Pilot Manifest: The Source of all Things Read online

  I need to go check on James, the beach, and the overwatch. Then, make sure our new radio guy is doing his job—Elmhurst’s job.

  — 21

  James and the radio skeleton checked out. Another day, frozen conditions remain. Cold wind. Elmhurst’s condition is dire.

  — 22

  Skeleton overwatch. Desolation. Tattered headpiece flying: color fades and fabric wears out with interminable fluttering in arctic winds—prayer flags decay forever falling apart against exposed skull and bones.

  — 23

  Elmhurst could be able to get back to helping around camp, back on his feet. That would be a most welcome thing. There’s a chance, I thought, stepping back, realizing that humans have proven repeatedly to have a particular resilience in overcoming unimaginable adversity. I’m skeptical of his technique to flood his body with vodka. Again, we should remember instances when an incapacitated drowned victim was said to have been taken from the water and brought back to life. That is a hopeful thing. There is space for slight hopes such as this—and in the power of medicine.

  — 24

  Bright overcast. Darker edges shifted, feathered, sun concealing screens as I walked to our broken bird beneath, and into, endless gray.

  Frost inside our downed aircraft. Windows are frozen, broken. Ragged canvas coverings on open frames are blowing in icy wind. With that exception, our king stallion aircraft is a superb shelter. Our first shelter. Wind is turned away, except for getting through the torn canvas.

  There are still cases of fresh whisky in here.

  Here I keep other possessions. Here I keep the DEITI scientific journal. They once were able to consider such things as engineering evolution when they were so certain of their fate and in the power they had over it—crass human beings. An echo of man is his arrogance. With conceit they would design ways to sweeten the cream and plot the human course through a microscope, oblivious to the outside world. They kneeled before their own creation of embryos that would save humanity, having lost sight of man. All their work in vain.

  Infinite moments I’ve gazed into the forests adorning these pages of the DEITI assembly, infinite moments. A day is a thousand hours and all days run into one. Sympathy tempers anger as I read the scientists and their pathetic, naive optimism. I can see that the wilderness in their landscape is not unlike that found in ours, in the mountains of our transcendent isle.

  Here, in our relative isolation, I and the skeletons, with Kagan’s ever-present voice, are able to comprehend—after much fermentation of ultimate sorrow—the way the world should be. We have discovered harmony. Our harmony exists beyond destruction, after destruction.

  There, they searched for this, for harmony. They sought to achieve it through manipulation and creation. They sought to control nature—that would be their evolutionary fire: control. I imagine it’s true that in their self-inflicted isolation, when violence remained in an obscure offing, these scientists tasked themselves with discovering a dependable control of nature for an eventual prosperity which we have also discovered here. They sought to repair the heinous tendencies of man, even if in vain. Their blindness didn’t set fire to the earth—that I will concede. And so, I will keep this artifact in its rightful safe place.

  After the crash and first few weeks spent waiting for rescue, along with sheltering and food finding, I brought some pictures back to our wrecked mammoth. I found them in cabins and in the lodge. Soon, the stark walls of a crippled aircraft became reminiscent of home. That was a year ago, or a month. Or more, or less, I can’t recall—maybe months. I saw a calendar in a cabin in a year of yesterdays ago. The keeping of time is no longer a task of consequence. I don’t know how it could matter.

  There, a picture in a misty forest of a deer with velvet covered antlers and a stare of a sculpture. That was maybe taken nearby. It looks familiar as I look again—I’ve spent so much time in these mountainous woodlands. Here’s one of a child fishing. The silver colors of the fish at the end of the line reflect in summer light and water splashes out of the creek. Next, we see a barren, snowy sunset. Here, a lone sailboat with classic open sails attacks a northern ocean where the fathoms erupt into white feathering peaks of waves against a background of heavenly blue and opaque icebergs.

  All these I brought. Elmhurst wouldn’t take any pictures from any cabin even if it was half destroyed. I liked these pictures though, for one reason or another, because they reminded me of something possible in life. I guess. Instead, he brought an old hunting rifle there—a fine weapon—and an old chair, two of them actually. Very kind of him to bring two chairs. Except, I think I did bring in one of the chairs.

  My favorite discovery was a finely crafted trident. Its three blades were forged by an immortal smith. You can know the shape of the hammer, the angle and texture of the primordial anvil. It then is married to a handle burnished in layers of oil. It’s over there, leaning. You can imagine the awe I originally felt for it. As it was once wielded by Poseidon ruling from his godly saltwater throne before he was forced into the deepest cave in the darkest ocean when he abandoned his kingdom and this sacred trident to escape to a hiding place far from the absolute power of the war elemental, which is the omnipotent beast obedient to man.

  The trident has degenerated to the fallen class of things, a relic of a failed civilization, of a waning demigod. I don’t carry it much, even though I enjoy walking with it and using it for a staff. Usually, I end up leaving it for a skeleton to wield at a watchtower. I inevitably go on my way slinging a rifle over my back, a 45 revolver, or auto, on my side. For these are inventions that also harness elemental power, confining it in seraphic weapons wieldable by, and obedient to, man. Here is power over mythology, history, and bears.

  It’s strange to think that this crashed helicopter has become like an old home where you walk in and never really notice, except for rare times like this when you do, likenesses of your memories framed on the walls or placed above the fireplace where you can look into time at a portrait in a standing frame as you touch the keys of an out-of-tune piano.

  I need to reinforce those failing canvasses on our old bird so that this secluded getaway will be protected from cold wind and rain and so that it can be a place where I can sit in peace for a few minutes to get some rest from the radioactive tracers laced into my stressed out head.

  — 25

  After leaving the stallion, I went to our northern watchtower and sighted the range. It was all clear, deer in far canyons. I’ve since moved from the small overwatch campfire back to this shed. I’ve added firewood to the stove that burns an isolated heat in the center of a desolation of ice.

  There’s no time, just cold outside. I’ll find a southern journey in Kagan’s book. Today is for leaving, returning to the sun. Its light glows. Kagan’s scribbled thoughts will be our guide, Copeland.

  We’ll travel far into a gone world captured in resin of ink, a dark artifact of Kagan’s imagination. You’ll see that our return to the sun will be welcomed by warm blue sky and white clouds—remnants of the widow’s wedding veil that cloaked the dark soul of humanity.

  From the sidewalk we take concrete stairs to a green shaded cafe with windows undone. We enter the cafe with city views. Skeletons are always welcome.

  A breeze comes through wide-open windows and cools the sunlight in the upstairs cafe. To each one a good day and coffee is a treasure that all should cherish as we all are able to enjoy sun purified air of the cafe. Views extend through the haze of the city south and west to a landmark sheltering the bay. Our window overlooks a stretch of freeway and brick colored tile roofs. Common patterns are all around.

  A runway is too low to be seen. Planes land from the East, sometimes it seems a hundred or more in a minute. They take off west. Once most of them gain altitude they set course east again. Some lean for northern destinations. The pacific will soon be gone. At 33,000 feet mountains and deserts and cities would be reduced to archaic images, crop circles. Some passengers would pull shade cov
ers over their double-paned window to block out sky and ground. Engines propel the vessel through clouds in a time far from our once island home in ice and far from our old cafe.

  A cup is set with its saucer on the table, the sound. On a napkin the young barista wrote good morning Thomas. Smiles as she walks away.

  The cafe windows frame jacarandas hanging above the street. The blue sky cascades into an overexposed horizon and views of the point shimmer with the water of the unseen bay. You can taste the ocean in the warm air. It’s so sweet a skeleton would cry. It’s an aroma that ice kills like the scent of gone rain in a sunning morning.

  Death searches for us in the cafe, Copeland. The reaper hunts out of darkness into day with a scythe to destroy us or anyone with ocean or jacarandas in their eyes.

  Yes, it is the twin of grim frost.

  We evade the corrosive reaper. There, you can hear air brakes from commercial loading zone trucks, a constant hum from traffic traveling on an oil-stained junked up highway, low radio noise, low voices in unrecognizable conversations, people, the annoying people, and other quieter ones. Newspaper pages turn, shuffle. An engine winds uphill and they don’t know to change gear. All the world is evading the reaper. Or perhaps the world would steal our sweet ocean air. Either of them would.

  The world was in slow decay with demands, let down, aching noise, and killing. Then a motorbike, a twin-engine is heard and the beautiful sound it makes is the chance that in all his searching and failures man could make something so perfect—that engine. It overwhelms the rest of the chaotic world, the twin cylinder on that motorbike. As it goes everything else fades back into another jet escaping, transitioning from our existence in pulsing noise in radio static electromagnetic transmissions in frequencies, to atmospheric transit bending through broken air crossing to an unknown, unknowable obscurity.

  It is better that they’re gone, wherever it is they’ve gone. There are enough reflections inside the cafe to fill your skeleton imagination for all of this winter and next, Copeland. You could spend a day in the corner by a window looking at a rust colored awning or at a transparent image as it comes off the glass and is laid over sunlit bougainvillea. A few cars reflect in the peripheral windows and their hologram is layered over the wooden steps that connect a neighborhood on the hill.

  Sunlight floods the windows and tables nearest the wall. Chairs are covered in summery light. Some light gets through and shadows are blurry grids framed upon a worn wooden floor. A streak of light separates a white espresso cup and saucer on a table in the room. A squandering stream of smoke rises from a silver pyramid-ashtray sitting inside the tied-open, metal sculpture gate.

  Here we are—an envelope with our dead prophet’s name on it lays on the table at the edge of sunlight. I will lift it to study the impermanence of a life lost, in ink. The return address is gone, too. My feelings of contempt for the complacency of the world ease in as I put the envelope back on the table and push it to the edge again of the sunlight streak. Isolated in brightness, it imitates the stillness of the silent cafe. It becomes the stillness of the old world.

  My cup touches its saucer, and I shift my gaze outside to the trees and the wire suspended against intricate flowers on slender branches—a surge of electricity races along a nervous system to a heart, to a brain of unconquered inhibitions, quivering aspirations, fading dreams.

  So often they were oblivious to life. Their voices emerge from disappointment, in delusion, dissatisfaction, manipulation, in unconscious want. Broken conversations are torture. In all the sunshine, we find them. I can hear hints of things they say, still. I can’t block out their scornful voices in a cafe shelter where torn awnings flutter in pacific breeze opposite a freeway beyond an angle of light tracking a seam made with shadows. Engines race by, shifting down concrete highways.

  Interpret a symbol formed in an espresso sketch, set it aside to table center, on the saucer at the center of this far place. A far away center of lost time.

  The napkin would be a pleasant memory. We should leave. I drop the envelope in the trash on the way through the gate, abandoning the other bitter escapists in the company of entitled leeches and the dissatisfied ones where they can suffocate in each other’s misery. A violet sun fell long before I made way downstairs to desolation street.

  We can walk out to a busy driving street and watch traffic, headlights streak. There is a ghost, ghost memory. Cars go by as waves on a stream, faces are different inside, unchanging they seem, all ghosts of my ghost memory.

  I hear a small voice speaking in my ear wanting information for reasons unclear, asking the question, asking the question—the fucking questions. So I let my eyes down, clearly I can see, watching traffic headlights streak, I’m a ghost and you are ghost memory. I’m the ghost, oh, I’m the ghost.

  Their geometrical world with color and noise should have been kept from our world of killing frost.

  Those people had free will, Copeland. It was in their nature, even in defining it. How do they feel now that the place where they’d sit and complain and comment about the absurdity of their lives is destroyed in a war, now that their cafe along with everything else in their proclaimed meaningless existence is destroyed in firebombs? We know that they’ll never know, because they’re gone. The seaside cafe lays in rubble. Likely? No, certainly. I’ve seen it. I found destruction. Everyone destroyed. All of these people would wish for one more moment in this sun filled cafe if they had a chance for it. In the presence of oblivion, it would be a tearful wish.

  I wish there were something else for them facing disintegration beneath the reaper’s fiery will—one more memory of beautiful life, another glance of the barista girl. All of it razed to oblivion—Kagan’s dead world.

  Listen. Howling wind, Copeland. I prefer to return to howling wind and rain than to hear the ghosts complain of their meaningless disappointment. This desolate world of ours, of frost and skeletons—a once stranded existence—is no longer stranded. I know, even here, some ghosts cry in the cold. Here, though, I’m the hunter stalking the prey with ghosts flying along into the hills. It’s cold outside, raining ice fragments. I’m going out.

  —26

  The air of ice petrifies the marrow, and I realize some of these skeletons are useless. No wonder they got themselves killed. That said, some of them are professional and show an eagerness to learn and an impressive desire to earn my trust. It will be uncomplicated to know the difference.

  The problem is the mass of hate originating because of those who beg for tolerance, acceptance of incompetence, pitiful effort, and hopelessness. Screeching complaints of an oblivious existence torture my ears. It’s loathsome. I’ve gathered all the useless ones to burn them to dust at sunset tomorrow, to silence their shrieking. Now, back to Elmhurst, to inform him of the situation.

  —This is distressing. In an apparent fit of violence, Elmhurst took a doctor’s knife and attempted to severe his legs above the infection. I monitor him. There’s no way I can stop the bleeding. This entire hospital shed is covered in blood soaked vodka. Skeleton doctors are covered in it too. It appears that the sole entry into this Pilot Manifest by the pilot will be a dark smear of his polluted blood. Of course, I will relay his thoughts to the best of my ability. That isn’t really quite the same though is it. His heartbeat more faint than his breath, it appears he will pass away soon, nearly silently.

  Seconds since the last entry and the breathing has stopped. The eyes stopped living. Everything we could do was simply to attend quietly for the transcendence. The doctors and everybody were pulling for him. From this sorrow will be found solace in knowing that Elmhurst will have a safe painless place with the skeletons and me. To demonstrate our sincere admiration, Commander Elmhurst will be honored tomorrow during the incineration ceremony.

  — INCINERATION CEREMONY

  What is the brightest thing? What is light? How is it affected by gravity? How is it ambient? Thank you for these thoughts, old friend. This one, this fallen pilot will hear
you there in the ever-dark, in joining the skeletons. May he survive the metamorphosis. And may we be guided by visions, together.

  I said a few words for the valediction. The pyre burns. The burning consumes antagonizing voices, and we will hear them no more. It was the optimal way to remove those useless ones, those who were unhealthy in death. Everyone, all who remain outside the fire, are of one accord.

  In a fitting and touching bit of ceremony, it was gratifying to recognize Elmhurst, the honored guest, as he stared into the incineration pyre. The glow was immense. I have to say the feeling of unity felt with skeletons and Elmhurst is encouraging. To signal our strength, I’ve decided to move the flag from our wrecked bird to the highest tower on the hill. We stand without fear of our enemies.

  A crimson veil is cast upon us—on Elmhurst’s bloodstained expression and on the faithful skeletons encircling the fiery pillar of smoke and bones. We are the luminous resonance in the dead of north. I believe we will endure. This belief is evident in tears.

  — 28

  There was a satori of sorts in the morning after the ceremony. I’m struck with a grateful realization, and I will confess that it has come as some relief in the darkness of the last few days. It has occurred to us that Elmhurst will soon—within a few weeks— be returning to his radio duty. Rexo will be transferred to a desirable lookout since he’s done very well covering for poor Elmhurst. Everything’s getting back to working order again. We’ll soon be running like a fine springtime watch with Elmhurst back on the radio, once his evolution is complete.

  The process has already begun with the purest symbol aiding in his skeleton reincarnation: eagles. He fell onto his back as they remove parched orbs. It’s difficult to watch—though care must be taken so no canine or bear predators take Elmhurst away. One or two of our faithful have lost limbs to such crimes. I consider the time needed for this so that connective tissue and tendons are not completely destroyed. It takes some time. I stand guard over eagles of necromancy as they call upon the dead.