Dying in Philly in 2023
Chapter 1
There wasn't much remarkable to say about Desmond Sharpton's life before he became homeless. He grew up in Chester, a suburb of Philadelphia, achieved mostly ordinary grades in high school, and went on to become a construction worker with a small family owned operation not far from where he lived. But his unremarkable story took a decisive turn early in the summer of 2020 when he was at the youthful age of twenty-five. He lost his construction job because of covid, fell two months behind on his rent, and when it was clear to the owner that he would not be able to make up the shortfall, he was summarily evicted.
On the morning he was due to leave his tenancy of two years he looked out the window and saw his landlord and the county sheriff waiting at the door. They had only unpleasant things to say to him when he emerged, and with an arm full of possessions pushed past them hoping to add them to the haphazard pile of others by the kerb.
"I'm sorry sir, but you're trespassing now. You'll have to stand over there on the sidewalk," the sheriff said.
His landlord bore a side-arm and was even more hostile. "I'll bet I find a big flat screen in there," he said. "They're all the same. They'll spend their stimulus on a flat screen but they won't pay their rent. I have no sympathy for them."
Desmond listened to these unpleasantries and tried to compose his demeanor, but with only limited success. He didn't need anyone to tell him that being evicted meant that he would now be listed as a bad tenant on the tenancy database, and that he would be unable to rent a dwelling for so long that it might as well be permanent. To all intents and purposes he was now homeless with what seemed like little hope of ever finding affordable housing again.
For the first few days following his eviction he was able to count on a few friends to give him a place to sleep at night, but it was a very tense situation and he knew it wasn't going to work out for long. He didn't know anyone with a spare room, so he was sleeping on the couch or on the floor.
Ryan, an old friend from high school, was already complaing about the disruption Desmond had inflicted on his young family.
"Man, I wish I could help," he said. "But the kids are frightened of you, and the wife wants you out. You can stay tonight, but this is the last time."
On the day after this depressing piece of friction Desmond made his way to Veterans Park in Chester where he sat on a bench, fell into a deep reflection of himself, and thought long about where he could possibly go from here. Fortunately, he still had a car, stuffed with as much of his previous life as would fit. It may have been a modest cluster of possessions, but at least he had a few options he could consider.
His first thought was of his parents, who lived not far from where he sat, and the wisdom of attempting to reach out to them for help. He felt sorely tempted to throw himself on their mercy, to humbly plead with them for their forgiveness, and hope that his present predicament would assure them of his determination to heal the rift between them. He tried putting himself into his mental picture of what he thought that would be like before concluding, no. That would be even more forced than the situation he had just left with Ryan and his young family. He would rather retain a shred of dignity than humiliate himself in front of them anyway, so he scratched that one off his list of prospective options.
He then turned to a more creative expression of his thinking. He had been camping with his family in the hills of western Pennsylvania as a child and had enjoyed it, so he began to think about buying a tent to sleep in. This thinking lifted his spirits dramatically, and after the initial thrill of a vision of himself living in a tent he arrived at the only question he allowed himself to voice, although it was little more than a whisper.
"Where the hell could I put it up?"
On the basis of no more than common knowledge he could think of perhaps as many as a dozen campgrounds in the metro area, including one right here in Chester, but all of them would require the payment of a weekly fee, and would probably not be amenable to a long term resident anyhow. A tent would be situated on a grassy area which would require frequent mowing, and a necessary periodic relocation which would be annoying, and would probably result in some friction with the other residents and the campground owner.
His employment record met the minimum earnings requirements required to qualify for insurance payments, and he had registered for unemployment benefits soon after he lost his job. He was getting about three hundred a week, so he would have enough money for this sort of accomodation.
I could live in a formal campground, he supposed to himself. But it just doesn't inspire me, he thought, so he began to think beyond the confines of Philadelphia.
The cheapest option Desmond could think of was, on second thought, not cheap at all.
He knew that there was a lot of wild country in the hills to the west of Philly where a camper could put up a tent in a forest somewhere without paying any rent to the owner, who in this case happened to be the government and people of America. It was a long way to the west involving several hours of driving, and a proportionally large amount of fuel. It would also involve a lot of trial and error in order to find a suitable location which would involve even more fuel, and even then it would cost a lot of fuel to source and resupply provisions on a weekly basis.
Desmond found it entertaining to think along these lines. Becoming a mountain man appealed to his vitality and appetite for drama, and the acquisition of the necessary skills could be handy in some post-apocalyptic future, but in his present condition it was simply impractical. So, with an amused smile he dismissed yet another alternative.
He continued to rack his brain in search of any other possibilities for a few minutes before he said with some resignation, "Well, that leaves only Kensington."
Chapter 2
It was still only a little after nine in the morning, and it was a pleasant summer's day, so he had plenty of time to put his plan into action. All this rumination had taken him less than half an hour, in spite of how murky his feelings had been. He was hungry and he would need to stop somewhere to find something cheap to eat, so he got in his car and headed to the McDonalds drive through on W Oregon Avenue in town. Covid restrictions were beginning to ease, and it would be cheap, and easy for him to get in and out with a minimum of fuss.
As he sat in the car park quietly eating a cheeseburger and fries, he mentally rumaged through the remaining possessions packed haphazardly in the car. He would keep his clothes, his blankets, his phone and a radio, but the rest could go to a pawn broker including a forty-three inch TV, an Xbox, and a computer. With any luck he could get four or five hundred dollars for just these three items alone.
As it happened he only got two hundred and ninety from a pawn shop not far from Kensington which was disappointing, and this was only after several minutes of intense haggling. The pawn broker just wasn't interested in a lot of his junk like an electric jug, a toaster and crockery, so he tossed most of it in the garbage. He found a Thrift store nearby which took the clean stuff from him, his plates and utensils and things, so he was able to save his conscience from having to think about how wasteful it was of him.
He now had enough money for a little fuel and a tent, but a check of the internet on his phone told him that the only suitable tent he could get was way out of the metro area in Pottstown, which with traffic was about fifty minutes to the west.
He gassed up for the drive on his way out of town and took the Schuylkill Expressway to Route 422 and followed it right into Pottstown.
When he got to the store he found that there was not much of a selection, but they had a small two man dome tent for sixty-nine dollars which suited his needs. A foam mat and some nylon cord cost him another fifteen which he could use to make a bedding roll. He also bought a packet of basic face masks for a couple of dollars which was only sensible in view of the situation he was heading into.
It was getting close to two in the afternoon by the time he got back to the car with the intention of returning directly to town. But he spent some time divesting himself of the packaging and tied the tent, the foam mat, and his bedding, in a roll he could sling over his shoulder, and threw it on the now empty back seat.
Desmond was back in Kensington a bit after three ready to begin his initial survey of the scene, so that he could evaluate the sort of place he might reasonably expect to adopt tonight.
He drove slowly around the streets for a while looking for tents he could set up next to, but there weren't many out there, so he figured that he could set up anywhere he felt was safe and relatively unthreatening.
He found a spot he liked on E Cambria Street just across from Kensington Avenue where there happened to be another two man tent.
He had a fairly limited knowledge of the streets around Kensington having visited the place perhaps no more than a dozen times in his life, so he had to memorize the path back to this spot as he drove away. He wanted to park his car somewhere discreet where it might be safe, but also because he didn't want the locals to associate him with a car before he a chance to evaluate its significance among them.
There were a lot of cars parked on the sides of all the streets he passed, and there were a lot of pricey ones among them, so he figured that his old Ford jalopy would likely be ignored by any would be thieves. Nevertheless, he was about half a mile from Kensington Avenue before he found a vacancy. And after parking he grabbed his bedding roll and a backpack with various other items, and made his way back to the corner of E Cambria and Kensington.
It was late afternoon by the time he unrolled his tent and began to set it up. E Cambria is about half way between Somerset station and McPherson Square so there were quite a few people milling around including a rowdy group standing in a doorway a few yards away. Desmond tried not to pay too much attention to them, but he did keep a furtive eye on people walking up and down Kensington Avenue, of which there were many.
He had his tent set up before long and began to lay out his mat and blankets ready for sleeping. But with this maneuver completed he sat down nervously beside his tent with his back against the wall of a boarded up building trying to look like he had been there all along.
He looked back and forth avoiding eye contact as much as possible, but he couldn't quite fit into the scene because he seemed to be the only one who wasn't utterly stoned. He desperately wished it would hurry up and get dark so that he could disappear against the blackness, and he began to fear that someone was going to approach him and attempt to strike up a conversation. Little did he realize, on his first night of residence, that conversation among the druggies was a rare thing indeed.
At last the darkness overtook the night and he could relax in his newfound anonymity. He still felt quite apprehensive about his vulnerabilty, and took note of the lighting around him. His little corner seemed to be only partially lit but the avenue and the El were bright by comparison. He felt a little easier knowing that whatever danger might lurk in the shadows would not likely venture into such brightness.
He sat up for as long as he could bear, observing the scene around him, but eventually his weariness persuaded him to climb into his crib where he could roll over and sleep in utter fearlessness.
Chapter 3
When Desmond woke up the next morning he was in desperate need of a visit to the rest room. Fortunately, he had taken a wrong turn on his way back to his spot after parking the car the night before. He happened to come out on Kensington Avenue at Monmouth Street, where there was a public conveniance trailer, so he knew exactly where to go. It was only about fifty yards away.
Before his visit to the loo, however, he hastily collapsed his tent, rolled it up, and tied it as best he could, because he wasn't going to leave it where it could be stolen on his first day.
He couldn't believe all the litter he saw. It was in the gutters, on the street, and on the pavement as he got closer to the trailer. And all the used needles.
It was still quite early when he got to the trailer with his bed roll and backpack in place, so he didn't have to wait in line, in fact the whole place was eerily quiet. There were sleeping bodies scattered here and there, and used needles everywhere. He attended to the matter at hand, washed his hands carefully after, and looked up and down the avenue for activity of any sort, because he was famished and in need of hot coffee.
A cafe or something would be really handy right about now, he thought, if something like that could be found at this hour.
There was nothing in sight from the corner of Monmouth so he had a quick look on his phone for the address of a cafe or deli of some sort. He was in luck, it was just after six and New Cambria, a breakfast joint down the avenue past the station a little way, was already open.
On his way down the avenue he mentally cued a couple items on the agenda for today. His phone was getting very low, so he would need to find a power outlet somewhere to recharge. He thought about the library at McPherson Square which would be ideal, but he figured that everybody would have given that a try, the result of which would be a residual hostility towards homeless people by library staff.
The other thing on the agenda was a little more serious and deserved careful attention. He had a job interview at a restaurant in the city at two this afternoon. It was a kitchen hand job which he didn't expect to get. His job seeker obligations had been suspended early in the spring, but he wanted to make an effort to keep his options open. He had made the appointment a couple of days ago and was committed to attending it.
When he arrived at the breakfast joint he found a small unassuming shop front, and went in. Booths were marked as restricted or available, but there were few customers this early in the day, so he found an unrestricted one easily and sat down. A look through the menu revealed a fairly limited breakfast fare, but he quickly chose a dish which suited him.
A waitress soon appeared and greeted him. "Good morning. You're up early," she said with a hint of sarcasm.
"Good morning. Yeah, I'm an early riser," he answered cheerfully.
"Not many street people about at this hour," she said with a smile reflecting her good nature.
"Oh, yeah. I'm new here," he replied.
"Oh, I hope you have a strong stomach then," she said. "It gets pretty wild here."
"You mean the street scene?" he asked. "It's that bad, is it?"
"It's worse, but you'll see for yourself if you stick around for a while," she said, again with the smile.
He looked at her during an uneasy silence, wondering if she had foreseen his destiny.
"So, what are you having this morning?" she went on in her business like tone.
"I'll have the cheese steak, and a flat white coffee," he said glancing back at the menu.
She took note of his order and disappeared in the direction of the kitchen, returning in due course with the steak and coffee.
After he had finished his coffee he sat there thinking with some satisfaction that being homeless was at least tolerable, and before long he got up, paid his bill with a small tip, and smiled at the waitress.
"Good luck," she said as he left.
"Thanks," he replied sincerely and returned to the avenue.
He started walking back in the direction of McPherson Square thinking that he had some time to pass before his appointment. Another look at his phone told him that there was a free charge point at the Marshalls store in Feltonville, so he went past the square and turned onto G Street.
He got to Marshalls early, so he had to wait for half an hour which he spent wondering about the kind of impression he would be making in his job interview. He hadn't changed his clothes for several days or showered, he would be clinging to his precious bed roll and backpack, so he suspected that the interviewer would draw conclusions about his appearance very quickly.
Marshalls opened promptly at eight. He went in, and asked a sales assistant where the ChargeItSpot was and if he could use it. He got an affirmative reply, proceeded to the charge point, but it took more than an hour and a half to fully charge his phone. It took a studied suspension of himself to endure this interval without looking like he was obviously vagrant. He checked his phone, read various social media sites, and busied himself this way for the duration.
It was nearly ten o'clock by the time he got back out on the street. Plenty of time to get into the city from here, he thought.
He took the El from Allegheny station to the 13th Street station which was just around the corner from the location of his appointment.
He put his backpack and bedding roll beside a chair halfway down a long corridor to one side of the kitchen, and sat nervously thinking about whether it would be safe to leave it there during the interview. He figured it would be a dead give-away if he took it with him, but when his name was called he thought, fuck it, I can't afford to lose this stuff. To hell with the impression it may make.
He entered a tiny office at the back of the kitchen and was beckoned to the seat in front of a small desk. The backpack and bedding roll was hidden beside him but it was too late, the manager already saw it before he cast a doubtful gaze on its owner.
"So, you're homeless, aren't you?" the manager began after a long pause.
Desmond sat there circling the obvious but searching for something dignified to say. At last he said, "Yeah, but it's only temporary."
"Yeah, but life is only temporary," the manager went on. "Do you have any experience in a real kitchen?" he asked.
"Umm. Not really, but I could learn quickly if I had to," he replied.
"Look, I'm sorry pal, but with covid restrictions my margins are shrinking. I can't afford to risk this position to someone in your position."
Desmond sat there for a full minute. He wasn't in the least surprised. He gathered up his bundle and stood up. Yeah, I'll probably have to do this often, he thought as he turned and walked down the long corridor.
Chapter 4
It was getting late in the day so Desmond went back to the place he had the night before, after catching a quick meal in the city. He pushed his bedding roll close to the wall and sat on it because it was a more comfortable position for him to wait the hour or two it would take to get dark.
He had been sitting there minding his own business for only a few minutes before a member of the rowdy group a few yards away approached him.
"You're new here, right?" the tall black man asked.
"Ah, yeah. It's that obvious is it?" he replied.
"Hey, don't worry about it," the black man said. "We were all new here sometime."
"Last night was the first time I've seen you," he went on. "Are you from around here?"
They spoke briefly about where they had come from, and how things had changed in Kensington over the years, before the black man offered his name, and a proposition.
"Anyhow, I'm Stretch," he said. "And I can get you almost any kind of drug you can think of, if you're interested."
"Oh. Hi, I'm Desmond, and I haven't been into drugs much. I've smoked grass a few times, so I'm open to that. I like it."
"Well that's a start," Stretch began. "If you want a smoke right now I can sell you a joint for five dollars."
Desmond gave it a moment's reflection before he spoke. "Well, as a matter of fact, a smoke would be real nice right about now, you know. The last few days have been a real drag, to be honest."
"That's the spirit," Stretch said reassuringly as he reached into a vest pocket and pulled out a ready made joint.
The would be druggy fumbled in his pockets momentarily before a five dollar note was produced, and the exchange was made after a quick look around to make sure they shared a moment of privacy.
"Do you have a light, or do you want to save it for later?" Stretch asked politely.
"Yeah, I've got one in my backpack somewhere. And I'll save it for the half light I think. But, thanks anyhow," he concluded.
"Any time, pal. I'll see you around," he said as he returned to his crew parked in the doorway.
Desmond sat back on his bedding roll and considered this unexpected turn in the day's events. He knew cannabis pretty well, in spite of what he had told Stretch about his experience, and he knew it would now be a cornerstone of his experience of homelessness. So he sat there reflecting on his good fortune. It would have happened sooner or later if he hung around Kensington for long enough, he thought, but to have it happen so soon seemed to be a good omen.
It was just about sunset as far as he could tell on this partially cloudy afternoon, so he got to work setting up his tent and laying out his rubber mat and blankets. He still had a while to go before he felt confident about lighting up this little number, so he lay back on the mat looking at the avenue through the door in the tent, and feeling a little agitated. He knew cannabis well enough to know that a little apprehension was a proper attitude to bring to the little smoke, so he lay there cultivating a measured anticipation.
He looked out his tent door and saw the traffic on the avenue increasing. He saw car lights, advertising signs and street lights begin to illuminate the growing darkness, and chose this moment to light up and breathe in his first puff of the hallucinogen. It was his first in a while so he knew it wouldn't take much to effect him, so he smoked only half of it leaving the other half safely tucked away for later.
It took only two or three minutes for the little THC molecules to make it through the lungs and into the circulatory system, and then only seconds before it was everywhere, but it was when they got to the brain that they really went to work. It was around this time that he began to feel buzzy, and soon after that he felt like he was getting fully stoned.
As the effect of these molecules registered in his consciousness Desmond looked back at the last few days and weeks and realized that they had provoked a deep and unwelcome anxiety in him, which the little smoke could help alleviate. What a blessing this little drug is, he thought, that it could remove the user from a gnawing pain and provide a perfectly transcendental view of it. He had lost everything in a very short period of time, but the little smoke made him feel that his loss was only an appearance of such, that the essential features of life endure whatever he may have lost. I have a good feeling about this, he thought, and that's all that matters.
It wasn't long after he started feeling good about his situation that he lay back with his head propped up on his backpack, and closed his eyes. What he saw there was a scrolling pattern which reminded him of something similar he used to see when he was drifting off to sleep as a child.
At the top of the pattern he saw a late nineteenth century image of an angel among the clouds which soon disappeared as the image scrolled down and merged with an intricately laced pattern of vines and leaves which were colored in soft blues and greens. It was a very soothing experience for Desmond and he began to fall asleep. But as he lay there admiring the scene he saw a darkly colored dagger enter the image from above and race down dividing the pattern in a highly threatening manner. It was so threatening that it jolted Desmond awake, feeling a strong sense of alarm.
He sat up with his back against the wall feeling that he had just been touched by some kind of thing, something he had no way of describing in rational terms, but something which had been following him, and watching his every move. As a pretty rational thinker, he had no experience with ghosts, but whatever it was it was something he could only describe in terms of such otherworldly things.
A few minutes were spent memorizing the details of this experience before he lay back again, and managed to assemble some semblance of ease and relaxation. It was quite a chilling experience, but there was another image from this episode which he felt was also worth remembering, as it persisted while he relaxed and fell asleep.
It was an image of each and every person on this planet depicted as a cone adorned with evenly spaced concentric black and white stripes. It may have seemed like a randomly generated psychedelic image, but it was one whose true meaning would not be revealed until the following day.
Chapter 5
When Desmond woke up the next morning he was no longer intoxicated, but the feeling of well being he got from the smoke the night before remained, and he managed a hearty smile as he collapsed his tent and made his way to the convenience trailer.
He then stopped at the New Cambria for something simple to eat and drink before heading north west in the direction he thought his car was parked. He figured he'd better move it frequently or else someone would report it abandoned, and the police would organize a towing. He had already forgotten exactly where it was but he remembered the name of the street, Hope St, so a quick look at Google Maps pointed him in the right direction. It took half hour to find another place to park, but he had little else to do that day, so a half hour wasn't going to bother him.
The only other thing of any importance he wanted to do that day involved a fairly studious observation of the street scene around Kensington and E Allegheny Avenues where he had heard the worst of the homeless culture was to be seen. It was still quite early in the day so he dawdled back to Kensington, and settled down across the road from Allegheny station ready for a lengthy wait.
He kept his distance as people slowly began to fill the streets, and positioned himself so that he could take in the whole scene at once. He saw all sorts of interactions between the people milling about the station entrance. He saw the occasional drug deal being negotiated, and cops who turned a blind eye to what was going on in front of them.
Before long an old man came into view who was muttering something loudly enough to attract attention to himself, but quietly enough to persuade Desmond to get up and cross the street so that he could hear exactly what it was he was saying.
He looked properly weathered after many years of exposure to the elements and had a crazed look of defiance in his eyes as he spoke what Desmond thought to be a cryptic message. "Pyramid!" "Entanglement!" he muttered over and over in a raspy voice. Desmond tried to catch his eye but he refused to speak to anyone directly.
The old man had turned the corner and had begun to walk away when a more cultured voice spoke to him from over his shoulder. Desmond swung around to see who it was, and was faced with a younger man in his middle age who looked relatively clean considering where he was, and fairly well groomed.
"Sounds crazy, right?" he said. "But you'd be wrong. Old Cecil is well respected around here. Looks can be deceiving everywhere you look, so don't rush to judgement."
Desmond blinked, still considering what the old man's rasping chant could mean. "Pyramid." "Entanglement." The words clung to him like burrs, refusing to let go.
The middle aged man stepped closer, and lowered his voice as though he were about to share a secret. "Cecil's been out here longer than most of us," he said. "Sure, he's lost a lot, but he sees things. That word he keeps repeating? Entanglement? Around here, that's not nonsense. It's what binds us together. It's not just some random science word," he said. "It's a feeling."
Desmond frowned. "A feeling?"
The man gave a half, almost indulgent smile. "Don't expect to understand straight away. Think of it as sovereignty without a body. The order beneath the chaos. Cecil raves on about it because he's touched the subtlety of it. Most of us only get a glimpse of it in passing."
He extended a hand. "Name's Marcus. You're new here, and Kensington doesn't forgive the uninitiated. Stick with me, and I'll help you read the signs. Out here, prophecy comes dressed in rags."
"A pyramid feeling." he replied. "Hi, I'm Desmond," he said, as he shook the offered hand.
"That's right. Hey, you catch on quick, Desmond," he answered.
Desmond caught his breath, and paused for a moment as he remembered the image he fell asleep with the night before. Pyramids! The cones with concentric black and white stripes were pyramids!
Marcus saw Desmond's face pale and asked, "Yo, Desmond, are you okay?"
"Yeah," he answered. "I just had this strong sense of déjà vu. I'll be alright in a minute."
"Déjà vu, eh? That sounds like an omen to me. You're quite an interesting character, Desmond. I'll have to keep an eye out for you," he assured. "Anyhow, it's been nice meeting you. And remember, around here déjà vu isn't memory, it's entanglement nudging you in a certain direction," and with that parting gesture he turnd and disappeared into the crowd.
Chapter 6
Desmond returned to his position across the street and found somewhere to sit down and think about how interesting this new life of homelessness was becoming. When he was working most of his time was spent either in the drudgery of labor, or either sleeping or watching TV, but the fabric of homelessness was rich in variety and potential. He didn't have much in the way of shelter, but in its place there was an endless fascination.
He wasn't sitting there for long because he had to go back to Marshalls to charge his phone, so he spent an hour or two wandering the streets in a round about way somewhere in the direction of Feltonville.
It was a warm summer day and there was a light breeze blowing when he sat down under a tree beside the road to rest and cool off. He hadn't been sitting there long before he noticed a piece of tissue paper someone had discarded floating in the warm breeze. At first he didn't take much notice of it, but he looked away and back at it a couple of times and saw that it was still floating there in the vicinity.
He couldn't believe what he was seeing and became transfixed by the sight of this scrap of paper living a life of its own making. It seemed like an age before it flew away out of sight and Desmond sat there wondering what was happening to him. He had no experience he could compare this with, so he had to surrender to a completely open mind divorced from any prejudice or expectation.
It was late in the afternoon by the time he finished charging his phone and began his trek back into Kensington.
There was a golden light illuminating the streets and sky, and quite spontaneously he started looking at everything out of the corner of his eye so that he could see these things without actually looking.
It was somewhat of a shock to him when the golden light jogged a memory from early in his childhood when he spent quite a lot of time observing this same sensation. It was a fond memory which up till this point had remained nameless, but in his present state he could call 'Eternity'. It had never occurred to him before but with the raw emotions of his recent experience he imagined that death must be something like this. A vision of the golden light and illuminated shadows stretching to the horizon.
Desmond found that the events of the day drove a wedge into the solidity of his beliefs about reality, but it was not until he was safely back in his tent in the evening that he felt equipped to boldly confront them.
He began to feel that the tissue paper was mocking him with its liveliness, yet its utter insignificance, just as he was feeling exactly these things as a member of the homeless. Could reality be that plastic, he wondered with some alarm.
He felt that his reality had let him down, and that he would now have to rebuild it all from shattered elements which he knew very little about.
He replayed the scene with Marcus in his mind over and over until he felt empowered to adopt an interest in the entanglement he spoke of. He knew very little about quantum physics, or any physics for that matter, but he had heard gossip that entanglement had the ability to break reality itself. He was tempted to just Google it but he knew that the results would overwhelm him, so he made up his mind to ask Marcus about it next time they met.
On a lighter note, his memory from a time he rarely considered consoled some of his grieving. It was a memory he felt he could have confidence in, but he suspected that it was of a time when reality itself was in gestation and could flow in any number of different ways. Much depended on what Marcus could tell him about these things.
What is it Marcus would have said, "Even fragmented memories are omens dressed in rags."
Chapter 7
Desmond made his way to the New Cambria cafe a little after half past eight the next morning for a bite to eat, and a browse of the job vacancy sites on his phone. There were a few customers at that hour so he had to wait five minutes before he could sit down at an unrestricted table.
He ordered the cheese steak and coffee again, and set about the task of lining up another job interview in the feint hope that some sort of income would alleviate his situation. He found a carpentry job he was not actually qualified for, but it was at least in the general area of his work experience. He rang the number and made an appointment for three days from today before his meal arrived.
"How is street life shaping up for you?" the waitress asked as she put the steak and coffee on the table.
"It's not too bad so far. The tranq is pretty deadly, but I'm going to avoid that," he replied.
"Yeah, that would be sensible," she said.
"I'm still a bit confused. It's a strange world I've entered, but I'll get used to it," he said in all honesty.
"Well, keep coming back here, we'll keep you on an even keel," she answered.
He smiled warmly and said, "Thanks, I will."
When he finished eating, he paid the bill with a small tip and went back out onto the avenue. He felt quite anxious about finding Marcus so he turned right and walked back to Allegheny station where he had met him the day before.
He squatted down against the wall opposite the station where he had a good view of the corner, and where he could comfortably wait for what could be several hours.
He was in luck. It was only about an hour and a half before he saw Marcus across the street near the station entrance. He got up and raced over to where he was, and after brushing past the gaggle of people he found there he called out, "Hey, Marcus!"
Marcus swung around, saw Desmond approaching, and immediately noticed the quiet desperation he was harboring.
He said, "Hey, grasshopper, what's gotten into you this morning?"
"I wanted to ask you about entanglement," he said. "Something happened to me a couple of days ago, and I wanted to ask you about it."
Marcus beckoned Desmond to join him over by the wall of the station where they could squat and have a private conversation.
When they felt comfortably at ease Marcus asked, "Tell me, what happened to you?"
Desmond began with the cannabis. "I bought a little grass from my neighbor on E Cambria, and when I smoked it I had a vision of all these cones, like everyone on this planet was a little cone."
"Yeah, that's right. We're all these little pyramids," Marcus answered correctly.
"Yeah, and then I heard Cecil speak of pyramids and entanglement like they were related," Desmond tentatively enquired.
"Well, they are related. Very intimately actually," Marcus went on. "It's resonance that ties them together. Do you know what resonance is?"
"Vaguely, it's harmonic, isn't it? Like music?"
"Yeah, that's it. When you pluck a guitar string you hear the note it produces, but you don't hear all the other notes it's producing because they're drowned out by the note of the open string.
"But really, that string is resonating at countless other frequencies simultaneously, but they're too feint to hear. Comprende?"
"Yeah, that makes sense," Desmond answered.
"Well, everything is just like that. Everything around you is resonating at countless frequencies, and harmonizing information.
"It's a bit of a leap, but everything is information, and harmonics facilitate the production and exchange of information. We relate to this in terms of knowledge.
"The point about the pyramid is that it depicts infinitely small things resonating just as surely.
"Don't worry if it doesn't make sense to you immediately, but your little smoke will help you understand. It sounds like it has already begun to entangle with you if it's telling you about cones."
Marcus sat there smiling at his new protégé. Desmond looked a little perplexed but was fully engaged by what was being spoken.
"Thanks for that. I can relate to that. I'll give it some consideration," he said.
They stood up together and Marcus said, "Tell me what you think in a few days from now. See if it still makes sense," and with that they parted and went their separate ways.
Chapter 8
Desmond retreated to his position across the avenue where he could stop and think about what Marcus had just told him. He squatted down with his back against the wall and felt comfortable enough to comb through their conversation carefully.
He thought about how a pyramid was related to entanglement in terms of the scales of resonance that give matter and energy their form. This made a lot of sense to him but there was a big gap in his understanding of what exactly entanglement was. He dismissed the idea that everything was information for the time being because it was a distraction from his desire to understand entanglement.
It wasn't long before he decided that it was time for a little peek at the results of a search of this topic on Google.
What he found was on first view simple enough, that the states of two entangled bodies may have a simultaneous correlation with each other regardless of the distance between them. He decided that this was enough for him to go on with at this stage. He didn't want to be encumbered with a lot of new information, so he moved it to the back of his mind and turned to what else he could be doing with the day.
It was still quite early, it was late in the morning, and he thought about going to where the car was parked so that he could change his clothes and find somewhere to do a little laundry.
He had parked the car not far from where it was before, and he was getting familiar with the territory anyway, so he was able to go to it directly without consulting the map.
The car was quite hot when he got there, so he wound the windows down before rummaging through his belongings in search of something suitable to wear.
When he found his trousers and shirts he got in the back seat and wound the windows back up with a couple of shirt tails wedged in the cracks at the top so that he could change his trousers and underwear in privacy. He thought it would be a real drag on the day if someone caught him in a state of undress.
When he felt properly attired again he searched Google and found a laundromat not far away on E Allegheny just up from where he was at the station.
Washing and drying the laundry took a while, so it was late in the afternoon by the time he got back to E Cambria and set up his tent. He still had the other half of that joint he bought left to smoke which he was planning to do when it got dark.
Desmond lit the joint just as the street lights and advertising were coming on, and lay back with his head propped up on his backpack. His mind was more or less focused on his new found interest, but he knew that the smoke would have its own way of relating to him, so he just relaxed and left his mind to wander at ease.
It was only a matter of minutes before he could feel the THC molecules coursing through his veins, and with his mind in a neutral repose he saw a vision of a golden crown adorned with a soft radiant light at its center, and casting a golden shadow on its outer rim. It wasn't encrusted with jewels of any sort, it was a simple crown of gold, but radiant with a soft pearly light.
As the image solidified in his thinking he saw a vertical medieval sword appear below it, its pointy tip touching the source of the golden light, and its hilt out of view in the shadows.
It wasn't long before the image transformed from a state of clairvoyance into one of rational thinking, and he immediately recognized that it was an unambiguous reference to the cones he had been thinking of, and a symbolic representation of the mind at the center of the brain. The memory of Marcus explaining that the feeling of entanglement was like sovereignty without a body began to haunt him, as though the crown itself were whispering the words back to him in golden light.
As his mind began to drift to other mundane things he considered the inevitable association between the mind and the tip of a pyramid. He marvelled at how pointy the tip of a pyramid could be with its reference to infinitely small things he would rather not consider, and with this somewhat awkward thought he drifted off to a deep and peaceful sleep.
Chapter 9
A few days passed since Desmond spoke to Marcus and asked him to tell him a little more about entanglement. During this time he had his carpentry job appointment which ended in failure, and was not unexpected, but it had affected his demeanor. He sat in the gutter beside the road after his appointment feeling dejected and wondered about his position in the world now that he was homeless. He looked at the littered roads and pathways and thought about how his position now reflected them.
His feelings lingered by the roadside for a few minutes before he made up his mind to buy some more cannabis from his neighbor Stretch, the next time they met. He rose to his feet heavily and began the long walk back to his safe spot on the corner of E Cambria Street and Kensington Ave.
He couldn't see Stretch in his doorstep when he got back, so he set up his tent and bedding role and began to wait for his return. It was a warm afternoon and was probably warmer in the tent than outside, but in the mood he was in he felt like a bit of privacy and time alone with himself.
Desmond was almost asleep when the group next door got a little more rowdy. He figured that Stretch was back in the vicinity, but he waited another ten minutes for him to settle down and feel at ease before he emerged from the tent and approached him with the intention of buying a couple of grams of grass.
Stretch saw him coming and immediately got up and said, "Ah, here's my new customer. How are you?"
Desmond replied with a look reflecting how he was feeling and said, "I'll probably feel better with a little smoke in my veins."
"Sure, I can help you there. How much you want?"
"Umm, how's about a twenty?" he asked.
"That'll get you a couple of grams, Desmond. But only because you're my neighbor," he said in jest.
"That's plenty," he answered. "That'll probably last me weeks."
Desmond rifled through his pockets, found a small wad of notes and peeled off a twenty dollar bill. Stretch reached into his vest pocket and pulled out a little bag with a couple of grams in it. The exchange was made after Desmond had a quick look around, and both men smiled in agreement.
"Any time, Desmond," Stretch said as he turned to rejoin his group.
Desmond had the foresight to buy a packet of cigarette papers as he walked through town, so he rolled the first joint when he got back to his tent. He debated whether or not to wait until dark before he smoked it, but it was already late in the day, and he wasn't thinking about having any sort of clairvoyant perception anyhow, so he lit it up straight away and had a good puff.
What he had in mind was to feel an idea he had been developing about the simultaneous correlation between entangled bodies. He had already asked Google about whether or not bodies could be separated by time as well as space, which they could, so he concluded that bodies resonating at different pitches could be doing so perfectly simultaneously, just as surely as they could at different times.
In the case of octaves produced by a guitar string the different pitches share a resonant harmony simultaneously, so that the entire range of resonance is open to an observer at any moment of observation. A deeply bass note will share a relative equality with one which is infinitely higher.
He lay back with his head propped up on his backpack as his mind swirled through the implications he could feel resonating in harmony with this simple observation.
It was dark before long, and he began to feel a little more hopeful about his situation. Having a little smoke to puff made all the difference in the world to him. He could feel satisfied with his vision of the infinities implied by the cones and pyramids he was discovering.
He made up his mind to look for Marcus the following morning as a peaceful sleep enveloped him. As sleep overtook him, he felt the harmonies dissolve into a single point of light, and in that vanishing resonance he sensed again the whisper of sovereignity without a body.
Chapter 10
Desmond slept in for a couple of hours so that he wouldn't have to wait too long for Marcus to appear in the vicinity of the Allegheny station. He did a bit of restless tossing and turning as he lay there rehearsing what he was going to say to him when they met. The thin foam mat he slept on wasn't exactly made for this sort of treatment, so his hips took a bit of damage, but only added to what he had already suffered.
He got up and rolled up his tent and bedding at about a quarter to eight, made his way to the Medina food market on Kensington Avenue where he bought some sandwiches and fruit ready for a long wait at Allegheny station.
He sat in his usual spot where he could watch the daily drama unfolding in the vicinity of the station. He saw the Fentanyl addicts bending over as they do, and the Xylazine users scratching the ulcers on their arms and legs, and thought he was pretty stable and healthy by comparison. He shrugged a little at this thought; it was still very early in his street life, and anything could happen.
He watched the sun creep slowly across the sky, saw the shadow on the station entrance grow larger and larger, and thought about how late it was getting. He finished his sandwiches and fruit by about mid afternoon when, at last, Marcus was seen turning the corner onto E Allegheny Avenue.
He got up with a start, raced across the street and called out, "Hey, Marcus."
Marcus turned and saw him approaching, and said, "Hey, I was wondering when I would see you again. How's your little investigation of entanglement going?"
"It's been growing," he answered. "It's getting more and more comprehensive each time I have a little puff of the smoke."
Marcus gestured Desmond to join him over by the wall of the station where the two could sit comfortably and enjoy a little private conversation.
"I'm glad to hear it," he said. "What have you been seeing?" he asked.
"Well, I had a vision of a crown and sword symbol a few days ago," Desmond replied, and went on to explain to him what he had seen and felt.
Marcus's face bore a look of disbelief as he considered the progress Desmond appeared to be making.
"That's the Emperor you've seen. That's a very important indication of your ability to see," Marcus assured him.
Desmond went on to explain what he had been thinking about the simultaneity of the entire spectrum of resonance between entangled bodies, to which Marcus listened carefully.
"Yes, you've definitely had an encounter with the Emperor, Desmond. You should be congratulated. Not many get a glimpse of such things."
"The Emperor?" Desmond queried.
"The Emperor is a very subtle source of radiant energy on a scale comparable with atoms and subatomic particles. It is very sensitive to the entanglement of your mind with the more general mind of universal symbols, and information itself in a more general sense," he explained.
"It's not an Emperor in the worldly sense of nation states and rulers of such, although such rulers could be sensitive to this sense of Emperor.
"It's sovereignty without a body," he went on. "It's the identity of the individual in question, and the Governor of that person's destiny.
"And, there's only one more piece of the puzzle left for me to point out to you."
"Oh? What would that be?" Desmond asked.
Marcus caught his eye and raised his arm to point out into space. "It's that. Out there."
Desmond was a bit surprised, looked out there, and for a very brief moment saw perhaps as much as a couple of hundred light seconds of space out in the direction of the Sun.
Desmond was a little taken aback before exclaiming, "Wow, what was that?"
"It is your future, Desmond. It's the last thing you'll ever need to know."
Desmond looked overwhelmed as he considered what Marcus was saying.
"Don't worry, Desmond. It takes a lifetime of practice to develop that skill, so don't expect much from your new found perception."
The two sat there quietly as Desmond tried to understand what was happening to him.
"I'll leave you now. I'm sure you've got a lot to think about, but I think you'll work it out." And with that expression of confidence, Marcus got up and continued on his way down E Allegheny Avenue.
As Marcus walked away Desmond saw the crown and sword hovering in his mind, whispering 'sovereignty without a body', and he wondered if his own future was already dissolving into that radiant space.
Chapter 11
Desmond arrived back at E Cambria just as it was getting dark. He decided not to have a smoke, although he had plenty of it spare, but he thought that he was getting so much value out of those few moments of clairvoyance that it would be prudent of him to conserve it as much as possible.
His next consideration was of the vanishing flash of perception he had when Marcus got him to look at the sky. He felt strongly that he'd very much like to do it again, but try as he might, he couldn't break free of his innate belief that there really was nothing to see when he looked at the sky.
He spent a bit of time as the light was fading, looking at the horizon and trying to push his perception out there. He thought after a bit of futile effort that the perception had less to do with the eyes and more to do with what the mind believed about the sky. He concluded that his belief was merely a tired old habit which would take considerable determination to break.
The other thing of interest to him concerned the rather startling observation that at the center of the brain there was a sovereign being Marcus had called the Emperor. Common knowledge allowed him to picture an array of bodies within the brain, but he thought that what Marcus was talking about was much smaller than these, and something very subtle.
It was with some excitement that he rhetorically asked himself, could this be the being people call God? It kind of fits, he thought confidently, but he thought he'd like to ask Marcus about this and made up his mind to look for him again on the following day.
He set up his tent, and when he had his bedding rolled out, he rolled over and dreamed of the surprising things the day had brought to him.
Desmond woke up and collapsed his tent and bedding quite late again, and made his way to the Medina food store for some sandwiches and fruit in preparation for a long wait at Allegheny station.
He didn't have much of an expectation of the day; he figured it would be pretty much like the day before, waiting for Marcus to appear and watching the drama of so many broken lives carrying on beside the station as if everything was normal.
It was a warm but tedious day, he finished his provisions by mid afternoon, but Marcus had not yet appeared. He watched the shadow of the station cross Allegheny Avenue and touch the building he was sitting beside, but still no sign of him.
A tremor of anxiety began to stir within him. Would he have to give up and go home without seeing him, he asked himself. He began to rifle through all that he knew about Marcus, and wondered if it had all been a mirage. He had to concede that their relationship was unlike any other he had experienced, but could it be a hallucination?
The light began to fade along with the hope that the day had not been a complete waste of time. He struggled against his conflicting feelings, but eventually stood up and began the walk back to E Cambria feeling defeated and exhausted.
He sat in the dark with his back against the wall, not thinking about assembling his tent and bedding, but a puff of the smoke he thought could solve his inner conflict. He sat there paralysed for nearly half an hour before he rolled a joint and took in two deep drafts of smoke.
It was only a couple of minutes before he was sufficiently stoned. He sat there with his eyes closed for a minute longer, and there he was, a clairvoyant perception smiling warmly as if he had been waiting for Desmond to call.
"I've been waiting for you," Marcus said reassuringly.
Not believing what he was seeing Desmond asked, "But, how are you there?"
"You went looking for me, didn't you?" he answered. "Our minds are now entangled, so we can converse with each other.
"It may seem unlikely to you, but I'm a dreamer. I can occupy many different threads of dreaming simultaneously," he went on to explain. "And you happen to be one of those threads.
"The question you should be asking is, was I dreaming of you when we met at the station? And the answer is that reality is much more subtle than people usually take it to be. My waking moments come and go as required, but right now, I'm dreaming you."
Desmond found all of this so disturbing that contact was broken, and he opened his eyes still affected by the smoke, but his head spinning in confusion.
He sat there in the dark feeling that the world had become something he no longer recognised. He descended into a well of anxiety so deep that he automatically reached for something familiar, something he knew before he became homeless.
He stood up and frantically set up his tent and bedding roll, so that he could escape within, and search for some kind of asylum where he could grieve his loss in privacy.
The Emperor may have seemed godlike to him the night before, but that golden light now resonated with abject fear and horror.
Chapter 12
Desmond slept a little more fitfully than usual, tossing and turning uncomfortably on his thin foam mat, his mind attempting to displace the remnant of Marcus he found there.
He woke up early, rolled his tent and bedding carelessly, and made his way to the New Cambria cafe where he hoped to attach himself to some semblance of the world he now found slipping out of reach.
The cafe had only just opened, so Desmond was able to find an unrestricted table without waiting. He sat down nervously, and fumbled through the menu before the waitress arrived to take his order.
"Oh, hello, how are you today?" she asked.
"I'm struggling a bit this morning," he answered honestly. "I think I'm losing my mind."
She smiled knowingly. "I'm not surprised. It's pretty rough out there," she replied.
"I hope it hasn't taken too much of a toll on you," she added consolingly.
"I think I'll be okay, but I just don't recognize the world any more," he assured her.
She smiled again, but waited for him to select something from the menu.
It took a moment for him to realize that she was waiting for him.
"Oh, I'll have the cheese steak and coffee, please," he requested.
She disappeared in the direction of the kitchen while Desmond attempted to slip into the feeling of comfort he usually felt there.
It's just another day, he assured himself. I can get through this.
When he finished his steak and coffee, he paid the bill, emerged from the cafe, turned right and returned to the place opposite the Allegheny station entrance where he had spent most of the previous day. He had no provisions tucked away for later because he didn't plan on staying long. He just wanted to draw comfort from seeing how ordinary the scene was. In no way did it seem threatening to him on this warm and sunny morning.
"Ah, I see you've returned to your spot," said Marcus gently.
"Yeah, I thought you'd be back," he thought.
"Yeah, you can't get rid of me that easily," Marcus replied.
"But, how can you know what I'm thinking?" he asked.
"Think of me as actually you, but with the benefit of my experience," Marcus began.
"Remember what you told me about the simultaneity of the entire spectrum of a body's resonance? When our minds became entangled you began to enjoy the entire sum of my experience at every moment you think of me.
"It's not that complicated, Desmond. You'll understand more as we go along. But in the mean time don't worry about me. I'm not threatening you am I?"
Desmond pulled a face he hoped would express his doubt. Just make the most of it, he thought privately, there's nothing in my power I can resist him with for the time being.
He waited for another few minutes, during which time Marcus remained silent. He got up and walked aimlessly down Kensington Avenue with no purpose other than exhausting some of the nervous energy he was feeling.
He knew from some childish experimentation years ago that it was very difficult to stop the incessant mental babble going on in the mind, but he had observed quite seriously that listening carefully to what was going on around him was quite effective. He had the traffic on Kensington Avenue to listen to, and the El which thundered by at regular intervals, and so he began an attempt to defend his mind from Marcus's intrusion.
He also knew that apart from muscles surrounding blood vessels there were no other muscles in the brain, so that the effort to control the babble in his mind was virtually futile. Nevertheless, it was at least a consolation to make an effort and give it a try.
He made it nearly all the way into the city center before he stopped at the corner of Girard Avenue and N Front Street to rest and re-evaluate his situation.
Marcus sensed that Desmond had relaxed a little, so he asked him, by way of making conversation, "What did you want to see me about when you went looking for me yesterday?"
"Hmm, what?" he answered.
"You went looking for me yesterday. What did you have in mind?"
"Oh, I wanted to ask you if the Emperor was the being people call God," Desmond answered.
Marcus considered this for a moment, and said, "Not exactly. The Emperor will be that being from the point of view of the countless cells and atoms that are your body's constituents. But it will not be God from the point of view of people and society. That being is another matter entirely.
"They are very similar, however, so you're definitely onto something there, but there is a big difference in their domain."
Desmond found this proposition encouraging, and it lifted his mood a little. He wasn't one to look for spiritual consolation or anything, but he did find it amusing to know with some certainty the exact nature of that mystical being.
It was early in the afternoon, and he was about an hour and a half from Kensington, so he gathered up his belongings, threw his bedding roll over his shoulder, and started back in the direction of home.
Neither of them spoke much during the walk, Desmond practiced his listening, and Marcus was careful not to breach his boundaries.
As they walked in silence, Desmond wondered if silence was itself the Emperor's gift; sovereignty without a body, dissolving the babble into fragments of traffic and thunder.
Chapter 13
On the following day Desmond took care of a couple of practicalities, he moved his car to another location not far from Kensington Avenue, and he charged his phone at the Marshalls store in Feltonville. This took most of the morning, but he made it to his favorite spot opposite the Allegheny station by early in the afternoon.
He was beginning to get noticed there, some of the locals had begun to say hello to him. People were beginning to recognize him, and he was beginning to associate some of them with patterns of behavior he was becoming familiar with. There were the addicts with their symptomatic behaviors, but there were others like himself who just liked to hang around this central location in the Kensington community.
He saw old Cecil there on odd occasions, he heard him muttering something about Eternity today, but he wasn't expecting to see Marcus there, although he did keep a vigilant look out for him.
He had been practicing his listening technique throughout the morning, but Marcus had remained mostly silent anyhow, so the urgency of restraining his intrusive behavior was beginning to evaporate. He wasn't going to release the babble to unrestrained liberty either, he liked the feeling of listening to everything. It made him feel peaceful, but it also let him feel like he was in control.
It wasn't long before Desmond spontaneously began a conversation with him. "Did you have someone who told you about things when you were my age?" he asked.
"I was a little older than you when I started to learn about entanglement and the traffic of information," Marcus answered. "I learned mostly from books written by a sorcerer's apprentice, Carlos Castaneda, if you've ever heard of him."
Desmond admitted he had never heard of him.
"I was able to entangle with his mentor, don Juan, so I learned most of what I know directly from him," he admitted.
"Did this sorcerer tell you about God," Desmond asked.
"Ah, no. He was a little skeptical on that subject, as it happened."
"Do you believe in God?" Desmond persisted.
"Yes I do, but my beliefs are not consistent with any of the major religions, so you won't hear any of that sort of talk from me."
Desmond was relieved to hear that. He wasn't interested in it either, but this Emperor thing had inspired an interest in investigating the subject.
"Could you tell me about it, if it's not too complicated?" Desmond enquired.
"Yes, I can, and no, it's not too complicated," he began. "It all begins with irony. Do you know what irony is?"
"It's the comparison between opposites in a funny or sad kind of way, isn't it?" Desmond explained.
"That's close enough, for our purposes. Have you ever thought about how ironic is the relationship between Italy and Sicily?" he asked. "How Sicily can be associated with a large group of chronic offenders, and Italy with the kick of the Catholic Church's punitive sentiments?"
"Um, no. I never thought about it, to be honest. Italy has always been a quirk of nature, hasn't it?"
"Yes, it's not the first thing you'd think of, but it is ironic, don't you think?"
"Yeah, now that you mention it, it's very ironic," Desmond conceded.
"Well, I believe that everything is stitched together by irony, and that it's no accident that Sicily and Italy depict these things. On the contrary, they have been geoformed quite deliberately to express this comparison.
"I believe that the relationship between Sicily and Italy are the expression of a cosmic being who intends to judge our behavior," Marcus concluded.
"Wow, that's pretty severe, isn't it?"
"Yeah!" Marcus answered.
"So, where does this cosmic being live? Where can I find him or her?"
Marcus spread his arms in an expansive gesture. "Everywhere around you, Desmond. It's the Earth itself. Or perhaps more accurately, it's the entire Solar System. You've been unwittingly living with this being your entire life."
This conclusion hushed Desmond's questions. He sat there under the growing shadow of the Allegheny station, dumbfounded.
Desmond broke off the conversation at this point. He was both impressed and disturbed by what Marcus had to say, and it wasn't long before he thought, wow, now I have some really powerful bits of information.
He sat there for another hour until it was getting dark, feeling the implications of what he had heard wash over him again and again. He thought about having a smoke this evening, but remembered how the floral pattern he saw a week ago was divided by a threatening dagger, and thought he'd better be careful. He was obviously out of his depths, and thought that caution would by highly advised.
Chapter 14
It was dark by the time Desmond got back to E Cambria Street, but there was enough street light for him to assemble his tent and bedding.
He lay down with his head propped up on his backpack, and let his thoughts dip into the swirling storm of elements and factors involved in the production of an effect such as this. He glanced over the entire map of the world looking for other examples of contrived geoforming, and found plenty of them.
Now, Desmond was not a stupid person. Very quickly it became clear to him that there was a pattern of geoforming involving the modelling of continents and islands on organic imagery which suggested the existence of an integral planetary organism. But just as quickly he realized that the geomorphic result was powerful on a level way above the modesty of his practical circumstance as he lay there in his tent and ragged clothes and bedding.
He realized the political sensitivity of the predicament he now found himself in, and made up his mind to urgently lock it up, and keep it secret. He wasn't going to share this thinking with anyone.
He saw Marcus watching him in silence, but with a bemused smile, and a sympathy equal to the danger he was feeling. What he saw on his map of the Earth was a threat he had no way of defeating.
As he rolled over, weary from exhaustion, he pictured himself above the planet looking down on the figure of Italy, and dreamed of the phenomenal scale of time its geoforming must have embodied. He felt that he must be looking across many millions of years, an interval few people have to make room for in their modest lives.
When he woke up the next morning he lay there on his mat for half an hour, not wanting to face the world, and feeling highly conflicted with himself. What was he going to do with this thing, he asked himself over and over.
When he finally emerged from his tent he glanced over at the party next door, and saw Stretch looking back at him with a knowing smile. Did he already know what had happened to him, he asked himself. No, it couldn't be, could it?
What a strange life this homelessness was becoming, he thought. All he could come up with to meet the difficulty of his situation was to present an open mind, free from prejudice and expectation.
He rolled up his tent and bedding and made his way back to his spot opposite the Allegheny station, and some of the people he saw there seemed happy to see him. What, with one thing and another, it was enough to make him feel self-conscious, but it did lift his sodden spirits. People couldn't know what he was thinking, but he believed that they could see what he was feeling.
He sat there all morning watching the daily drama unfold and thinking about the geometry of the two empires, the one he had just discovered outside of himself, and the one he had already found within himself, but his thoughts kept returning to the image of that dagger.
He couldn't help thinking that the threat it seemed to pose to himself could be inverted, it could also be a measure of how much of a threat he posed to it. Either way, he thought, the whole situation seemed distinctly deadly to him, and he was not happy about it.
In a sense he found it vaguely flattering, to be Emperor of his inner domain. But in the other sense of being someone endowed on a global scale seemed flattering on a level he didn't want to know about. He was homeless. He didn't want that sort of attention, and he didn't want to get involved in a major global drama.
He began to feel he needed to reject something from his mind when something clicked into place.
If it was to be his destiny, he thought, he could be a major player in both domains, but a player who, in all modesty, preferred to remain incognito. He decided that he could tolerate being the Emperor of planet Earth, but in no way was he ever going to reveal his true identity to anyone. He was determined to keep this, his darkest secret.
His arrival at this conclusion lifted a great weight from off his shoulders, and he began to smile. Being Emperor incognito seemed acceptable to him, and something he could get used to, and perhaps even enjoy.
It was about midday, he was hungry and started to feel like he should be getting on with the day. The New Cambria would be open, so he made his way there feeling much better about himself.
The New Cambria was crowded and he had to wait twenty minutes for an unrestricted table to be available.
When he sat down and looked at the menu he decided he was feeling so good about himself that he chose something different, the grilled seafoods and coffee.
When the waitress arrived to take his order she told him, "Gosh, you're looking better today."
"Yeah, I've solved a little riddle in my life, so I'm no longer feeling such despair," he answered honestly, and let her know his choice from the menu.
He ate in silence, paid the bill with a generous tip, and made his way back to the Allegheny station.
He sat there for a few minutes framing a question he wanted to ask Marcus. He eventually put it together and asked, "How can something as old as the Italian peninsula reflect something that happened only in the last few hundred years?"
Marcus laughed, "Yeah, that's a beauty, isn't it."
Desmond shared a chuckle with him and asked, "Well, is there an answer to it?"
"Oh, yes. And it's not that complicated either. It's because of the simultaneity of the entire spectrum of cosmic resonance here on Earth. The person who modelled the shape of Italy would have been entangled with the cosmic dreamer, and the deeper cosmic register would have been a harmonic of his or her resonance."
"I can relate to the simultaneity of entangled bodies, but I'm struggling to grasp the sheer magnitude of it," Desmond replied.
Marcus smiled a little indulgently, "Everything in its own time, Desmond."
And with that Desmond relaxed and let himself enjoy the endless drama Kensington seemed to perform every time he looked at it.
Chapter 15
It was still early in the afternoon when Desmond had a yearning to get out of Kensington for a while. He had his bedding role with him, so he figured he could go just about any where covid restrictions were easing.
He thought about taking the car to Atlantic City where he could sit on the beach and watch the late afternoon light fade away, so he checked his phone for any travel restrictions in New Jersey. Pennsylvania seemed to have a low level infection rate, so the official advice seemed to be that travel to New Jersey would not be a problem.
He sat against the wall for a little longer thinking about the fuel cost, and time it would take to get to there. He already knew that looking across the east horizon into the space beyond was his ulterior motive, and he glanced at the sky to see if he could retrieve that vision Marcus had shown him the day before. He couldn't, but he knew that it was beckoning him to try.
It didn't take him long to find the car and head out on Aramingo Avenue to the turnpike where he could turn east onto White Horse Pike all the way to the coast. He stopped at a Sunoco for enough fuel for the round trip, about twenty-five dollars, so it was late afternoon by the time he parked at Chicken Bone Beach in Atlantic City, and took in the freshness of a warm Atlantic breeze.
He grabbed his bedding roll and backpack because he wanted to have a smoke on the beach and knew he would not be in a fit state to drive back to Philly that night. There was still plenty of light, but it was softening and he looked to the west to see that the Sun was already setting.
He sat comfortably looking out to sea and began to mentally toy with the horizon. He couldn't see the volume of space Marcus had shown him, but he could definitely feel something out there. It was a sense of something completely different from the world he had known all these years.
"Have a little smoke, Desmond," Markus beckoned teasingly.
Desmond didn't need any encouragement, and rolled up a small amount of grass.
When he began to feel affected by it Marcus suggested he look to the west where the Sun was no longer visible.
"This is the little show you should be looking at," he said.
"Picture a really huge bubble of energy growing in front of you, and passing this world at a phenomenal rate.
"Reach out with the palm of your hand and touch the surface of the bubble. Can you feel it?" he asked.
"I can't feel anything," Desmond replied honestly, "but I can definitely recognize the symbolism of the gesture.
"It's an expression of the unity of Earth and sky, isn't it?"
"Yes, that's very perceptive of you," Marcus answered.
Desmond sat quietly looking all around him while it got quite dark, before he spoke. "There's something else here, isn't there? It's a long forgotten memory of a dream I once had, I think."
"That's the memory of a ghost," Marcus answered. "Death has a way of making an impression on the living. It's always a memory of dreaming the timeless dimensions of Earth. It's not surprising that you're familiar with it."
Desmond rolled out his bedding in preparation for sleeping. He thought that putting up his tent would probably attract the wrong sort of attention, but no one would mind a stranger sleeping on the beach.
As he rolled over he thought that the sand was much more forgiving than the concrete he had been sleeping on. It wasn't long before a dreamless sleep overcame him.
Chapter 16
Desmond woke up quite early next morning feeling hungry, in need of hot coffee, and with a residual echo of the horizon. He stood up, and got to work getting everything ready for his return to Kensington.
He had just finished rolling up his bedding, and as he rose to go back to the car he glanced indiscriminately at the east horizon and caught a surprising glimpse of what Marcus had shown him before. But this time it was combined with an image of his reaction, and he didn't like what he saw. He saw etched in wrinkles on his face an expression of pure incapacitating horror.
He did a double take involuntarily, but what he saw this time was not a glimpse of his expression, but Marcus grinning from the shadows with a menacingly mischievous delight.
He stopped and stood there for a moment wondering what to make of this, feeling both a grave concern and resentment for the intrusion of one whom he knew could no longer be evicted. It was blind trust that he had surrendered to Marcus only a matter of days ago, so the worthiness of that trust was still an open question.
Was it an offence he could ignore, or should he express a futile outrage which could only be directed at some part of himself? He felt paralysed before he could even make a decision. With a teeth clenching resolve he promptly decided that little glimpses of the vastness beyond the clouds were worth the payment of a little humility.
He threw his bedding roll onto the back seat of the car, and went looking for somewhere he could eat breakfast and drink coffee. He was in the tourist part of town not far from the Boardwalk, so he found a little cafe without much effort.
Nevertheless, after food and drink his drive back to Kensington was overshadowed by a simmering resentment. It wasn't the first time he had felt this way with Marcus, but he wasn't so proud that he couldn't make concessions to the novelty of his predicament.
He thought, the sky could be a truly horrifying knowledge, in which case Marcus' presence could be a source of comfort. He swallowed his pride, and as he got closer to Kensington, felt a vigorous confidence in how the situation was unfolding.
By the time he got back to his spot at Allegheny station he had made up his mind to try looking at the next day's sunrise from a position with a little height. He climbed the steps up to the station platform and saw that its height was perfectly sufficient to get a good view of tomorrow's sunrise
He spent the rest of the day brooding, practicing his listening, and entertaining a certain skepticism he could always level at Marcus.
Chapter 17
Desmond was a reliable early riser, so he didn't have to make a plan to get up early when he rolled over in bed that night. He slept well, free from any dreams of significance.
It was well into dawn when he woke up. He collapsed his tent, rolled it up, and tied his bundle with plenty of time to get to the station.
There were few people milling about the entrance when he arrived, so he went up the stairs and proceeded to the south end of the platform where he would be less likely to be disturbed during his attempt at gazing.
He stood there in anticipation, watching the eastern horizon while the Earth turned into sunrise. It felt like he had been waiting a long time before the sunlight finally made him avert his eyes, and he saw what Marcus had told him the night before, the huge transparent bubble of energy blossoming in front of him.
He saw it with his mind, but what he saw with his eyes was a very subtle rhythmic presence, like a breeze blowing from the east. It reminded him of a photograph he had once seen of the Emperor Hadrian's mausoleum in Rome. It made him think of all the ages it had stood there waiting each morning for a glimpse of the first light of dawn. It was a picture of all time just dreaming of eternity.
Marcus murmured his recognition of Desmond's arrival at this point in his perception. "I think you're about ready to stop the world," he said.
Desmond wasn't impressed. He was practicing his skepticism.
"I think you'll tip over the edge next time you smoke a pinch of your grass," he concluded.
"I can't tell where your hostility is coming from this morning, Desmond," he added. "But trust me. Everything that happens between us is just geometry. There is only the geometry of knowledge here, and that is beyond the realm of disagreement."
Desmond had to concede. Marcus had been right about most things. He could see a future where forgiving Marcus would be possible. He couldn't help feeling like a petulant child.
"A smoke of grass, you say?" he answered. "I can't say when that might be. I'm feeling like taking it easy with that stuff at the moment. It's pretty awesome for me."
"Yeah. It's awesome all right," Marcus replied.
Desmond turned from his view of the east and made his way to the station exit.
Chapter 18
Desmond resumed his position opposite the station entrance on Allegheny Avenue. He sat there for a long while combing through his memory of the last couple of weeks since his eviction. Mostly, he thought about how the continents of Earth portray the figure of a planetary being, and how the Solar System must also be a solar being. He thought about how awesome a knowledge of this had become for him.
A couple of weeks ago, he thought, he was a nobody, really. But now he felt like he was a player. He had a stake in the world, and that he should do something about it. It was awesome all right, but in a heavy burdensome way that induced a deep sense of sobriety in him.
He had been sitting there for a couple of hours, the Sun had risen in the sky, and there was now a multitude milling around the station entrance. Someone had brought a loud boombox with them that was playing some pretty funky dance music.
It was against this backdrop that Desmond saw old Cecil make an appearance. He was uncharacteristically mute this morning and their eyes locked for a long penetrating gaze at each other. He seemed to make a gesture at the Sun, and Desmond looked in that direction and back at Cecil, but he was gone.
Desmond sat there aroused but dumbfounded. He felt like the world was calling him to action, but all he could think of doing was leaving his bedding roll and backpack by the wall, and dancing to the rhythm of the music.
It was almost involuntary. It wasn't the first time he had danced in public. He had been to nightclubs many times in the past and had a strong sense of rhythm.
So, he got up and danced.
It was a tentative motion at first. His legs bent and lifted in time with the music, and his arms pointed, one in the direction of the Sun, and the other in the opposite direction at the Earth. But it wasn't long before he lost all inhibition, and with the intensity of feeling in his body, his movements made a perfectly symbolic sense to him.
People stopped and watched his movements momentarily, but in the chaos of life on the streets of Kensington what they saw was something very normal to them.
Eventually the boombox disappeared and Desmond stopped his gyrations, but the feeling of pointing at the Sun and Earth remained strong and meaningful to him. He persisted with this pointing behaviour but his arms grew weary and he got hungry, so he stopped, sat down and thought about visiting the Madina food market for some well earned lunch.
After filling up on sandwiches and a couple of iced coffees he returned to his spot opposite the station, and noticed that some of the locals were beginning to show him due respect and deference. He felt like the symbolism of his morning performance was meaningful to them and resonated deeply.
Later, as the afternoon drew on he returned to E Cambria and set up his tent. The day's excitement had taken a toll on him emotionally, he was weary, and just wanted to roll over and sleep.
As he lay there in a semi-conscious state he glanced in the direction of Marcus who said, "Don't look at me. I'm keeping my mouth shut."
Desmond smiled with good humour, and dropped quickly out of consciousness.
Chapter 19
Over the next three years or so, Desmond Sharpton continued to make an exemplary impression on the homeless community of Kensington, Philadelphia. Throughout this time he remained determined to adopt an unassumingly modest role in the community, and was known for his consistency and reliability.
He smoked cannabis infrequently, but never got involved with any of the more dangerous drugs like Fentanyl or Xylazine.
It wasn't long before he stopped the world, as Marcus would have put it, and became so familiar with where in his feelings he could find this ability, that he more or less lived a continuous occupancy of it. It's a very subtle feeling he would say of it, unmistakable when eventually you find it, but one which requires an inward dwelling intention which is why he never became more famous.
He managed to survive the Philadelphia covid infection spike of 2022, but was caught by it in 2023 when the infection rate was fairly low.
As he lay on a gurney in a hospital corridor, drowning in his own mucous, he felt inspired by the accumulated experience of the previous few years. He felt no fear of either death or judgement because he had made these his companions quite early in the piece.
When hospital staff went through his belongs after he died, they found the packet of face masks he had bought when he bought the tent some three years earlier.
It was disheartening for them. The packet looked like it had never been opened.