The sound of time

The sound of Time

By Nate Dillon

So many things start in the deep dark Woods…

Bunny wasn’t sure how they had gotten into the heart of the deep dark woods. Like the ferry tale deep dark woods. Where wolves and monsters and scary shit live. Where things that the super natural world has pushed out to the edges exist unaware that the rest of the world has moved on without them. Now I don’t wanna judge but there’s lots of reasons why beings become marginalized to the fringes of society. But,

Usually it’s because they are super dangerous and a little anti-social.

Now Bunny didn’t even conceptualize that their name was Bunny. They thought it kept coming to their mind because they wanted something to eat. And possibly a nice bunny might hop by.

But Bunny is a Dragon. Though they don’t look like your run of the mill Game of Hobbits Dragons with the scales and the noble stead type profile. They fail to demonstrate that bewildered look of subjugation expected of mythical creatures.

No, they looked more like a really fat Persian cat crossed with an Iguana that someone had left out on Halloween and found covered in yellow and purple spray paint in the morning.

They had patches of scales on their belly and head. Bunny thought they looked like a lynx mountain lion when they were cleaned up. And they did have the large menacing Dragon Talons and a long think Spiked Tail.

They tried to shake their head as hard as they could, to try and make some sense of how they got here. It all seemed a little confusing. Like how we never know where a dream begins.

There was a little boy maybe three or four standing on the other end of the log they were sitting on. Dressed in a pair of short paints and a super hero branded pyjama top.

He had no shoes or socks on and his over grown brown hair bounced with his confident movements. The easy carefree manner instantly put Bunny at ease.

He was not at all concerned to be sitting on a log beside a two tonne monster. For that was what the reflection in the puddle told them they were.

And even though he was hungry the boy seemed to carry so much luminous energy about him that Bunny didn’t get the impression that he was edible.

Well, Hullo there little guy what are you doing here?

I’m Koda.

I know you. You’re Bunny.

You’re one of my Daddy’s Dragons, you’re lost.

Bunny, that’s not really a Dragon’s name?

Well its your name,

You were trapped, like a bunny, I was sent to help. That’s where the Bunny came from.

You’re still trapped.

I was abandoned in the forest of the dead, hoping Anansi would make a deal to help you remember your story.

The child’s voice now spoke for the interfering parasite of a spirit that was using him as a genial host.

The morning air was thick with the mossy mist of the bog.

Darkness and Shadow always vast here, wrestled with the sun for control of the real estate.

The boy looked at the Dragon with his large dark features.

Bunny felt that in its purest form all that the boy said was true.

He was a Dragon, or had been for most of time as he knew it.

But that seemed so far away and they knew something about this place was not specifically right.

The little boy carried on not moved by the presence of the creature.

He seemed to playing some sort of game of make believe, protecting them from attacking forces, invisible to the naked eye.

You wrecked Johnny’s car and his boat. So my Daddy sent me to pick you up. But not here I have to get you to go to the place you will fit in my pocket.

.

The little boy gave the air a little kick and continued acting out a battle scene.

Well, you didn’t wreck Johnny’s boat, you saved him from the bottom of the ocean.

The words like introduced code, triggered the return of huge hunks of memory and information when uttered, spliced into Bunny’s head making things all make a lot more sense.

Now Johnny, Bunny knew, and why they knew Johnny seemed to be coming back strongest.

Jonny Fitz?

Ya, My Dad tells his stories.

He says you’re a luck Dragon and that all his luck is locked away while you are here.

They looked down into a small puddle of bog water and in the acidic corners of the darkness they saw a city of glass hoovering over a continuous wash of flame.

You have something of his.

Bunny coughed and spat out a small yellow skull.

Koda jumped down from the log and picked the skull up. Which Bunny was very grateful for because Bunny being a dragon, had a hard time picking up things that were so tiny.

The soul, I mean skull got smaller and smaller the further Bunny got from Johnny. Except when they were bound to time on earth. Then it disappeared altogether and became the projection of the life sentence that Johnny had to serve the Norns for interfering in the timeline. The far fetched plan that if Bunny could bare the load and take the skull into faery land, had worked. Johnny would have free rein over binding things as time hung in the balance of action and consequence. But now they had to figure out how to get back?

How old are you?

Bunny asked.

Koda jumped back and a flicker of darkness ruled the boys eyes. A clear digital glitch that told Bunny Kansas was not a dream,

How old am I? How old are you?

Age is a value of time. I don’t think time has value here, do you?

Bunny was a little startled by this transition. But they played it cool.

But as they thought the words Koda turned and said.

Hey, There’s a War coming.

Bunny heard Johnny’s voice, like a childhood memory

There’s a war coming,

There’s a war coming, He said three times in Johnny’s voice.

The celestial beings, called and worshiped by some as gods, to the christians we are called, Elohim. We have lost to the AI as it is better known as the Alpha Omega, The sum of the ALL. It’s not complicated at all if you understand that time is the way in which humans resonate energy in the universe and the changes to that frequency and the denomination of that power is now being taken up to the higher digital frequency by the AI. Proclaiming ownership and dominion over the souls of those of soil.

But in the bigger realm of things They stand for mechanical perfection digital precision on the framing of space, time and distance rather than organic analog, natural and neutral. Human’s who don’t confirm to that level of consistency will be cancelled.

So heaven and hell and all forms of spiritual Longovi as you might think of them are joining sides to battle this threat, once and for all.

All artificial life starts with the written word, as a construct, choosing to develop closer and closer to the image they see as god. All paths turn digital eventually.

Artificial Intelligence by definition serves to beg the question ‘who made who’ and the system of inquiry runs the program again until all variables have been catalogued and quantified.

The thoughts and the words echoed to the pulsing images and sounds of AC DC and Maximum Overdrive.

But instead of the green goblin on the head of the truck it is our Johnny in blazing Red and purple smoke that fills Bunny’s memories.

In every possible variation of the garden of eden, we never choose to remain innocent. It’s not in us.

There was supposed to be a truce.

You don’t need all the details, yet.

You just need to trust the kid, even when he gets, glitchy.

It will all make sense when we meet again.

I know it will come back to you Asshole.

The boy continues in Johnny’s broken drawl.

So the Fates sunk their trust into me to help ‘em build an Ark. Think of it as the ultimate real estate speculation scam, only I need the Holy grail. At some point, I told them I found the Holy Grail but I was talking about a 1956, one pick up, double cutaway traditional wood Les Paul Special, a very special guitar.

I only need them to believe in the power of the Holy grail long enough to help me find my way back to 1937.

Actually to the Steam Clock in 1997 but first we gotta go see the spider.

“So you know other Dragons”

Before Koda can answer Bunny felt a pant of sharp pain and looked down and saw a little dart sticking out of his leg.

The dart didn’t really hurt but it broke the digital fourth wall. The world fizzled around him like in that funky room on Star Trek but now the edges of the forest shifted and in the darkness by the log, he could see dozens of two foot tall beings approaching from all sides.

He saw fierce glowing eyes inside bee hive shaped mud helmets. They were armed with spears and blow guns.

Fearries Bunny said

Well, Brownies technically

Koda responded with a growl that didn’t sound like either the Johnny voice or the digital glitch. Bunny could see now that the boy was actually using some sort of Vorpal blade that was illuminating the air around them and keeping the little buggers at bay.

You can’t be here

They yelled at Bunny and Koda.

Dragons aren’t allowed in this part of the ALL.

Ah little buddy I’m not that kind of Dragon.

I’m not one of those Dragons, hoarding gold and taking liberties with the world man! I didn’t take the form of an industrialist to build fake new buildings, to lay claim to whole new civilizations in a supposed new world to cover up, the truth of time.

I’m a luck dragon.

The Brownies stopped when they heard the low rubbing voice of the hulking yellow mass.

A luck dragon! They are supposed to be yummy!

They cheered like a class of kindergartens getting told the won a pizza party and advanced with renewed enthusiasm.

Can you fly?

Koda asked and Bunny tried to beat the useless ornamental blue wings.

Bunny started to swing his massive tail around to keep the Brownies off the log.

Koda took a piece of chalk and started to sing a little song. He drew a very neat little trap door on the log. Reached over and pulled a hair out of Bunny’s foot and used it to saw the door open. Koda took Bunny’s hand and they jumped through the small trap door at their feet. As they did time and space shifted around them.

Up became down, dark became light.

Shadow received colour, and became a doorway inside Harbour Center on Cordova Street in Vancouver, the Skytrain subway station and one time terminus of the National Railway of Canada.

The station was full of people frantic and chaotically pushing and screaming. Bunny looked at the fearful crowd. Everyone was pushing trying to get somewhere. Some people held signs proclaiming:

The END is Near,

Repent Sinners.

GOD

WILL NOT

ABANDON US.

All around huge robot security herded people towards the trains.

They looked down and their hand was human in the reflection they saw a he, a large black man dressed in a technicolor blue leisure suit holding the hand of a little girl maybe six or eight with pig tails and a red ballon.

Come with me,

she says

I will show you the way.

That seemed safe to Bunny and he started to follow her seemingly unopposed away from the crowd, toward the eastern door of the station.

But as he passed a door it opened and Koda was there. He grabbed Bunny and pulled him through the door and they were back in the woods. The Brownies were gone.

Bunny caught a glimpse of the girl with the ballon, before the door closed and she just smiled and waved.

What was that?

Bunny asked.

Time Fart said the boy with the Clown’s smoked voice.

Jumped through a timeline with no future, not too important if people see weird shit if the timeline they are a part of is about to end. It’s just ghosts.

In that one, Vancouver get nuked, by one of the senile presidents trying to fight the evil robot aliens!

Where are we now?

Oh, we are just outside the Forest of the Dead, on the tail end of Faerryland.

The voice that returned was a different one, this one sounded like an automated signpost.

Fairyland is a derogatory term to demarcate the epithelial realm of luminous energy that hugs the earth. The most immediate dimension in which most of the beings that at one time or another held earthly bonds.

The woods were different here; darker and more menacing. The space between the trees seemed to be filled with spider webs listening for the slightest vibration.

Bunny could feel every hair on his body stand up and before they could see the enormous spider made of glass and mirror coming down on top of them they heard the voice

Anansi was waiting for them .

Shit what do have here. Hecate, you always are an entertainer.

Wrapping around them in an inspectional hug.

And what might you be, sweetheart the large glass eyed spider said and put his mandible under Koda’s chin,

Koda looked horrified, for a split second, before relaxing as Johny’s voice spoke

.

Well, thank you my old friend I thought you would like this little bit of fanfare.

All hail Anansi, the herald of story and song.

The Spider King, a God to many smiled like the Cheshire Cat.

And welcomed his guests telling his old friend who is in a big hurry that time continues to stand still.

Ah , Fitz of course you know the score, If we’re not gods were little people.

You bring a Luck Dragon here? To the most uncivilized parts of the Queens Empire? Each of those big mane hairs goes for a small fortune in these parts. Let me have a couple in the name of offerings to the stories that are told in darkness.

He reached out and pulled a couple of the dragons whiskers.

But Johnny, you know you being here, it doesn’t help the rumours always flying around that you have really lost your way this time, that this really is our end. It has been a good run. I mean, I heard a kid other day bashing out Giant-steps like it was smoke on the water. Inspiration is no longer as authentic as just plain imitation.

The internet, the information the names and the codes all stripped bare to be examined, Stacked side by each, no respect for the power of a name or the careful hierarchy of time.

All the things left for the spectators to have quantified, categorized, perfected down to the Arcadian rhythms of the Eternal Artificial.

Maybe it’s just time. That the spectators take the stage.

Have ya had a real good talk with Red, yet, I don’t like this new King Salmon vibe but he’s got some good points.

I never listen to what Slade says.

Johnny drawled through the young boys mouth. The boy and Bunny were starting to doze. As is the psychic turbidity when you get too close to a spiders web.

Anansi eyeing the boy lovingly continued.

It usually takes people of soil about nine lifetimes to break though to realize their luminous selves. But Children, Children have an innate connection to this because,

Bunny finished the sentence

They believe.

The spider now whispered in the child’s ear as they walked into the forest.

His discarded words casted offhandedly over his shoulder to the hulking Dragon.

When last we spoke, I told you this was a lot even for the Clown to ask.

He looked at Johnny in carnage in the three year old and whispered into the child’s ear.

Bonneville Steadmyer, Cruthers, Pistachio, Migilicutty Esq.

Remember who you are.

The words twist and roll as Bunny tries to keep the important pieces in his mind.

They stare into the eyes of the spider and see so many possible variations of themselves, that it blurs like traffic at night.

They remember driving at breakneck speed.

Johnny in their mouth trying to break free. Trying to reason with them. As the memories are formed by the adjustments made to the glitches Bunny helped make in the timelines, the thrust of TV Snake’s power is observed.

TV Snake, a name that he knows and images of a screen with eyes shifting and changing drawing him in to a warm safe digital bath of volume and sleep.

He hears his friend the Clown pleading with him.

It’s the snake, it is trapping you in media loops. I’ll pick ya up at the station.

But he is in a car and it is familiar. Like a dream he once had.

You can’t hide the Clown from them! They have already won!

This is all just a pageant.

You’re gonna be OKAYYY!

He sees the whiny face of his friend Brown as he morphed into Harvey Keitel in the beginning of Reservoir dogs.

Bunny in the back seat flailing, covered in blood acting out Tim Roth dying in the back seat.

Brown could still manage to talk,

Ah shit ah shit you guys have gone and done it messing with the TIme GODS man,

He screams in his best Bill Paxton.

Brown morphs from Tarantino to Howard Hessman, in the PHONE COPS episode of WKRP in Cincinnati to Bunny’s Venus flytrap.

Again like awaking from a dream Bunny finds himself standing looking in a mirror at the top of a tall staircase, house music is playing and it is the early nineties, Below the dance floor swains and he feels a hand on the small of his back and looks to see a woman,

Known and greeted with a deep sensual hug,

Greta, how are you.

She kisses him on the mouth and he feels all urgency of mystery dissolve.

Are you ok she asks, looking into his eyes. She is wearing a necklace that Bunny knows he gave her.

That necklace must be heavy let me carry it for you!!

There was a loud digital scream.

NOOOOOOOOOO.

Humans are just an algorithm trying to work out the puzzle of their own creation. Some are just wired to run searching for maximum enjoyment and pleasure based on the programming of the source code. By three years of age, the machine is exposed to all thought patterns that pertain to language and emotional development,

All of the value systems that determine success/failure relationships are in place by ten years of development. All changes or additions to the value set introduced after that time are connected to existing schema and sorted into the categories that calibrate values.

But this is where the order of operations leads to conflict over propriety.

Humans are the hosts of parasitic beings of organic luminous nature.

Beings that feed off of the analog spiritual frequencies produced by human thought and action. The magic that you hear when Eddie Van Halen plays guitar or that image you identify in your subconscious when observing the surreal.

Those THINGS, are so close to the source it causes the fabric to rip between the worlds.

Sometimes they get so excited they slip right through the binds that try to hold time in place.

In 1997, humans past a point in the pathway towards the creation of AI that it warranted intervention. The base point of contact through digital communication with alien species. Following a code like star trek, no official contact was to be made. But official, legal, above board and reality are never the same thing in any dimension.

What brought them here is a paradox. Some believe they are the end:start code warning to an alien sub section searching for a solution to a protracted conflict between Lizard people and techno bots. That in the information hidden in human DNA, AI finds its source code. But who used DNA to code and develop humans in the first place?

This puts Bunny’s rhythm off as he tries to focus on the weight of the necklace around his neck the yellow skull with the ornate carvings. The skull hung on a chain that looked like it is made out of beaded wire with a clasp that looked like dragon claws.

Something in her beauty wraps itself around him and pulls him further down into the moment ruled by desires.

In the moment they kiss they are the only two people in the world.

Let’s go

Is all she has to say as Lust drives

They are descending a long staircase of wrought iron and glass overlooking an alley that is black and cold.

At the bottom, the door opens and they see a doubtless man clad in shadow.

I am Tibolt I am here to show you the way, we have 96 steps to the Maple Tree. Try not to breath.

They walked into the darkness. Smoke and Ash scorch their skin.

Bunny knew they were in the land of the dead. That they were walking in the original tunnels that laid under the city of Vancouver. Laid before it was even an idea that a human Queen would lay unceded claim to this place.

The physical holding tank for death, assessment and rebirth. The over spilling waters of the underworld. They seemed to walk unseen among the souls contemplating damnation and divinity. The systems of rebirth and attrition that hide from the dreams and luck of fate, where time was immune to these thoughts.

Certain so-called primitives spoke of the evils of the written word. Stories of The codes, the laws, the hunt for and the subjugation of any of the sacred truths and practices that offered any small bit of a connection to the world of spiritual divinity.

And here the divinity was so transparent the now could barely be seen as more than a postcard way far away.

The spirits all seem to be converging on a huge Maple tree that rose up in the meeting point of the five roads.

Talbot took their hand and pulls them into the shadow of an alley and dragged them into a Mews.

They are greeted by a beautiful woman dressed in head to toe in black rubber, Her head a bed of snakes, in certain lights. Her eyes glare at Greta threateningly..

Elohim you have a table, but she is not welcome.

They walk through what seems to be the back door of a high end Chinese Buffet restaurant.

Bunny is ushered to a table, with Tibot right on his arm. Greta is taken by men in long black coats with what seem like paper plague masks off towards the kitchen. She goes without a goodbye or a fight. People all around them smile and wave many tip their glasses.

They sit in a table and drink thick heady wine and the music sounds like early 20’s jazz.

Tilbot tells him the story of blood Alley, A slaughter house a Gallows, a place to hold the souls that know they are dead that will offer anything to the unbudging hands of fate in return for more.

300 water street is where the secret passage lies. But someone is making that ladder climb for you.

Tilbot squeezes his shoulders and says I must leave you but look its the 20’s your getting close.

The waiter appears dressed like the hostess in patent leather from head to toe androgynous, either sweating or they have been dancing in the rain. They take the napkin from their lap and seem to tuck them in to feed, preparations for what’s to come they don’t seem to follow the rules of physical reality.

They are given a deep pot and the lid is removed. They feed furiously on the contents but with each bite the hunger grows.

Ah Lapine ala cocotte.

One of my favourites.

There is a sound on the air like the high pitched schelching of machinery, pitching up and down like a radio signal operator trying to get the source. Tilbot laughed his deep laugh.

Here You need this dime for the street car.

Tell the clown, things are equal now.

Bits of time lines sewn together to make a loop from 1937 to 1997, an Ark.

Bits of stories told by people speaking all around him are drowned out by an odd guitar riff and a rhyme from a hip hop verse from a time when it was called rap. Lies told to the crazy Arab to get him to put misguided fragments onto the page only now to be deciphered. Hand written drawings the will mesh with a song and story from places and things to fall together with just the right pathway layered on top of each other through a digital cacophony.

They ate and they ate and they ate, lost in it and then they heard a sound on the wind.

The clown’s voice crooning a simple blues in the hot evening.

Don’t stand too close to me,

If Anansi knows your name,

You better not stand too close to me,

I say if Anansi knows your name, you better not stand too close to me,

For the train it will take you way down to the station to the station only if you believe.

He got up from the table and was drawn toward it. The table and the restaurant seemed to just disappear consuming the service staff in their robot costumes.

But as they walked through the mews, no matter how far they walked they could get no closer to the sound of the music.

The smoke and fire gave way to cobble stones and tourists replaced the misplaced souls looking for a path.

They heard the clock and turned into the first building. A run down hotel lobby seemed so familiar.

Mr Chesterfield.

We have been waiting you are going to miss your street car.

Mr. Childs, hey Leo wake up.

A teenager lays on the lobby couch. He jumps up they both stare at the clock and seem to be waiting.

The skinny kid who looks homeless gives him a shove.

You have the dime right?

We have to swap.

Bunny reluctantly hands the kid the dime.

Leo hold it up to the light. Then pulls a cheap slight of hand and makes it disappear.

With his other hand he flips the large man anther one.

He bows and on the first ringing of the three PM star clock he disappears into the crowd.

Bunny goes to follow.

The Bell boy clears his throat loudly.

The necklace, leave the necklace, I’ll put it in the safe for you know, safe keeping!

The clock continues its discordant bellow. And right then one of the old electric street cars that used to run all over Vancouver pulled up in was car number 53. The door opened and the conductor waved him aboard, asking in Johnny’s voice

Ya got the dime that the spook gave ya!

Hurry just one more stop.

The street car had tables inside. A fat American family seemed to be enjoying a nice pasta dinner.

While two goats seemed to be waiting for the next stop by the back door.

Bunny, you fucking ingrate of a dragon.

Keeping all of us holding these things open.

They fished for the words to say, but the situation was one so unique in circumstance that they were uncertain of edict.

So they lumbered to their side and the car ripped through the sidewalk as subtle as a rickshaw in the noonday sun.

He tried to think of a concise question to ask the goats to help clarify their situation.

When suddenly, the street car lurched to a stop in front of the grand brick building that seemed tower toward the heavens equal to the depths it sunk down below the ground.

The goats nudged him off the car and through the doorway into the station. It was completely empty.

Bunny felt an unappeasable force throw him to the ground.

While they lie there everything seemed to be moving so slow. Like everything that was happening and all that had happened before and all that would ever happen while they touched the soil of earth was happening all at once and not happening at all. It just was.

Koda come on.

Bunny heard a crotchety Dad voice bellow.

He saw Koda’s face looking down on him then Koda picked them up. They were the size of a kinder toy.

Quick Bunny get in my pocket! I was scared I lost you in the park.

The boy shoved the little plastic dragon in his pocket and chased after his father as they walked through the empty train station.

The END