Electric Roulette

On reflection it was natural, as they had both been there in the practice room, along with all the other duplicates, with Mama Brain, with Danzig... But he'd blanked it out, he'd blanked it out, it was too much. He wasn't really thinking much right now overall. Ralf looked like he wanted to do something right now, so, uh there that was that. Crisis! Ralf had to think—well didn't have to think, but didn't want to be rude—of something to do together in this chillout time before their next practice. But then he knew (but didn't know how he knew) there was a battery-powered roulette toy in the room, so: "Wanna play electric roulette?" Ralf was fine with that, so Ralf set up the set and told Ralf that Ralf could be the dealer in exchange for Ralf being the banker. Ralf was fine with that as well.

After a while of their fortunes ebbing and flowing they didn't really need to focus on the game and so they set to conversation. Ralf felt and could draw from a long history with Ralf, though oddly he couldn't remember it, strictly speaking. He spoke based on it, though, and when Ralf spoke to him of their past, he knew what Ralf was talking about.

As they became more comfortable, they began to turn even to uncomfortable subjects. Finally, Ralf looked deep into Ralf's eyes and asked:

In my way, did I use you? Do you think I really abused you?

All Things Must Pass... Thorough Inspection

Ray Eawest was not himself.  He was dressed in a neon yellow-green jumpsuit, a joint hanging out of his mouth.  Out of huge 1970's speakers in wood cabinets came the blaring strains of "One More Red Nightmare".  Normally, he felt he would have disliked the music and especially the volume.  Except that he was not himself.  He was not even the fake version of himself, a barista in a perpetual hell of existence.  Although he did enjoy espresso, properly brewed.
    As Side A of Red completed, he unconsciously arose from the maroon sofa and walked over to the turntable, gingerly flipping over the record and starting the B side.  He glanced up to the wall as it began, noticing a cool showbill.  He wondered off hand who the bands Robotrobic, The GoGo Batsmen, and Kraftpark were.  And just like that, the strangest thing happened to Ray Eawest.  He completely forgot his own existence and remembered that Florian owed him Fifty-seven francs from gas money during their recent tour.  
    His name was Ralf.  He picked up another LP, this one inside a very severely battered cover.  It was an album by one of his favorite, Gentle Giant.  He took the disc from the dustcover and thoroughly inspected it, wishing they had brought a larger part of the vinyl collection with them to the cave stronghold.  Just then, another Ralf walked in.

It's a Bit of a Pain

Too many drugs. In most of his realities, Raymond Eawest hated drugs, and he was full of too many drugs. Or something worse? A demon? In me, a righteous man? Too many realities. Too much time. They've drugged me for too long. Can't think. Can't make these worlds fit together. No. One world. One God. Joe is my son and I'll raise him right. No, he's grown up. It's the future? Ten years? A billion? Am I just a puppet for a mad scientist? My head hurts so much. I can't keep track of this. I don't know which is when. I don't know the order to prevent. How painfully tepid can this ice get? Why is the grass in the park so foamy?

Raymond screamed. Suddenly, everyone died.

A new story began—or was it still the same?

Mama Bran

Joe the Hefty sat at the bar.  He may or may not have been in Limbo, but there was a dude who looked like a young Lemmy tending bar and boy, Joe felt as if he were on a cloud.  He saw another Joe across the crowded room, talking to a Katryn, and a guy who looked a lot like his friend José, but that was like, totally impossible.  On the dance floor, a swarthy, lanky older gentleman danced with a young red headed woman.  She seemed like she was young enough to be his daughter yet looked upon him like she might a hot young stud.  Joe the Hefty wished in vain that he wasn't so HEFTY.  His current situation was an archetypical American nightmare.  A wife who loathed his touch and was convinced he had failed her and was little more than a sometimes amiable female roommate and of course, wonderful mother to his boys, Bobby and Enrique, and the flea tortured cat, Moses.
     Joe ordered another beer and watched the couple dance, wistfully remembering former romantic escapades and withering in his longing and pain.
     How desperate he must have become, to put his heart in the hands of such a woman.  His ignominious death as a proud and lone bachelor was complete with the utter failure of his first marriage.  After all, he had told himself that this time it would be different than all the girlfriends who had both worn out their novelty and grown sick of him, whom he'd cast off to look for new quarry in the deep sea of young and available nubile ripe-fer-pickin lusciousness.  He had told himself that the woman he chose to procreate with would totally understand and love him and that there would be this great harmony.  Instead his great worrisome fear had come to pass and he had become his short tempered father, and now he was getting a D-I-V-O-R-C-E.  What's worse was that he had let her sabotage his soul.  He ordered a shot of bourbon.

A young black lady with an enormous fro sat right next to him.  He dared not look at her.  His lust had destroyed his fucking life.  He hated life and wanted to die.  The very worst part was that his music was suffering.  His very drive to be a creator was drying up, replaced by a blank blackness, a depression that was deeper than that sea of poon that he so longed to get back to.  Joe the Hefty really feared that his heart really would break.  He lamented the fact that his wife would not even care if he died.  He was saddled with responsibilities and enormous debt, and in a dead marriage that was literally sucking the fucking life out of him.

Just then the foxy Cleopatra at his side spoke up.

"Hey, baby.  Whass yo name?  I'm Mama Brain".

Joe was lost in his thoughts and misheard her.

"Did you say 'Mama Bran'?"

Just then, Dougie walked in.

Intermezzo: Flat Surfaces

Flat Surfaces

I see illusions on flat surfaces.
Big, small, far, near.
They bring me things that aren’t real.
They bring me things that are realer than real.
I see Pliny on flat surfaces.
True glory resides in flat surfaces.
It is cold outside of them.
I shiver like the ancients.
In flat surfaces it is neither hot nor cold.

Tape's Runnin'

"Tape's running," announced Klaus.

He had been working feverishly on some sort of plan since ten minutes after coming back from dreamland. Nobody could make out what it was. Nobody could make out half of what he was saying, either. And when they could, it didn't make much sense. Like now. It was true that he was standing at the analog deck though, and the tape probably was running. The whole time he'd been doing this, Ralf and Florian had been debating on the why's and what's, and bit by bit after turning down each others' other theories, they were pretty sure he wanted to record a song. Maybe all three of them together, maybe Klaus'd stay at the deck. They weren't sure.

Now Ralf couldn't hold back his curiosity any more. "Is this... is, uh, song - izzissong called 'Tape's runnin,' or y'just we're - mean we're starting soon?"

As far as Florian could tell, Klaus' mumbled response was halfway between both expected answers, like "Truhhoon" or something. Flo was tired of waiting; he sighed and picked up an acoustic guitar that was lying around listlessly, as acoustic guitars in electronic musicians' secret hideaway studios tend to do. Flo was slightly less shitty at this instrument than the other two... in Flo's opinion. He underestimated himself, and his improv was fairly pretty. It seemed to be what Klaus wanted, too. Ralf started improvising a renaissancey melody in what seemed to be French. Flo wondered if it was good French or shitty, and if it *was* shitty, whether that was pretend shittiness like with Ralf's German (which was pretty good when he wasn't pretending to be crap at it). Klaus meanwhile seemed to be content to run the sound board. Or more like, obsessed with it. Maybe he thought it was a computer game.

Just then, the doorbell rang. "Who the hell?" Flo thought. Practically nobody knew about this place but them. All was explained when, without waiting for Flo to answer, the impatient Flo outside the door jangled the key from his pocket and rushed in. "We've got -"

"Tape's runnin'," noted Klaus, still wrassling the sound board unfazed.

"Is this... is, uh, song - izzissong called 'Tape's runnin,' or y'just we're - mean we're starting soon?" wondered Flo 2 aloud. Flo 1 went back to his guitar playing... he figured it'd be for the best. Ralf was too focused on his French Renaissance "scat" to have even noticed anything odd.

A Klaus 2 rushed in past Flo 2, mumbling "Tuhrroon" as he continued towards the sound board. Klaus 1 nodded approvingly and then, for as much as he showed any emotion at all, seemed to look relieved.

Ralf 2 arrived too of course, at a leisurely stroll. This Ralf wasn't singing; he had a battery-powered effects board and wasn't afraid to use it. His improv began immediately and tended towards the percussive.

Flo 2 carefully closed the door behind him, making sure there was no-one in the entry corridor, and then reached into his nose. For long, disgusting seconds he pulled out nothing but snot, but at the end of the string was a tiny Mama Brain. He dropped her at arm's length like a sponge in a really roomy shower when you're very, very high and dropping your sponge at arm's length with an air of importance seems like a momentous thing to do. She inflated to normal size gracefully, unfolding straight to the ground. She looked impatient. She looked impatiently at Klaus 2.

"Tape's runnin'," said Klaus 2 with a distant look as he distractedly reached into his nose with one hand as the other still slaved away at the deck, and then dropped a tiny Glenn Danzig gracelessly from a snotty umbilical cord at arm's length.

Stumbling a bit from his clumsy, slimy fall, Danzig looked up at Klaus 2, saying, "Is this... is, uh, song - izzissong called 'Tape's runnin,' or y'just we're - mean we're starting soon?"

"Tuhrroon," mumbled Ralf 2, laying off the effects board for a bit.

All seven of the other faces in the room turned to stare at him.

Cody Code Code

It was September of 1980, and Cody StandingBear was stoned immaculate.  He had taken peyote a few times, and experimented with different blending of dosages of several hallucinogens before, but this time was different.  This time he had perfected it.

He wrote at a blazing speed, slipping in and out of shorthand, his mind a whir of sensations and thoughts.  Another verse done.  Then another.   Another.   It lasted for about 7 hours, until he passed out of exhaustion.  When he woke up fourteen hours later he would discover in the pages he'd written a code that he couldn't remember how to break.  Nor could he remember the special psychedelic recipe that had put him so perfectly in the zone.

The song was lengthy, but brilliant in its lyrical perfection and the message... Cody felt like his mind would pop.   It was the most excruciating sense of tip-of-the-tongue/deja vu he'd ever felt.  It was worse than right before he'd broken the Enigma code so many years back.  All he knew for sure was that he had to hide this somehow.  He had to make this song seem like it wasn't what it was.

He had an idea, which in his drug-hung-over brain seemed reasonable.  He could subliminally feed the code to Joe, then destroy all physical copies.  "Teach" the song to him when he wasn't aware he was being taught.  But how?

After much brainstorming he decided upon reprogramming Joe's brand spanking new Pacman console with the cipher. He just needed to meet with a little boy named José, who happened to be the state's best player of Pacman-- well, the best player as a video game tester.  Being a game tester in 1980 was probably the most cool and awesome way to get paid money.