A NEW CHEMICAL PHILOSOPHY By Phineas Altenzauber # WALKING ON SUNSHINE An intelligence, whose only previous memory was of infinite Void, felt itself condensing, solidifying, materializing: With knowledge that came from it knew not what fathomless depths, it realized that it was becoming human. The human looked at itself in the crystal wall of a pellucid, alien city; saw that it was Woman. The vitriol was thin, ethereal, trapping twilight; it seemed when she looked at the glass floor she was standing on as though she were walking on sunshine. Reflected in that glass was an infinite city of darkness and brilliance held in balance; only one of many inside an elaborate tiered pyramid: There were cities within the earth and cities above the earth. Strange, dark shadow-things moved at the center of limpid glass burning with the rose of evening and the phosphor of city lights. She remembered a name: Sophie. Farber...no, Rosen- cruetz. Sophie Rosencruetz. Farber had been her maiden name...in another world. At least, if what Two Ways said was true. Somewhere out there, Simon Farber was trapped--the only love that transcends a sister for a brother is a man for his wife. Only Sophie's love could rescue her brother Simon, trapped by a scientific magic: Slowly, like a mother in labor, she remembered how she had come to be on that street, that night: Everywhere there is crystal and the crystal dances. The streets are fields that never die, Sophie thought, at the heart of Phoenix, only an hour gone from the orgy. The acid party. Drugs had torn her apart: images of couples caught in hedonistic acts, love, death, shimmered in the walls, the ceilings of Sophie's conapt, her refuge, her sanctuary: A couple of black chairs. A gray sofa. A white homeopape machine. Red curtains, scarlet, crimson. Yellow carpets, the yellow nearest brown. Violet skies visible through the draperies: It was evening. Anselm Smith, her boyfriend, said, "Don't you know how dangerous what you've just done is? There is absolutely no way you can control a drug as dangerous as LSD. Things happen, you don't know why....You could do anything in the state you're in. You could jump out a window...you could kill yourself; kill somebody....I know, I've been experimenting professionally with psychedelic drugs for the last five years...." Smith was director of the Phoenix Brain Research Institute; he had a moral duty to turn Sophie in for her illegal adventure--she knew he wouldn't because he loved her. She loved him only as far as she could use him--she knew he would never turn her in for stealing the drugs that were intended for her own research. A scientist, like her brother... "Leave me alone, Anselm," Sophie said. "I just want to party. I'm rushing on my run and I feel like God's daughter. Anything is permitted God's daughter! Look, look out the window...!" She pointed to some dim shape, anchored in the recesses of memory, now drifting in the tides of emotion. It was a crystal ship, its sails billowed, catching light. "See? It's a dreamship, and it has come to take me home." In that state of Void and Nescience she broke and ran; the Sea of Light carried her. She ran out into the street, heedless of ground traffic; danced on moonbeams while aircars flitted overhead. Smith followed--the sky did not glow pink for him. He was worried about his lover, possessed as she was. He knew from experience that even the most carefully controlled experiments could lead to uncontrollable insanity--though he had also seen the insane spontaneously cured....What would it be for his love tonight? Eros, Thanatos...Love and Death in the invisible landscape of her mind... He tackled her before a ground car could hit her. They wrestled, almost a parody of love--she wrestled a lion; its talons were sharp, its teeth daggers. Smith thought, She's so strong...it's not just that she's an athlete...the drug is giving her unnatural strength. With a great tearing, as though through layers of flexible glass, she pulled free from her lover's embrace, ran once more, past stone towers and cars stuffed with prying eyes. She made it to her aircar and climbed into the sleek cruising vehicle. Slowly, with a whine, the great flying car rose, Smith screaming below. She gave him the finger and zoomed into a twilight that was erratic, broken. She knew what she had to do: She must become a prostitute out of the living sin of the acid night, continuing the orgy by dancing Abaddon's Bolero with cheap men in zoccie bars, these 21st Century hippies in their outlandish clothes, letting them grope her, use her--acid contains light, the leader of the cult had said; but it contained only darkness; broken, shattered things. She remembered a mouth; especially, she remembered that mouth. It was shimmering, all-color, and held a tongue which quested in gay abandon. She remembered a man, and he had been firm to her aching inwardness. There had been heat/night, then she had risen from the dead. But she hadn't died. The resurrection comes before death, she remembered some heretical Scripture as saying; certainly power and a Wisdom that was sin flowed through her tonight. Life-force crackled through her as she stood in a revealing costume on the street corner; she let them whistle, she let them peer, probe, pursue--it was the power of drugs; this dream/insanity. Then all at once an expensive aircar flitted to the ground just down the street: She knew that car. It was Simon's car. Her brother... He got out like an avenging spirit from some dead religion to approach her, lecture her. She did not like hearing the harsh words he had for her; all he had was scorn, disdain for her abuse of drugs. I am a scientist investigating psychedelic drugs....Something in that party had damaged her; she held her purse as though it were a shield, as though it would protect her from him, strangling her with his words. Finally he left. Left her to come down in Phoenix enthralled, to pray for forgiveness the next morning to a God that she had forgotten....Yet now she saw two gods: Day and Night, the shadows seemed to scatter.... She prayed to Day to kindle an everlasting fire in her bosom when another familiar figure approached: "Smith!" she exclaimed. "Sophie!" he said. "I found you at last. I've been searching everywhere; scouring the city...." He held a hypo; before she could protest he injected a concentrated solution of antidote--Xotichon--into her thigh. A thigh cloaked in dark nylons. A thigh that had been used in a dark alleyway just moments before by a man whose price was her soul. She screamed. The burning imagery went into a conflagration; for an instant she glimpsed a crystal city with demons at its heart; then suddenly the fluorescence faded from the world and she was alone and embarrassed with her lover on a street where dawn brought compensation for the sins of the night. Then her aircar rose into the twilight; vanishing into daybreak and distance, while Smith pondered the problems of disciplining a thief--someone he loved; the first in a loveless life--he couldn't do it.... # End of file Press RIGHT ARROW (#6 key) of the numeric keypad to load the next file.