The Harvard guy looked at me like I was retarded. Around the entire Charles River? It would have taken days, weeks. No way. He had help. Someone with a car, the police were sure of it.
You’re quite the expert, I said.
No, though I admit I read everything about it. They never found out who helped him because the guy was dead when the cops discovered him, had been for days, in some awful apartment in Slumerville—that’s what everyone in Boston calls Somerville.
I said, How?
He said, How—what?
How—did he die? My heart was banging against my rib cage like I’d swallowed a live bird.
The host, an artist a few years older, who had been getting attention for his hyperrealistic over-life-size portraits, cut in and asked if anyone wanted to smoke some grass and started passing a joint, and I accepted my first toke in over a year as the Harvard PhD went back to his story.
According to the papers, the killer, a loser who had flunked out of some junior college, Bunker Hill or Roxbury Community, took an overdose of something, plus he was inhaling some sort of hallucinogen that was all the rage that year though I can’t remember what it was called.
DMT, I said, not meaning to.
That’s it! He looked at me, eyebrows raised, and so did everyone else.
I only tried it once, at a party in Cambridge.
In Cambridge, he said. Hey, we could have been at the same party!
Then everyone started asking me questions about DMT like I was a specialist—or a junkie.
Was it like acid?
Was it addictive?
Wasn’t it unhealthy?
I dragged on the joint picturing my pink Studebaker filled with boxes of body parts, me and Johnny driving round the Charles River, dropping cartons into murky water and watching them sink while the older guy fed us hash and thanked us over and over for helping him.
Wasn’t it dangerous? The sophisticated woman with all the gold jewelry gave me a pointed look.
No, I said, and took one last toke swearing I’d never smoke again. It only lasted a few minutes. Not enough time to be dangerous.
PaRT II
DeLIRIuM & HaLLuCInaTIOn
A
BRAHAM
R
ODRIGUEZ
was born June 13, 1961 in the South Bronx. From an early age, he showed a big interest in writing, especially on his father’s large, clunky typewriters. His father bought him a portable when he was eleven, and from then on he began writing stories and novels. His books include
The Boy without a Flag, Spidertown, The Buddha Book
, and
South by South Bronx
. His work has appeared in numerous anthologies, including
Bronx Noir
and
The Dark End of the Street
.
moon dust
by abraham rodriguez
1.
Report to Commission C
Inclusions: video files, one (1) short story manuscript
Package of: tainted substance, referred to as “green,” “pot,”
“weed,” or, in this case, “Moon Dust”
[WARNING!! DO NOT SMOKE SUBSTANCE.]
Substance will be submitted to the Justice Ministry for examination. It has been weighed and is vigorously controlled. Any misuse will be prosecuted under penal code 717-3 SUPERIOR!!
The sun golden-yellowed over tenement tops.
They were up on the roof, looking down on the apartment. It was a chilly morning, and they both had the collars of their raincoats turned up high.
They were laughing. Bobbing back and forth. They were on a stakeout on a cold morning in the South Bronx. They were freezing their asses off. Their clothes were from the freaking 1890s. They couldn’t stop laughing.
“I’m fa-fa-freezing.” Killy’s teeth chattered.
“It’s not even officially fall,” Kelly said.
Killy sniffed his own lapel. “Why do we always buy such cheap suits?”
“Uh-uh. I’m not spending money on clothes I’ll need just for five minutes someplace. We’re doing a lot of time-jumps lately.”
“But we’ll make ourselves cuh-cuh-conspicuous,” Killy said.
“What?!” Kelly stood his six-foot tallness straight, giving Killy an up-and-down look. Black raincoat. Black derby. Killy looked Kelly up-and-down right back. Black raincoat. Black derby. “I think we look quite dapper,” Kelly said, lighting an Amnesian stick.
“Hey! Didn’t you light an Amnesian stick before we left?”
“I don’t remember,” Kelly said, and the giggles started for them again.
Killy turned grim. He regarded the stick in his hand. “This is not from this time. We’re going to have to smoke it all right now.”
“And eat the roach,” Kelly said.
A quick couple of tokes for each of them.
Killy went back to his Thermospecs, again sweeping the apartment from one end to the other. Kelly nudged him.
“Hey,” he said, “what year is this again?”
This investigation began with a report that there was a “time disturbance” originating in the year 1973 in New York. The disturbance in this case being marijuana tainted with iridium, a substance yet to be discovered. Iridium is the classified substance used in the assembly and successful functioning of the time-sequencer device. We suspect a scientist well-known to this commission, Abraham Ziegler, found a way to somehow break down the active properties of the time portal. To synthesize its elements and somehow compress them into tiny bits. This fine, glittery dust is then sprinkled or sprayed onto marijuana buds
.
[See sample. WARNING!! DO NOT SMOKE SUBSTANCE.]
The cumulative effect of smoking the iridium-laced marijuana is limited-experience time travel, “limited” by the amount ingested or smoked. We have as yet acquired no data on duration of the “trips” or what happens when the drug wears off, but we suspect the subject returns back to its own time. This may depend on the amount ingested or smoked
.
The Thermospecs made a weird whirring sound. Killy scanned the apartment. “I’m seeing four people,” he said as he pulled the small gun from an inner pocket. He set the laser sight, and fired. Sounded like sand through a straw. The sonic bomb is about the size of a small kiwi. The term “sonic” is a misnomer, since the blast is not loud, but the effect on the nervous system is severe and instant. There was a bright flash, a muffled thump. More thumps. Glass breaking, something falling.
Kelly checked with his Thermospecs. “They’re all down.” He pulled out a small gun of his own, and loaded it with a glass ball. He sighted with the laserscope and fired the ball through the same window. They could hear it clatter against a wall, roll along the floor.
“Okay,” Killy said. He pulled out a small mirrored disc from a small leather case.