The Changing of Everything-- a novel

CHAPTER 4: HOW IAN LOST HIS JOB

2009-12-04T05:11:00.000-08:00

CHAPTER 4: HOW IAN LOST HIS JOB

Three years passed since Ian Flatley started utilizing his Polaroid camera to capture moments in time in the ever-changing world in which he now lived. Since he started, he had scanned the pictures onto his computer and emailed them to everyone he knew from an anonymous email address. No one seemed to pay much attention to them, at least not anymore. When Ian first started sending the emails, he would receive dozens of replies weekly, such as, “Who is this?” and, “Stop emailing me!” and, “dont quite ur day job!!!!!! =P” which was just embarrassing for all parties involved. But these emails dwindled and finally ceased entirely within only a few weeks as people lost interest or just started actively ignoring him. So it should come as no surprise that Ian was surprised when he received his first reply in years.

He was at work when it happened, on the 17^th floor of a 42 story office building, tucked comfortably snug in the confines of his own desk. Despite the ever-changing world around him, and the slow collapse of the economy and government as anyone could imagine it, Ian still managed to keep the same job, much to his own dismay. Apparently humorous t-shirts and bumper stickers are simply one of those commodities that people will always need, like food or flyswatters. He was about to send out his latest photograph of what appeared to be a monolithic moving object in the sky, along with a poem questioning whether or not the object was a dragon (which also forced the word “wagon”) when he saw it. The surprising notification. One new message.

Ian closed his eyes as he clicked the link. He was agnostic, so he prayed to no one in particular that the email would at long last be a reply from the Los Angeles Times, which was now centered more around survival tactics than politics and which celebrities were sleeping with who, as the government was mostly dismantled and most of the world no longer gave a fuck who Tom Cruise was. (As it so happened, Tom Cruise now found a very comfortable living manufacturing non-lethal mousetraps, now making him more relevant to the Universe than ever before.) When Ian opened his eyes again, he was both disappointed and surprised to discover the email was a message from a virtual postmaster general gently informing Ian that one of the intended recipients of Ian’s latest exhibition didn’t exist.

The recipient in question was Alex from accounting. Ian turned to Alex’s desk to ask him if he had a new email address when he discovered the desk looked deserted. Or not so much deserted as never used. Simply put, it wasn’t there anymore. There was no desk, no cubicle, not even a space where the desk could ever be. Just a wall with a “Joke of the Day” calendar on it, still four days behind. It was a knock-knock joke involving an interrupting cow. It was almost as bad as Ian’s poetry.

Alex from accounting no longer existed. Or rather, he had now always never existed. A quick interview of Ian’s co-workers revealed that no one remembered Alex or any of his many zany topical impressions. Ian wondered if Earth actively ceased Alex from existing, snuffing him out like a candle on a birthday cake which someone stuck in a windtunnel, or if Alex, in a desperate attempt to adapt and survive, peeled away his many layers of shallowness, only to discover there was absolutely nothing underneath. In which case, Ian couldn’t mourn for too long. Why would someone mourn the loss of something that never really existed in the first place?

The moment Ian thought this, the building in which he resided shook violently. Then it stopped. Before any of the startled inhabitants could shrug it off as another Californian earthquake, it shook again, this time with longer, more deliberate movements. Then it began to actually sway, back and forth, longer and longer, until it ripped from its foundation entirely and spilled onto the streets. Then, the swaying continued.

Inside the building was, for lack of a better word, pandemonium. For availability of a phrase of equal value, it was fucking nuts. Screaming, crying, running, collapsing, clawing, praying, all different actions with a single-minded goal: to find a way out. A chilling challenge, indeed. Some people, not fully comprehending the situation, headed for an elevator and patiently waited for it to arrive. Those of sounder, but equally confused, mind tumbled down the stairwell. The few sane people left, Ian included, stayed exactly where they were. Some protected their valued possessions: laptops, family pictures, stashes of whatever illegal narcotics they had hidden away in their desks. Ian had nothing left to protect. He already had his camera in his hands. He found it fun to slide with the building’s movements in his swivel chair.

The building’s swaying brought one side closer and closer to the street below, jerking like a swimmer trying to get some water out of his ear. The front door stuck straight out into the air. Those who headed towards it for escape found themselves hopelessly trapped. Ian’s swivel chair slid him towards a down-facing window, where dozens of his co-workers and fellow survivalists poised, ready to jump. Ian poised alike. When the window finally dipped far enough, Ian stepped out of the open window.

He landed with barely a thud on the asphalt below, which fortunately had a very spongy texture today. Others fell in all directions around him. Most of those who leapt left soon after. This made sense. They had family and loved ones to check in on. Ian only had his pet rat, and he would be fine so long as his food dish was filled (which, to the best of Ian’s knowledge, it was). So Ian stood still and watched the building for some time. He watched some other people escape. He watched the building stop its violent swaying and stand mostly upright again. And then he watched the building unfold the wings it suddenly had and fly off into the brilliant pink and green sunset. The cries for help emanating from within faded as the building flew further and further into the sky.

Ian wondered where it was going. He wondered what would happen to the people still trapped inside. He also wondered where he would work now. He finally came to this conclusion on all three thoughts: whatever. It was a beautiful sight. Ian took a picture.

CHAPTER 3: QUIS THE QUESTMAN

2009-11-11T05:13:00.001-08:00

CHAPTER 3: QUIS THE QUESTMAN

Not everyone in Delim’s time was so reluctant to quest. In fact, a certain number of people had actually made a very comfortable living for themselves going on increasingly dangerous and pointless quests and writing about their adventures. Such a man was Quis Orrek, whose quest stories were renowned for their quick action, unnecessary violence, and gratuitous sexual content. Quis had been described as a man about town, a man’s man, a ladies’ man, a complete and utter psychopath, nicknamed “Q.O.” or “Quis the Questman” or “a real asshole”. He leaped before he looked, shot first and asked questions rarely, and never used protection. If something didn’t concern direct action on his part then the betting odds were he wasn’t paying attention. It’s a mystery to many how he even managed to write about his adventures at all instead of wandering off to find some ravenous beast to slay. He had tried every drug and sexual position known to man and even invented a few of his own. He was quick-tempered, easily excitable, and openly bisexual. Quis Orrek, in short, was a man you better have heard of so you knew to stay out of his damn way.

Those were the glory days, at least. Along with such a decadently adventurous way of living came a copious amount of litigation. Quis’s downfall began in court when his latest sidekick, Grock Manslaughter, sued him for libel for misrepresentations in his latest quest novel Quis Orrek and the Lost City of Nashville. Grock claimed that Quis didn’t heroically save him from the ravine of carnivorous three-toed sloths, as written in chapter six, but rather threw him into the ravine after kicking him in both his kneecaps to keep the sloths distracted as he ran away. Grock lost the lawsuit, not because he was lying (he wasn’t) but because Quis’s publishers supplied him with a damn good lawyer. Despite the short-term victory, the consequence of the lawsuit was devastating. It was the first time Quis had ever shown weakness. He was no longer invincible. The previously perceivably impervious Quis Orrek was vulnerable to lawsuits. And damn did people take notice. All at once he was slapped with libel suits, slander suits, sexual harassment, paternity, assault and battery, breaking and entering, petty larceny, grand larceny, larceny with intent to commit fraud, larceny with intent to commit further larceny, mail fraud, bank fraud, impersonating an officer, impersonating a lawyer, impersonating a doctor, practicing law without a license, practicing medicine without a license, counterfeiting licenses including medicine and law, and manslaughter on no less than six separate degrees, to name a few.

Quis’s questing days came to an immediate end. He spent every day in court. He fended off his plaintiffical foes for as long as he could, but he eventually started losing the individual battles (and thus, the courtroom war) when his publishers dropped him after his latest quest novel Quis Orrek and the Nightmare of Endless Litigation part VI failed to sell more than sixteen copies. With them went their lawyer, and with him went any chance Quis had of not losing everything, which he decisively did.

Two weeks after Delim set off for his first ever quest, Quis Orrek woke up with absolutely no idea where he was. It may come as a surprise to someone with absolutely no grasp of human nature, but he was hung over. This was par for the course. He was also far from civilization and naked. Again, hardly unusual. But he was also broke, homeless, unemployed, and alone, which may not be anything new but it still surprised Quis every morning for the past three years. He was too young to be a has been and far too impressive to be impoverished. And yet here he was, somewhere between cities with absolutely no memory of the night before, with only a flask of alcohol and the clothes on his back in his inventory, once he could find them.

Earth saw this visage of past glory pathos, took pity, and decided to give Quis Orrek destiny. And this is why Quis suddenly found his clothes. They were clean and folded. This was weird. Quis attempted to twirl his scraggly beard in amazement, only to discover he didn’t have one. He snatched his metallic flask from his pile of clothes and checked his reflection. For the first time in months, he looked good. He wasn’t entirely clean shaven. His hair wasn’t trimmed much. But he looked a hell of a lot better than he did the night before. Some color returned to his face. A gleam he hadn’t seen since his questing days had returned to his eye. And, probably the strangest change of all, he was smiling. Quis wondered: did he have sex last night? He couldn’t remember.

He rummaged through his clothes, looking for any mementos from the night before. He happened upon a slip of paper almost immediately. It read, “Thank you for saving me. Now save yourself.” It was signed simply with a heart.

Quis took a swig from his flask of undisclosed alcoholic content and continued smiling. Things may not exactly be getting better, but they sure as hell weren’t getting any worse. And that was enough, at least for today.

CHAPTER 2: DELIM

2009-11-08T03:02:00.001-08:00

CHAPTER 2: DELIM

500 years after Ian Flatley’s destiny began, the world was a much different place. Even more different than one might expect something to be after half a millennium because of the arbitrary changes. So different, in fact, that the least confusing route to go about explaining it would be to focus on the few things that have remained the same at all, and explain how even those same things are different. For instance, colleges still existed. Classes focused mainly on math, philosophy, literature, and history. They had given up on the sciences a long time ago because, frankly, what was the point?

Fraternities still existed as well, but mostly out of necessity for survival. The world was a much more exciting place now, and traveling between cities without a large group was legally considered suicide in many areas. Gone were the days of rich jock types who got drunk at every opportunity. The new fraternities were composed of the best and the brightest of all ages, those most skilled in craftsmanship or fighting or knowledge of the ever-changing world outside the city gates. They were only loosely connected to the Universities, and were often used as mercenaries or bodyguards for hire. And then there were people like Delim, who only belonged to the fraternity because spoiled brats from rich families also still existed in the future.

(It’s also worth noting that fraternities had stopped strictly naming themselves based on letters of the Greek alphabet. For instance, Delim’s fraternity was named after a Latin number. With that in mind, let’s all try to be adults about this.)

Delim belonged to the Fraternity of Sex. He wore the traditional Sex robe, which was blue and green and clung embarrassingly around his potbelly. He took quick, short steps down the Sex corridor, which was a further embarrassment because they were the longest steps his stubby legs could muster. He scurried past the Sex practice rooms, where the finest Sex warriors trained, and past the Sex library, which was filled with books about Sex. In his hand was the cause of his hurry: an official Sex summons. It read simply, “You are summoned.” It was signed with the same official Sex insignia that adorned Delim’s robe: the numeral for Sex (6) followed by the same symbol inversed (9).

Delim’s mind raced just as fast and awkwardly as the pudgy body that contained it. Please don’t send me on a quest! his mind pleaded no one in particular. Please don’t send me on a quest, please don’t send me to go on a quest!

Delim stopped short. One of the flaming torches on the wall had snuffed out, leaving a patch of darkness in the long corridor. Delim took a deep breath and scrambled through the shadows to the illuminated salvation of the other side. He was embarrassed by how winded such a short scramble made him. Delim hated the dark. But then, Delim hated a lot of things. He hated spiders. He hated heights. More often than not, he hated himself. He also hated leaving the city, sleeping outside, scrounging for food and warmth, and dying. This is why above all else, Delim hated quests.

The pitter-patter of tiny, yet fully mature, feet stopped echoing through the stony chamber. Delim had reached the heavy metal doors at the end. Please don’t send me on a quest! his mind continued pleading. The doors swung open. Dear God, don’t send me on a quest!

Delim stepped into the Boardroom, where the Seven Chairmen of Sex rested in appropriately high-standing chairs for chairmen. The flickering flames behind them cast threatening shadows in Delim’s direction. Their eyes were covered by their hooded Sex robes. “Delim—“ a particularly ominous chairman spoke.

Delim panicked. They were going to send him on a quest. “Sirs!” Delim yelled.

The room became deathly silent. Delim felt the Chairmen’s eyes burning a hole through his very soul, like a child using a magnifying glass to burn through varying objects depending on the hypothetical child’s level of sociopathy. But suddenly, he had a thought. And he actually smiled. “Sirs!” he beamed. “I would like to volunteer to go on a quest!”

It was a brilliant plan in Delim’s own mind. If he volunteered to go on a quest, then they couldn’t very well order him to go on a quest!

And suddenly, Delim realized it didn’t quite work like that.

CHAPTER 1: IAN

2009-11-08T02:38:00.001-08:00

CHAPTER 1: IAN

Earth’s immediate changes were sweeping, romantic, and grandiose, but other than the reverse rotation the changes were mostly intangible and imperceptible to those we weren’t really looking, which is to say everyone sane. The most noticeable change to those of us who knew to look was that destiny suddenly existed. Not everybody was given destiny, of course, but certainly the most interesting people, some of the uninteresting, and absolutely everybody who was certain they had no destiny at all. And this is how Ian Flately, both interesting in personality and inconsequentially situated and by no means a fatalist, suddenly became somebody worth writing a book about.

Ian Flately worked for a company which sold novelty ties to retail shops. He was 25 years old. He lived in Los Angeles. He had sandy blonde hair which never cut quite evenly or combed entirely straight. He had pale green eyes which he never opened wide enough to look surprised, even when he was. His posture resembled something of an exhausted exclamation point or a startled question mark. He was, by most conventional means, attractive, but by no means in an interesting manner. He was a pescetarian who hated seafood but refused to become a full-fledged vegetarian on the off-chance he might learn to enjoy it after all. He had other qualities, too, but why ruin the surprise?

Directly after the Earth reversed its rotation, the world’s news outlets were in an uproar because Tom Cruise had done something interesting or distasteful or sexual, Ian could never be bothered to figure out which. No one seemed interested in discussing the Earth’s inexplicable change in rotation. Ian, however, was very interested, and he attempted several times to communicate so, to perhaps reach a deeper understanding as to the mysteries of the Universe. He attempted to mention it to his co-workers, but they all seemed too busy attempting to become the new office joker by impersonating the interesting/distasteful/sexual thing Tom Cruise did. Ian attempted to use it as an ice breaker to speak to an attractive woman in the elevator, but once the doors opened she couldn’t run away quickly enough. He even tried to discuss it on niche message boards on the furthest reaches of the internet, but he was too overcome by the gargantuan typos, overused emoticons, and disturbingly intriguing pornographic pop-up ads to actually achieve anything resembling intelligent conversation (he also had a sneaking suspicion he was the only person over the age of 13 on all of the internet). He finally did manage to have a deep and meaningful conversation, albeit one-sided, with his pet rat, Joe, who only really took interest in Ian when he offered him a strawberry yogurt treat. “Everyone always wants something,” Ian smiled as Joe gobbled up his treat. And then he continued talking about the subject at hand.

Such was Ian’s life, pre-destiny. But three days after the changes manifested themselves, Ian’s destiny began. He sat at his computer at work, surfing the web as his co-workers continued their Tom Cruise impressions around him, and as luck or fate (but really destiny) would have it, that’s where he found a Polaroid camera of surprising quality (like new!) for a surprisingly affordable price (like, but not exactly, free!) All he had to do was pick it up from its current owner and the fine piece of machinery was his. He had been meaning to get into photography. He needed a camera. He liked polaroids. And yet he remained still, as indecisive and unmotivated as ever, drowning in an ocean of ennui and refusing to grab onto the life vest thrown to him.

“Hey hey hey, chicken soup!” Alex from accounting shouted into Ian’s ears. Ian took quick note that the Tom Cruise incident must have had something to do with chicken soup and promptly left to pick up the camera, mostly because he wanted to get away from Alex and needed someplace to go. Undeterred by this negative review of his comedy routine, Alex searched for someone else he could amuse with his topical humor.

Ian’s acquisition of the Polaroid camera could not have been better timed (it was destiny, after all). Directly after he walked out of the previous owner’s house with his new toy in hand, the sky flashed red. Cars everywhere stopped in their tracks, afraid they had just run a red light. Pedestrians everywhere froze as well, because the sky just fucking flashed red. The sky then flashed green. Then red again. Then purple. Then blue. Then it flashed red and just stayed that color. The full moon appeared in the sky, and then above it, another moon. Earth was changing and now no one could ignore it. Ian smiled and took a picture of the brilliant new sky, and then of the faces of the people around him.

For the next nineteen months, Ian happily used his camera to document the happenings around him. Life, as it was, was boring. Any change was very much welcomed by Ian. Everything seemed fresh and new and every day was a new adventure. No one knew what to expect next. No one was prepared when the palm trees in Beverly Hills sprouted legs and terrorized the city, nor were they prepared when all the dogs and cats in the same area suddenly became insatiably vegetarian and ate the palm tree monsters. But Ian was always there with his camera, ready to take a picture and smile.

Not everyone took to the changes so well. The residents of Los Angeles were notorious, and in many cases rightfully so, to being accustomed to superficial consistencies: celebrities, coffee bars, and sushi to name a few. When the celebrities fled from the palm tree monsters and coffee became a depressant and sushi changed to a flavor Ian felt was finally palatable, many people had no idea how to react. The shallower the person, the more confusedly visceral the reaction. Alex from accounting was affected the worst. The changes made him so mad that he could only stomp his foot and squeal. Nobody was able to interpret these actions as anger. This frustrated Alex to such a deep and personal level he could only smile and skip away. He was new to dealing with emotions.

Ian scribbled a blurb in form of a poem on the back of every Polaroid he took. The poems were always awful. This made him happy. He wouldn’t have it any other way.

On the back of a picture of the red sky:

Roses are red

And the sky is so blue

Something about violets

Hey! Now the sky is red, too!

On the back of the creature that lived in Rodeo Drive Lagoon:

“Come ever closer, please”

Said the creature in the lagoon

“I promise I won’t bite

Or else my name ain’t Boon!”

(I think his name is Ted.)

Ian’s life was filled with adventure, great photographs, and bad poetry. He was happy. But his destiny was far from realized.

Prologue: Everything is Neurotic

2009-11-02T00:37:00.000-08:00

When a person is lost in life and everything seems hopeless and futile, often times his reaction will be to ask nobody in particular, “What does it all mean?” as if he actually expects the Universe to answer. But truth be told, the Universe doesn’t know any better than we do. It would often find itself pondering its own existence and wondering what in the world all those small, living creatures within itself think they’re doing. Stars make sense to the Universe since they burn and that’s all they do. But it has absolutely no idea who Tom Cruise is, nor why it should give a flying fuck.

And if the Universe has no idea as to its own machinations, then what chance did the small, neurotic ball of cooling molten rock known as Earth have? Despite the eons and epochs the poor planet spent pondering and worrying about fulfilling its purpose in the equally confused Universe, Earth had absolutely no idea what it was supposed to be doing, but it was pretty sure it was doing it wrong. It had no idea what it had to offer. Earth saw nothing about itself as particularly special, unlike the other planets that orbited the same sun. Saturn had a beautiful array of rings. Jupiter compensated for its morbid obesity by gathering the most moons. Pluto was small, but cute. Mercury was hot and it knew it. Mars was a beautiful shade of red and of course Uranus just had to be different by tilting itself on its side. What did Earth have to offer? No rings, one measly moon, most of its boring brown surface flooded with water, and a balding patch of ozone. Sure, it was the only planet currently capable of sustaining life, but Earth had a sneaking suspicion that perhaps life wasn’t all that great after all ever since Venus seemed to devote its existence to becoming as inhospitable to life as possible. Nothing said rebellion more than Venus's searing heat, massive volcanoes, and poisonous atmosphere. It even rained sulfuric acid. Damn that’s cool.

In its younger years, Earth had dinosaurs. Those were also cool. But Earth just wasn’t all that cool anymore.

All the small, scuttling creatures on Earth’s surface remained entirely oblivious to Earth’s plight. They were so self-involved with owning as much of the Earth’s surface as possible that they never bothered to ask the planet how it felt in the matter. Nobody ever asked Earth anything. They never even asked it if it wanted to be called Earth. If Earth could decide, it wanted to be called Zanzix. Or Azzanizanz. Something with a lot of z’s. It liked z’s.

Earth was misunderstood, unloved, and alone. The Universe was alone, too, but that was due less to antisocial tendencies and more to the fact that no other universes exist within this dimension. But at least the Universe was content. Earth was not. It was plagued with anxiety. Sometimes it wondered why bothered doing anything at all. Neptune didn’t really do anything and it seemed happy enough. But Earth was too nervous and fidgety to simply laze about. No, it had to be productive. It wanted to do something, but it wanted to do what it wanted to do. It couldn’t simply continue its current condition forever. Something needed to change.

All at once, Earth stopped rotating. It stopped at a realization, much like how a person might stare in a mirror while shaving, or a cartoon coyote might look directly at the camera after he runs off a cliff while chasing a speedy bird, right before he plummets to the ground and crushes upon impact to resemble either a pancake, a coin, or an accordion. Earth had its answer right in front of it. Why couldn’t it simply do what it wanted to do? Why couldn’t it change, in little pieces and as a whole, all of a sudden and for no reason? Its entire existence it had attempted to remain at least fairly consistent to appease its life forms, most recently the humans who feared change when it didn’t conform to their rules. But they cut down Earth’s trees and melted its ice caps. They polluted its air and killed its dodos. They blew up its mountains and stole its coal, which they then used to pollute its air and perhaps kill a dodo or something (Earth didn’t really pay too close attention to what humans were doing, it just knew it was supposed to be mad). And if the life forms didn’t even respect Earth enough to not actively destroy it, then what did Earth owe them? Why should Earth adapt to their needs? It gave them life, after all, why not have them adapt to its desires for a change?

And suddenly Earth felt something it hadn’t felt in a long time: happiness. Excitement. It felt young again. It had purpose, maybe not what it was supposed to be doing, but absolutely what it wanted to be doing. It had the rest of its existence to look forward to, and it could do anything—anything!—it wanted. New land formations, new life forms, new weather, perhaps a new moon or two, anything it wanted to have and contain and be was entirely within its power. And Earth was content with this thought.

Having made its decision, Earth began to rotate. The opposite direction.