1. Carlos: Carlos, Carlos, scientist of Spain, lifting eight thousand pounds, day after day. In his basement at 265 Hayden Ln, he found a dusty notepad calling him again. Old and smelly, with his dyfn 2x000 ring, scribbled math and nonsense, some symbolic thing. "2=l," the kid screamed, "x.2=l!" So Carlos kept on looking, and the answer started to swell: the laws of physics, held by an army on the way. So he took a five-hour drive, dull and gray, to the army, to the gates, to the place they wouldn’t say, knocked so hard the car door turned to ash that day. He asked about the laws, but the army turned away, so he drove back home, one traffic-filled delay. But his house was gone, burned by profit and by flame, smelled like hotdogs in the smoke, that’s the name of the game. So he grabbed his defyn 2x000 ring, turned the whole facility into honest little things. Then it attacked him, but forgot how to stand, and Carlos ran as time ate the place like sand. He tried the ring on workers, one by one, and they said the answer lived inside the earth below the sun. So he spanked himself fifty times, then grabbed a chainsaw tight, cutting through the madness, crashing through the night, to the center of the earth where the red giant glowed— Rickr- 2. NOT OF THE DEAD BUT FROM THE DEAD THAT ARISES FROM THE DEAD OF THE AFTERLIFE: Carlos, Carlos, knocking on the red, giant door, “And shall everyone escape not?” he cried from the floor. The notepad’s equation was a whisper, just a sign, of a world made blank, of a world out of line. “We tried, it was melting,” sang the giant sun, and the whole dark dream kept spinning, never done. “Shall the light be darkened by forty percent?” the sun asked low, like a warning heaven-sent. What is above, what is below, what’s left to see? “In no place shall they ever mourn,” said the dark beneath. “But your teacher, sun,” said Carlos, voice thin and small, “have descended into the world of flies and shadowfall.” But the sun did not dwell, nor answer, nor bend, for the earth was old and melting at the end. The sun was in the earth, a liquid blob of fire, and no one could explain the pressure, the desire. Then—KID!—the sun gave out a burst of light, Carlos couldn’t speak, just vanished into night. Through the unbreathable oxygen, through the heat and the dust, the sun was lost, the dream gone, the world gone bust. “Another failed simulation,” said the earthians in dread, nine hundred comics deep, with pressure in their heads. This is getting about— blobby in the dark, metal-fused, bone-less, dreaming in the spark. 3. NO DEAD BLOB So the sun risked everything on that yield of energy, while the earthians hid beneath a cover, trembling silently. And honesty was the road that led to evil’s door, because truth can twist the heart until it’s truth no more. Then Carlos slowly turned to lava, melting red and slow. “HELP ME, HELP,” he cried, and let the pain show. Then the lock behind them creaked, the door swung open wide, but the sun was lava already, burning deep inside. Carlos leapt from rock to rock, from edge to edge, to the final stone, the exit, the trembling ledge. The honest ten years olds stood grumpy by the way, and the facility came down, guns blazing in the fray. No, wait— the army fell, the whole world shook, the whole thing went to hell. At the hatch back up to normal earth, they wanted the notebook near, “Ther- it’s too powerful,” they said, with fear. “NEVER,” Carlos shouted, like a note held long and loud, then GTA’d the army’s warthog through the crowd. He drove twelve hours home, storming through the night, kicked the house so hard it vanished out of sight. A black hole swallowed walls, swallowed every trace, and he rushed through his eighty-thousand-pound weight space. Through the basement, through the boxes, through the family frames, through the photo-strewn memories, through the old remains. Until he found the notepad, drew the line once more: “2=l sybolic stuf x.2=l” on the floor. Then he hurled it down, and it split apart in two, no cutting, no warning, just darkness breaking through. 4. WAIT, IS HE THE NEW DOOMGUY!? A little heard about this story, the notepad, the man, the constant six-pack glory. But if you listen close, you can hear it start— Carlos in the thunder, singing from the heart.
