Man, human, beast, whatever it was that you called the hulk of mass, the matter, the machine that we were made out of—not the luminous beings—but the crude matter, the Aztec coatl—really was something of an interstellar cell phone calling home.
Each night when Alex slept it was the set-up of antennae, communications with the mothership or motherland, or whatever you’d like to name that a priori, fundamental from which we came from which we get al our want, survival instinct and so on (that infinite unnamed).
First, we were made of want but were too self-destructive so we needed survival instinct also so as to not waste the Controller’s time, effort, and money. So sure the Controller gave Alejandro, Alex, Ale Ale Ale (like the Ricky Martin song) a soul that gave him a consciousness that was an individual self but want, anger, and the will to survive rose up from another place—a resonant antennae of a place far away that was linked by the angels Ralph, Michael, and Gabriel, who zipped across the universe in song and light and reached Alex that moment, on his motorcycle, coming down a hill on a small island in Thailand, when he took his eyes off the road to see Ning, the virtual goddess on the motorbike beside him, her long curly black hair flowing out from under her helmet like a waterfall, but then survival instinct shot back into him and he leaned forward, steered the motorcycle away from the cliff and lost Ning, who was traveling in the opposite direction into that unnamed infinity.
Want, however, was strong and he considered turning around but inertia had him in her grip and he kept moving forward.
At night when he dreamed, he sent all this information to the Controller who processed it and re-developed his wants. he was told he should find any girl.
Also, some antennae scrambled the wrong signal to the wrong place, like a radio getting two stations at once, and he also received a second contrary message: become, no joke, a Buddhist monk. This message must have been intended for a different tourist in the Buddhist country.
Ale woke the morning swollen-eyed and red-faced more tired then when he went to sleep, although he had slept over twelve hours. Those kinds of counter-communications really were tiring on a young body. He saw Ning’s face in the air and felt a longing. His stomach growled. Alex was hungry. But he decided he would deprive himself of food today.
He sat at the hotel restaurant, beside the pool with bougainvillea separating the two, and ordered a peppermint tea. His spirit wanted re-nourishment and this would start with diet.
The woman that took the order for his tea was a young woman in a uniform—a black skirt, apron, and white t-shirt. The woman that bought the tea was different: she was the one from the motorbike—standing in front of him smiling, tea in one hand, a stack of towels in the other, radiating all the same charm as yesterday, but now closer he felt a bit like Phaeton nearing the sun, crunched up by a need for asceticism and distance from her and a headlong desire to jump inside her and be her master and slave.
The plants will teach you.
The plants will teach you. That’s right. That’s what Don Juan, Carlos Castaneda, and Jeremy Narber all say. The instructions in the plant’s teachings. The old brujos once killed a wild boar and got its magic that was once powerful, even then it was hard to believe. These powers were lost, but the plant can teach you—so if the plants wants you have them, you may have them.
The plants then are controlling consciousness. These plants now, living vibrantly in the tropical lowlands of Ixim-2, an area just below the planet’s equator, sent the messages to Ale via dreams. In old days men in the Earth’s tropical forests ate the plants, boiled their roots, smoked their resin, went on expeditions to cut certain ones, spread their pastes on their genitals and temple, apologized and explained the reasons for helping their brothers, sisters, and friends, but now the plant to human relationship is no longer good. So the plants now had to rely further on dreams—and this was a change from the previous era of doing things and with change comes adjustment and with adjustment comes errors—and so the plants got their wires crossed, their branches coiled, their lianas vined; and Ale at once lusted over this girl and held himself at bay. It was the stop-start inside him—like the message from a certain Buddhist statue with one hand up in restraint and the lowered hand beckoning. Ale found himself now when teasing people using the same style—left hand beckoning right hand gesticulating stop, then he would change to right hand beckoning and left saying stop. He would alternate quickly and people laughed. This was funny to be caught in a stop-go rift. And this is where he now found himself.
He had no control over it, didn’t even know what was happening. He merely waited for more instructions from his dreams.
In Ixim-2, there was another problem: it was a cruel dry season that began to starve the poor plants. The vines got more desperate and began to strangle each other in the race to the top to bask and take energy from the Omega Star, the lianas started to droop, fade, and fall, and the trees began to as well. It was trouble on Ixim-2.
At the pool, sipping on water, covering his tanning body in suntan lotion, he was somehow feeling starved. The fate of Ixim-2 was like being in sun or shade—the clouds were covering the shine inside him and he was vaguely aware of being under the power of something else. Ning, from behind the bar, and asked if he needed anything else.
“No I don’t. You,” he said, an involuntary stop-go gesture poured out of him.
She laughed, of course, then recomposed herself by smoothing a rogue vine of hair and said, “what is that?”
He looked down at his hands and jumped back in his seat. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me. Ordinarily I would have asked you already to dinner, but…,” he stopped.
“I would have already told you how unprofessional that would be.”
“Lately I am moderate or something. It’s horrible!”
She backed away a step. “Are you sure I can’t get you something?”
“I don’t know.”
She stared at him, trying to figure out what was going on in his head
On Ixim-2, the two vines—the monk vine and the sex vine—coiled around each other in a final tug. There was barely enough water for one and they would fight each other to the death like to drunks.
Ale put his hands back down.
“Are you thirsty?” She said, the way she would ask her four-year-old niece. She leaned close and he could examine how pretty her face was with its smooth curves, slight lines, and pronounced shape. She put her hand on his shoulder. Strangely, he looked as if he was dreaming.
In Ixim-2 the vines tightened. The stronger one would kill the weaker. The monk vine twisted itself and compressed—giving every last bit of energy, but the lust vine have it’s energy to defense. It almost gave in but that touch on Ale’s shoulder was transmitted back, like plant steroids, and the vine got a final push of strength and put the monk to death.
“You are so beautiful,” Ale said to Ning. A tear came out of the corner of her mouth and she smiled.
In Ixim-2 it had started to pour.
