(10) Prax


Paradoxically, the Masters of Prax were so called to protect them from disintegration. Prax has no connection to written language and thus cannot be described by it except in the most abstract terms, on the level of "my love is like a red red rose." Prax knew that his children would have to be under the illusion that they were the masters and he the servant if they were to overcome their toadying fealty to power. He accepted that there has to be a wounding, even in a god, if he is to survive death and rebirth. Archer was the wound in Prax's infallibility, and thus the roadblock to Prax's transformation into a red dwarf star.

Archer was predictable in his ego identity as Archer Prax, but he was programmed to be conscious only of that identity, and to be unconscious of the other characters inside him. These would come to consciousness in vivid dreams, perhaps, at moments in his life when he came very close to the surface of the story in which he was contained, like a fish at the surface of the lake. But that he had personified them and manifested them in rentals was outrageous behavior. That he was taking them to earth to eat poppies, lie to humans for pleasure, and kidnap people for kicks, was startling, even to Prax, who was still connected to the maintenance of rituals as the source of power.

Prax was very, very old, and could only be described in abstractions, such as, "Your majesty is like a dose of clap." Prax consciousness was contained by rituals, by memory, by his story and her story and by an underground river of dreams and chance meetings with allies who break through the fabric of repetitions of what must be true. Prax was not part of this. Prax was the container who held it in place. Prax had never been challenged for supremacy before because of Prax's huge capacity for containment, for diplomacy, and for expanding to accommodate evolution. Ultimately, though, all Prax's powers were in the word, and the word was always clawing like a crazy cat at the mystery of what lies outside the gates. For Prax, outside the gates was insanity, and Archer had passed outside the gates. "Fuck him," Prax decreed. "Let him see what it's like to be cut loose from Prax."

Archer Prax had been programmed to build a recharging station in Pennsylvania. That seemed like a simple enough task. He had to find a place for the reactor, usually the inside of a mountain, and set the robots to work on it. He had to check on the construction, set up time phasers to make the work invisible by making it too confusing to bring to consciousness, and when he was done he had to recharge the ship to make sure it was working right, and then he was to return. Instead he had split himself into his five basic compartments, collected rentals for them, and was partying on the planet.

Prax had lost control of Archer. Thus Archer was no longer inside the containment of Prax. Archer had become a god, but he was not one god. He was five of them constituting one containment system. His purpose was now a mystery. Prax sealed him outside the container.

"I don't feel very well," Archer said.

"Are you going to throw up?" Speedy asked, pulling away from him.

"You should stop the car," Eva said.

Jukebox had already pulled off the road and was coming to a stop as he looked back at Archer. He was getting sicker by the second and there was fear in his eyes. "Oh, shit," she said.

"Not in the car, please," Cici said icily.

"Why don't you just leave the body if its sick?" Legggs asked.

"Something's wrong," Archer said weakly. "I lost my energy."

"It must have been all those poppies you ate," Jukebox said. "You better make yourself throw up. Just stick your fingers down your throat and gag yourself. It's a fucking reflex. Anybody can do it, even a mental case in a suit."

"Be cautious," Hans said. "He could still put you on a specimen slide."

Archer stumbled out of the car. "My hands are tingling," he said.

"That's hyperventilation," Jukebox said. "Just make yourself throw up."

Archer looked like he might be dying. His eyes were rolling around and he was complaining that his stomach was exploding with pain.

"He shit himself," Speedy said with a disgusted sneer.

"Fuck you," Archer whined weakly. He shoved two fingers down his throat and his rental gagged, convulsed, and shuddered with the force of expelling what could not be contained. A sickening sweet stream of brown paste and orange and pink and purple syrups shot from him like venom and he collapsed on the ground beside the highway.

"I think his rental expired," Speedy said.

"He'll pick up another one," Cici said. "Let's go."

"Wait," Hans said. "Look at that."

"How does he do that?" Eva asked, staring intently -- they were all transfixed -- as from Archer's open mouth a translucent form emerged, or more correctly a tendency toward form, which appeared in first one shape and then another, as if testing it's newfound substance.

"What is that thing?" Legggs asked softly, as if her question was directed interiorly, but everybody seemed to answer together:

"It's a poppy spider."

"What's a poppy spider?" she asked.

Hans answered. "A poppy spider is the companion of a god."

She looked at Jukebox and he looked at her, then they both looked over at Archer Prax, who was now breathing normally. In response to their attention he rolled his head toward them and said, "Nothing changes for you. I was already a god as far as you're concerned."

"How about the rest of us?" Cici said. "What happens to us?"

"We're inseparable," Archer said, "so what happened to me happened to you, too."

"We're gods, then?" Speedy asked, hesitantly.

"Sure," Archer said. "That and five bucks gets you a cup of coffee. I feel better. God damn I don't recall ever being in a rental that got that sick. I had to stick around for it to see if it was gonna die. I'm beaming us back to the ship. This rental's got to go to the shop."

To Archer and Legggs it was like a remembered conversation, or a dream that is dissipating as awareness comes into focus. There was a conversation, somebody was saying something, then there was the feeling of dispersal. They were turning to bubbles and they felt irrationally happy to feel their bodies go away while their awareness remained, connected to a larger awareness that contained the energy of their story. There was no sense of time having passed, only of being inside a different chapter, in which they were going to kidnap the President of the United States by beaming him up into a flying saucer.

Something had changed in Archer. Before he became a god he thought the other aspects of himself were separate from him. Now he had admitted that they were all inseparable. That was the difference between a madman and a god. It was a shift of perception from chaos toward system recognition. There was also a shift in the direct communication coming through him. It was more subtle and more abstract, and didn't seek to prove anything. It only sought the pleasure of arranging elements with artistic balance.

"That's why you want to kidnap the President?" Speedy asked. "You're doing it as performance art?"

"That's all a god can do," Archer said.

Posted: Fri - June 3, 2005 at 12:41 PM