We are yet again prisoners of Lariat Motor Lodge, Mount Shasta, California -- the Comfortmobile won't be discharged from the clinic until 5:30. Stephanie and I are allowed to keep our motel room until 5:00 and we are both sensationally bored -- so bored we feel stoned, like we've drunk a bottle of cough syrup each. Travel restlessness fills us; we want to move.

Stephanie's juggling lace hankies and firing her cap gun at the ceiling. Lunch kills 3,600 seconds. I post last night's letter to Frank E. Miller in Seattle, addressed to "Biff" Miller, his college nickname, thus boosting the letter's chances of being read by Frank E. Miller himself.

On the way back from the post office, I stop at a bank of America ATM and withdraw from my rapidly disappearing savings. I then convert my withdraw into a wad of low-denomination bills. I feel like a crack dealer. I have an idea.

I am writing a list of tragic character flaws on my dollar bills with a felt pen. I am thinking of the people in my universe and distilling for each of these people the one flaw in their character that will led to their downfall -- the flaw that will be their undoing.

jasmine, Anna-Louise, Daisy, Mark, Dan, Stephanie, Monique, Kiwi, Harmony, Skye, Gaia, Mei-Lin, Davidson, Pony, Grandma and Grandpa, Eddie Woodman, Jim and Lorraine Jarvis -- everybody's here. Even me. And more.

What I write are not sins; I write tragedies. And I am writing these tragedies in a manner that the recipients can easily absorb. And I won't say whose flaw is whose. I continue. In no particular order:

Stephanie is mutilating cash, too, garnishing my mottoes with messy red lipstick kisses as we bring into the foreground the secret language of money -- biting the invisible hand that feeds us.

Hours later we pay the Comfortmobile's hospital bill with some of our "tragic cash." The mechanic, after reding his money, can't herd us out of the garage fast enough.

Stephanie and I are eager to flee Mount Shasta. Our plan is to drive at warp speed down Interstate 5, then branch over Route 299 onto Highway 101 toward Humboldt County and my dad's house. We could have spent the night in Mount Shasta, but we felt the unfightable urge to move. Hopefully tonight we'll drive through Trinity and Siskiyou Counties before we OD on driving and need to crash in a cheap motel.

Our drive into the night is chatless and tunage-free. The scenery is flat, dry, and Lancasterish. Stephanie falls asleep beside me and I think about the family and friends I've left behind me back at home. I pull into a Circle-K grocery to buy a nostalgic bag of Cheezie Nuggies and a ginger ale, feeling a twinge of pride in belonging to a society that can maintain a beacon of light and technology like this Circle-K out in the middle of nowhere. Convenience stores: the economic engine of the New Order.

The store inside is a spacious warehouse of potato chips, chocolate bars, pop, and car magazines -- and little else. Dwindling numbers of species outside; dwindling section of products inside. It's the new balance of Nature.

The store is also lit to the point of painfulness by a ceiling loded with more fluorescent bulbs than a landing mothership. Shielding my headachey eyes, I make my consumer choices, then head to the counter, where the clerk is wearing sunglasses. I pay the clerk with a five dollar bill on which I have felt-penned with words:

Have you ever researched your family tree? Have you ever tried to meet an unknown relative merely because you shared blood? Telephoned a stranger out of the blue? Knocked on the door of this stranger's house because you knew shared chromosomes pulsed behind it?

Maybe you have and maybe you were pleasantly surprised. But then, maybe you regretted doing so. Maybe you realized some folks are best left a name and a date on a piece of yellowing three-ring notepaper in the back of a kitchen drawer, your sister's hot date's phone number scribbled in one corner (MURRAY IS A GOD: 684-1975) and a half-finished game of hangman doodled on the other corner (H _ A T H _ R ___ L _ C K H _ _ D).

maybe you saw these strangers and said to yourself, "You are not me" -- but you were wrong. They are you; you are them. You are all one forest.

My biological father, Neil, lives in a cedar-shingled Hobbit-type house trimmed with purple, deep inside the redwoods. On the thatched roof above the Plexiglas light bubble and long-dead solar panels is a rainbow wind sock; a sky-blue 1940s truck muralled with latex paint clouds is parked out front amid a patch of lupins, Shasta daisies, Scotch broom, and California poppies. Stephanie and I had to unlock two gates and pass three DO NOT ENTER signs to access this house, aided by an iffy map sketched by Jasmine years ago which had the two gate keys taped to the bottom. What a treasure hunt.

For today's big surprise meeting I'm wearing a shirt and tie. A decade had passed since I've seen Neil, so I want to look mature. I am expecting much insight into why I am the way I am as a result of this trip, and my knees go limp upon seeing the house.

Neil's children, maybe ten of them, blond with pale blue wolf eyes, are strapping each other with frizzies of redwood bark as Stephanie and I drive up. Two girls hold Barbie dolls with third eyes painted on their foreheads. All of these children fall silent when they see the Comfortmobile, then fall to the ground, like in a 1950s nuclear alert.

"Jesus"

"Sacre bleu."

The kids start wailing and screaming, crawling to the side of the house. Two women in white prairie dresses run onto the porch, each wiping her hands off on an apron. One of the women shrieks inside, and Neil, white bearded like God, clad only in bib overalls and cowboy boots, runs down the house's porch aiming a 12-gauge shotgun as Stephanie and I stop our walk toward the house, frozen --- petrified.

"What do you want?" he barks

"Neil?"

"What of it?"

"I'm Tyler."

Neil knits his brows, cocks his head, then says, "I don't know any Tyler. Tyler -- oh -- Tyler. Tyler?" He lowers his gun, whistles an all clear. He lumbers down the steps to hug me, his snowy beard clinging to my crispy gelled hair as to Velcro. The past minute of fear is erased. "And this -- " he says, turning to Stephanie -- "Is... uh... Daisy." He goes to hug her and Stephanie flinches.

"No, Neil. This is Stephanie. A good friend. Daisy is in Lancaster."

Neil hugs her, regardless.

The children are swarming about us, touching my tie and reaching for Stephanie's hoop earrings. In their faces I see snatches of my own face -- I didn't realize I had so many half-siblings, and I experience an odd pleasure while meeting them -- like eating a pear you know was harvested from a twig grafted onto an apple tree. The kids are wearing T-shirts with molecules printed on them: LSD, chocolate, testosterone, valium, THC, and other mood-altering chemicals.

"Come inside," Neil says. "Have lunch. Be with us. Let us gather."

"Pa sells shirts at festivals," one of the kids offers. Her shirt is filthy.

"My decoy business," Neil says, then whispers into my ear: "The Feds."

"Does MTV have a molecule?" I ask.

"What's MTV?" Neil replies. "I don't like designer drugs."

The scariest aspect of the kitchen is that there are no boxes or cans or other tokens of this nation's mighty food-distribution system -- no recognizable brand names. No processed foods. No microwaves. No electricily. Nothing. Jars are filled with bits of plants and grains that I don't recognize, even with Jasmine's training. Crystals are nudged into all corners of the ceilings. Incense reek permeates all porous surfaces. Kickknacks are smooth and carved from redwood: hippie accessories to Eden. This kitchen makes the kitchen in Lancaster seem like the Space Shuttle.

And these two women, Laurel and Jolene -- spacey-eyed and barefooted -- don't talk. Nada. They do smile a lot, but their smiles are creepy hippie smiles, like the smiles friendly folk give you in a small town when your car breaks down and they feed you and feed you and you think it's great, only to discover in the end you're going to be their Thanksgiving dinner. Nonetheless, Laurel and Jolene have fixed a no-doubt nutritious lunch, a flavorless legume casserole.

During the meal, as we sit around a large redwood dinner table, Neil is wholly uncurious about my visit. He doesn't ask me even one question. Not even, say, "How long are you here?" or, "Why are you here?" He is also bleary-eyed. Stoned. I think the women are tripping, too. The kids aren't high, though. They're bestial, altering between being mean as a sack of cats, or as dull as a sack full of sacks. Boy, they need discipline.

"jasmine is in good spirits," I offer. Neil nods, saying this is great, but Laurel and Jolene don't respond a mention of their once rival. When this lunch isn't scary, it's bring. I give a few sundry details about life in Lancaster.

Stephanie keeps squinting, trying to see hints of my face under Neil's beard. "Oh lady, you've got to stop looking like that," Neil says, "I'm freaking out."

"Zut! My apologies," says Stephanie.

I give up on the conversation with these deadheads, and talk to Stephanie as though only the two of us are present. This strategy seems to work well, relieving the elders of taxing thought processes. "Jasmine met Neil at a Rainbow festival in Redwood City. Neil was a guide."

"A guide?"

"He guided people through acid trips. Sweated it out with them in bathtubs. Talked them down. He and Jasmine lived in the middle of a total scene: bikers, speed freaks, suicides -- casualties lying all over the place. Neil guided Jasmine through a bad dose of microdot. They lived for a while in the woods outside of Mount Shasta, then moved to the new commune in B.C. together."

"Freaks." Neil chuckles trollishly to himself.

"Jasmine says that because of both acid and Neil, she's well aware of the infinitely rich possibilities of life. She says acid opened doors she never knew existed. But she also said that once she began to fear acid she could never drop it again."

"The Fear," Neil says with authority, then brusquely adds: "Coyote, take Norman his lunch."

"Yes, Pa," says one of my half-brothers -- Coyote, I supposed -- grabbing a plate of casserole and heading out a rear door.

"Who's Norman?"

"Jasmine not told you?"

"No."

"Norman is your godfather."

"Wild!" This is just the sort of exciting fun fact I was hoping to find by visiting Neil. "Really?" Imagine -- being able to meet the human specifically chosen to provide me with religious instruction.

"But Norman's kind of out of things. He's not much to talk to," Neil adds.

Silence. I know what this means. "Casualty?" I ask.

Neil, Laurel, and Jolene nod.

After lunch Neil shepherds me into a tepee sweat lodge in an alder grove behind the house. Stephanie, daggers in her eyes, has been delegated by Neil to stay behind in the kitchen to help clean up. "We have male energies and lore to exchange."

As Neil and I walk out back, naked except for yellowed frayed guest towels wrapped around our waists -- towels stolen two decades back from the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco -- I see Stephanie's face through a kitchen window, her hands washing dishes in the sink. She's angry as a buzzing hornet at having been abandoned in the 13th century.

The children swarm about us, their directionless motions and fluttering long white hair mimicking the imbecilic liquid world of fish under the sea. In their hands are strings of plastic and clay beads, which they trade with each other like strands of genetic material. These children are not allowed to enter the sweat lodge with us.

Smoke streams out a hole in the roof. Inside the air is chewy and salty and hot. The gel in my hair is an odor magnet and I'm going to emerge from this experience smelling like lox. Redwood planks burn my thighs while Neil lights a joint and offers me a toke. "No thanks. I have to drive."

He arches his eyes eyes in surprise. "Young people have no memories. You're unable to mourn the past."

"Huh?" These hippies.

We sit and get mellow while Neil smokes his "Dr. Jay."

"Did Jasmine ever tell you the story of Norman and the bicycle?" Neil asks.

"Never."

"After Norman flipped out in Santa Cruz we had to babysit him. We smuggled him up to British Columbia with us, up to Galiano Island."

"I was just up there. Up at Galiano."

Neil ponders this. "Yeah? See anything?"

"Zero. No traces left of the commune. Except a file of chimney stones-- and there are condominums half a mile away."

"The disappearing act. Is the blackberry path still there?"

"Barely."

Neil tokes the joint, holds his breath, then blurts out a cloud of muck. "The path used to be more like a rod -- it's where Jasmine was riding when the bicycle story happened. She was pregnant. With you. She was riding to the general store to phone Vancouver. Norman was running the other way screaming at an invisible attacker -- the Pope or a bank regulator from the Channel Islands. I think he was yelling about deutschemarks -- and he plowed smack into Jasmine. The two went flying."

Another long, windy toke. My hair feels like it's dissolving. "They were both lying on the ground, stunned, collecting their breaths -- staring into each other's eyes like they'd just made love. Then Norman reached over and placed his hand on jasmine's stomach -- you -- smiled, trembled, then calmly walked away. He stopped being chased by bankers after the crash. He stopped being paranoid -- even though he was still a casualty in other ways. But because of the transformation -- the loss of paranoia -- Jasmine thinks of you as being blessed. Special. She ever told you she thinks you have healing power?"

"No."

Neil finishes off what's left of the joint. "She does. She still sends Norman birthday presents. And pictures of you. That's how I recognized you." One final toke. "You're a photographer?"

"I'm hoping to be a professional. We're moving to Los Angeles right now."

"Snap a picture of Norman for Jasmine. We haven't had cameras here in years."

"Does Norman talk? Does..." But Neil stops responding. He's fried. Meanwhile, the steam heat becomes too much for me. I sit for a few minutes with my catatonic biological father, then leave the sweat lodge and scurry back to the house, air freezing on my sweaty bare skin. Stephanie is standing out by the garden. Seeing me, she pleads, "When can we leave? I want to leave."

"Hang on. I have to wash the smoke out of my hair. Is there a shower here, or do they just wait for it to rain? And I have to take a picture, too."

"Please, be sna-pee."

Around the front of the house, the children are clustered around the Comfortmobile's rear driver side tire, hooting and hollering like skatebrats at Ridgecrest Mall.

"What's up, Coyote?" I ask Coyote -- the only demi-sibling I'm able to identify. Coyote points his thumb as a skinny man, dressed in rags with a hillbilly beard, sitting cross-legged beside my car, licking his reflection in the black paint.

"Meet Norman," says Coyote.

Get me out of here.

An hour later, at the Hitching Post Cafe in Ukiah, California, I am recovering from my father's house.

The cafe's shellacked Elvis burl clocks, its pie racks full of gooey, chemical-based lemon pies, and its edelweiss still lifes painted onto saw blades seem positively life-alarming after this morning's descent into madness.

We can't eat enough chemicals: "Caffeine -- caffeine -- caffeine," I chant to the waitress.

"Nutrasweet!" adds Stephanie.

"Edible oil products!"

"White sugar!"

"Now!"

Stephanie spent the first three miles back on the open road screaming like banshees -- like we'd just escaped being roasted alive -- giddy with a sense of escape. it was enough simply to rinse my hair, change clothes, and peel out through the gates.

Now we just want to see the future. Any future.

Another day: San Francisco and wooden houses painted the color of children's thoughts. Stephanie and I are lost in rolling fog, sniffing the asbestos tinge of the Comfortmobile's takes brake pads.

The fog disappears and so does or breath: "Check out the view, Stephanie -- talk about glamour -- a real futurescape: bank of America -- Intel -- TransAmerica -- and across the bay, nuclear aircraft carriers in Oakland -- all of this plus the earthquake faults threatening to cum at any moment. What a city -- it's so modern."

Later we break for a cappuccino near Cyclotron Road by the Lawrence nuclear facility on a street of freaks on the liberal nipple of Berkeley. Stephanie phones France -- Monique's kitten, Minnuit, is still on the verge of death.

Next stop: a pilgrimage to Apple headquarters in Cupertino, then into the Silicon Valley: Los Altos, Sunnyvale, Palo Alto -- twelve lanes of traffic zooming past eucalyptus trees on fire. Hot hot hot.

Traversing the Bay Bridge, sun glimmers on fragments of abandoned earthquake-ravaged freeway held up to the sky by uncollapsed poles -- like the sculpture garden at the Ridgecrest Mall. "Stephanie, all I need is air in the spare."

The traffic jams abruptly. Lolling here in this glorious West makes me think of photos of those dead factory towns in other parts of the world -- those zones of long dead, rusting technologies like ball bearing andnaphthabituminous coal and ideas that aren't working anymore -- cities so big and so dead as to have their own complete cosmologies of the afterworld. I feel sorry for these places. Examples? I envision screaming housewife mummies in pearls dog-paddling in the molten coke lakes of the anti-Pittsburgh. I picture eyeless ghost engineers huddled above the blueprints of iron machines that will eat the sky in slow motion. I imagine skeleton passengers on a BOAC prop flight that will never land, their bones clad in smart wool suits, lifting cocktails to their grinning skull faces, rattling and chanting with rage at their eternal damnation, gleefully clacking their fibulas together and toasting the black-and-white industrial landscapes below -- the anti-Bremen, the anti-Portsmouth, the anti-Hamilton, the anti-Yokohama, and the anti-Gdansk -- the plane puncturing the fluffy clouds of smokestacks -- billowing gray tufts of dioxides and burning time.

Now, contrast these visions with the skinny turquoise buildings of the West: blue-jeaned employees playing with hackeysacks during lunch hour; employee babies learning japanese in corporate creches, freeways brimming with the success stories of the New Order -- software, jets, and submarines; white bond paper, vaccines, and slasher movies. With relief, I have found the antidote to my father's house.

"Stephanie," I say, "we are gong to become rich in Los Angeles."

"I hope so, Tyler. Life is rich."

"You read my mind."

The Silicon Valley is a necklace of futuretowns. What is a futuretown? I shall explain.

Futuretowns are located on the outskirts of the city you live in, just far enough away to be out of reach of angry, torch-carrying mobs that might roam in from the downtown core.

You're not supposed to notice futuretowns -- they're technically invisible: low flat buildings that look like they've just popped out of a laser printer; fetishistic landscaping; new cars only in the employee lots; small backlit Plexiglas totems out front quietly brandishing the strangely any-language names of the company housed inside: Cray. Hoechst. Dow. Unilever. Rand Pfizer. Sandoz. Ciba-Geigy. NEC. Futuretowns are the same in Europe as they are in California, I figure they're the same the planet over. Futuretowns are like their own country superimposed onto other countries.

Stephanie and I drive through these futuretowns of the Silicon Valley with tunage cranked to eleven.

"What should we play next?" I ask.

"British industrial noise!" Stephanie wisely decides. We scavenge the tapes from the backseat, which has degenerated into a jambalaya of bicycle shorts, cassettes, maps, and turkey-jerky wrappers.

We then return our gaze to the mirror-boxed futuretowns circling us -- the hard drives of our culture, where the human tribe is making flesh its deepest needs and fears: teaching machines to think; accelerating the pace of obsolescence; designing new animals to replace the animals we've erased; value adding; reconstructing the future.

We don't set our TV shows in futuretowns, and we don't sing songs about them. We don't discuss futuretowns in conversations and we don't even have a real world for them. Industrial parks? I think not. A contradiction in terms.

Futuretowns aren't places -- they're documents. They are the foundries of our deepest desires as a species. To doubt them is to doubt all.

We stop for gas in Santa Clara. Stephanie goes to a Pacific Bell booth to phone France again. Alone in the car I see the digital numbers on the gas pump race forward like time; only 2,549 shopping days left until the year 2000. I felt pen more words onto a stack of one-dollar bills:

---

jon@swamp.gas.uug.arizona.edu