Character in Search of Author

When I got back to the guesthut Felicia had just finished packing a royal blue rucksack and was zipping it closed.  I could feel my eyebrows arch into a quizzical look, and when she saw it, she said, "My father and I have to travel to Creel for supplies.  We've been doing it together every few months for years.  I hope you don't mind.  We'll be back in two days."

"It's fine," I said.  "I'll hang around here.  I've got a lot of thinking to do."

"Thinking about what?"

"About what I'm going to do.  I'm AWOL from the BookForce.  Remember?"

"You can stay here with Dad and me.  And Indira."

"Neither of us should stay," I said.  "They'll have the Holmes Division searching for me, and the marshals already have you on the run."

"I can't keep running.  It's very hard to write a book when you're constantly on the move."

"You're writing a book?"

"Yes," she said, "it's a memoir called Creeping toward Creel."

"Is it your first?"

"Don't be silly, I've written ten books already."

"I'm impressed."

"You can take a look at some if you want," she said, gesturing with her feline chin to the desk in the corner of the space.  "They're all loaded on the iWear."

I followed her gaze to the sleek, polished silver glasses sitting in the middle of the desktop.  I said, "I've never seen those before."

"They're pretty neat," she said, going to retrieve them.  When she brought them over and handed the glasses to me, she said, "Try them on."

When I did I was looking at a blank white page as pure as the highest quality bond paper I'd seen in a museum as a child.

She said, "Give it the command 'TOC.'"

"TOC," I said, and a table of contents opened immediately.

"All you have to do is say the title you want to read, give it an 'open' command, and say 'next' to keep reading or 'back' to reexamine something.  Pretty basic stuff."

"Thanks."

"I'd better get going," she said.  "Help yourself to anything.  You know how to use the food and drink computer."

I followed her to the door and watched as she walked toward her father's hut.  A moment later I heard both of their voices as they made their way out of the village on the same path Felicia and I had taken in.

I sat in the commodious white-leather chair and was about to don the iWear when the zPhone Indira had given me--which was sitting in my pocket snuggled up against my crotch--began vibrating at massage speed.  I considered leaving it there for a moment longer, but pulled it out instead.  On the ample 3" X 5" screen was a map to Indira's hut.

That made me recall what she'd said about researching Tantric Yoga, and I immediately accessed the Uninet site to do a quick search.  What I found there made it crystal clear to me that the kind of intercourse Indira had talked about this morning certainly had little to do with "social" intercourse.

"The Tantric Yoga technique called Karezza is a method of prolonging intercourse without ejaculating. This practice synthesizes breath control, various yoga postures, meditation, and finger manipulation into the act of coitus. The goal is for the man to approach ejaculation without actually ejaculating. Orgasms sans ejaculation are exceedingly pleasurable, allowing coitus to continue for inordinate periods of time, thereby satisfying both male and female partners."


I read it again in order to assure understanding.

When I returned to the search page I found something called Tantra Yoga, which was completely different from what I'd just learned.  Tantra Yoga concerned itself with understanding the universal through the experience of the individual, a way of discovering the ideal of philosophy in daily life.

Surely that's what Indira referred to; after all, she had accused me of being too caught up in sexual gratification in my book, of favoring "booty-ism" over "Buddhism."

But I was certain she had said "Tantric Yoga."  Why would she use the word "intercourse" otherwise?

Feeling a bit peckish I went into the kitchen and typed "Baloney and Cheese Sandwich" onto the InstaMeal keypad.  When it came to choosing a drink I didn't hesitate:  a pint of NuMeade.  Thinking I needed to eat something healthy I considered typing "banana" or "apple," but instead punched in the letters for another NuMeade.  Ordinarily I wouldn't start drinking until evening, but there was nothing ordinary about the life I'd been leading of late.

Back in the living room I sat in the leather chair and started on my second drink.  I slipped the iWear on, gave the "TOC" command, and examined all the titles of the books written by Felicia Monk.  Some of them were Daddy's Little Vixen, Lying Your Way to Freedom, and How to Marry Your Invisible Lover.
The alcoholic beverage had kicked in fast, nearly sending me into an instant stupor before I noticed that among Felicia’s books was one written by her father, Zen:  Thinking Inside the Box:  An Inspector Mime Mystery by I. Box.  Though I could feel myself slipping over the steeply-sloping precipice to peaceful afternoon-sleep, I tried to force myself to stay awake.

I gave the "open" command to the iWear and read this:

"They caught him in the Chisos Mountains in the old Big Bend National Park, one of the few remote places left in these United States.  He'd been on the run for several years, popping back and forth across the narrow ribbon of Rio Grande near Boquillas, Mexico.  But he was tired, his back was killing him, and he was hanging out a lot in the mountains near the South Rim grubbing for food, relieving himself in an old solar compost toilet the Forest Service had put in over a decade ago, and just generally wishing he could will himself to die before they came for him.

They came in the middle of the night while he was sound asleep in his tent.  At first he thought it was one of the black bears that had migrated across the river from the Sierra del Carmen Mountains, but when he heard whispering he knew his time had come.  It was a SWAT team from the BookForce, and they handcuffed him, confiscated his life savings of $50,000, and marched him down the trail right then and there, the lead marshall lighting the way with the torch strapped to his forehead."

I quickly removed the iWear and tried to understand what I had just read.  Was Zen Monk plagiarizing my book, Utomepia? I put the glasses back on and returned to the page that gave the date of publication; according to that page his book had been published several years earlier.  Might he have changed the dates for nefarious purposes?

Or, perhaps, in some bizarre reality beyond my comprehension I was nothing more than a character in a book he'd already written.  The thought was mind-boggling.  Had "free will" never really existed for me?  Had my entire fate already been predetermined by a master storyteller?

I read voraciously, stopping only to relieve myself in the bathroom and to get a third NuMeade.  The story in Zen's book paralleled mine exactly, detailing my escape from the marshals, my recapture, my incarceration in Paso del Norte, my phenomenal literary success, the movie, my near carnal transgression with Bonnie McRae, my arrest and sentencing to the BookForce, my mission to Copper Canyon, the encounter with Phyllis Mime (Felicia) and her father, Marcel (Zen).

That's where I stopped reading, wondering what lay ahead if I ventured further into the text.  The fear of learning my true fate gave me genuine pause for thought, but I read on, nevertheless.

Inspector Marcel Mime and his daughter, Phyllis, slipped into the rear door of Induma's hut.  She had been waiting for them, and they all huddled together in the living room.  Although they were obviously in a hurry to carry out their diabolical plan, the good inspector seemed more preoccupied with getting some fresh tobacco for his cherrywood pipe.

"Do you have any more of that black shag, Induma," he said.  "I can't think properly without it."

"No," she said, "only a pouch of Schippers Speciaal."

"Let's have a bowl, then," he said, handing her the smoking implement.

He was obviously quite impatient, barely able to contain his agitation as she filled the bowl, packed it with the tamper arm of the pipe tool, and lit it.  He nearly exploded as she took a deep draw on the bit.

 When she handed it to him he crammed it into his mouth, taking several pulls and inhaling deeply of the thick bluish-white smoke.  Releasing a cloud nearly into Phyllis's face he paused just long enough for her to recover her composure.  He reminded himself to ask her later why she was wearing only a skimpy emerald-colored bikini.

To Induma he said, "You invite Rowe over, and Phyllis and I will hide in the Chinese box closet.  When he comes inside the hut give him a NuMeade laced with Toma.  Flirt with him afterwards, then get him onto the bed.  We already know he has an incredible weakness for the flesh."

Stopping at that moment to level a malevolent look at his daughter, he said, "Is that why you're dressed in the swimsuit?"

Before she could respond, he said, "When he conks out we'll cuff him, call the authorities, and put out a news release.  The story will circle the globe in minutes:  'The great Lee Rowe has been captured--yet another notch in the belt of the inimitable Inspector Marcel Mime.'  This time, though, I'll reveal my true identity so the world will know I'm the fabulously-gifted thinker/writer Zen Monk.  I should hear from a representative of the Big6 Cartel within days.  The mind-numbing 10-book deal I'll be offered will set the literary establishment on its ear, proving that only a genuine genius could self-publish his way to fame like this.

I practically ripped the glasses from my face, sitting upright in desperation.  They were going to turn me in; it had been their plan all along.  What could I do to save myself?  How resourceful could I be--especially if I was nothing more than a character in another writer's novel?  But wasn't it true that characters--at least good ones--often developed their own personalities regardless of what their creators originally had in mind for them?  Perhaps I could test the theory, see if I couldn't force the "free-will" issue.

A brilliant idea came to mind.  I immediately jumped up, crossed to the door and stepped out into the space between the guesthut and the main residence.  Finding the back door unlocked I entered Zen's home cautiously, crept silently down a hallway and entered his office.  His McBook Author Series 3 computer was already on, and I had no trouble finding his mail address.  I used it to log on to Ambarguntenpress.glo.  My plan was to get into the file for his book Thinking Inside the Box.  If  I could get in I could revise the text in such a way that I would set myself free.  The only problem was I needed a password to access the file.

Like in a dream the word came to me out of the blue:  "Marceau."  I punched it in, immediately opened the file and went directly to the passage in the chapter I'd just read.  I couldn't believe how easy it was.  Employing a popular motif from fiction of the past I simply changed the nature of the characters.  I made Marcel Mime a vampire, Induma a werewolf, and Phyllis a zombie.  Then I set the inspector and Induma on each other.  Induma killed Mime easily, but not before incurring a coma-inducing bite to the neck.  Then Phyllis went about the process of consuming Induma's brain, unaware that the woman's cerebral cortex had been heavily infected with Clostridium botulinum--the botulism toxin.  Phyllis would be paralyzed within hours.  And for a zombie that meant really dead.

I updated the changes, closed the file, and republished the book.  Finished with my devilishly-ingenious plan to save myself and, at the same time, re-exert my free will, I returned to the guesthut and collpased into the leather chair.

The vibrating of the zPhone in the front pocket of my pants went on for so long I woke with a serious case of stiff pizzle.  Putting the phone to my ear, I said, "Hello?"

"Are you coming?"

Groggy from sleep, I said, "Who is this?"

"It's Indira.  You can come now."

I rang off, putting the phone back into my pocket.  I was in that place between dream and reality, undecided about which was really real.  I stood, extracted the phone again and called up the map she'd given me.  There was a red X on her hut.  Was I really going to do this?  Would I actually go to her?  Was my willpower that weak?  Would I cuckold Zen that way?  Well, technically I couldn't really cuckold him because Indira wasn't his wife.

I closed the door to the guesthut behind me as I went out into the cool, crisp night air.