Luminarium by Alex Shakar

Author:Alex Shakar
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Literary, Fiction
ISBN: 9781569479759
Publisher: Soho Press
Published: 2011-08-23T07:00:00+00:00

As the sun began to burn around the edges of the blackout curtains, Fred read about Kama Deva, the Hindu analog to Cupid, with his beestrung, sugarcane bow and lotus-tipped arrows. He read about Vishnu and Lakshmi, the eternal lovers residing together beyond time, beyond space, amid the coils of a thousand-headed snake on whose hoods rest all the celestial bodies of the universe. He read about them finding each other in earthly manifestations again and again down through the ages; and how Padma, Lakshmi’s incarnation destined for the hand of the tenth avatara, Kalki, would pray for blessings from a god it took Fred a while to figure out was also Shiva—the god had one thousand names, apparently, and the pseudonym used in the semi-redacted Google Books version of the Kalki Purana was misspelled at that. And how Shiva would answer both their prayers, and the two lovers would come together, and Kalki would set off to make sacrifices and prepare for the fight ahead.

It wasn’t the tiredness, the gravitational pull of the bed, that was keeping him from getting up and getting dressed for the interview. He sat for a long time leaned against the headboard, folding open and back the various tools in the Swiss Army knife. Blades, saws, files. Pliers, scissors, bottle- and can-openers. An awl. A chisel. A plastic toothpick. He stared at the little emblem, the cross within the shield.

Who were these people? He knew who they were, he told himself. If not specifically, then generally: a bored, random hit squad of listserv dweebs, out to make his life hell. He could barely even contemplate the alternative—that it was people actually trying to honor George, to avenge him in some misguided way. People who—was it really possible?—may have had his trust, even his participation. People loyal to George. More loyal than Fred.

Whoever they were, they were spying on him. Would they now involve Mira in this? Simply to humiliate him, if this was a prank? Or to blackmail him, somehow, if it wasn’t? Was she in danger? The idea seemed farfetched, but his spinning mind reeled out farther still, wondering if Mira herself were in on it, if this helmet study were nothing but an elaborate ploy to brainwash him, make him psychologically malleable, implant subconscious messages or the like and soften him up to do the conspirators’ bidding.

Then, sensing no ground beneath him and madness all around, he was scrabbling all the way back to the prank scenario, telling himself to get real, to get a grip, hurling the multitool across the room, bounding up from the bed, cursing himself for the wasted time. A one-minute shower. A shave in quick, perilous strokes. Throwing on his semblance of a suit. He was about to leave the knife behind, but thinking he might be able to get a telling reaction out of someone were he to casually produce it on the programming floor, he retrieved it. Then he was leaving the rabbit hole of

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