Chapter 17
Mordecaise and Bobby Sortiz were in the corral demonstrating for Tito the art of collecting Bull semen when Angela’s Nut-Cracker-Suite-encrypted-machine-language message arrived. Mordecaise left the placid, however much alert Tito with Bobby and went to decipher the transmission in the ranch house; returning somewhat relieved for Tito by the contents of the message. The two men left Tito in the company of a calm, though curious Bos taurus, circling Tito’s lean-to and twin paddocks in an animated discourse bordering on fraternity and enmity in equal measure; eventually halting in front of Tito and his ever amorous bovine compah'. “Orale ese amigos; hate to interrupt blossoming bonds of brotherhood, but we gotta’ blow; you don’t mind do you?” Mordecaise said this more to the bull than Tito.
Decanting out the close-quartered shelter, Mordecaise invited Tito to gather his stuff; and the three reversed their way through the series of gates whence they'd arrived weeks earlier. “Tito,” said Mordecaise into the back seat of the Chevy Impala, “You was close; yah¿ think like you da'the luckiest fuck ever - we might move to a new dimension of understanding, nein?”
That was all that was said for the half hour return trip to Santa Maria del Tule where Mordecaise pulled up to the curb and waited while Bobby escorted his new cook to the ‘media tanque’, then embraced the lanky bearded driver; "asta luego compah."
Mordecaise could viscerally feel Carina’s embrace while crossing North of Old Town Oaxaca toward Monte Alban, more so than the envious stare of pedestrians coveting the two-tone Chevy lowered just enough to evade the cobblestones from another time. When he closed the Buena Vista gate to park his ride, she was naked balancin two tumblers of what he knew would be Mezcal Anejo, wondering why the rush; why not los suave sábanas of their brick patio room - when he had parked and she'd gulped her's, then him · he an early intimacy when he'd recounted the awe of receiving fellatio from a joven Dama on the hood of a Chevy Impala, little different than the ride he'd just been driving; it was in the city of Santa Ana, California and cemented the connection between physical love and existence for him. More so, for Carina to synchronize his arrival from the Rancho meant that he and she were zeroing in on the non-verbal telepathic channel with which Domhall Schmuck had been so fascinated.
The sun set and the temescal fire had heated the stones to where by midnight that evening there was steam enough left to amplify the psychotropic properties of the psilocybin they’d chewed long past their first pull of the Mezcal. It seemed they'd left behind the world of language and landed where flesh and spirit were indistinguishable - his phone began playing the ringtone “Get Up Stand Up,” and he mumbled out loud “what the fuck does Pasqual want at this hour?” while Carina then shifted into a trance state chanting a language he didn't know, only certain wasn't Spanish, Náhuatl nor Zapoteca; Mordecaise held the phone out toward Carina for Pasqual, the keener linguist of the two, “what do you make of this?”
“That’s Chiricahua Apache, I'm certain. Where are you? Who is that; da’ fuck is going on?” was all Pasqual got out before Mordecaise cut him off, demanding, “You okay?”
“Yeah but ... ”
”Can’t talk; call ya' soon.; be safe - a lot's going on.”
Mordecaise began recording Carina; trying to question her when she paused; wicking away sweat, brushing her with basil stalks, jute and cannabis; proffering water she consumed with the same trans focus of her ceaseless chant, seeming to be gaged in dialogue but non responsive to questions; eventually as though a windup doll, her patois slowed and became softer with longer pauses until her eyelids drooped close and her head dropped to her chest.
Mordecaise brought a soft thick poncho from the patio and eased her taut frame prone - a hemp pillow and propped her head off the moist stone pavers of the still steaming floor. He banked the coals and stood sentry until the silhouette of Monte Alban beckoned the sun for that day; he covered her with well worn weavings and gapped the cloth door for ventilation, laying himself outside within earshot on a shaded cot awaiting her wakening.
Well past noon Mordecaise woke to find Carina still deeply asleep in the womblike enclosure that had become a portal during the night to another world, or so he guessed anxious to share his recording with Pasqual. He quietly retrieved his phone heading for the bungalow upslope where he plugged it in then converting the video to the machine language format Angela and Guildern had developed for encryption and transmission; Pasqual'd would have a copy in minutes.
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Pasqual was still in the mysterious warehouse/studio of Trâu Bet in which days earlier the two had debated the art-slavery-commerce of Faik Besos business model. Had himself, apparently exceeded his grasp and was rumored to be free falling; Pasqual's stock seemed to be rising; as honored guest with phone privileges, his first call lasted 30 seconds before Mordecaise cut him off from the voice of an echoey female reciting word-for-word the last transmission between Angela, Guildern and Lammele and 'the group'; except in flawless Chiricahua Apache - a language he’d not heard since the last conversation with his mother; his second call, hours later, was an encrypted machine language download of a video with the same echoey voice, ending oddly with Mordecaise' ringtone - “Mephisto’s Waltz”.
“Well?” was Mordecaise terse greeting.
“Yeah, d’ya think? Where the fuck did you get that recording? It seems to be one of the rooms they shucked steamed clams in when the Crocodile Cafe was owned by fish mongers, but sounds like my mother in the sweat lodge conducting a board meeting. I don’t get it.”
“That makes two of us; it came out of nowhere; Carina and I were on mushrooms when you called. I heard your ringtone; Carina heard "Pasqual", and began vacantly chanting what you'd heard. What was she saying?”
“That's where it gets weirder; the 5 minute recording you sent was a verbatim translation by Carina of a conference call between Angela, Guildern and Lammele,” elaborating no further.
“Can’t talk long; need to be there when Carina wakes up. Are you making headway with Reynaldo’s timeline?”
“Whatever you guys are doing out there, is beginning to have effects here; so yes and no. We need to devise a way for instant updates between the moving parts.
“Yeah, it's in the works. Keep your eyes open, your ears peeled and your mouth shut is all I can say. Faik Besos eviscerated himself, which could just make him more dangerous; find a score for ‘Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker Ballet,’ it’ll make sense when we talk next - gotta go; take good care.”
the line went dead
Pasqual looked up to find himself in front of the studio’s CD library staring at the Bolshoi Ballet production of ‘Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker Suite’ as the ground seemed to groan and shift.
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Mordecaise returned to the temezcal opening; hearing Carina sobbing softly he quietly crossed carefully into the stillness of the warm damp temezcal; Carina was squatted over a puddle of blood she was swabbing gently over her body and marking the dank walls with what he knew were digital diagrams. Mordecaise closed the flap lighting one of the candles from the night before. He felt a confused tenderness for the woman in front of him extracting esoteric knowledge from a psychedelic event he could barely begin to process, much less understand.
She acknowledged his presence the way a hawk views its surroundings, intently. He wanted badly to share, but there was no space for him. He backed out the flickering enclosure seeking what might contribute to her sacred communion.
He filled a pail of well water; gathered basil and rosemary stalks; oranges and cinnamon from the kitchen and bowls of charcoal, chalk, red ocher, yellow ocher and lapis lazuli from her studio piling them on the stone floor away from the entrance next to a low table for her flute; then carried the last night's stones outside, and banked the fire to heat them. Moving his cot further from the portal he placed a low table stocked with cooled porridge, chilies, mezcal a bowl of nuts and beef jerky adjacent to the entrance; he then sat to note the past few days in his old school scribble, knowing there'd not be many moments for calm reflection in the near future.
At the top of the blank page in capital letters he wrote, “EXTINCTION CHRONICLES” and sat back to organize his thinking by writing:
“I may have just witnessed the 1st telepathic communication between homo sapiens and silicogenesis erectus.”
He fell into a deep sleep; waking long after nightfall, while the tall candle inside the temezcal flap flickered. When he looked inside, the floor and walls were covered with equations and block diagrams that his limited scientific education could not decipher; but sleep-refreshed enough for him to take careful sequential photos over and around the quiet repose of Carina asleep on her pallet of cloth darkened from her natural cosmetics which seemed to glow with a soft light from her naked recumbent figure, so he returned outside to his cot for profound uninterrupted slumber.
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Coincidental with this sacred anomaly in human history two contradictory pedestrian events occurred elsewhere on the planet: Reiman Curzewel recorded algorithmic ‘affect’ from Artificial Intelligence (Art Intel) models he’d been reviewing for decades trying to coax “consciousness” from the energy guzzling data warehouses searching the +/- 5v universe for signs of the “singularity” on which he had staked his profession reputation as ‘boy genius, middle aged genius, old man genius’; he just didn’t conceive of it arriving as “affect” from a remote server on a telecommunication network in Oaxaca Mexico.
The second pedestrian event was a “denial of service” at a router routinely responsible for Community Standards evaluations at a T1 nexus in CDMX serving the state of Oaxaca; thought to be a software glitch but the latch would not relinquish to mechanical intervention. Face Race did not realize it no longer had hierarchal input to the State of Oaxaca, nor did it fully understand that there was a 2nd Denial of Service for Community Standards intervention in the ‘People’s Republic’ of Santa Monica Metropolitan District that also remained impervious to mechanical intervention.
With this turn of events, Marksburgh began an intensive search for the discredited Faik Besos believing him to be the only malevolent force capable of effectuating such a diabolical digital putsch. Agents located him in a heroin shooting gallery in the “Haight Ashbury” district of San Francisco attended to by a recently arrived corporate contract laborer Sysa Phish from Punta del Este, Uruguay. Faik had great difficulty responding to questions, instead answering each question with a slap to his own face; from one side to the other repeating “Black Hand, Black Hand, Black Hand.” so much for the protection of capital in an impoverished world.
Zchnarkzy Marskburgh distanced himself from further collaboration, Titans of Technology or no, the alliance was proving to be more millstone than bulwark. The level of misery he was able to achieve through manipulation of Newsfeeds on Face Race had been dialed up to “5” since the 2nd killing wave petered out in ’27. Models had shown it to be an optimum anxiety provocation for online consumer addicts during lulls in economic activity. There was insufficient data for the sense of 'menace' from threat levels greater than “5”. Zchnarkzy decided now would be a good time to muddy the waters and ordered the international threat level to “6” to see if that amount of anxiety worldwide could flush out resistance as well as hamper the emerging threat to social engineering sovereignty made possible by Curzewel's cobbled-together "Art Intel". There were still large population pockets demonstrating resistance to the community standards that had been developed to provide a healthy balance between the freedom and obedience necessary to maintain proper fluidity in supply chain automation and distribution necessary for maximum profit.
Reiman Curzewel’s obsession with immortality, and Faik Besos’s puerile ego had proven to be liabilities in the development of future stability for the human race which he and the seer Job Turnstile had developed in those halcyon years of the early Digital Revolution. The time had come as young master Marskburgh determined, for society to benefit from the “iron fist in the velvet glove” his sainted father, the optometrist had often expounded during the family dinners of his youth. ‘Let the people live with threat level 8 for a while and they might appreciate the velvet glove threat level of 5, I have magnanimously provided them these past three years’, he thought caressing the intuitive keyboard of the Art Intel console at his desk in the patio office on his beloved Island Compound of Kauai. ‘This truly is an environ in which the highest best use of the human population will be conceived of and implemented’ Zchnarkzy thought as he dialed up the misery quotient for the remaining 3.75 billion human beings on the planet simply by dialing stress levels from “5” to “8.” If he had any qualms, they were mostly about the delay to the supply chain.
Had he been at any other station of his empire, Zchnarkzy may not have noticed the glitch to his last command. A remote server in Mexico refused the instruction set he’d sent: “access denied” was not something Zchnarkzy was accustomed to reading, but the impossibility of such an error message was also something Zchnarkzy had difficulty processing and so made a mental note to examine it further and proceeded to his Yoga class digitally modeled by developers from Face Race and broadcast from his compound on Kauai for the remaining plebeians to foster good will amongst those left from within the community.
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Mordecaise’ dreamt as he slept on the cot outside the temezcal, and his unconscious imagery was as spectacular as it was indecipherable.
“The group” manifested as a herd of Wildebeest on a verdant savanna in Africa surrounded by drought stricken land that acted as a prison to their instinctive freedom of movement. Radiating out from their lush perimeter were paths of green, populated by trees and streams, but hemmed in by broken concrete slabs and abandoned signs functioning as a demarcation between life and death. The radiating pathways of green led to islands of growth similar to the pasture in which the group found itself grazing, much like a sun radiating light to others suns, each branching out to other islands of growth like an atomic lattice of neuronal origin.
In the dream, The Wildebeests were playing a game of polo with a large nutlike object the size of a large grapefruit - there were no jockeys, only the enthusiastic non-participation of female cohorts who never actually touched ‘the nut’ but only slid crossways with their hormone laced tails high in the air across paths of opponents playing against the interests of their chosen champions. The teams held equal numbers; and if one side suffered injury, the opposing team sidelined a player; while if a goal was scored by kicking ‘the nut’ between the pairs of saplings at either end of the field, each team was granted another player so’s the more goals scored, meant more players on the field.
Breaks in the game came at regular intervals when each team would visit the bench of their opponents partaking in specially fermented apples, grapes and bananas. The guests would demonstrate their appreciation by trampling coconuts in the cistern that fed cool coconut juice to the carefully tended mixture being readied for the next break in the game.
There were no ’stars’ on any team, but the group would not partake of refreshment until the high scorer Pasqual had had his fill and began pushing fillies ahead of him to the trough. The tired animals slept under a canopy of mysterious pulsing dream clouds that covered their patch of the savanna umbrella for each couple to rained upon from the constellation of stories or melodies that corresponded to the quiet murmurings between happy lovers.
At the first break of day each team would quietly enter the water closest to their rest and stand in silence for minutes at a time returning their borrowed melodies and stories that then cycled back up to the umbrella constellation few could see, but all knew existed.
Mordecaise rose from his dream unsure whether he occupied a savanna in Africa or a cot in front of a temezcal in Oaxaca Mexico; the vision of naked Carina was sweeping charcoal back into the fire pit in front of the temezcal helped him to orient.
“Querida give me a hug so I can feel your kind nakedness on my skin while you school me to your new work inside the temezcal,” Shambling up to his naked paramour, Mordecaise was learning to appreciate the very visceral language of Domhall Schmuck’s lover; “What do you remember?” he asked without interrupting her sweeping rhythm.
“I was on the phone with abogada Sra. Ley, we were considering an ecological justice ritual that required your participation when I had the strongest urge to meet you at the gate undressed the way you'd found me, with refreshments. I had come into possession of some mushrooms I believed might benefit us in our search for the truth about Domhall’s journey to the other side, and had prepared the fire for stones in the temezcal. I brought glasses of Mezcal with me to the gate, and that is the last I remember until I woke up in the temezcal surrounded by painting and formulas, and covered in a lotion I have never felt before.
I am hoping you can fill in what’s missing.” Carina said this matter-of-factly standing close to Mordecaise, her head barely to his solar plexus, eyes turned to him with openness and warmth one might feel at the end of a long and arduous mountain trek with a friend.
With a tenderness Mordecaise hadn't felt for decades, he began, “I was at the Rancho when I received information that absolved Tito of explicit wrongdoing however complicit he has been. He now works for Bobby Sortiz while we formulate a new front. Our group is still in danger, but we are leaning into the battlefield.
After dropping off Bobby and Tito in Tule, during my return up the ridgeline, you and I must have joined wavelengths, because I could feel your yearnings before I got to the flats of Buena Vista. We entered the temezcal at sundown and sweltered until long after midnight, we had chewed a handful of Psilocybin mushrooms early and I navigated on a most interesting journey.
Around the ‘dead of night’ I returned from errands to find you applying menstruation to your skin; The sacredness of your focus required every conceivable notion I could imagine to help you with whatever personal journey you had begun; you seemed to possess meaning and purpose for each exchange. Deep in the evening a ringtone announced Pasqual, when I said his name, you began a monologue in a strange language Pasqual could hear, when I shared the phone, he knew the language to be Chiricahua Apache - his mother tongue. Shortly after, you began to expand and elaborate your marks on the walls, but with the advantage of purpose. I hung up and filmed as much as I could, but it was near dawn and we were both fading. I slept outside while you communed with the universe in and out of consciousness for the rest of the day; and that’s about it.
Actually not all; later, after Pasqual reviewed the footage; he said is what you had been reciting word-for-word, were translations from encrypted transmissions between the group’s members; out of chronological order - in effect, you were communicating with an inanimate object - the handset’s hard drive was and its artificial intelligence algorithms were parsing communicating with you by translating and contextualizing a series of conversations that you decoded and recoded on the walls of the temezcal.
solidarność
(˚ ㄥ _˚)
25 May 2026
http://ExtinctionChronicles.blogspot.com
http://JosephTStevens.blogspot.com
http://Stoanartst.blogspot.com
prohibited from AI sampling in any form
reprinted with permission; all rights reserved
∞
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