Luis Perez. 2-28-99

And Then A Guy (magnetism)

Jumped Off the Roof

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I awoke with a splitting headache after a night of ebullience and random handshaking. Sprawled out on an unknown couch, I put my hands to my face and began to massage my eyelids with tense fingertips. I gradually made my way to my feet and found myself naked in a chilly room. The room appeared to be rather bleak and not so sassy so I raced out by way of the nearby door. On my exit I had set foot in a hallway and found myself encased in an environment of darkness with neither hanging lights nor street lamps providing illumination through the stained glass windows.

As I walked, I tripped over various naked people who on my contact began to scream in high-pitched tones. The screams were truly unreasonable and seemed to be tainted with insanity. After completion of the human obstacles I found my way onto the street. The street was very quiet and all calm until I looked by way of my left side and found a crippling naked man gliding towards me on roller skates. In his hand, he held what seemed to be a turtle and as he came closer he began to scream, "The lord hath cometh and the lord hath taken away. I once had a snail but no more, the Lord hath taken away thyne dimension. Will you live? Will you live?" He came within three feet of me and lunged at me striking me to the ground. The old man was rather strong in spite of his decrepit disposition and held me down with only one arm. "Look you fool," he said to me in an exuberant voice displaying with his right hand a compass. "It works no more because the lord hath felt our race unfit to preserve it.... the perfect..... the beautiful........ the MAGNETISM."

The man let go of his hold on me and began to weep. Stages of vomit began to follow and I hoped to comfort the man with my interest in his ominous belief of the loss of magnetism.

"Tell me, Chap, of the things you say... Whatever do you mean by the loss of magnetism?" I asked.

"In the summer of 02", the old man said amongst tears, "we, the sages of the colony professed our loyalty to the lord and promised to rid the colony of all inferior subjects. In our various attempts we’ve had difficulties in the annihilation of some groups such as the Hooligans and the John Denver fan club. Due to our inability to carry out the formulated plan, the lord hath taken away our source of perfection...."

"Magnetism?"

"That is correct," replied the old man

I asked him to prove that such a thing as the removal of magnetism had actually occurred. On my request for proof, the old man began to guide me throughout various points in the colony in order to placate my skepticism.

The first stop was a small group of basketball players fiercely deformed by skin cancer and cataracts. Their skin was like that of funky alligator flesh and their eyes bulged out in such a manner that they were permanently open due to the ineffectiveness of their eyelids. A truly sad sight they were as they clutched to one another in search of comfort from their freak like appearances. The old man explained that without the protection from cosmic rays emitted by the sun, that we were all subject to possible radiation poisoning. He explained that although the Sun’s light could not be physically seen any longer due to the lack of magnetism, its wrath was mightily felt by the victims of its rays. Cures for ailments are almost impossible now in the field of cancerous diseases because the MRI’s are no longer functional. Attempts have been made to treat patients in hospitals who’ve formed various spinal injuries, but the attempt has been short lived. The bacterium once used to form new spinal tissue has been inadequate for some time now because of their use of magnetic fields to perform the task of spinal cord construction and reconstruction. Hundreds of youngsters without spines are left helpless in old school hip-hop medleys and sitting up straight contests.

I asked the man why people would not be able to venture out of this colony and into a place of asylum somewhere else and perhaps there live just as they once had. The old man said "navigation was impossible now without magnetism and that the effects of a magnetless world would catch up to all one day. Anyway, the only form of transport is the Bakersfield Monorail, which is rendered useless now because it runs on magnets in its travels. The monorail used to bring many a rapper and stripper to the lovely Northern Lights Show in the northern county of Foulcrackton , but the show headlined by Kenny Loggins is no more because of the loss of magnetism."

The next stop was the Flippin’ Center (or it was the name given to the area known for its flipping) in which we found hundreds of youngsters continuously flipping. According to the old man, the crystals in our brains are quite identical to that of the little bar magnet bacterium and these crystals help maintain our equilibrium. Since magnetism has been lost, these folks have been forced to flip twenty-four hours a day in order to maintain some equilibrium, making the scene a rather facetious one. Another evident characteristic that caught my eye was the ever-present amount of pigeons and lobsters that were simply going nowhere in their lives. These creatures had been known to migrate a great deal, but since the loss of magnetism which had allowed them to navigate had been lost, they have lived in this pitiful section of the colony spending their days perched on one another’s rotting carcasses and watching marbles melt near old pitchers of car wax.

As we moved along, I thought of a great documentary that could be made about this colony and its struggle without magnetism but all hope was lost when I found that filming would be impossible with a movie camera because movie cameras use magnetism to load its film. After weeping for a brief hour over this incorrigible truth, the old man led me to the last stop on our journey, the roof of Snappled Nipples Tire Factory on the south shore of the island. While on the roof, we could see the still waters below with no ebb to push it about and we could see the remnants of the factory which will never be able to make anymore emollient tires because all of its motors need magnetism to run. All the plans for the factories projects were lost, being stored on magnetic computer disks and no new blue prints for sexier tires will be able to be transmitted across the continent because electromagnetic waves are no more.

We have only to look forward to dark and cold because the plasma due to fusion can no longer be contained without magnetism. "We are left alone and monogamous in the world without the lord’s magnetism", said the old man. "Soon our atoms will break apart because the nuclei will be unable to hold together any longer without magnetism. That’s why I’m going to break the fetters now my boy, Adieu!" Before I could realize it, the old naked man took out a stick of lipstick from his hair and wrote "open window" on his chest. He then ran and jumped off the roof, splattering his old wrinkled body on the pavement and leaving his impression for the lord to see.

Perhaps he was right for leaving this world, but he missed the days when the lord gave us back our magnetism and we all got a little crazier.