Condecension

Luther and Rory were with Penelope and Ireena. Marcus was sitting with Charles and Spencer. All of them were drinking at Rory’s apartment. Several of them were also experimenting with other chemicals
“So you know I’m going to jail tomorrow, right?” Spencer said to Marcus.
“Are you serious?” Marcus answered, astounded.
“This is just like the 25th Hour!” Spencer exclaimed.
“Whoa.” Marcus reiterated, dumbfounded. “I’m totally just hanging out with my buddies, having one last good night.” Spenser happily announced.
“But more than that,” Charles cut in, “we’re going to tear a hole through time tonight. We’re going to erase the notion of duration.”
The two architects of the evening, Rory and Ireena, had become disinterested in arguing with each other about matters of taste and had taken to listening in on the other conversations going on and making comments on them.
“Yeah man, we’re like, totally going to rock the earth!” Ireena mocked.
“Hey, that’s my cousin you’re talking about.”
“Well, sorry, I didn’t know. But he’s just like, psychedelic man.”
“I say we take a few bottles of wine, some plastic cups and we walk down into the park and write poetry!” Charles cheerfully suggested.
“No way,” Rory said, “I don’t want to leave here anytime soon. But maybe somebody else will go with you.”
“I’m down for anything tonight,” Spencer said.
Penelope and Luther looked at the forming consensus.
Around this time, Missy and Jeanne rang the buzzer.
Marcus went down with Charles and Spencer, and Penelope and Luther decided to go along too. As they met the two girls on the stairs coming down, they explained what was going on, how Rory and Ireena didn’t want to go out with the rest of them, and how they were going to bring wine and walk down into the park and write poetry. The girls, given the circumstances, tagged along.
Three A.M. The seven of them were walking into the park. They were opening the bottles of wine and walking towards the beach. Charles had taken Marcus aside.
“I’ll sell you one of these. Magic Pills. It’s some crazy ayuhasucas compound. Telepathic experiences. I’m giving one to Spencer in light of tomorrow. For you, ten dollars.”
“Is it safe?”
“It’s used as a medicine in South America. I haven’t heard of a bad trip.”
“How long does it last?”
“Four hours or so. It’s not too overwhelming but some amazing things tend to happen. It’s like, your luck suddenly changes. It’s weird.”
“Okay, I’ll take one.”
Missy and Jeanne came up.
“Could I have one too?” Jeanne said.
“Sure, but there’s a five dollar discount for you.” Charles said.
“Hey.” Marcus said. “That’s cheating.”
“This girl has earned the five dollar coupon. She has been an extraordinary citizen.”
“Thank you.”
They took their pills. And then they walked together for a while, muttering conversations, waiting for their pills to work. Penelope and Luther had walked with them, but as the other group of them became increasingly frantic, they slowed down a bit, and walked together behind them.
“These are some crazy people you hang out with.” “They’re ridiculous. They’re going to have to slow down sometime.”
“So when are you going back to Hollywood?”
“Monday. I mean next Monday. Nine more days of vacation, or something. Then I go back to shoot a movie. But I’m still working here.”
“You’re working here?”
“In the interim. I’ve got a job I drive to during the week.” “So it’s not really your vacation.”
“Eh, sort of. I mean, I’m leaving in nine days. I won’t be gone for that long, this is going to be a quick shoot.”
“What are you doing until then?” “I don’t know, research, just trying to come up with a game plan.”
“That sounds interesting. You should come by the coffee shop sometime when I’m finishing my shift; I’ve been thinking a lot lately about getting into acting.”
“That sounds like fun. We should do it next week.”
Missy was not on ayuhauscas. She was walking with everyone else, and they were all on it. Now it was beginning to take a very strong effect on them.
Charles shouted, “I’m the ghost of the Sun. The dead Sun now. What happens when the Sun goes dead cold out? Do the planets keep revolving around the sun after it explodes? Who can tell these things. We’re only here for 100 years at the very best. These things takes hundreds of thousands of years to occur, but while we’re here, things are okay. Global warming probably isn’t going to prematurely end all of our lives. It’s the science of it. None of it will really affect our lives, or our children’s lives, or grandchildren’s, or even great grandchildren’s. And besides, how much of a connection do you feel to your great grandparent’s? Do you even know what they were like? Do you blame them for the biases of their time? Do you think they’d really blame you? No, we just have to leave things as greatly undisturbed as possible. But one day, when the Sun dies, and all living things on this planet are obliterated, and the supernova occurs, who knows what happens to the planets? Do they sit in space, in orbit? Do they fall into nothingness? One thing is certain—dead stars are still pulsars.”
Spencer was greatly affected by the pills. He wanted to do anything to get away from everyone. He became isolationist. He walked towards the beach. On the sand, he sat down, crossed his legs. Missy had followed after him. They sat there together.
“Are you having fun tonight?”
“I’ve never done anything like this before.”
“Do you even know what time it is?”
“Not a clue. But the Sun can’t be far from coming up.”
“Damn, is there any wine left?”
“Here, let’s have another glass.” She had one of the bottles with her.

Jeanne and Marcus were walking together, both on the pills, now taking effect.
“Jeanne I know I haven’t known you very long, but I feel this real connection to you.”
“What do you mean?”
“I just feel like we’ve been on this journey together.”
“Yeah. It’s kind of sad, this is going to be one of the last warm nights of the year. We’re in for six months of Hell.”
“My brain feels like it’s bubbling inside my head. Like a kettle boiling. Or a whirlpool.”
“Whirlpool brain. That sounds like an album title.”
“What are you doing tomorrow?”
“Nothing, it’s Sunday, rest, you know.”
“I don’t know how long this stuff is going to last for but I don’t see myself sleeping anytime soon.”
Jeanne needed a lesson right now from Missy. Since she was nowhere to be seen, she decided.
“Okay, but I don’t see how you feel so hyper. I feel so mellow. Like I could just fall forever sinking through sheets of silk, a pile of feathers. I bet this grass right here is soft like the womb.” Jeanne laid down in the grass. Marcus laid down beside her.

Charles was alone now, stumbling through the forest. He had consciously separated from his companions. He had set them up with the situation, he had changed the course of the evening, and he didn’t want to interfere further. But he was alone now in the forest. There was nobody else around. No runners, no animals, no couples romantically lazing through the wee hours. Everything had taken on a more surreal quality than it had when he had taken the pills earlier in the day. It was as if two trips in a day was one too many. The trees started to look like woods in black and white films. Charles’s vision became blurred. It seemed as if the air pressure had suddenly risen, and all the heat was being sucked out of the space directly around Charles. A fog seemed to blow, and it smelled a bit like gasoline. There was a scattering of birds in the trees. Charles saw a dark path leading into the woods. There seemed to be a footpath so he followed it in. After about fifty feet, there came a clearing. It looked as if the space had been used to make a fire recently.
He sat down on a log. He looked up at the sky. From his point in the forest the sky took on a different atmosphere. He was no longer in the city. He was out camping. Charles did not light a fire though. He sat on the log and looked at the sky, and he said, “The pulsar of the Sun, the ghost of the Sun, does not accommodate the Milky Way galaxy at this time. Service is disconnected permanently. Please find alternate forms of life-sustaining energy.”
“What are you doing, Charles?”
Charles heard the voice and looked behind him. He saw a figure ten feet back, against the foliage.
“Who’s there?”
“You think this is a good way to spend your life?”
Charles recognized the voice.
“You’re not real. And I’m tripping, and I’m hallucinating you, and yes, I think this is a great way to spend my life at this time. Did you ever make anybody happy? Do you know how that feels?”
“I made you happy, didn’t I?”
“But my life is also irretrievably fucked up because of you.”
“You shouldn’t talk that way to me.”
Charles loosened up.
“Well still, what’s a better way to spend my life?”
“Don’t you want to build something? Make something out of it? Leave something behind after you’re gone?”
“I’m making these people happy in the present. When I’m gone, I won’t get any satisfaction from what I’ve left behind. Right now, I get that satisfaction. Did you ever get that?”
“I got that plenty of times.”
Another voice sprung up.
“Charles you should go back to your friends.”
“Why do you two always have to tell me what to do?”
“We still want to look out for you.”
“You can’t do this to me. I mean, you’re not real, you’re dead, I’m alive, I’m hallucinating my memory of you, which is so obsolete at this point in my life that it just really takes me out of my element okay, life is not all roses okay, I know you knew that, but don’t automatically assume that because you paid some sort of debt or whatever that I’m going to benefit in the long run.”
“All we’re saying is that you should appreciate what’s there in front of you, you don’t have to transform everything into your personal vision.”
“I don’t! I appreciate whatever vision created everything around me.”
“Then your heart’s in the right place.” the more tender voice said.
“His heart is not in the right place! He should be straightening up!” the first voice said, fading out.
The apparitions receded into the deeper woods and Charles started pondering the circumstances since he had left the rest of the crowd. He decided that he had just had mystical vision. The Sun still hadn’t risen, and he could hear some of his cohorts shouting in the distance. He left his spot in the woods, and went to find them on the beach.