Bad Trip

[DaveD]

In another reality, a younger man in a smart suit glances at his gold watch. It is late at night, very late. He pushes an eighty-something man through the rain-slicked streets of Midtown, empty at the Empire State, closed-up storefronts vaguely menacing. The old man sits slumped in his wheelchair, feigning sleep, feigning drunkenness.
 
Abu Sa’id blinked as the vision cleared. He squinted into the teacup. Wisps of steam rose from the dark coffee. He drained the cup.

The world turned sideways as gravity reoriented itself ninety degrees. The colors of his study bled together, mahogany and oxblood, tangled with  the silver sheen of the cloudtops below and the moon above, with the dark night sky and the neon pastels of ionized gas and Cherenkov radiation escaping from the Wormhole.

A dirty boy stands on a streetcorner selling yesterday’s discarded roses. “For your girlfriend, sir, only a dollar for a rose.” Late at night, the streets are empty, but he has no other home to return to. “A dozen for ten.”

He hears the soft shush-shushing sound of the wheelchair before it turns the corner. The man pushing it says, “How much for all of them?”

Without thinking, the boy says, “Forty dollars, sir. Thank you very much.” Hungry, he takes the two crisp twenties.

He was the boy, wasn’t he? Or was he the man in the wheelchair, smiling slyly, whispering a half-remembered joke? Who was he?

He is a lizard, one of many living by the shore of a lake. Centuries pass. An entire civilization of lizards arises. Centuries pass. They spawn. They fight wars. They decline and die.

Bleary-eyed, Abu Sa’id looked out at the sun. He touched his face, unwashed and unshaved. His mouth felt gritty. He looked into the teacup. There were dregs. He drank them and staggered to the elevator. An operatic overture swelled as the doors opened. Feeling beneath his shirt – his tie hung limp and folded around his neck; he had undone it yesterday – he found the key and turned it in its lock in the elevator panel. The elevator descended forever to the lab level deep underground, smoothly accelerating and decelerating. He exited as a woman sang sweetly of death and love.

He smiles up at her, “I’m here for you always.” He loves her red hair. “You know that.”

Abu Sa’id navigated the corridors with his eyes closed, still hearing the aria in his head as he walked. He stopped for a moment, pretty sure that his elevators did not in fact have piped-in music, then he shrugged. Maybe they did now.

The silver cylinder was so pretty. Distorted reflections fled across its surface. Falling leaves blown by the wind. Shadows left by an atom bomb. Wrinkled scars from a burn.

Discordant music jangled. His innards recoiled. With shaking hands, he typed the code into the keypad. He picked up the matrix and the frozen head within, staring into the dead eyes of Lovious. “I know you.”

“I. Know. You.”

***

“Your Highness?” Ungentle hands rocked him from his stupor. “Your Highness?”

Abu Sa’id tried to remember where he was. “Buh?”

“Wakey-wakey!”

He opened his eyes in time to see his insolent private secretary slop a bucket of cold water at him. At its bracing splash he spluttered, "Ah!”

“Pre-verbal, are we? How about some coffee?”

The smell of fresh coffee roiled his stomach. The Prince of Schwartzmirenburg groaned,  “No, no more coffee.” Vision came into focus. He was at his desk, gripping the delicate teacup tightly. Slowly, with shaking hands, he unpeeled his fingers from it. He touched his face, unwashed and unshaved. His mouth felt gritty. He looked into the teacup. There were dregs. There always were dregs.