Wherein Icker, eighteen, uses mescalin for the only time this life, and comes under withering investigation from two leprechaun-entities in a forest, and is found wanting…

–May 1st–

Icker awoke. Daytime. Saturday, no classes. Breakfast. Mess hall. Strolling back across the green.

Smec & Kentum were avid alterers; the plan was they would provide. Icker never altered, not even alky-sips. A mild peer press had brought things to this. Nothing Icker couldn’t withstand, honesty to uphold. But it got tiring, that freshman spring. One weekend Jool, “Tuesday Afternoon” broadcasting down the corridor from his abode, like usual, confronted:

Uncle-R — why are you against drugs?

There was always intensity whenever Jool vocalized. As though he had an inner toggle switch to strip off emotion. His head became hawk-like, talons poised to clutch an unsuspecting truth morsel. Long dark locks, piercing blue orbs, Jool, a philosoph by heart. Sophomore pulling rank. Icker figured him likely to drop OUT from all that physics and analytics he was studying. Early junior year probably. Jool gazed forever, eyes thinking without movement. This was the way many conversed then, while altered. You rarely answered with voice. Protocol was you just matched the gaze and thought your reaction silent in a stream like Finnegan’s Wake. Was Icker actually against? No, that’s not the essence of it. Something instinctively valued about the spiritual nutrition of self-propelled cognos. Besides, it was unneeded. There was always a constant contact high in this extended social cluster. Not physical. Not induced, just experienced. Jool was suspicious of any opinions held non-empirically. Smec echoed this. Icker would joke: need we commit suicide then before achieving a judgement call about it? Still… part of him knew that just one alter would forever quiet them.

Two conditions… Icker insisted it must be natur-mesko, no syntha. The cactus would tell him. And no party atmospherics. convivial half-witted joking, sofa cushions on the floor, King Crimson blaring. This was going to be scientific. Non-social. Icker would alter-travel solo, and guideless. In Nature. Recount the juicy bits later, maybe. Kentum was opposed. Some people lost it first time, couldn’t orient without their typical bodies. But Smec knew Icker was solid. Agreed.

A motorcycle arriving out the dorm windows. Kentum. Courier. Much talk among their friend group had made Jool curious to encounter Kentum, for they weren’t acquaints. Jool having grown up in another region. He assessed others intel-heavy, only. But Kentum was no academe. A jovial sort, factory jobs. Unoriginal perhaps, but good company. A year back he’d gotten the nickname Oregano when he ventured to score weed in front of an Orange Julius shop in Greenwich Village on a tip. Fifteen bucks, ziploc. But arriving back at home base his haul was determined to be ersatz, spice. Jool, unimpressed, made a few unfiltered comments about this and word got back to Kentum. There would be tension now.

Kentum strolled into the dorm room, helmet in hand, smiling. Smec, ever gauging the room’s complexion, boosted the volume slightly. Greetings exchanged, warm mostly. Kentum liked Icker, was genuinely intrigued by their many conversations. Steely glare at Jool though, while pausing to imbibe the music.

♪ The trees are calling me near… I’ve got to find out why. ♫

Softened, he confronted Jool as to his rumored opinions. But Jool could word his way out of anything. He apologized, saying he had made a flippant remark.

♪ These gentle voices I hear… Explain it all with a sigh. ♫

Kentum was pacified, content to have acquired a new vocabulary item in the bargain. Then various amounts of cash and green weed packets and strips of candy pill LSD were exchanged. Icker had no part in all this alter commerce. His lone dose was to be a gift. He watched the transactions bored, tuned out. Endless assurances about the quality of this and the smooth highs from that. Some African hash might be around next week, some potent shit… he drifted off. It was May first. A gorgeous morning. He wanted to be in a forest.

Short while later, Icker was back in his own room with Kentum. They waited for the floor monitor to pass by, innocuously. Then he revealed the tiny capsule. Yellowish. Some brief tips given. And Icker downed it with a minimal gulp of H2O. Kentum grinned. They had to depart right away, Kentum was riding Icker piggyback style the fifty miles or so north to their hometown for the weekend. Icker donned the extra helmet and clasped the leather seat strap tightly. Motor noise, and just like that, Icker was embarked upon his dual trips, it being roughly 9:30 beneath a splendid sun. The last moment Icker would cognize time like usual until the following day.

–Unordinary Sense Organs–

Was he moving? What is motion? Possibly the motobike was moving. The gray highway unfurled, came rapidly, passed beneath, and disappeared. Like food. Scenery travelled, yet rider, passenger, bike and highway seemed one. Undifferentiated. Sometimes Kentum leaned slightly into mild curves. Icker follwed suit but in moderation. There was no fear. The planet told him how much to lean. The whole cosmos seemed cooperating to convey them forth. The green green grass turned into a verb, greening with ferocious prowess. More and more he recognized less and less, although he knew this route intimately. With his other body. Things were shifting, all visual objects. They were vying for him; they paid attention to him, not the reverse. Some of them blended together, revealing kinships. The seat strap held his hands tight.

After some indeterminate period of sensory enjoyment Kentum slowed into Icker’s neighborhood. Houses looked artificial, something not supposed to be there. Odd pedestrians seemed like props. Kentum stopped the bike at Icker’s driveway, as the sidewalk curb requested his meditation. Kentum seemed to be marvelling when he turned to face him. Icker could see the emotions swimming beneath his plastic face which scurried to keep pace with what it was supposed to convey. A voice used his mouth to say something:

God. If only you could see your eyes right now!

Icker tried this; almost knew how. Using his gaze inwards. But he couldn’t quite manage it just yet. Instead he surveyed scenery inside his eyelids. Kentum burst out laughing and remounted his bike.

Good luck, man. You are in for an amazing few hours.

The bike travelled around the corner, devoid of sound, just as if a Disney artist had animated it in a series of cartoon flats. Icker still had enough presence to make a plan. He needed to go inside, drink some fluid, drop off his knapsack, grab a shirt, and slip outside again quickly as possible. Important to avoid encountering any parental units for any extended convo, as he was concerned they would realize after a while that he was looking at their internal organs. It mostly worked. The only sentient encountered was Doggy. Doggy, the same who he would feed an occasional Sugar Baby to years back in middle school. The little black and white sentient seemed alarmingly perceptive now. It knew. Something was off. But no cause for danger. Icker made it out the door and began walking to the forest surrounding the reservoir. A little over a mile away.

Neighborhood passage, housing development, a blemish on what was previous. Is that man entering his garage over there about to insult the scene with a lawnmower roar? That car approaching, will it have windows rolled down and the radio screaming? Too much potential sensual invasion. Have to make it to the woods. Icker sees it nearing, it strode forward. He pulls it open like a curtain, asks it to swallow him. Darker here, quieter, cooler, un-chaotic, earth before humans came.

–Nature–

The trail is gracious at first. Wider at the opening like a river’s delta. Many different shapes of leaves, different species. Still off to his sides a few yards, the foliage proper. Icker liked it better after a bend or two when the entrance and street seemed only theoretical, not part of the actual. And nicer too when the path narrowed. Intimacy. Even no-mesko he had to come here periodically. To help digest his ensuing biography since last time. But memory was ceding the stage now to the onrushing flood of immediate impressions. It howled closer, tsunami warning. Icker alter-saw: this body certainly something one is forced to lug about with them. Slowed him down sometimes. Needed it though. Why? The sensory portals. Visuals, audio, tactiles, temperatures, the odors of things and deeds. Clumsy they were, perhaps, but needed for earth. Earth could only reveal itself via portals! If he un-attended to it, walking the path was natural, not an effort thing. But soon as he’d attend to… lugging the body, lugging the body. An epiphany then: leave the trail. What he must do. More bravery required because now the trees would have him in their domain. And what first presented as silent would now become an extensive society of sentience. Trick will be to not maintain the veil: Icker/Other. Then the green populace will wash his feet gentle. Though numbering perhaps a million, there is harmony here. Icker merged into the forest.

Maybe an hour happened. (In mesko-time one cannot know hours.) Passed in pure astonishment. This is what never having been in a forest is like. Icker spied himself some distance away to the right sitting in a slight clearing peering downwards at some grasses. He altered there to know why, curiosity. Icker sat into his other Icker to see what is to be seen. Each blade of green sloped artistically, livingly, in its own being. The brown gray of the soil peaked through randomly and was rich in scent and texture. Everywhere miniature hills and valleys. Then he saw what Icker studied. Perfect little — really little, tiny as a pin’s head — spherical red insect beings. Radically red! The red that red can go. Icker magnified them with his meskovision. There were four or five travelling about in a small region. Each seemed independent, the chances slim that any single one’s meanderings would cause it to meet another. So vast their territory. Sovereigns of their cosmos, this sparsely grassed forest floor shielded from maximum sunlight. A lifetime lived in twenty square meters. Icker zoomed one. He lacked the technique to get inside its sentience but he could easily trace its labors. Tremendous get the job done persistence. Climbing over plant debris twice its size. Dodging leaf bits then regaining its heading. It paused for no reason; even meskovision couldn’t see. Maybe an item of food so miniscule as to be invisible. Yet, from Icker’s vantage point there seemed to be no identifiable body parts to consume nutrients with. What makes it suddenly veer off at ninety degrees no obstacles in sight? Icker gave them flexible spindly legs to power their peregrinations, but they only lasted briefly before vanishing. No need, apparently. Icker could spend a brief eternity partaking in this zoo exhibit. And so, in fact, he did.

Eventually the shore line of the reservoir approached him, a wide two mile lake. A boulder he knew of was nearby, a fine seat. Icker noticed he had an ounce of reflection available and paused to consider awhile. The entire alter had been externally driven thus far. Thoughts thought into him only when part and parcel with some sense perception. Now Icker tried to think about the water. A relax place. Difficult though, things strove to mesko-sense into him, wanting his attention for their own. The lake seemed as if one vast thing, not varied or with local qualities. A lake-being. The surface its skin. And a taut skin it was. More cloudy than earlier. No sun glints rippling anywhere. The lake’s skin so taut and perfect! Icker moved off the rock to the water’s boundary to investigate. He got down, lying like red insect altitude, and peered out over the vast skin surface, glass smooth. Then a revelation came. This is how Christ did it! The walking upon the water. He simply altered his perspective so that it was a smooth vast glassy surface one could easily skim and hover upon. It was true and certain for an instant. But then something felt off. The thought intruded in the sensory swirling. It was theory only, partly fantasy. Maybe the peak of the mesko was arriving. Kentum spoke of this in the briefest fashion. The purity might begin to dilute. Icker chose to move away from the waters. This place was potentially popular, a vista point. A trail passed near, and normal people might pass by. Need be, Icker knew he could navigate dealing with them but preferred not to have to. Better to resume off trail.

Icker scanned inland and slighly uphill for cover. He saw himself nicely sheltered in an area behind a clump of thickish trees in the middle distance, and thus found himself relocated. It was quiet here, nestled. but something irritated him inwardly about the walking on the water incident. He must be careful not to fantasize. He must only observe! No world-building. It must be about world-revealing. He felt as though admonished by an unseen agency, and thought he detected a presence of some type. About a hundred feet away, in the bush a figure seemed to be moving. Actually it was two figures moving as one. Peculiar, it struck him. Not the sort of location for humans to be walking in the woods. No path or clearing, just thickets. Could there be other alterers about, seeking to operate off path? Unlikely. Though markedly strange this entire thing was, Icker accepted it immediately as genuine. When he closed down all theorizing it just unfolded unremarkably, and experience could never be wrong. Only how we process it. There was something else odd about these figures. They were not particularly tall at all. Not adult-sized. Children? They moved with their own will, independently of his cognizing. Different than the way presences usually felt in mesko time. Yet when he deepened his attention upon them they responded by inexorably floating nearer. Quite rapidly, in fact. Until they were standing there, or being there, directly in front of him.

These were not ordinary children. Maybe not human. Four feet in height, tops. They were dressed extremely unconventionally even for this era of hippie garb. The one had bright green trousers of distinction and an orange vest-like top, featuring exaggerated metallic buttons and claspings. The second, absurdly, had the exact same clothing but oppositely colored. Maybe their shoes matched their vests. It was hard for Icker to cleanly take it all in. Their faces had a maturity that was alarming. And their expressions morphed rapidly and continuously while they observed him. Icker felt nude, psyche-wise, to their precise probing. All the while a silent conversation was transpiring between the two halflings. One’s question became the other’s reply. All expressed in detail facially, not verbally. They sometimes seemed like one being almost, or two complimentary aspects of one being. That they were longtime companions was evident. Perhaps terribly unimaginably long. Gradually it was seen by Icker that they were somewhat embarrased by him. Or disapproving. Weighing Icker, they found him in error. This was not the proper way for him to become aware of them. Emotionless pure thinking rippled across their oneface, their peering coming near a decision, a judgment, sculpted in their countenances of clay. Icker wished their proximity to persist. It was the first instance during the alter that he wished something contrary to the flow of simple happenings. But it was not ordained so. The entities closeness was dependant upon their interest, but as it was fading, they receeded away, appearing again like distant children. Then like nothing visual at all. But a parting thought-gift they emitted filled the air enveloping Icker. It hovered there only briefly but with an intense sparkling, before dissolving into the general ether.

Not the right way to cross the boundary… not the way…

–Downslope and May 2nd–

Icker began walking. On a mission. Not that the mission was known. But the sheer undirected will was on display, given full expression. Interest in his surroundings dimmed drastically. It had become an inward alter now. He walked without concern as to who he might meet, or not. The forest eventually ended. He noticed that he passed by a dam where the reservoir water trickled down a rocky sloping ravine. He used roads after that point. The angle of sunlight indicated the escaping afternoon, but he took no precise measures. Soon — not objectively soon, for he probably walked near five miles — a golf course manifested. Icker had sufficient presence to not traipse directly through its middle, but still had to present an unusual figure travelling with neither golf cart nor clubs. Once in a while he still would emerge from subjectivity and glance about for impressions, especially if they were distant. Far off, a golfie had just swung and Icker captured the arc-travel of the white ball in its trajectory, high and far in the sky to another sector. Its path intrigued for a moment. He wondered could he only trace back its arc to the unwitnessed moment of its launching, the golfie’s contorting muscles. And he could! In mesko time, he could! He reversed it and forwarded it in slow motion several times, watching how swing and arc were one thing, each causing the other. This was something new, because he was certain he could have no memory of the golfie’s swing, having not yet paid visual attention when it happened. Not a memory. What was it? Yet, even this timelooking left him cold presently. Icker began wanting out. Or in. His regular body with its conventional cognos.

Golfland ended and a new road appeared, Icker chose it and it soon began paralleling a river. A non-alter memory arose, reminding him that after another mile or so a bridge would appear which led back into his home ville. Icker could not manage to get out of his inner world now. He normally would not mind this, but the inner world experience was mesko-hued. And time passage awareness was still absent, or incorrect. A metallic flavor had begun gnawing at his throat and head and respiratory tract. Kentum said something about this. The downslope. A primary school was approaching. Icker knew it. Not too far from his house. He needed to rest from the walking. And prep himself for entering his house. He knew of a back porch on the school, facing a field and pointing west where he could rest and watch the sunset. He aimed for it.

Rounding a corner he spotted the porch. A girl was sitting there. A young female, sex rayed outwards from her. A girl Icker did not know. With breasts and lips and thinking eyes and long brown hair. Normally Icker’s sense of politesse would cede the resting spot to the young lady and seek elsewhere. But the mesko in him marched forward with a mysterious lack of transmittal regarding his intentions. Close in now, he studied her scrutinizing gaze. Beauty. Worth kissing. Sunset rays, oranging her brown locks towards golden streaks, and her eyes too. Icker saw the fear blended with intrigue sculpting on her face and breathing. He managed an excusing tone, explaining he needed a rest from a long walk. Sorry. The female did not speak, hummed an acknowledgment. You live nearby? Yes, Icker answered. He mentioned a little bit about mesko. Ahh! She seemed to grasp it. Long day. Icker could see the sexuality traveling up and down her breath column, adding a glisten-tinge to her lips and tongue, and flaring nostrils. Problem was he could also see it in her esophagus. Decidely anti-romantic. She shimmered in a cloud of her own DNA. Even though he had the moxy in the moment, it couldn’t work. Kissa, he named her. Without speaking. She left and his vision trailed after her shrinking shape, into the orange sun. The odor of metal everywhere.

–Epilogue : 50 Years On–

Icker made it to his room, bringing a glass of water, and closed the door. Tried to put his face into the pillow. Dreamless blacker than black sleep. Nextmorn some post-mortem thoughts woke up with him: During mesko time, no considering, and no true bodywant, only a barrage of mesko-sensories. But Icker liked considering. At least he demanded its availability as an option. Good to bodywant also. This was the issue with Kissa, no true bodywant. Just frightfully accurate pre-vision of her mesko-senso’d lips and mouth and insides. Too much disconnect from the authentic inner want. It intued into Icker, he would find a real kissa someday soon. It truth-saw in him, no more mesko this bio. His spiri could operate at a higher frequency elsewise, in his normal body. From time to time though, Icker would puzzle over the incident with the green and orange halflings, which carried a persistent and disturbing poignancy. A mystery to unwrap, a very worthy one. Puzzle he would, once in a great while, separated by great intervals. Puzzle he would, but no light would come, no light until the passage of about 50 years.

_______RS

[ Drawing : moi — after taking a lesson from my son. The green and orange halflings had more limpid and see-through faces, but you get the idea. ] 

Notes : Apologies for the closing cliffhanger. It was a creative choice. I do mean to elucidate about the 50 years, but see it better cast as an essay format thing than part of the story. Plan to publish it in a few days, here.

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