Agent Cybele Reporting, Part 4

Well, trust as well as love is all in our heads. Having experienced both I must say both the joy and dread, betrayal and faithfulness, are subjective mindgames I've indulged in out of . . .


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Cybele had the bed to herself. She twisted the blinds closed, so the twinklings and cries of
the city wouldn't disturb her pre-sleep reveries. She pulled the comforter over her head and crossed
her arms across her chest. Aum Shanti, she thought. Aum Shanti, O universe, please give me peace.
Her brain firecrackered in the dark. Her heart the same. Sleep was out of the question as one thought-
flame lit the fuse of the next. Why, Matthew, did you have to be who you are, the only living bloom
in a vast garden of black flowers, you've found somehow and emptied my soul's cistern of unwept
tears. Goddamn what am I to do? what am I to do? the puzzle pieces of all my life are tossed as if
from a mountain and I have too little time to gather them up and configure the new picture which is
my future with or without you. What to do, you lovely complainer, you Jesus genius pretending jes-
terhood for the protection of all. Many false prophets in the last days, but one is true. You write
scripture pasted with shit to the outhouse wall and no one knows but I, and fuck the elders of the
Round Table, those child rapists, those fanged monsters behind the veil. Do I dare think any long-
er on this? How to be true? How to escape it? Their tentacles, their suction cups--everywhere!

August 10, 2007. Predawn.
Dear diary:
Finally, dear tabula rasa of truth, I got to sleep, but it was fitful, and thank god I didn't dream.
I must check myself and take stock of what I could lose. Three hours till first contact with the one
known as Marcus--Christ!--I need to concentrate, and not think of Matthew tonight, or my next report,
or the possibility of other agents doublechecking my loyalty. Rogue agents have been caught doing
what I'm contemplating. The faith in everything falters at this dark hour. The morning song birds have
congregated for their daily praise service. The uncertainty is making my head float away like a child's
helium-filled birthday balloon. I've lost my moorings, and wish upon the morning star I had a mother
to call. I never had a birthday party. I had getting raped parties. What buttons did lovely Matthew
push to break the nightmarish spell? I have always been anchored to deception and death. I was al-
ways deprived of beauty and truth. Matthew showed me the truth and the way and the light in a day,
and I never saw it coming. Saul blinded on the way to Tarsus? Lord Zorac would not smile at such
news. Lord Zorac would feed me my martyr's throat, and tape the proceedings as a warning to others.
Do I have the stuff of martyrdom in me? That is the only relevant question now. Tonight I go to a dive
as Christ's bride, and I dare not let my guard down in front of the ten thousand Judases cowering all
puckered in the corner. Anyone could be a spy here, and that, beloved, is a truth I've never had to
fear. What is the best I can hope for? My heart knows: I, Juliet; he, Romeo; consummation brief if
any. Is that good enough for me? Can't I find a loophole in the ironclad law of this lunatic bin? May-
be there's a way. Maybe tonight with Matthew a plan will come to us out of the wind, a heralding
benevolent spectre harking us from the midst of discourse for a Holy Spirted plan for escape. But that
is later. That is the stuff of prayer. As for now what can I do but do my job. I will size up Marcus,
and fake another report (already a capital crime!), and await the one who's already saved me. If you
could answer, darling book upon which I've laid my open soul, I know you would. If you had arms I
know you'd wrap them around me like the good father, good mother, good sibling I never had. A final
thought. It just came. If I can't save both of us, maybe I could tell Matthew what I know and save him.

August 10, 2007. 4pm.
Attention: Lord Zorac, Chief Administrator of the Round Table.
This is Agent Cybele reporting. Gathered a good deal of material on Matthew's "friend" and
"co-conspirator," Marcus, today, my lord. The reason for placing quotation marks around the words,
"friend" and "co-conspirator" will soon be obvious. Sadly, swiftly, Ezra had to be taken off the game
board. My fears in the last report were confirmed. Ezra was on to us, and we are better served without
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him. I bounced into the Go Sports all smiles at nine am. all ready to plug Dale for the 4-1-1 on Marcus,
and he was most accomodating. Dale seemed amused that Matthew and I had talked the previous day.
From this I gleaned that Dale cares enough about Matthew to want him to hook up with a woman.
Dale sees me as a potential girlfriend for his strange acquaintance. Funny, my lord, but it's no wonder
that Matthew has a hard time meeting appropriate women. He is the epitome of inappropriate. But back
to the paramount subject of this report, Marcus. I paid for my coffee, and told Dale that it was in-
teresting chatting with Matthew about literature, but that I knew he wouldn't be in today. "So, Dale,"
I said with a flirtatious grin, "Matthew mentioned that his friend, Marcus, pretty much was into the
same ideas as he. Could you introduce me to him?" Dale assured me he would, and that Marcus would
be in shortly. So for a half hour I pretended to read Zecharia Sitchin's The Twelth Planet, a tome of re-
diculous conjecture that Matthew had mentioned yesterday as being transformative to he and Mar-
cus's alternative understanding of science. There's no greater drawing power for these misfits than to
have one of their special books on your table. They are so craving validation for the misery of their
chosen pariah-hood. I looked up when Dale said, "Hey, Marcus," and saw a bedraggled figure in his
mid-thirties with unkempt dark brown witch hair flowing past his shoulders. Long-faced, and learned-
looking behind the round spectacles, Marcus carries his six-foot-two frame with a most off-putting
swagger. A confident man, more reserved than Matthew, but just as eccentric. With considerable dry-
ness he told Dale, "It's a farm," then dropped two bucks on the counter and snatched up a coffee cup.
"Oh, hey, Marcus," said Dale, motioning over to me. "This young woman is Cybele. She had
the mispleasure of meeting Matt yesterday." Dale did well, my lord. Marcus smiled and joined me.
After some introductory chitchat, during which he apologized for Matthew's presumed bad conduct, I
was able to manuever the conversation onto the topic of philosophy. The following verbatim has been
edited for relevence. Marcus's humorous sidebars were frequent, and illustrative, but for the sake
of brevity, I include only the quintessential remarks that mark the man a paragon of recalcitrance.
Cybele: (Feigning interest, sipping coffee) So what do you mean, "It's a farm?"
Marcus: (Folding a paper airplane) That we exist on earth as animals, doing the grunt work for
unseen masters, or as crops, ripening till harvest time. It's the only analogy that makes sense.
Cybele: (Touching his hand, then tossing the paper airplane into his chest) Pretty pessimistic.
Marcus: (Face lengthening) Is anyone truly satisfied with our produce-and-consume till death
lifestyle? Is anyone content with toys to spend the time with? Is anyone not afraid of running
out of money? of not building a sufficient nest egg for retirement? of dying alone and cold?
Cybele: All valid points, Marcus. That's the result of capitalism. Survival of the fittest.
Marcus: And what does it mean to be fit enough in our money-based civilization? Being lucky
enough to be born into the right family? Being type-A enough to get down with self-marketing
and sellin' out and suckin' dick all the way up the ladder of a company, the controllers of which
could care less about you as a human with a soul? Or is being fit enough what people call "pru-
dence," just shuttin' your mouth and joinin' the sheep line to public acceptance: nose to ass,
nose to ass--Baaaaaa . . . Baaaaaaaa? I agree with Matthew's favorite assertion: Non Servium!
I will not be a pawn. I will not offer my talents in service to their childish games. I will do
what I want to do, not what I'm told I should do. I play tabla. I eat pizza. I talk smack against
the system of death, and I do all that far more effectively than Matthew. Does that answer
your question, Cybele? I could go on ad nauseum, ad infinitum about Outhouse-Earth.