Ray Bradbury sat on a seat in The Stormcrow Tavern off Commercial Drive in Vancouver, his legs crossed at the ankles and a book in his hands. He didn't respond to Ray, Raymond, or even Ramón. He was Ray Bradbury and would answer to nothing else.
While it was the name he responded to, he was pretty sure that Ray Bradbury wasn’t his real name. Nearly almost maybe certain? He was almost sure he could remember a month when he’d been Neil Gaiman. He’d learned to play the ukulele and become interested in beekeeping. Those were far more Neil Gaimanesque pursuits than Ray Bradburian ones.
Now that he thought about it though, he might have been Ray Bradbury just pretending to be Neil Gaiman. Issues of identity were fluid with him. Like God said to Moses, and Popeye proclaimed before him, he was who he was. Names were to be changed when they became uninteresting or smelly.
Ray Bradbury had the wiry, slightly underfed look of the professional travelling college student. His clothes were not quite worn, so much as they were well-loved, and his long blond hair fell past his shoulders in a tail that appeared to be a few days late for its regular washing.
A table of four patrons to his left vied for world domination on a colourful cardboard map while he read his way through a paperback with a spine more twisted and crooked than Richard the Third’s. Ray Bradbury was hard on books. This one was written by Frank Herbert and was one of Ray Bradbury’s favourites from the last century. He might even be Frank Herbert at some point in the future to see how it fit.
As he read, a part of his mind continued a running commentary on the words as they entered his brain as though in conversation with the text. The voice was something he’d first noticed when he was a fixture in Victorian London’s Limehouse District. By the time he’d made it to the opium dens of Vancouver’s Shanghai Alley in the late eighteen-hundreds, the voice had become even more clear, and now, mildly obnoxious.
Chasing the dragon was something he only dabbled in briefly when the danger and forbidden romance of the Orient had been in vogue during the later-half of the nineteenth century. Victorians were at their the best while clutching their metaphorical pearls in the spasms of moral outrage. At the time, frequenting an opium den was the thing to do for anyone looking to jab a finger in the eye of polite society.
By that point in his already long life, Ray Bradbury knew himself well enough to understand that an opium addiction would lead to nowhere but a cold hole in the ground. He’d left the opium dens when he felt he’d made his point, but instead of fading back into the smoke from whence it came, the voice remained. He’d ended up simply calling this new presence, “The Guest,” and left it at that.
“Fear might be a mind-killer,” The Guest was now saying, “but it’s not the mind-killer. If you have a really vindictive, bloody-minded death wish for your consciousness, there’s nothing like alcohol”
Ray Bradbury couldn’t deny The Guest had a point.
Though he didn’t look like it, and though he couldn't remember his given name, Ray Bradbury knew beyond any doubt he was the last great explorers. The last spiritual descendant in the line of Leif Erikson, Marco Polo, Ursula Le Guin, and Neil Armstrong. He was Ray Bradbury, Chrononaut, first of his name.
When people went travelling, they were content to fly off to some place sunny where they could buy expensive coconut shell knick knacks that would count down their days on dusty bookshelves before they were finally tossed in the trash. Ray Bradbury, on the other hand, had a craving to go somewhere Lonely Planet hadn’t written a travel guide.
He’d lived through the age of great explorers, telling himself the whole while that he’d soon join in and sail away to see what was hidden beyond the sea. He'd have a glacier field named after him. Even a single island bearing his name would have been enough to burn away the desire to explore. It seemed as though that every time he had his trunks packed with over-large fur parkas though, some new calamity erupted that demanded his attention at home.
He looked away for only a second, and when he looked back, every corner of the world had been mapped, travelled, catalogued and named after somebody else. Now the only place left where you could plant your flag and be reasonably sure you were the first to visit, was the future.
Travelling to the future was a tricky proposition though, the only way he saw to get there was by sailing on a ship of alchemical magic. Ray Bradbury’s family hadn’t been alchemists, or in any way magically gifted, but they did have the one thing that made them powerful and absolutely essential to the supernatural arts. They had money, lots and lots of money.
Even when you weren’t a fraud or a crackpot, which was rare enough for an alchemist in those days, alchemy wasn’t a cheap discipline. It required costly materials and equipment. Before the Guild stepped up and began training its own, your average alchemist couldn’t afford the pot to piss in. The only reason European alchemy succeeded in creating anything more interesting than a variety of offensive smells, was that in the fifteenth century it became fashionable for the nobility to act as patrons for budding alchemists.
As it occurred, Ray Bradbury’s family had been noble, and very fashion-conscious. They had funded a veritable kennel of alchemists at the family seat. So, when Panacea was finally discovered, they were among the first in line to reap the rewards. Ray Bradbury had his first dose of Panacea at the age of nineteen. For a while, it seemed as though the world and all of its most warm and pleasant bits were there for his amusement alone.
Decades passed though, and a niggling dissatisfaction began to grow in Ray Bradbury’s breast. The problem was that the future simply wasn’t coming fast enough, and after many slow centuries, he’d become bored. That was when he first heard of the fabulous Doctor Knox.
The people who usually employed Dr. Knox’s services were trying to avoid death. Ray Bradbury saw Dr. Knox’s new services as a way to avoid boredom. Instead of ploughing headfirst through the interminable decades, he’d be revived every fifty years. Thanks to compound interest, he’d be able to tour the latest age in style. Depending on how he liked it when he was revived, he would stay anywhere from a few months to a few years before going back into his own custom-built casket and soaking for another half century. He would never live a boring day in his life again.
This time around, he’d been up and about for over two years, and there was still so much to see. Culture had becoming so fast-moving that you couldn’t possibly hope to come to grips with it in a few months, or even a few years. The Internet had only really come into its own in the last twenty years, and it had already transformed and added to the global culture in ways he could never have imagined. How different would the world look in fifty more years, or a hundred?
These thoughts were filtering through his head when he unexpectedly put his book down on the table. He hadn’t meant to do that. A hot sensation began at the crown of his head, then quickly spread down through his whole body. Once it reached his feet the odd feeling paused, then flared burning hot. It was like his skin, bones, and vitals were all being flung away in different directions. He screamed, but no sound came from his lips.
“I was reading that,” The Guest complained.
The Guest, who had been enjoying the book, felt an odd jolt. It was what he imagined it would feel like if someone had shoved past him on the street. Being immaterial, it wasn’t a sensation he ever expected to feel.
“What are you doing?!” he asked of Ray Bradbury. The Guest focused his senses inward and found someone new. He realized with a shock that Ray Bradbury had been evicted! This new presence smelled like old blood and smoke from a burning tire. Beyond that, it was both bad and stupid. He could feel the unsophisticated desire to do harm coming off of it in red, stinking waves. The Guest was sure the new guy hadn’t noticed him, he was certain he would have been kicked out just like poor Ray Bradbury.
The Guest made himself as small as he could, and because there was no alcohol began muttering, “I must not fear, fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little death that brings total obliteration..."
* * *
Some were stopped by concerned friends, only to become quietly violent, silently striking out at those who tried to get in their way without rage or passion. A few were physically restrained. Once they were down, they lay quietly like a toad on its back, simply staring ahead and waiting. As soon as they were able though, they would try and leave again, and again.
The sleepwalkers drove, walked, hailed taxis, and slowly began to condense into groups no smaller than four, or bigger than ten. They gathered, staring through each other with thoughtless gazes, and waited.
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