After we put the finishing touches on the booth - assuming that booth is not a glorified term for the two of us sitting on a heap of merchandise - we walked over to Disneyland because it is literally across the street. It was then that I heard of Gabriel's three period long speaking engagement at our old high school, and of his regret that he did not take a few select young men aside and relate to them what we know to be true: not only is adult life infinitely more tolerable than the somnambulistic enterprise of secondary education, but that there are (in fact) valid, crucial, satisfying roles for our people beyond those evil warehouses full of idiots.
Even if he had related this startling communique, I don't know that it would have found purchase. I would not have been, myself, in a position to profit much by it at that point. My primary concern at that time was, if memory serves, Warlords II on the Amiga. So if what you were saying did not directly relate to the movement of armies or the noble champions that led them into battle the chances of me looking sort of tense and distant were pretty good.
That person would not have particularly enjoyed Disneyland. The insidious brand messages and the almost savagely inoffensive consumer culture would have kept him out of the park like a kind of force field. The person who stands before you, or sits, in any case the person typing these words thinks that Disneyland is a magical fucking wonderland. He doesn't really worry about whether or not Star Tours is considered official canon. The idea occurs to him, yes, but it is filed away with the other pungent residues of the obsessive-compulsive mind.
Gabriel has insisted that Robert, Kiko, he, and myself be referred to as "The Four Horsemen" for the duration of this adventure, and these harbingers must not be separated at any time, even if one of the Horsemen (let's say Famine) wants to go on a completely terrifying rollercoaster. I don't like rollercoasters, not anymore than I like other careening chunks of metal not under my direct control, but somehow I found myself in a line for this Satanic "Space Mountain" contraption. Almost immediately, as the device began to ascend through a tunnel filled with whirling lights, I began to disassociate from my body and spool out of our atmosphere. I heard a man screaming, as though from a great distance, crying in a loud voice "Oh no, oh no," and pitied him. I tried to remember the agonies of mortal existence, but then I was arrested by the sweet music stars make as they shiver together in their galactic symphony.
(CW)TB out.
