Fellow Epoch

Malachai the spider was underneath the plughole, grasping onto caked shit on the inside of the pipes when someone began pouring half a carton of rancid cream down the sink. His mind was a blur as he gorged on death and flavour.

Years before Malachai had been roaming the Australian outback, sampling the various varieties of desert hallucinogenic on offer and had had a dream of dying by cream. He'd tossed the vision aside as slurry clutter but the image had haunted him, right up until the point where it had bled through into daylight in fact.

He'd recorded his dreams on the advice of Edison, sometime doctor and lecturer at Cambridge, who had become fascinated by the properties of dream. His notebooks were exhaustive with aimless scribble, prophetic junk, all manner of wierd solopsistic bric-a-brac.

And indeed it was Edison who'd prompted the spider to Australia, drunk on over-ambition and basic ideas, hungry for the cup, thirsty for the ambrosia. The two talked endlessly in the proffesors' Edinburgh Reserve about the wonders of the outback and their significance in the world of dreams. Whilst never drawing direct conclusions there was a general fizz in the air whenever the subject turned to antipodea.

-- Lynskey (paul@daymaker.freeserve.co.uk), May 20, 2002

Answers

Malachai believed in Edison. He'd spend hours in his Chelsea townhouse pouring through the proffesors notes looking for some glitch, some error. Many a morning he found himself rudely awoken by his alarm clock to find he was still at the desks, hunched over Edison's latest tome, a stack of sculpted candle wax running so high it was beginning to obsure his one grey window.

After a time he acquired a housekeeper, if only to keep his stack of Edison's papers in order. Her name was Penny and she wore her hair tight around her head. She devised a system whereby Edison's papers were divided into three boxes, Folly, Substance and InBox. Penny learnt to reward Malachai when the InBox contained fewer documents than the others by sweetening his tea with banana wax. The two struck a firm bond, Malacai more than appreciated his new, clean house and Penny enjoyed having someone to talk to who was so learned on the subject of dreams.

Since age six, when she was living on the family's Dorset property, Penny had been plagued by a dream of ravashing intensity. Horrible images twisting the evolution of almost every species that walks the green earth would pour into her mind over a steady, deafening backbeat, as a rising noise would drive her few remaining framents of conciousness to hot coals. Malachai would sit at his desk and hear Penny recount her dream as he would sip whiskey and ponder the dreams' significance towards Australia.

-- Lynskey (paul@daymaker.freeserve.co.uk), May 20, 2002.

Malachai began his own notebooks, primarily concerned with Penny's recurring nightmare. Unfortunately he consulted them as often as a father consults a son about woodworking and his reasoning became as dangerous as a badly wired plug. Edison would browse through his lunch on the Reserve over lunch and comment to himself how everything Malachai seemed to write seemed impossible to follow. There was no introduction, no meat, no ending, just a slapdash coagulation of jellied ideas and dripping paradoxi.

Edison would have become concerned, but Malachai's passion remained in the work of a proffesor, not his own.

It was on Edison's sixty-fifth birthday that he called a fateful party. Himself, Malachai and Penny were to meet in Hyde Park and drink champagne. The three duly met at noon and sat in a secluded spot, popping open a bottle. Each clutched a mass of papers, each settled into their first glass with a feeling of anticipation about the afternoon.

However, Edison's excitement was of a different kind to his companions. For Edison has something to say.

"Malachai, Penny. You have both beens such wonderful companions to me over the last few years. Malachai, you are but a thing of wonder. Like a starling, flitting from copse to copse grabbing only the tiniest thing so that you and your family may eat. And you, Penny. The organisational skills of a cell block and the face of a blessed angel.

"As you both know, I am now 65. A dinosaur in the eyes of the athlete, a supernova to the man of thought. It is a shame then, that what I feel may now be neccesary to further my research will be more in the arena of the athelete than the scholar.

"Malachai, Penny, I need you to go to Australia. I need you to see for yourselves, pinpoint exactations, establish truths. My feeble, bleating body will not hold it's seam for such a voyage, but I have no fear you pair can survive the journey without becoming undone.

"Please, it's only you two sweet souls I trust"

There was no hesitation. Just the sight of Edison's face shining with a tear was enough. They would make travel plans immediately.

-- Lynskey (paul@daymaker.freeserve.co.uk), May 20, 2002.

Fortunately, Penny was a whizz with the arrangements, booking two large rooms in a splendid hotel overlooking Sydney Harbour for an open duration. Their visas would run for a year. Their research, however, could take several more and have meant running from the law, fugitives in the name of study.

All these and many hundreds of other thoughts sprinted through Edison's mind as he watched them leave on the boat. He had been worried about Malachai's sea legs and had given him his lucky lifejacket for the voyage. The lifejacket had been attained in a razor like game of poker in his boating days on Coniston. It stood as a permanent rue to the captain of the lake and the three fishermen who lost out that night to a young, plucky player. At that moment, it was Malachai and Penny who needed whipsmarts, not Edison. He was about to turn around and walk back to his books. For the other two, it was new soil.

-- Lynskey (paul@daymaker.freeserve.co.uk), May 20, 2002.

kind sir, you consistently omit the well known and highly regarded illustrations. woodcuts or linoleumcuts -- i can't tell. artistic choice or copyrite dispute? i have the full set (thrice repeated) on the backs of a well thumbed pinochle deck. holler if you need a scan, or even if you don't.

-- hurley (michel@tcn.org), May 22, 2002.