This week, Doug finds himself herded into the so-called New Atlantis Sweat Lodge, and things are about to get… dramatic.
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THERE WERE SEVERAL hundred people inside the tent. There was a dim, warm sepia light, the color of sand. A hodge-podge of old woven carpets had been laid about the space. Hundreds of large pillows were scattered about the floor, upon which numerous people already reclined. Adults and children relaxed and chatted in the dusky light. Over the musk of bodies, and gasps of mountain air, hung the heavy scent of burning clove.
The mugginess increased as people continued to pour in. Beads of sweat dripped down Doug’s forehead. He settled down on a mound of pillows and stared up at the tent’s roof. The light from outside flickered and reflected through the space in a way that pleased Doug. The warm feeling in his stomach had spread through his body. Despite the crush of the crowd, he felt calm, almost better than he’d ever felt before. The paranoid feeling of being surrounded and forced to enter the tent was completely gone. His wounded hand wasn’t throbbing anymore. His arms and legs tingled with numbness, but it felt pleasant. He had an urge to giggle.
“Woe betide!” A rotund, pasty-skinned man with dyed, jet-black hair and a goatee was precariously perched atop a ladder rising up from a circular stage at the center of the space. He was wearing a Tudor costume of heavy red fabric, a white, lacy silk ruff around his neck. He wore a headset microphone which amplified his raspy voice around the tent so loud it was hard for Doug to think.
“Woe betide! I am Francis Bacon! Esteemed philosopher and statesman. And I say again: Woe betide those who stray from the path of their own heart!” It was DJ Bacon, now bellowing in a hammy, fake English accent. “And scorn for those who let their minds drift into ill-thinking and poor process.”
The same sword that had been hovering above the tent outside, now descended through the roof. Bacon reached up and grabbed it. He waved the blade around at the crowd, motioning for them to sit. “True success is all in the ghosts one chooses to honor…”
At the base of the ladder, right below Bacon, sat Dr Hubble in his Jedi costume, next to mayor Mike Dobson and treasurer Stan Brakhage. They where dressed in purple robes with golden trim that gleamed against the velvety fabric. With them sat a burly man, a head of bushy black hair, and a beard to match, his eyes hidden behind opaque, wraparound sunglasses. It was Osmar Elian Prullansky, cult film director, and Siobhan’s current boss.
The group swayed from side to side, humming along with each other in a meditative state. Around them were more robed island locals, swaying and humming in unison. As the temperature inside the tent increased, people in the audience started to strip clothes off.
Bacon continued to ramble loudly from the ladder. His hand clasped to the illuminated sword, as if he was dangling from it. The sweat-beaded furrows of his brow, the oddly gaunt chub of his pallid jowls. Doug could see them in surprisingly clear detail, the man’s heavy theatrical makeup highlighting the distinctive crow’s feet that spread out from Bacon’s eyes. Doug’s stomach froth rose higher, travelling up his gullet, tingeing his mouth with a rank, bitter taste.
“Beloved travelers,” Bacon shouted across the audience. “Before we begin, I must ask you to switch off all cellphones, cameras, and any recording device of any type. It will help preserve the integrity, and the enjoyment of tonight for everyone.”
There was a flutter of distraction around the tent, while Bacon waited awaited the audience. When calm returned, he proclaimed, “Prepare to begin a journey. A life-changing story!” Dozens of ushers had appeared out of the folds in the tent walls, all wearing t-shirts with “I’m Official: Ask Me Anything!” written across their chests. They wandered through the crowd, blowing out candles and collecting empty cups.
A troupe of dancers emerged from under the stage, writhing slowly, as if growing out of the ground, creeping up toward Bacon. It was the dancers who had corralled Doug earlier, dressed in their skimpy leotards and animal masks: the fox, lion and wolf, a snake, an alligator, the deer, and then the hare, one of its floppy ears missing. They all circled around one dancer in black leotards — eyes masked in black makeup, a black beak protruding off her nose. It was Farleece Goggins, the fire chief’s daughter.
“Through our muddy moon of pre-history, we tell the story of humankind, without regret, and such as it is: ancient, hungry…”
A smoke machine spewed out thick clouds. From somewhere in the roof above Bacon a constellation of multicolored lazers shot out, rotating at a frenetic speed. They shimmered around the tent and started drawing geometrical shapes on the roof. Square, circle, triangle were followed by mountains, a sun, trees. Then the lazers drew mutating, shifting structures on the mountain, they drew stars above it all.
“The human is a good actor, and a true witness to the childish, frolicking dolphin we call the delta, our history; a happy and wondrous myth, humankind — from the the big bang, to the atomic bomb blast and beyond — our nature is generous and open, loving and decent.”
The lazers redrew the sword in Bacon’s clenched hand, adding more jewels and decorative inscriptions to it. It shimmered and wobbled — an image beamed from somewhere far away.
“Never wilfully destructive, only ever led down the wrong path by demon, or witch, or malevolent spirit whose only desire is complete and total collapse.”
Farleece and her troupe of dancing animals flailed their arms up past Bacon, toward the roof and the glowing shapes and mountainscape. The lazer beams descended and coursed over the dancers, drawing more elemental shapes on them, overlapping and intersecting. It was the same scene as in the paintings at Bruno’s art exhibition, the small figures intersecting with structures.
“Golden Years witnessed the beginnings of the practice of agriculture, hydro-culture and animal husbandry. This miracle of ingenuity, to feed us all.”
Some in the audience responded to Bacon, chanting in a hoarse whisper: “Practice… Feed…”
“Golden Years was there at the first Caesarian birth. We dispelled the pious shame of science; the realization of the hitherto open wound of infection, the discovery of cures for despair.
The chants from the audience continued: “Shame… Open… Despair…”
“The cleansing of cold, fresh mountain glacier water from a peaceful creek, the empathy of stranger for stranger who meet traveling opposite directions on the same road…”
“Creek… Road…”
Farleece and the dancers climbed up the ladder. Bacon’s sword was still raised up, lazers crackling out of its silver blade, shooting millions of blinding flashes around the tent.
“Across ages, we attended the fountainhead of all sacred arts. We have patronized true divinity for millennia, whether temperate or an Ice Age…”
“Ice! Ice! Ice! Ice!”
“… Yet never turning our noses up. The greatest lifting up the weak whom had been cursed with the least strength.”
“Least! Least! Least! Least!”
“To Golden Years, eternal! The fortress on the mountain! The last leap from the Earth’s last step into eternity! Our kingdom!”
The chanting stuck on the last word, repeating it over and over again like a broken record: “Kingdom! Kingdom! Kingdom! Kingdom! Kingdom! Kingdom!”
A small explosion cracked over the stage. A ball of smoke consumed DJ Bacon and the dancers. Dozen of white doves fluttered out from the small mushroom cloud and flapped over the audience. As the smoke cleared, the birds’s light downy feathers drifted down around the empty ladder. Bacon, Farleece, and her dancers had disappeared.
The audience gasped. Hovering above them was Bacon’s sword, glowing in a haze of smoke, its jewel-encrusted hilt in a rainbow of color. The sword twirled around, as if taking in the view from above. Then it rocketed up through the tent’s roof, and vanished.
“Kingdom! Kingdom! Kingdom! Kingdom! Kingdom! Kingdom!”
CHAPTER 50: Woe Betide!