Buried Alive
Bryson Newhart

One spring afternoon after the cities were repopulated and people were getting on with their lives, Jake the Magnificent took his family to the Bingo Province to visit the Houdini Museum. Within days he was lying in bed each night in a cheap straightjacket made from garbage bags, pondering a super cool stunt. As he calmly rested in the bags and slowed his heart to twenty beats per minute, he thought about it, and again in the shower each morning while pissing all over the walls—and even while dressed in his tiger suit on his way to Atlantic City in his holographic monster truck. What he thought about was spending some quality time beneath the earth. Down there it was closer to the core and a man might learn a few things. Wrap his hands around some sacred Buddha wisdom. As the next Houdini it made sense. But it wasn't until the night that he broke his wife's jaw and then headbutted his shaven skull through the wall that he finally made the decision. It was time to bury himself alive.

"Man," he said to his pal Gary, "I need to dig a huge hole and get in there. I need to cool out for a while."

Jake had just left therapy to meet Gary on a dirt lot behind the Personal Choice Mall, where in a week Jake was hoping to be buried beneath a transparent tank full of water and piranhas. His waxy head shined in the afternoon light as he finished guzzling his Ginseng and stroking his fake goatee. He put a hand on Gary's shoulder, briefly struggling to remember who Gary was. Both men had goatees, that much was obvious, but Gary's goatee was stringier. Instead of goat hair, it was made of shoestring. And unlike Jake, his head was only buzzed on top, the rest being pulled back into a long ponytail that was tucked into an edible hair pocket. An ornamental silver bird was perched atop Gary's head, its feet screwed into his skull. Sometimes Gary would replace it with another decoration: a tiny microwave or turnip.

The thing to remember was this: Gary was Jake's new publicist and an old buddy from the silent days of edible music. Back before the pills were banned, the two of them used to chill out in Gary's basement in skeleton suits, their stomachs loaded up on heavy metal tablets, which could totally rock your insides. Their heads would bounce around in furious circles as they jerked all over like piles of loosely strung bones. Now Gary would be chronicling Jake's burial stunt on his holosite. And Jake was excited too, having just remembered who Gary was, and because he couldn't wait to get down in the hole and be in close contact with a whole lot of Buddha power.

Smacking his own head, he said to Gary, "I have to show Marion and the kids who has control of this thing. Most people lack the mental strength for what I'll be learning in the hole."

*

To Marion and the boys, Jake's card tricks, holographic bunnies, and levitation skills were a joke compared to the frequent vision of his shaven skull crashing through the wall, shortly followed by his swinging fists. When he was in the basement wearing his animal costumes and shuffling his oversize cards, they made sure to stay quiet upstairs. Sometimes they forgot why, but then they remembered the one morning when the youngest boy, Patrick, by accident dropped a bowling ball that he was juggling with a handful of seed, and how Jake appeared in the kitchen in a cougar costume, his eyes rolled back and a baseball bat in his twitching hand. They remembered how Jake accidentally broke Patrick's arm after accidentally breaking all his ribs, and how they had to give the kid a holographic ribcage, which sucked because Patrick couldn't breathe right and everyone made fun of him. They remembered how Jake disappeared that day, and how when they returned from the hospital he was sitting on the street in the lotus position, naked and covered with blood. He kept saying he was sorry to the stuffed cougar head as he beat it with his fists. The rest of the costume was shredded all around him. They were afraid to get out of the car.

*

It is perhaps important to note that in the brief doomed era in question, a technology of growth manipulation permitted people to look any age they pleased. It began with adults who wanted to look younger. Tiny bugs were set loose all over their faces. The eager critters burrowed beneath the flesh and went to work. The effect only lasted a few months, but as the bugs got smarter, they found a way for people to look any age they pleased. The treatments were known to cause the Heebies, a form of cancer that began with screaming meemies and a blistering case of the fantods, but nobody cared much because they figured that a cure was on the way. It seemed obvious because otherwise everyone would become unbearably annoying and then die. Kids were not supposed to touch the stuff, but most found a way to sneak the bugs into their cereal. As parents began to look like teenagers, it became fashionable in junior high to look older. It did not take long before you were an outcast if you didn't look elderly. Wrinkly puckered kids with white hair smugly staggered in walkers or inched forward in wheelchairs, trying their best to look cool, and in the morning a long line snaked around the school parking lot as everyone waited to use the handicap ramp. The most popular kids looked like corpses; they were carried on gurneys. It was hard to tell the difference among parents, grandparents, adolescents, and children, and things were further complicated by the introduction of human pets, which everyone had to have right away, and by the fact that many people were nothing more than holograms. Entire families could be turned on and off with a switch, and the fashions morphed to such an extent that most people soon did whatever they pleased. Marion's boys, Patrick and Mickey, appeared to be five and eight, but they were actually in their mid-twenties. It was easy enough to forget; they still lived at home, a common ploy among young adults. Jake was thirty three and looked his age, but he had been among the very youngest to try the new drugs. As an orphan he had purchased them on the black market. Increasing his age by several decades, he had managed to marry and have two kids before he was ten. Marion, who was almost fifty, looked twenty three. When she married Jake in her late twenties, she looked twelve. She had no idea that she was marrying a six-year old.

*

Day One:

This afternoon folks gathered from all over the Personal Choice Mall, having interrupted important purchasing decisions to see the Magnificent climb into his hole. Many cheered as the famous man lay in his casket and pointed his thumbs at the sky, which meant that it was time for the tank of water and piranhas to be lowered just inches from his face. The lid of the transparent tank magnified the great Jake beneath the water.

"That is one cool mummy," people kept saying.

Or, "Like, what kind of scam is this?"

Well folks, let me say that Jake is no mummy and this is not a scam! This is simply a chance to see the great Jake in his hole, possibly until he dies, living on nothing but spoons of water and a small bit of air for his lungs. The Magnificent is going to learn a lot about himself, which is certainly more than most of us can say. If he feels like talking, a communicator has been set up. But at most, he has stated that he might listen to his fans when he starts to lose touch with reality. So the question is, are you a fan yet?

"He must be nuts," said a woman on her lunch break from Gurneys N'Canes N'Stuff. "I mean, how sick do you have to be?"

I think I sense a new fan in the works!

*

Unlike Houdini, the closest Jake had ever come to enduring in a cramped space was when the director of his group home stitched shut his sleeping bag so that everyone could laugh as he screamed for help. His magic was confined to stock tricks that barely earned him a fistful of pennies when he attempted to go on the road, which for Jake meant standing on the shoulder of the highway in a panther suit. On weekends when he left the house with his magic backpack, it was mostly so he could hide in the bushes and drink kangaroo urine. He would pour it into his ears and hop around, inventing excuses to return home early and discover Marion with another man. He was sure it was going to happen one day, and when it did, someone was going to pay dearly, even if it was just a marsupial.

Jake suffered from taphephobia, which is the fear of being buried alive. He knew this as soon as Gary pronounced the word: Taf-ee-FOH-bee-uh. But thanks to a strict diet of Aussie vitamins, yoga, and Zen, he was ready to go down in the hole. The night he broke Marion's jaw, he had just been returning from the Smart Shack with a fat bag of dingo cartilage. Pulling into the yard in his enormous fake truck, he saw Marion through the window and was immediately sure that her secret lover was hiding inside beneath the sofa. Using super stealth magic, he ran across the pebble yard for a closer look; inside he could see Marion at her computer, pumping the foot levers in an effort to type a holomail. From this distance, it was impossible to read the pictograms morphing in the air, but the intent was obvious enough. He slipped inside the house like a magical stealth commando and threw open the door to her den, causing her to jerk in her seat.

"Jesus, you scared me," she said, blowing the hair from her eyes.

"How come?" said Jake. "Who the fuck is Jesus?"

He said, "Who are you talking to on that computer?"

He stepped forward, but she killed the holo.

"Just an old friend," she said.

Jake made a strange animal noise and his neck began to stretch like an ostrich.

"Old friend?" he said, his eyes screwing up.

"Yes," she said. "You know, an old school chum."

"I'll show you an old school chum," Jake said.

He swung the bag of Aussie vitamins and struck Marion in the head, knocking her from her chair, then shouted, "How's that for an old school chum? How about a lesson from the teacher?" He rushed the computer and began stomping on the pedals to scare up the secret man. For all he cared, it could be a dingo—he was going to throttle it—but the only thing that appeared in the holospace was a snowman. Apparently he had frozen the system.

"Goddamnit!" he said. "Is this the guy? How long has this been going on?"

He tried to strangle the snowman, but his hands kept passing through it. Marion rushed the door, but he caught her by her wrist and twisted. As she struggled and squirmed, he ripped the keyboard from its cables and whacked her across the face. He tried to shake loose the image of the snowman, wondering if it might be hiding beneath the sofa, but then he heard the boys outside in the hall, crying, which pissed Jake off more than anything. Leaving Marion on the floor, he charged the wall and smashed his head through it, coming out right between them. Seconds later his arms burst through and grabbed them each by the collar.

"Where is Mister Snowman hiding?" he said. "Where is Mommy's lover?"

They continued weeping so he told them to call an ambulance.

"Mommy fell down and hurt herself," he said.

*

A couple days after the accident, Jake stormed into Marion's hospital room with a blossoming holographic tulip. She sat hunched on her bed in shadow, her bandaged head in a neck brace, a band of sunlight sliding down the wall beside her. Jake placed the flower on her lap and brought out a coloring book for Patrick and Mickey, as usual forgetting their age. The boys didn't notice. They were curled up on the floor around forty ounce cans of Ritalin Pepsi.

"I deserve to die, baby," Jake said. "I promise I'll make it up to you."

He opened the coloring book and flipped through the pages to show how it was filled with empty line drawings.

"How about that?" he said to the boys. "Nothing but white space."

They gazed at the floor, barely aware that he was there.

He closed the book and tapped the cover several times, chanting, "Buddha Buddha!"

He smiled as he opened it, but the smile quickly turned into a frown. Nothing had happened.

"Stupid fucking Buddha," he said.

The boys were feeling way too good to even hear him.

He tried the trick several times, but nothing happened.

"If you work the magic right," he explained. "When you open the book, the pictures are colored."

He said, "In a few weeks I'm planning to dig a huge hole and get in there. Once I go down into the hole, Marion, things are going to work out. Big time. You'll see."

*

After she was released from the hospital, Marion went to stay with Patrick and Mickey who were already at her sister Kay's in downtown Blandingdale. She arrived with large shiny bruises on her face, like patches of bluish tinfoil, but they were mostly hidden by the edible bandages that supported her new holographic jaw. She had taken a week off from her job teaching robots how to sing, and Kay didn't work at all because she didn't believe in it; she was smaller and rounder than her sister and suffered from a cheery disposition. Hence, they had plenty of time to play holographic blackjack, their favorite! If there was anything the two sisters loved, it was gambling.

Meanwhile, Jake was pissed off because his family wouldn't come home. He knew that he could win them back once they saw him at the bottom of the hole, but he didn't feel like waiting. He had purchased an edible coffin for the stunt, and with Marion out of the house, had taken to wearing his old skeleton suit and indulging in heavy metal thrash pills. Twitching like a monkey in his cheap straightjacket, he practiced fasting in the coffin in the basement. Each afternoon he tried to convince Marion and the boys to come over for dinner, but the boys wouldn't listen and Marion wouldn't pick up the communicator. Finally he tried changing his voice. He called pretending to be a robot that wanted to sing Kumbaya. Mickey took the call.

"Mom!" Mickey yelled. "Pick up the stupid phone."

She and Kay were playing their game on the fire escape.

"One of those robots is on the line," he said. "I can't hold this thing much longer."

Marion came in and took the call, and after much wrangling, Jake convinced her to come over for dinner one night, to which she agreed as long as Kay and Gary could be present. And the boys of course, provided they were sober enough to climb out of the Ritalin den they had made beneath the dining room table.

On the day of the big family dinner it was sunny. The sun had left a streak in the sky that stretched from horizon to horizon, so evening never came. As soon as they got to the small white house surrounded by its pebble yard, the boys dashed inside, excited to see their father. They had been sucking on Bliss Smackers all afternoon and their chapped blistered mouths were covered with sticky orange drool.

"Daddy, Daddy!" the boys yelled. "Where is Daddy?"

"I'm in here," came a voice.

Jake was projecting his voice again, which was something that Marion hated. It was coming from the oven. The boys checked inside, but no Daddy.

"We don't see you Daddy!" they screamed.

They waited to hear the voice again, stepping from foot to foot, then eagerly followed it around the kitchen, opening various drawers and cabinets and checking inside of glass jars.

Finally it spoke through Mickey's own mouth and Patrick tried to look beneath his tongue.

"In the living room," the voice said. "Hurry up!"

The two of them rushed off, but Jake had changed things around. To get to the living room, they had to run through a maze of giant cards. The stupid cards were even larger than ever. In the living room they found Jake on a bed of nails, projecting his voice through the lips of a holographic joker card, which was propped against the wall.

"Three lessons," said the joker. "So pay attention. To study Buddha is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be enlightened."

The voice moved back to Jake, who winked. "That is what is going to happen in the hole," he said. "It's the whole reason your father is going down there."

Marion, Kay, and Gary caught up. Everyone gathered round.

"What about seeing a doctor?" said Marion. It was painful to speak with her new fake jaw. "We could all go together as, like, a family?"

Once again it was the joker who answered.

"Once I have mastered my nature," the card said. "I will consider it."

Keeping his body straight, Jake seemed to rise above the nails.

"Then again," said the voice, returning to Jake's own lips, "Buddha says that I can come. I can see this doctor before I go into the hole, but you must understand I'm in training."

Jake got up. "There's something I want you to see," he said.

Everyone stayed close as they went through the maze and down into the basement. Jake squeezed into his cougar head and climbed into the coffin.

"Now this is what I'm talking about!" he said. "Know what I'm saying?"

He said, "I sleep like a kitten in here!"

He held up a pair of smaller cougar heads and gestured to Patrick and Mickey.

"Put these on boys and climb in!" he said.

For the rest of the evening things went fine except for a moment of panic that came in the middle of the meal when Jake's face began to look irritated. He stopped eating and glared across the table at Gary.

"Gary," he said.

"Yes Jake?"

"What the hell is that screwed into your head?"

"Huh?" said Gary.

"On your head," said Jake. "Screwed into your fucking skull!"

"Oh," said Gary. "I guess that would be an ornamental toilet."

"I can see that," said Jake. "But what the fuck is it doing in my house?"

"Nothing," said Gary. "It is not even in your house."

"It's not?" said Jake.

"No. I must have grabbed it accidentally in a haze this morning and screwed it into my head. It's been there on my head all day. It's on my head, Jake. Nowhere else."

"By the way," he added. "Delicious wombat."

Jake thought for a moment then smiled. "I can live with that answer," he said. "You got lucky. But if I ever see it again, don't be surprised if I accidentally grab your face in a haze and by accident screw it up with my fist."

*

Day Three:

Today there was agitation in the water tank and it was hard to get a good view of Jake. Nobody could tell if he was awake. But despite that, and despite the editorial in The Blandingdale News saying that the famous man abuses his wife, crowds of every kind came to show their support. They waved signs that said "We love you Jake!"

*

In general, people seem strangely drawn to the master magician. Women are attracted to his dark good looks and the gigantic yin and yang on his chest. Still, many complained that they couldn't see his body through the water. Someone even suggested that maybe the great man isn't down there. They said that maybe he is just a hologram. It's not true! Keep coming back. Sunny days are in the Jake forecast!

*

A week after their dinner, Marion came to pick up Jake for a family meeting with Dr. Flimflam. When she got there, she knew that Jake was home because his monster truck was parked in the yard. With its projection array turned off, it looked like an oversize Big Wheel. Unlike fake bones that could only be turned off by doctors, most holograms were manual, and the sight of the emasculated vehicle struck Marion as sad. The boys waited in the car with their Happy Helmets on as she went inside to find their father. For some reason the back door was wide open.

"Jake!" she yelled.

She looked around the first floor, stopping to turn off some holographic rabbits humping on the dining room table, but Jake didn't answer, so she decided to look upstairs. At the top, incense thickened the air and a disturbing number of large Buddhas patrolled the rooms, bumping into each other and changing direction. Apparently in the last few days Jake had purchased a human pet because a young girl was propped on top of the bedroom bookshelf, pretending to read. She asked Marion if she could come down and have a kissy and a snack, but Marion didn't have time to play games. She was worried that Jake might have hurt himself. She took a deep breath and decided to check the basement. It was chilly and damp, a black light illuminating several rows of cards of varying sizes, some as tall as the ceiling. Most were face cards animated with uncomfortable smirks and roving eyes. The only place that Jake could possibly be was in the coffin, but she didn't like how quiet it was. The cards seemed to laugh. She knocked on the coffin, but there was no response.

"Jake," she yelled. "Stop fucking around."

He didn't answer, so she struggled to lift the lid.

She almost screamed. Inside was a person in a skeleton suit.

"Jake?" she said.

She shook the figure, but it didn't stir, so she bent closer to listen for breathing. A heavy dread washed over her just as an ominous voice echoed from across the room.

"That is definitely not Jake," it said.

Marion's heart jumped wildly as the skeleton popped up with waving arms.

"Say hello to Skeleton Man!" the voice said.

Marion nearly fainted.

"You fucking asshole," she said.

*

Dr. Flimflam's office was a low brick building off the highway surrounded by an empty cracked parking lot. Everything inside was white. Jake had insisted on bringing his new pet, Mindy, and the family sat in a circle on inflatable chairs as the doctor asked them many questions. Jake had a hard time concentrating and kept forgetting where he was. It was bright in the office and he had not turned off the holographic sunbubble that surrounded his head. He stroked Mindy's hair and thought about getting in the hole. As he had already explained a thousand times, once he was in the hole he planned to cut the pipe of the floating devil above his head. Then, if all went well, he might fuse with the universe for two billion years and send a new bible to the world.

As the doctor described his philosophy, discussing anger management and approaches to the family therapy, Jake rubbed Mindy's shoulders and thought about flying through space in a bright painted egg. Dr. Flimflam finally stopped talking and asked Jake what he thought of the discussion.

"It's not for me," Jake said, stroking his fake goatee.

"Why not?" said the doctor.

"Allow me to explain," Jake said. "Most people see body, breath, and mind as separate things. But in zazen they come together as one reality."

The doctor waited for him to continue, but he did not.

Mindy purred in Jake's arms as he kissed her forehead.

"How is this going to help the situation with your family?" the doctor said.

"Allow me to explain," Jake said. "The body has a way of communicating outwardly to the world and inwardly to the self, so it has everything to do with what happens in the mind. In a few days I plan to climb into a hole and possibly remain there forever."

"Huh?" said the doctor.

Jake slid off his inflatable seat and sat on the floor in the lotus position.

"Observe how I form a tripod base between my buttocks and my knees," he said. "If you tried to tackle me you would fail. The tripod gives me complete stability."

"So you plan to bury yourself alive," said the doctor. "I had a brother who did that."

Jake remained on the floor with one hand placed over the other, palms up. He proceeded to rock in a circular motion.

"I know how to find my center of gravity," he said, humming to himself. "The cosmic mudra turns my attention inward. If you were just talking, I could not hear you."

The doctor looked distressed, but he ran his hand over his face and composed it.

"In the coming weeks," Jake went on. "I'll be focusing my energy on my hara, which is just below my bellybutton. When the wind blows across the surface of the mind lake, there are ripples. I am learning to smooth those ripples. Once I get inside the hole, I shall become a psychic astronaut, as well as learn various techniques for creating a homunculus. Buddha says that when Jake is not cruising the stars in the body of a hummingbird, he will become a better husband and father. Eventually he will stop counting and simply become one with his breath."

"That is great," said Dr. Flimflam. "Super fantastic. But the violence could still be sleeping. If we don't tackle the violence, you could have a flare up."

"I don't think you get it, Flim," said Jake. "I'm not even going to be here. I'm going to be in the hole. And after that, I'm not even going to be in this universe."

*

On the drive back, Jake said that Dr. Flimflam was a nice man, adding that people like that will suck you dry. He said that it was important to place a toad or perhaps a coin sword or rooster in the corner of every room. This would prevent the doctor from stealing all the money in the house.

In the days leading up to his burial, he and Marion no longer spoke, and once he was in his hole, she took out a restraining order. She and Kay sat outside on the fire escape playing fuzzy dice in the fading light, while inside, the boys drank urine under the dining room table, toasting to the kangaroo goodness. Suddenly in the middle of Marion and Kay's game, Marion abruptly stopped tossing the stuffed cubes. Kay watched with annoyance as Marion set down the big dice and gazed across the street at the parking garage, a sooty structure that doubled as the town's only art museum. In the distance beyond the low rooftops and holographic buildings was the Personal Choice Mall, which would soon glow red in the night, blocking out all the stars.

"I'm going to take the boys and move beyond the Salt Lakes," Marion said, wiping off a thin strand of drool. "Start over. What do you think Kay?"

"I don't know," said Kay. "Maybe we should kill the fucker." She rubbed her hands. "Can we get back to the fuzzy dice now?"

At that moment, Gary was stumbling around Jake and Marion's yard in a soiled loincloth, jacked up on smart drugs, a holocamera mounted on his head. Slung over his shoulder was a massive phone. Earlier that day he had covered his body with a new batch of bugs and grown himself an extra pair of arms. He was still trying to master their flailing. He was supposed to be watching Jake's house, but he was actually just leaving after telling a group of reporters that Marion was out of town. "She crossed the ridge," he said. "I saw her waving exit flags." Having interviewed Marion's mother, the reporters were anxious to ask Marion what it was like to have the shit beaten out of her. Gary was desperate to stop the negative publicity, but not sure where to start. He struggled with the heavy phone and tried to call Kay's apartment. There was no answer, so he decided to pay a visit. He needed to interview Marion and try to get the woman to explain how Jake's stunt involved total self healing.

"Someone needs to explain that what he is doing is an act of love," he said, breaking down Kay's door. "So I thought, like, maybe if I could get an interview, you could explain about the love? Like what a great thing it is? And together we could stop this negativity?"

"Flimsy door," he added, waving the knob.

"Fuck you," said Marion. "Fuck you and your extra arms, your shoestring mustache, your fake scooter, and that stupid-ass loincloth you're wearing. Why do you think I'm living with my sister?"

"Whoa, that's a lot of fucks!" Gary pleaded. "But what about the whole Jake philosophy? Won't you say something about that? How the fantastic Jakey is smoothing out the ripples?"

It did not go well.

*

Day Five:

Today more reporters came and the producer of American Choice News offered Jake a dingo sandwich. Jake replied with his first words ever through the communicator. "No thank you. Although I do like dingo." People have been expressing doubts that his Greatness is in the hole, saying that the Jakey is just a holo, so perhaps the beloved magician decided to speak some words in an effort to dismiss those doubts. "Dingo rules," he added.

I have no doubt that the famous man is in his hole because I saw him scramble into the coffin. Also, you can see him smacking his lips beneath the tank, probably famished for Australian dog. People need reminding of what a difficult thing Jake is doing. One woman asked why Jake would want to die in his hole when he is having such problems with his family, but Jake was resting at the moment. I had to explain the whole Jake philosophy!

"That is one spiritually enlightened man down there!" I said. "You are gazing on a famous Jake in the process of a great discovery!"

I think people are starting to understand!

*

At first Jake was overwhelmed by the loss of control in a space in which movement was impossible, and staring through the tank at the fish faces, as well as the human faces, he had a hard time becoming one with his breath. Instead of letting the breath breathe itself, he almost let it scream for help. But then he focused on his hara and forgot about screaming. His mind detached to the rhythm of his breathing and he saw his brain rise out of his head. It was moving toward the piranha tank, which almost freaked him out, but realizing that the brain is mere flesh, he relaxed, telling the piranhas to go ahead and enjoy themselves.

As time passed, sleeping and waking poured together like liquid metal at the center of the earth: molten states of the great Buddha mind fusing into a single alloy, the tractable stuff of all matter. Jake was aware of this. The whole process was conducted by a Buddha with a ladle. As Jake stood by, preparing to become a psychic astronaut, Buddha identified negative thoughts and emotions and resolved them. States of being appeared as objects and Buddha took care of them. For example, when anger and jealousy appeared as a blood-coughing heart, Buddha placed it on his head, then proceeded to attack his head with a cleaver. Chocolate kittens emerged from his ears, which he and Jake gobbled. Jake was fitted with a golden cape, courtesy of Buddha, and each of his problems were transformed into pastries.

At intervals of time impossible to gauge, Jake returned to his body and noted if it was night or day. Looking up through the tank, he tried to read the expressions on people's faces. Sometimes a noise through the communicator ordered its way to comprehension, and if it was negative, he and Buddha transformed it into cake. At night, the underside of the illuminated water appeared like mercury and Jake followed his gaunt reflection as it shifted among the hungry fish. By now he was not just a psychic astronaut, but a certified psychic scuba man. Each day he flippered in the underwater palaces of Venus. He and Buddha snorkeled through the sun together. They dove in and out of solid land and emerged triumphantly with fistfuls of stone.

*

By the time Buddha gave Jake a pair of jade chopsticks so that the two of them could munch on his insecurities, which Buddha had transformed into wontons, Marion had gotten her divorce papers and made arrangements to move away. Beyond the Salt Lakes she knew an old school chum who worked in the Great Black Pyramid. Apparently they needed daycare workers because gamblers didn't want their children to be handled by holos anymore. It sounded like paradise. The pyramid was a mammoth casino and contained a small school where Patrick and Mickey could learn to service slot machines. The machines required lots of maintenance because they worked on the Easy Pass System, which meant that a customer carried his credits on a card that was automatically filled from his bank account as soon as he walked through the door. It was neat. Customers filed past the slots and computers conveniently calculated their luck in seconds, adding or subtracting the credits. Once a customer's card was drained, which happened almost immediately, more credits were added from the bank. It was a good way for the casinos to make money. The only way for a person to get away with any winnings was to pull a lever in The Tomb of the Pharaoh, and to get there, you had to have a security pass—that is, if a customer could even find the room without going broke first. If all worked out, he or she could pull a lever and be rocketed through a hole in the roof. Then, the only thing you had to do was survive impact and find your way home through a desert teeming with hyenas. More than likely, though, a customer's bank account was drained in minutes and debt would begin to accrue. So long as the slot machines were properly serviced, which Marion figured Patrick and Mickey could take care of, a trap door would finally open and drop the unlucky gambler into an underground work pit where he or she could labor to pay back his debt at a reasonable rate of interest while his children lived upstairs and made poker chips. It sounded like fun!

Marion had a hunch the big pyramid was the best place in the world, probably even better than the mall. For one thing, you got to live in a shiny pyramid and were not allowed to leave. Also, employees got to gamble for free with fake money. Six days after Jake buried himself in the hole, she and the boys were headed west on a holographic bus.

*

Day Seven:

Good news! Now the public knows that the real reason Jake is in his hole is love. Fewer fans came to visit today, but that did not stop the sun from shining in the great man's eyes. The man has willpower! I am surprised he hasn't eaten his coffin! When asked if he plans to come up, the Magnificent says no sir. He says to please release the piranhas so they can nibble on his body. The famous Jake is all spirit! Unfortunately, lawyers from the Personal Choice Mall are against pure spirit. They say that it's time for the spirit to come up and avoid a lawsuit. I don't think they realize that they are dealing with the new Buddha Jesus! Jake has begun to spread the word with his mind! I hope his Jakeness can at least finish bonding with the universe and mentally composing his bible. If nothing else, when the holy man comes out, I think there is a chance for a reunion! So far Marion has been unavailable for comment.

*

As Jake mastered his breathing, he found that he could go to other dimensions. He could fly there or ride the psychic elevator inside his spine. Usually he had at least six hands, and in each of them he held a glass of buttermilk. At night, which he measured by the spin of Jupiter, he slept near the sun with Mercury as a pillow. In the morning he splashed the Pacific Ocean under his armpits, then bounced off the moon and zoomed back to earth to laugh at his old body behind the glass. He laughed at his neighbors who paraded around as toddlers, their minds trapped inside their bodies like slabs of ham. He was learning a great deal about himself. He observed the sacred wonders, moving through space and time. While one version of him enjoyed taking care of his family and tunneling through mountains of dingo, still another took pleasure in concocting mystic ointments and applying them to his fingernails, so that guided by his mystic thumbnails, he could visit a future in which sentient donkeys were created from colorful blown glass by the spontaneous sneeze of a dog. Still another Jake spent time with Mindy, both of them dressed as rhinos; they played hot cockles. He and Buddha played soccer with the sun. If Jake wanted to swallow the universe, he did so, farting it back with a bang. Basically he was the Buddha Jesus now. Soon it would be time to send a new bible to the world.

"Release the piranhas!" he screamed as they pulled his limp body from the hole.

"The Buddha Jesus is coming!"

© Bryson Newhart