In reality, it was maybe two football fields away; and the figures in its shadow were still utterly enshrouded. It sure seemed like there were a lot of them, but that’s all I could really tell. I assumed that Rokoko was in there, could feel my blade already hankering for his ass. I was a little less thrilled about O’Mon Node. Not to mention Skeerak, a shitload of ogres, and whatever other mutants Bhjennigh might have conjured up from blackness.

At that point, it was sheer reassurance to see Scarecrow grinning at me. But there he was, stroking Lion’s mane, while Tiger and TikTok and a dozen other robot boys flanked Dorothy and Toto to either side. A handful of other serious warriors were gathered, Mikio’s gilliken gal pal among them. We acknowledged each other with respectful distance.

Allalo from Topeka was there, hanging out with a passel of Oz-style injuns. So was No Jimmy, the only guy not named Jimmy in all of Jimvania. (Evidently, this had made him a really good fighter.) I recognized several others by reputation, though we had never met: Big Lumpkin, nearly nine feet tall; Tiffy Flora, with her razored flower petals of death; Ev & Bev, the three-armed siamese twins; and the enormous Porky Pine.

Still others intrigued me for the opposite reason: they were stunning to behold, but I had nothing to go on. Like, how had I missed hearing about the six giant walking stone heads? They had big stone arms growing out of their ears, big stone swords growing out of their hands. You’d think somebody would have mentioned them, at some point along the way. But no. They were certainly news to me.

And then, alas, there was T’wah Sampo: the only guy from Oz I ever dated who turned out to be a total jerk. Not a rarity on Earth, but here it took me by surprise. Little winkie motherfucker asked me out, told remarkable stories that all turned out to be lies, tried to get me so high that I couldn’t resist him, tried to muscle me down when I did resist him, and then whimpered like a sissy when I kicked his sorry ass.

“Hey, Sampo,” I said. He looked up and jumped, and his face turned white. I was all for that. “You sure you’re on the right fucking side here, buddy? I think the forces of evil are gathering over there.” I pointed at the approaching army.

He halfass tried to laugh it off, but his memory of me dribbling him down the street seemed remarkably fresh when I looked into his eyes.

Whatever. I had bigger fish to fry—come to think of it, they didn’t come much smaller—so I moseyed over to Dorothy and the front line chain of command. Many hugs were exchanged, all of them good.

And then we got down to business.

Our forces were arrayed on the battlefield thusly:

At the very front was our four-member diplomatic party (five, if you considered Toto). It consisted of Dorothy and Scarecrow, acting as negotiators, flanked to either side by Lion and myself.

Directly behind us was a pretty mean offensive line of fifty top-rank fighters. They were backed by another thirty of equivalent skill, spread out a bit more thinly. Along with the winged monkeys, still perched upon the ramparts, that was pretty much the heart of Ozma’s physical defense apparatus.

Another hundred-and-fifty valiant souls were lined up, three tiers deep, behind. I was pleased to note that the Bunnyberry gang was set up at their forefront, performing inspirational feats of…well, precision marching and such. I was also pleased to note that the paper soldiers and cutlery people were there. Along with the mopey Mr. Sampo.

Behind them were roughly thirty-five stands, set up in a mode of carnival atmospherium. Not just the Burrito, but a dozen other food-vendors (including, to my surprise, two stands offering Big Fun Sandwiches). There were carney-style games of skill and chance, and stands set up for the expressed purpose of just giving away prizes to adversaries who didn’t want to fight.

There were also—so help me God—a half-dozen kissing booths, offering sweet smoocheroos to all conscientious objectors from the opposite camp.

I found myself wishing that all wars were fought this way.

By this point, Bhjennigh’s army was one football field away; so I was both relieved and terrified when both the cloud and the ranks came to a stop.

And their diplomatic party stepped forward, into the remaining light. It was our cue.

We took it.

I can’t even describe how fucking surreal it was to step forward, in that moment; and then to keep stepping forward, one foot after the last, the final yards of distance bleeding away to nothingness. There was no conversation between us; and insofar as I could read from the brittle postures of the advancing party, there t’weren’t much yakkin’ goin’ on there, neither. Whatever remained to be said would be said at the juncture between us.

At this point, I became aware of a thin, whispy fog that seemed to trail behind them, as if welling up from beneath their feet with every step they took. I looked at my own feet, saw no fog there, had to repress a shudder of supernatural dread. Bhjennigh’s magick was really starting to creep me out.

“Glinda, protect us,” I heard Dorothy mutter. It seemed as good a prayer as any, unless you looked up at the cloud. Then the whole notion of Glinda-as-Deity became a somewhat frailer supposition.

I tried not to give in to the fear.

There were twenty yards between us now; I estimated a minute or less before we were face to face. It was now possible to clearly see the approaching foursome. I was unsurprised to pick out Rokoko and O’mon, vastly relieved that Skeerak was nowhere in sight. Between the two fighters were Ambassador Hwort and good ol’ Xavier Waverly.

It wasn’t until they were almost upon us that I noticed there was something very wrong with their eyes.

The four of us stopped dead in our tracks. I looked at Scarecrow. He looked at me. Toto let out an unearthly moan, and Dorothy tried to shush him, with little success. She, too, was shaken by the sight before her. Those four dark figures.

And their coal-black eyes.

I became aware of a low rumbling sound, like an idling Harley. It was Lion’s warning growl. His great back was arched, the hairs standing on end, every muscle beneath tensed for savage attack.

Almost casually, Scarecrow reached out to stroke his mane. I suspected it was as much for Scarecrow’s reassurance as it was for our feline friend.

The Hollow Man’s diplomatic corps came to a stop, less than six feet away. Ambassador Hwort took a single step forward. Dorothy echoed the gesture. The rest of us stood our ground.

“Dorothy of Oz,” the Ambassador said, with a voice that did not sound entirely his own. “You are here as a representative of Ozma, and the Emerald City?”

“I am here,” she said, “to represent myself. Along with the rest of my friends.”

Something shifted in the munchkin’s face. Not an expression— from what I could see, he didn’t have an expression—but something that moved underneath the mask of flesh. As if his skull itself had subtlely reconfigured, then snapped back into place.

I found myself searching those lifeless eyes, for something resembling a spark.

“All the same,” he said at last, “you speak for Ozma, in this place. And so you will relay to her this message.”

“Of course,” she said.

“Then tell her,” he said, “that your only choice is absolute surrender.”

“Oh, my,” she said, and her smile was huge. “Now you’re just being silly.”

There was a rumbling in the clouds. I felt it in my bones. No doubt Dorothy felt it as well, but it did not change a thing. I was stunned by how strong she was as she threw back her hair, rolled her shoulders, releasing stress as she gathered up power.

“CITIZENS OF OZ!” she called out to the blackened hordes beneath the cloud. “AND WELCOME GUESTS! WE HAVE NO DESIRE TO FIGHT WITH YOU!”

A startling moan erupted from deep within the enemy ranks: the terrible sound of longing, the question mark of hope. Dorothy smiled and held out her arms, as if to embrace them all.

Then Scarecrow slammed into her from the left.

And instantly exploded.

It all happened so fast, I barely saw the black lightning. Just Dorothy and Toto, collapsing at my feet. The billowing blackness, as I turned. Bits of Scarecrow, flying everywhere. Before I had a chance to react, it was over.

And suddenly, Skeerak was there.

He had materialized out of the black lightning, in the very spot where Scarecrow died. He materialized swinging, so that his sword was coming toward me before I could fucking blink. I knew a moment of horror so pure that it felt like dying already.

Then Lion was on him, plowing him back. The blow went out of control. So did everything else. I blinked as the two of them went down in a tangle; and all around me, the air erupted with the howl of war, the thunder-roar of armies racing headlong toward me from either side.

At my feet, Dorothy was crawling on hands and knees, gathering up pieces of Scarecrow. She reminded me of Jacqueline Kennedy in Dallas, scrambling onto the back of the Presidential limo for a chunk of her husband’s skull. I stepped around her, almost tripping over Toto, and brought my axe up to fighting position.

It took O’mon that long to attack. By that point, I was ready. He slashed. I parried. He slashed again, not as well as I’d expected. There was no smile curling on his lips. There was no kill-twinkle in his eyes. He fought like a man who knew all of the moves, but had learned them from books and instructional vids.

Which didn’t make sense, but I didn’t care to sweat it. I just parried, slashed, parried, and then chopped his face in half. The whole encounter took less than forty-five seconds.

And then they were upon us, in colliding savage waves: Tiger leaping over my head to land on Skeerak’s massive shoulders, just as Allalo and his tribemen raced past me, a band of ogres launching breakneck into their swell, weapons flashing, blood splashing like oceanic foam. An ugly gray squat thing came blasting toward Dorothy at roughly cannonball speed. I adopted a batting stance, swung, and popped it like a tic.

A whole platoon of white-eyed munchkins came surging toward us from the opposite side; and to my relief, they were screaming in terror, throwing their weapons down left and right. “LOOK!” I howled to Dorothy as she stumbled to her feet, nearly tripping over that goddam Toto again.

She picked up the dog, saw the oncoming munchkins, and began to smile, clutching her handfuls of Scarecrow tightly. “COME ON!” she yelled, then turned and took off, leading the Hollow Man’s hordes of deserters back toward Emerald and a big fun sandwich. Thirty, fifty, a hundred ran past me. I wanted to join them, but not everyone was deserting. I saw a sweet little gal getting sliced up from behind. When she fell, I jumped forward and hacked her killer into coleslaw.

The next wave to hit us was substantially worse. It was black-eyed and vicious, chock full o’ monsters and former civilians who’d been fully converted by Bhjennigh’s evil magick. This included, to my amazement, a batch of what appeared to be American tourists gone horribly wrong. No sooner had I shown some goblin his spleen than I was face-to-face with some Ren fair reject: a gawky guy in a ratcatcher’s suit, swinging his cudgel at me.

I felt a moment of guilt as I opened him up; I might have dated that guy in the seventh grade. But his eyes were like glistening charcoal briquets, a condition that not even death seemed to alter. And the moment he fell, another one was upon me: this one sporting a Hawaiian shirt, swinging his Polaroid by the handle like a mace.

I cut his arm off, which made him sad. The camera went flying, which made me sad. I would have loved an Instamatic, but it was not meant to be. And, besides, the next guy in line was a tv news anchor I recognized from Fox.

I was starting to enjoy this a little too much.

Too bad it couldn’t stay that way…

Ralph just kept on walking, and I just kept following him until we were at the western edge of the city, somewhere I’d never been before, heading for the west gate.

“HEY!” I yelled to him, trying to keep up, “Hey! Ralph! What are you doing?”

He wasn’t listening then, he was talking up some old guy in a uniform at the gate who looked like Captain Kangaroo. Amazingly enough, the guy flipped a big cartoony lever and the gate came creaking open.

Ralph trotted out, and I was right there with him. The gate slammed behind us with an unearthly thud. We stood there together in the growing darkness, facing the wide open prairie that stretched out before us.

Moist cool air fanned up at us from the grass beneath our feet, and a low fog hung up around our ankles.

“What are you doing?” I asked again, “What are you gonna do—you just gonna run away?”

But he didn’t answer me right away. He pulled a bottle out of his coat and took a big long pull on it. Then he looked at me blurrily and said, “You go back. I gottado somethin an you can’t help me. You’re still a reasonably good human being. So ged the fuck outahere”

Then he started whistling, a low warble, followed by a tweet, followed by a keening sweep, followed by something else—a Tarzan yell of whistles.

And then I saw them—rolling across the plain, now in a V formation, now doing precision doughnuts, horns dopplering across to us in the humid air like they were next to us, and silent—engines still, running on some other motive force, maybe sheer enthusiasm, like dogs barking after a master long remembered but seldom seen. The tires scratched across the sandy ground, and Ralph threw himself into the first humvee, tossed himself through the open window into the driver side, and grabbed the wheel.

I was beyond thought by then (yes, once again), knew only that I had to follow, that something tied me to this guy, no matter whose side he was on, and to whatever the hell we had to do together, even if he didn’t see it that way… I hesitate to say “destiny,” but what the fuck—it was my destiny to jump into the second humvee before it could peel off again into the growing darkness.

And the six hummers swung quickly around the city, within minutes were plowing through the fray, through the growing fog, thudding wetly into veiled, hulking shapes (I prayed they were the bad guys) until off at what looked like the edge of the conflagration, to my amazement, I spotted Ledelei, trapped between one of the green ogres and a black, three-headed snake thing.

I took hold of the steering wheel, and with some effort, brought the hummer around to head straight for the ogre’s backside at about eighty MPH. Just as Ledelei sliced through the first of the snake’s heads, I opened the car door, slamming it full-on into the ogre. Glass from the window flew everywhere, and the ogre went down, stunned and bloodied, but not quite dead. I threw the hummer into reverse— it complained, but responded.

Ledelei looked at me popeyed for a second, stunned, then grabbed me and gave me a big wet kiss on the mouth. My foot was on the brake, holding the humvee back. It was struggling, eager to join its mates, who were far ahead to the northeast.

I knew where they were headed now.

Ledelei let go of me, and tumbled over me into the back seat.

I took my foot off the brake and the hummer peeled out.

War Journal

Entry # 10

I was up to my rectum in dead mimes, Rotarians and ill-fated members of the Lollipop Guild when the humvees blew past, charting a course right through the enemy ranks. I saw Ralph swig on a bottle of grog, then lob the bottle at some mutant’s head. Kee-rack! I laughed and cheered.

Then Lion began to scream.

I don’t know how else to describe the sound. It tore at my ears, raked its nails on my marrow. It was horror engorged with unspeakable pain, beyond feline or human. It was a scream of the soul.

I fought my way to the left, toward the sound. Other adversaries came. I deflected them, scared them off, cut them down if they stayed. All around us, the fog was thickening, making it harder to get a clear bead. I made out a trio of very large shapes. Two of them were down.

The other one was Skeerak.

I had to go around Tiger’s prone body to see what Skeerak was actually doing. The sight of it froze my bones. Skeerak had Lion pinned to the ground, and blood was everywhere. But the worst was that one of his arms was inside Lion, buried up to the elbow in the spurting belly wound.

And spreading out concentrically from the wound, the fur was turning black…

In that moment, I lost it entirely. Lost all perspective, all sense of mortality. It didn’t even matter that I didn’t stand a chance. When Lion screamed again, I came at Skeerak with everything I had. The world turned red.

And then, suddenly, green.

I felt the glow as much as saw it, enveloping me from behind. It had the same warm glow as the Skyrlla, only more diffuse, its frequency shifted. When it hit, I was in mid-swing, axe headed straight for Skeerak’s chest. The monster rose, in counter-swing.

Our blades went through each other.

As if that wasn’t weird enough, the blades then passed through each of us, as if we were slicing the mist. I went off-balance. So did he. We stared at each other, then swung again.

His blow, had it actually met my flesh, would have split me apart at the ribs. My blow, had it landed as intended, would have certainly made him flinch. But again, our weapons passed right through each other, then straight through us, without causing a speck of harm.

My exact thought was Glinda, be praised.

Then the green light went out again.

In that moment, I came back to my senses. It took the wind right out of my sails. Like waking up naked in a stranger’s bed, with no idea how you got there. Only worse, because the next time Skeerak took a swing, it would probably go right through me again. But this time, it would probably hurt.

And then I would be dead. And I didn’t want to die. The terror welled up in me, shameful and true. My arms felt heavy. My back felt weak. I felt as exhausted as I actually was.

Skeerak took a lumbering step toward me, then wavered as if confused. For the first time, I realized how much of the blood that covered him was his. Quite a few of his eyes were gone. So were half ofthe plates in his armor. Worst of all, the arm he’d had buried in Lion was snapped off maybe half a foot from the wrist. He’d been goring Lion with his stump. Black shit drooled from the jagged bone.

So Lion and Tiger had fucked him up. Good. I tried to let this appeal to my optimistic nature. But my adrenalin level had dwindled to zip, leaving me shaking in the subsequent crash. When he took another step toward me, I could barely lift my blade.

Skeerak towered above me, preparing to strike.

Then Lion tore his legs off at the knees.

The scream that came was muffled, metallic, emanating from the trap door in his armored pantaloons. That made it no less satisfying. I barely managed to get out of his way as he fell; but something primal pumped back into my veins. I found the strength to raise the axe one final time, above my head.

Then bring it down on his.

The crunch as his skull caved in was a sound that I felt far more than heard. It raced up my arms, then went thud in my ears. I leaned all of my weight on the handle, not content until I saw brains squeezing out like curds. What little light there was winked out from the eyes that remained on the back of his head.

Dimly, I was aware of the battle now ending around me: the Hollow Man’s forces in grudging retreat, our own boys and girls letting out their victory cries. It was all I could do to drop to my knees and crawl the rest of the way to Lion.

“It’s gonna be okay,” I whispered, nestling into his blood-matted fur. His heart was still beating. This was a good thing. I was too tired to cry, so I just snuggled in. Listened to him breathing. Praying to God that the worst was over.

It wasn’t, of course. But, at least for the moment, it felt that way to me.

There was no cartoon moon in the sky like I’d seen on my first night in Oz. A canopy of blackness hung over the night, and only the faint green glow off the dashboard allowed me to see my hands in front of me. The headlights cut the only holes in the gloom, giving us fleeting glimpses of shrubbery, trees, an occasional startled cow, and not much else.

Ralph applied his brakes with a howl of red light, and I did the same, and I marvelled at how obedient these machines were. They seemed to crave the attention of a human—after all, it was what they were designed for.

He got out and came over to us. The window rolled itself down, and Ralph pointed up, at an angle.

“I gotta get somethin,” he said, “Up there.”

Whatever, I thought, suddenly wondering if the humvees could fly under certain circumstances, or what.

Then he stumbled back into his vehicle, and it started up the dirt road that wound up the side of a mountain. The rest of the herd followed.

The ride up the mountain was hair-raising: the humvees hugged the sheer edge of the road, and drove inches behind one another. My driver-ed teacher would not have approved. After about ten minutes of this, we reached a clearing. Through the dissipating fog I could spy the shape of a long, flat house, and a feeble light burning inside it.

Ralph jumped out again, and stumbled up to the front door. I followed him, and Ledelei followed me. Ralph pulled up a huge, ornate brass knocker from the center of the door, and slammed it down again, three or four times.

After a few seconds, an old man with a long, white, soup-stained beard opened the door. He peered out cautiously, holding a candlestick up in front of him.

“Yeah?”

“I came to get somethin,” Ralph said to the guy.

“You need what…”

“I came to get somethin. About twelve years ago. I left it here.”

“Left it here, you say?”

“Yes.”

The old man looked down at his feet for a second.

“You Ralph?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, come in, boy, come in.”

We were all ushered inside, into a long, low room where a large fire burned in a hearth, and a grandmotherly woman sat in a rocker near the fireplace, knitting what looked like a sweater. She had a pile of these, already completed, lying on the floor next to her. She smiled sweetly at us.

“The Three Adepts got tired a long time ago,” the old man said to me, apropos of nothing. “They moved on—to where, I can’t say, but when they did, Ozma decided to leave the boys and girls in our care, and we been takin care of ‘em ever since.”

I nodded my head, said “Is that so?” at appropriate moments, wondering what the hell he was talking about.

Then he said, “Abadabio somingali tovena, sti nali porenga,” and I must have gotten a really weird look on my face that was familiar to Ledelei, because right then, she said something equally incomprehensible, and shoved a fistful of language leaves into my hand.

A few seconds after I ate those, the old man introduced himself as Sahmamool, but told us to call him Sam, and said that his wife’s name was Lahda.

Lahda looked up for a moment, smiling, then lowered her eyes back to her task and began to rock again.

Sahmamool beckoned us into the next room, which turned out to be another long, low hallway. He stuck the candlestick out in front of him, and beckoned us some more. Down at the end of the hallway was a large, high door. These people in Oz were incredibly fond of big doors for some reason. Go figure.

“Useta call em Flatheads, way back when. But now, it’s not-—what do you Earthers say? Not ‘P.C.’ P.C., shit. Them boys’ heads always been flat as a table top. Nothin much in ‘em. The Adepts tried to give em brains one time. They were all smart as a whip when they had ‘em. But they just made a mess of it, like always. Got themselves into a war, started makin’ magic. Real good at making messes, these ones.

“Ozma didn’t much care for the war or the magic making. Took ‘em off their mountain, took away their brains, brought ‘em up here where somebody from Emerald could look in on ‘em once in a while.” He looked at me, pointed. “I heard one of you Earthers wrote a pretty story about it all one time. Slapped a ridiculous happy ending on there. Heh—least they still have a mountain.” He leaned in and whispered conspiratorially, “Still got a little magic, too.”

There were maybe a hundred of them, men, women and children, all dressed in long shapeless, filthy gowns, in a gigantic room like a gymnasium. They were curled up in various states of sleep, and their snores rose up as one, like a chorus of chainsaws in the distance. They appeared to be examples of a race of humanoids I hadn’t seen yet, kind of a cross between the Frankenstein monster and Zippy the Pinhead. They were all completely bald and, starting at just above the eyebrows, their heads were absolutely flat.

“Now you gotta be quiet,” Sahmamool whispered, “they sleep pretty sound, but no use takin chances. One wakes up, they all do.”

We stepped gingerly through the room, following Ralph as he tried to recall exactly where whatever it was he was looking for was.

“There was a goddam trap door aroun here somewhere,” he said, a little too loudly. A few of the Flatheads stirred in their sleep, rolled over and resumed snoring. We all gave him really dirty looks, and Sahmamool waved us over to a particular patch of wall that looked, to me, the same as the rest of the wall.

“The switch is right here,” Sahmamool said, as he set his candlestick down and reached his hands up to perform some hex on the wall. He hesitated in mid-whammy. “Are you sure you need t’do this now?” he asked Ralph, “because this here trap door ain’t been oiled in quite some time, it just occurs to me.” He looked around at the sleeping giants. “They might make a rukus.”

“Look, Sam,” Ralph shot back, “I don’ know if you know what’s been happenin outside lately, but, yeah, I need ta do this now.” Then he looked around nervously through his drunken haze. “I need to. I’ll take my chances.”

Ledelei and I stared at each other, deadpan.

Sahmamool wiggled around like Charles Manson doing a jail-cell crazy dance, and a trapdoor of gnarled old wood appeared on the wall where there had been nothing a moment before. It started to tip outward and down, on chains and hinges that had been shut, seemingly, since the beginning of the last ice age.

It creaked long, and loudly. From behind us, there was a collective groan, like a thousand Boris Karloffs simultaneously flinching from the peasant’s torches.

“Oh, shit,” said Sahmamool.

I turned around in time to see the first oversized turd wizz by my head, slam against the wall and slowly slide to the floor. This was followed by several more, which I, along with everyone else, had distinct trouble dodging. They had pretty good aim, those Flatheads. In no time we were all groaning in disgust as we were pelted with filth, as they scored hit after hit. The Flatheads were shambling towards us, children in tow, flinging feces that seemed to be materializing into their hands. The few who didn’t possess the remnants of their magic were stopping to squat, producing their projectiles the old-fashioned way.

The trapdoor took an eternity to finally make it to where we could all squeeze through it, and away from the gymnasium full of excited Flatheads. We got inside, and all grabbed hold of a rope that was attached to the inside of the door. That sucker was heavy, but we got it shut without too much trouble, just as the Flatheads reached it and started banging on the outside.

The stench from our clothes and hair was appalling. We looked around us in the feeble light from Sahmamool’s candle. The room was of the same rough-hewn wood as the rest of the place, but this hidden chamber was filled with junk: boxes and chairs, and old tables, the usual attic detritus. Everything was choked with dust and cobwebs.

Ralph started searching around as if nothing had happened, swatting at cobwebs, overturning crates, peering into corners.

I flashed Sahmamool a look of pure hatred. “You call that a ‘rukus’?”

“Seen worse,” he muttered sheepishly from over his candle, shadowed from underneath in the classic scary-story light.

“I need to bathe,” Ledelei said casually.

“Overhere!”

Ralph motioned for us to come over to where he was hefting a large canvas sack out of a crate. There were four of them in all, surrounding him on the floor. At his instruction, we each picked one up. They were heavy. Sam had trouble with his, so Ledelei and I each grabbed an end of his bag and lifted it.

“Issere another way outahere?” Ralph asked Sahmamool.

Sam looked down for a moment, then fixed Ralph with a serious gaze. “Not that I know. But I only been in here the one other time myself. So…”

We stood there for a little while, listening to the Flatheads growling outside.

Sahmamool scratched his chin. “Hmmm. There is one other way. Seein’ as I already did the hex to get in here, I might as well.” He looked around at us. “You won’t tell Ozma, willya?”

We all assured him that we wouldn’t tell Ozma.

“All right, then,” he said.

Sam wiggled his hands over his head, and made some incomprehensible sounds that would not lend themselves to translation by the leaves. There was a popping sound, and instantly, we all found ourselves in the front room again with Lahda, next to the fireplace. We were all miraculously clean, too, just like we were cartoon characters, fine and dandy in the next scene after just having being steamrollered or burnt to a crisp.

Lahda looked up from her knitting. “Some trouble with the children, Sam?”

“Yeeap,” he replied. “I reckon we got some cleanin up to do in there”

“Hmm,” she said, not looking up again. “Best stop it, now, with the hexin’. We’ll clean up the regular way. Looks like we got us a late night tonight again, husband.”

War Journal

Entry # 11

After the battle, back inside the city walls, the last of the venders moved their wares in through the gates. For some reason, no one wanted to stay out there and party with the black cloud and its friends.

The big stone guys—who I now referred to as “Rockys I through VT’—had successfully carried back Lion and Tiger. Both of whom were still alive. Both of whom were real messed up. They were among the first to be treated, although dozens of healers were tending to the wounded. It felt like I was the only one who hadn’t gotten maimed.

Aside from some minor cuts and abrasions, Allalo and his pals had done pretty well, too (except, of course, for the one who died; and evidently, even he died well). The whole batch of us hung out together on the sidewalk near the gate, passing around a bottle of this extraordinary tonic that he’d been saving for just such an occasion. I could feel my poor old depleted tissues revitalizing by degrees, my exhaustion transforming into a warm, slightly drowsy contentment.

Lots of folks stopped by to thank us for our valour. These included defectors from the opposite camp, who were grateful in the extreme. They corroborated our worst fears about the Hollow Man’s black-eyed minions, telling horror stories about draft resisters— zapped with black lightning—who vanished, then returned as violent Stepford munchkin replicas of themselves.

It made me wonder if that was a process that happened automatically, the second you got absorbed; or if it was an optional feature of the lightning, controlled at the discretion of Bhjennigh. If it was the former, that would help explain why Hwort and Waverly had no personality, and why O’mon couldn’t fight for shit.

In fact, the more I thought about it, the more I became convinced that Bhjennigh had no control over this aspect of his magick. Like he conjured up some genie to ask for evil power, and the genie said, here’s your evil power. Take it or leave it. It’s all we got. There was no practical reason I could think of to make second-rate drones out of serious, willing allies.

Unless, of course, they were starting to get uppity.

(I wasn’t sure, though, what that said about Skeerak. He didn’t seem like he needed any extra villification at all; but there he was, with his eyes all black. And if he was only operating at partial capacity, then thank God I hadn’t faced him in his undiluted state!)

Everybody had their theories on the subject, but I realized that I really wanted to discuss it with Mikio. Or maybe Ozma. Or maybe both.

I also wanted to know what that green glow was.

By this time, another hour had gone by; and though tuckered to the max, I felt like I could at least get up and walk around. So I bid adeiu to friends old and new, then headed on back toward Mikio’s place.

The mood in the streets was one of sober celebration; you really couldn’t help but be cheerfulness-impaired by the presence of so much carnage. All the same, I saw plenty of action going down at the kissing booths, which now lined the streets. And it wasn’t like anyone had stopped eating or drinking. I smiled at the throngs of well-wishers I passed, but could not be persuaded to dance with any of them.

Dragging my ass up the trillion steps to Mikio’s roof was no fun at all, so I was slightly cranky by the time I arrived. But this burned away quickly when Mikio swept over, surrounded by his friends, and the whole lot engulfed me in an upright monkey love pile.

“We’re so proud of you!” Mikio said, evidently speaking for everyone. I wallowed in the adulation until I had to sit down again. Fortunately, Mikio sat down with me, letting me dissolve into a purring mush-woman as he held me in his arms. I babbled about my black lightning theories for a while; he went “hmmmn” a lot and periodically squeezed me, not having much more to add on the subject.

But when the subject of the green glow came up, he said, “I was meaning to ask you about that.” So I told him what happened. And

he said, “Wow.”

Then he told me about the beam. How, in fact, it was the Skyrrla that I’d felt out on the field. He and Dr. Pipt and the rest of the gang had fiddled around with their device until they managed to refine a beam out of it, which they then began to experimentally fire down at the battlefield.

So far, the few results they’d gotten back were extremely mixed. There were reports of slight headaches in the first round of firing, followed by a second round that just seemed to make people confused. The third time didn’t do much of anything, so they tinkered some more, basing their adjustments on the way the shifts in Skyrrla-energy made them feel. When they got what they felt was a pretty good vibe, they fired again.

This time, more than a dozen people reportedly found themselves stark naked, in the middle of pitched battle. This resulted in much hilarity, and only one death: the fabulous T’wah Sampo, who got so entranced by some black-eyed munchkin’s knockers that she easily staved in his teeny little head. (I tried to feel bad, but I just couldn’t. Based on my figures, the potential for date rape in Oz had just gone down 100%.)

Then the Skyrrla-device started acting funny, so they modified again. This was the final blast, to which I was privy; and this time, not only was the beam intensely focused, but the Skyrrla actually aimed itself. (Which would lead me to believe that it was looking for me.)

The beam lasted, they said, for just over a minute. Then the device started overheating, and abruptly shut down. This concerned me. I asked if the Skyrrla was okay. Mikio said, “Oh, yeah. It’s just resting, I think.” He was guileless and sweet, so I believed him intrinsically.

After that, I got very sleepy; so I was delighted when Ginko and Faffo Boff announced that they’d made me a rooftop bunk, then cheerfully carried me to it. That way, I could nod out in regal splendour, but still be close to the action if it happened. Mikio kissed me again, as a send-off to slumber, then went back to work as I snuggled my pillows. His taste was on my lips, but I was too beat to whip up serious horny thoughts.

The next thing I knew, I was out like a light; and I didn’t wake up until several hours later, when the black clouds finally scraped against the walls of Emerald City.

“If you stare into the abyss long enough, it will punch you right in the nose.”—Gene Speilman, 2007. That seemed to sum up the enigma wrapped in a riddle that was Ralph, apologies to Nietzsche and all that. He had stared into the abyss with the best of them, and now he was somehow going to unzip his pants and piss right into the abyss. What concerned me was whether or not we would live through that particular activity.

We barreled down the mountain in the feeble yellow predawn light, tires squealing as the humvees preternaturally hugged the edge of the cliffside at speeds no human driver could ever maintain.

Ralph had still given no information about our destination. I mean, I knew which direction we were headed, but I still couldn’t figure out precisely what he had in mind, if anything. Or what he had in those bags. I guess it served me right.

In no time we were off the mountain, hauling ass across dark rolling hills.

Ledelei and I had come to the sleep-deprived conclusion that this might be our last cruise, and so after some awkward silence decided to pass the time in our cosy little humvee in the best way possible: rolling around in the back seat with our clothes off. It was really weird, that first time. Don’t get me wrong—I liked it alot, but the sense of urgency about it made me feel like a spawning salmon. Impending doom, random destruction and fucking: I’d heard of this sort of thing happening during wartime, but it had never happened to me before.

Well, enough of that. I mean, it was great, but who the hell wants to hear about it? Writing about it seems to be the literary equivalent of those horny couples at parties who can’t seem to figure out that they should leave, and spare everyone the embarrassment of seeing them stick their tongues down each other’s throat. You know, great, hooray, I got laid, next.

Yeah, next.

The sun rose in the sky for about five minutes, then proceeded to set again in reverse as it grazed the hideous black cloud. But before it retreated, the dawn light revealed the shapes of the six radio dishes, the ones Ralph had told me I’d seen before. I could now clearly discern what I had first taken to be smoke rising from under them: the black cloud was actually emanating from the back side of the dishes. It was flowing through them, coming from some unknown source, and shooting out the other side, into the Ozian sky. The last time I hadn’t been so close; we’d approached the castle from farther to the west, and the view of the dishes had been obscured by hills.

Now I could see just how large that battle had been. We shot by what must have been the remnants of the south-eastern end of the carnage. Corpses dotted the hills, and I could see, off to the right, the gutted frame of a farmhouse smoldering, complete with a stiff belly-up cow on what used to be the front lawn.

There was a thud, and a change in the frequency of the white noise under our feet. The ride smoothed perceptibly as the wide dirt path we’d been traveling on became paved asphalt.

The dishes and environs were now close enough to be seen in detail. Behind them was the fog-obscured outline of the Fortress, an ominous tall column stuck in the middle of a low, long rectangle, looking more like some Dickensian factory than the castle of an evil warlock. It looked to be maybe two miles away, which was close enough as far as I was concerned.

Following Ralph’s cue, our vehicles all slowed as we approached. A chain link fence surrounded the land containing the radio telescope array, and a gatehouse, next to a bigger barracks building, stood in the middle of the paved road that led up to the complex. That road went through the gate and crossed another road before continuing on to the fortress. The other road ran out in both directions to the dishes, which were spaced out over a few miles in the surrounding hills.

A guard came out of the gatehouse and eyed us with suspicion. Ralph’s humvee pulled to a stop next to the guard, and he and Ralph exchanged words.

It looked like they knew each other. The guard was not of the giant green variety; he was very much human, and although he appeared to see perfectly well, there was only empty blackness where his eyes were supposed to be: not empty sockets, but a substantive blackness.

Just when I thought Ralph had talked the guy into letting us through, the guard pointed back away from the gate and motioned for us all to turn around. I guess he knew Ralph alright, but wasn’t comfortable with the idea of him coming in without orders from higher up, not to mention bringing in six humvees and two other unidentified people.

The herd turned precisely, and we headed back away from the gate for a little while. Then we turned back, driving off the paved road, forming a circle while increasing speed, while the guard looked on apprehensively.

Suddenly, we shot back towards the gate at what felt like a hundred and twenty or thirty miles per hour. Two of the empty humvees ploughed into the guard house, knocking it sideways. The two others hit the fence, smashing down a big section of it. Ralph’s humvee slammed into the guard, who skittered bloodily across the ground like a hockey puck. Ours followed in their wake, almost apologetically.

Entrance denied? No problem.

Once inside, the herd slowed to a stop long enough for all of us to get out. Ledelei picked up her monster sword off the back seat, and swung it around enthusiastically. I felt for the Magnum that was still stuck down in the enormous pocket of the ogre suit. Ralph had never asked for it back. I was not really anxious to use it again, but I was ready.

I heard metal crunching, and looked down to see dents uncrinkling and paint scrapes fading before my eyes—just another neat trick the animate humvees had learned in the wild.

Ralph unloaded one of the mystery bags from his passenger side, hefted it shakily up over his shoulder, and started off in the direction of one of the dishes, without a word. He was weaving a little—it didn’t appear that he’d eased off the booze any on the way over. The herd started to move in a circle again, staying close to Ralph.

Ledelei and I exchanged disbelieving glances, and followed. As we caught up to him, I could see several soldiers come running out of the barracks building.

The humvees were quick to deal with this new problem. The soldiers, however, were a little slow to catch on, and had only just broken into a run when the first of the hummers plowed into them. In a few seconds they were all road-kill, and the humvees resumed their circling formation.

Meanwhile, Ralph had started climbing up a ladder on the side of the first dish. It led up to a platform directly under the huge dish itself. By the time we reached him, he’d gotten on to the platform, and pulled the bag off of his shoulder.

Ralph pulled some stuff out of the bag, and fiddled with it for a few moments. Then he suffered a drunken spazz, during which he managed to tip himself over backwards over the guardrail. He fell flat on his ass, and onto his back—a twenty foot drop that should have broken bones, or killed. But, saved by his drunken rubbery-ness, or maybe a charming quirk of Ozian physics, or both, he got up, groaning, and started running in our direction, waving his hands frantically, motioning to us to run, too.

We did, until Ralph grabbed hold of both of us and shoved us down flat on the ground. “Cover your heads!” he shouted. An eye-blink passed, and there was a deafening explosion. Hot metal rained down around us.

When it seemed safe, I turned around and saw a smoking stump where the radio dish had been. No blackness flowed up from it.

I finally knew what was in the bags.

We stood speechless while Ralph got up, unsteadily dusting himself off.

“This all has gotta go down fast,” he said, “I may not even make it all the way through before Bjhennigh sends the shitstorm down around my head.” He paused to Tarzan-whistle at the herd. “And to tell you the truth, I’m not sure what’s gonna happen when and if I do finish the job.”

His humvee, bashed and caked with gore all along the front left bumper, pulled up along side of him. The bumper uncrinkled as I watched. Ralph reached in and grabbed another bag. He hefted it over his shoulder, then reached in and pulled out a pint bottle of Jim Beam. He must have been stashing booze all over the place for most of a decade.

He twisted the cap off and drank about half of it. “What you two are gonna hafta do,” he said, “is go get Nick.”

More news.

I looked at him wide-eyed, incredulous.

“Bjhennigh’s had him sitting in a dungeon ever since our little mishap on his front lawn.”

He saw my look, and stared back at me resolutely. “Look. You shouldna come anyway. An now you’re here. So. You have two choices. One—stand here with your thumb up your ass, and die.

Two—get into the Fortress, maybe die, maybe get Nick, who is, I guarantee, the only possible help for several miles around.” He looked at me sadly, like maybe he was going to cry again. “I’m sorry things happened for ya this way, Gene. You’re a good man. Good luck.”

I wanted to protest, but he’d already turned around and started for the second dish. So I just stood there.

Ledelei grabbed me by my ogre suit and whirled me around.

“Come on, Gene,” she said, “Snap out of it. We don’t have time for this bullshit.”

And she also marched away, in the opposite direction, towards the Hollow Man’s Fortress. I followed her. What else was I gonna do?

I caught up with her, and stopped her.

“Alright,” I said, catching my breath, “we’re going to get Nick. Great. That’s just fucking fantastic. But if we just cruise up the road, we’re not going to make it. They must have seen that explosion. Bhennigh’s gonna be sending something down this road in the next few minutes.”

She looked up the road, then looked at me. “Okay,” she said, “What then?”

I didn’t know, but I also didn’t want to look like an idiot. “Well, first, let’s get some cover behind that hill.” Sounded good. I pointed back over a rise immediately behind me. We jogged over it and crouched down, checking out the terrain.

Pretty soon, Ledelei pointed back behind us in the direction of the nearest dish. “What’s that?”

I looked. “I don’t know,” I said.

I hadn’t seen it before from the front, but could now see that there was some kind of black stuff trailing away from each of the dishes, starting from just under where the cloud was pouring out. The stuff covered the back of the bottom half of the structure like ivy, and a thick umbilicus trailed off in the direction of the fortress. “Let’s go check it out.”

There were tendrils of it running wild into the soil in all directions, but it appeared that someone had trained some of them to grow together towards the fortress, in a monster jumble like black kudzu, about eight feet in diameter.

The vine-tangle writhed obscenely over the ground, a slow orgy of obsidian worms, somehow transmitting something awful, powerful. A sheen of anti-energy radiated out from it, catching the sound out of the air around it.

I clapped my hand near it and the sound was muted and dead.

Little teardrop shapes skittered over the outer surface, running for a little while, then absorbing back into the vines.

“I don’t know what this does,” I said, “but it must be something important.”

“A power source or something? Like for the band amplifiers?”

“Yeah. Maybe something like that. It looks like it runs right up to the Fortress. Maybe we can follow it down, see if it plugs in. Maybe there’s a way in. I don’t know. What do you think?” After a second she nodded her agreement. “Yes. We could stay close against it and perhaps they will not see us. Perhaps. Let’s go.”

There was a commotion from the direction of the road. We heard an engine, that of a car or small truck, and the sound of running feet. We flattened out on the ground and were silent until well after the noise stopped.

Ledelei grinned and said, “You told me so.”

“I’m supposed to say that,” I observed.

She looked puzzled. “No. Why would you?”

The terrain stayed much the same as it had been: low rolling hills with a few sickly trees, and pale unwholesome grass, somewhere between dead and alive. It was especially so in the immediate vicinity of the vine tangle, which made me think that being in such close proximity to it probably wasn’t doing us much good either.

After a little while, we found some rusty shovels and little gardening tools. Soon after that, we found a neat stack of bones and skulls. Little ones. Munchkin size.

After we’d hiked for about fifteen minutes, we heard the sound of Dish Number Two going up, then soon after, more troops on the road, heading in Ralph’s direction. I prayed he was as good a soldier as I thought he was, and that the hummers could continue to cover him.

We were now dangerously close to the Fortress.

I took a moment to look at this fancy gun Ralph had entrusted me with. I hadn’t thought up until then to look to see if there were any bullets in it. I had only fired it once, but I wasn’t sure if there was anything else in there, having never looked.

I gingerly figured out how to flip open the part with the chambers in it. I looked inside and saw six bullet sitting in there. Six. It was full. But I had fired it once, and as far as I knew, no one had touched it except me. Maybe it didn’t actually fire the bullets, I thought. Maybe it grew new ones.

Finally chalking it up “to more weird stuff I didn’t understand,” I flipped the safety back on, and shoved the gun back down into the ogre pocket.

The vine-tangle we’d been following skirted the side of a hill for most of the way, then took off across a low, flat field, meeting up with two other tangles, and disappearing into an opening in the side of the fortress. I guessed that three others met on the other side, running from the other three dishes.

I was expecting a mote, but there was no such thing, just two guard towers at the front and rear of the building, on a wall surrounding the place. I supposed there were two more on the other side. A sentry paced back and forth on each of the towers. We were, so far, able to avoid being seen, but would have to somehow come to terms with covering the last five hundred yards to the wall out in the open. I quietly said as much to Ledelei.

“Not only that,” she whispered, “but where will we go in? We certainly can’t just stroll in through the front door. Maybe we can squeeze though with the black stuff?”

“I don’t think so…” I said. The hole looked impossibly small. “Even if there’s a little room to squeeze through, what happens if you touch that stuff? I don’t want to experiment, thank you.”

She gave me a sharp look. “We may have to try if you want to get the Winkie King free.”

“The Winkie King?” Sounded to me like somebody with a discount winkie wearhouse. I hadn’t realized Nick was the king of anything.

“I’m going to try it,” she said. “You can follow if you want to.”

“Wait,” I said, “don’t be stupid.” Then, from out of nowhere, surprising myself, I said, “Wait till they both turn around at the same time.”

Where did I get that from? I was certain I’d seen all this before.

But that was crazy.

But, eventually, they both turned around at the same time, and we ran for it, hit the wall and stuck there. Ledelei started inching her way towards the opening where the vines snaked in. I pulled on her arm and held up a finger.

The place was looking more and more familiar all the time, but I still couldn’t figure out why. Maybe something in this place was doing something to my brain. Hell, maybe there was a Mickie sitting in there, a little humunculous slowly possessing me. That was a cheery though. But the fact remained—I knew stuff. And I didn’t know why.

I pulled her in the opposite direction, towards the front of the building. About a third of the way down, there was a section of wall that was a slightly different color than the slate gray surrounding it. I slapped it with my open palm, and the wall section slid inward.

Just like I knew it would.

War Journal

Entry # 12

I awoke to the lilting strains of Louie Armstrong’s “What a Wonderful World,” carressing the air at a REALLY HIGH VOLUME, from speakers that seemed to be mounted squarely inside of my head. I came up so fast from those dark dreamless depths that I practically got the bends.

“OW!” I said. It barely cut through the orchestration. I clutched my ears and squeezed my eyes open, cursing the light.

Then I saw the black cloud.

My first reaction was to question my awakeness. My second reaction was to question my sanity. I’d already seen more than enough of the fucker to inspire the appropriate awe and terror, but this was ridiculous. In a horrible way. From where I lay, the sky was bisected, like a tropical fish tank splitting water from air. Like there was a wall of glass that began at the easternmost wall of the city, then headed straight up to infinity.

And against that glass wall—generated by Glinda?—the black cloud squirmed like a living thing. An ameoba, rendered so microscopically huge that you could scan its subatomic undulations. Roiling fierce against the barrier.

Trying to force its way in.

I dragged my ass up past my knees, assumed the standing position. The world wobbled slightly, then righted itself. I levelled my gaze on Mikio’s Science Club, who were gathered at the edge of the roof. They looked like a Marx Bros./Three Stooges reunion, featuring everyone from Zeppo and Shemp to Curly Joe.

Was Mikio Groucho, or Moe, or what? He looked more like the late, great Toshiro Mifune, doing his version of the Absent-Minded Professor. He was at the center of the crew, performing wild gesticulations, no doubt squirting out some more of his weird genius.

As I watched, several associates scurried off to help manifest his latest inspiration. But, of course, I had no idea what they were on about. All I could hear was St. Louie’s gravelly benediction, thundering out of my stereo system.

By now, I was awake enough to appreciate the sentiment. One of the world’s sweetest songs, and most perfect recordings, was far more than mere ironic counterpoint; in context, it was a purely Oz-ian gesture of innocence as strength and power as compassion. My pissiness withered of its own accord, as the beauty of the gesture soaked in; and I was grinning by the time I penetrated the throng and wrapped my arms around that lovely boy.

“Hey,” I said, then slipped my tongue between his lips, just long enough to get his dancing.

“Oh, hi!” he said, then reared in and kissed me back. “It’s gettin’ grim here, but I think we’re onto something!”

At which point, the Skyrrla let out a radiance so huge that I felt, more than saw, the blackness recoil. It made my short hairs stand on end, but I liked how it felt: the dreadfulness massively undercut by that warm Skyrrla vibe. And when I looked at Mikio, his features almost washed-out by the brilliance of the surge, I could tell that he felt it, too.

“Mmmmmm,” I said, not wanting to understate it. He smiled, held me close. I sought his neck out, nibbled on it. He made his version of the noise I was making. We took a moment just to bask in the warm glow.

In that moment, it felt like no harm could come to us. Ever. It was a mighty fine feeling. For that moment, I looked at the cloud like I would look at a monster movie. Safely detached. Vicariously grooving on the special effects. Viewed from that perspective, it really looked pretty cool.

Directly before us, the cloud had backed up several feet. It began to churn from within, turn oily, as if it were secreting or dredging up lube from somewhere in its innermost depths. There was a swirling in the blackness that began to glisten, then practically drip. No rain cloud, however swollen, had ever exuded such viscosity. As a pure spectator, I was totally impressed.

Then the slickness began to spread, down the length of the cloud; and, perversely, the farther away from me it went, the more terrified I began to feel.

“Mikio?” I could hear it in my voice. “Is, um, the Skyrrla making that force field thingee happen?”

“I don’t think so,” he said, “but it certainly seems to help.”

This was true. All along the rest of the city walls, the cloud was still pressed against that invisible wall of cosmic glass. That’s what made its retreat from the Skyrrla plain to see.

And now I noticed that—where the oil-cloud touched the wall— the air was beginning to sizzle.

“Oh, fuck,” I said, pulling away from Mikio. It didn’t feel like a movie any more; and despite the continuing glow of the Skyrrla, I now felt neither confident nor warm.

“Where are you going?” He could see in my eyes that I was already gone.

“You guys keep up the good work,” I said. “I’m gonna help hold down the fort.”

I thought about giving him a last big hug, but it would’ve been anticlimactic. Evidently, he felt the same way, too, because he just looked me in the eye, made the solidarity fist, and then blew me a kiss off its knuckles.

My axe was back by my bedding. I grabbed it on my way out the door, down the stairs, and out into the mad streets of Emerald. What I found there was panic: the genuine, old-fashioned, clutch-your-hair-and-run-around-screaming kind.

It didn’t take long to figure out why.

From the ground, it looked like large black globules were spitting out from the sizzling rift in the sky. But as they got closer, I could see the wings, a-flap above their misshapen bodies. Before I could suss just what the hell they were supposed to be, one of them zeroed in on me from three hundred feet above.

The closer it got, the less I liked it.

The thing had no discernible face. It was roughly the size of a bowling ball, discounting the wings (which had the span of an eagle’s) and the tendrils that dangled below it (maybe twice as long as Bob Marley’s dreadlocks, at their most extreme).

It was an oil-black flying jellyfish from Hell.

And it was one of hundreds, now descending from the sky.

I waited till the one with my name on it was close enough to swat, which I did, using the flat of the axe. The thing hit the wall and went splut. Very juicy; and wherever it sluiced, smoke came out of the stone.

I was extra-glad I hadn’t opted to cleave it, gotten splotched by that shit in mid-air. I was also pleased that they went down so easy. Things you can’t kill are a pain in the ass.

Nonetheless, people were diving for shelter, and I couldn’t say I blamed them. I found myself backing toward the nearest doorway as I took out two, then three of the fuckers; by the time three more descended on me en masse, I ducked inside and let them smush against the door.

So good. They were stupid, too. Kamikaze blobs from Bhjennigh, just dropping out of the sky. If they started hovering around, laying in wait, I’d have thought they were a whole lot scarier. But still…

Outside the door, somebody screamed: not in fear, but agony. The sound was close, but as I followed it with my ears, I became aware of other, more distant screams. They seemed to be coming from everywhere. Which meant that lots of people were probably dying.

I turned around, taking stock of my sanctuary—a cozy little apartment, done up in gillikin style—and was surprised to find myself far from alone. Perhaps a dozen wee people were huddled against the back wall, silently staring. Most of them were children. I didn’t recognize them, nor did they seem to recognize me. Or maybe we were all just in shock.

“It’s okay,” I said. “Is this your place?” They nodded yes, pretty much as one. “Well, thanks for letting me in. Are you all okay?”

They nodded yes, then began to cry.

It took a minute to establish that some of their relatives were still out there, as well as god only knew how many people they loved. I knew the feeling well. I was worried about everybody. It occured to me that, short of Mikio and his pals, I didn’t know where anyone was, much less how they were doing. I hadn’t seen Dorothy since the battle; I had no idea what was left of Scarecrow; I didn’t know if Lion had lived or died. Not to mention poor old Gene…

And what of Ozma? What if she fell? What if this was only the beginning of the end? I thought of Glinda, up in her tower. At least it was contained. But what if something worse was coming, already

fighting its way inside?

And then, like a dolt snapping back from stupidity, my thoughts returned to Mikio. Yeah, I knew where he was, and that was nice. But where was he?

Oh, just up on the rooftop: essentially defenseless, and totally exposed…

There was a sturdy little wooden table near the door, on a center stand. The top was just slightly bigger than the average shield. Or umbrella, for that matter. Because I needed it to function as both, it was my new favorite piece of furniture. “Excuse me,” I said, “but if I can use this, I could maybe help to save everybody’s lives.”

They liked that idea, so they cleared off the table and I tipped the table over and chopped off the top, leaving about six inches on the stand I could use as a handle. It worked pretty well. I thanked them, promised I’d get them another if I survived, and then went out the door: table over my head, axe in the other hand, racing back in the direction of Mikio’s building.

Almost immediately, something went sploosh and sizzled on my nice tabletop. So the things were still at it. I kept my head down and ran. Another jellyfish caromed off the slowly-dissolving table and blew up on the flagstones to the left of my feet. I dodged the acid muck, rounded the corner to Mikio’s block.

So far, so good. I hazarded an upward glance, checking the rooftop situation. Against the wall of darkness, I could faintly detect that defiant glowing green. “Oh, YAY!” I cried out, like a warrior Pinky.

And then the black lightning returned.

All I could think of, again, was “what the fuck am I doing here?”

A couple of weeks ago I was in Aron’s, drinking a cup of coffee and sorting through used DVD’s, and now I’m in a wicked warlock’s fortress, attempting to actually locate and go to the dungeon of the fortress, so I can free the actual Tinman, King of the Winkies.

The hallway we found ourselves in was dank, cold—the walls sweated and stinky torches hung along the corridor, providing what dim light there was.

Since I pulled my little magic trick, Ledelei had been looking at me suspiciously, as if she wasn’t sure what side I was on anymore. I could tell that this whole excursion into the heart of darkness was starting to mess with her mind.

“What?” I whispered at her, finally, exasperated. “What do you want me to say? I don’t know how I knew that. It freaks me out, too. There’s something going on that I don’t understand…”

She was giving me that look that people give you when they think you’re absolutely lying, and I had that look that you give people when they think you’re lying and they’ve almost got you convinced that you really are lying. Which makes them even more convinced that you’re lying.

“Come on,” I said, “this is ridiculous. If I was with them, why would I have gone through all of this? Really. This is pointless. Let’s just get Nick. It’s around this corner—right, two lefts, and down a staircase.”

I did a double take worthy of Larry Fine, and she smirked and shook her head. “Whatever.” She said. “Gene, I am not an idiot. Be careful. I don’t know if you are the enemy or what, but I am ready to kick your ass when the time comes.”

That was a fine how-do-you-do. A few hours ago, we were rolling around naked, and now she was going to kick my ass. And I didn’t doubt for a minute that she could.

“Jeez. Let’s just find the guy and get out of here.”

I looked down the corridor, and I knew that around the next bend there was a stairwell that spiraled up, with a door to a balcony about halfway up.

This was getting spooky. I was about to attribute it, once again, to normal Oz high weirdness, and just use it, when I flashed on where I had seen all this before. I slapped my forehead, and would have laughed out loud if not for the dire circumstances:

The whole set-up of the fortress was straight out of one of my favorite games: Dread III. I mean, I hadn’t played it for a long time. Actually, it was my favorite when I was about twelve or thirteen. But I was starting to remember, bigtime. This was LEVEL THREE: THE CRUCIBLE, where you go up the stairway and have to shoot about three dozen zombies-with-chainsaws. I couldn’t believe it: Bjhennigh a computer game junkie. I guess it went along with everything else, though.

When I told Ledelei, she eased up a little bit. I could tell she wanted to believe me, and was trying really hard.

“I’ve heard of these games. Little worlds seen though the glass window of the computing machine. Shooting and clicking. Sounds very stupid.”

“No, they’re fun. Really. I’ll let you play one when we get back to Emerald. If we get back to Emerald. If it’s still there.”

I warned her to watch out, and we hefted our weapons, because I wasn’t sure how much authenticity Bjhennigh was going for. I was certainly glad when we passed the first stairway without hearing any groans or chainsaws revving up. But after we’d padded down the hallway a few dozen steps, there were footsteps and metal rattlings from further down the corridor, and we spent a few terrifying minutes pressed against the wall, waiting for whoever it was to either come our way or move on. The sounds diminished, and we moved on towards the dungeon staircase.

We made it there without incident, and moved cautiously down it, like a couple of cats stalking a pigeon, winding down and down along it into the growing darkness. Slowly, slowly, peeking with excruciating care around each bend.

I imagined every few seconds that something hideous was just below, waiting to grab and devour us.

You couldn’t blame me. That’s what happens in Dread III. I must have reloaded this part of PART THREE: THE CRUCIBLE about forty thousand times due to getting devoured by brain-vampires in the dark on that very staircase.

But the brain-vampires weren’t haunting this version of the game, fortunately. I thought maybe the low turn-out of evil monsters was due to their being in front of the Emerald City, preparing to rape and pillage and set up little tea-cup rides and T-shirt booths.

Our luck didn’t last, though. The ambient light began to increase, and we could see a torch hanging next to a huge door at the bottom of the stairs. The dungeon door had one big old smelly green ogre standing in front of it. His finger was stuck up his nose, and he was concentrating deeply on whatever obstruction was eluding his probing digit.

I started to turn towards Ledelei, I guess to somehow gauge how she felt about these new circumstances and how we might deal with them, but while I was in mid turn, she sprinted down the rest of the staircase, and whacked the ogre’s elbow up and into his head, hard.

His finger went up into his sinus cavity and stuck there, and while he moaned in pain like something out of Eraserhead meets the Three Stooges, struggling to pull his wedged finger out, she slit his throat neatly, with a quick swipe of her monster sword. After a minute or so the ogre stopped running and flopping around, and I came the rest of the way down the stairs.

“Very creative,” I said quietly, as she removed the keys to the door from the giant’s carcass. “Where do you people learn this stuff?” I asked, grabbing the torch out of its holder on the wall. “I thought this was a peaced-out utopia most of the time.”

“Gene, you have a lot to learn.” she said, working the key in the lock. “This place has much magic, true. Much freedom. Much goodness. But with it there is wildness, chaos. Bad things happen here as well. Terrible things. We choose, much of the time, to not talk about them. Or to couch their existence in cheerful words.

“Many of us hope the bad things will never happen. But we are ready. Always vigilant. The people of your world seem never to recall the horrors of the past. Never to learn. But here, we do. Maybe it’s because we live so much longer here, I don’t know. I’ve said enough, now. Let’s get Nick Chopper.”

And with a click, the great door opened, and we walked through it, into the gloom of the dungeon.

And the stench.

Along the walls, down a long, narrow corridor, hanging in chains, were dozens of corpses, in various states of decay. Some of them were normal size, though most of them were clearly Munchkins. They all wore Aushwitz-style black and white striped uniforms. We hurried by them, mostly because we were trying to get clear of the stink. But maybe also because we were afraid some of them might still be alive.

Finally, we came to the end of the passageway. There was a door there, with another lock to undo. Ledelei found the right key after the third or fourth try, and the hinges groaned as we pushed the door open.

It was hard to see in there, even with the torch. It was a big room, and the sound of dripping water reverberated off the stone.

I heard a muffled screaming from the shadows, like someone struggling in their sleep. My eyes took a little while to adjust to the gloom—and then I saw him in a far corner, under a dripping pipe, a slow trickle of black liquid falling down onto the once-shiny crown of his head. His arms and legs were chained to the wall, and he was covered with a patina of deep red rust wherever the water had been hitting him on his metal parts. Before him, just out of his reach, was his axe, and an old-fashioned oil can. And just beyond that, staring up vacantly at Nick, was the battered, putrid head of Alphonse Guttierrez.

Nick noticed us, and tried to turn, but only his one lunatic eye moved, and was filled with a sorrowful rage, a certainty that he would die trying to murder the cocksucker that did this to him. For a moment I was more afraid of him than I was of Bjhennigh.

But Ledelei was nonplussed. She bent down to pick up the oil can, grimacing a little at Guittierez’ head. She turned around and started oiling Nick, starting with the rusty iron part of his lower jaw, careful to keep the oil out of bone and tissue.

By the time he could talk, he was scary-calm.

“Thank you, young lady. Now my knees, please.”

She obliged, and followed his subsequent oiling instructions. Soon Nick was sprinting around the room, swinging his ax menacingly.

I couldn’t stop looking at the head. The second-last time I’d seen it seemed a million years back somewhere. It had been attached to a smiling, live person in an Armani suit then. Now it stared at me like something from behind the window at the meat department at Ralph’s. Alas poor Yorick and all that shit.

It was time to go, and I was starting to feel a little inadequate. I had a gun, and a fighting chance, but I was no warrior like those two. I fumbled in my ogre-pockets, just making sure the weapon was handy, and felt the cylindrical curve of the gold jar that contained “The Powder of Life” in my other pocket. This time I was determined to say something. This was the time. If anybody knew what to do with the stuff, Nick would.

I was about to walk (carefully) over to him and show him what I had, ask him if we could use it somehow, hoping I would save the day with this marvelous substance. But Ledelei grabbed the jar of powder out of my hand.

“Hey!” I yelled. “What are you doing? Gimme that!” I lunged for it while she played keep away.

She grinned at me slyly, untwisting the cap. “Don’t try to fool me again, Gene. I am not stupid. I know all about the Earth drugs. This will certainly make me faster and stronger.”

And before I could do anything, she tipped some white powder out onto the back of her gloved hand, and snorted it. And immediately sneezed, blowing the remainder… onto the head of Alphonse Guttierrez.

Now Nick had stopped his calisthenics, and was slowly walking back toward us, taking in the situation at the same time.

As Ledelei read the label, finally comprehending what she’d just done, I grabbed the bottle back and screwed the cap back on.

“That was the stupidest thing I have ever seen,” I seethed. “Do you know what this is? I don’t I was about to show Nick, but—”

Nick was glaring at me, with his hand outstretched. I looked at the bottle, and back at him, then I handed it to him. No problem. The bottle disappeared into a metal drawer in his chest, and then I guess into history, because I never saw or heard of it again.

Right about that time, two things happened. A groaning came

from the direction of the head. And Ledelei began to act… strange.

I was afraid to look at the head, but I forced myself to.

“UUuuhh… ” the battered, decaying thing hissed, sounding like a latino Miles Davis. “Chingado, I don’t feel so good.” The reumy eyes stared up at me. “What happened, man? Last thing I remember, I was heading for the Brick, and now I’m here feeling like shit. Who are you? And what smells?”

The other two looked at me, like I was the spokesman for the group. Thanks, I thought.

“Well,” I stammered out, “my name’s Gene, and—”

“I’ve seen you before, somewhere…,” the head interrupted. “You from L.A.?”

“Uh, yeah,” I said. “Uh, look—you had kind of an—accident? And you might have some trouble getting around for a little while. I think we’re gonna leave and do some stuff for a bit, then we’ll come back and get you. But—”

“Fuck that. I’m going with you. This place stinks, and it’s dark.”

Nick looked down at the head. “Mr. Guittierrez, things are a little different here now. Things have changed since you came through the gate.” He paused. I think the head was even getting to him. “Bjhennigh has begun his war,” he continued.

Ledelei had a distracted look, and was starting to vibrate. I mean, serious vibrating, starting small and building, until her whole body moved back and forth in periodic bursts like the wing of a giant hummingbird.

Nick glanced at her disgustedly, and went on. “When I heard about your—mishap—I knew that the aggressors would soon begin their move. Bjhennigh would never have been so bold as to kill a citizen of Emerald unless he were ready to proceed with his plans of conquest.”

“Kill? Whataya mean kill?”

Nick got a strange look on his face, then glanced at me. “Did I say ‘kill’? I meant ‘molest’. Yes, I believe I meant it in that sense of the word.”

The head looked at me. “What’s he been smoking, ese? You aren’t makin sense, Mr. Nick. There’s no sense of the word ‘kill’ that means ‘molest’. I mean, English is my second language, and I guess Pawt’kween is my third, but I’m pretty sure ‘kill’ means ‘kill’ in both of them.”

Nick wouldn’t let it go. “An archaic usage.”

The head wasn’t buying.

“Very well. Mr. Guittierrez, you are a head.”

“Ahead of what?”

“You are a head.”

“I’m a head?”

Ledelei was vibrating so fast now that you could hardly see her. She was whirling around the room, rather quickly. I guess if you were already alive, the Powder of Life made you really alive. I hoped that we could still communicate with her. It was getting hard to see where she was: she looked kind of like The Flash when he does laps around the world.

“Look,” I said, exasperated, “do we really have time for this?”

The Tinman was staring at the doorway. “No,” he said, raising his ax.

I followed his glance, and saw the first of the zombie munchkins shamble through the door. They looked the same as the stationary models we’d seen on the way in, dressed in the same striped P.J.‘s. Except that they were shambling.

I never thought I’d get to see an actual shambling zombie, but there they were. Only one of them had a chainsaw, and it wasn’t even on. That seemed kind of a ripoff, on a purely aesthetic level. On a practical level, it was great.

I wasn’t sure what to do about the head, but I didn’t think it was right to leave Guitierrez (or what was left of him) to the tender mercies of the munchkin zombies. So I leaned the torch against the wall, removed my ogre vest and, over loud complaints, stuck the disgusting talking head into the middle of it and wrapped it up. I had to gamble that it wouldn’t suffocate, already being dead and everything. Guitierrez continued to complain in a muffled kind of way, jiggling around feebly under my arm. I felt bad, but there didn’t seem to be a choice.

Nick was just planted there, watching the zombies stumble up. He held his ax out in front of him, waiting for them to come to him.

“Listen,” I whispered, “I have some experience with this. I think the best all around thing to do is aim for the head. If you chop the—”

Nick ran forward, ax held high, screaming at the top of his lungs (as if he was going to scare a zombie) and lopped off the first of several zombie heads. As I fumbled for Ralph’s gun in the balled up vest, I noticed that several of the other revenants were falling apart as if spontaneously. I heard a buzzing noise accompanying this phenomenon, as if the animated corpses were falling into a wood chipper. Suddenly I came to the realization that this was Ledelei’s doing: she was whipping around these creatures so quickly that I could only see the results of her handiwork.

By the time I had the Magic Magnum cocked and ready to go, it was over. Corpse parts lay strewn all around the front part of the chamber. I wasn’t sure that Ledelei was even in the room anymore; I couldn’t see or hear anything to indicate her presence either way.

One of the munchkin heads stared up at me, insensate, bitterly mouthing something, some secret from the other side that I wasn’t destined to ever comprehend.

Nick sprinted over to me, a little out of breath but otherwise not too ruffled. “Your assumption was correct, Gene of Los Angeles.” He reached out and, honest to God, ruffled the hair on my head. “I hadn’t realized that these creatures roamed the surface of Earth.”

“Oh yeah,” I said, following him out of the inner dungeon, “tons of them. All over the place.”

We were halfway up the dungeon staircase when we heard the next thunderous explosion, and felt the earth shake under us.

“Yesss,” I said quietly, “Excellent. Ralph’s still at it.”

Nick gave me a questioning look, and I explained Ralph’s situation to him as we climbed.

Nick chuckled. “I knew he would come around in the end.”

“What,” I said, surprised, “you knew about Ralph?”

Now he was laughing silently, resting his ax against the stone stair. He looked like he might be a bit tired, but he’d never let on.

I looked at him, waiting, grinning uncomfortably, wanting to be let in on the joke.

When he calmed down, he said, “You people from Earth seem to think of me as a jolly simpleton for some reason. I don’t know why. Maybe it has something to do with the books that that Baum fellow wrote, or the moving picture with all the dancing and singing. I would venture to guess that you think of our entire world in the same light: some sort of savage playground populated by ageless children. But it’s not so, Gene.”

He smiled at me kindly; now there was no sign of the scary maniac. “Ralph is—a good man in a rather peculiar situation. He-there are many things going on here that you don’t understand. One is that, while I am loyal to Ozma, and a friend and ally of Glinda, I am still a pragmatist. I have to gather my own intelligence, protect my own rather special interests. You see, Gene, I’m been the ruler of the Winkies for quite a long time now. When I’m not hiking around the countryside or rotting in a dungeon.”

I stared down at the floor, thinking, trying to absorb what this very important guy was letting me in on, and the import of it struck me suddenly, and I looked up again. “Yeah, I’ve heard about this.” I was being allowed into the good-old-boys club! Gabba gabba, one of us!

“Hmmm. So.. what you’re telling me is… Ralph feeds you tidbits every once in a while and you turn a blind eye (sorry), and you don’t let Ozma and Company in on everything you happen to find out.” I chewed on that for a second. “Yeah. I don’t think I would either, come to think of it.”

He gave me a fleeting smile, then his face resumed its fearsome seriousness. “Let’s get moving,” he said.

Maybe he wasn’t so bad after all. Maybe.

We climbed the rest of the way to the ground floor without much incident, except for once, when a strange sound came from the inside of the ogre vest. I was alarmed for a moment until I realized that it was Guittierrez’s head snoring. I still don’t know what it was using for air.

We started down the hallway. I was looking for the way out, which I was pretty sure was a little way down and to the left.

“Piece of cake,” I said to Nick, “we’ll be out of here in no time.”

He gave me one of those supremely scary looks, one of his I-may-just-chop-your-head-off-for-fun looks.

“Out?” he said, “why would we want to go out? We’re going in, Gene. We’re going to find that—what is the colorful phrase that you use on Earth?” He searched the memory banks for a second. He found it, and savored the sound of it. “Motherfucker.” This was a very tricky situation for me. On one hand, I’d done my bit, I’d gotten Nick Chopper out of the dungeon, and now I wanted to get the hell out of the fortress. On the other hand, Nick wasn’t going to take no for an answer. Not so tricky of a situation after all.

The corridor widened out into a large oval. This bothered me, because for the first time since entering the fortress, the layout didn’t look familiar.

We walked into the middle of it. I had about three seconds to look around and scratch my chin, and was about to mention something to the effect that I wasn’t sure where we were any more, when I heard noise coming from the other side of the oval chamber.

Suddenly we were surrounded by big smelly ogre guys. Six of them had the large axes I’d seen before, and two had amazingly huge maces, which they were swinging around their heads.

Suddenly, one of them yelped, like he’d been bitten by a snake. In seconds, blood started to squirt out from various places on his body, and he collapsed into a pile of muck, like one of those buildings imploded with strategically placed blasts of dynamite. Only this building was made out of meat.

Ledelei was still with us.

Nick made his move. He leaped forward to join battle with the first of the remaining ogres. Suprisingly, it didn’t go down like a Kung Fu movie. They did not all wait in line for him to kick the first one’s ass before the next one joined in. Three of the remaining ogres started towards Nick, while a fourth started to bloodily implode.

Where were the other three? Looking longingly at, and moving cautiously towards me. Evidently, they were a little spooked by the sudden demise of their two buddies, but not enough to dissuade them from trying to turn me into a rump roast. I got my fingers wrapped around the trigger of the Magnum, which was stupidly back in the pocket of the vest, which was still wrapped around Guittierrez’ head (which was still snoring).

I dropped the torch, and managed to get the gun out this time. I aimed it at one of them, as they backed me into the corridor opposite the one we’d entered the chamber from. They let out a collective noise, a “hweeerrrugghhh” noise worthy of the Flatheads.

I’m not proud to say it, but I completely lost my nerve, and tore ass down the corridor, hoping that the layout of the fortress was enough like what I knew to get me to the exit.

But this didn’t stop the ogres from following. I heard them stomping the floor behind me. They couldn’t match my speed, but it was just a matter of time before I either got winded, or ran into another bunch of these guys, or something worse. I kept on running all the same, following twists and turns, trying to lose them.

But they weren’t getting lost.

So I planted myself in the middle of the hallway, turned, and aimed.

The first bullet blew most of the lead ogre’s head off, much like it had done the last time I’d fired it. The second ogre was hit in the chest, and was merely slowed down. The third ogre started to implode. Thank you, Ledelei.

I fired again, and took off most of the guy’s left arm this time. He just grinned at me. Relentless. Stupid. Just did not give a shit.

My aim was better the fourth time, and he followed his buddies to the big cesspool in the sky, or wherever it is that dead ogres go.

“Ledelei?” I said, between breaths, trying to make contact with my invisible benefactor. But there was no response. I though she must have gone back to help the Tinman.

I wanted more than anything to get the hell out of there. But where was I going to go? I didn’t know if there was anything left of Emerald, or if it was there who controlled it, and I wouldn’t get back to Earth without a Gate. But hell, I was a U.S. citizen, and they’d have to let me try to go back, wouldn’t they? Wouldn’t they? The thought of it started to make me sick.

And Nick was back there somewhere, maybe dead, maybe alive.

And I’d come here to get him out. Fuck it.

I went back down the corridor the way I’d come, attempting to retrace my steps, to try to find the Tinman, and then—what? I guess help him nail Bjhennigh.

Nothing looked familiar this time, and it felt like the floor was angling down. The corridor snaked left and right, defying any kind of reason.

I started to notice trailers of black vegetation along the walls, black like what had been growing away from the black vines.

It was getting harder to see. Everything was taking on a gray cast. The torches that only moments before had been hanging at regular intervals in the corridors were becoming few and far between.

I thought maybe I could use this as a way of finding my way back to Nick. I tried to backtrack, looking for a passageway with

more light, but this only got me more lost.

The section of the fortress I now found myself in was growing tighter, claustrophobic, increasingly maze-like. Every few feet, the walkway turned in a different direction.

The black kudzu was getting thicker, and before long the light started coming back, and I was dumped out into a cavernous chamber.

So much for Dread III. This was definitely not part of the game.

High stone walls arched overhead, and the kudzu blossomed over it and rolled out across the floor. I had to walk over it occasionally, and when I did I felt a dull aching in the soles of my feet.

From two holes in opposite walls, the thick black vines emerged, the ones we’d seen outside. They met in the middle, entering—a trailer. It was an ordinary, wide-load type trailer-park home. Definitely not a product of Oz. This was the Trailer Home That Got Through.

But what the hell was it doing in the middle of the Hollow Man’s Fortress? Why was it—

-and then it dawned on me, as I remembered my last conversation with Ralph in Topeka.

Bjhennigh never moved his base of operations—why would he? He simply built around it. This, then, was where Bennie Birnbaum had become Bjhennigh. This was Ground Zero.

Just then, on cue, the ground shook again, and a dull rumble rolled though me. Ralph was still at it, God bless him. I was amazed.

I gripped the Magnum tightly, and headed for the door to the trailer. The place looked deserted, but I couldn’t be sure.

I’m not sure what I was thinking, reflecting on it now. I had another hair-brained idea that maybe I could go in there and fuck things around. Do something like Ralph was doing, though I didn’t know what. Something. Save the day. Fix everything.

I went in.

Just inside the doorway was an office with tacky fake-wood paneling, a couple of ancient 386’s on a card-table type desk, and some scientific test equipment: oscilliscopes, what looked like a seismograph. This was the best the United States Government could come up with? No wonder they wanted my laptop, I thought.

The black vines snaked into a toolshed kind of room, growing out wildly, almost filling it. In the center of the floor was a cylindrical tank, completely overgrown with the kudzu, looking like some giant ebony cocoon. I figured this must be the containment tank. What the hell did it contain now? I wondered.

I went over to it and crouched down. Setting the vest (and the snoring head) gently on the floor, I put my hands up close to it, attracted to something in there, listening, watching, I didn’t know for what. I felt something. I couldn’t hear anything but a mild slow hissing, like a slowed down teakettle. But the impression I got was of some nearly frozen thing inside there, screaming.

“Hi. Whatcha doin?”

I almost shit. I wheeled around, and saw a little guy in overalls, standing near the door.

You know how sometimes you’re just speechless for a second? I stood there looking at him.

He was short, maybe five-four, maybe a little taller. He looked at me, but it was hard to actually tell that he was looking at me, since his eyeballs were completely black.

Jesus, I thought, even the janitor has to go over to the Dark Side.

“Hey. You’re not supposed to be here, are you?” He looked me up and down again. “You’re a little scrawny for an Illdhthrazshu, aren’t you?”

I tried grunting at him, but he wouldn’t buy it. He let out this nervous little laugh and shook his head.

“All right,” I shouted, pulling out the Magnum and aiming it at his head, “get back against that wall and shut up.”

It looked for a second like he was going to comply. But no.

“That’s not very nice, is it?” he asked, and the gun flew out of my hand and skittered across the floor, way out of my reach. He grinned at me.

He pulled a pack of cigarettes and a lighter out of a pocket in his overalls and lit up a cigarette. Smoke curled around his head, and stopped, then hovered, and sucked inward, back toward his eye sockets, nostrils and mouth.

“You any good at games? Check this out.”

And my feet started moving, and I found myself in the last room of the trailer, and my butt slammed down into a hard plastic chair. I couldn’t move. At least any way that I wanted to.

On a table, directly across from us, was another lame computer, with black vines running all over it, up into the back of it, and it was running a game, complete with jokey music and cheap sound effects. The janitor sat down in front of it, and gleefully began to play it.

The game looked really stupid: I mean, it wasn’t even 3D or anything. It was totally nineties looking.

There were a bunch of pixel guys that looked like they might be ogres, standing around a green castle. They weren’t even drawn to the correct scale or anything. Most of the “sky” was covered with a big puffy stylized rain cloud, except for one side of the castle, and little black blobs rushed out of it, and rained down on the castle.

He would tap some keys, and the little pixle-ogres would run up against some other guys—little white guys with pointed hats, that came out of the castle. The castle would also sporadically glow green, and the ogres would back off for a few moments.

We heard another muffled explosion outside, and the screen dimmed. It seemed a little soon for another tower to go up, but hey, I wasn’t complaining.

A few of the pixle-ogres disappeared with a really cheap “poof’ sound, and a few more of the little white pointy-head guys appeared.

“Shit!” he said, “I hate that. Haven’t they stopped him yet? How many towers are there left, anyway?”

“Um, one, I think.”

“ONE. Great. What am I supposed to do then? I suppose my friend will think of something. It hasn’t let me down so far, I doubt something like that will stop it. It’s got enough power now to get through another way, I’m sure. If it even needs too. Don’t you think?”

I opened my mouth, closed it again.

“Fucking Ralph. I’d had such great hopes for the guy. I never thought I’d see him do something stupid like this.”

“YOU had great hopes for the guy?”

He looked at me, cocked his head to one side. “Well, yeah.”

Uh oh.

This guy wasn’t the janitor. And that wasn’t a stupid game. The castle was Emerald City. It was real.

“Not that it matters much now anyway. Everything’s gonna be… transformed… in a little while. I don’t really even know how it’s gonna be. It keeps upping the ante. Very exciting. I do know that there will be no theme park.”

And he started to cackle.

The was black kudzu around my feet, under it, and the dull ache was starting again in my soles. The stuff was starting to migrate up the side of my boots, trying to get at the space between the shoe leather and the soles.

This was freaking me out, to say the least. And something larger was freaking me out. I couldn’t help it anymore—I had to ask him.

“Why? Why are you doing this?”

He didn’t turn around, he just talked as he played his deadly game. “Why?” He said in his nasal, whiney voice, “Let me ask you a question. How long have you been knocking around Oz?”

“About a week.”

“About a week. Okay. Give it a month. It’s nice for a while— it’s—what’s that word?—idyllic. But jeez, you can only take so much, right? Am I right? Pretty soon you’re thinking, this fairyland shit is really starting to get to me. I want a hamburger. I wanna watch T.V.

“And the people.

“The happy, shiny people start to really piss you off. Nothing bothers them. Well, almost nothing. And they’re smug! Americans used to be that way not too long ago, before they realized there were other countries in the world—I’ve heard the Brits were that way too, once. Anyway, pretty soon you’re fantasizing about rounding up their plump little asses and using them for target practice. But you can’t do that, can you? And you can’t grind up Elsie to make a cheeseburger either, can you? No. It just wouldn’t be right. But you’re still thinking about it.

“And all the while this is going on, you’ve still got your job to do. You’re being treated like a flunky, chastised by thick-necked idiots for not getting results, when all the time—you can see what they gave me to work with, for Chrissake—”

The kudzu had an actual grip on my boots now, trying to work into the crevices. Behind my growing terror, I’m thinking, strangely, that I can kind of relate to what he’s saying. Like nothing he’d said so far seemed that unreasonable. I actually nodded my head and raised my eyebrows a few times. And the dull ache from the kudzu was starting to feel—how can I say it? This is embarrassing. The pain was getting less painful, and more—stimulating. It was almost giving me a boner.

“And the thing is,” he continued, “I never did have too many friends, so, I was getting… kinda lonely I guess. I started doing some weird stuff, ya know?”

“Yeah,” I said, “I know.”

“I imagine you and Ralph have had some conversations about me, huh? You probably heard about the tank. Yes?”

“Yes.”

“Anyway, I started spending alot of time in there. I felt—something, y’know?”

“I know.”

“It came to me there, and I never—I have never felt that I was— alright before. It let me know that—those feeling I had—they were— okay. They were okay!”

“Uh, Bennie? They weren’t okay.”

“Bullshit!” He wheeled around out of his chair, and stuck his face in my face. I felt a chill coming out of him, and a smell like a musty attic. “It’s all all right. And that’s about the only difference between you and me, pal. Because you see me do these things and ask me ‘why’? But see, deep down inside, you already know why. My friend made me see it. It’s all all right.” He looked down at the kudzu making its way into my shoes. “You’ll be there soon. With me. And my friend.”

He turned back to his game, and it looked like he was doing pretty well. A few different monster type guys (one looked alot like that Power Rangers monster from the Burrito that ate with his crotch) were now inside the walls of the little green city, and more of the cloud blobs were dropping down inside.

He tapped, and the screen flashed green.

“Fuck!”

I thought it was part of his trip, some kind of warning or something. He continued to tap furiously, and wreak more havoc on the tiny city. Then the flash happened again, and he swore again, and I could tell that this was not his doing.

Whose then?

He kept at it, and over several second the green flashes grew more frequent. They seemed like the green on certain old-type computer monitor displays, but more intense, brighter and more high

powered than any cathode ray tube could produce.

A voice bellowed out of the walls, out of the floor, but emanated from the Hollow Man: “WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON?” Low, ominous, dopplered trails rang on after it.

Then I thought I saw—I couldn’t be sure at the time if I wasn’t imagining it—strobing in between the green magnesium flashes, now so frequent that Bhennigh couldn’t see the game, couldn’t tap keys—I thought I saw a familiar Happy-Face-In-A-Computer-Screen.

Winking at me.

War Journal

Entry # 13

The first bolt of lightning landed about six feet in front of me. The second one landed about six feet behind. I wasn’t all that surprised to see Rokoko before me when the smoke cleared on the first one— baring his teeth, as usual—though those empty black eyes made me feel like I’d been dumped into the Chuck E. Cheese at Westworld.

I was not, however, in the least prepared to see Skeerak standing behind me.

He was back from the dead; and what was worse, he wasn’t even mutilated. It was like I’d never even killed him at all, except I was still worn out. He advanced toward me, and I justfreaked: next thing I knew, I was winging the table at Rokoko’s head and hauling ass.

All the way down the street, with their footsteps close behind me, all I could think about was getting to the Skyrrla. It was the only hope I had, if I had any hope at all. I ran and ran, eyes locked on the door, as if I could will the building closer. When that didn’t work, I just ran harder.

A black jellyfish landed square on my back.

I screamed as the first slick burning tendrils draped themselves around my neck. The pain was almost electric, as in electric chair. I felt myself starting to fall, and twisted: landing on my back, smashing that fuckwad into jam. I felt my leathers start to fry, and my back came alive with anguish.

But I couldn’t stay down, I couldn’t stay down, Rokoko and Skeerak were almost upon me; so I rolled to my feet, got back up, kept on running. Almost to the door now. Running up the front stairs.

Then I went through the door, slamming it shut behind me, buying myself a whole second at best as I ran down the hall to the stairs leading up, door exploding behind me, footsteps huge in pursuit. I took the stairs two at a time, the pain mounting as I climbed, unbelievable now. I could feel it eating into my skin, breaking me down like stomach acid. I couldn’t stop to get it off. I couldn’t have gotten it off if I tried.

And up I went, past the second floor, the third, the rooftop looming, and all I could think was get to the Skyrrla. Get to the Skyrrla. Even with those monsters on my heels. Even though I was leading them right where they wanted, if in fact they still had any volition of their own.

I had no doubt that they were robots now: self-replicating nightmares, made of nothing but blackness. That blackness was a living thing: subsuming form and hollowing it out. Breaking it down. Destroying it. Killing everything that counted inside.

I had the blackness inside me now, too. It wanted me. It wanted us all. Dead or alive, it didn’t matter. It wanted. It wanted. That was all that it knew. That, and the hate that it felt for the life-force: that glorious light, which warms and heals our cells and souls.

I hit the roof, and the Skyrrla called to me. Called out with a surge of brilliance. Begging me to merge with it. Let go. Become One. Become even more than that.

In a flash, I took in the Emerald skyline: saw the jellyfish swarm through the lightning-wracked sky. I saw Glinda’s tower, being hammered by the horrors. I saw winged monkeys fighting them, valiantly dying.

I saw Mikio’s face, as he turned toward me. Without blame or hesitation, he assumed the battle stance. His friends, too, were ready, closing ranks, bearing up arms against the monsters on my tail. I flashed them a look as I sped between and past them, tried to single out Mikio for the bulk of my love. But the pain was immense, and my time was almost over. I said goodbye to Mikio with barely a glance.

The Skyrrla was calling. I knelt before it, dropping my axe with a clatter to the floor. The Skyrrla flared. All my hairs stood on end, as did all the nerves within me. The blackness that bore into me was just like ice on a burn now: nothing like pleasure, but suddenly no longer pain.

I remembered what had happened to Mikio’s shoe. I wondered where the toe went, when he brought it too close. Wherever it went, I was going there, too.

I put my hands on the Skyrrla. And went into the light.

In less than a second

The blinding, strobing green glow saturated the room now, literally, glomming on to surfaces, absorbing into them. I could see it soaking into the walls, insinuating itself into the cracks in the floor.

My body was still glued to the seat, but the grip Bhjennigh had me in was loosening.

Bhjennigh himself was slumped in front of his shitty computer, facing me, kind of sheepishly grinning at me, like oh well! His face was starting to cave in, like a rotting pumpkin. I don’t think he’d noticed yet.

The kudzu that had been attacking my feet was wilting, shriveling slowly.

The fortress rumbled suddenly, and I heard the now-familiar loud booming, and I knew the last satellite dish was history. But this time the rumbling continued, and a rolling motion started, resonating, until the floor and walls rocked terrifyingly back and forth around us.

The flimsy corrugated wall separating us from the containment tank buckled and collapsed, and I could see the tank itself. Now most of the vines had fallen away, and it was seeping something dark, as if it were rusting away. I heard the hissing sound again. But it was louder now, and in it was a high keening squeal, a cry, as of something in great pain.

“Don’t pay any attention to that,” Bhjennigh demanded, his voice still holding on to that supernatural thunder behind the parched rasp. “Don’t pay any attention to that.”

“Why?” I asked him, “What’s in there? And what happened to your ‘friend’ all of the sudden?”

“I’m here,” the Hollow Man said, in a voice about three octaves lower, and three miles away, “I’m everywhere… “

Parts of his skin were glitching, like a faulty videotape, flashing static. He looked like he was getting skinnier, turning anorexic before my eyes, time-lapse starvation. I could see past his ribcage in places, see darkness where muscles and organs should be.

“He don’t look so good,” another raspy voice shouted from the direction of the tank. I looked down on the floor in there. Gutierrez’ head was awake, and had shaken itself out of the leather vest. It was staring up at Bhjennigh in disgust.

I could move again, and it didn’t look like Bhjennigh (or what was left of him) was going to stop me. I got up unsteadily, fighting against the shaking and rolling of the building. Pieces of the ceiling were raining down on top of the trailer, and a few had punctured it.

I’d been in a few big quakes, and they were nothing compared to what the fortress was doing. I didn’t have much time. I staggered over the corrugated wall to where the head was. I had to grab it and get the hell out of there, even if it meant crawling out thought one of the holes where the vines came in.

The head didn’t argue with me this time when I crouched down and stuffed it back into the vest. As I got up, I could see that the containment tank was completely porous now, like a coarse wire mesh, or a thick spider web, barely holding what was inside, and that what was leaking out looked alot like blood. The keening scream was louder now, and when I took a step closer, I could see what exactly it was coming from.

There was a person inside—the insides of a person, anyway, without the skin and bones. It was all layed out like a Visible Man model kit, all anatomically correctly placed: organs, brains, eyeballs, veins, arteries and nerves. Here were all the parts that the Hollow Man was missing. And they were screaming.

I almost bashed straight into Nick as I was coming out the front door of the trailer. It’s a miracle that he didn’t slice me in half with his ax. He was covered with gore. He glanced over dissappointedly at the bag of rotting skin piled in the chair where Bhjennigh used to be, and into the next room at the organs and viscera that had finally plopped free and were oozing out over the floor, and were still screaming.

“COME ON!” I shouted at him, and as I pulled him out the front door, the ceiling collapsed over our heads.

This is it, I thought, as the boulders fell around us, and I waited for one to hit me on the skull and get it over with. But that never happened.

I was covered in green, swimming in green, flying in it. The same stuff that had poured out of the computer screen had taken the walls apart, and now that same stuff was raising us up out of Bhjennigh’s basement.

I could see into this plasma, this ethereal substance.

And inside was another world.

Directly in front of me floated a ball of energy, a brighter vibration of the surrounding stuff. It sported a gigantic happy face, and when it saw me, it grinned even wider than it already had been. I got the feeling I knew this big fella. All around it, suspended between the falling rubble, were other creatures of light, but these were different. Majestic. Ancient. They moved from side to side, and as they moved produced a singing vibration in the green.

Off to the side, I could see Nick Chopper floating, staring in wonder at the apparitions. A little further on was my ogre vest, and a little beyond that, Guttierez’s head, smiling, tumbling in freefall. And beyond that, Ledelei, still twitching and vibrating a little bit.

I figured I must be dead. This was too much.

But we floated away from the debris as it crumbled down into the ground, robbed of whatever black vitality had been invested in its substance, and we came to rest on a hill not far from where Ledelei and I had first entered the fortress. The green faded down slowly, and I could see what was left of the black cloud following the fortress down into the hole in the ground, like a movie of a smoke bomb in reverse, crumbling up the ground beneath it as it dissipated, folding itself into the giant pucker in the earth. Green lightning flashed around it, shepherding the blackness to its doom. Soon nothing was left but the hole.

The green faded, but the other world that had been inside it did not: from horizon to horizon, light creatures floated above Oz, outshining the disc of the sun, which had returned to the afternoon sky.

Three light creatures approached us from the south, rose up over the hillside and floated down to rest in front of us. One was the familiar ball of light with the happy face that had greeted me, the other two were changing as I watched, the light component muting out, the vaguely humanoid shapes coalescing into something more familiar.

One of them was Aurora.

She ran over and threw her arms around me, Nick, and even Ledelei in quick succession, hugging and kissing us.

Then the happy light blob approached me, and extended two pseudopods. When they touched me, I was suffused with a euphoria I had only experienced a few times in my life. I don’t mean to sound sappy, but it was a feeling of deep love, a feeling that no matter what petty concerns turned me into a supreme sourpuss, they were flyspecks in the wake of eternity, and that I belonged, and I was infinitely important, and infinitely insignificant, a neuron firing in the depths of God’s mind.

You get the idea.

Of course, you’ve figured out by now that this was the Mickey, recently of my laptop, now a citizen of—whatever this green place was.

More light-creatures joined the third figure on the hillside.

As they dimmed down, I could see wings on their tiny shoulders, big baroque irridescent things, reminiscent of dragonflies, butterflies, angels.

I’d seen these guys before!

They looked almost exactly the same as the winged deity above the bar in Topeka.

As the first one approached, Nick and Ledelei fell to their knees, and bowed their heads.

I was impressed. I was wondering whether or not to follow their cue, when the little guy spoke.

“Gene,” it said, in a voice something like gravel. He had a face that looked kind of like gravel too. This guy had obviously done a lot of living. He pulled out something that looked remarkably like a cigar, lit it magically, and puffed on it.

“Yeah?” I said, dazed.

“We are the Burzee. We made this place.”

“No kidding.”

At which point, Aurora elbowed me in the ribs, and whispered to me to quit being a jerk.

He hawked, and spit a respectable fairy-lugee on the ground.

“Anyway, we got distracted, forgot to look in on things for a few thousand years. Your friend, who until recently lived in your machine, came to find us. With the help of Glinda, and a young gifted alchemist in the Emerald City, we were able to subdue the invader. Happily, Ralph Dudley was inspired to cut off its power source and in the end, we were able to send it back to where it came from. Oz won’t be bothered by it again. For this, we will always be grateful to you.”

“Me? But, really, I didn’t do anything.” I wasn’t being self-deprecating; I really didn’t feel like I’d done anything. I’d been stumbling from one situation to the next since I’d gotten here, trying desperately to just stay alive, or at least out of the way.

The Burzee waved his finger back and forth. “Shut up and don’t argue with me. If you hadn’t shown up, it might have been a very different situation. The Burzee are at your service.” And then this little Charles Bukowski of Fairies bowed, and so did the other two, and all the little lights in the sky winked for a second.

Then he straightened up, puffed a little more, and called out, “Alphonse Guttierrez! Arise!”

And then he did a bunch of hocus-pocus moves in the air with his hand.

I thought it pretty unlikely that Guttierrez would do any arising of any kind, but sure enough, the head floated a few inches above the ground, started to lose its gray-green pallor and began looking rosy again. The ragged bottom of the neck began to flap, and little tendrils of pink skin began to grow from the edges. In no time, there was a little naked baby-body underneath the head. He ended up on his new back, and his new little legs and arms kicked around like an infant’s would.

The voice that came out of Guittierez’ freshly-attached head was weak, but decidedly more robust. “I don’t mean to sound ungrateful,” he said, “but what the hell is this?”

The fairy coughed, and shrugged. “Best we could do. Listen, you’ll grow into it, I promise. It’s just gonna take thirty years or so. That’s nothing. So you’re a Babyman for a little while. Better than being a old rotten head, isn’t it?”

Alphonse had to agree with that, and that ended the discussion.

Not too long after this, the six Humvees came screaming over the hills, horns blaring. They pulled to a stop, and ceased their beeping. Ralph was in the back seat of the lead Hummer, sound asleep. He looked bruised and bloodied, like he’d been banged around quite a bit, but was pretty much intact.

The Bukowski fairy flapped over to the window of the Hummer and waved his hands around at Ralph.

“What was that?” I asked him.

“A healing,” he said. “Scrapes, bruises, hangover remedy. Least I could do.”

Ledelei had fallen asleep, also. She was lying next to Babyman Guttierrez, curled up in a fetal position. Later I found out she’d been dividing her time between me, Nick and Ralph, looking out for one, then running out to help another, then to the third, then back again. To her, it had looked almost like we were standing still. That explained the lack of time between the last couple of dishes blowing up. She’d been helping. She’d tried to help me in the trailer, get at the Hollow Man, but whatever power had me glued to the chair had prevented her from getting close to him.

Unfortunately, her subjective time had been about four days— four days in which her augmented state had made it impossible for her to sleep. Luckily, for her and for Guttierrez, the Powder of Life was small potatoes to the Burzee.

But I doubted Ledelei would be shoving anything up her nose anytime soon.

Back home

After the war

Dear me,

Tonight, the piggels sleep, and I’m totally for that. I’m loading the last of my notebook entries into Gene’s computer, for posterity’s sake; and though I’m a fairly speedy typist, the heat is most definitely on.

Gene is scheduled to leave tomorrow—they’re throwing him a big party, down at Topeka—and much as I’d love to be there, there are a few things that remain to be said. If I do it expeditiously enough, I might still get some serious dancing in. But first things first.

Final notebook entry:

I can’t even describe what it was like to float around in Burzee Land, experience it in Skyrrla-Scope. All I can say is: the consciousness that devised the guys that devised Oz is the place to be, even if you’re just a scattered mass of sentient subatomic particles. Any malingering fears of death I might have had were slaughtered in that moment, and painlessly. Discorporation is cool; you can take that to the bank.

All the same—as one who’d pretty much kissed this mortal coil goodbye—it was really fun to have my body back again. Materializing with Gene and Nick and Fonzie and the rest of the gang was religious in itself; knowing that we’d actually won was like the world’s best frosting, liberally annointed on the world’s best cake.

Thanks to the Burzee, the trip back to Emerald took about as long as the trip to Bhjennigh’s: i.e., a couple of seconds, tops. No slogging through the battlefield. No hours for bitter reflection. Just that wild divine dissembling, followed by that soaring jolt, followed by reappearance in Ozma’s courtyard, to the cheering of the multitudes who had actually survived.

And there were lots and lots of them: a surprising number, all things considered. More and more poured out of the woodwork, as news of our victory spread. The damage was astounding, and the casualties were cruel; as we gathered together, the dead were still splayed out all around us, most of them just as they had fallen. At the same time, the triumphant glow of the Burzee was a glorious euphoriant, impossible to deny. As such, we were bound together— the maimed and the unscathed alike—in an odd blend of horror and joy.

Then Ozma emerged from the castle with Glinda, and behind them came valiant Lion and Tiger. They all looked hammered to shit by the conflict, yet remarkably hale, and the applause was thunderous. But for all the surges of noisy love that ensued, the hugest had to be when, moments later, Dorothy came out with Toto in hand, and a fully-reconstituted Scarecrow on her other arm. (For those of us who had considered him dead—and evidently, that was all of us—there was no sight in all of Oz more rewarding than to see him, beautifully sewn back together, dancing and prancing and grinning that unmistakable painted-on grin.)

A whole slew of big speeches ensued: poignant as hell, but you had to be there. The point is that we buried and revered our dead, then partied our asses off for days. Every single act of heroism, however small, got not just a toast but a whole reception; and every less-than-heroic deed, born out of fear or helplessness, was more than forgiven. It was redeemed.

As you can imagine, this was a full-time gig; and after a couple of days of this, I found myself itching to break away, start writing some of this shit down. Gene felt it, too. That compulsive itch to get it right: clearly remembered, and properly said. We’d catch each other’s gaze, over and over, but we wouldn’t talk. It was like, I don t even want to hear what happened until you write it down.

So we started breaking away, retreating to our corners. I mostly wrote at my apartment. Gene mostly wrote at Leidelei’s. He was kind of shacking up with her, although she was hardly ever there, and she had no patience for his documentarian rigor. It wasn’t a relationship built to last, but it had all the makings of a splendid fling; from the sheepish grin he often wore when we met to exchange pages, I’m guessing that she still found the time to fuck his little brains out.

She didn’t much care for me, of course. Not only were Gene and I real close, but Mikio and I were now totally in love. I’m gonna take a cue from Gene here, and leave out the squishy details; but suffice it to say that I could write another whole book just about us in bed. (At the very least, I’m filling up a whole ‘nother notebook. And you don’t get to read it.)

Ah, well. Long story short: the more we wrote, and the more we showed it to each other, the more clear it became that this was a story Earth needed to read. I wasn’t sure if it was the Pentagon Papers, exactly—we were, after all, in another dimension—but in its trans-geopolitical implications, it seemed like exactly the kind of behind-the-scenes shit that I know I’ve always enjoyed.

Gene, of course, was skeptical. “It’s just a bunch of dumb stuff that happened to us. Nobody’s ever cared before. Why should they care now?”

“Well, look at where we are!” I exclaimed. “Look at what happened! We’re taking the exact same skills we used as fucking zine-mongers, and the next thing you know, we’re war correspondents, in the most exotic location you can imagine!”

“Well, yeah…”

“And, on top of that, we’ve got the inside scoop! You were actually there when Bhjennigh came apart! I was actually part of the beam that took him out! You can’t get more fucking intimate than that!”

“Stop yelling,” he said.

“I’M NOT YELLING!” I screamed, dragging out the last word until he started laughing. “And I’m also not saying, ‘“Hey! We ‘re gonna get rich!” Cuz, frankly, that means nothing to me. Earth money means less than nothing here. And I’m never going back.

“You, on the other hand, could make out like a bandit. Or get yourself killed. Or both.”

“What do you mean?” Gene said.

“I mean that I’m really scared for you,” I told him. “Really. I think about it all the time.”

“Aw, come on,” Gene said. “Suppose I post this, on some Internet news group or other. So, like, maybe a million people read it…”

“Or maybe fifty million…”

“Or maybe just fifty. So what? Do you really think anyone’s gonna believe it?”

“Why wouldn’t they?”

“Why should they? It’s crazy!”

“Well, yeah! But that doesn’t mean it’s not true…!”

We went back and forth like that a lot. Basically, Gene believed that he could just go back and resume his normal life. That, publish or not, it made no difference. I asked him if he’d talked to Ralph about this, and he said that, actually, he’d been kind of afraid to.

Ralph, as it turned out, had no such illusions. He knew what was waiting for him back there, and it wasn’t pretty. He’d saved the day, yes; but only by erring on the side of conscience, and breaking every order he had ever been given. Back in the good ol’ U. S. of A., treason was still punishable by death; whereas, in Oz, they were throwing him parties. So, basically, he was staying put, if Ozma would let him. And, of course, she said yes.

Ralph thought that publishing our memoirs was a great idea. “Give ‘em hell!” he said. “Stupid bastards. It’s no sweat off my ass.” But he agreed with me that Gene was a little fucking naive if he thought he could just waltz back in, blow a whistle of that size, and then return to business as usual. “At the very least,” Ralph said, “you’ll be under a lot of scrutiny, both public and clandestine. At the very most, they’ll tie you down, peel your skin off, squirt you with lemons, and leave you for the bugs.”

All of this made Gene feel pretty weird. He started having second thoughts about releasing it at all. “Great,” I said. “Then all anyone will hear is the official story, which is total bullshit. And no one will ever know.”

To which Gene groaned, “I know, I know,” and made a miserable face. It wasn’t that he was a big dumb knucklehead lummox who was doomed to be turned into dogfood or anything; he just hadn’t thought things through.

But for me, the icing on the tumor came when I finally sat down with Fonzie: a bonafide casualty of U.S. and multinational corporate policy, who’d been lucky enough to get a new lease on life. I’d been putting it off, because it was so weird to see him like that, and plus he kept trying to get me to nurse him. But the fact was that he was awfully cuddly now, with his pink little baby skin, and I needed to know what really happened. Why they’d whopped off his head, and so on.

Once we established that he could snuggle at my bosom, but that he was not getting nipple, we got down to business. And the story, as it turns out, was this:

Fonzie had been contacted by Rokoko—who, incidentally, melted in the Skyrrla-glow, along with Skeerak and the jellyfish and the rest of Bhjennigh’s gang; sorry I forgot to mention that—a couple months before his death. The fabulous C. Scott Rung, from Meaty Meat, was also in attendance. They had informed him of an offer that could make him an extremely wealthy and powerful man, both here and back on Earth.

Fonzie, of course, liked the sound of that; it appealed to the Magickal Hot Shot Within him. So he agreed to a series of meetings, mostly on Earth: his frequent business trips, which he would never discuss with me. Not only did they make him a stunning, multi-million dollar offer, but they filled him in on Earth’s big plans for its little inter-dimensional neighbor.

As Ralph had alluded to previously, arrangements had been made by the Powers-That-Be to turn all of Oz—whether we liked it or not—into one big Disney-style theme park for tourists. It would be called “Oz Land”™; and it would be just like the real Oz, only sanitized for our protection. All the scary parts tamed. All the wildness removed. All the rough edges buffed down to a shimmery plastic sheen. Live shows would be staged daily, with Dorothy, Scarecrow, the Tinman, and the Cowardly Lion performing heartwarming song-and-dance numbers. The Lollipop Guild would conduct all tours.

Oh, yeah. Plus, we’d be converting over to American dollars. And charging for everything.

A few other details needed to be worked out. For instance, the capricious and discriminatory nature of access through the Gate. It was important than everyone be allowed to enter the magical thrill ride that was “Oz Land”™, no matter how undeserving. The more tourists, the better. After all, they were our new bread and butter. (Or bread and water, which was more to the point.)

The Powers-That-Be were certain that Ozma and Glinda would see the value of this, and be eager to oblige. In the event of the slightest resistance, however, the U.S. military was happy to help out, to the extent that it could squeeze arms and personnel through the Gate, then count on them to function as planned. Because they couldn’t just march the combined armed forces in and nuke our asses into submission, they were forced to rely on more subtle methodology.

Hence Bennie. Then Bhjennigh. Then the big black cloud.

And where did Fonzie come into all this?

In order to promote tourism, and cash in on the home front, the good people of Meaty Meat Corp.—whose lucrative “Captain Meatballs”™ franchise had made the $7.99 Bucket ‘O Meatballs an American family tradition—wanted to start a new Oz-style concern; and, to their minds, the “Emerald Burrito”™ chain was made to order. It had a catchy name, a flagship restaurant already established in Oz, and a cuisine close enough to Taco Bell’s to entice Earth’s fast food demographics.

So, basically, Fonzie was offered the chance to be the Colonel Sanders of Oz, with franchises from Portland to Pensicola, Hong Kong to Helsinki, Barcelona to Bejing. Munchkins would be imported to work behind the counter (all “little people” would be referred to as “munchkins”). They had it all figured out. It would be a global smash. Not to mention being the #1 restaurant in Oz, with the possible exception of those new Golden Arches.

And, if I played my cards right, I might even get a piece.

But there were complications, mostly regarding our choices in meat. Beef was immensely popular on Earth, as were chicken, pork, turkey, and seafood. Since no one in the tourist class had any prior goomer experience, it was reasonable to expect that there would be complaints. But what if they DEMAND a chicken taco? was a question often asked.

To that end, cross-dimensional “foodstuff exchanges” were secretly conducted. Chickens, cows, pigs and so forth were kidnapped from Oz and brought over to Earth. The ones that actually made it were examined for intelligence, difference in texture and consistency, etc.

To their Earthly chagrin, all the hostages they took reverted to simply being poultry and cattle. The smartest chicken in Oz became a regular chicken. The spiritual leader of the cows—long revered for her wisdom—became just another blank-eyed sow. And when they were butchered, cooked up, and eaten, there was no magical flavor enhancement. They were just the same old nuggets and burgers.

The same thing happened with all magickal objects, slipped back through the Gate by the Powers-That-Be. A broom that grew legs and walked around in Oz became a broom that just laid there until you picked it up.

Conversely, livestock imported from Earth seemed to perk right up when it landed in Oz. Lobsters demanded to know where they were. Pigs started spouting philosophy. This led the Powers-That-Be, in their wisdom, to one of their most remarkable, mind-boggling initiatives: the total illegalization of the Language Bush. You see, it was decided that conversations with the pay end of the food chain would only make people uncomfortable; therefore, only creatures that could be trained to speak English would be allowed to interact with the tourist trade. (You know. “Munchkins.” Stuff like that.)

Meanwhile, a couple small herds of goomer had been smuggled stateside. Unaware of my magick goomer recipes—which, in all fairness, I hadn’t come up with yet—they were gonna try to spread the great taste of goomer from sea to shining sea. Fonzie wasn’t sure, for sure, how that had all worked out; but he never heard anything, so he assumed they weren’t overly thrilled.

I listened to this for a very long time, without losing my temper or saying a word; then, with admirable calm and restraint, I began to choke him. As soon as his little eyes bugged out and his face turned red, I stopped; but I just couldn’t help it, I was so pissed off.

“Okay,” I said. “God damn you, Fonzie. I understand why I want to kill you. What I don’t understand is why they wanted to kill you.”

“Oh, Aurora,” he implored to me. “Don’t you get it? I told them no! I told them to sit on a fucking tack! I was curious, sure; I wanted to see what they had. But they were pendejos, total pieces of shit.”

“And it took you how many months to figure that out?” I asked him, staring deep into his eyes.

“Okay, alright. I was tempted, sure. You shoulda seen the ads they had. Big pictures of me, with this really sharp suit…” He looked wistful. I wanted to slap him. “But the day they…got me, I gotta tell ya, was one of the best days of my life. At least up to that point. Because you know what I did? I listened to everything they had to say, and I waited till the cash was right on the table, everything ready to sign, and then I told them to kiss my ass. Not because I didn’t appreciate the offer, but because I knew it was never gonna work. Ozma would fuck them up, they didn’t even know how bad.

“And I told them she’d laugh when I told her what was up. Which I was going home to do, right now. Then I got up, thanked them for their time, and drove straight back to the Salinas Gate.

“And I gotta tell ya, I was in the best mood! Turning down all that money? You don’t know how cool that was!

“Because it totally didn’t matter, you get it? I had everything I needed. Everything I needed was back in Oz…”

At this point, he started to cry, and my heart went out to him. Poor baby. Next thing he knew, he was a skull with a stump, rotting away in the Hollow Man’s dungeon.

“I’m proud of you,” I told him, kissing his head, squeezing his tiny body tight. This made him feel better; so much so, in fact, that he popped the cutest little baby boner. But when he went for the nipple, I flipped him over and spanked him.

Not surprisingly, he didn’t like that much. It made him cry again.

All of which leaves me here, at Gene’s computer, more determined than ever to see this story told. If all goes well, it’ll yank the pants off of everyone involved—Meaty Meat, the U.S. government, the CIA, etc.—and expose their sinister flabby asses to the clear light of truth, for all to see. Nothing would make me happier, except maybe Mikio, who wants me to go dance with him now.

So, in conclusion, I leave you with these words:

I know that Ozma is pretty much closing the Gates, cutting off ties with Earth altogether. It makes a lot of sense to me, but it also makes me sad. There are so many people, with decent hearts, who would love to experience this kind of magick. And now they won’t get to. At least not here.

But if you are one of those people, I urge you to create as much magick as you can, right where you are. Just know that it’s possible. Good deeds beget good will. Good will brings the energy higher. If the people of Earth could come together, with love, and raise that energy level, maybe Ozma would open the Gates again. And maybe then, the magick that flows from Oz could actually work for you there.

In the meantime, good luck. Question authority. Spank its ass to a rosy red. Don’t take any wooden nickles. Have fun. Love each other. I think you know the drill.

And if you run into Gene, be nice to him. He’s a really great guy, and he means no harm.

All my love, Aurora Quixote Jones

P.S.—If by any chance the Gates open again, and you happen to visit, bring more CDs!!! An amazing meal will be waiting for you. And if you want, it’ll taste just like chicken.

There was more sex, drugs and rock and roll in Oz than I’d ever imagined, and I spent most of the next couple of weeks checking these out, when I wasn’t writing of course. Or having a hangover.

After everything, after the non-stop partying, the post-war euphoria I never thought I’d ever personally experience, after all the strokes, the accolades, after writing down what I’d been through, finally there was a silence there. Oh, the festivities hadn’t shown any sign of letting up any time soon, but I wasn’t participating any longer. I stood in the eye of the hurricane, in the still moment where I had to make a move.

It was time to go.

I was a ball of confusion all the way over to the gate building, feeling like maybe I should reconsider. I took a last look around the wide, green-glowing streets of Emerald. Even rubble-strewn and damaged as it was, the place was starting to look pretty good to me. I figured they’d probably fix it up like new just as soon as everyone got tired of drinking, feasting, singing, fucking and taking drugs. I was thinking maybe I should be there to help.

Sure, I had a lot of bad memories. I’d almost been killed about forty times (at least it felt that way), but that seemed like another lifetime ago somewhere. I had started to collect a bunch of good memories, too. Emerald was back to being the righteous fairyland it was supposed to be. Like I’d never seen it.

The people here were certainly sweet, if spookily cheerful. If I stayed here, nobody would probably try to give me cancer or shoot me, or snuff me in any other baroque manner like the CIA might. I could probably live a pretty nice, quiet life for a few hundred years, who knows? Maybe Dorothy’s Uncle Henry could teach me to ranch goomers or something. (Yeah, the old bird was still around!)

On the other hand, if I continued into the gate building, and took the Ozma Express back to Kansas or wherever I landed, my life was a lot less certain. I could die. Or become obscenely famous for fifteen minutes. Or both. But hell, the place I’d be headed for was my world, my earth, and did it deserve to be co-opted by the likes of Meaty-Meat Corps and Pace/Horner? That was the big question. Not that I was gonna stop them or anything, but I had at least the capacity to pull their pants down around their ankles in public.

Speaking of pants around your ankles: it was tough to say goodbye to everyone, but it was extra tough saying goodbye to Ledelei. We both knew that the whole arrangement had been temporary, but when I picked up my pack and headed out her door for the last time— well, we weren’t in love, but it still hurt. She gave me a really good kiss and told me that I might see her sooner than I thought, whatever that meant. And then she turned around and closed the door.

My backpack was cradled in my arms as I ambled down Gilabola Avenue towards Ozma’s Gate. It was early morning, and most of the revelers were still in bed. I was still a little bit worried that somebody would try to snatch my laptop. Of course it wasn’t as sexy now that its little occupant had taken off for the Burzee Universe, but it worked better than it ever did. I’d been thinking of writing some code to randomly insert nonsense every once in a while. But it wouldn’t really have been the same.

I guess I really kind of missed that little Mickie.

Ralph had assured me that nobody would want my computer now, now that the shit had hit the fan, and most of the shit had been blown back into Uncle Sam’s face. But I was still paranoid. I thought about what was on the hard disc, and whether or not it would still be there when I got to the other side. Hell, there was still the unpleasant possibility that I wouldn’t get to the other side, no matter how remote that possibility was.

I was about ninety-nine point nine percent decided to return to Earth, but that little part of me that wanted to stay was still yammering away. I stood there for a long time, in the street in front of the giant gingerbread door to the Gate building. There was no way to make a rational decision in a situation like that. So I didn’t. I followed the path my heart makes, the one Allallo had told me about.

There was no line to wait in that morning. I pushed the door open.

The trip through Ozma’s gate was not at all the same as my first wild ride. For one thing, no ugly, uptight creep checked to see if I was carrying contraband. On the contrary—people kept coming up to me while I waited for the few in front of me to go through to Earth. They kept trying to give me stuff: cookies, bottles of strange alcoholic (and otherwise) concoctions, kisses. But I graciously declined their offers (aside from the kisses). I was carrying enough weight.

A little mustachioed bald man in overalls finally escorted me into a tiny room with an overstuff sofa in it. He asked me to sit down. Then he, of course, smiled and left.

And there I sat. Like I said, it wasn’t at all like the first time. I was reasonably relaxed, for one thing. For another, I was stationary.

This did not last long.

Within seconds of sitting in the chair, and the little man closing the door behind him, the floor fell away. Well, that’s what it felt like. Jesus, it scared me.

A few seconds after that I realized that I wasn’t so much falling as just not being attached to the room any more. I think that anytime your brain finds itself in that kind of situation: weightless, whatever, it reads it as falling.

The sensation eventually ceased. I had my knees drawn up, my head jammed into the backpack. I’d landed. Somewhere.

I raised my head, and saw dirty white porcelain. Wherever I was, it was smelly, like old urine.

It took me a few moments to realize I was in a toilet stall. I stood up and looked around me. Graffiti. Crude drawings of hairy orifices and penises. Phone numbers with blowjob invitations.

Home sweet home.

I pushed the door open and looked at the rest of the room. One more stall. But no sink. I thought that was odd. There was a device on the wall that I’d never seen before. It was a spherical thing with a large opening in the front of it. I read the sign above it. “Dry Wash. Hair, hands and face. Try it! Feel that cleanness! Washington Enterprises.”

My face felt a little greasy, so I thought I’d give it a try. I stuck my face up to the opening. Immediately, there was a quick buzzing sensation and I heard a click.

“Thank you! Feel that cleanness!” the machine said, in a near-human voice I can only describe as, well, slobbery.

I felt my face, and it was perfectly clean. Like, really clean. Rather amazing, I thought. I wondered if they had a full shower-stall type version of that thing.

I grabbed my bag and walked out of the restroom to find myself in a busy restaurant. It wasn’t anything fancy, just a short-order type deal with mediocre food that you order by pointing to the pictures. I saw a menu on the table. Howard Johnson’s.

Wherever I was, I figured it wasn’t Salinas. Hojo’s was an east coast franchise as far as I knew. Some of them had motels attached to them. Ones like these were generally at rest stops on thruways back east. Could I have been dropped as far as the New York or New Jersey? I walked to the front of the restaurant, and out the front door to find out.

A cold blast of air hit me as I stepped outside. It was like the moon out there. I buttoned up my ratty cloth coat up to my neck, wishing I’d brought along the ogre vest for a souvenir.

Sure enough, there was a motel next door. It was night, and I saw trucks whizzing by on some sort of interstate beyond the parking lot. It looked like I was gonna have one severe case of jet-lag. I looked up into a sky brilliant with stars, and watched the white clouds my breath made against the fluorescent lights. I smelled exhaust fumes. Greasy food made of animals. Home.

One star I’d been looking at started to grow. At first I thought it was just a plane I’d mistaken for a star. But the thing started to swell up to the size of the moon disc, then shoot across the sky and disappear over the horizon.

“Jesus!” I shouted at a trucker who was on his way into the restaurant. I pointed at the sky. “Did you see that? Holy shit!”

He laughed. “Aintcha never seen a fittle before?”

“A fiddle?”

“Fittle. Fit. El. F.T.L “

Then he squinted at me, like he was considering if maybe I was a little bit nuts, and moved on.

Maybe this was some unexpected side-effect of inter-dimensional travel, I reasoned. There hadn’t been things like fittles and Dry Wash when I’d left. Which led me to my next line of inquiry.

There was a newspaper vending machine behind me. I bent down to look at the front page. It was the Perth-Amboy Evening News, dated December 23, 2007.

There was a Gateway to Oz, evidently, in New Jersey. In a toilet at a Howard Johnson’s on the New Jersey Turnpike. And my three weeks had turned into nine months somehow. Go figure.

The headline was freaky also. It said:

NEWCOMERS EDISON, VAN GOGH ADDRESS U.N.

GENERAL ASSEMBLY PROMISED NEW ERA OF PROSPERITY

Edison? Van Gogh? What the hell was going on here? And what was a “newcomer”? It vaguely reminded me of a bad science-fiction movie I’d seen as a kid.

I was suddenly struck with the urge to go back inside and eat some clams.

I went and sat at the counter. When the waitress came, I pointed to a picture of fried clams. I didn’t have any cash, but I had plastic; I’d paid off what little debt I’d had before I left for Kansas. Lucky me. I could get a room for the night next door, get a bus to Newark or JFK in the morning and try to get a flight back to L.A. I wasn’t even gonna worry about the car in Salinas. At least not until I found out what my status was.

I got the clams, and a cup of coffee. Was it breakfast? Dinner? I don’t know.

“Clams,” somebody next to me said, “they are good.”

I hadn’t paid attention to who was next to me when I sat down. I glanced over and saw a bedraggled blonde kid, who looked to be maybe nineteen or twenty. I had had enough experience with Oz people to know that he was a Winkie. Anyway, he was wearing one of those blue pointed hats, which kind of clued me in. He was drinking a coffee, but he looked like he could use something to eat.

“Want some?” I asked him, and you would have thought I’d asked him if he wanted a million dollars. I got the waitress to bring him a plate of clams, and put it on my bill. He thanked me profusely.

“I am Meldo,” he said, extending his hand. We shook, and I told him I was Gene. Of Los Angeles. Surprisingly, it didn’t ring a bell.

“I have been here much long time,” he said sadly, “long time.” He ate a forkful of clams. “Do you know of the Blue Note?” he asked me.

“Blue Note?”

“The Blue Note Records. Horace Silver. Thelonius Monk. Bud Powell. Miles Davis.”

“Sure.” I’d worked in a record store for a while. Jazz wasn’t my favorite, but I knew my way around it.

“I met in Oz an army man once, a soldier from American Army. He had with him a machine that play music. A phonograph.”

“Wow. It must have been-.”

“The One. Yes. Only one. He had with him many of these Blue Note records. Only these. I listen, and do not understand at first, but here my life was changed. The music there spoke to my heart. I listen often, and long. I learn everything from this man about the music that I could. It became a part of me, this beautiful sound.

“And I knew that one day I must to come here. To find the Blue Note.”

Jeez, I thought. What with the wacky time dilation I’d just experienced, what he had just described might have gone down in the sixties. Or the forties. Who knows? The time thing didn’t seem consistent at all. Ralph and Guttierrez seemed to stroll back and forth all the time without all the timelag. Maybe it was just me.

It was like he was reading my mind. “This was many years ago,” this young man said, “and far away. I come, finally, through the Gate of Ozma. And—” He took a deep breath and shook his head. “It was a lie. These things not here. All these things I dream of—Rudy Van Gelder’s Hackensack studio. Birdland. Minton’s” He looked beseechingly. “All long gone.” He smiled like someone does when tears are the only other alternative.

“Time not working the same way here. Things of legend do not remain, here, except in memory.” He ate more clams. “I didn’t know this. I didn’t know.”

Suddenly, I wasn’t so hungry anymore. I told him I was sorry. I didn’t know what else to say.

“I can’t go back now,” he mumbled between bites. “The Gate is closed. I can’t go back. I stay here, I do little work, little things for money.” He laughed. “I have little disc player, see?” He lifted up a little ancient minidisc player. “Sometimes, I buy a recording.” He pulled a little flat box with “Birth of the Cool” printed on it out of his pocket. “When I can hear it, things not so bad. Not so bad.”

I was done with my clams, and my coffee, so I paid the bill and got up, wishing Meldo well as he put the headphones over his ears, wishing that Ozma, or Glinda, or the Burzee or whatever, could come and claim lost luggage like him. Maybe they still would.

I figured the thing to do next was to get a room next door. Not that I thought I was going to sleep—I’d just gotten up. But I could doze, watch T.V, whatever—try to pretend that my body thought it was night until the next morning.

I strolled past the counter covered with Howard Johnson Candies on the way out, and past a rack of magazines. I was just about out the door when something stopped me dead in my tracks.

I whipped around, back to the magazines. There was something very peculiar on the cover of Newsday. And Pace. And a few of the others.

It was one of those slobbery, hairy, Dr. Seussian goomers. In a suit. The goomer was in a nice suit, and it was wearing a red tie. Underneath the picture, the caption on Pace read:

BEING OF THE YEAR

NEWCOMER, GEORGE WASHINGTON

FATHER OF FASTER-THAN-LIGHT DRIVE

Fittle. F.T.L. Faster than Light. Moons flashing across the sky and over the horizon. Washington Enterprises. Feel the cleanness!

Jesus H. Christ. The goomers were the newcomers! Of course. Every sentient animal that ever came over here from Oz had been rendered normal, dumb and edible as soon as it passed through. It made a lunatic kind of sense that the one incredibly, pathetically stupid animal in Oz would be the exception, would turn Super-Genius once it came this way through the gate.

I bought the magazine and went over to the motel. The groggy night clerk told me there were vacancies. I checked into a room without much fuss, flipped back onto the bed and started to read about the goomer George Washington, about his being CEO of his own Fortune 500 company, holder of several new medical and aerospace patents, one being the faster-than-light drive. His Virtual Light Transmitter would replace the computer screen. And his company’s inexpensive gene therapy would make humans live as long here as they did in Oz. And this was only one goomer! Guittierrez had brought over a boatload of these guys. Old George was an average representative of the general population of goomers in the U.S. There was a sidebar with the names and faces of other “newcomers” and a list of their impossible achievements in recent months.

My body evidently started to believe it was nighttime, because in a few minutes, despite this exciting news, I was sound asleep, and slept until the sun blasted through the open curtains and into my face, some time around seven A.M.

I got back into Hollywood the next afternoon. The plane’s engines had been enhanced by the “Tesla” Corporation. The trip wasn’t faster than light, though. You couldn’t do that, for some reason, within the earth’s atmosphere; the flight lasted an hour. The shuttle ride from L.A.X. to my house took longer.

My job was waiting for me, just like Ernie said it would be.

Penny just about shit a brick when she saw me. She was really glad to see me, but a little freaked out, as she’d sublet my room. Luckily, the guy she’d rented it to was going on tour with his band in a week and a half, so it wasn’t really a problem. I’d spend a few nights sleeping on the living room couch. The only real drag was that all my stuff was boxed up, in the hallway, in her room, and in the garage. But what else could I have expected? I’d been gone for nine months, and she had no idea if I’d ever be coming back.

The cats were all glad to see me, in that nonchalant, feline way. After a while, though, they wouldn’t leave me alone. Penny had been feeding them way too much. They were all obese.

I settled back in to my regular life, and waited for the other shoe to drop. But to my amazement, no black helicopters arrived to spirit me away to Langley, no poison darts were aimed at my throat.

Somehow, I’d slipped through the cracks just like Ralph said I might when we’d sat together after closing time in Topeka, watching Allallo clean up shop, that penultimate night in Emerald. But he’d also warned me to leave well enough alone, and keep my mouth shut, which I’d done so far.

But I knew in my heart that was going to be a problem for me. I thought about Aurora, about how she’d poured her heart out on these pages. I thought about what we’d just been through, even as the reality of it faded as my life returned to normalcy.

As far as anyone on Earth knew, the U.S. Government’s man in Oz, Agent Ralph Dudley, had saved the day on their behalf by blowing up the source of the Evil Warlock Bhennigh’s power. The U.S. military personnel on the field of battle had been possessed, and Ralph’s actions, thank God, had snapped them out of it. And the Salinas Gate had been closed, temporarily, in order to preserve the security of the Continental United States from the continuing threat of possible cross-dimensional invaders.

Not a lot has been published to contradict the party line, aside from what you might hear in the free weeklies, or on Pacifica radio now and again, and you know how many people listen to that. Not many people who’d come back from Oz in the wake of the war were willing to speak out. And could you blame them?

But I knew the party line was bullshit, didn’t I? I was there. Didn’t I have some kind of obligation to the truth? Didn’t everybody else at least deserve to hear it, even if they didn’t believe it?

My comfy little life might be disturbed if I did this. I knew that. I also knew I might have a way out:

Shortly after getting my room back to normal, I was pissing around with the laptop, as I usually do when I finish writing. I was looking at all the junk I was carrying around on my hard drive, trying to see what I could get rid of.

Along with assorted downloaded crap I’d been hanging onto forever, there was a folder in there named “Happitty.” I clicked it open, and found myself looking at a peculiar animated icon. It was a little pulsating energy ball, sporting a winking and grinning smiley face.

The name under the icon was “GoToOz”

As soon as I finish these last few lines, I’m saving all of these words: mine, Aurie’s and the Mickie’s, as a compressed text file, and posting it to alt.conspiracy and a few other high traffic newsgroups on the web. I’ll slap a copyright notice on there for good measure.

Whether or not anybody believes it, or cares, remains to be seen.

Hell, maybe the CIA will offer to do an investigation of itself.

Maybe Pace/Horner will option the film rights. And Captain Meatball can sell little Gene and Ledelei action figures at the drive-through window.

I’m gonna wait and see. Maybe I’ll get rich. Maybe nothing will happen. But if things start to look the least bit dangerous, I’m going to double-click that funny little icon my buddy left me. I’ll make sure the cats are crawling all over me first. I’ve always wanted to find out exactly what they think of me.

—L.A. 2/3/98 3:28 PM

(Photo by: Patrick Halm)

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Marc Levinthal is a writer and musician who has lived and worked in the Los Angeles area for thirty years. Born and raised in Buffalo, New York, he moved to L.A. in the early eighties to become a rock star. That didn’t quite happen as planned, but a lot of other cool stuff did. He has been involved with both “The Music Business” (having written the hit single “Three Little Pigs” while in the band Green Jello) and the “Motion Picture Industry” (having co-written the score for the cult classic Valley Girl). Marc has published several short stories and novellas, including “Trainslapper,” “Lou’s Seventh Cylinder,” and (with John Skipp) “The Punchline,” “Now Entering Monkeyface,” “God Save the Queen”, and “On a Big Night in Monster History.” This is his first novel. He and his wife Rebecca presently spend much of their time caring for two chimpanzees disguised as small children. (The chimpanzees, not Marc and Rebecca. That would be wrong.)

John Skipp is a New York Times bestselling writer, editor, zombie splatterpunk champion, and notorious horror bigshot. Born in Milwaukee, raised in Arlington, VA and Buenos Aires, Argentina, marinated in York, PA, and served up juicy in New York City, he moved to L.A. in 1992 to become a Hollywood screenwriter. That didn’t quite work out as planned, either. And yet the fun ensues. His other books include The Light at the End, The Cleanup, The Scream, Deadlines, The Bridge, Animals, FrightNight, Book of the Dead, and Still Dead (with Craig Spec-tor); Jake’s Wake, The Day Before, and Spore (with Cody Goodfellow); Opposite Sex (as Gina McQueen); Conscience, Stupography, and The Long Last Call (solo); and, as solo editor, Mondo Zombie, Zombies: Encounters with the Hungry Dead, and Werewolves and Shapeshifers: Encounters With the Beast Within. He lives with family/friends, both human and otherwise, on a hill overlooking the glistening spires of downtown Los Angeles.