“We are at the brink of a new window into the soul. Like children at a windowsill, we peer back into a garden beyond this season of deception—trust—distrust, betrayal—yet depravity still rankles its fierce stalking head, snarling as it devours all the farmer tilled.”

- Danwicket Standoff, 1436

A man, in a strange utterly alien landscape, has a near death experience, jolting him from the machine. In doing so, he discovers and is enraptured by the thrill of a strange and fantastic reality.

- Boris Stanley, 2021

1.

Kevin graduated from his alma mater, Princevard Bodyshopiversity in Amy Gidillah, Carolina. The shop was, in maintaining its prestige, quite progressive with its long sleek buildings and challengingly spaced marble stairs. Kevin emerged in control of a small, plump creature (of his own devising and construction, using molds and models from the leading body-builders of the era ("We stand on the shoulders of giants")).

However, Kevin’s freshly curated body only had two legs, which was unfortunate in an age where three is obviously in fashion among the buildellectual elite. But what he lacked in talent, and physical accomplishment, Kevin made up for in raw, uncarved intellectual prowess. It was no secret that this talent, this winning of the genetic lottery, this casting of the long straw, this outgunning of the reproductive algorithm, was the real reason he had been accepted to Princevard. His scholarship required him to take the quarter-brain position of the Princevard Braincos mindball team. It wasn't a surprise either. He was the product of two textbook factory writers, so naturally he’d inherited a gorgeous psyche, thrumming with youth and lithe vitality. Conceived in a Hollywood thinktank and born in the brainstitute of Johns Synopkins, his able-bodied mind had received top of the line psychiatric attention.

His body, on the other hand, was rather sad. A rather dull lump of flesh, uninteresting to say the least (that would change at Princevard), but my, oh my, was his bubbling eager curiosity and naturally forming interest in abstract algebra just simply adorable.

And now? Even a rather borish two-legged, skinny gangle of uncoordinated, cornbread limbs, he was a real hit with the ladies. I mean, come on! His strong and handsome intellect was positively musical. “Endearing” doesn’t do his natural, born-bred charm and suavity justice, his naive restructuring of differential geometry with a wave of his mental arm—a real sweetheart.

2.

Life was drudgery for Kevin. His once majestic wings—declarations of wonder and delight—now drooped and dragged and mumbled (to anyone who stopped to listen) about such things as the weather and there being too many clouds and too many months of the winter variety and how everything would be better if only, and once I’m finally past this quest, once I’ve slain this beast... things will be different, I swear.

If Kevin had kept a diary (which he did not) he probably would write things like “I had distressing dreams last night. There are many things to mourn if only I could allow myself (I can and do—but it’s a struggle).”

On the way too and from his job at the factory, Kevin had small moments to himself—to note the flabby, undernourished body he’d become. What once had been exciting, youthful, had become wrinkled and a chore to maintain. Each prime-numbered year, Kevin spent a month or two and a chunk of hard-earned quest-cash getting work done so his body could pass safety inspections. Finally that too became much more effort than Kevin wanted to dispense. He started smuggling unregulated riddle-packs (and sometimes even sudoku) from his body-shop buddy Don and using the highly addictive substances as bribes for the chief safety inspector. It made Kevin a little sick, morally, knowing he was encouraging the baser instincts in Ronwaldon VcCqwerty but, well. What can you do for anyone anyway?

His wife and their two brainchildren certainly hadn’t brought anything magnificent. (Brainchildren are great, but they are-who-they-are and you don’t get the ones you want).

3.

Each day began to take hold of Kevin like a vice grip, or better yet, a crucible wherein he felt melted, poured out, forced into an ingot shape, then hammered in husky temperwater, plunged steaming, dunked. The driving of his body which once brought him joy and vigor—which he had anticipated with the capacity only children possess—now seemed dull and menial. His limbs, once nimble and expressive, pained and demanded, imprisoned and weighed him down. No longer could Kevin pride himself in the dexterities he had worked so hard to acquire. He was, as they say, washed up at 40. His dragon slaying days were behind him. He was the old fart publishing scholarly products that nobody would use except the other buildilectual elite for whom his esoteric mechanisms were designed. I mean, seriously, who wants to bother with a “Chemical Propulsion Motor”? It’s so far from abstract, so purely physical, and therefore useless. He might as well just mindlessly demolish the feeble monsters which plagued Beantopia.

It struck him one day as he waited for the synaptic crosswalk to change (as he made the mental commute to the CNS), that perhaps he should have listened to his crazy Uncle Jim and not pursued such a limbed and high maintenance body. None of that matters, Kid. What matters is right here. His uncle made a casual but pointed neurological gesture at Kevin’s sprawling network of autonomous thought processes. Believe in that, if nothing else.

4.

At that moment of recollection, that tiny paradigm shift, Kevin saw a collection of pilgrims, their robes billowing about their bodies which were the shape of prayers (that is, smoke, to be precise).

It was at this moment of yearning insight that Kevin noticed something peculiar; the rain which never ceased had ceased its relentless torrent. This was a troubling sensation in the brain-space air.

Kevin ran a quick systems diagnostics and found that the microbes and CNS signalled back nothing save an appropriate level of adrenaline in the bloodstream—

expanded capillaries.

Yet, strange as it sounds, Kevin’s mind remained untroubled. Once miraculous and melodic, it rumbled on with grave incredulity.

Suddenly, as Kevin looked down at his diagnostics read-out, huge swaths of his byzantine mental structures—entire industrial sectors—began to shut off, replaced with horrifying void. At the same time, Kevin’s periphery vision began to expand, widening the frame of view, giving the world a fishbowl appearance, as if peering through a raindrop. All the natural neighborhoods and military complexes of his brain went blanket dark, one by one, until Kevin felt his consciousness recede to a single, straining branch of intention. A singular twig, on a singular tree, in a singular forest, in the singular park, at the singular center of Kevin’s singular mind-city.

The world around Kevin began to collapse under the distortion until the sky became a circle of rainless light above him. His surroundings squashed themselves into a thin ring of activity at the edge of the sky-circle of light. The world grew distant above him as Kevin fell into the empty, mundane well of his mind. Presently the light above flickered and went out and Kevin felt himself falling through the darkness for an unimaginable length of time.

Here and there he grew tired, exhausted from holding onto the vein of intention left available, and presently his mind left him unconscious. Visions of old branches of thought flickered through his mind, disorganized, dreamish, and lacking context, yet rife with the syrup of emotion.

Kevin concluded what any sane concluder would in this situation—that this strange sensation must be death. That settled, how exactly had he died? Had something killed him? Had he forgotten to fuel his body? That couldn’t be it. A failing body simply burned away to smoke. Was that what this was?

A light appeared below Kevin. He had just enough time to rotate as he fell before the bright disk of light enveloped his periphery, swallowing him into its reality.

5.

He came to a grinding, dizzy, swooning halt. Looking around, Kevin saw that he stood with his back pressed against a wall, staring out over a great blue abyss. A stunning pier jutted out over the expanse, glassy, angular and metallic. Then, four figures peered back at him. So marvelous and intricate were their features and magnificent clothing, that Kevin, (utterly mesmerized,) took a few moments to realize that his initial observation was incorrect.

He was not standing with his back against a wall, but lying flat on his back—the great blue was not abyss, it was sky, and the strange and fantastic figures looking at him were not standing in front of him, but standing above and around his prone body.

This life, one of the figures said, is many things, boy. Many of which are harder than all the other things combined. He spoke uneasily, and Kevin felt dread and wonder well up within him like a freshly tapped aquifer’s tide.

A man at the end of his rope, another voice whispered.

6.

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