Our condition is a perpetual quest for an impossible truth: the first-hand understanding of the universe’s totality and origin, and to make sense of our present, historic, and future connection to it.

Gnosticism—and to an extent a reading of the consequences physical cosmology—stresses that our being is divided but perpetually seeking out its other parts.

Thomas quotes Christ in his gospels as saying “I am not your master. Because you have drunk, you have become intoxicated from the bubbling spring which I am measured out.” I.e., Christ says he and Thomas are one-and-the-same, a statement of cosmic unity. The implication is that all beings are derived from iterated layers of creation by a distant god, that creators creation (“demiourgos”), the demiougros’ creation (the world), life, and so on, with each iteration being more flawed and alienated. But the key may be that our ideal state is wholeness with our origin, the beginning in the chain of creation. Christ reiterates this later in Thomas’s gospel: “When you make the two one, and when you make the inside like the outside and the outside like the inside…and when you make the male the female and the female one and the same, so that the male not be male nor the female female, and when you fashion…a likeness in place of a likeness; then you will enter the kingdom.” We are divided now, but “the kingdom,” our ideal and total state, will be achieved when whole again—as we were before.

The root of Gnosticism, in terms of its explanation for our origins, seems analogous to the most currently accepted secular theory of the universe’s origin. The big bang theory observes that because galaxies are consistently moving apart from one another, they must have originated as a perfect singularity. The consequence–which I am positing as a kind of secular universalism–is that, in the most intimately physical sense, all matter and energy in the universe was originally one entity. We truly are all one in this sense. All that we are, matter and energy, is united in a linked chain spanning eons. All was united, but has undergone constant macro and micro evolution and diversification throughout the universe’s history; singularity to subatomic particles to atoms to molecules; galaxies, stars, solar systems, atmosphere, microbial life, advanced life, sentient life, and the imitative creations of sentience. The intelligence of sentient life sets it even further apart from its origin by way of false categorization of its own experience as being more distinct from nature than it is.

And that brings us squarely to our condition, the entanglement of sentience: the quest to recognize our origin and reconcile ourselves with it, to know what came before it, and to seek comfort with origin and the fate of finite existence.

“New Sensation” and “Singularity” are now out available in the current issues of Inkwell and Transfer magazines, respectably, and therefore present here. Enjoy them. “New Sensation” and “Singularity” are just stories, though I have been made aware that there are both rouge asteroids and psychic tortures at bay in real life, respectably.

It wasn’t as easy as that time in Thailand down in Bangkok, though. Or down in Pattaya, even easier. The women crawled up from every alleyway in that city to serve him. He chuckled. Simple as pie. That was their trade, you know. Trading in bodies, in women and in men too. A job, but he could tell by the way they giggled and tickled at his side that they wanted him.

India has it too. Quite an old profession, as he remembered reading somewhere. The Indian women are so strictly devoted and so socially stiff. Very old fashioned, Colin reasoned. But they’re out there. He pushed his shoes off and curled his toes. Just need to know where to look for them. Certain neighborhoods, certain times. Most decent people were in bed by nine. But everybody else wandering around on those dismal streets at night, the rotting or unpaved roads connecting mishmashed buildings, those men with their tattered, plaid lungis and yellowed eyes were the ones to talk to. Old men approached, tugging an arm, “ganja? Opium, maybe?” That wasn’t the thing Colin was after. Had to watch out for the drunken “gents,” as they were called, fist fighting in the street so pissed drunk that they had to. But finally, he’d come across a thick young man sporting a well-trimmed mustache and acid washed and embroidered bellbottom jeans, standing before a girl in the shadow. The young man would bob his head and ask him directly, “you are looking for laids this one evening, sir?” The night was his then, like the young girl in the sari pulled beside the pimping young guy. It was to be spent in some putrid apartment, with the mattress on the floor and their faces down. And he knew she wanted it like that.

“So where were you coming from, Mr. Rezo?” the stewardess asked, setting down his double shot of Evan Williams bourbon, illuminated in its tulip glass.

He opened his eyes and smiled a tight lipped smile.

She was standing there grinning, leaning on his recliner, black hair and eyebrows and blue eyes.

“Oh, I just came from Chennai, a city in India. Pretty sure they used to call it Madras.”

“India then? The women, I think, have lot of kids, very very big families. So many people, yeah?” She fooled with her gold scarf.

He kept smiling, nodding, raising his eyebrows over his tiny eyes. “Oh, definitely. So many people, that’s for sure.” Colin straightened up a little, then, and loosened his tie. He knew he needed to ask about her at this stage; she said she was from Kitzingen, a tiny Bavarian wine town. She brought a hand to the lobe of an ear when she spoke, a finger tip tracing its outline. Colin smiled noticing the detail. He could only hope to impress her—Anna, he read on her flashy name tag—for longer than the relative moments of the flight home. He hoped he could remember Anna, the small town German girl with glimmering eyes against black space, rocketing herself around the earth, away from simple beginnings toward something bigger, toward her future. How admirable, the will to make herself anew. If only they would remember each other. Anna told him she enjoyed her travels, but did want a family, to settle in a warm place.

“Well, I think you could have it.” He smiled. “You are a lovely woman.”

“Maybe in India,” she offered, rising. “It’s warm, lot of good people. Maybe you’ve left a cutie there, yourself, Mr. Rezo?” Anna laughed, nudging him, and walked back toward the galley to prepare the drink service.

A girlfriend—a mistress! Hardly, Colin thought with a chuckle. Those women. What had Anna said? Lot of kids, very very big families. Colin shifted in his recliner. He reached for the bourbon, took a sip. He wiped his lips and his five-o-clock shadow hissed.

But there was no way that she’d have a kid. He pulled out in time—he’d done that with his wife through fifteen years of marriage and she was only pregnant when they wanted to have Jacob! Pulled out, finished off all over. Didn’t he? Probably. Looking back, really, he couldn’t remember if he’d finished all over or not. But why wouldn’t he? He shook his head. Everything was fine. He finished the bourbon.

Colin frowned. He stared out the cabin window as the plane moved to taxi. The busy bustling of the Germans working to load baggage was illuminated by the blue runway lights. He picked up the interactive remote and flipped through the menus on the screen in front of his recliner; only bad American blockbusters, dancy Bollywood and Tollywood and Kollywood films, online music magazines featuring strange bionic electro-pop musicians from France and other weird European and Asian invaders. Good lord. Everybody forgot about good old American music. Simple, raw, from the heart. From the gut. What happened to John Denver, Glen Campbell? He even could do The Rolling Stones from time to time before the disco. The new generations have let this Eurotrash and others trample all over their country. He thrust the controller back into its holder and waited for the plane to take off and crossed his arms again.

They were at nearly 34,000 feet in the dark when Colin awoke. He wiped his face, stretched. He pressed the glowing red service button and Anna returned. He asked for another double of Evan Williams. She asked if he’d like a good German beer, a Berliner Kindl maybe. He insisted on the bourbon and finally removed his tie, opening some buttons of his full sleeve shirt.

Waiting, Colin reviewed the laminated safety card from the seat before him with the dumb-faced woman putting the oxygen mask on the dumb-faced child.

“Good lord,” he whispered. Why was he thinking of this now? How many women–how many business trips had he been on? After a few moments, Anna returned with another glass of bourbon. Colin took a gulp. Another smile, tiny squint.

But the feeling stayed with him, lingering thoughts of ‘what if.’ What if she was pregnant? And was to have his child? Birth his child out there in Someplace, the sporadically paved backstreets of Chennai, where houses standing side by side might be palaces or in ruins—no doubt, she’d have this child on the floor of a home in ruins. The neighborhood would smell like jasmine pedals and spices with hints of gasoline and rotting shit. Christ. What would this kid’s name be?

He was a boy, a boy called Maan.

“Well that’s an interesting one.” Colin said. He hadn’t heard the name before. It just occurred to him, popped into his head through some kind of inner voice, and it did sound very Indian. Maan. Okay, so maybe Maan will be born, and make it. Well, he’ll be on his own, that’s for sure. A prostitute for a mother, unknown American father.

Yeah, the father; just another Western kosu kusu nobody’d ever see again.

He frowned. Will they always insult him in Tamil like that? Maybe she’ll remember him. She’ll realize when Maan was conceived. Women keep track of those things. But Colin, he was just one in 300 million, and Maan, one in a billion. Two bits in two oceans of codes. They will never meet. Colin shook his head. “Poor kid. He’d barely stand a chance alone like that.”

Oh? He wasn’t alone. That’s the thing. There was such a big extended family. Aunt B. Lakshmi and uncle H. Alagappan took Maan on, raised him like their own. No idea about his real mother’s profession then, or the real father from America. Real mother as Auntie. English-medium private-school. They’d keep the boy focused through strict discipline, but beating him only when they must. Always high marks. It was a solid foundation for any young gent, despite a kosu kusu father.

“Alright—for a bastard,” Colin slurred. Kosu kusu, whatever that means. Better or worse than dipshit father? From the corner of his eye, he noticed two of the stewardesses glancing curiously toward him, their silhouettes eclipsing the few lights still on in the dark cabin. Should keep his mouth shut, he thought. Why was he obsessing with this intellection? He couldn’t shake it, like it was dragging him off by the wrist, a dog of a thought.

Suddenly, he flashed on his son at home, Jacob, lost in a dirt lot without a shirt; he’s shoved into a crowded room by an angry man pushing him down to work on a loom. He thought of Maan again. “Well,” he said, squinting and nodding, “okay, okay—he’s got a tough hand. Maybe he’s not such a bastard. But why the hell do they have to call me that?”

What would people think of Maan? Because he’s mixed, Colin wondered, and all that poverty. Jesus, such an impoverished nation. He remembered laughing kids waving at him, selling cow chips on the road side in the blazing sun with their hand prints dried in the center. That was the same week he saw a boy suckling from the teat of a dog and the other boys laughing at him.

Yes, of course, Maan wondered about his origin, why he looked so different from his darker skinned Tamil kin: the round face, the high, full cheeks, perfect complexion (though wheatish) and dark eyes. But that light hair, totally unlike the other children had ever seen. Finally, he asked his parents about Daddy. He’ll ask after realizing the kids were harassing him all along, sensing Daddy was elsewhere. Lakshmi and Alagappan will feel they must tell him the truth because they love him, justifying the complications of his origin in different ways. Alagappan reminded him what the swami taught them in the temple: Lord Ganesha was cast out too, at first. His daddy Lord Shiva chopped off his head, not knowing the boy was his own son since he was away when Mommy made him, a clay figure transformed. And Lord Shiva worked to make it up to Mommy, found him his new elephant head since they’d lost the first one, like that.

Maan had his identity crisis nearing the 6^th standard in school, around his eleventh birthday. He joined the wrong friend circle with the other outcasts, maybe united by their own complicated origins. He found comfort in the mischief he created with other boys as a distraction from imagining who his real father was. His real father was just “an arse-arse of an American pig,” as he remarked to friends, smirking. He imagined his father as some superstar businessman somewhere, smug on an airplane, a tiny tiny pinhead.

Colin’s face soured. “What—” He looked down at himself, holding his hands out, sitting strapped into his deluxe reclining chair with complex entertainment system, a  set of blue slippers and jammies put aside for him. He glanced around at the others in first class. Men and women like Colin, upright, relaxing or sleeping, all carried the big wheel look—a fine shirt, an excellent haircut. They kept their teeth damn well. Colin frowned deeply with this projection of the bastard child’s image of himself. “So critical,” he muttered, and finished off the bourbon. “So critical—but not so critical of yourself.” He wiped his mouth and set the empty glass down. “What will Maan accomplish? It’s not what you envision, you know. It’s what you do.”

Well. More than an arsey American father might give him credit for.

And Colin frowned again at the thought of that. His face tightened even more. “Wait a minute,” he said, then lowered his voice to a hoarse whisper. “What the hell—telling me things I don’t know.” He jerked his head all around. “Telling me things—is this a vision? Or something whispering in my ear? Or am I—is he imagining me?”

Remember: one day, Maan and his friends wanted to try cigarettes and beer. And rather than risk their reputations for that one they sent Ravi, a seven-year-old boy they pulled from the road-side by the bridge. Told him to go to the wine shop. “You will listen now, Ravi,” Maan commanded in English, his face close, “you will tell it like this only: tell him your appa sent you, because today morning he was paining. Ceri?” And he slipped him two 100 rupee notes. Ravi returned with the full bottles of Kingfisher and cigarettes and spare change in one brown bag.

So, remember, Maan brought Arun, Harish, and Karthik beneath the bridge for the perverse experiment, all the boys nervous in their blue bellbottomed uniforms. They sat on the concrete at the riverside, some autorickshaw drivers shouting over their own drinks down the way. Arun gave a begging goat a tight slap on the face as they sat, and it ran. They passed the Kingfisher and the smoke between them, making faces as they took them, but Harish refused the smoke. “What do you know about it,” Maan said to him and laughed, “you’re still catching your appa’s hand, no? With your years now? You’d never make a get like this one.” And he and Arun laughed at him, Maan puffing the smoke in Harish’s face. They finished the bottles of Kingfisher, even though it tasted like piss. And the next time, Maan tried to mix the beer with orange soda, half a Mirinda. It tasted worse. Harish wasn’t there for that one. Maan never saw him again.

Maan was a rogue among his fellows. He realized at once, due to the amount of change Ravi returned to him, that wine shops in the gullies of town sell beer and cigarettes cheaper than shops by the college. And he realized he could move money by buying the goods for fewer rupees and selling them for a higher price in town. The college boys, of course, didn’t want to risk their reputations either. They preferred commissioning Maan—then at thirteen years old—for their vice over being seen at the wine shop themselves. As expected, Maan always commissioned or bullied a seven or eight-year-old boy from the street to retrieve the drinks and cigarettes for him, so he was not seen there either. He even realized he could earn even more rupees by expanding his services to include all kinds of goods; cell phones, cameras, auto parts, like that. By age 17, Maan already earned a few lakhs, something like 200,000 or 300,000 rupees. He bought a Hero Honda motorcycle. He bribed his way through his college classes for 3,000 rupees per paper to the registrar and bunked every class and never completed one paper, earned his B.A. anyway. Amma and Appa never knew.

Colin gasped loudly. “You lie! How the hell will he make that much money?” he exclaimed. He recalled his own entrepreneurship at the same age, making a few hundred dollars a month flipping a couple of beef patties, washing a few Mustangs. He glanced around the cabin, noticing the stewardesses had taken to murmuring into each other’s ears, watching him. Other businessmen looked away from him as their eyes met.

“This is shit,” Colin slurred, forcing his eyes straight ahead. He vowed he would forget about this Maan, this wild projecting voice in his head, throwing his hands out in front of him. “I won’t listen anymore.” But his mind continued to roar far ahead, light-years ahead of him, tearing him along on this speech of some spectral chain.

It keeps Imaging. Maan wouldn’t stop imagining Colin, either.

“He will.”

But he wouldn’t.

“But he should! Because I’m tired of this!”

But he wouldn’t. He felt Colin out there, someplace, and he felt the fire from the specter that was that sex tourist arse-arse father. Smiling somewhere out there while sipping his whiskey drink and having his penis tended to.

“Now you’ve got it wrong, all wrong,” Colin scoffed. “Not smiling. Not even a little bit.”

But every rupee the boy made, every day he woke and rode his Hero Honda too fast and without a helmet, he still remembered that dear old arse-arse. The mirage of a person that he would never meet, only imagine. That one who co-created him out of a thoughtless spite toward his people. Every move the boy made for some time was an upshot of revenge toward his astral co-creator. It rang damn true when his parents finally found out his educational and entrepreneurship by way of scandal at his college, The American College of Madurai—

“Well,” Colin said, smiling then. “It’s about time that happened!”

But, remember now what happened. The Church of South India’s Archdiocese goonda’s thrashed and chased out the honest principal of the school, filling the principals place with a friend who in turn substituted the school’s treasurer with another friend. In the wake of the school’s collapse, all the talk of bribery was reported by journalists in The Hindu newspaper, Alaggappan’s favorite. He mentioned it to Maan, asking him what had happened. But the boy, thinking Alaggappan realized the specifics of his own personal bribery, confessed to the transgression immediately, shocking Alaggappan, who prepared to beat him greatly with his belt. “Illa-la-la, no, please please Appa,” the boy said, “I will tell you kindly everything else.”

“Maan will spill his guts,” Colin whispered, gripping his leather arm rests.

Yes, the boy did indeed tell Alaggappan everything. His friends taking drinks and smokes under the bridge, the seven-year-old boy, the lakhs and lakhs he made over the years. He told him everything, even about the secret Hero Honda, he told. But to the boy’s amazement, Alaggappan gave him not any such thrashing he expected, nor the one you expected, arse-arse.

Instead, Alaggappan pulled his chair closer to the boy—he lifted the boys head from his tears on the table. Set a hand on his shoulder. “You truly are a blessed one my boy,” he told him, “the goddess Lakshmi has made you to know the ways of fortune. It is a gift.” And he held the boy’s hand, telling him he had plans. And later he told the boy to drop from class—

“What!” Colin shouted, breaking the train for a moment. He stood, thrusting his finger out. “That’s absurd! Why should this little bastard be the one to get—”

Anna and two other stewardesses trotted over to Colin, holding his shoulders, offering him cool words, bitte, Colin, Mr. Rezo, please, bitte.

“No!” He shouted. He jerked her arm away, writhing around, thrashing off the dog of a thought—his swinging arm caught someone’s face. “No! It’s not okay! It’s not okay! He’s a, he’s—he’s a goddamn—!”

Finally, Anna signaled others with a jerk of her hand, and two more stewards came, all of them grabbing at Colin.

“Sir,” a male steward said firmly, grabbing both his arms. “Not so good. Maybe enough to drink tonight, do you think?”

Colin, his tiny eyes squinting even smaller, his brow compressed even tighter, began warming and he could feel the sweat beading. He squirmed, shook his head dismally while the bile rose into his throat and over his tongue. He huffed, tightening his fists.

“Mr. Rezo,” Anna began, tightening her grip on Colin’s shoulders, “will everything be okay? You’re making things very difficult for us here. You’ve hit someone on the head.”

His shoulders began to tingle with the pinching. The jet engines were so loud, he couldn’t resist anymore, and all the staring made his ears hot. The crew members were so close, he could hear them breathing, and the shadows on their faces made their features into stone.

Anna’s blue eyes were cold, her lips twisted up. She nodded to the steward beside them, and he produced a pair of plastic shackles. “You’d not want us to put this on you Colin. Yeah? You’re making things very very hard.”

“Yes,” Colin whispered, looking down at his curling toes.

“Your behavior, it’s embarrassing, yeah? Some people here want to move away from you.”

“Amerikanisches Kind,” muttered one of the women. “Sprechen Sie mit ihm wie ein Kind.”

“Quiet,” Anna said. “He’ll be good now.”

The cleft-chinned steward holding his arms smiled, and thoughtfully added, “Gib ihm Zeit. Er wird verblassen.”

Colin eased limply into his recliner, fists unclenching. “Yes. I’m fine.” He finally raised his tight smile, but his tiny eyes began to drip.

“Oh, there, there,” said the cleft-chined steward, rising and releasing Colin’s arms. Everyone rose slowly. A few others smirked, including Anna, who shook her head seeing his tears. “Simmer down, be good, okay?”

“Everything’s okay. Sorry about the outburst. I just have a lot on my mind.”

The five crew members chuckled, and Anna said, “I’m glad you’ll be good. Those restraints, they’re for the unruly children.” And they all had a laugh, returning slowly to their stations. The cleft-chined steward watched Colin, chatting with Anna as they both stared. Colin looked to his feet. He could feel the stares of his fellow passengers still all over him. He closed his eyes.

And again, the Imaging voice returned to what will be, pulling him along on the light-years long chain. Colin resigned himself to being Imaged. There wasn’t much he could do with the staring and then the evaporating effect of the humiliation. He had to listen now to what this Maan imagined. He placed his hands squarely on the arm rests; the boy wanted Colin to see him grow.

By the time the future came about, Maan was one in eight billion. He had grown into a man, and he was quite a successful man after some years working with Alaggappan and his brother, Sanjeev. What began as one single purchase—a lopsided passenger bus retired from service in Chennai—resulted in one of the fastest growing tour companies in the entire state of Tamil Nadu.

“The arse-arse surely wouldn’t die in such a bus,” Maan sneered, and they all laughed about it. Over the passing months, through the man’s entrepreneurial ingenuity, Alaggappan’s experience, Sanjeev’s connections, and the energy of trust and family between them, the tour company was fueled by an ample flow of Euros and dollars from tourists who had no idea about how much anything was worth in India but were fascinated enough with exoticism to pay anything. Especially when their tour guides loosened them with drinks at such an apparently cheap cost. And Mann always laughed with the sight of that.

Alaggappan and Lakshmi took Maan to New York to celebrate their fifth profiting year of business: April, 2029. They visited cousins and an uncle in Uniondale, lounging on the patio and hoping to glimpse the asteroid Apophis as it passed Earth through their telemetry-guided telescope. Alaggappan read briefly about the delay of the “technological singularity” on his wrinkled e-paper while the family chatted and waited for the others. They argued about whether or not man and machine intelligence have any business becoming as one.

Later, at the party, Maan convinced Lakshmi to have her first alcoholic beverage; a glass of Champagne.

He told her, “Amma, don’t be afraid to take Champagne—you’re in America now!” And everyone laughed.

She started to look closely at it, holding it up to her face. Her curious eyes were illuminated through the golden bubbles. Then she took it. She made a sour face. They laughed again.

Then Alaggappan grabbed the whole bottle and filled his thin glass to the top. He stood and held his glass up like he was an American. He recited the Tamil proverb about persistence: “Erumbu ora kallum theiyum.” Then looked to Maan and continued slowly in smiling, deliberate English, “to you, our community, our business, our family, our duty and home. To you, my son, Maan.” And Alaggappan sipped his drink, and hugged Maan and kissed him, and they all started shouting, and they all started cheering, and then—

“Maan,” Anju calls after me. And I jump as I hear it.

“Sorry to scare you!” She puts her drink down on the banister and brings her arm around me, resting a hand against my chest. “What were you thinking, Maan? You seemed so lost.”

My chest is still pumping hard after she came up on me like that. Always scaring me. “I suppose I was lost in my head.” I think back on it, and finally start to laughing. “You’ve given me such high blood pressure with that scare, I can’t remember now for anything!” But she’s waiting. I spit something out anyway: “thinking about the contract for the new taxi purchases in Pondicherry. For next week when we return duty.”

But she just raises her eyebrows.

“Ceri ceri ceri, I will tell.” I don’t want to tell it really for the torture of it. And for the length. But also I want so to be honest. “Well. While I was on the balcony, sipping my drink,” and I gestured to the moon, “admiring the sky,” I laugh, “and, so, my mind started wandering to the past and life as a lad—and I started wondering about past things from growing up.”

“Something difficult?”

“Well maybe not so much difficult, no.”

“Mmm.” She runs circles on my chest with her finger. I laugh, and she laughs too. It’s a feeling of electricity, her fingertips, and it spreads well. I look back to her face, and she’s looking me in the eyes, a big smile. It’s like she’s keeping a secret for later—so nice.

But I try to answer her. “Just something with so much depth. I think it was about…” But then thinking about it more, I really can’t recall the thought anymore. It was something quite specific, maybe some specific person. I remember—it was, perhaps, something of travel. Something about a small town? Germany? Thinking about it—well, I recall one picture from Germany, a photo I snapped of a German girl, the stewardess on a plane, sitting and smiling with the shutter open beside her to the night. But I can’t recall everything else, so I only laugh again. “Truly, I can’t remember it now for anything. Perhaps I’ve taken too much Champagne!”

“No worries, nii,” Anju says. “Let’s retire soon. I’m tired of the party.” She squeezes my side, and returns inside with a wink and too good a look, again that secret smile.

Of course I smile at the sight of that—do the gods not have some humor?

I know everyone inside will wonder why I have been outside so long. I am trying to remember the thought once more, but it is truly gone, save for that photo of one stewardess.

I take a last look at the sky and the waning moon, then take up our glasses and return inside to say goodnight to my family.

July, 2004

At prime time on July 1^st, Fox Report was the first to break the greatest story of everyone’s lives—Los Angeles and the world were both more than likely doomed. The story, “verified by scientists,” confirmed what everybody had suspected all along in a magnificent feat of cable news journalism; the apocalypse was not only real, it was coming immediately. The good Shepard explained in a firm, melodic voice over blurred footage of cities in flames and crisped skeletons that according to scientists, Los Angeles and the world were “more than likely doomed. They’ve suggested that 2063 Bacchus or 433 Eros or 99942 Apophis have a probable chance of crossing Earth’s orbit and striking the Earth, destroying Los Angeles and the world.” And in the ten remaining seconds following the quick cuts and footage of utter destruction with statistics, the good Shepard prompted a real scientist from Los Angeles who appeared in the left half of the screen.

“In your professional opinion,” he asked the real scientist, “is it possible that any of these three asteroids have the potential of striking the Earth in the near future and destroying Los Angeles completely?”

The scientist squinted, twisted his lips. “Well, um, I suppose the short answer is ‘yes’—”

And the good Shepard thanked him, concluding the reasonable, balanced and unafraid report on the utter destruction of the world as the image faded to the painfully erotic Disaronno commercial with the buxom brunette asking for “Disaronno on the rocks” and sucking off the last ice cube.

Hundreds of people contacted and turned to the internet. But is this the truth, they asked. But is this real? And the screeners resoundingly reiterated and confirmed what the real scientist had said: “‘yes.’”

The internet exploded with blog posts and forum debates on the startling “yes” from the real scientist, confirming that it was true. If more than one written source confirmed the same information, how could it be wrong?

Some, like Allycat_88, argued that it served us right for our complacency. xxStensonitexx retorted that plans were impossible anyway because any certainty was impossibility.

Sil3ncingM4chine trumped them all with diagrams and illustrations from NASA’s website, ones which clearly pictured the Earth and the orbits of thousands of asteroids in neon colors, the wildly elliptical lines tangling together around the tiny planet, each one with a name, and all he wrote in accompaniment was “pwned.”

But John316000 shouted them down in all caps. He reminded them that all contradictory scientific mumbo jumbo in the internets was only just now trying to describe something the theologians and believers had known for centuries—“CHRIST WILL RETURN TO THE WORLD AND REND THE FLESH OF ALL YOU HEATHENS AND DOUBTERS AND MILLIONAIRES AND YOUR SPINELESS COHORTS AND TURN OTHERS INTO PILLARS OF SALT AS THEY GAZE BACK AT THEIR PITIFUL CITIES OF PORNOGRAPHY AND BELLIGERENT SODOMY VAPORIZING IN THE MILLION DEGREE BLAST OF HIS RETURN!”

The alarm surrounding the report drew the attention of Fox’s competitors. MSNBC’s prime-time executive producer shouted to the conference room, “people deserve better than right-diving misrepresentation or third-rate internet journalism!” He straightened his jacket and tie.

The table full of senior producers and assistant producers and segment producers all straightened their jackets and ties. They nodded vigorously, shouting “yeah” and “no kidding” and guzzling lattes. They checked for new comments on posts they wrote with their Blackberrys beneath the table.

“The internet lets any Smith, Johnson and Williams publish any ridiculous thing that comes to their head. They can speak their opinion without checks or restrictions or any credibility at all—they’re gonna put us all out unless we get it together and make this the best damned story we ever told!” And there was a resounding “yeah!” throughout the conference room as they stood and pumped fists with certainty.

The story then ran on MSNBC primetime; it was the number one story on Countdown. The story on NEOs and confirmed NEAs also ran on CNN, CNBC, and much later on CBS, ABC, and NBC. LA, without a doubt, was doomed according to the confirmation by a real scientist. And they all played the short clip of his resounding “yes.” No doubt, the news would alter the course of civilization. The reports supplied ample graphs and statistics and illustrations from NASA’s website, ones which clearly pictured the Earth and the orbits of thousands of asteroids in neon colors, the wildly elliptical lines tangling together around the tiny planet, each one with a name.

And a young man, taking a break from his feverish online communication for a vegetarian corndog, recognized the collection and order of illustrations immediately. “They stole my post!” He shouted at the television. He dropped the corndog.

The hearts of millions skipped millions of beats as each of them came across the story of the end. The news men cried so much their faces were wet. Resolutions were made and shattered, wagons were jumped from and jumped on, secret desires revealed, not-so-secret desires enacted. Rampant indulgences begun and ended, favorite vices were reemployed and discovered from sudden trials. Discounts were flaunted, honored, surrendered, stolen, wrenched from the cold, stiff fingers of the hardworking people. Love was given up on and realized and reunited, and it was too late and never too late for all of them.

Jacob had never been in love—that is, he’d never shared it with somebody. He always hid it away fearfully in his bedroom beneath his pillow, scrawled in the dark in a shaky, stubby hand he believed to be disgusting. But as he listened to the TV, he shot up from bed, the sheets falling from his baby soft skin, sticky and naked in the heat. He threw the pillow from his bed and threw his journal and his sheets and jumped up hollering and hurled the mattress away from the frame.  He tore from his room through the hallway without his pants or shirt, past his gasping mother sitting beside the TV, past his father in the living room. He wrenched the front door open, hurtling out and up the street in his white briefs toward Emily’s house, the patio where he imagined her every day of his life for the past five years, in her blue dress, pony tail and soft lips.

Isabella pulled her car in the driveway and shut it off, the stuttering media man’s voice fading with the shutter of the engine. She loosened her tie, unbuttoning the tight buttons of her blouse, and she sighed, surmising of the end. A fiery eruption? Screaming riots, maddening orgies? What would they do? What would she do? She bellowed ironically in the isolation of the darkened driveway. She was rich. She was an anchor! She was a talking head and shoulders everybody knew! “But all I did was read,” she confessed to the darkness, “I read invisible men’s words and they made me rich.” Maybe she read her husband’s script, too. She’d never had an orgasm, ever, always focused hard on script reading for boogiemen. But she realized, laughing again as she caressed her chest, her shirt unbuttoned and her hair down in the dark, that she felt sexy on her own now that she needn’t try any longer.

Officer Michael Brown had always grabbed his son Tony by the collar when he found out he’d been getting high or drinking late at night with pond scum down the street like Josh Cooper or that no good swim star William Powers. He’d take the joint from his outstretched, shaking hand, slapping him across the back of his stringy head. Once it was a little baggie with white, powdered rocks inside. That was the time he broke his son’s nose and wiped the blood from his fist onto his pants. Officer Brown sat in his unbuttoned uniform at the edge of his bed, the televisionman rambling hysterically. He was a lawman. He’d avoided all the things he punished people so relentlessly for. Slowly, he reached for the box beneath his bed. He’d never turned the marijuana or cocaine into the station. He smelt the joint cautiously; the scent was deep and sweet. He hung it in his mouth, curious.

Josh loved speed. He loved the challenge of searching, calling endless phone numbers to find it, loving a thousand “best friends” with their fading faces. He loved blowing glass in tin-foiled rooms, the little crystals cast in rainbow and dragon white smoke pouring from their long whispered exhales. He loved that sudden orgasm of static electric in his skin and mind and the end of time. He loved suffering; it meant time for more. But the news—he dreaded this news of the end really. Was it really? What was “really,” really, he asked everyone in the thin, pallid sweat of his 140th hour and the world’s 11th. Then he told them it was a dream he’d had six months prior and it was finally coming true. Chris Kandmin knowingly advised him to sleep on it. Josh murmured deliriously he didn’t need sleep, that he’d never tweak again,  and crashed into a black slumber.

Ethan always wanted to sleep with someone. And he didn’t even care if it was a boy. He just wanted to know somebody, to feel their heat and their heart and to come with them. Nobody from his high school wanted to be with him—he wasn’t unattractive. But nobody wanted him. He stepped out of his car and left it running in the intersection. As he walked, people of all ages fled through the dark street around him, some of them squealing with delight, others with agony. Two topless girls in schoolgirl skirts skipped toward him, their breasts bouncing in time. They hollered at him and picked at his shirt buttons, laughing. He could smell the rum and chocolate. But now in the street, with everybody cheap and afraid, it meant nothing and he no longer cared.

Olivia always respected those who killed mercilessly. She silenced the rambling radioman, shoving the XtoЯt album into the player and skipping ahead to Son of a Gun for a proper soundtrack. She spit out the window and ripped her shirt open, throwing her bleached hair back and stepping on the gas and not letting up. Her monstrous Ram surged forward, barreling down the dark street through a red light and another—she missed a passing motorcyclist by inches, the suction and the wind throwing the bike out of control. She laughed hysterically and eyed the tubby boy running through the street in his briefs, jerking the wheel to run him down. But the tires screeched on the pavement—she slid past him, careening into the patio of the house on the end of the street, a girl in a blue dress shattering across the windshield.

Emma was sobbing in her room, the blazing televisionman blaring and running on with his media circus sermon, anarchy and fucking in the streets. He told them to pray, but Emma was tired of canon. She was tired of hymns, creeds and first councils. She was tired of bodies and blood. She was tired of hearing incessantly about belligerent sodomy. Emma was sick to her stomach from all the adherents and the adherence in her life. But suddenly Ava burst through the door and tugged violently at her Sunday school skirt and shirt, ripping the shirt open, screaming to Emma, “You’re free! You’re free!” And Emma jumped up, following Ava’s lead.

Danny always worked hard at remaining a conscientious biker. Though he often rode his bike fast, he didn’t cut or split lanes obnoxiously. But nobody was conscientious during his return from Crescent City that day. Leaving the redwood highways, the road became progressively hurried, frenzied, and finally anarchic, with topless daughters and bellowing fathers hurling beer bottles at him in Whittier. So he cut everyone off, splitting the lanes and weaving at will. What was happening? As he rushed toward the intersection near home, he saw a boy, fat and glistening, jogging through the street in his briefs, gazing ahead with a glint in his eye.

Tony had been intoxicated daily since his freshman year. But now, knowing he could never take back the time lost to indulgence, he vowed to end it and tell them everything. He left the party, never to speak with Chris or Rob or Josh again. Tony pushed his stringy blond hair and tears from his face and headed to his father’s door, crying “dad”—his father sat at the edge of his bed in his uniform, a joint hanging and smoking from his lips.

Chris struggled to take his gaze from the rising sun while Rob and Josh “slept on it.” He heard screams and gun shots in the distance. The sky echoed. But was it real? Or was it just the accumulated days of meth and waking dreams? He imagined seeing two sobbing, topless Catholic girls with that kid Ethan Stine walking down the sidewalk. They stopped before a BMW, where he heard a woman orgasm.

In her short years, Emily always felt she was an object. Now she was sprawled and shattered on the sidewalk, her howling parents pinned beneath the battered Ram in their smoldering house, its dying driver laughing, a familiar chubby face confessing to her again and again and again, her life pulsing and fading and fading and fading. She felt no different.

“Get out here, Tony! Don’t you dare hide from me!” Officer Brown shouted, pounding on Tony’s door, emotional from the joint, relentless from the lines, and frenzied from the loneliness and acute knowledge of looming death. And Tony screamed as the day broke through his window and the door crashed.

William Powers, exhausted from so much effort the days prior at swim practice, shifted beneath his sheets upon hearing some commotion, his heavy eyes scarcely lifting. He couldn’t understand it, so he did nothing, returning to Thursday’s summer slumber.

Isabella let the three teens into her car, the girls topless and cold, the boy weeping and afraid, nestling them close to her warm, bare skin and flowing hair.

The real scientist panicked, boarding his powerboat for Chiapa de Corzo and subsequent escape to Pitcairn.

Emily passed away alone, Jacob thinking she’d already died.

The four of them slept.

The sun rose.

Nobody who’d heard the story expected it when the world didn’t end the following morning. There wasn’t a million degree blast or a terrific flood. No crazy flaming hail—not even typical hail, for that matter. Live footage from a local Los Angeles metro news station did show a meteor falling to Earth in a fireball over the Hollywood hills. The footage was summarily ignored by the public—though it was flaming and heading to Earth from space, it was far too small to destroy Los Angeles, let alone the world. It landed harmlessly in somebody’s Yukon XL, destroying the truck completely.

The parts of the Los Angeles news team assembled, sipped, wheezed and debated at their headquarters in Universal City. They watched the flaming Yukon XL on one of the plasma screen televisions in the studio.

“But that definitely is not news, people,” the morning executive segment producer shouted at his regular morning segment producers and the morning assistant segment producers and the other regular producers. “There are flaming, completely destroyed vehicles everywhere right now. How is that anything any Jake, Josh or Jennifer doesn’t know already?”

“Well, I didn’t know that!” shouted Jennifer Brown, the morning segment senior producer, as the phone began to ring at her adjacent desk. She picked up the receiver, but did not address the caller before adding, “We’ve been in here for twenty-four fucking hours, Andrew. I have no idea what the hell’s going on out there!”

Though they’d broken the greatest story of all our lives, they’d stopped reporting it after midnight: the red eye show aired follow-ups on the gay bishop story and the story that Michael Jackson’s nanny can’t merry him because she’s already married. Hannity & Colmes and Geraldo were reruns, and the editorial report was focused on Dan Rather.

“We’ve had some call-ins about reckless driving, a few hit and runs, lewd conduct and sexual assaults,” an assistant’s voice came in flatly from her cubical across the floor. “Some gun violence. You know.”

Andrew shook his head, placing his hands firmly on his hips. He shouted around the room. “You’re not giving me anything, people! That’s everyday stuff. That’s  happening everywhere. That isn’t news.”

“We’ve got a report,” the voice continued, “about a truck that plowed through a house and killed a preteen and her parents.”

Andrew wagged a finger toward the assistant’s disembodied voice—he could not see her in her cubical across the news room. “Now we’re on to something. Alright, I want details.”

The voice rose as it summarized the police report. “This driver, apparently, was a crazed woman named Olivia Miller. She plowed into the first story of a house on Bushnell Avenue in Pasadena where a teenage girl was sitting on the stairs, and the truck—”

“What was she driving?” Andrew interrupted.

Some papers shuffled in the background. “It was… right, a ‘97 Dodge Ram 3500. And as far as we know, this was completely unprovoked.”

“So she just felt like it?”

“She just felt like it.” The voice concluded. “Although,” he added a moment later, “the report says something about some music blaring from inside the vehicle. The disc was from an electronic metal rock group called KMFDM. I did some research and apparently some of the members are Germans. And, coincidently, the band was a favorite of those Columbine kids—”

Andrew shot up. “Columbine! You mean that Marilyn Manson shit!”

The voice shuffled his papers, but confessed, “well, I’ve never listened to either group, frankly.”

The wheels in Andrew’s head were turning loud and fast enough to tune out the disembodied assistant and Jennifer Brown, who was trying to get his attention having finished her phone call. “It’s coming together for me, people. This… this, crazed maniac woman—”

“She was found topless,” the voice cut in quickly.

“Andrew,” Jennifer said quietly.

Andrew resumed his train of thought, “Yeah—this topless—this naked, deranged woman blaring and—”

“Inspired by,” added another assistant beside Jennifer’s desk.

“Yes, blaring Marilyn Manson whom she was strongly—who inspired her, through her devotion to him, to kill—”

“She slaughtered her!” somebody shouted.

“Andrew!” Yelled Jennifer.

“To summarily eviscerate an innocent little girl with the king-sized wheels of her Dodge Ram!” Andrew bellowed with finality, thrusting his finger triumphantly.

All the various morning producers and their assistants fell into amused ooohs and ahhhs and uuugs and other smiling unpleasantries.

“Andrew!” Jennifer shouted, enunciating over the group, “one of Bob Wright’s guys is demanding an explanation. Accuracy in Media is reporting that we’ve sensationalized the asteroid story.”

A chilling silence slapped them all. A few of the assistants and producers shied away from the open space, taking their lattes back to their desks. Others were too uncomfortable to leave the circle, instead shaking their heads or looking down at awkward feet.

Andrew’s eyes and brow narrowed. He preferred a cigarette in that moment, something strong, a Camel Turkish Gold. Instead, he relegated himself to a stick of cinnamon chewing gum. “Jennifer,” he began, crossing his arms and staring at her down his nose, “we haven’t sensationalized the asteroid story.”

“That’s what they’re saying, Andrew. And we—”

“And we,” he interrupted, “are not obligated to address something that isn’t our doing or our problem. Are we?”

Jennifer stared at him, the rhythmic contractions of his jaw, his eyes flat.

He stood, throwing his arms out. “They broke the story in New York. New York!” And he gestured wildly to New York, out there, away from their morning assistant segment producers and the regular morning segment producers and all of them. “How are we liable for what New York broke way out here in Los Angeles? We had no part in that segment whatsoever. We did no journalistic or critical research or put anything into that story whatsoever.”

“But Andrew,” Jennifer reasoned, her palms opening as she stood, “are we not a part of this company? And beside the company, don’t we have an ethical responsibility to the public as the news media and journalists in the big picture?” She looked about the group of producers. “Even if we didn’t break the story, you and me and all of us on the West Coast, if it’s true that this chaos stemmed from sensationalizing the asteroid story, don’t we have a responsibility to correct, or at least to inform the public, about… just to tell them…” The eyes of the others were turned coolly away from her.

“Junk science.” Andrew shook his head, also looking away from her. “Some junk science story doesn’t make people crash cars and rape and pillage. You say we should be responsible for some bullshit that everybody ran? Everybody ran the story! Who’s responsible then, huh Jennifer? Is it you? Are you the media’s caretaker and everybody else’s?”

Jennifer thought carefully about how to respond, but the telephone rang once again. It was her cell phone this time, and though she hung on to the thought as tightly as she could, the flurry of electric information from the personal call stole her away.

The room reverberated her exiting footsteps around its icy silence until slowly, one by one, the morning producers began trudging back to life. The trappings of the morning media machine warmed, milled, and finally ran with direction and in it’s typical, expected whir, each piece moving where it should, when it should, following the restraints of its casting.

Andrew and his team were left to provide stories to explain the chaos and destruction which took place everywhere outside the studio the previous evening. The disembodied voice from across the studio suggested a sports riot; Beckham retired as captain of England’s football team and plus, Brazil had failed out of the World Cup. But Andrew reminded the voice that no American cared a rat’s ass about “futball,” and real football was a season away.

Nevertheless, the stories on Beckham, for what they were worth, ran anyway, images of the angry English footballers drunk and hollering in the streets and pubs. And the Brazilians, too, with their long, slurred names and Portuguese curses. They grumbled through Rio, everyone smashing car windows and ripping down their flags and colored ribbons until the cities were dim and sober again.

No doubt there were riots in American cities, too. They reasoned; the world is on edge, frustrated and angry and bickering with itself like some hundred-and-ninety-three headed demon slapping and scratching at every inch of its body. Crazed drivers were inspired by the likes of Marilyn Manson to commit murder on the innocent. Grown women molesting groups of teenagers. Police officers turning on their sons. It was a full moon, they joked, the public agreeing and guessing that yeah, it was probably the tides. Global warming! Gore’s certainly got everybody dancing and antsy on that one. And that John Kerry fellow and George, all their bickering—maybe that and the football and the full moon too. At any rate, there were other things to report: the Mexican government had outlawed unseemly baby names, like “Lluvia,” “Azul,” and “Kevin.”

An evening two months later around 9:25, 4179 Toutatis began a slow tumble past the Earth within four lunar distances. Silent, inert and unknowing, without fanfare, it was observed only to those who’d awaited and expected its passage.

The xenophobia was biting, but Patna was only a brief two night stop, a chance to catch our breaths and where we needed to be to catch our seats on a plane to Chennai. We expected merely to remain bolted in our rooms, the mouth breathing, mendacious hotel attendants attending too often. Instead, we ended up rolling around the streets of Patna in a tiny but efficient Hyundai with two young and stoned Indian men alternating their playlist with ours, blaring Celine Dion, Elton John, Dido, and Michael Jackson through highways and alleyways alike. How is this possible?

Communication. We wandered down past car dealerships and industrial non-descripts of Fraser road searching for an ISD, an STD; exorbitantly priced Indian payphones. We finally asked two young gents smoking cigarettes outside a strip mall if they knew a place. The wild-eyed one simply handed us his cell phone.

We came to know that Aalok and his compatriot, Joyesh, both worked for a telecommunications developer. Joyesh returned to the office after their smoke break. But Aalok, smitten by Dorothy’s beauty—which was, naturalich for me, equal parts flattering and obnoxious in a totally benign way—decided it was best if he blow work off altogether and instead take us on a tour of Patna with his friend, Himanshu.

Aside from these gents, Patna seemed drab in terms of offerings for travelers. An industrial city where we could provide no industry. As we were walking through the ruins of ancient Patna—now nothing more but a lone toppled pillar and a room’s worth of foundation walls—Joyesh called Aalok, joyously conferring that they’d closed a deal with Hyatt-Regency that they were certain they’d botched.

“You people,” Aalok said, taking me aside, “are good luck. I knew we found you for a reason.”

After a stop in to the pharmacy for a celebratory bottle of Robitussin, Aalok brought us to a safe place to down the bottle; a gents hang out near a tea and smoke shop. There he introduced us to all his friends, including a very inebriated old man he called The Encyclopedia.

“As a follower and lover of music, I admire this man. He is knowing every music.”

“From the 70s and 80s,” The Encyclopedia clarified, “after that I stopped listening.”

I quickly revealed my MP3 player, and we explored it together. He knew all the greats—The Beatles and their solo outings, Hendrix, the Stones, Dylan, Bowie, Floyd, The Police, naming his favorite album from each, then demanding to specifically hear Roger Daltry, crying “The Who! ‘Who the fuck are you!’”—and he even knew some from the path less trod—Patti Smith, Lou Reed, Roxy Music, even Brian Eno solo. He requested I play Zappa albums which I didn’t own. There seemed nothing I could offer him he didn’t already know.

There was only one artist I knew that he didn’t; T.Rex. I thought it could be too easy, but somehow he’d missed it. I told him the story of Marc Bolan, his life and pre-mature, ironic departure from this world. Then I played “Girl” from Electric Warrior for him.

Upon the start of the song, The Encyclopedia closed his eyes. He pressed the earbuds into his ears—raised his voice for a moment, silenced the younger men so he could focus—and his face had a look of pained sadness and wonder. He sat in silence for the length of the song. Afterwards, he removed the earpieces. “That man needed no instrument” was all he could say.

Once Aalok’s Robitussin settled, we departed. We drove aimlessly, the windows down and the music loud and reverberating through the streets.

And then, the defining moment of this tryst through Northern India, and maybe of all my journeys abroad, and even maybe of my entire life: the Hyundai slowed as it rounded the corner, and a young boy caught the blaring audio of Michael singing Don’t Stop Till You Get Enough, and he took to the groove, then broke into dance as I pointed at him and we pulled on down the street, still dancing in the rearview mirror. In that moment, I knew peace may exist.

We know food didn’t do us in; our stomachs are invincible to spices or weirdness of any kind regarding food. It was some sort of virus. I know the Italians and Lithuanian we shared liquor with in Varanasi were sick at some point, so maybe we picked it up there. Regardless, there wasn’t much we could do for the week except languish and watch Wipeout (both the American and Indian versions, the later substantially budgeted and somehow hosted by Shahrukh Khan).

Socially, Kathmandu felt very similar to our other experiences around South Asia with exceptions rooted in one notable difference; women seem more outspoken here. More than once, I noticed women barking an order to a gent who would obey without hesitation, on busses most of all. A woman wanted a seat, so she needed only to snap her finger at some gent, tilt her head aside, and he moved instantly for her. This would never happen in India; the lungi wearing gent, or even one in trousers, would only stare back at her and move on to his mobile, or whatever. Subsequently, I noticed the high fashion sense of women around Kathmandu, many opting to mix native and global fashions for fantastic results.

Kathmandu has incredible sites in terms of architecture and the like. The durbar squares host well preserved 16^th and 17^th century buildings from Nepal’s feudal past, including amazing woodworked pillars and buttresses. The true wonders though, in my opinion, were in the two major Buddhist stupas, Swayambhunath and Boudhanath.

Boudhanath was the most sublime of these stupas. A circular village of shops, monasteries and eateries had risen around the stupa, which itself possessed something uncanny; it was a massive, monolithic sphere, topped by a crown painted with the iconic Nepalese Buddha eyes and a gold spire, rising from a white wall encircling it and it’s square base, prayer wheels in the wall spinning all the while. The sky was overcast and emanating a faint, blue glow, perhaps from the white light illuminating the entire site.

Hundreds of people were there. Single people, couples, families, children, monks, workers, all of them experiencing the place both alone and communally. Some people walked quietly, while others laughed and chatted with friends. Regardless of how, everyone walked around the stupa clockwise, a great circle, the same beginning and ending in the same place for everyone.

The true draw of the site is the ancient monastery and pillar erected by Asoka the Great, now protected from the elements by a steel hangar. Within the crumbling monastery remains therein lies a nondescript stone. It was placed there by Asoka to mark the exact spot where Buddha was born.

Outside, we watched the sun falling through the bodhi trees, all the trees linked by webs of prayer flags. One could not count the number of flags, nor the number of voices chanting.

Until the holy men were actually upon us—I’d assumed they were holy men from a distance, seeing their worn silhouettes against the ghats at night, the pyres in the distance and the sea of insects swarming the sporadic flood lights. Dorothy and I were alone, and the men approached us directly.

The first man seemed quite an average Indian-man-wandering-at-night; five-o-clock shadow, glazed smiling eyes, unkempt plaid shirt, stained white trousers all wrapped in a worn blanket. Most Indian men wandering in the dark at 11:45 resemble this man.

But the second man, he was something different all together. He held a wooden stick and a brass bowl. He wore thick, oily specs and a tangled beard, white tunic and trousers. But all his garments were overwrought with possibly ten or fifteen heavy flower lays, the ones that people hung on huge puja deities and statues. I took a step back; this man, grinning at me with greasy eyes, was actually hung fully with these lays, his head and neck and fat stomach all wrapped. I’d never seen anybody wearing so many flowers at the same time.

“Namaste, Namaste,” he greeted us, pulling the cigarette from his lips “you’re having a nice evening, no?”

Dorothy rolled her eyes, and I read her mind; why were we talking to this fraudulent asshat? He was going to swindle us. His friend was there for the peer pressure once we said no. We’d seen true monks who’d watched bodies bubble while they burned for their entire adult life, and this guy was not one such monk. Honestly, though, I was too drunk to care much.

“You know what?” I answered, and laughed, “I’m fantastic! Never been better, ever.”

He began. He asked us where we were from, about our stay in Varanasi, complemented my fine wife. “Your Indian dress,” he told her, “looking very good, very good scarf selection.”

“It’s a salwar set; it’s a dupede.” She corrected him flatly.

He turned back to me, his eyes bugging. “Listen: I am The Holy Baba,” he urgently told me. “I have come to give you a, sacred blessing. With this one, we will make a blessing to the holy goddess, and the holy goddess will bring you good luck and forever make you the, good fortune.”

I noticed his double use of the Indian linguistic oddity played by certain groups; before the definitive article, there’s a rising inflection as in a question, then the delivery of the stupendous noun phrase in a slow, low voice after a tiny moment of dramatic silence. This one is the, sports car. Here I will show you the, finest sari.

“Very interesting!” I told him, and I closed my eyes and held open my arms and palms like a free eagle.

“Jesus Christ,” Dorothy said.

The Holy Baba began this sacred blessing to this unnamed holy goddess; it was mumbling. It wasn’t slurry Hindi or slurry Punjabi or Urdu or Tamil or English or Dutch or anything. Just mumbling. Mumbling like mum mum mummy bum mum mum while he smeared ash on my face, and I slipped my hand into my pocket and felt for my change. There were five coins. Indian coins are unintelligible from one another except for the pisae, which are tiny, and fives, which are ridged. Ones and twos are identical in the grubby warmth of a pants pocket. The more mum mum bum mummy mum bum I heard, I fingered fewer coins. I knew there was a fiver in there, but the rest were unknown.

“Tiik he, okay,” he concluded. He slipped something soft into my free hand.

I opened my eyes; they were flower pedals. “Fantastic.”

“Okay,” The Holy Baba began again, bringing up his posture through his shoulders. He held up the brass pot full of ash. “And now, for the continued good luck and good fortune, you will, put something.” He repeated it: “for the continued fortune, you will, put something.”

Even though I only had two coins in my fingers then, I took two others and the fiver and placed them into the pot, and I grinned with completion.

Without looking down, The Holy Baba shook his head. “Now; The Holy Baba is not a beggar.”

Dorothy bellowed. She even nearly turned in a circle. “Well, you’re a beggar now.”

“You will put some more,” he commanded me.

Just then, my eyes snapped down to his cigarette. The ash had overtaken the thing, his mumbling having gone on for so long.

“Enjoy your cigarette,” I told him, and I smiled.

With that, The Holy Baba turned without reaction, his friend as well, and the continued south toward Assi Ghat into the blackness and haze.

I took hold of Dorothy’s hand. “Let’s skip!” I shouted. And we skipped, and I tossed the flowers into the night, just dry enough to flutter.

On one hand, this is a culturally amazing place. It’s among of humanity’s most ancient cities, and it shows; layers of alleyways and buildings in degrees of decay bunch up along the ghats. Some of the ghats are partially silted by the Ganga. Twenty-four hours a day, the dead are burned on either end of the concrete ghats.

On the other hand, this is the most invasive tourist trap I’ve ever been ensnared in. You can’t trust anybody; almost every person we’ve ended up talking with this week winds up trying to sell us something or sell us generally. People see us and see wallets and dollars. They forget that I came here because I appreciate and enjoy the beauty in their culture. Sometimes, it seems like the Varanasi folk, themselves, have forgotten to enjoy the beauty in their own culture.

It’s easy to forget, though, that this is a place where corpses go to be released. So many Indians are there as part of a pilgrimage to take someone dear to them to burn, then go home and put it away. The poorest leave the bodies in the river according to Lonely Planet. And that means it’s only barely true. But maybe the fact of the function of Varanasi has something to do with the ruthlessness and sometimes outright resentment of us, the looks that mention, ‘yes, we would like you to cease existing on this planet but leave your resources behind’—that’s not something we get from those said pilgrims, but more so from residents. Think about it, knowing that your home is the crematorium of an entire region and faith. Maybe we shouldn’t be there. Maybe we shouldn’t know or see something so sacred to a Hindu as the place where the dead cross over. Especially should we not consider it a cultural curiosity so compartmentalized that it may well be caged and put on a postcard as a marketing homework assignment. It was embodied in a look I received from a Hindu monk; I’d seen him earlier tending to a body on a burning pyre. He was tanned dark and deep red, his beard, turban, minimal tunic, baggy pants all black but grayed with cremation ash. His look was the deepest, blackest, most obsidian stare. He had touched death—he touched death every day. We should not be here. Spending the past week here was borderline misery.

Until the very last day. And again, like in Khajaraho, my initial feelings about this place were shattered by kind people. And in this case, they were well informed of how their co-residents treated outsiders, and they seemed to work doubly hard to counter such curses.

We were wandering generally toward a 17^th century fort overlooking the Ganga, Ramnagar Fort, when we ducked into a residential street, lured by a sign promising a café. The café turned out to be the carport of someone’s residence which was converted into the small restaurant we attended. A young, voluptuous woman served us; she carried herself with seemingly permanent joviality, her face and all. After her special tea masala, we asked for directions to the fort, which she and her husband tried their best to clarify on our map. But she was still concerned we might get lost despite our insistence we understood. We went on our way.

In less than ten minutes, her husband had caught up with us on his motorcycle—he gestured us to join him so he could give us a ride to the auto rickshaw stand, and there, he haggled the price with the driver and sent us on. I promised we’d return to their café before we left Varanasi.

We did the following afternoon, ultimately spending the entire day with them. They introduced themselves; Sujata and her husband, Sunil, a striking man of perhaps 30. They happily invited us into their home, shared their lives and work with us, had us meet their family. Sunil took us on a bike ride around the city, showing us a local temple, the university where they met—it resulted in their love marriage—and he brought us to a local department store, where I bought clothes at the standard price. They wouldn’t let us leave before they served us dinner, and Sujata even sent Dorothy away with her shawl as a parting gift.

The two extremes are bold. In Varanasi, we’ve met the swindling, unrelenting disrespect of some people, and the total selflessness of others. And the two extremes are certainly at odds. Consider this; Sunil took us to his local temple to experience something of the neighborhoods culture. We needed to check our handbags at the front, the security being tighter there due to a bombing some years prior by Lakshar-e-Taiba. It’s a free service, but on the way out, the attendant tried to charge Sunil 1000 rupees. They argued vigorously before we left. While we were on the bike ride back, I asked Sunil what they’d argued about. The man insisted Sunil was our tour guide.

We returned the next morning where the woman, named Sayra, her eldest daughter Anjum, and youngest Zeba were all working on breakfast. The two girls worked in the kitchen, while Sayra sat on the floor in their home’s open air courtyard, rolling and baking chapattis in a wood-fired, clay oven. Anjum stopped cooking for a time to put more mehendi on Dorothy, her other arm this time, and afterwards, Sayra showed Dorothy how to make chapattis. They served us, and after we ate, all of us sat and talked of India, the US, and life. Sayra insisted we return for her son’s wedding next year; she’d even have us stay over in their new guest room once it was finished.

This exposes the almost schizophrenic dichotomy of this place. On one hand, the area of town with the hotels and temples beats you into pashmina shop after pashmina shop, pushing you into a “mixed cuisine AC” restaurant with the promise of serving pizza, jabbing at your wallet for inflated prices; on the other, it offers a piece of local, rural India, where random strangers strike up a conversation and invite you in for home brewed chai and a chance to meet their family—that actually happened a second time that day. It’s probably pretty easy to succumb to greed. I’ve never been given the opportunity.

We met a fellow, Dharmen, who blurred the line and substantially complicated this entire discussion. He’d succumbed to greed, but it tangled his life, and he sort of regretted it, but not utterly or anything. Complicated.

Dharmen is a young, early-twenty-something, with a thin, handsome face, pencil moustache and fine teeth, which were stained by tobacco cud—he’d since kicked the habit, only one issue among many. I’d seen (and ignored) him the first time when he tried to hustle me into a shop. The second time I saw him, I asked him if he knew some young lad I’d been chatting with in Spanish on the street corner. The third time I saw him, he told me he couldn’t find the lad, then followed us unassumingly to dinner at a rooftop café, where he began pouring forth the woe of failed romance and other exploits.

His life was mired by his relationship to an Australian woman he’d met one summer. He’d acted as her hired guide at first—many of these young Indian gents seem to become guides to solo foreign women, who always seem youthful and have wonderful racks—but they became closer after a motorcycle trip together into the mountains. Certainly, into the mountains.

She decided to stay with him, living with him and his auntie. Things became quite serious—quite serious enough that they had an Indian wedding, the whole town involved, everything. After three months, she went home to Australia to get things in order. That had been a year prior. Now, she was telling him to forget about her.

When he related the story, I could see the bitterness and resentment welling up in his eyes, his frustration. This woman, his “first love”—how could she be so callous? So fickle?

“And now,” Dharmen continued, sipping from his glass-bottled 7-UP, “I have this one Russian girl—not Russian but Ukraine, only she’s talking Russian and not Ukraine—this one Ukraine girl crying to me every day on the phone. She telling me ‘Dharmen, Dharmen, why you no come back with me, why you leave me’—and I’m having this girl’s mother to call me, saying ‘Dharmen, Dharmen, why this girl crying to me so much? Every day in her room crying, she won’t even come out to see Delhi.”

“Christ, Dharmen,” I interjected, “you brought this girl to the mountains, too, on your fucking motorcycle—you slept with this Russian girl in the mountains, didn’t you?”

He opened his mouth to defend himself, but could only smile, and laugh.

I told him he really should forget the Australian;  you can wait your entire life for something but expect only death. Then I related the ancient cliché to him: “There are other fish in the sea, Dharmen.”

He shook his head. “One fishes dirty, than that one fishes dirty all fishes. Then all fishes dirty.”

We ended up visiting both Dharmen’s aunties’ houses in Khajuraho the following day. He told me in one home that he hated India for its caste system, for having to be a Brahmin unable to eat meat or socialize with lower caste people in public. In the other home, he told me he already had a passport, that he wanted to leave forever and marry a Western girl. I told him he could, that he need only save half his spending money in the stainless steel tumbler every week to get out sooner rather than later. “Come to California,” I told him. “You can meet other Indians who don’t care about caste and marry a California girl. Come to California, I’ll show you everything.”

He rode with us to the train station, and gave Dorothy and me a hug before he left in the auto. “Come back when I’m in Khajuraho again, in May,” he told me. “You will stay at mine. I’ll show you everything.”