The Coyotes of Quantis

The table was brown; the bread was blue. I was in a manor house dining room — oil paintings in large gilt frames lined the walls.

A coyote sat in the corner, he said, “I’m tired, but at least I can still piss standing up.” He told me about meeting Jesus.

After which, I told him about my meeting Jesus. We’re not Christians.

Jesus came to help fix his flow. He couldn’t piss standing up anymore; he was a chameleon without the ability to change colour. Okay, not quite. But to him, pissing standing up was an essential, like blue bread.

Every night, Jesus would come to him in his dreams. He’d perform little operations on his gentlemen’s area.

In the mornings, the coyote (sitting at breakfast with a bunny), would feel the urge to piss. He’d pull his front legs off the ground, and day by day the flow from his ‘gentlemen’s area’ would increase, until one day he was in full flow whilst standing.

He was a special coyote, because he had been a member of the crew from Quantis.

If you don’t know, after we die, our bodies go back into the quantum vacuum.

All you need to know is that horses have an autumnal kind of hue, and when they die, they are baptised in the vacuum by coyotes in colourful dress. Their clothing is the same as the Pied Pipers in that 16th-century painting — but fear not, there’s no mytho-symbolic relationship.

Now Scruffy McGee over here (that’s a comedic nickname. His real name is Des, like Des O’Connor. In fact, by a sort of quantum happenstance, O’Connor is his last name too) isn’t the stereotypical coyote in colourful dress. He drinks, smokes weed, and pisses in cereal bowls — he’s the cosmic coyote equivalent of Joey Diaz or Charles Bukowski.

Quantis, rather than being a ‘crew’, is actually a formal institution. They teach the coyotes how to transform beings like horses into new forms — like ants, or humans. When the transformation is complete, they whisper into the new body’s ear, “Tu aimes le poisson?” (You like fish?). It’s a test.

You see, there’s a great fish of time, it’s the life of the spirit (la vie de l’esprit — see my artwork [image 1]). If the new body, temporarily animated, says “Oui.” to the question, then this is a sign from the original gangster (God) that the soul in question is meant to be born again. So, it is baptised and injected with the breath of life (otherwise known as the steam from a single-origin Columbian espresso).

I cannot possibly recite the entire tale of Des O’Connor’s life here, as this would require a level of near-infinite description almost akin to that found in a short story by Borges.

After all, the coyote Des O’Connor was entangled with a vast array of other beings through his mental imaginations of them. Our own human Des O’Connor entered his imagination often and therefore contributed to his death. Let me explain.

We know that the coyote Des O’Connor died from a myocardial infarction. Our human Des O’Connor frequently entered his brain in a spontaneous imaginal form — thus, the human Des O’Connor became a part of the infarction’s aetiology. This is the science of Quantis, otherwise known as ‘Quibley science’.

Before I tell you the remainder of my interaction with Des, I should offer some information about myself.

Quantis is a cool place, and I, Zorino Bands, am the only human who knows the Quibley science of Quantis. I learned this from others who found the ‘quantum’ in physics but saw not Quantis within the quantum. Every scientist who fails to smirk fails in his science; Feynman is adored because he smirked his way to scientific understanding.

Once I got a glimpse of Quibley science, I was better able to communicate with Quantis through my dreams. That’s how I met Des.

Now after he had told me his Jesus story, the one I have already recited in redacted form, I told him mine.

I was once on an extended trip to North Africa. This was 10 years ago, in 2032, when violence was slightly more prevalent over there. Since I had some knowledge of the local town, I inadvertently became a guide for a small group of tourists.

I was escorting them through a street when we heard gunshots nearby. Everyone in the group knew I was a white wizard; so, I was determined to use my powers to get the group to safety.

I saw a small building up ahead that looked secure. I peered around the corner of the

building to my right, before darting across the street and signalling for the others to follow.

We got to the door.

Now came my time to shine. Zorino, the great wizard, would get them to safety.

I had my staff — an object of pure white magic, enchanted under a full moon — and I would be the one to do this.

Now, did you catch my mistake? Pride and power: the two enemies of a wizard.

I moved my staff toward the door, but my magic wasn’t strong enough. I quickly tried again. My staff glowed a beautiful teal colour, but still, it had no impact on the door. I panicked, ‘We’re going to die,’ I thought to myself. That’s when he came.

Jesus had come back to earth about 7 years prior. The Kali Yuga had ramped up too quickly, and there was going to be a premature nuclear war. So, the saints and sages of all religious traditions got together and decided that a few of them would take up their bodies again to help directly: Jesus, Lao Tzu, and the Buddha to be specific.

You’d think that would do it. Well, they did stop Kali in the form of a nuclear bomb, but even 17 years later they are still working on strengthening the population — it’s the video games and consumerism that keeps us clinging to ignorance.

So, there I was, a wizard that couldn’t cast a spell. We stood outside the door like a bag of lemons waiting to be juiced. But just like that, the big man appeared: Jesus Christ baby!

First, he told me that I was being too prideful. All well and good but coming from the perfect man it stings a little — not like a hornet, but certainly like a honeybee. Nonetheless, his presence was calming, and I knew he wanted the best for me, for us all. He had no staff; he simply used his hands. You see the difference? In some sense, a staff is ego, individual accumulation. A staff, if you aren’t careful, will close your heart to love.

So, there we go, Jesus saved us.

When I had finished reciting my story to Des, he said very little.

But the bunny, who had sat silently at one end of the table, stood up. He was a wise bunny, reasonably old. He wore a tattered leather jacket. Just before the dream faded, he said one thing to me, “You should have got the gunmen to shoot you in the leg.”

In hindsight, I think he was a god.