Chapter 7: Do I Have To Do This All Over Again?

hen I was about eleven my family and I were on a skiing vacation in Vermont when I developed a fever. During the night my temperature rose to 105.1° F, barely a degree short of the level where protein in the brain tissue begins to denature; I was taken to the ER, where my temp was brought back down, and the fever dissipated. But in the height of the fever I hallucinated, and this hallucination would recur in one form or another throughout my entire life.

I was lying down when I noticed someone standing at the foot of the bed. The figure was in silhouette, and I could not tell who it was; silence greeted every question I asked. Though I could get out of bed, I couldn't approach this person. Something invisible -- a trick of space, perhaps -- surrounded the figure, and the closer I neared to it the dizzier I got. I could not look at the face.

On one occasion of this hallucination, at home, I left the room and called for my sister; she followed me back to my room, and I pointed the person out to her, but it was, of course, invisible to her. I stayed awake the remainder of the night.

Over the years this fever dream occurred with less and less frequency, until it apparently ended while I was in my early thirties. Then, three years ago -- again, during a fever -- it recurred, once. My wife was with me, and she talked me through it with the skill of her years of nursing experience; and for the first time I was able to recognize the figure.

It was me, though older -- in my late fifties, perhaps sixty.

The discontinuity I felt now, as I looked at the Professor's PC screen, was similar in both intensity and origin as that night three years ago. Here I was, impossibly seeing myself exist in two different places, with two discordant sets of memories, at the same time.

"Nick, see, there you are." The Professor's words jarred me back. "Looks like you knocked yourself out, but they're takin' care of you. Also looks to me like you're takin' this dream a little too seriously. But tell me again, why're you searching out the Recycling Babes?"

I thought briefly of the old Star Trek series, about how the computers would throw off showers of sparks when they were overloaded with information, and wondered if those sparks were now flying out of my ears. I sat down on the floor and, wishing that I had saved my previous posts, slowly recounted as much as I remembered from Chapter Three.

Melhi was driving the lead minivan with Nightgown riding shotgun, Tami and Rob in the back and Beautymoon* sitting in a rocking chair tied to the roof, as they took the Gravois Avenue exit at the tail end of 44 in St. Louis. Tami, who had been dividing her time between pouring Kombucha tea into the unconscious Nick's mouth and mooing at passing cows, rigged up a mechanism similar to a 7-day bird feeder that would continue the tea-dripping while they all got out of the car at the Busch brewery to stretch their legs and replenish the natural alcohol in their bodies.

After a brief idyll it was decided that their legs were long enough, and the eastbound caravan refuelled and jumped onto 70 towards Cleveland. Tami shared her mooing duties with Melhi, and Rob oinked, bleated, whinnied and made Senator Packwood noises at the other animals.

They didn't notice that the animals were following.

"...So, I'm supposed to find a way to get these simians admitted to the Shrine. But the arbiters supposedly take only a couple of animals at a time, and -- let's face it, as much as people may like the little critters, I don't think that they're all that big in the food chain, if you know what I mean."

The room fell silent. Uh-oh. Even Oliver -- who had excused himself when attention had turned to the computer, and who was now propped up in a La-Z-Boy with a crossword puzzle trying to guess at the meaning of the word "prodrome" -- put down his pencil and glared at me.

Corky seemed to swallow his annoyance and said quietly, "Let me show you something."

He conferred briefly with the Professor, who entered another URL into the PC. "A lot of people say a lot of things concerning the reasons that certain animals are admitted into the Shrine. They say political reasons, or pressure brought on by special interests, or any number of things. But the fact is, there's only one thing, one basis. Consideration isn't given to whether the animal is endangered, or famous, or if they'll be forgotten if they're not let in. Animals are admitted simply on the basis of their tracks."

The computer screen showed hundreds of animal tracks, each with a name.

Tornadoes are widely viewed as short-lived phenomena, and in fact most tornado paths are seldom more than fifteen miles long. There have been exceptions, of course, with one twister in 1917 lasting nearly seven and a half hours and covering over three hundred miles across Illinois and Indiana. Like that one, the tornado which picked up Heath's caravan was an overachiever. It followed the breaking front between the southwestern desert heat and an overriding cold air mass that had sliced across from the Baja, not dissipating until it approached the Mancos plain in northwest New Mexico, where it gently placed the caravan vehicles on a ledge a thousand feet up a sheer basalt cliff, five hundred feet below the summit of Tse Bit'a'i.

The Monkeeheads slowly opened their doors and stood out on the gabbro. "I don't think we're in Iowa anymore," NiteShade ventured, as the sepulchral cry of an eagle echoed from the glare of the sun now rising in the east over Hogback Mountain.

"The Shrine houses a plaque with five hundred animal tracks engraved on it. It's a Track Plaque, actually. The Keepers made the memorial to remind us of why the Shrine was built in the first place. Your simians are on it."

I looked. Sure enough, there were a pair of tracks with their names. "Okay, but the simians themselves aren't in, and that's what I'm supposed to do. Look at this plaque. There are animals that probably far more deserve admittance, like maybe eagles, for instance, and there are -- what'd you say? -- five hundred tracks here. I just don't see there's a chance."

"That's not the point. But even if it was, you're forgetting something. A lot of these animals are already in." Corky leaned over the Professor and did something to the keyboard, and almost half of the tracks disappeared from the screen, though thankfully not the chipmunks. "That knocks out over two hundred. Now, a lot of the other tracks were made by animals that were admitted to the Shrine for ...well, let's say for other reasons. Valid reasons. They were the teachers." Again he typed something, and more tracks disappeared. "And most of the rest of these animals simply aren't old enough, like those eagles you mentioned. The keepers don't want any animals younger than twenty-five years old. Seems to me like an arbitrary decision, but..." Corky entered a final command, and the screen cleared of all but a few of the remaining tracks.

"Forget five hundred. Here's what you're up against. Forty-two. And if you ask me, your simians are somewhere in the top five."

The professor logged off and shut down the PC. Windows 95 rattled and hummed for a moment and displayed "It is now safe to turn off your computer," though I've always thought that it's probably far safer to not turn one on in the first place.

The Professor looked right at me with what appeared to be the hint of a smile. "So, you're off to the Shrine. Okay. Let's go."

Corky, Ollie and Earl looked at the Professor in disbelief.

"It's getting dark," I said.

"It's light." He opened the cottage door. It was a new morning.