The prismatic eyes of a dog sees, but these eyes do not speak, observe nor judge; they see and that is all. I scanned the interior of the outpost. Everything was there; every shred of evidence needed to map out the state of mind of the missing young scientist. All the intuitive senses, research and knowledge gleaned, and the pain of comprehension. The price paid for eyes that saw everything and the mouth that spoke and wailed through the penciled trees. He had pre-set it all, displaying it as if some mad installation. Sheets of equations, results of testing, comparative studies of permafrost disintegration from the nineteenth century notes of Peter Kropotkin to the present, all hanging on heavy thread; a determining Calder, only slightly spinning. It was all there, along with a fully preserved wooly mammoth recently regurgitated from the core of another age, laid out on a steel table. Notes for a carefully executed autopsy lie on the floor streaked in sadness.
There was a tin of chocolate, a Bunsen burner, matches, a core of wood perhaps brought by dogsled. Outside, the stars were realigning and the cries, a female wail that was not real. I felt the need to organize and read everything. To understand what happened here and decide on my next move.
The young scientists’ erratic papers fused with the astute research of Number 4. Many recently tread upon, some sheets still wet. Everything seen could be felt and the rivers ceased to flow. Love’s body was entered and the wound gushed an indecipherable truth, bearing witness to an age yet to come. A bent shoulder, a blood oil sea, coursing through an expanse of frost totally gone.
I thought of Allen Ginsberg entering the sacred, toxic domain of William Burroughs in Morocco in the early nineteen-fifties. Interzone missives scattered, stained in blood, tea, cigarette ash and sweat. The sweat and blood of genius, every precious page a perverse prayer.
I did as I imagined Allen had done, carefully peeling each sheet from the floor, retrieving research and ravings, hanging them to dry. The dog was hungry. I had some dried turkey strips and fed him slowly, then boiled water for him to drink later. I wasn’t hungry, but ate a biscuit and half an apple and set to work assembling hundreds of documents and diary entries; the mad puzzle of a mind. I was getting tired and wondered if I was real or a projection. I reasoned that I was real enough to down the biscuit. The dog finished off the turkey and slept by my feet.
I fell into a cold clear state of mind. I looked more carefully around the room and noted there were two screens attached to the low ceiling that could be rolled down. They were delicate as if composed of a veil of gelatin. Night encompassed the Outpost and I was suddenly sleepy, a druggy kind of sleepy as if I was laying in a field of poppies. The pollen did its thing and I slept beside the dog. I dreamed Allen Ginsburg was waist high in a lavender field somewhere in the South of France. Someone had placed a wreath of flowers on his poet head. I could still access the scent of lavender when I awoke.
I awoke as light streamed through a lone window, which was not glass, but soft durable plastic distorting the view, which was hardly a view at all. The dog was outside and the air was perfectly still. The pages I had hung in the evening had dried and taken on the look of parchment. I placed them in some order, though besides some of the dated materials of No. 4, much of it seemed non-linear, akin to poetry.
I noticed when I moved a certain way, vague images were appearing on the screens I had unrolled before I slept. Holograms with time codes that could only be seen from a certain angle. Faded silvery images flickering, almost gone, like Shackleton’s listing Endurance, and another frozen in ice, and ill fated hot air balloons and found glass plates embedded in the heart of a glacier. And then for a brief moment I saw him, the young scientist and the image burned. The dog entered and howled at the sight. The dog saw as I saw and the physical pain in my eyes from momentarily staring at these holographic images was so intense that I ran out and buried my face in the snow. The dog followed suit and then I laid on my back and let the bits playback.
I only saw him briefly, a nineteenth century salt print in motion. It had to be him, a modern face among these historic shots. He was tall and blonde with a dark brow. The expression on his face could be described in two words: dead horror. He appeared to be moving sideways and I had overlaps of the motion of a prospector in H. P. Lovecrafts’s At the Mountains of Madness. But this was not a book, not film, it was something cellular, perhaps experimental, chemical, that caused my eyes to burn. Something forbidden that I have no words for, and yet I saw and the dog saw, with the same painful results.
If only you could speak, I said to the whimpering fellow. And he looked at me and an entire numerical system of love, devoid of logic, flowed from his eyes to mine. I reentered, found my bandana, covered my eyes and made some instant coffee.
I shared my provisions with the dog. It seemed he would eat anything, but was not greedy. I rolled up the screens and continued my task of arranging the papers of Number 4 and the young scientist. Their work was easy to distinguish from one another, but it seemed to me both unraveled as they wrote. Two diaries of findings became that of losing their minds.
I thought of the Secretary awaiting my report. I thought of her secret hopes, her faith in me, her love of her bother and nephew. I was very close to successfully completing my mission and I feared what I was all too clear destined to discover. He saw what the eyes of the dog saw, but he was plagued with analytical powers and was more than conscious of the consequences of the burgeoning evidence within his fathers, and his own scientific discoveries. I suddenly was able to decipher the strange hysterical murmurings I had heard generating from the screen and nearly forgotten. The end of things, he was shouting form the burning cells of the holograms. The end of things.
I thought about Bruce Lee in the film Enter the Dragon. The forces were closing in on him and he sat on the floor crosslegged and waited. I did the same, I sat for hours it seemed but the digital clock on the white metal table registered no time at all. I wanted to get up and unroll the screens and see if I could make out anything else besides a blank expanse surrounding the sideways moving image of the young scientist. I decided against it as my eyes still burned; I remembered his hair was golden and he was exceedingly pale.
The dog became restless so I followed him outside and surveyed the area around the Outpost. There were no tracks, save our own, but I sensed someone had been around, leaving a vaporous trail that seemed to be agitating the dog. I widened the perimeter of our scouting. I felt fine, it was cold, but a dry quiet cold that did not cut through my protective clothing. I found a small block of dark chocolate in one of the pockets and ate it slowly.
I noticed the stars and the moon were yet visible, though it was clearly daylight. I became aware of crossing tones, vague sounds in the distance that slowly revealed themselves. I could make out a long dark guitar solo, maybe Jimmy Page, and then the higher edges of the voice of Robert Plant. I couldn’t hear it distinctly but I was sure it was Since I’ve been Loving You, I recognized the squeak on the drum pedal and a plethora of cascading frenzied and desperate frequencies.
I searched for a radio, maybe a boombox or some shortwave with high powered batteries. It had to come from somewhere but there was nothing except the inside of my head. The dog followed at my heels, then took off toward a mound where the tips of black brambles were jutting through melting patches in the snow. He was digging around for something and laid it at my feet. Just a piece of tattered cloth, a stained handkerchief caught in the underbelly of the bush.
There were actual berries and I thought to pluck them but thought better of it. I had the feeling this had all happened before but I shook it off. We’re in present time I said aloud. Drag, drag he was singing and I slipped the evidence in my inside pocket. One day, God willing, I would be able to place it in the hands of the Secretary. But in truth, at that moment, beneath the white-on-white sky, the fragment of hope in my pocket, I had a sense of the credits rolling; the end of a movie and only a sequel would get me back home.
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