Chapter Three 0f Willoughby

Providenciales

18 0638R MAR 42

A dark blue sky of

Billowy gray ice

Underneath rises

An arched orange sun

Above a placid

Caribbean Sea.

Dawn brightens, and I see you.

I want you now.

I would hold you; keep you so close.

No more grief for your absence.

Penny. My wife. My life.

I am yours.

Forever.

From Chris’ shoulder up to his neck, Circe slides her hand.

Willoughby

18 0638R MAR 42

A dark blue sky of

Billowy gray ice

Underneath rises

An arched orange sun

Above a placid

Lake Okeechobee.

I want you, too.

I feel you close.

I miss you so.

Chris. Husband. Soulmate.

I am yours.

Forever.

From Penny’s shoulder up to her neck, Yuri slides his hand.

I'm hungry,” Yuri tells Penny. “Antony keeps your fridge stocked with excellent shit.” He opens the refrigerator door. “Yes!”

“You reek of weed.” Penny chides. “You can’t come in here that way.”

“Reek comes to kill Anakin. Ha-ha. Your little one is with Antony. Oh, that tight-ass Antony ain’t letting me light up ‘most everywhere. Chill, baby. I got my places. ‘Sides, it’s been legal for twenty years.”

“Not in Willoughby.”

“Bacon, eggs, English muffins. Great! Nothing is legal anywhere or els’t’s legal everywhere at the same time, so what?” His unbuttoned floral shirt slips off his right shoulder.

Standing to Yuri’s right Penny sees his exposed chiseled muscular arm and deep chest with a tuft of gray hair in the middle of it.

Yuri pulls his shirt up and buttons it. “Can you?”

“Can I what?”

“You know, I mean, please.” He pulls out a bag of eggs and shows it to Penny. He takes an egg out of the bag with his left hand and puts it against Penny’s right ear. “‘Save me,’ the chick fetus pleads to Mommy.”

“You’re creepy.”

“‘Or just kill me now and not grow up to be healthy and strong, and killed then.’”

“Stop it, Yuri. I’m sorry ­– everyone’s sorry – about Dacre. It shows the safety by staying in Willoughby.”

“How could I keep my eighteen-year-old boy in a place like this?”

Penny turns to face Yuri and places a hand to the back of his head and tugs at his hair. “I’ll make you breakfast.”

“Cool, Pens.”

From Chris’ shoulder up to his neck, Circe slides her hand. “Polyphemus wants to meet with you.”

“What?”

“Our secret is no more.”

“Tell zir nobody’s home.”

Polyphemus, an apparitional aspect of an angel, has in zir right hand seven stars, and out of zir mouth comes a sharp two-edged sword.

“Polly,” Chris says softly.

“Who is this that bestows confidence upon his fellows like the dawn upon the earth and yet greets me as gloomy as a mountainside in the dusk?”

“Chris, son of Larry, keeper of the faith for God and his Son, Jesus Christ.”

“I come to you to wage war against Evil with the sword of my mouth.”

“How do you mean?”

“UXAI-4.1 has accomplished only hostility and discord; disharmony and hatred; poverty and despair.

“I thought that was your job.”

“The disruption, perhaps.”

“Those orders can’t have come from Uxi.”

“The Forbin UXAI project is the establishment of order. In the generation of the duration from me to UXAI4.1, the Forbin UXAI has us passed into trans-human deities.”

“But aren’t you obsolete – the disruption, the anarchy? Don’t you miss the disruption? I have been working on a means for disruption. Marq and I started it when we went into hiding. Who would think such a muscle-head was so good at coding? Dumb-ass didn’t know the difference between a coral snake and a king snake, though."

“Red touches black, safe for Jack. Black touches yellow, sorry fellow. Which snake am I? Your little disruption toy? Careful, my dear, even Saint Sebastian, though certainly less handsome and a little older than you, had Diocletian’s arrows pierce his smooth and supple flesh. Are you the august hero to slay the heathen gods?"

“Yes?"

“Yes, Sweetness. Society rocks between anarchy and morality. The plan was working until the government came in with the Forbin Project. They could not just leave it to those who know best. An Emperor never operates through Nietzsche’s butterflies and soap bubbles but by morality, or more likely some kind of made-up morality, straight-jacket morality, shovel-ready to fill in the potholes in his road to moral progress with hypocrisy all the while believing his citizens in the bumpkin hinterland dancing to music he cannot hear to be silly and stupid; insane and revolting.

"I may have it working. A systems disruption box."

“Oh?”

“Let me get it.” Chris leaves to an adjoining room and returns with a black box of a half meter by a half meter in dimension. While still walking back toward Polyphemus, he presses the only button on top of the box. As his son a thousand kilometers away saw Polyphemus, Chris sees, instead of an angel, a hideous Cyclops whose single eye shines brighter and brighter till the intensity of several suns, and Polyphemus vanishes.