Doug’s on his own now, pushed ever further by throngs of visitors to the new age retreat’s open day. His kombucha gets spilled, there’s gibberish in the air, and holograms…
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ANOTHER WAVE OF people pushed up against Doug, making him spill frothy kombucha over his bandaged hand. The fermented tea soaked through quickly, stinging his wound. He stifled a yelp. Doug squinted in the harsh sun. He sipped down the last of his kombucha, and then gulped down Gus’s as well.
“I’ll take care of that,” a smiling young woman plucked the empty cups out of Doug’s hands. Written across her raw hemp t-shirt was, “I’m Official: Ask Me Anything!” in a child-like scrawl.
Doug’s stomach bubbled warmly as he was slowly swept further along by the crowd. Like he was drifting down a slow river, he could lift his feet up, then just float with everyone else.
In the distance, he spotted the top of a structure poking up above the prefab roofs. White sails billowed about in the mountain breeze, striking against the brilliant blue sky, as if about to rip loose and fly off into the Earth’s atmosphere. Another surge of the crowd, and Doug saw the large tent blossom into view. It was shapeless, like a cloud, sheets of super-light tarpaulin fluttered over an invisible skeleton, keeping the bones of the structure itself always just out of view. Plumes of white smoke or steam puffed out from cracks hidden deep in the tarp, making it seem even more otherworldly.
At the center of the rippling walls was a dark tunnel, people streaming into it. As the crowd pushed Doug toward the entrance, a gust of wind ran over the structure, making the sheets whip even harder. Plumes of steam puffed out, a blast of tepid air exhaled from the tunnel’s mouth, making Doug’s face feel sticky. Pink pieces of paper fluttered out from the gaping maw — it was the missing poster of July. Inside the tunnel, Doug could make out hundreds more of July’s face smiling in the darkness.
There was an electric crackle over the tent. Doug looked up to see the moon had already appeared, making its way toward the western horizon. Cast over the silvery disc was a sword, its jewel-encrusted hilt sparkling, hovering high up in the air on its own as if by magic. It was the sword that Doug had seen in the paintings at the art exhibition. For a second the sword shimmered and wobbled slightly, like the tracking distortion from an old video tape. It was a hologram, somehow projected atop the tent, glowing and sputtering in the rising steam.
“All soul-carrying phenomena welcome!” the DJ’s amplified voice carried above the wind, and echoed across the canton. “The bones will sing… in a good way! The mountain will burn… in a good way! How’s that for a Saturday night?! The New Atlantis Sweat Lodge welcomes you, phenomena… in a good way!” The DJ was now practically screaming, his voice forcing its way deep into Doug’s ears. The warmth in Doug’s stomach grew, the lightness of it lifting his mood against the DJ’s intrusion.
A song blasted from the loudspeakers: the pip-pip-pip sound of a metronome followed by an elephant-like trumpet call, then a familiar, airless voice sang a cappella and lonesome through the blustering wind: “Me llamo es moon con regret, as kept ancient zen tree hungry. At con refuse actor watashi wa witness, men el dolphin para myth bomb never.”
Everyone flowed into the darkness of the tunnel. Doug’s stomach frothed along with them. As their feet trod over thousands of empty kombucha cups, July smiling all around them, the voice sang on: “Tu refuse un actor con fall witness, Il Sono Dolphin to Myth Bomb Never, alla witch, shining stiffer, scheduled collapse, practice con beef… I con feed, shame tut open, despair upside con creek.”
CHAPTER 49: The New Atlantis Sweat Lodge