Dr. Yes and the Mystery of the Mission (Pt9)
11 Sep 2010
INTO my heart on air that kills
From yon far country blows: What are those blue remembered hills,
What spires, what farms are those?
That is the land of lost content, I see it shining plain,
The happy highways where I went
And cannot come again.
--A.E. Houseman, A Shropshire Lad
DR. YES PEERED DOWN AT the dubloon in his hand and remembered his conversation with Dr. Strayker
"Surely Doctor yes, you recognize the emblem of what we today call Halley's Comet?"
The comet emblem--simple and obvious. Yes turned the coin over. A crude snake with wings.
"the winged god of ancient Mexico Quetzalcoatl?."
Yes looked up and saw a streak of light above Bernal Hill. A bright lozenge of light. His father's face was superimposed over it.
"This is a time mirage. It shows the comet you have been thinking about. The singular moment is upon you now, son. Don the garb and enter the streets of the Mission. The final confrontation is about to begin.
...
Phillip Soleman leaned back in his designer office chair and peered out across his penthouse window view at the spread of the city beneath him. Distant twinkling lights atop the towers on distant hills were joined by those of jets from SFO.
"We can slow down the surreptitious torching of these janky Mission houses now, Nigel." There are enough places for us to renovate and it's time for us to really start turning the Mission into a luxury area." He pushed aside a stack of papers a foot high.
"The complaints are really coming in fast and thick now. Stacks of them. From every do-gooder non-profit in town. I'm supposed to read them but I have two interns that do nothing else all day but shred them. But it's fine. We have the backing we need from the highest paid people in Sacramento. The Mission is coming along nicely now as a corridor gateway, all the way down to San Jose. Those techno geeks love their spice up here in the city, and we're able to give them the clean living of Silicon Valley right here. Clean. Clean in every sense. Two Lexuses in the garage clean. Latest model Jaguar clean. Six thousand dollar suit clean. You get the picture.
"Its going much faster than we expected. We should have cleared the area of skanks by January 2019 and we can start to roll out the serious investment clientele late next year. The locals are totally getting the message. A hundred and forty thousand a year in income or get the fuck outta dodge. This whole area is going luxury and it's a foregone conclusion. Even from people here who thought they could, ha ha - resist!"
"Excellent. Well keep up the good work. And that bonus is as good as yours. You've earned it Nigel. Let's meet in the Marina for that cocktail later tonight?"
As he put the phone down on the receiver, he looked up in time to see the window shatter--a microsecond before his own head was turned into a pulpy four-sectioned object, like a medium sized watermelon hit with a fifty pound sledghammer at full force.
The sniper looked up from his perch atop the building opposite and saw the comet.
"Sí su tiempo. ¡Su finalmente tiempo!" he whispered.
...
For Sharon Paillard, the whole business of her former lecturer's depression and breakdown had taken its toll. But her film was finished now and was already garnering her a lot of attention. Her cell phone rang every five minutes with festival organizers and distributors wanting her time and her signature. Dr. Yes had left a rather cryptic message on her voicemail service, something about how the time had arrived and to look out for some major action from above. She would ignore the premiere of her film tonight at the Roxy and be with him, she decided.
Now the serpent flew low over the sierras, picked up a headwind and dove down, down, down to the valley known as Donner Pass. It picked up the scent of the Donner party (who ate each other and thus rang the first true bell of destiny for the Europeans in the west).
At NORAD air defense command center deep within the mountain near Truckee, the signals blazed across the dozens of screens that peppered the cavernous space. Uniformed men and women started running and scrambling to headsets, desperately making calls, scanning screens. Over the speakers the voices rang out:
"NORAD report - URGENT - aircraft flying rapidly within Zulu sector Zulu Northern California Corridor. Scramble Operation Noble Eagle - recommend urgent fighter aircraft Combat Air Patrols (CAP) under command of First Air Force and Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS) E-3 Sentry aircraft under command of the 552nd Air Control Wing.
"Be advised at this time urgent presidential and Pentagon request, NATO scramble and deploy five NATO AWACS aircraft to the Bay Area to help NORAD identify and engage unknown object approaching Nevada California border region."
The general slammed the phone down and stared at the screen.
"What the God Damn is it??"
Dr. Yes picked up the gold dubloon one more time and stared at the comet image some more, then turned the coin over to view the image of the winged serpent.
The Winged Serpent. The winged serpent?.
Q then rose high, high, high on up to the stratosphere to where the private spacecraft flew, carrying passengers who had paid ten million dollars for a fifteen minute view of earth as a ball. The GPS satellites stretched out like a girdle of dots over the curvature of the earth, and glimmered, like a sparkling diamond fishing net above the earth.
Q then sensed the pen of Dr. Yes as he wrote the words:
"Come now Quetzal, and redeem your comet's promise to the peoples of California?"
Q then dove directly down zooming toward the city of San Francisco at speeds no Google earth zoom could match. Down, down, down the dark ladder to the soul of the city.
Quetzalcoatl image by Genzoman
In Sunnyvale emerging from the buildings of search engine companies, software firms, from NASA and from the airforce bases, a slick shining surface of pure ooze spread toward highway 101 like an tumescent white oil slick. It started first as a trickle, then gradually intensified its volume until it spewed in torrents from the doors of Google, and Apple. It exponentially grew, and quickly became a massive tidal wave of white thick cream, it spread to fill the entirety of Silicon Valley. The sperm wave grew to a height of a hundred feet and slowly coalesced into a viscous, gelatinous wall of impenetrable translucent white stuff. From San Francisco, helicopters started circling the mass, which gradually took the form of a four-legged creature (like a kind of blobby turtle). The legs sprouted out further as did the head and the arms.
The white then formed itself into a smooth figure--two hundred feet high. A smooth, shiny human form whose form flickered logos and moving images. 3D forms like holograms flickered on and off from its semi-transparent skin as it stood up and walked like a man over the Santa Cruz Mountains toward San Francisco.
Quetzalcoatl from its perch on Sutro Tower saw the white monster and let out a deafening squawk. People emerged out of their houses to see an appalling sight. A massive cream-colored figure like a smooth glass walking human, its skin a shimmering film of constantly changing images, sounds and data.
Doctor Yes ran to the corner of 24th Street and Mission. He was joined by Sharon as she had just arrived from the 24th street Bart station. Sharon pulled out her small digital video camera, started filming. They turned speechless to see that seemingly all of the Mission's population, by some unspoken force had magnetically gathered at the corner. It was like the Rodney King night all over again, thought Dr. Yes (who had been here that night as well), except, no wall of police, no obvious signs of protest or any organized gathering. It was more like a kind of silent ritualized ceremonial gathering right there on the corner. Cars slowed to a stop. People looked up aghast at the spectacle unfolding before them.
As during 9/11 the police simply stared in disbelief at the sight of the amazing vision of an enormous winged serpent flapping its wings, atop Sutro Tower, making a hurricane of gale-force tornado-like wind. Roofs flew off houses. Cars tumbled down Mission street like toys. The marquees of the cinemas along Mission rattled and strained to stay fixed to their buildings.
The white figure--now clearly and amalgamation of all upwardly mobile power in the city stopped to stand on top of Bernal Hill. A bright dazzling holographic miasma like a million fireworks spewed up from the top of its head to read in text that spread across the horizon "I am King Yupporah and I claim this city for the deserving few!!! I will now destroy all those not worthy of my professional taste and discerning sensibilities!!!"
Monster Image by Ramses Melendez
Quetzal flew directly at Yupporah and knocked him directly into the Bay. The pair stood and Yupporah swung a blow at Quetzal. Quetzal landed on Sutro tower and Yupporah picked up the tower and flung it at Quetzal. It missed him and crashed exploding into the FBI building, sending horrified burning special agents out into the street.
Yuppies, staring out of Lexus cars and SUVs stared up at the milky white monster and exclaimed "Its beautiful!!" Yupporah let out a screech of high pitched sound "Hiiiiinnnnnkkkkkk Yerrrrrrrr!!!" "Hiiiinnkkkkk Yeeeeerrrrr!!!"
At that sound, Police officers started drawing their guns and started shooting at each other. Police were soon shooting each other in the head. Police cars started crashing into each other, Other police cars drove off elevated bridges and roadways. In the streets and in their cars, some turned their own service guns on themselves to the horror of onlookers.
The assassin, still on his perch, drew a bullet from his collection. He aimed at Yupporah's eye and fired. Yupporah screamed as a torrent of red spurted like a tidal wave from his face, splashing down on cars, trucks, people. Circling helicopters captured the action from cameras. Drains were soon gushing with the white liquid that had been Yupporah.
The comet was brighter now than it had been before and was joined by an elaborate complex mathematical geometric form that gradually became a pyramid shape. Both comet and pyramid flew over the heads of everyone in the Mission silently and came to a rest above the Mission Delores. Quetzalcoatl flew to join the form then in a display of pure energy shot directly up into the heavens. The sky opened up to reveal the open dark expanse of the universe in a section of sky that was otherwise blue with daylight all around it.
The comet shot up too and then the pyramid folded itself into an intricate box form, with millions of tiny sections to it, like a Mandlebox, before simply vanishing into thin air.
Dr. Yes will return for the last time in a future issue of Otherzine!
NOTE: David Cox is also working on a film version of the Dr Yes story. A trailer for this film can be viewed here: www.archive.org/details/DR_YES_TRAILER_V1 ◊