The bullets tattooed themselves into the left side of the young man’s thin torso, the floor on which he had stood five seconds previously now seeming harder when abruptly laid out against his entire body. Surrounded in darkness, the silence of the room echoed around his being, pushing the images of faces he once knew closer into sight and more into the realm of reality. “What is it really like on Earth? It can’t be so much like you say it is here,” Judah’s curious voice rang softly through the air of the unusually hot spring day and directly into his ears drums, the tone of voice the Hyron spoke with insinuating that he was only asking for conformation of what he already knew. Backside to the ground, a chunk of Judah’s hair lay sweaty in front of his sharp brow, the scorching heat of the sun taking its toll on both of the men that afternoon in the garden. Beside him, Calder, the latest wannabe Hyron, laid in his own hallucinatory-type state. Eyes dilated, his long threaded hair covering the dirt surface below him eloquently. Focusing, not on the answer to Judah’s question, but the form in which his words took.
“What is the exact of opposite of here?” was all the younger man could muster, the effects of the mushroom already starting to take its place on his psyche.
“Earth? You know I’ve never been there, Calder. I can only make inferences based on what I have found and what you have told me,” Judah said with an air of effortless intelligence seemingly designed with the purpose of intimidating the other man. “Do they really all have the same physical attributes as us? Are they internally the same as well? You’re always so vague when you describe these things you know, I can never tell the actual truth from what you wish was the truth.”
“I actually prefer the idea that my entire life was just a lie, I’ve never been very fond of the truth,” Calder admitted, seemingly unaffected by anything that he was asked. Judah rolled his eyes helplessly and laid back down on the dirt surface with a faint thump, his efforts to pry a logical answer out of his friend proving to be a failure once again. It wasn’t that he was unable to tell the truth, it was just that keeping it all inside was much more preferable. He had already told Judah what he could; he didn’t know what else the scientist could want. Physically, the Hyrons could be considered identical to humans. They both, after all, had different colors of skin, facial features, and sizes and shapes. They also all had legs, arms, torsos, heads, and other similar body parts. In fact, Calder was quite sure that if he wouldn’t have told them, the Hyrons would have easily believed him to be one of them opposed to the human he knew he really was.
Tracing constantly changing figures in the clouds, Calder spoke in the rhythm by which his hallucinations were occurring. Sun turning blue, sky turning yellow, enveloping him inside each word his lips formed, “They look exactly like the people here. If I wouldn’t have told you, you’d still think I was from Psy opposed to Earth,” Judah nodded in agreement as Calder continued; his words sounding less important then he intended them to be. “I can’t say Psy’s environment is much different from Earth’s,” he tried to sound as intelligent and significant as the man beside him. Perhaps that was one of the major differences between Earth and Psy, the inhabitants of each world spoke differently then the other. Of course the people of Psy only spoke English as with Earth, there were multiple languages. The younger man continued, “The only thing that is different on Psy is the people and how they treat you.”
“How so?”
“Everyone on Earth only cares about themselves, whether they hurt people on their way through life is not a factor,” he said with bitterness, demons from his home planet following close behind his words. He knew it was all crap, but far-stretched truth was more enjoyable.
“They can’t all be like that, especially if they’re almost the exact same as us,” the other man reasoned. “There’s good and bad in everyone, perhaps you just never got to know anyone enough to see their good?”
“Sometimes the bad overrides the good.”
“But not all the time.”
Silence.
“You said there is government in—erm, what do you call it,” the foreign being trailed off in search for the word he wanted. “County, I think it is?”
“Country,” Calder corrected. “A county is a land area of local government inside a state or territory inside a country.”
“I don’t understand.”
Calder let out a soft laugh. It struck him as odd that Judah was one of the most intelligent Hyrons on Psy who could understand the most complicated of scientific theories but yet when faced with simple geographical knowledge, he had no idea what you were going on about. At least for once Calder could out smart him. “Don’t worry, that’s not much important. But yes, there’s government in my country, the United States. There’s government in most every part of the world, some forms worse then others.”
“What’s the worst?”
Your form of government, Calder wanted to say but instead he started with, “Dictatorship which is when one person has full control over the government and the people under its rule.”
“Sounds familiar,” Judah said, a bitter smirk forming across his face. Calder looked down at the ground and nodded in silent agreement, remembering that no matter what he said any form of “bad” government would offend Judah who had probably experienced just about every negative form of legislation in existence. It was only twenty years ago, after all, that the Hyrons had been fighting for their right to live against a vicious Hitler-esque tyrant and his large group of followers who wanted to knock out the rapidly growing group of anarchists in Psy, Judah and his own group of followers included.
Calder sighed anxiously before continuing. “The second worst form is,” he trailed off for a moment, unsure how to define the government without offending the Hyron listening eagerly to what little knowledge he could actually share. He sighed again and turned himself to face Judah in shame, “Anarchy.” The other mans eyes landed on Calder’s now dead serious expression, “It’s when there is no government.”
There was silence for a while before a quite and solemn, “I expected that,” followed with nothing but a creak from the rusty handle of a blue bucket filled to the top with the red and white vibrancy of the powerful fungi. The other man stood and turned towards the house.
“Judah wait,” Calder reached out a hand to stop him. “It’s really much worse there then it is here. You don’t understand, Psy’s anarchy is more controlled then the ones that exist on Earth. Anarchies there are usually associated with violent acts and—”
“And war. Don’t tell me you believe we’ve never had any wars here since Shuzu was in power,” he interrupted.
“Why would I believe that? All I’m saying is that my planet has been subjected to more violence and destruction then Psy has. Do you need examples? I have plenty and while I can’t prove any of them to you, you have no idea how peaceful your planet seems to me whether you believe it or not. The anarchy here and the ones on Earth are two completely different things. They might as well have separate names and definitions.”
Judah scoffed in disbelief, “That doesn’t change the fact that you don’t agree with it either way.”
“I nev—”
“You didn’t have to,” he interrupted again, more bitterly this time, before abruptly walking back inside the large brick house, a slam of the screen door being his last input on the conversation.
His broad jaw-line was digging itself harshly into the floor beneath him, a warm and metallic flavored liquid filling his mouth in an uncontrollable manner. Through the searing pain and flashing neon colors of the beckoning dead, the slits between his heavy eyelids revealed the face of his assassin, their queer face looming above. The assassin’s eyebrows, menacingly arched, were plastered on above his reddened dark eyes, each pupil masked with the wrath of Lucifer. He smiled in a satisfactory and malicious manner that held the faint reminiscence of a smile Judas would have exchanged with Brutus in Hell. It terrified the younger man deeply and for once, he was not afraid to admit it.
The assassin turned, “I knew you wouldn’t disappoint. What a shame it is that he has to die knowing that the one he trusted the most was the one that betrayed him the most.” The other man strained his neck around desperately, trying to find the face of the stranger to which his assassin spoke but instead yelped pathetically in pain when he felt the cruelty of a sharp boot force itself into his rib cage. “You disgustingly idiotic, human. Don’t you know there is no use to move when you soon will be dead?”
“Thank you,” Calder said into the microphone for one final time as he waved and smiled to the crowd of the Hyrons surrounding him eagerly, the hard wind stinging his face. It’d gotten colder on Psy, just as it did every year on Earth and soon winter would be approaching as it was in New York and all the other eastern-coast states. “I cannot be more grateful of the support you have all given me these past few months and I’d like to close by saying, at the risk of sounding too cliché,” he stopped for a moment. Who was he kidding? They didn’t even know what cliché meant. He continued, “I couldn’t have done any of this without all of you.”
Cheers, apparently all from people who could not see how horrendous of a speech giver the man actually was. Weren’t leaders supposed to be fantastic at giving speeches, he wondered. After all, that is what helped Hitler and the Nazis rise to power. They must not have gotten that memo on Psy but then again, they never really had much of a leader to begin with.
Bundled in a large and fluffy coat, Calder walked down the steps of the podium with care, afraid that if he turned or jolted the wrong way the gigantic size of his coat would bring him tumbling downwards embarrassingly. As he entered, he discovered that the backstage area, contrary to his expectations, was small and dark, almost eerily resembling some kind of old medieval dungeon used for the torturing of others. There were two grime-covered tables, one for food and beverages, and the other to hold various objects that belonged to the designated stage crew and Calder’s assistants and friends. He shuddered with disgust as he watched one of the security guards obliviously picking up a mushroom from the dust-covered table and eating it. There were no words to describe the stomach-churning view.
“Judah, how do you expect him to keep this up if he has no idea what’s going on beyond the speeches and town hall meetings?”
“How do you call yourself a supporter when you consistently doubt his motives?”
He took his eyes off the security guard in interest for a moment, his hazy vision directing him to the far left side of the table where the two owners of the familiar voices stood face-to-face in competition. He slipped himself silently and quickly behind the black curtain.
“I know it seems like he’s an armature but he really knows what he’s doing. Don’t you think this is a good idea?” Judah asked, visibly shaken with anger. “I’ve told you for years, ever since our first year after Shuzu’s regime fell, that we can’t be a completely lawless society. It just doesn’t work out. If you’ve ever listened to the stories Calder has told about his home planet and the weak government systems there, you’d understand.”
“How would I understand?” Logan, Judah’s assistant and perhaps one of Calder’s supposed largest followers, shot back. His eyebrows were arched sharply and on his face laid his trademark smirk, the one that made him so likable and charming but at the same time manipulative and threateningly clever. Calder felt his stomach churn for the second time in the last two minutes, only this time out of nerves. “Tell me, please, how I trust someone who doesn’t seem to know truth from lies himself? Who doesn’t know reality from his own demented illusions? How do I, or we for that matter, know that the weak government systems and terrible violence on Earth really exist?”
Judah stayed silent for a moment, his well-hidden friend kicking at the dirt below his feet anxiously. The numbers had been growing; almost one thousand and six-hundred to three thousand and two-hundred. He didn’t understand how Logan could be so skeptical of him; he was supposed to be a supporter after all. Sure, Calder was a human and they were Hyrons but that didn’t mean he cared for them any less or anymore then he cared for the people on Earth. Truth be told, he was fairly sure that he cared for them more then humans and would have gladly stayed on Psy for the rest of his life. But he was sick, he knew it. He believed in false realities, like Logan had stated and he didn’t know the truth from lies a lot of the time but did that make his changes all that bad? He didn’t know. He didn’t know why everything had to turn against him when it never turned against others.
The scientist finally spoke, “Don’t you think this is a little hypocritical considering that you were the one to suggest this in the first place? Especially when you yourself followed Shuzu for years and did everything he asked like a servant. Face it, you never wanted the anarchy but now that it is virtually gone, you are crying for it to rise to dominance once aga—”
Logan looked to where the other man’s gaze fell, both suddenly startled at the appearance of their new leader. Judah raised a friendly smile.
Calder smiled back, pretending that he hadn’t heard any contents of the previous heated conversation between his two accomplices. “Logan, Judah. What’s wrong?”
The short-haired man rested his eyes nervously onto the side of his opponents face, “Oh nothing really, Judah and I were just in a slight argument about something you said in your speech. Nothing major.”
“Oh, er, anything I could do to help?” he twiddled his frozen thumbs awkwardly.
“No, we’re—well, actually could you go have someone pick me a few fresh agarics, I hate eating the ones that have been tainted with everyone else’s germs,” Logan replied smoothly, pointing to the bowl of the dirty, red and white colored mushrooms. He knew full well just as Calder and Judah did that no one on Psy ever grew ill due to the spreading of germs.
The other man nodded, “Oh, sure. They do look a bit nasty, don’t they?” It felt odd, he noted, knowing that well-know knowledge from Earth was just used against him by someone who had learned said knowledge from none other then him. Regardless, he hesitantly walked away from the two in search for someone who could fulfill Logan’s “needs”.
He did know it was stupid, he knew was dying. There’d been a war, it was his fault. There’d been a revolution first, his fault as well but perhaps a fault more positive then negative before the full effect took place. Hundreds killed already. Maybe a hundred more had died today, he didn’t know because what did he know? He was only an idiotic human bleeding to death in the home of a Hyron, not even his own kind after all. He was only an idiotic human who’d tried to bring a crazy mixture of a republic and democracy to an anarchy after all. He was only Calder Hartley, the weirdo loner who lived on 52nd Street in New York City for more then eight years of his life entirely alone, only braving the day-light to visit the psych ward down the street every now and then. And what did they want? They’d wanted him dead and he didn’t see it coming. He wanted to laugh at the thought of the outrage this would bring amongst human-kind if they ever found out. Then everyone in the world literally would hate him. He even hated himself at this moment.
“You’ve done enough damage already, just please let me try to help him! H-He’s dying, can’t you see?”
His assassin still stood high and mighty above him, but this was the first time he had been given any complete indication that another person was present in the room. The assassin, his voice and face still familiar, everything still a blur, loudly spoke again, “I haven’t done any damage. The gun lays used beside your feet.” Calder heard what he assumed to be the gun skidding across the floor as if someone had kicked it. “Those nasty bullets stuck in his arm, as much as I’d like to claim them as my handy-work, were the results of your hand pulling the trigger and your hand only.” Despite his eyes being closed now with weakness, he could still feel the villainous smile forming at the edges of the assassin’s face. Or was the assassin really the assassin?
The other voice, shaky and distressed, cried out in anger, “It was you who put me up to it Logan and you who made the majority of his most devoted disciples turn against him!”
Logan, that’s who the face and voice belonged to but who put who up to what? Logan put him, the distressed man, up to killing him but why? He couldn’t remember, everything was getting fuzzier and his mind kept registering blanks.
“Always the easily manipulated one, aren’t you Judah? That’s why I chose you, you know.”
Judah. But Judah had been his friend. He had trusted Judah. None of this made sense. Outside, he heard the cries of war fading, fading into the sounds of busy traffic on a Friday night. The room fading from brown into white, their faces fading into stark nothingness.
The garden was beautiful and far surpassed any garden he had ever seen on Earth. Everywhere within his line of vision laid a rich, lush bright green spotted with the vast colors of the blooming flowers and fungi, all beyond foreign to his four humanly senses. They had the strangest names too, none of which he could pronounce. Walking down the dirt path, he was lead deeper and deeper into the endless sea of greens belonging in its entirety to Judah who he had been sharing a house with for the last two weeks since his arrival on Psy.
As it was mentioned, he couldn’t really remember how he had arrived. He wasn’t an astronaut or astronomer. He was only a writer and not even a notable one at that, not to mention a writer that hated science and math. He didn’t think there had been an apocalypse on Earth because he was sure he would remember that and despite not really knowing them fully yet, he oddly trusted the Hyrons and believed them when they said they had no clue as to how his arrival came about either. As they told it, they found him sleeping in the town center one early morning, no bruises or other signs of physical injuries. From there, he awoke and soon learned of where he really was and they learned that he wasn’t one of them.
“But you’ve had to of gotten here somehow,” Judah argued as they walked through the garden, the sun beating down upon the tops of their heads. “People don’t just go to sleep one night and wake the next morning on a different planet, Calder.”
“Really? I didn’t know that,” he remarked sarcastically. The other man frowned, unamused. “You act like I know any more then you do. I’ve never even met an astronaut or astronomer in my life except in fifth grade for career week and that doesn’t account for much obviously. I’ve never even been a fan of science. I don’t care if NASA can land on the moon, Mars, or anywhere else for that matter.”
“Well that wouldn’t matter if my theory is right, and this is or Earth is a parallel universe, Calder.”
“Oh not with that again, Judah. How would I have even managed to get to a parallel universe? It seems just as unlikely as the neighbor thinking that I subconsciously flew here from Earth without the usage of a spaceship.”
They stopped walking for a moment as Judah leaned down by a patch of deep red mushrooms spotted with flakes of a white colored pollen. Calder had seen them before on the planet, in fact everyday since his arrival but he had never been told what they exactly were and why they were of such importance to the Hyrons, so much that it was virtually all they ate. They reminded him of something taken out of Alice in Wonderland and he wondered for a moment if they would make Alice larger or smaller.
“Quick, hand me the bucket. These are perfect,” the man said, picking a fairly large mushroom up from the ground and taking in its scent longingly.
Calder handed him the bucket hurriedly, “What are they anyhow?”
“Fly agarics,” Judah replied, throwing a few of the mushrooms into the bucket with precision. “They’re a very poisonous fungi generally used as an ingredient when cooking. I’ve also been told that they effectively kill various insects. Hyrons have been studying them for years.”
The younger man frowned with confusion, having seen a lot of the Hyrons eat the supposedly poisonous fungi, Judah included.
“When cooked, the poison is no longer existent and you can eat as many of the mushrooms as you’d like. Even when they are eaten raw, they generally are not harmful you just have to be very careful about how many you eat,” Judah paused for a moment, rethinking his last statement. “Well, a human has never eaten one before as far as I’m aware, so I have no idea how they would affect you personally but you get my point.”
Calder picked one up out of the bucket and examined it curiously. It looked like any other mushroom from Earth with the exception of being slightly more colorful and much more appealing. “What’s the purpose of eating them raw if you could just eat them cooked without the risk of becoming ill?”
“Ah, I suspected that would be your next question. The fly agaric has one of the most curious and significant impacts on Hyron perception and consciousness. It’s primarily known for its hallucinogenic properties which is why we eat it raw because when cooked, these properties like with the poison—”
“Are no longer present,” the other man finished confidently, being reminded slightly of the infamous mind-altering mushrooms found on his own planet. He couldn’t be sure, but somehow he didn’t think they were the same thing. Although he had never experienced any kind of drug, he knew that the mushrooms on Earth did not look anything like the ones on Psy. “J-Judah,” he interrupted slightly as the scientist below him picked through the patch of fungi like an eager child unwrapping Christmas presents. “Do you think something like this could be found on Earth? W-We, well I think we have something similar but not quite.”
Judah nodded as he listened, taking a moment to think before finally speaking, “I have no idea honestly but it wouldn’t surprise me. The atmosphere and climate on this planet, as I’m assuming, is almost exactly the same as the one on yours considering that if it wasn’t, you’d probably be dead. You said that the environment is almost exactly the same as well, am I correct?”
Calder nodded.
“Then I don’t see why it wouldn’t be possible to find fly agarics on Earth. Maybe they are only very rare on your planet and that is why you have never seen them before,” he suggested, examining a bruised agaric briefly before deciding it was bad and throwing it back onto the ground. He stopped what he was doing for a moment and flashed his friend a very serious stare, one that was long enough to make the other man slightly anxious in anticipation of what was to come. He picked up an agaric and placed it between both of them, “Would you do me a very large favor, Calder?”
“Depends—I guess,” he replied in a slow and unsure manner. “What’s the favor?”
His mother had always told him not to take anything from a stranger, especially something that was edible. He had now gone way beyond breaking that rule and he was sure that as he swallowed his third agaric, his mother was patiently waiting for him in heaven where he would, upon immediate arrival, be severely paddled and then grounded for three weeks. But then again, Judah wasn’t really a stranger and he sure that he wouldn’t let anything bad happen; however, even that didn’t matter because if Calder hadn’t broken the first rule, he’d broken the second. “Never eat or drink anything that you don’t know what’s in it or what it is,” she used to advise. So, either way he looked at it, he was still in big trouble if he died.
After swallowing his final mushroom, the fourth one, his hallucinations had immediately begun to take place and he took notice quickly of the changing shapes and colors forming in front of his eyes. He felt a hand rest itself upon his shoulder and he tensed for a moment. “Just try and relax. If you get too worked up over it, you’ll give yourself a panic attack and cause bad hallucinations for yourself,” Judah said supportively, slurring his language slightly as he started to become lost in his own trip, the grass suddenly seeming to be of significant interest to the Hyron.
Nodding despite himself, Calder did, or at least tried to do, as his friend said, actually enjoying the strange and unfamiliar show taking place in front of his very eyes. There were colors and shapes and the wind which he could now see instead of just hear and feel. It didn’t have a color, not really, but it wasn’t translucent either. It was just—he couldn’t describe it but he knew it was there, more then ever before. Like God or some other mystical creature that’s speculated but never proven.
As he stood up, he found himself intrigued by the oddest things that ordinarily would seem dull and meaningless. Directly in front of his eyes stood a tall tree, one that had been there forever or at least since he had been on Psy but it still looked old. Maybe over a hundred, he thought as he approached the gangly being. It was fascinating to Calder, how the yellow leaves connected with the wind and faded into blue as he grew closer with each step. The trunk, notably thick and bright red, aged with the orange wrinkles and creases marking every inch of its abused surface effortlessly. And just as Timothy had said, it was all viewed like it might have been in the stage of infancy when everything was new and unfamiliar and every day was a true adventure.
