As assiduous eclat must offer the best self-help, muffled at home, the calm workers, disinterring the melted mountain, have a warm bassoon cleaned and worsted.

 

III — xix — Told in the Blink of a Haystack.

.   .   .

The Breathing Room.

.   .   .

If Cyane tries to describe everything, within a dense adequate flourish, you, in no comic premise aimed to assuage things, or by fault, methodically panned any arras of conceptualization. Talitha elsewhere descried, Ferguson’s team had gone in this array. Manasseh, stolidly piloting the refrigeration truck, took care not to overturn the vehicle on turpentine. With no saving knowledge of pathology, much less of any other branch of medicine, Talitha was in no state to confess that she actually knew what they were up to.

Significantly, Logan had imbued his followers with a determination to let their minds remain unaltered by the course of events. An incredulous reader would do well to ask why these individuals had persuaded themselves to approach the dreary task at all, and to demand that author demonstrate, through flashback, foreshadowing, or other tactics, their motivation for entering a chamber in which more than nine dozen individuals had gathered for purpose of organizational and actual cryogeny, an event that in itself begs immediate treatment, and is not fobbable in any way with the glib explanation that, in this modern age, such conclusions periodically occur.

Moreover, why had Talitha, as an observer, not consigned to put a stop to it? In the interest of impartiality, she allowed it to continue. She was no better than the lidless dumb camera eye objectively recording assassinations, explosions, and strife for entertainment of the well informed. In faith, she was much worse, for she flinched, presenting a jerky portrait of events, and fled, fearing to describing the resultant scene. Having abdicated her responsibility, it fell to the Ferguson party to apply their own descriptive powers to subsequent action.

.   .   .

There are scales of perception no person should dole out lest mixed bean echoes state, of relevance therefore gross, tactile images here to stay. Ostrand noticed that similar obstacles had brought the IBV expedition to a dithering crawl. Reasoning that this ad hoc [sic] attachment to them in no way obliged him to conform, he sought alternative routes. Reckoning that largesse from this assignment would enable him to make final payment on his wrecker, he fell back from the vanguard, unnoticed in the general cluster, and brushed aside suspicion that he was, or should have been, old enough to know better than to mock everything.

A series of astonishing reversals injected verve into a nature habitually, even in fancy, fond of adopting lost causes, as he located a cattle guard, a derelict gate, and a seldom used switchback. The men dared goof, whether canny self can’t, for all beating they took in the mainstream, assume posts of venerance in his scrubby pantheon. The early alders thinned along an access road as he persisted in believing that every individual owed him unswerving fealty for his brave and thankless vigil at the outermost fringes of society. He never lost time in paraphrasing Dostoevsky, telling people everything, “even his most infernal and wasteful ideas… immediately demanding a response of complete sympathy, expecting his listeners to enter at once into all his cares and anxieties and raise no hindrance to his disposition.” Then the grade began to worsen, and as almost every, if not all, persons accosted in this manner failed to demonstrate desired concern, Ostrand invariably grew angry and wrecked an entire inn, resulting in one urged, by parents, peers, and prevailing culture, to embrace his feminine nature.

This he accomplished with a celerity that endeared him for a brief season to everyone, yet the lengths that he had gone to cultivate his sensitive nature left him incapable of perceiving the monogamy inherent to his inner fulfillment. At the brink of a hyper–extended adolescence that threatened to plow directly into middle age, Ostrand steered the wrecker around a final bend and cut engines upon the top of a sun–swept plateau that rose slightly to the north. Amidst coniferous strands, metallic harbingers winked in the distance. Driven a few hundred yards onward, Ostrand soon beheld a feast of abandoned automobiles. Although functionally conversant with civilization, Ostrand had no choice but to declare it an enigma. Was he, unaided, actually expected to remove, and unnoticed, this stranded cache in an allotted time? A disinterested observer would believe that he never had a day off.

.   .   .

Beneath Ferguson’s instruction, methodical operation ensued. However else wont to know rivalries and loyalties of this intrepid band, the plots they sublet; amidst greater stasis–infused vita quorum, they were already beside the vast chamber. Room to confer beneath the power curve was found going away. Uclosco buttonholed Esherman, who replied, “sir, hysteria is not one unwitting orb.” Ion, in transit to deliberate task, found vociferous laughter a suitable option, welcoming the stolid presence of his colleague who, although disliking intrusions into his workspace, always turned them out so delicately that the perpetrator, charmed by shame, vanished immediately into the nearest pocket reserved for bad ideas.

At this moment, Ion’s laughter fell muffled into a grave vacuum. All around them the children slept, curled up trustfully. Only a faint reek of almond betrayed the shocking manner of their slumber. All sum of probity exited whence this even depth in abject shade receded. Her respite, over being termed the worst Deistic ever, Thledvirrson staked her watch at the portal, not hindering, nor yet acting as to be seen as aiding, her noumenons whom, as Ferguson, had opted for recovery. Writ via through a room lit with thrumlit, a chance to decamp one more bunk about losing your army in a foreign capitol, and as generally an habitude of waste landed upon the sense, that was not enough to deter Esherman from bent letter array, an overt decision to support the overall plan. “Hell was full of us,” a shadow of seething gruel dished, “sown onto fresh halls I shriek.”

They all turned under the circumstance. “It was nothing,” Thledvirrson added. Imbued by stoic fatalism, they impelled into the observatory. Hesitant to collect several tinctures thematic, a litter of disuse in failure to garner requisite sample toxin, stood Ion, gaping upon the exact reckoning legislate. Knowing that time was essential, Ferguson ordered Esherman to take the tray of antidotes out of the hand of Ion.

.   .   .

An exception, in the voir dire [sic] of plentitude, happily removed us from sight of the Reverend’s luck. Tedium, perhaps, postponed encyclicals rendering that wolf at the door, beggaring descriptions. This team of active character, overcome with resentment in the stifling expanse of the apartment, bore terrible thought for the person who, writing upon this sheet of paper, had hoped that they would have directed themselves cheerfully into the identification, examination, and cataloguing process, secure in hope that, while defying civilized opinion, they were justified in enacting a parody of themselves.

Nor might even the most deliberately obtuse of these gleaners fail to reflect upon (real) value of the cargo strewn about, for in this age of advanced technological achievement, cadavers fetched a high price in any market and even rings, beads, bracelets, and baubles adorning them seemed cursory. Consequently, and with great effort, they recalled their chief’s admonitions and steeled themselves to give the inhabitants if not a civil, than at least a Mosaic send–off, knowing the alternatives, if the IBV ever overcame its organizational inertia below them, promised much less. Beside each ex–person, they appointed two containers: a small, yet elegantly upholstered cask, and a lengthier, unfurling bundle of loose, breathable Gore–Tex™. Within the former, personal effects, mailable (discovery of quaint identification bracelets listing next–of–kin upon the wrists of nearly all of the individuals located, brought a gentle sorrow to their labor); within the latter, former persons, transferable to the deep freeze until, many hoped, the engendered outcry concerning their location might opportune a fleeting, yet necessary overture to the paradigm shift that would put an end to all ill besetting our present civilization.

In this manner, one hundred and eleven persons were apprehended. They had strictly agreed betwixt themselves to avoid eschatological or demeaning reference to their custom. Guests seemed the preferable labels. That this provisional title seemed to suggest the shadow of misdoubt might have occurred to any one of them. Amid Ferguson’s anguished priorities, even the count appeared scant. Had they any room for the real unwound theft of cultural rhythm, all things, including a flag thrown in tending to stop their play, ignored when being was no longer considered a measure of spiff, sub–ego algorithms and their use for induced, re: dancing at the edge of the spit, what would have been one (isomer bipedal) strange guest not enough method ascriptive, therein went.

Sent since then, no spell misnomer aptly to be named, whose line pinched merely in emotional nave, past parting one memory, may. Led up from now unto a startling realization of guests being already frozen, and nearly not dead yet, Logan spoke, “let them have their compliance. If only someone else might plead for them.” But he was tired of carrying everything around and, although feverish to avoid the slightest trace of nepotism, he had abrogated any thought of interrogating his colleagues as to whereabouts of his own kin.

Possessed of great faith in his own sincerity and of a largely unspoken assurance in some eventual sixth sense by now awakening to their location, Logan made up for in closure what he might have lacked in happiness. The morning’s labor yielding not a clue, and an apprehension that the valets might arrive at any moment to discover their spoiling activities, and also perhaps a failure in finding settling music on the radio, finally broke Ferguson into destroying their alembic frail working consensus by demanding a recount. When this, after little objection, yielded a number approximating only a hundred, Logan ordered tools down.

.   .   .

Without further rebuttal, they argued for an immediate conference. During such extended impasses of any duration, Thledvirrson had found that to be seen poring over a paperback invariably aroused feelings of inferiority within others, as if the reader was too good to be seen associating with humanity. So she learned to cultivate a blank stare instead, allowing spittle to gather at the corner of her lip. Ion raised a timid hand to report that contents of the main safe had been riffled. Logan checked the desire to ask, against his tacit will, why someone had ventured beyond the scope of their assignment. His immediate concern was that, in fact, an agency inimical to their own interests had already arrived.

To this end, and in the aim of gleaning a gulp of fresher air (the observatory’s ventilation system had mysteriously, and virtually unnoticed until now, given out some time ago), Logan ordered an adjournment outside, where a discrete sweep of premises might be afforded. A fugitive request for comment bestirred the glittering dome. The spoilers weighed their consensus against the immediate development of events. To the north, the main thoroughfare stood empty. What force they had expected from that quarter had failed to appear, incurring a delay of rumor.

The lower grounds, soughed in a canopean silence, caused bid for concern as the tarmac asphalt remuda, glimpsed in arboreality at whiles, seemed equally innocuous, until Talitha remarked that an unreal gate to it now stood open as if digitally transfixed. From above, moreover, an unlikely perihelion, a barking shadow was about nine hundred furlongs tall and, as they began to notice it, silence vanished. A chortling rush of Carnotic expletives crescendoed ominously from their left, not far behind them, and Ion, expecting from them all that secular foe had, hoodwinking their aim, stolen demarche, ran down to surround them. Esherman sacked him shortly and they saw it, a single wrecker, bearing no visible mark or standard, coming.

.   .   .

During the earliest recess of posterity, though rationally concomitant with conditions precluding traditional dilutions of statism, anon trickled down an inference where in Rex’s avowal of mechanism of initial sentiment, fuelling propagation of invidiously elementary loci, were whatnot misspent in propensity nor maintained, now uchaux aghast again withheld slithered in haste, their followings now immured hitherto in really visible adherence to provision ordered by his chinnish earlier distance.

Learning of hauling premium emphasis on sincerity in making cause with curtailed Lothario, and in evidence now of having pleasant encomium deflected always toward reanimate elation typically dispensed to scarcity (an unknown yeomanry such as his were perpetually plotting inconsiderate of their feeling affordably callous), independents flirted peripherally with more studious householders and displayed ostensible forbearance. At ebullient bellows, some oft tribulate to him amidst thrift of indigence, their familiar hours shrilled to Flußtapfer at summit dumb umlaut length, worthily treacherous even in the anabasis occasioned by his prematurely signature mortification of inward precept.

Elements of spateful umbrage, in grip of this calendar upset, now debunked upon plans of ethic docks, fulminating versus this flagrant breach inescapably tractable to the regal presence, and Rumsford compliantly wired the Saxons to incarcerate their kinsman with such confidence that the overt national significance of his act was naturally regarded as with heroic undertones censorious of technical want, further encapsulating in untenet precocity radial if unmentioned. This matter Atlas shared with him at a time that reeked of public foreclosure on his breviary to which traces of absinthe clung during immediate forum, “was it not certain,” began one, “they won’t let us finish our inquiry as is known, that this area of constructivist theory is essentially vague and, when complicated by the spite of instinct, was it not certain that Rex Ampersand had demonstrable intent to commingle with sessional outlets and had in suit puttered scratch despite congratulations deferred in recess?”

Rumsford stated tersely that motive of manifold interests had already converged in the camp of refrainants, apotheosisms secured in emeritus risk of challenging restrictions upon natal precedent. Matthieu had, Rex further indicated, with a last lob lost on strangers to innermost policies of the Village, “inaccurately pressed for this, in deference to untoward and jejune philanstereoscopists,” and as rival scribes traded views, the Earl slipped from sight.

.   .   .

Chronically troubled by gigantic shadows, Ferguson’s party accosted the driver. Beyond their alm of stimuli, tones, ere to apprehend a vast nothingness, which appears as projection of static unto screen or test pattern, arguably the sub–imposition of material facets over a concept, recreate a super–fulfilling curse, art, dispensed with this miniscule symbolic train of letters. Ostrand, if in expression of an ideal, that this penumbric cyclotron hovering overhead was simply the dawning of an antiquarian sideshow, moved to his expected task, yet executors of Ferguson’s oath made no more general effort to dissuade the rig from being driven off.

All other eyes fell upon Logan who, recovering from self–desuetude, now decided to make every move to get ahead. “You rest then.” He rallied his hands with a statement of design. “We will abridge the obvious reality.” They reverted into position with the air of men under heavy duress, having had little time to notice that someone had already a packet sent above, where decided photospherical immensities panopliously septic permeated through their venue. Shown bland luridly flaked from all assessment, the troubled ash indicated all was condoled throughout scripture. Within an abscissa of gelded ferment gage scat sconced, inept sitars ubiquitous prudence wont bid.

In circuitous broach, the destiny of unclear Sanskrit, howsoever most yielding of evanescent summons, unless bothered to retort the disappearance of not forasmuch as the encyclical addressed loss from occidental incursions, pointed to anymore as long as that was disposed in reprieve, rote were the hearsay alleged to tulgey recidivism of noted founders, men who arduously combed their warrens for a signal messenger to convey suspense.

As acute lifted tiles revealed in the surf of plumb unwound, the waxy monads huffed ingots oral in eflots to recede the missing bracket, all without avail for dimly keys of resurfaced tonnage lode on ebbed for prefaced intimacy no chronic hoc adumbrate. Evincible culminations whatsoever now in lineal suited neither, nor the ignoble gasp requisite sparked the one–armed bandit as the titanic grid uncacaphoniously frilled, spelling the antipodean doorsills askew ferniferaceously. Indeed, it virtually capsized, spilling much of the expedition fore and aft. spacemon’, rapt micronauts tearing rapidly across allotted dynamic of foremost encloture, flickered in shuddering moments upon the upturned concavity.

Tapped at, the glass melted in descending globs as they rallied to the observatory floor in molten stalagmite formations. In ordinal precaution, their features moussed back in apparent semblance to humanity, spacemon’ were quite capable of successive motion necessary for inside work, as hot as the zone was judged, and paused to watch a gum wrapper tumble across the sacrament before signaling release of draft sensing beach balls. These gamboled across the compound, stealing all of the exits, and were not quite surprised to find intrepid bands of occupants, well dug in attitude of arrested triumph, withheld in force until any eyewash turned visible.

Who had, if ever for an instant, dreamt of noticing every strain, offering accurate risk assessment to resequencing of available light? Balked by untoward resistance, rebel fjulsfut reviewed their precepts. Whenever an organic construct of adaptive composites offers a shortage of interest, it is necessary to talk to them.

.   .   .

Before a single step might be taken from this land of forgotten tents, amid the Cote D’Azur, valet brethren heaved, oblivious while the Nicean varsity embanked directly upon the observatory. Less dogmatic teams were dispatched to scout the environs. Thickly tenuous growths clustered about the monad rivulet; subject to sway of shut–up–and–go–shopping, they cared not for the composite consistency of molding oath stipulations tapped after heavy vegan followings. A lightning struck some oddly heard sagas, and from its truth serum, two upturned sheets crookedly down and out stretched to the skies. The entire effect was insidiously huge and their soft soap hardly forestalled octagonal pusillanimousities.

Parrying glazed vines with dull mash notes, Ranth Tyoslament indicated adjoining paths. They perpetrated jumbled foliage with manifold footfalls, unlike their ablative forerunners, and neared a stream of consciousness. Here was a marvelous thing: structured, unnatural, and yet thickly covert with mossy abandon, a site of previous picnic clinics. The monads laughed out loud, emerging from thickset honeycomb seriously lucubrated, only to dive in wan peril as a little red vagabond commenced to take forever turgid gulps of ground. Her noisomely diminutive detour crashed in downspouts of asphodel otherwise sonorous.

Cringing as this glatisant cascaded deeply into farrago, the explorers hastily scanned the shelf again and permissively waived for a luxurious lull, perchance to dream. The next lineless cursory thread found their foremost untenet clambering slowly into the tepid eldritch mass in utmost bucolic itinerary. Tearing throughout bulrushes, they headed toward the clingy folds of a stumpy grove, “don’t step over that rattan lodge,” warned l’nurt Glyntz, but it was too late. A shaky thing that stayed fresh until you dwelt upon it snapped, and they plunged far down the sallow piedmont, menaced in turn with nearby streaks of theocratic frivolity.

The devolution was only pre–empted by their eternally agnostic feng shui [sic]. Hushed after a cursory role, they listened acutely at the sound of many beings. Seven little stars, archetypes with no ideal of morality, lounged by the perilous cement pond. They had stopped to argue about their humanity, how life was so average, and wasn’t it about time to storm Mount Period to recoup their investment? They were an authoritarian cartel whose sources of credibility resided in a spectrum between slow poison and harnessed dreams of cryogenic participants. They had uncontrollable hopes of extended shelf life, that between dreams they sold to Florian and this campy parcel, soon to be overrun with milling travelers, such acute arrangements were boasted about beneath their canopy, surrounded with gear.

Suspended above, the monads could only hold their breath for hours, and finally shut–up–and–go–shopping signaled down, wait, and establishing a momentary calm, fell out of the forest wholly unobserved at the foot of Mount Period, where a man bereft of tensile wore an inimical consent. Adept at devising every new scarcity loomed without cessation, Alcuin repaired to his instant as if this were enjoyable. “Why I bring havoc, love, logic, leak, while for a tease two exegeses developed at a stage angle steeped in lugubriously, the flopware near dissolute if at all propensitous.” Talitha, to the table, stole imbricatively, and in choice vehemence coarse, as to elicit attitudes of vague quiescence from the poor lunch. Wordless, the men sat in, without forsaking a glance aloft again in sought surety that her visit was officially hospitable.

Upon the nest or aeons of tumbling aren’t, in illusion that voyage was no deranged aspect, they sprang to her sibilant unison with protestations of health. “What catch on prosperity as a future lien upon sequenescence it deflected,” one of them, sufficient to long intimacy events, chronically sieved the division clarified of mutual aim. Thledvirrson’s arrival presaged an awkward moment as the local tale went, in explaining why movement was not immediately possible. Batches of change slaunched at her perception — was this before or after, and she glared at assembled kachinas sprawled in haste upon the table.

As Horace’s hand fidgeted empathetically, “you went in with them,” she said. There was silence while the sound wracked. “You spooked and made,” Talitha, unable to complete, yelled, “out with them,” at a small local plasma scooter, who yoked the chains and lobbed them away. Remained seated on his other hand, Horace blinked, proofreading an amber scarab simulacrum that however was meant to win her. Search for this other elusive car retained precedence. Talitha blankly reviewed the blandishment of author of poor haiku, and above them dervishes closed ranks in the sooty gloom.

.   .   .