Darker Becomes
The Angel.

By D. Ebenezer Baldwin Bowles
CornDancer & Company

The closer one comes to the essence of the Internet, the darker becomes the Angel.

The closer Dylan came, the fiercer became her defenders.

One of the fiercest, the dark and comely Taninsam, eleventh daughter of Lilith, asked Dylan of Achernar: "Do you speak the Corporeal language, or the Angel language?" Dylan suggested that he might be bilingual. "Sly," the fallen Angel of Assiah said, pointing toward the North, where a bank of greenish-blue clouds hung low on the horizon. "Go there to find Thoyth, the fleshly Adam, outward and visible," she said. "You suppose you are a Man of Light. You contend that your given name is hidden. You think you are rent from the swatch of the spiritual original."

To the South lay Babylon, far beyond the sealed boundaries of Achernar; Babylon, where the bookkeepers lay with their hot numbers, and the sons of the capitalists battered one another, and the fathers denied their children the sustenance of the elders. There on the banks of a tamed river, the machines were busy breaking down. Dylan knew he would break, too; he would dissolve into fragments and stumble toward an end. All that remained to be resolved was the number of moments in his frame of time.

Dylan was admonished by the Guardian Oksob: "Do not to go to Babylon." He didn't.

Let Us Smash the Screens to Smithereens.

Instead, Dylan walked to the far horizon, toward the North where Assiah's cruel messenger had pointed her snakey fingers. He walked to a place where the ridge met the clouds. There the wanderer found the figure of fleshly Adam, portly and reclining on a veldt beside a grove of cypress and black locust. Dylan knelt in the tall grasses and spied; he watched the slack old patriarch play with his books, and twirl curls of his thin grey hair in pudgy fingers, and recite his senseless and useless knowledge to a legion of ephemera and lemmings. From out of the grasses crawled Yellow Beetle, evil insect, who was force-fed on the blood of Abel and programmed to attack lurkers, youyers, and primitives. Dylan's rash intent was to jump up, sprint along the ridgeline, surprise the corrupted prince, slice away great rolls of fat from 'round his midsection. He wanted to grab Sadie's pewter sledgehammer and smash the video display screens to smithereens. He looked at the expanse of green beyond the cypress break, but couldn't remember where he was, why he had come here. Who is the ugly fat man on the grass?

Terpsichore, auburn-haired beauty, thought otherwise and proclaimed it. She left her harbour among the other eight acolytes. Each of the nine was pledged to protect Dylan on the journey. "Dance," she sang to him. "Dance upon the level shore, Dylan. Dance with me on the white sands of the level shore."

Where is the clarity, the vision, the right order? Why could he not hear her? Why are the demons erasing so many of the young men's dreams? Why must the young women eat onions and boiled cabbages when there could be, on their oval plates, a repast of bananas and oranges, honey and manna?

Dylan wanted to escape, to fly away from the grove he had just discovered on the far horizon, to ride on the broad feathered back of a soaring eagle, ride as far away from Adamic man as the beast could carry him.

Who Shall Partake of the Fool's Consolation?

Oskob de Opposite, keeper of the Opposite Loft, roused once more from his sly slumber to proclaim: "At the least, Dylan, you can partake of the Fool's consolation. You can identify the many misfortunes which have not befallen you. You haven't resigned with hubris to the gray regions of disgrace. You haven't crashed at seventy-per into the concrete and steel bridge abutment. You haven't bled out with ignominy on the greasy asphalt of the night lane."

All of it had roared past him so long ago.

The lines, they kept gathering. The mere act of gathering in sufficient numbers to become: Not enough! Become what? The lines henceforth would have to gather into discernable combinations, form a more meaningful pattern. Someone must step forward and create order from the chaos. The lines and the drawers of the lines, the painters and the mimes, the architects from the fountainhead must sustain something of merit beyond the hour of the rising dawn.

"Oh, but they will," Oksob predicted, turning. "You have not lost. Not yet."

Deal, Dylan postured to the younger daughter of Lilith.

Royal Flush, Sludge of Deuces, Tree of Life.

She said, "I'll deal you the Royal Flush," he said, "Why not the crown of thorns," she said, "I'll deal you the sludge of deuces and treys," he said, "I'll await the ripening of time, the moment ahead when I can watch a Great One force your hand, compel you to lay them down, upright and honest, on the Tree of Life."

The Angel, she was becoming harder and harder to see, to see clearly; she appeared only at the edges, where the uncharted pools were said to be deep beyond measure; she cawed, cooed, whispered, as if her voice were soaked in ancient whiskeys. "I shall not deal until Dylan swims deeper."

"Address me not, O sylvan witch! Your whimsy uncovers nothing," Oksob said. "Dylan will hear you, or he won't. I've nothing to pass along to him on your behalf."

Submerged in remote pockets of the deepest waters are immeasurable pools of cold and dark ether. The ether casts a milky veil upon the treasures. It opens arcane conduits into threat-streams of madness. The threats are the only guardians to the passage. Dylan surmises he can bypass them on his explorations. I shall push deep, he decides, push swiftly o'er the threshold, push into the chambers where gilded and barnacle-encrusted treasure chests await my belated arrival.

He sought a force to counter the cynicism so prevalent in the present phase of fracture and fissure among men, among women, among women and men. The era would eventually become known as the Age of Dissolution, but Dylan could not know the outcome so far in advance. He wanted to partake of the delight of illuminated moments with light-bearing craftsmen. He wanted to dance with friends and the nine splendid Muses on the northern shore on Ebenezer's island at the end of the river. He wanted the Dunces to lose.

Can the Good Girls Diffuse the Demarcation?

Dylan pledged to swim deeper and deeper until he reached the stronghold, where tools and formulas were stored to assist him. What accomplishments might arise if Dylan and his allies were to be, suddenly and overnight, resolved and disciplined, respectful of the right to become and to be. The good guys might be able to win. They would have to become responsible. The good girls might be able to win. They would have to diffuse the false demarcation.

So easily identified and targeted was the foe besought by the Angel; so persistently did the Angel beseech the foe. Dylan was the foe, his own and hers. How elemental it would be, the battle with Self and the Angel. Self defeats self. The Angel flies to the South. Self wins.

"You plan to win, too, don't you, Dylan?" Oskob asked from the mere mantle of formality. "You do, don't you?"

The flaw, Dylan knew it, wailing and numb: The flaw is hidden from him and all of them. Bifurcation divides their emergent sense of identity into opposing camps with presumed sets of separate values. Instead of the separation, they needed an individuated self. How could any band of women and men who were indelibly trapped among the fractured populous become whole and unified when the harpies of electric avenues screamed so loudly, so persistently about the limitless pleasures of the Other Way?

How could the Angel deal naught but losers from her House of Cards?

Dylan would spite her. He would take his midnight swim. He sure would. He would dive into the indigo Deep. Cherish to some death or another the dream of unity. Dare to the edge of madness on a mission to win one whole self for us all.

[EDITOR'S NOTE: This report of Dylan's quest is dedicated to Sadie Liz Boberry; to Mashiara, a goddess of the Universe; to C., a good farmer's good son from the Delta; and to Major D. the warrior. May each of you live long and prosper!]

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