Perceptua Connecta.  Ever heard of it?  Most people haven’t—the only way to get there is if you’ve loosened the right screws in your head and taken a heroic dose of DMT.  (I’ve satisfied both conditions, in case you’re wondering).  It’s a half-real dreamscape beyond the mind-space barrier, where sentient ideas mingle freely.  A concentration of novelties and wonders so damn potent that—if you’re not watching your step—you can easily spin out into a disincarnate mess, and spend your next thousand lives trapped in the depths of possibility.

As I take my second rip off the DMT pipe, the world goes yellow.  One more, and I’m sucked into a looney tune kaleidoscope of fractalized mandalas.  A second later, the world crystallizes into an aetheric realm.

“WE OFFER YOU GIFTS, KENT WAYNE!  GIFTS BEYOND YOUR WILDEST—”

“Knock it off, Earl,” I say irritably.  “We’ve known each other for seven years.”

“Oh.  Right.”  Earl, DMT entity and Resident Greeter (he looks like a prettier version of Slimer from Ghostbusters) scratches the back of his noggin, and throws me a chagrined smile.  “Sorry—it’s standard protocol.”

“Understandable.  Got any gear for me?”

He nods, plunges his hand into his rippling torso, then withdraws a Voltron figurine.

“Here you go.”  He extends his arm.

I reach out and take it from him, closing my eyes for a brief moment.  Conceptual armor begins forming around me, cohering into an ensemble of translucent plates and pulsing, jointed nodes.  What does it look like?  Think LOTR Elven warrior, throw in a touch of steampunk, then layer in some Protoss Archon from Starcraft 2.

I flex my will, and a stylized gun-barrel emerges from my forearm.  The muzzle’s a cybernetic circlet which isn’t attached to the actual weapon; it floats several inches in front of my knuckles, secured by the best telekinetics that Perceptua has to offer.

“You really think you’ll need that?” Earl gives me a doubtful look.

I pump my fist, racking an imaginal round into the chamber.  “No.  But it looks cool as hell, doesn’t it?”

He shakes his head.  “Humans.  What are you here for, anyway?”

“Soccer Mom Prime.  The legends say that she resides in Perceptua.”

Earl’s face turns an alarming shade of green.  An instant later he zips off in the opposite direction.  “GOTTA GO, KENT!  TRY NOT TO DIE!”

Da fuq?  I look around in puzzlement.  Before I can decide what to do next, a beautiful voice rings throughout the aether:

“KENT EFFIN’ WAYNE.  TO WHAT DO I OWE THE PLEASURE?”

It’s Soccer Mom Prime.

“You and I were born to be together, Soccer Mom Prime!  You can’t deny it!”

A menacing chuckle shakes the foundations of my inanimate being.  “AND WHY WOULD I CONSORT WITH A PITIFUL SPECK LIKE YOURSELF?”

“I fulfill all the requirements:  ripped body, crazy AF mind, 5.5 inches in circumference—”

“BOOOOOORINGGG.  THERE ARE APPROXIMATELY 10^9358 SUITORS THAT FULFILL THOSE SPECIFICATIONS.  I BELIEVE YOU HAVE OVERSTEPPED YOUR BOUNDS, MAN WHORE WAYNE.  PREPARE TO BE SCATTERED TO THE ASTRAL WINDS.”

“Wait!  There’s still more I can—”

“EMO-POETS…HAVE AT HIM!”

Iridescent ripples carve through the air, forming into pasty, vitamin-D deprived visages of jerkoffs with names like Sunlilt, Darkbrace, and Attack Cock (okay, I made that one up; I happen to think that it has a bit of poetry to it.  Ironic, I know.)

Their mouths yaw open and they bombard me with hissing streams of revolting emo poetry—a gut-churning conglomeration of hey-look-at-me-I’m-clued-into-some-universal-sadness-that-you-better-feel-too-or-I’ll-get-bent-the-fuck-out-of-shape.

I raise my left arm, instantiating an Elf-steampunk-Protoss shield, warding off their incessant mind-shit, and fire desperately at them with the psychic wrist-gun affixed to my right arm.  It’s no use; in a matter of seconds, these fucks are gonna flood me with their vomit-inducing weak sauce.

Unless…

I open my eReader to Echo, activating its reality distortion powers.  Magic flash.

My wiener bursts from my pants, revealing the one feature I forgot to mention:

The Upcurve.

“CEASE FIRE!”  Soccer Mom Prime’s authoritative voice rings throughout the dreamscape.  The Emo-poets stop attacking.  A series of black-ringed slashes swirls through the expanse, forming into the figure of a hot AF soccer mom.  She drifts toward me and stops six feet away.  She looks down at my crotch, then meets my eyes with a level gaze.

“You didn’t mention an upcurve.”

“Guess I forgot?”  I offer a nervous grin.

She turns briefly to the side.  “Begone,” she orders the Emo-poets.  They all vanish in a puff of ideas.  Then she looks at me again.

“Prepared to be used like cheap, Costco pie crust, Man Whore.”

*70s porn music*  😀

 

Are you trapped in an imaginary realm where your life is being threatened by one of the lowest forms of literature?  Never fear!  Get Echo Vol. 1 on Kindle here:  Vol. 1 on Kindle.  Vol. 2 on Kindle here:  Vol.2 on Kindle  Vol. 3 on Kindle here:  Vol. 3 on Kindle  Echo Vol. 1 & 2 Combined Edition here:  Combined Edition  If you wanna hear me babble on about anything and everything, and strain my FREAKIN’ BRAIN, then here’s a link to my podcast:  Strained Brains!  It is on iTunes, Stitcher, Spotify, and Google Play!  Please give it a listen and a five-star review!  Here’s the miscellaneous gear that I use to try and become an uber-human:  Optimization, and last but not least, my buddy Jumar Balacy has made a supercool microsite at kentwaynebrain.com!  Go check out his computer-based wizardry  🙂 🙂 😀

Hold on!  I just got approved to be an Amazon affiliate!  If you’re going to buy ANY product from Amazon, and you’d like to support my efforts for absolutely free, then simply click on one of the Echo links I’ve provided—they’ll send you to Echo’s Amazon page—and THEN buy whatever product you wish.  Amazon gives me a small referral fee each time this happens!  In this manner you can support my books, musings, podcast, zany ads, or my adventures along the noble path known as The Way of The Man Child WITHOUT spending any more money than you were already going to!  Should you do this, I vow to send you a silent blessing, causing your genitals to adopt the optimum size, shape, smell, and death-ray attachment of choice that paralyzes your enemies with fear and envy!  Entire worlds will bow before your nether parts!  😲💪 😜