Below the deafening rumble of the diesel engine, pavement flew by at a breakneck pace, the dotted yellow line blurring into a streak upon black asphalt. “ ‘Bout fifteen miles to civilization, I spose. ‘Nuff dem weirdos ‘round here to break a Christian, make ‘em believe there’s some other thing teachin the rules, what say Randy… “ His passenger was long past sleeping, but he took no notice, whether talking from sheer boredom or ignorance, the words continued to spill out of his mouth like a stream of water from a broken pipe. The graying truckdriver bent over and felt for his coffee mug in the crevice between the seats, barely moving his eyes from the highway looming in front of them. “Twenty years behin the wheel of this beast, never seen nuthin like this out east tho.. dunno what’s the prob’em with them kids. Seems awful strange, hear them’s comin from good ol fam’lies, whatever got inta they ol’ heads I ain’t never gon’ tell.”
Barely visible in the cover of darkness, Joshua trees grasped at the landscape like alien beasts, lurching and toppling into each other in a random assortment of shadow, their arms reaching as if trying to pull their gangly stems from the rocky soil. Tumbleweeds and dustclouds spun across the highway travelling quickly to nowhere in particular, crushed beneath 15 tons of steel and cargo to lay splintered and lifeless. “Heard ‘dems gon vote nex week for a new guvnah, hope he’s got some more balls in ‘em than this last one, boyee was he ever a failure, brought this whole state into arrears I tell ya’.. God only knows what’s got in ‘dem kids tho.. You’d never b’leive it, saw whole groups of em naked on the streets last week when I drove into here, standing makin a mockery of freedom they was, like it was their god given right to be idiots.. geesh, you’d think we were back in the Summer of Love by the looks of it.” His passenger stirred, smacking his lips together in a feeble attempt to suck water from the air, taking no notice of the empty rambling of his chauffeur. “Almos’ there now bud, almos’ there.” His southern drawl blending the words into a single phrase, lacking punctuation or inflection.
The beginnings of suburbia were appearing on the horizon, marked by never ending trailer parks and gas stations, littering the barren wasteland beside the road in the yellow orange glow of sodium lights every fifty feet. “Firs’ stop is Charlie’s, got half the truck goin’ jus to him this time, Lord only knows why he needs it all. But that ain’t my job to be judgin’, no sir, jus deliv’rin the goods I am. Jus’ deliv’rin.” He steered the truck into a small side road and backed into the loading dock of a small mall, turning his eyes to the side mirrors to guide the truck safely into the cramped quarters. He grabbed the sleeping passenger by the shoulder and gave a solid squeeze, roughly shaking him until his head lolled up and his eyes opened, dazed and unaware of his location. “You comin’ with me? This why I hauled ya over the west, to help me unload this son of a bitch, now come on.” He unlocked the door and stepped out onto the landing, unsteadily climbing down from the truck with legs of rubber after sitting behind the wheel for hours, his companion slowly beginning to show signs of life.
In the void was silence, penetrating walls existing only through doubt, telling stories too quiet to hear. The lack of sense became ordinary and the delicate voice of sanity was clear and true, telling tales of history to his hungry ears. He could feel the drug induced calm evaporating into total panic but behind the anger was the voice of God, the voice of reason talking so clearly there was no hiding from it, an old woman quietly whispering in the darkness, a memory dredged up from below the drugged stupor of his physical.
“In a dreamy haze they led us through the complex, surrounded by a great swarm of guards we were brought to our chambers far into the labyrinth of corridors. Unlike a prison, we were assimilated into the masses and accepted, unmistakably marked by the tattoos and regarded with caution and suspicion. It seemed as if we were in the infirmary, surrounded by hundreds of disabled people. A woman with her body wrapped in white linen like a leper, a mentally retarded man with uncontrollable spasms, a group of severely deformed children played a simple game of marbles on the floor. Most disturbing and unusual was a young girl wrapped in blankets, neglected and alone in the middle of everyone, ignored even though she screamed and pleaded in toddler gibberish for help. I crouched down to give her attention, and reached over to her in comfort when my arm was hastily pulled back. An elderly woman glared at me with hatred, she mumbled under her breath in a foreign dialect, and shoved me away. The child continued to scream, and I noticed that under the blankets she was covered in bloody sores. Repulsed and unable to help her, I scurried to the far side of the room.
The wall was thick wire reinforced glass panels overlooking a gigantic gymnasium. Within this was what appeared to be a complex assortment of machinery manufacturing countless items too small to be identified, splendidly organized and efficient in an assembly line Henry Ford would covet. I watched the inner function of the colony in awe, carefully monitoring my surroundings, watching for a moment where I could slip unnoticed away from this lunacy. There were guards at every corner, invisibly mingling with the crowds, and eventually I sat down in a corner and hid my face in my palms, trying to forget.
From the din of chatter a voice emanated, calming and cheerful, “New boy, come here”. I caught her caring eye and it filled me with hope. Finally, someone who might be real, someone who I might be able to communicate with, and I slowly shuffled over to her. At about four feet away, she put her hand up to motion me to stop and whispered, “Be careful, I don’t want you to get in trouble”
“I was brought here just like you, with about forty others, none of which are alive now…. That was when I was young, over twenty years ago, they all were sent out to recruit. None came back, I’m not sure if they were just killed, or if they were sent to asylums, I don’t know. You see, this commune is entirely brainwashed, they feed us drugs in every thing we eat that remove our individuality and make it more comfortable to just conform to their beliefs, to their control. That’s the only reason this is still around, the drugs. I used to think it was pretty cool, the way we all worked together, but things have changed. Somehow the people lost their way, lost everything that mattered, and now it just all is for the leadership. There is no community anymore. Of course, no one even notices what they are working for, it’s like a big machine made up of thousands of people. The only way I can live is to meditate on the outside world, not the people or the culture but the real spirituality that underlies everything outside of this place, the hope of a future. I can see paradise gleaming at me when I close my eyes, I used to think I could find it within this place, but that was just a hopeless dream I had in my youth. That was what I came here to find, and now I realize it was with me all along, but I am trapped… in this.”
“They all think I can’t speak, so please whisper to me and barely look at me, they think I am too old to notice and that allows me to see things they wouldn’t want me to, to hear things they wouldn’t allow me to. And I know how to do it; I know now how to be free again, I know how to make everyone free again, but you must promise me to do exactly as I say, to do everything I tell you, and I will guide you away from this nightmare, just remember from where you came.”
I nodded in cool awareness, feeling a chill come over me. “I promise you old lady, I will be true; tell me what you need”
“First, you must learn to listen to me, not with your ears, but with your mind, your heart can hear me talking to you. Listen for me, and once you can hear everything I tell you, then I will tell you more. Now go, and do not return, if you can hear me in your mind, then I will talk to you and guide you away from here to my allied brethren in the outer world.” And she closed her eyes and turned away, leaving me in amazement and confusion.”
He clawed a pathway through a thousand pounds of tightly stacked crates, eventually breathing stagnant air at the roof of the trailer and curled up in a foetal embrace with the darkness that had consumed everything, waiting patiently. Hours passed into what seemed like days, mixed with the muted rumble of the diesel churning hundreds of miles below its frenzied wheels, gasping and slowing to a standstill. A crack of sunlight appeared in the back of the van trailer and his eyes squinted, stumbling over the freight to get to the open door, and jumped out into the unknown.
“Hey! Where th’ ell did you come from, you Freak?? How in God’s name did you get in there..” The yelling was punctuated by a sudden thumping of boots against concrete and rattling of keys on a chain. He was blinded by the sunlight, unable to open his eyes for more than a blinking second, and ran to nowhere guided only by sounds of his angry pursuers. “Forget it man, that guy’s nuts, we couldn’t do anything with him if we tried, besides… look at him! He’s naked man, totally naked. What a freak!”
The sunlight burned holes into his eyelids, the heat was unbearable and he stumbled like a bum fresh out of the drunk tank. There was no recollection of how he managed to come here, how he ended up wandering in the desert, naked and alone, and he ran into the shadows of the buildings looking desperately for shelter. The numbing confusion would not subside, his vision swirling in random hallucinations, non-sensical and frightening in their abstract nature. The voices repeated to him “Remember from where you came” but he could not, there was nothing he could grasp to trigger a memory, history blended into the present, mixing together into a blur of color and emotion. His bare feet burned against the hot asphalt and fallen cactus thorns pricked their soles with no reaction. The pain was unnoticed in his drugged stupor; the slightest notion of feeling was hidden behind dilated eyes which masked all emotion with an opaque glaze. It seemed ludicrous, like begging for torture, to head into the city in this state, raw and bleeding in the sun, naked skin tattooed with foreign paintings from an unknown source, completely hairless like a chemotherapy experiment gone awfully wrong. He stumbled onward, bent to a near falling over angle, the gravity of his body thrusting forward with little need for reaction.