Wax, or the Discovery of Television Among the Bees Page #2

---

So I went indoors.

I watched the people in the trees...

and Cain...

as he left for another planet.

I decided that I didn't want

to understand what had happened.

I went to bed just as the sun was setting.

Melissa wasn't home yet.

The next day at work, I felt

especially sensitive

to what was happening inside

the machines.

I could feel the weapons

and the targets.

Inside the targets

I could feel that there were souls.

I was leaving my old self behind.

That afternoon, I could feel the

darkness around me.

I was on the edge of a journey.

That night as I watched television,

it occurred to me that the soul of a

person could fragment and decay

like one of 'Hive' Maker's ghosts.

I was lost...

The dead were in the sky.

I was their target.

They wanted me.

I knew that my suit would protect me.

I didn't want to tell Melissa

what was happening to me.

I was glad for the everyday

routine,

but I knew that I would soon have to

make a decision.

I separated from the ground...

I was a weapon.

Our battlefields were prepared for us

by the Defense Mapping Agency.

Every tape was a square of real landscape.

I could feel those places -

there were people there.

To hit a simulated target was to secretly

prepare murder against the real target.

Eventually, there would be real ghosts.

I had to decide now.

I was on a mission.

I turned off the radar, and headed

towards the moon.

The dead had attacked me.

Now I would attack THEM.

I was protected.

They wanted me dead,

but I would kill them before they

killed me.

I spent the night at a motel.

The next morning

I visited some friends at the National

Solar Observatory in the mountains.

We watched the clouds on television.

Then I went home.

I wasn't a killer...

I was a beekeeper.

There was only one way I could go.

I wanted to use the bees

to go back to the Garden of Eden.

The bees were waiting for me.

They pierced the side of my head.

Through this hole, they inserted

a mirrored crystal.

I had discovered television

among the bees.

Through the television, I could read

my grandfather's diary

at the Garden of Eden.

Ella Spiralum and Zoltan Abbassid

returned from New Mexico the next Spring.

Strangely, the Mesopotamian bees had

multiplied over the Winter.

The hives were filled with

their clear honey.

James 'Hive' Maker never harvested

as early as he did that year.

The colonies were so crowded,

everyday there was a new swarming.

Hive Maker followed lines of

Mesopotamian bees

away from the farm, and found

wild colonies in the trees

and caves of the surrounding

countryside.

That Spring,

Ella Spiralum began work on a device

that would allow the dead to travel

to our world.

She combined her brother's techniques of

ectoplasmic cinematography

with her knowledge of electrical

telephony.

She called the device, the electric

telescope.

Spinning discs scanned mourners left

behind by the dead,

changing their pictures to sounds

which were transmitted by

telephone wires.

The receiver changed the sounds to

moving pictures of the dead

which could float free and alive...

in the air.

During all this activity

the bee scientist, Zoltan Abbassid,

conducted his own experiments

on the Mesopotamian bees

he'd provided 'Hive' Maker.

I could see further through the

television,

out to the Deseret Test Facility,

where weapons were flying through

the air.

They were killing each other.

It was up to me to kill someone...

...that was where I had to go.

The X-shaped gun sight floated

before my eyes...

I was Cain.

That was my mark.

God would protect me from my victims.

Melissa called from work.

I told her that I was going to the

Deseret Test Facility

to look at the Army's implementation

of the Airbattle Mission Simulator.

I had no idea how long I would be gone.

The test facility was 60 miles away

through the desert.

Deseret was the main American testing

ground for guided

as well as semi-intelligent weapons.

The facility was slightly larger than

Rhode Island.

There was always haze around

the main post area.

That had reassured me right away.

THIS was a better place for me.

They were using my work to solve problems

with a vision-guided missile system

that they were testing for one of

their contractors.

I found the work disturbing.

I had the strong feeling that I should

go out to the range.

That I should be with the weapons.

I rented a small place

not far from the base.

I started taking morning walks

in the desert.

All this time,

the bee television was active

inside me.

I received pictures from the bees.

They showed me how weapons died

every day.

At the end of the day,

every night in the trailer park,

the bees told me about the new world

where they had settled

and formed a new nation.

It was the land of the dead.

The bee television showed me that place

where the radiant souls

of living spirits

split into innumerable pieces

forming beautiful patterns that

were their new bodies

and at the same time a language.

It was the language Cain brought with him

when he fled the Garden of Eden.

The thought of this new world

excited me.

My walks became longer.

I often found myself 15 or 20 miles

down-range

still full of energy.

My favorite stopping place was the

launch site monument

where the Army had tested Nazi rockets.

On the bee television,

I could see that this is where

the Moon and the Earth were joined.

All around this place,

semi-intelligent weapons were trying

to escape the Earth

hoping for a new life elsewhere.

When I was away from the ground,

the bee television became even clearer.

I could lose myself in the images

and become a weapon myself,

rising through the air.

My destination was the Moon.

That's where the dead lived.

I always enjoyed visiting the moon.

The dead were always quiet until I

started to leave.

That's when they spoke.

They spoke to me

...as bees.

They showed me a line

that I would have to follow through

the darkness.

It led to a place

hidden in the desert

where they were waiting for me.

I would have to follow this bee line

out to the test range.

That's where the weapons were.

They were leaving around the clock.

No one on base seemed to wonder

what happened to the missiles

that never came back.

But I knew that they had become

flying saucers,

and that I could

join them if I wanted

and become one of them.

And so it was,

that carrying only the bee television

and my own thoughts,

that I walked out to the desert.

As I walked, the bee tv showed me

the sights of past

or future explosions.

I walked for many hours,

engrossed by what I saw.

But eventually, I awoke.

I was afraid.

I could see the dead, shaped like

letters of the alphabet.

They danced for me.

The bee tv appeared among them

I was traveling in the right direction.

I woke on my feet,

heading north.

Less than an hour later,

I came upon an unfinished mud building.

It was a library in-progress

for the Russian Orthodox monks

Rate this script:0.0 / 0 votes