Fragments Fiction

The Houston Birthday Party

Summer is parties and nothing compares to a party in Houston the city of dreams, of vast prairies, of herds of longhorns, of rocker-armed oil fields, the Babylon of the oil world. In the penthouse of a green-as-green-can-be, 80-story skyscraper, a small army of workers toiled, sweating, stinking, reeking in the heat of summer to build a garden paradise on three floors, six stories high with waterfalls, privet hedges, meditation groves and flower beds. Babylon had a new emperor and his name was Chance. Chance Everhard Highsmith sat in the midst of the construction making plans to come out in his private hanging gardens on his twenty-first birthday party.

"Are you going to be ready?" Chance asked, taking the clipboard from the chief engineer's hands and pointing at the punch-list.

"The tropical fish are acclimated to the water in the ponds. The peacocks for the Indian garden will arrive in an hour. The fake stone coatings on the living statues are being polished as we speak. The effect is going to be spooky at night. You can't tell which statues are real and which are models. Best of all, the Arrakeen sandworms will be ready just in time for the openings. The worms are learning their speeches. I was just going down to take care of that myself," the horticultural engineer answered.

"The worms? Multiple?"

"We found a bunch of college men more suited to basketball than acting. They only have to speak a few lines each to establish who and what they are. Want to see? It's a simple process." The engineer led Chance into the gardens and down two flights of faux-stone stairs. A sand and stone garden, half the size of the building came into view. In its middle, a white-coated technician collected clothing and personal possessions from a gaggle of tall and scrawny young men. A second technician distributed brownish-gray, sack-like tubes of to each. One by one the naked men squeezed into the worm-like, tubular sacks and sat, legs pushed to one side in the coils of a worm. Chance watched one of the actors squirm his arms and shoulders into the narrow tube.

"Ready?" the engineer asked as he pumped the air out of the sack and replaced it with a liquid. The sack took the shape of a sandworm with the head of a human at the neck. "How's that feel?" the engineer asked.

"Slick and squirmy. Surprisingly comfortable. I thought my arms and legs might feel cramped but that stuff they pumped in is literally ineffable. I'm not feeling any effing reason to be human again," one of the college kids answered. Each new worm took the cue and smart-assed satisfaction. The engineer wrapped the worm's head around the young men turning them into functioning worms. When they moved the proper way, their prostomium opened into three flaps to reveal their human face in bas-relief.

"Say your lines," the engineer ordered.

"Hidden away within the rocks of these deserts are a people known as the Fremen, who have long held a prophecy that a man would come, a messiah, who would lead them to true freedom. The planet is Arrakis, also known as Dune." Pleased, the engineer smiled and went to the next young man. Eight worms sat in a circle in the sand, reciting their lines. Six of them sat coiled like snakes and two crawled out of broken eggs. Chance shivered asat the sight contemplating the end of the night.

"We have worm-sign," the engineer said.

"You've done more than I thought possible."

"I have extra worm sacks just like you ordered."

"Bless the Maker and His water. Bless His coming and His going. May His passage cleanse the world," Chance answered.

"Precisely sir." He stopped and listened to his earpiece. "The first of your guests are arriving in the lobby.

"And I must play the party boy, the bon vivant, the raconteur and not myself."

"Understanding is required before success is possible," the engineer said. He put two fingers to his forehead and saluted Chance then he returned to the garden. Chance left to greet his guests.

The dutiful guests arrived first, family and friends unable to refuse. They would party the tnight as happy duty, chowing down canapes and exotic drinks, watching the dancers and making pleasant chit-chat. Prompt in their familial duty and unremarkable in that no one would remember them. At least no one who mattered would remember them.

Society mavens, aesthetics, dowagers and dilettante advisors, all family friends of his parents and the lawyers, arrived on time, as expected, at the top of the hour. These people knew everyone, knew everything, experienced it all. So they would be tonight's happy twitters, posts, bloggers and tomorrow's society page gossips. Chance greeted these people with thoughts of Edgar Allen. If this were the Masque of the Red Death, then these people would have paid mourners in designer shoes to remove their bodies when the Masque ended.

Fashionably late, the Glitterati arrived in decorated convertibles, horse drawn carriages, helicopters and other extravagances. These were society's golden idols, children of the sun, courtiers of the gods. With their presence they made the party and then as the hours wandered through tiny numbers, they took the party to the Afterthought Bar on Fifth and Liberty.

Exhilarated and happy, Chance returned to his special garden desert. The engineer waited, bare toes wiggling in the sand, lab coat and a pair of worm sacks on his arm.

"The icing on my birthday cake. My lifelong dream of becoming a sand worm." Chance said, removing his tuxedo. The engineer handed Chance a worm suit and opened his lab coat. He was naked underneath. The two men laughed.

"When in doubt of your surface, bare feet are best." The two men stretched the necks of the worm tubes and stepped into the tubes. A bearded technician with long, shaggy hair helped them close the sacks. He sucked the air out and filled the sacks with fluid. Two long brown tubes lay on the sand, one with Chance's head sticking out of one and the engineer's head sticking out of the other.

"You sent the college kids home?" Chance asked the technician. This was the first time he met the man and wanted to hear his voice.

"All but one. He discovered that he could travel through the sand and he said that he is a willow submitting to the wind."

"So we have a triad of worms? Did you give supplemental orders for a triad?" Chance asked. He waited for an answer because the technician was closing the mask over the engineer's head and sealing him inside the worm tube. The technician tried to block Chance's view of his face with the worm mask but Chance moved too fast. The technician had stitches, two black eyes, broken nose and dark bruises. The technician shrugged his shoulders and sighed.

"An argument in a bar. That's all. It won't happen again" He paused before continuing. "I calculated the feed for three worms. And you'll be happy to har that I got enough worm food for a year. You guys are only going to be here, what, a month? I got it all covered," the technician answered as he clamped the mask over Chance's head, cutting off his questions. Two new worms slithered into the sand like sandworms should. The mechanisms of the worm suit made living in the soft sand possible. They no longer had need of hands and feet. They slithered, pulling forward and backward, gripping the sand as they moved through it. They found the college student and cavorted as worms in their own private desert.

The technician stayed for a few hours to be sure the worm suits didn't malfunction, then he checked the water and food supplies and left the garden. The servants of Chance's penthouse knew nothing of the worm's true identities other than they were part of the garden. Each night, the technician would return, check the water and food as his contract specified. He set a special gadget to summon the worms, one of Chance's Machiavellian machinations to keep his wormy identity secret. The Dune books sat nearby for the technician to read while waiting. If they came before dawn, he would open their prostomium, record their observations, take samples of their bodies and generally record their adventure. If they didn't come to the surface, then he would leave.

Chance surfaced about once every five days, the least frequent of the worms. He never complained about the worm suit. He found nothing wrong, experienced nothing wrong. The technician marked the records as "non-responsive, true believer."

The engineer surfaced about once every three days and listed hundreds of technical adjustments that made the suits easier to maneuver and live inside. Dutifully, the technician implemented each adjustment.

The third man, the collegian with the funky fantasies, gave honest descriptions of life as a worm and the actions of the suit. Any dirt they ate passed by their faces and although their skin was tough as the worm's outer skin, it felt awful against his human face. His second observation concerned the expansion set of worm muscles kneaded his human body like bread and made it feel soft and squishy as he moved. The push-pull muscles that lengthened and contracted his body, fought against his skeleton and after about two weeks, his body started to flex and twist. Movement became easier, more natural.

"It's time to ask the other two if we can stay worms for another month, maybe two or three," the face in the worm said.

"They'll say that they only hired us for a month and ask who's going to put out your food?"

"Tell them you're willing to look after us if they agree to an extension. That's what we planned, isn't it?" the worm asked.

"Sally keeps asking me 'bout you." The technician shuffled, looked everywhere else.

"Aw rats. Tell her I went to a Buddhist Temple in Thailand. She thinks I love her and I was going to commit. Truth is, I was ready to break up when we found out about the worms. Be nice. Let her down easy." His wormy face showed more emotion than the technician thought possible. The technician smiled too broadly as he noted his observation. "What's that look all about?" the worm asked. The technician pulled the clipboard tight against his chest.

"Just notes." He smirked and laughed. The worm slid up and rested its head on the technician's knee. The technician laughed and explained. "Well not really. Sally cried on my shoulder for two days about you leaving her and how you broke her heart before I took her in my arms and comforted her. Since then we been hotter than pepper sprouts and she wants my baby. She knew I knew where you went and kept nagging me to tell you that she got too drunk the night you and her hooked up and that night was just a one night stand, her words. She couldn't figure out how to break up so she was going through the motions. So you might say I already let her down easy like and I'm giving her my best forget your old boyfriend injections to cure her memory of you. If I were you, I'd forget her." He laughed so hard that he had to stop.

"You rotten pile of," the worm stopped and laughed. "Serves me right, huh." The technician packed up his clipboard and took up a stethescope. He listened at the side of the worm.

"You sound OK. The owner of this joint, Chance, might surface tonight. I'll ask him about the extension." He slid his hands around the worm's shoulders, sampling the mucus. He wiped them onto a sterile towelette and put the towelette in a sample bag.

"I need to check your slime for oxygen levels, pH and electrolytes. Now shoo or Chance won't surface. Come back tomorrow and I'll have answers." The worm slid into the sand. The technician took his notepad out and wrote about the disappearance of human shoulders and the rounding of the worms. They started out oval shaped like humanoid bodies and over the past month grew rounder. All this would get him a second PhD in Biology when he published it. Then he set about writing and editing his textbook until Chance surfaced, still in the worm suit and still gushing about how good it felt to be a worm. The technician took the opportunity to present the idea of an extension.

"What with the month coming to an end and the days for the human Chance to return from his birthday trip," the technician explained. "Why not extend the vacation, take the opportunity by the horns and enjoy yourself. Think about a transfer to a real desert habitat near Big Bend? No one will know that you aren't on vacation."

Chance loved the idea. Instead of a month, he agreed to the new habitat and proposed a full year extension. He explained how to access his accounts and emails so the technician could reply to any requests in his name. He renewed the technician's contract and explained the encryptions that gave the technician complete authority to handle Chance's affairs until he decided to return to human form.

Before the sun came up, the technician became the electronic version of Chance Everhard Highsmith on vacation. He gave orders for a new habitat in the Mexican desert across from Big Bend National Park. He created special set asides at the University of Houston for studies in biology and the worked out how to publish the details of a rich American turned ascetic on extended vacation. Then he followed his usual routine and went back to the grubby apartment on the college campus.

The next night just after midnight, his buddy broke the surface and slithered next to him.

"I got good news and bad news. He only agreed to a month extension but y'all are going to be moved to a new habitat. I got a crew to box you guys up and ship you to the Big Bend in three days. It's not ideal but it's dry enough to handle three sand worms," the technician said.

"I thought for sure he'd agree to longer."

"He's an rich man now. This is his final fling."

"And you know about final flings," the worm said in a rather smug tone of voice.

"Rub it in dude. I told you, that guy was drunk and looking for someone to beat up. Big deal. I've been cleaning up your worm shit without complaint. The bones have healed and the black eyes and bruises went away weeks ago. I'm just as pretty as I was before." They laughed.

"So what's the rest of the deal?"

"The rest of the deal? Eat big today and tomorrow for the trip and don't open your prostomium unless you know it's me. Understand? The last thing we need is for someone to discover you can talk."

"No problemo," the worm said. He sank back into the sand.

The technician waited for Chance and the Engineer and explained the move to the new habitat to each and the need to eat heavily before the move. Both worms thanked him. Before he left, the technician dumped extra food laced with chemicals to hyper-sexualize the worms. His plan was coming together.

The next time he saw the worms, their crates were being offloaded from a helicopter in the Mexican desert. Each worm displayed a mucus collar containing eggs. Their new habitat consisted of a box canyon with rocky canyon walls on three sides and buried metal plates on the fourth. Large yet secure, no wormy escape possible. The hand picked staff understood only that the worms were living out fantasies and not who they were when they were human.

He waited a few days for the worms to get acclimated to the new sands and lose their egg sacks before he summoned them to a night meeting. He sat on the grass, cross-legged and listening to the night sounds until the three worms came over and squirmed up to him. They studied each other. The human faces, once in heavy bas-relief appeared flattened and indistinct.

"How was the trip?" the technician asked. Chance responded first.

"Rough. What changed that made us so active? I didn't care if I came near these guys before and those last two days, I couldn't stay away from either of them. What was that all about?"

"Anticipation, jet-lag, rich food, I don't know what. I'm going to have to do tests to be sure," the technician answered, hiding the truth.

"I can taste the difference in the sand. There's wild animals around here, aren't there?" the engineer worm asked.

"No predators. Lots of small critters. How's the dirt taste? I had the workers scout out a pristine canyon so the land shouldn't be polluted with chemicals or fertilizers." The worms gave each other questioning looks and seemed to decide if they wanted to say more about the dirt they ate. This time, the college kid spoke up.

"To tell the truth, better than the bagged stuff you gave us back in the city. That's a break for you. We won't have the pleasure of your nightly visits." He winked at the technician. The other two worms couldn't see his face.

"How big is this place?" Chance asked.

"On the order of ten square miles and a couple hundred feet to bedrock at the deepest. Tonight's the full moon why don't we meet a month from now at the next full moon?"

"Sounds like a plan. I'm good with that," Chance said. He closed up and slid beneath the sands.

"So am I," The engineer said, following Chance. Only the technician's partner stayed.

"Did you do what I think you did?" he asked.

"What do you think I did? It's your plan that I'm following. You tell me."

"Get me out of this sack."

"I don't think that's possible anymore," the technician half-yelled as he watched as the worm scrape against several rocks in a futile attempt to open the worm sack.

"Hit the emergency release on this thing," the worm demanded. The technician reached around and yanked at the costume. A rubber collar released and nothing else happened. The technician held it up to the worm's face.

"We both knew the risk of those worm sacks and I started to get suspicious when all of your plans included one of us keeping track of Chance. I kept telling you he was OK alone with the engineer. They were both true believers in all that sandworm stuff. But every time I devised a plan for us, you figures out how I always had to be a worm. That's when my worm turned, so to speak. You got your wish. One of us did become a worm."

"What did you put in that last batch of food?" The worm thrashed in anger.

"Your special recipe. The one you were ready to feed me; growth hormones, anti-oxidants and lots of anabolic steroids. When you slip underground again, listen for your hearts. You'll hear five, fully functioning hearts by now. No way you can return to human form."

"Why didn't you warn me? Why did you let it get past the point of no return?"

"Because you planned to double-cross me. I found your notes on the irreversibility of worm sack transformations and the chemicals used to transform a human body." The worm stopped talking and slid backward. It squirmed to the left and coiled his body on top of the sand.

"You're just guessing," he said.

"Sally kept a copy of your files. When you didn't show up, she went looking for cheaters and found a liar instead." The technician leaned back on the sand with his hands behind his head. The worm circled him and plunged into the sand. It surfaced between his legs and arched itself up over his body. The prostomium opened and moved the human face up close to the technician's face.

"Done in by a woman scorned," the worm said.

"You rated her as a three and a half out of ten. Were you suicidal or stupid?" the technician asked, laughing too hard and enjoying it too much. The worm dropped onto his torso and he doubled up. He twisted sideways and reached to protect the family jewels. "Damn. You got fat. Don't crush the nuts, Dude. I want them and need them."

"I ought to slime you like the slick worm you are." The worm bounced, causing the technician to curl wrap his arms and legs around the worm while laughing like a fool. He slid around the worm and stood straddling it with both legs. Then he grabbed the worm behind is head and pretended to ride it like a horse. The joke lasted a a few seconds before they separated and faced each other.

"Go, join your buddies in the sand. I'll be back in a month."

"Not if I see you first," the worm said.

When the next full moon was high in the sky, only sandworms answered the signal. None of them had faces or could speak. By that time, the technician had shaved his beard and trimmed his hair. He closely resembled Chance Everhard Highsmith. When he traveled into cold weather, the bones of his face hurt just like the plastic surgeons warned him when they repaired his shattered face from that fateful bar fight.

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