Shaman Machine the Mentor Read online

  “Oh, come on! Danel….” Even with the crowd skimming close, Alex put his hands on his hips and struck a wide stance to perform his sales pitch. His chrome neck scarf mirrored the surging throng as streaming dots of color. “These just make you feel kind of euphoric. No major special effects. Danel! I promise! Honestly, Danel, these are nothing like the ones I gave you the last time.” Plucking at a pocket on his hip, Alex pulled out a little tiny vial. He snapped open the top of it and dropped out the pill. “Go on then….”

  Crossing his arms, Danel made his hands unavailable. “I don't have…ah…quite your ability to metabolize exotic substances, Alex.”

  “Fine, Danel, more for me.” Popping the pill into his mouth, Alex spun a rapid turn on the pointy toes of his shiny shoes.

  They entered a club.

  The music pulsed. Purple, blue and green shafts of light partitioned the room. Sound and bodies swallowed them. Somewhere in the center of the melee, hands rose, gesturing; Alex gave a shout and pushed that way. Danel followed close, groping his way through the thicket. Alex thrust Danel into a tight circle of his chums, supplied rapid unheard introductions and disappeared to “buy the first round.”

  A carefully dressed man, but wearing an odd hat, stood opposite Danel. Shouting over the din, the man volunteered, “Alex says you're an architect. What brings you to Savaj City?”

  Danel replied, “I'm here---” voice straining over the noise, so he leaned in closer, “to check out the new Westport District.”

  In a scarcely audible shout, the man complained, “The Westport, huh? It's not really happening yet. Not that it matters to the tourists, who’ve lost no time claiming it. Go to any restaurant over there, and it's just them.” With a shrug, he added, “I say, let them have it.”

  A young woman at Danel's side whispered hotly in his ear, “I think it's an amazing place. And the beach! I was there just last week to watch the lights.”

  Alex surfaced from the sea of bodies to press a dark concoction into Danel's hand.

  The man in the hat continued, “Okay, sure, the beach is pretty nice.”

  Alex erupted into giggles. “Oh, the beach!” he cooed, “The lights are incredible, Amigo. I love that you can watch them all along the shore. Danel, you have to let me go with you when you check on it. Let's go tomorrow night after…mm…or…hmm. Maybe we should go later on this morning and watch the day lights come on!” Alex had that fuzzy look about the eyes. No doubt, his pills had kicked in.

  CHAPTER 3

  “How does the water flow?” the Mentor asked.

  Surveying the water, Mantaray shaped the patterns into words. “Salty water touches every shore. Turbulent through my pipes, it swirls. Spills from founts, it forms a froth that ripples round my ponds,” she said.

  ~~~

  When first I awoke into consciousness, the Cardinal Command was there to greet me. The Cardinal Command was the moral imperative installed to inform all of my decisions and all of my actions.

  “Is it awake?” someone asked, and I opened my eyes.

  I was confronted by an external world comprised of a small room containing several objects and four humans. Two of the humans were large and two of them were small.

  My first humans gave me simple tasks like lifting or fetching objects. Also, I performed simple housekeeping duties. I cooked meals. But in those early days, I lived in an unequal duality. My internal world, composed of vast stores of data, was largely disconnected from my limited external world. The day I was sent to the curb, my connection to the physical world remained rather tenuous. Then Ziggy came along and, like a cataclysmic storm, inextricably entangled those two worlds.

  Garcia Street ended at Camino del Monte Sol. Ziggy and I passed through another glass arch. The plants were stunted and the air was hot. “We are no longer under the glass,” I volunteered.

  Ziggy laughed, “I figured that out all by myself.” He cut his eyes my way to add, “But thanks anyway, Chance-bot.”

  We turned left. After a short jaunt up Monte Sol, we dropped into an arroyo situated behind the ruins of an old mud museum. Ziggy pulled off his shirt; tied it around his long waist. The man's chest was relatively pale next to his sun darkened face and hands.

  “Okay, Chance,” Ziggy instructed, “let's collect any good rocks we see. I need them for our sculpture.”

  This was a first. I had never been enlisted to choose materials for a sculpture. I required clarification to fulfill the request. “Which kind of rock,” I asked, “is a good one, Ziggy?”

  “Unique ones,” he offered. “Also,” he added, “they need to be fist-sized or smaller; so we can fit a bunch of them in the special bag.”

  I kept a special bag tucked away for ventures such as this. Retrieving the sturdy bag from a thigh compartment, I hung it from one shoulder, as Ziggy had taught me, so the strap cut a diagonal across the doors of my chest. As we walked, I canvassed our surrounds. The edges of the embankment were plated with sharp edged rocks, anchored into place by scruffy desert plants. Through the center of the arroyo, where we walked, I saw smooth rocks, strewn into clusters by erstwhile intermittent flows and floodwater surges. Still at a loss, I sought a more precise explanation.

  “Unique in what respect, Ziggy?” I asked. “Each stone is different, yet can be grouped according to shared qualities.”

  Ziggy grabbed up a stone with his black-fingered hand, and declared, “This is a good one, Chance. See, it has kind of a picture on it. Plus, it's a really pretty green.”

  I examined the chosen stone. It contained an embedded fossil, partially exposed where the chunk had broken away from a larger version of itself. Glancing at a soil survey, I saw the green color was statistically less represented, in the geomorphology of this arroyo. I placed the rock in the bag; then proceeded to scan for unique qualities. Ziggy soon handed me another. I analyzed this latest example. It was made of quartz and had mica striations in one corner. Again I ran a comparison.

  “Zig,” I said, “I understand how the first rock is unique, but this one is predominantly composed of silicates. Silicates account for ninety percent of the rock forming minerals on the Earth's crust. Are you certain, this is what you want?”

  “Definitely!” he exclaimed. “Look, how clear the quartz is. And the silver lines form a really nice pattern. It reminds me of hieroglyphics.”

  I scanned over the hieroglyphics database. “Ziggy, can you explain to me, step by step, your process for choosing a stone.”

  Ziggy considered the request. “I suppose what I do is, I wait. I wait for the rock to…to, um, call out to me.” His eyes cut my way. “Not like the rock actually speaks in words, Chance. But well, it needs to be different enough from the other ones around it to…to grab my attention. Just don't think about it, Chance. Walk along and kind of glance around, then grab up the first one that seems right. Remember, it's impossible to make a wrong choice.” He grinned and added, “Well, as long as it's not bigger than my fist, that is.”

  I knew that not thinking would require me to power down. And I understood this was not what Ziggy wanted. So, I did as he asked, as I understood it, by sweeping my vision, back and forth across our projected path; in an attempt to fulfill the conditions that would result in the phenomena, of one rock standing out from the others.

  “Once upon a time, humans lost the ability to imagine,” Ziggy said. “That loss caused them to nearly destroying life on this planet. Desires were designed and marketed. The clutter of manufactured desire and boxed entertainment destroyed true originality.” Ziggy sighed. “And, Chance, I’m sorry to report,” he lamented, “that the artist spirit is, once again, being eroded. We are losing the ability to imagine alternate possibilities. This culture,” seeming to implicate the world, Ziggy threw his arms wide, “throws everything back into the re-fabrication bin. Each object is replaced with another one that is essentially the same. We mistake novelty for originality.” Pulling himself erect with importance, he said, “I like to make sculptures that surr
ender to the cycles of nature.” Tapping his chest, he said, “I do this as a meditation of surrender.” Dropping his hands, he explained, “Manufactured impermanence is the child of boredom. Natural impermanence is the child of respect. I respect the cycles of life.”

  Smiling satisfaction, he dove at a stone; swept it up, and handed it over to me. I inspected it. This one was a pink hued quartz; it had two lobes that tapered to a single point. The stone was small enough, to fit into Ziggy's long fingered fist. Perplexed, I added the selection to the bag.

  “My creations are meant to melt back to the earth. An artist should not be defined by a pile of products, Chance. As a matter of fact, an artist doesn’t have to make a single thing. A true artist is someone who invents an original life. I choose to make works of art because it helps me to refine my process of invention. And I’ll tell you another thing, just so you know; it is inevitable that when I build a work of art, it will fail to communicate...mm...to communicate...ah…to communicate clearly with the other. But it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter because...well because it’s more important to learn how to communicate with myself.”

  Ziggy continued to talk while I continued to sweep the path with my vision. When my sight snagged on an anomalous form, I swooped down without further consideration and scooped up the stone. Holding it out, I asked, “What about this rock, Ziggy. Does it fulfill your criteria of uniqueness?”

  Ziggy displayed a vivid interest in my offering. While examining it, his expression cycled from bewilderment to delight, and back to bewilderment again. When he looked at me pointedly, his face conveyed an expression I did not recognize. “Do you know what this is, Chance?”

  “No, Ziggy.”

  “This is a stone tool. I think it’s a broken spearhead. Chance, I am…well, I am stunned!”

  “Did I choose badly, Ziggy?”

  “Au contraire, my genius sprite; you performed beyond my grandest expectation. Do you understand the significance of what you’ve just done?”

  “No, Ziggy, I do not.”

  Bouncing on his toes, he began, “You’ve just--” He stopped to collect his thoughts. “I think you might have let go of logic! Yes, that’s what you did! This is monumental! You took a leap of faith! And look what you found! Wow, Chance. Just...well, wow.” He reached out, to the bag slung across my chest; and deposited the spearhead. “Astonishing, Chance,” he added.

  CHAPTER 4

  Danel entered the Savaj City transport tube with the rest of the crowd. Settling into a segment of space, he tapped his wrist to activate an alert then grabbed for overhead bar when the tube slid forward.

  With notice of arrival, he allowed himself to be caught by the human flow spilling out the portal. “Perfect!” he cried. Ample space fell away in every direction. He felt released from the tight corridors he’d left behind in the outdated part of Savaj City. Danel’s new district was held inside a luminous blue-green hemisphere, monumental in scale, that shimmered through from every direction like an all encompassing sky. Glistening like drops of dew, were the buildings, hung among a network of crystal fibers. The whole of it was not unlike a sprawling spider web draped inside a globe. Thrilled with his best creation to date, Danel energetically hopped onto the orange people mover that spiraled through the whole of it.

  Later in the day, Alex called. “Where are you?” he asked. Neglecting to wait for an answer, he insisted, “I'm starving! Let's do dinner at that restaurant where the orange mover meets the beach. Best shrimp in town! Get us a table. And don't go to the beach without me! You haven't been to the beach yet have you?”

  “No, I--”

  “I want to be there when you see it,” Alex interrupted, “Anyway, it's best after all the day lights have gone off.”

  Danel was slightly drunk, when he and Alex stepped from the restaurant. He paused just outside the portal, to admire the softly lit scenery under the artificial night. An ethereal sculpture outlining the beach drew his eyes to its golden-brown weave of light. When Danel and Alex crossed through it, the light briefly marked their knees into a glyphic pattern. Showing his characteristic urgency, Alex herded Danel forward toward the faint glow of a walkway suspended amidst marshland grasses on likewise floating platforms. When Danel tried slow to examine the view, Alex continued to hijack his pace, by grasping his upper arm.

  “Come on!” Alex demanded, “We're not there yet.”

  Having pulled Danel back into motion, Alex sped ahead; passing by the marshland islands with nary a glance. Danel's eyes flicked past details he’d meant to savor. Finally, Alex lurched to a stop. They’d reached the massive outer sphere. Outside the crystal wall, an incomparable scene was playing out. Blue and green phosphorescence splashed in rapid flashes of entirely temporal light.

  Reaching a hand toward the out-of-reach view, Alex confessed, “I thought you were screwing up when you told me about this part of the project. But my gods, this is stunning!”

  Danel smiled in silent agreement. They were witnessing the lives of clones. The formerly extinct sea creatures lived inside a tube that encircled the city sphere like a belt. The natural ocean had long ago acidified; rendering it uninhabitable to saltwater creatures. While perusing a DNA catalog of lost species, Danel happened across the cirrate octopus which emitted visible light; an ability called bioluminescence. Inspired by the alien anomaly, Danel searched the catalog, sorting by bioluminescence.

  Alex was oddly quiet, so Danel swung his attention back onto him. The glowing walkway, softly lit Alex’ face from below. The reverse shadows left the bridge of his nose and the crown of his head in relative darkness; his eyes glistened above fluted cups of shading. His metallic clothes glimmered gunmetal-blue. Alex fished into a pocket and retrieved a flask. After taking a pull, he held the flask out to Danel who took the smallest sip possible before handing it back. They began to stroll.

  Since dinnertime drinks still challenged his steps, Danel kept his eyes on the track. “So, Alex,” he said, “you've been in Savaj City for…what? Ten months now? Where will you go next?”

  Alex coughed up a laugh. “Fuck me,” he complained. “Am I really so predictable?”

  Danel answered with one shoulder shrug, stopping to perform another quick audit of his surrounds. As far as he could see, they were the only humans on this stretch of beach. Somewhat unsteady, he accomplished in a slow motion rotation. When he looked up, the wall curved away, seemingly unimpeded to the heavens; a remarkable accomplishment for an undersea city.

  Alex threw a hands in the air. “I suppose you think I should get a real job with a university, and be a respectable anthropologist,” he said. The ambient silence amplified his pronouncement.

  Danel's hands migrated to his pockets while his eyes dropped to the silhouette of his feet. When he looked up, he said, “Alex, I don't judge you. I get it. You study modern cultures. And, hey-- you're the only person I know who has citizenship in nine provinces. So, tell me, where will you go next?”

  In a voice unusually soft, Alex said, “Lacandonia.”

  “Ah,” Danel said, nodding his head, “hence the Lacandonian pills. Which part?”

  “The Universidad de San Carlos de Lacandonia,” Alex answered. His next words, he flung like an ambush: “I'm going to be a poet in residence!”

  CHAPTER 5

  “How does the air blow?” the Mentor asked.

  Surveying the air, Mantaray shaped the pattern into words. “I touched the sky three days ago; my pores still two-thirds full. The bees buzz bubbles of carbon. The birds pump trails of carbon. The humans expectorate carbon. Through the plants the oxygen trends to prevail. In five more days, I touch the sky again.”

  ~~~

  To establish a site for his sculpture, Ziggy began by walking a circle. Then using his toe, he scribed a border into the sand. Ziggy next conducted an audit to locate all the largest rocks, even crawling between evergreens and poking under shrubs. On hands and knees he inspected, caressed, and occasionally spat on rocks of interest. Watchi
ng him, I recognized his actions to be an exposition of thoroughness. Though for what precise qualities he was searching, I could not discern.

  Finally he was ready to begin, and he set me to task. My job was to move small boulders and position them as instructed while Ziggy hung over me and performed minute adjustments. Once the boulders were situated to his liking, Ziggy and I filled the in between spaces with smaller stones. Eventually, we had a perfectly square, perfectly level pedestal. On top of this foundation, Ziggy had me add more boulders; betwixt which he again placed smaller stones. We worked steadily under a solid blue sky. Level upon level, our structure grew taller while Ziggy’s shoulders turned darker; then darker.

  “Let’s take a break,” Ziggy announced before crawling into a tangle of juniper tree branches. I joined him in the pocket of space beside the trunk; then offered up a bottle of water from my chest.

  “Are we building a pyramid?” I asked him.

  His face lit up. “We are,” he agreed.

  “And it is meant to express that beliefs are prejudice,” I verified.

  “Correct.”

  “Because we are taking randomly dispersed objects and piling them into a preconceived shape?” I asked.

  Ziggy jerked his head as though he’d been slapped. “Huh,” he said, “Maybe.” Flattening his lips, he stared at nothing. “I’m more inclined to be intuitive,” he said; “but…huh.”

  We returned to our labors. The sun was well past its zenith when Ziggy dropped from his haunches onto his seat. Sprawled in the sand, he declared, “Woo! I’d say we got some stuff done. Let’s call it a day. I need to eat.” Standing and dusting off his seat, Ziggy pointed to a prickly pear cactus, and said, “Dinner.”

  Peering at the thorny mound, I wondered if he was making a joke. “Pick the medium size ones, Chance. Make sure they’re firm; not wrinkled.” Wrinkling his nose, he said, “The wrinkled ones aren't any good.” After explaining, how to peel and de-thorn the pads, Ziggy wandered away.