This story is dedicated to the memory of Philip K. Dick, and to readers everywhere whose lives, like my own, have been touched by his work. The Return of Horselover Fat is fiction, but Phil, Kevin and David are real people, and the VALIS events referred to really happened. Sort of. It's a long story… If you've never heard of PKD, Horselover Fat or VALIS, you might want to visit www.philipkdick.com to discover the larger historical/biographical context in which this story is embedded. You'll be glad you did!
- J.P.K.
"You guys'll never believe where I've been!" Horselover
Fat said as he pushed open the screened door and stepped into the small,
sunlit kitchen.
We all looked up. We'd been quietly sipping our coffees,
nursing hangovers of varying degrees and config-urations brought on by
varying levels of commitment to the previous night's "Mother of All Parties"
held to celebrate the end of the Persian Gulf War. Though we had, none
of us, agreed about the whys and wherefores of the conflict, we'd all been
relieved to see it end. No matter how you feel about an issue, to see people
stop murdering each other is, we could all agree, a good thing.
Anyway, we all looked up as the kitchen door swung out
and Horselover Fat appeared before us.
I'd never met Fat, but I knew all about him. I'd met Kevin
and David at BayCon, a San Francisco science fiction convention where they'd
been guests of honor. Their fame was based both on the fact that, since
Phil's death, they'd each written and published several critically acclaimed
novels, and on the better known fact that they had appeared as characters
in one of Phil's Masterworks, VALIS, a quasi-autobiographical novel describing
his own encounters with God (or something very much like God), his psychological
split into two people, his eventual cure at the hands of God (or something
very much like that entity), that entity's death, Phil's re-splitting,
and an ambiguous ending in which part of Phil jets off to find the dead
God, somewhere reborn, and the other part stays home to wait for some sign
that said rebirth has occurred.
Kevin and David, having lived through those roller coaster
times at Phil's side, were now hot properties as speakers, guests of honor,
and panel discussion leaders wherever people met who'd joined the ride
later, vicariously, through VALIS. Neither seemed to enjoy the odd fame
VALIS had brought them, too often finding themselves more in demand as
fictional characters than as living, contemporary authors in their own
right. But both, admittedly, enjoyed the free ticket their fame provided
to events such as BayCon.
Besides, they both - though sometimes begrudgingly -
understood people's fascination with the VALIS events and, consequently,
with themselves. Most people only dream of encountering a Larger Reality;
they'd done it. Both their lives had been forever changed.
"Shattered," is how Kevin most often phrased it.
So that was how I knew it was Fat standing there in my
kitchen, a peculiar beaming smile plastered across his face, pouring himself
a cup from the dregs of the coffee pot, and sitting down to, apparently,
enjoy the shock his appearance had written on Kevin and David's faces.
It was mostly Kevin that clued me in. David is Catholic
- old family Catholic - and is often shocked when the world refuses to
conform to a fairly narrow set of expectations as to what's possible. But
Kevin is a world class cynic. Nothing surprises him. So when his jaw dropped
and his voice fell from Ten A.M.-and-hungover grumbling into take my life,
please stunned silence, I knew I was in the presence of something way beyond
the natural faults of Kevin's admittedly irrational, even hysterical, universe.
Throughout the six weeks or so of the war, the months
before that of troops sitting in the desert preparing for a war no one
believed would really happen, Kevin hadn't shut up for two seconds. When
the first bombs were falling on Baghdad and we all cried and sought each
other out and more or less readied ourselves for the Apocalypse apparently
coming into being, Kevin had simply thrown the rubber TV-brick at NBC's
Tom Brokaw and redoubled his efforts to convince us that the whole thing
was a hoax, a conspiracy, that Bush and Hussein were in cahoots from the
start, and that the entire thing was a dog and pony show being staged so
that the U.S. could establish a permanent military presence in the Middle
East, thus gaining control of the oil supply feeding Germany and Japan
- America's largest creditors, and the biggest threats to our economic
security in the Twenty-First Century.
"Shut up, Kevin," I'd said. "People are dying. Fuck your
conspiracy, even if it's true."
He did shut up, closing himself off from the rest of
us in a little emotional shell of angry, self-righteous cynicism. But he
was not too shocked, either by the war or by our reactions to his theory,
to leave the room without first putting a tape in the VCR and pressing
"record." He wanted, he said, an objective record of these first hours
of the conflict so he could pick it apart later, go through it frame by
frame, and prove to us at some later date, when we'd gotten over our belief
that what we were seeing was actually happening, that he'd been right all
along.
That was Kevin. Nothing surprised him. Nothing broke
through his shell of expectation that the world, at its core, was inherently
rotten.
So to see Kevin fall into silence, his mouth open and
his eyes wide like a child's when meeting Mickey Mouse for the first time
off screen - not yet organizing the world into reality and fantasy, not
yet reducing the possibilities to "it must be a guy in a costume" - told
me two things: 1) The slightly heavy-set, gray-bearded man in my kitchen
was someone Kevin never expected to see "in the flesh," and 2) it was someone
from the VALIS experiences, because it was only in talking about those
times, which we still did often, that Kevin expressed any sort of awe,
any recognition, however slight, of anything beyond the mundane, mechanical,
and universal rottenness of existence.
You see, apparently, at that time, Kevin, too, had met
God. The meeting had, apparently, effected him quite deeply. His attempts,
and relative success, over the years since to write that experience off
as a group delusion had not completely robbed him of the memory of it,
or of the deep emotions those memories were capable of stirring in him.
They had merely given him a context in which to explain away something
he no longer desired to deal with, a way to put the experience behind him,
to go on living as Familiar Cynical Kevin, and not as some Zoned-Out Schizophrenic
Gnostic Jesus Freak, which is how he invariably described Fat in these
conversations.
Horselover Fat, in the novel and in real life, was Phil's
alter ego, a projection from Phil's downwardly-spiraling psyche - a sort
of Christ figure in his own right that hung around and went crazy in Phil's
place. Fat was not "real" in the sense of someone with a birth date and
a driver's license and a microfiche file with the Federal Government. He'd
simply appeared one day, poured himself a cup of coffee, and announced,
"I've met God."
No one was fooled. Kevin, David, and even Phil, to a
certain extent, recognized Fat for what he was - a Tulpa, a mind-projection,
a part of Phil that had become so fucked up that Phil had no other recourse
but to push it out, objectify it, allow it to live out its own crazy fate,
so as to save himself (Phil) from going down, too.
But this was the mid Seventies. Pop-psychology had become
the thing, replacing the gurus and spiritual searches of the Sixties. "I'm
fucked up, you're fucked up" was the slogan of the hour. For a close friend
to whack out before your eyes was, at that time, no big deal. It was everyone's
eventual destiny; one had only to wait for ones turn to come round. When
it was a friend, one was expected to be "supportive." You just coped; you
might be next.
So Fat was a figment of Phil's imagination, and the two
had been wedded from the start. They'd had very little choice: Tulpas are
a sticky business to begin with; unintentionally projected ones are even
more compli-cated. Once Fat appeared on the scene, he and Phil's
lives became symbiotically linked. If one died, they both died. They shared
a fate. They both, eventually anyway, came to recognize this.
But Kevin and David had a choice. They could have turned
away, shunted Phil off to a loony bin and settled the matter right there.
But Fat was, for all his craziness, a likable guy. And to abandon Phil
in his hour of need would have been unthinkable. So Kevin and David had
accepted Fat, included him in the circle. Over the proceeding years they
befriended him, ridiculed him, helped him, and joined him in his delusions,
in that order.
But when Fat boarded a plane headed for the Pelew Islands,
in search of the newborn Savior, they'd figured, at least, they wouldn't
have to deal with him for a while. When Phil died from a stroke in 1982,
they figured they'd never have to deal with him again, which on the one
hand was a relief, but, on the other, was sad because, after all, they'd
liked him. He was, for all his craziness, an okay guy. They'd miss him
almost as much as they would miss Phil.
So now a man had walked into my kitchen, said, "You guys'll
never believe where I've been," poured a cup of coffee, and sat down at
the table to two stunned faces, and my own quizzical expression, which
slowly changed to awe as I studied, and reacted to, the change in Kevin.
I'd seen that look before. There was no question. The
stranger now at my table was either Phil or Fat, and Phil was dead, so
it had to be Fat. I mean, reasonably, if Phil was dead Fat should be dead,
too. Then again, Fat's existence had never been reasonable, whereas Phil's
had been the normal flesh-and-blood, mortal: two parents thing. Since I
don't buy into all that bodily resurrection stuff, and the war was over,
so Judgment Day, complete with trumpets and opening graves seemed unlikely,
I stand by the rationality of my assessment that Horselover Fat, a Tulpa
projected by a human mind no longer in existence, was sitting in my kitchen.
"You've changed, Fat," David said, a bewildered smile
replacing his previous expression of dull shock. "You've put on weight.
You're tanned as hell. You look good, Man"
"I've been hanging out in the desert," Fat said. "Persia."
He sipped his coffee, head dipped down to the cup, gripping the hot mug
with both hands as he raised it to his lips. The, still hunched over, he
lifted his balding head. He rolled his eyes in big, comic circles, fixing
them, finally, on Kevin - who continued to stare, open-mouthed and silent.
Fat grinned.
"For once in your life, you were right," Fat said, looking
at Kevin, but addressing the whole room. "About the war, I mean."
Kevin exploded from the chair, sending it flying across
the scarred linoleum. He spun away from Fat, leaning his clenched fists
against the sink. His shoulders trembled.
"Goddamit, David, we said no hard drugs at this party..."
He turned back to face us. Fat still hunkered over his
coffee, his grin widening.
"No drugs," Fat said, winking slyly toward David. "No
psychotic break. Two equal impossibilities: I am really here, and you were
really right."
"Explain," Kevin said. He crossed his arms before him,
closing himself off.
"Babylon has been restored," Fat said, his voice low,
his eyes moving back to the cup in his hands. "Hussein began excavation
of the ancient site in the Eighties. The place is completely restored now.
The cults are operating full tilt, even as we speak. I've seen them."
Kevin retrieved his chair and sat again beside the table.
I tilted my chair back and tried for invisibility; I wasn't yet sure my
presence was appreciated.
"Deedle deedle queep," Kevin said, which was our insider's
term for Big Fucking Deal. "So Hussein has a hobby? What difference does
it make?"
"It's one of the signs," David said. "In the last days,
the City of Babylon returns in all its degeneracy. The Great Whore of Babylon
is a sort of Apocalyptic trigger that..."
"Bullshit," Kevin said. "The war is over. If Babylon
was there, it's gone now."
"It's there," Fat said. "The war is over, yes, but Babylon
survived. In fact, it won."
"It won," Kevin echoed. He turned to David. "Call 911.
If I'm sitting here talking to myself, I need a doctor, fast. If you see
and hear who I'm talking to, you can ride in the ambulance with me. We
can sell our story to the Enquirer to pay for the treatment... And
whoever doused us dies."
"Look," Fat said, "I can't explain it beyond saying that
one day I'm hopping islands in 1982 Micronesia, and blink, just like that,
I wake up in a temple in 1991 Iraq, sweating under a fourteen year old
prostitute who's chanting in Arabic and receiving visions while banging
my lights out..."
"My sympathies," I said.
Kevin and David both looked at me, shocked again, as
if suddenly remembering my presence. I could see no point in staying out
of the conversation any longer. I'd touched nothing but my own Jim Beam
supply the night before; I knew this was not a hallucination, at least
not a conventional one.
"I read about the reconstruction a few years ago," I
continued. "The excavation site was just outside Baghdad. If you were there,
you were in the heart of the bombing."
"That's true," Fat said. "I was there. But Babylon was
protected."
"From the Coalition?"
"Yes," Fat answered, then after a pause he added, "And
from Hussein."
As morning stretched to afternoon, the details, or at
least Horselover Fat's version of the details, became clear:
The Iraqi restoration teams had awakened something slumbering
deep beneath the Persian sands. The teams vanished. Soldiers sent to investigate
also vanished. The Republican Guard set up camp, encircling the site. But
they, too, soon vanished, one by one - into, it was discovered, the Great
City, which had miraculously billowed into full life before them, sometimes
there, sometimes not, wavering like a grand mirage over the steaming sand.
Those who remained outside could see the others within, joining the ceremonies,
sacrificing, being sacrificed, sweating under the young temple prostitutes
as they screamed out their visions. They could hear the endless chanting,
even during the less and less frequent periods when the City could not
be seen.
Frantic calls were made, calls for help. George Bush
- an Episcopalian - consulted Billy Graham – an Evangelical Protestant
- about End Time Signs. A coalition of more than thirty countries was put
together to break the chain of Signs before the next could be triggered,
to avert Apocalypse by bombing the City of Evil back to prehistoric dust.
A cover story was carefully constructed for the Press, complete with atrocity
reports, spectacular battle footage, and last ditch efforts for "peace."
They bombed round the clock for weeks. With no effect.
With each salvo, the City winked briefly out of existence, to reappear
in all its glory the moment the shelling stopped.
Their target could not be destroyed, could not even be
damaged. A quick ground war was staged for the Press, and the troops were
pulled back to Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. A few remained in Iraq in case
something changed, but were kept far to the South to prevent their being
seduced into joining the Enemy.
Now pestilence was spreading in widening circles through
the land. New cover stories were being prepared, building on the old ones.
Now, civil war...
"Hussein's restoration teams triggered a time dysfunction,"
Fat said. "Something they did there allowed Babylon to enter our time in
its true form."
David took his seat again at the table. As Fat was laying
out his story, the little kitchen had gradually grown dim. Dark clouds
had collected overhead, cutting off the warm sunlight. A thick, sheeting
rain now beat against the roof and walls. David had left the table to move
swiftly through the little apartment, closing windows, switching on lights.
He'd paused in the living room long enough to put a record on the turntable
- Wagner's The Valkyries, recorded at the Bayreuth Festival of 1952. "Rain
Music," he called it.
"Babylon," Fat continued vehemently, "cannot be destroyed
in 1991, because it did not exist, materially, in, say, 539 B.C. It exists
outside of time, outside the material universe. It's an Archetypal Form
that was imprisoned in material reality until God saw fit to allow its
return and begin the Apocalyptic countdown..."
"Babylon survived the fall of 539," David said. "Under
Alexander, the historical city..."
"There is no 'historical city'," Fat cut in. "Babylon
is an idea, a spirit of evil and destruction that was encased in material
form until the day of its Apocalyptic release, of its rebirth into pure,
malevolent Spirit. Over the centuries, many conquerors, including Alexander,
have tapped its sleeping power to serve their own desires. They built cities,
whole empires in its name - Babylon, Alexandria, Rome, the Third Reich
- But the real Babylon..."
"So you're saying Hussein is Hitler," Kevin said. "Deedle
deedle queep. You should work for Washington..."
"Damn it, Kevin!" Fat shouted. "Hussein's part of the
Coalition! They threw everything short of nukes at that thing and it didn't
even flinch! They blew those Kuwaiti wells hoping to slow it down a little,
confuse it. But it's waking up for real this time. Do you get it? This
is not a drill! Babylon is back and there's nobody at the wheel!"
Silence. Fat and Kevin staring bullets across the table.
Sweat on David's forehead.
"The oil," I said.
Again, Kevin and David looked at me, surprise on their
faces. It was as though I was somehow fading in and out of their memories,
only noticed when I spoke, forgotten again as soon as they looked away.
"What you're saying," I continued, speaking to Fat but
raising my voice in hopes of holding Kevin and David's attention, "is that
the oil is alive. That it's been sleeping under that desert for... however
long... That it's..."
"... the material form of Babylon," Fat finished for
me. "And we've been exporting it all over the world for a century. Building
our lives on it. Fueling our cars, our power plants. Fertilizing our food
with it, taking it into our bodies. And it's waking up now, Spiritualizing,
taking on its true malevolent form. All around the world."
David pushed away from the table. "I take it back," he
said, his face flushed. "You haven't changed a bit. You're as loony as
you ever were. First of all. God does not allow Apocalypse. He saves
us from it."
"You've been watching too many Televangelists," Fat said.
"Read your Bible."
"And second," Kevin said, calm again, a tight smile on
his lips, "You don't exist, Fat. You almost had us again, old buddy, but
not this time. Not this time."
He turned to David.
"C'mon," he said. "Let's get on the horn and find out
who doused us last night. We'll make like we're not pissed off, like we
had a great trip. Then we'll drive over and blow whoever did its fucking
brains out."
They stood, simultaneously, and disappeared together
into the living room.
"Good luck," Fat called after them, "with that driving
over stuff! Cars use oil! You'll never get out of the driveway!
"Shit," I said.
I was alone at the table with Horselover Fat. But I could
still see Kevin and David. The wall between us had become transparent,
moving in slow, misty waves in front of me. I could see them in there,
squabbling over the receiver, dialing. I could hear their voices, their
faked laughter as they grilled each answering party in turn, as they sought
out their culprit, the scapegoat to be sacrificed in the name of their
anger and confusion. Their words seemed to blend into a rhythmic, scatological
chant.
"We die because we are stupid," Fat said, shrugging his
shoulders. "I hope Kevin's right again. That I don't exist." He downed
the last of his coffee and stood. "Nonexistence would come in very handy
during the Tribulation. Less to contend with if I'm to find the Savior
before the shit really hits the fan."
I touched Fat's arm, gripping his shirt-cuff, testing
his corporeality. He smiled.
"One thing, Fat, before you leave," I said. "You claim
you were in Babylon. If all those Iraqis got sucked in there to stay, how
did you get out?"
Fat's smile vanished. He scratched his balding scalp.
The smile slowly returned.
"I just walked out," he said. "Any of them could have
if they'd wanted to. There was no barrier or anything. But that's the whole
point. They didn't want to. They liked it there."
He shrugged his shoulders again, freeing his arm from
my grip.
"It was nice meeting you."
He left.
"Shit," I said again.
I wiped at beads of sweat now pooling on my forehead.
I turned back toward the living room, toward the transparent, wavering
wall, toward the stereo, strug-gling to hear over the rising chant, suddenly
hungry for the reassuring strains of Wagner's heroic opera.
It had stopped.