|| -------- -- -----  A E R I E   O B L I V I A N A . singular book of text wandertainment by Frank Edward Nora ------------------- ----------- THE CARBONIZE NEIGHBOR--CUP 9--"LEON JAMES HARA'S SMALL UNIVERSE OF TRUCKS" <-------  ||  Severe Repair  ||  The Carbonize Neighbor  ||  -------> (Cup SRcn009, Created v2 (6/7/99), Copyright 1999) = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = It was a dusky junkyard world, but the trucks were in good shape. "Hi. I'm Leon James Hara. Welcome to my Small Universe of Trucks." "Um, yeah, hi. I'm Supple Jake." Hara, a young Asian man, extended his hand, which Jake shook. Jake was a hippie kind of woman in her forties, not bad looking. "I don't get many visitors here." Hara said. "Oh?" "Oh no. So where do you come from?" "I'm a lost soul with an opportunity. There were two of me, so one of me was offered a chance to go and not come back." Hara smiled. "Well I'm so happy you came." "I'm happy to be here. It's always great to teleport into a new world of some sort. It seems to be what I was born for. Another day, another alternate universe." "Well now that's really something to talk about, now isn't it?" "What, travelling to other worlds?" "Oh yeah! I only know about it because of this one world I have here, but I knew a traveller would eventually come through!" Jake nodded. "So you're part of some organized system of alternate dimensions or something?" she asked. "Oh no, I don't have an education for that. I just know my own place in things." Jake held up a piece of glass etched with pictures. It was square, roughly a foot per edge. "I got here with this piece of Whintillru Glass. Are you familiar with Whintillru Glass?" "I have to say no." Jake turned the Whintillru Glass around and regarded it. Then she frowned and gazed at Hara. "Wait a minute." she said. "Let me ask you something. Is this really a world, or are you just vividly imagining it?" Hara smiled, laughed, and looked away. "Of course I am." he said. "And I am imagining you. Let me reveal myself a little to you, here in my world, where no one else can hear. I could love you, make love to you, an imaginary woman, and tell you all my dreams and hopes. But I couldn't face a real woman out in the real world. They all must think I'm gay." Jake shook her head and looked off to the side, angry. "Now wait a minute." she said with emphasis, then turned back to face Hara. "I didn't come all this way to play the porno queen in your childish lust fantasies. I'm a real person whether you like it or not. And I have to stay here awhile before I can do anything else with the Whintillru Glass I got here!" Hara narrowed his eyes. "I am in bed now." he said. "I'm making this all up. Now let's go into one of my trucks, it has a nice bedroom inside, very high luxury standard. We can make love." "Look pal, let's get one thing straight. This is a fucked-up situation. I threw away my life to come here." Hara's eyes widened a little. "I guess I must really have mental illness. I can't even get you to come with me. I want you to love me and come have sex with me." "Y'know... god damn that Granticaine Chug Perion for that little menage-a-trois of his! It's all his fault!" "Look lady. I don't know what this is all about, but I have to get up for work tomorrow, and if you're not going to cooperate and do sex stuff with me, I'll just have to get up and go to the bathroom and jerk off to a magazine." "Leon... James... whatver your name is... listen to me... I am not a figment of your imagination... I am a real woman..." But then Hara got transparent, and he walked into a transparent bathroom. "What are you doing? Talk to me!" Jake said. Hara took out a porno magazine which had a computer magazine cover on it. Then he started jerking off. "That's bad luck." a strange little voice then said, coming from the Whiltillru Glass. Jake looked down to see an etching of a girl in the woods, moving. "What's bad luck? Masturbating?" Jake asked. "No. The place you wound up. The kid's mind. It's a stupid location." "I have to agree... but now... who are you? I didn't think that the Glass had a mind." "I don't know who or what I am." "Can I break the news to you that you're an etching on a piece of extremely supernatural glass?" "That doesn't sound so bad." Jake shook her head. "What's the matter?" the girl in the woods said. "I may be the copy. I may be the original. Or there might not be a copy and an original. But I was the one who left. From scouting out Primates to chatting with masturbators and glass people..." "I'm sorry. I lied." "Huh?" "I lied about not knowing anything about myself. I do know something." "Oh?" "Yes. I know that I WAS somebody. I know that I have a memory of signing a document with some sort of crazy purple pen saying that this guy The Tiredist Noava could time travel and use a past version of me in making the Glass. But I guess he finagled me and used a future version instead." Jake narrowed her eyes. "Where do you remember coming from?" "Oh, it was this wonderful thing, where we were able to go to different Earths. It was called Sweptim. The Tiredist Noava was my lover for a time. He showed me an awful lot of wonderful things." "Sweptim..." Jake said. -------> ------------------- ----------- -------- -- -----