...

Eventually everything I have to tell will be told, worthy or not, whether it will find a receptive audience or not, I don't care. It's all in the telling for me now. If a tree falls in the forest…indeed. You will listen. You may not like what you hear, you’ll likely be bored to tears, let me tell you my friend: you should try having lived this pointless, directionless life. I envy you, and I don’t even know you. If I can't have your life I will try to unload some of mine onto yours. I don’t care if you want to hear it or not. I am grabbing you by the collar, pulling you in close, you can smell my foul breath, you can see my dirt filled pores, you try to wiggle free but I have the strength of the psychotic and I’m leaning in on you, saying, you gotta hear this, buddy…

...

I came to laying on my side on a concrete bench. My head was at such an extreme angle and my neck so stiffened that I knew raising it would be painful, if not impossible; I opted to roll over onto my stomach and slowly push myself up into a sitting position while leaving my head, more or less, in its listing attitude. This too was no easy feat, accomplished by grunting, groaning effort. Laughter, accompanied by a lewdly malicious voice, attracted my attention from the other end of the cell. Two locals were sitting there watching me. He spoke again, the fat one with the leer in his voice and eyes, in a colloquial Spanish that I didn't understand. I said nothing.

Looking down I noticed my pockets had been turned inside out; my shoes were gone. I did not yet know how I arrived there; I sensed a partially formed, vague memory lurking just below the surface of consciousness. I tried retracing my steps mentally: the girl in the bar, dancing, being led onto the beach, rolling around in the sand. So far so good; then she's screaming at me; I was beseeching her to be quiet, asking in broken Spanish what was wrong: trying to ask

¿Cuál es la materia?

and just managing to stammer-shout, qual estimer! qual estimer! At the same time thinking her hysteria seemed odd, acted. I recall the impulse: Get away, get away from her. Several missing frames later and I'm struggling up an incline in the deep, loose Baja sand; wheezing, stagger-running, covering as much distance from side to side as forward but making progress back toward the plaza, and the hotel. Memory submerged, and only briefly resurfaced to reveal a glimpse of being herded into the back of a Mexican police car by baton blows, kicks, and epithets.

I was now staring at the wall across from me; it was covered in a profusion of graffiti, mostly vulgarities in Spanish. I realized I had been staring at a word. It shimmied and danced as a pair that separated, nearly aligned, and separated again repeatedly as I fought my double vision. I tried closing one stinging eye; I couldn't, like a very young child who can't yet wink. So I placed a hand, trembling slightly as if a small electric current was running through it, over one eye.
Slowly the word came into focus. No, I thought, no possible way. But there it was. Faint and weathered by countless years, crudely etched in jagged lines; I could just make out:
UNTETHERED

...

He stands on the corner addressing the cars that speed or creep by, oblivious to him. When traffic stops at the light he singles out a motorist whom he then appeals to directly, taking on a familiar air, as if speaking to an acquaintance, smiling. Most don't see him, some give him a moment's bored glance. None seem find him as alarming as his appearance should merit, long unwashed and transmitting the incoherent, insect energy of the manic; as the car moves on he effortlessly goes from intimate to stage manner of speech, back to engaging the multitude.
A crumpled cardboard sign lies at his feet, something is scrawled on it. Occasionally he turns about, addressing a pedestrian; none acknowledge him. His ranting grows more impassioned, his gestures grander, the longer you watch him. He pauses occasionally for effect, in a professorial manner stroking a beard that looks as if it's made of cigar ash, with his other hand a fist pressed against his hip and pulling back an overcoat bearing the satiny sheen of of caked-on dirt; sometimes he nods with pursed lips, as if to punctuate some earnest and frank aphorism; he sighs as if having unloaded a weighty truth.

You can't help yourself; you move in closer to try to catch what he's saying. Bits of it come through the crashing, rising and falling sound waves of traffic and the continual hum of everything else: "...representation; representation not of reality--no! Representation of representation..." he repeatedly reaches a climax of excited declamation, then falls back to a quiet, musing tone, gradually ascending until reaching the next peak, against which the flood of his thoughts spends itself like a crashing wave, and back again, on and on, important-sounding and nonsensical: "...closed to the real; not an alternative, no; a refutation..." Everything is so very important, so vital, so much the release of concentrated and long restrained energy that you think at any moment he will simply blast off from his feet, whistling and spiraling in a failed arc like an errant firework, to smash himself against one of the buildings nearby.

He sees you watching him; his eyes somehow grow even more intense; he is delighted, enlivened anew, as he addresses you directly. You are across the broad and busy boulevard from him, but, unnerved, you find yourself stepping back slightly, alarmed and repulsed but more curious than ever.
He breaks into a chant. He is increasingly agitated now, from all the way across the street you can see that he is trembling. You can't hear him, the wind-noise of the traffic seems to be coming out of his mouth as he repeats a single word over and over. Pedestrians are starting to notice him now, people are watching him warily as they hurry past behind him, cutting him a wider swath. He is leaning back, as if to give his words a higher trajectory to carry them farther, leaning back dangerously, deliriously, until finally he falls to the ground, and your stomach contracts in response to the crack of his head against the pavement.

Now a few people have stopped; most are merely staring; one man is kneeling near the fallen man. You move toward him reactively, without thought, stepping off the curb; as your foot lands in the street it somehow makes the sound of a foghorn; how odd, you think in the fraction of a second within which this occurs. But the sound is not coming from the ground, it's coming from the side; still held within this clear, surreal pixel of a moment, you turn to face the noise.

The bus is so large, so impossible, you think that you are hallucinating; because if it is that near, coming that fast, it can only mean...
There is a flash of white, followed by a freeze-frame snapshot, the photo-finish produced by billions of synapses in unison sounding their last alarm, of what you know is your final glimpse of the world: the driver's mouth in a little o, obscured behind the sunlight reflecting off of the big, flat windshield, and the destination sign above it. In this boundless split-second of final consciousness, only vaguely aware that you're tumbling headlong in space, you realize the word over the windshield is familiar, and another realizaton follows, as now you find you're reading the lips of the street corner lunatic after the fact, because this is the word he was repeating; it's not possible, it simply cannot be, but there it is in black and white, printed on the brow of the bus that is bearing down on you:
UNTETHERED

...

EXT. TYPICAL SMALL TOWN MAIN STREET, CIRCA 1962, DAY

A malt shop with a young soda jerk wearing white apron and hat out front, sweeping the sidewalk; next door a pair of old men lounge out in front of a barber shop, chewing the fat; kids race down the street on bicycles, a pet dog joyfully in pursuit; a young couple moving down the sidewalk filly back and forth flirtatiously. It is a beautiful day. The camera pulls back and pans over to a sparrow which has alighted on a nearby branch. The sudden, rude intrusion of the distinctive sound of several Harley Davidsons sends the bird to flight. Refocusing into the distance we see scores of bikers streaming into the town.

A SERIES OF QUICK CUTS THROUGH SEVERAL CLOSE SHOTS

The soda jerk looking over his shoulder at the sound;
The old timers, one lowers his pipe, the other reaches for his glasses as they turn toward the commotion;
The dog that was chasing the children, stops and looks, gives a yelp and scurries off;
The young couple turns to look, the girl drawing in close to her boyfriend.

ORIGINAL SHOT

Now a biker gang fills the street, a horde of modern day Visigoths pouring into the town center on their choppers raising a cloud of dust. The racket grows, drowning out everything in a bone rattling commotion. The bikers start to park their bikes with disciplined precision, two and three at a time pulling up to and gently backing up against the curb, each giving a defiant, noisy twist or two of the throttle before shutting down.

CLOSE SHOT, THE LEADER OF THE GANG

He is forty-something, wearing an old leather bomber’s helmet. Removing his goggles he reveals heavy, weather beaten slits for eyes. A misshapen nose bears an old scar across its bridge. He scans back and forth, with the air of someone who's about to devour a meal. He gets up from his bike and turns away, revealing his "colors", stitched across the back of his weatherbeaten cut-off denim vest, reading:
UNTETHERED

...

The others parted before him with habitual respect, males in their fashion, females in theirs.  Grace animated his powerful frame and ennobled his exquisite features.
The higher ones always paid him approving attention. Sometimes they stroked him, the music that issued from them growing warm and soft in approval. They brought him to mate with the best females, and fed him special delicacies. He was incapable of understanding his superiority, but he felt it.
They came one day out of the cold sharp sunshine, raising him up. Cooing, they carried him along. The others scattered in fear and respect as he rose and fell slightly in the higher one's embrace.
They placed him carefully on a pedestal, stroking him admiringly, humming and murmuring. Gently they laid his perfect head down. A streak of light drew his attention up, where the sun was eclipsed by the raised hand of the higher one, appearing as if its rays issued from it. He thrilled. He felt the crude beginnings of something like pride.

There, in the umbra within that crown of light, he saw the name, for a moment, the name stamped on the heel of the ax, before it disappeared in a flash of light and motion, as if it had been holding the sun itself back, the name that read:

UNTETHERED

 

Infernal Refugee Rag

I've got a little time left and nothing to lose. You have too much of both. Everything you do is contingent on your future; I have none. You must take care; I will take advantage. You pay your tithe in hypocrisy. You're invested. I'm busted. But I won't go away. I'm that crank with the uncertain means of income. I'm your village atheist. I won't humor your gods, and I'm ten feet tall. I am familiar and unsettling, something you've heard of but have never seen. I'm always there, in the back, glowering, moving through the dim edge of the mass. My features are never clear to you, always in shadow...

You have bought in, like everyone else, to get by; you have incurred an unexpected debt. I am here to collect. No more payment in the counterfeit that is your condescension--I'll break your legs. We had a trust, you and I. You declared it invalid, and me contemptible; I am the perpetual loser. But what happens when the game is up? I am of the psychic barrens left behind by your rapacious bacchanal. Those wastes are always with me. You don't know shit. I want to bring them to you. You pass me on the street, looking away in distaste; I grab you by the collar, pin you up against the wall; listen here you bastards...

The old neighborhood rises up around us; I am momentarily overcome; you try to break free but I have the strength of the manic and I hold you by the neck at arms length, your legs squirming in air, with one hand while wiping my averted eyes with the other...

You owe me an explanation. I am your incorrigible white trash, your embarrassing relations, your loud neighbors overhead going at it, fighting, fucking, going mad. Trust your instinct; don't come up to complain. I will be gone soon enough. Then you'll miss me. You haven't met my understudy. Just wait...

Yes, wait here a while. I'm just getting started.

...

The peep show divider comes down, the house lights come on; everything seems to be boiling beneath the surface in the acidic, garish light. The patrons, marginal characters and outright perverts, seedy sorts and vulgar youths, slumming yuppies and middle-aged men whose faces unintentionally plead for lifting the weight of years of disillusion and regret; all squint and cringe in the hostile glare. We are the uninvited of the great bacchanal, the unrecorded casualties of the revolution, homeless in the ensuing tyranny of gild and gluttony, staggering and limping about unnoticed. We all shrink and lower our gaze in the light's exposure, seeing no one, as if to be seen by no one.

Time for you to go too, friends. Use one of the doors to the right, or go out the way you came in. No one look at another. File out in furtive silence. You pass a slotted paybox on your way out, stuffed with expired coupons, slug nickels, greasy notes and scraps of old newspaper.

The ancient doorman is as still as the stained and eroding stone-front of the building, into which he appears to be, no you're sure he is, fading, like a mineral pocket dissipating into a greater mass. He looks at nothing and sees everything. Behind the dull, insensate eyes he records it all, like a meter mindlessly ticking through an infinite number. He's always been and always will be there, even after the body is gone, after the building is demolished and replaced, demolished and replaced again, after nature's reclamation of the spot; always the impression left by this blip of sentience in the cosmic mass, will remain in some form, a spectral smudge, eternally fading but never going away.

Back on the street you expand out and up as we disperse; your spirits lift. You think about someone at home or someone in the past; you stop, looking about at your fellows. Each seems to trail a bit of light behind him; you marvel a moment at this illusion of light and psychology. There is a twinge you don't recognize, a pull inside of an icy grey hand upon a silent bass string. For a split-second you are utterly disoriented, your history and identity vanish, lost to you entirely; you don't know who or where you are. Something is revealed, something you always knew but never considered, something overwhelming. The shudder of displacement passes so quickly you're not sure it happened. You pull your collar up around your neck, which feels exposed and vulnerable on the street. Already you're forgetting the queer sensation. Home beckons, comforting temporal echoes of its warmth and familiarity reassure you; someone is there now, you're certain, waiting; before moving on you take one last look at the others, all shuffling off beneath the alternating red and white of the flashing sign that reads,
UNTETHERED

Partial text of recovered captain's log, circa 1750

Called all hands on deck to address fanciful talk arising from previously noted sudden sightings and inexplicable disappearances of what some in the crew are calling a "phantom ship".

Interrupted by lookout's sighting of upper masts in fog bank about a half mile off starboard, due north. Called crew to quarters. Damn poor timing!

All quiet at two bells after sighting. Set course north by northwest to avail ourselves of the cover of another fog bank and put distance between us and first, but it's moving away from us as fast as the first seems to be trailing. We are exposed with fog all about. Crew increasingly uneasy.

Engaged enemy man o' war at seven bells. Her position in fog cover no more than a hundred yards off revealed only after we received her broadside. Two guns disabled. Hull breached astern. Mainsail rent by chain shot. Devastating gunnery!

No crew visible on deck of enemy ship, which is of no design I recognize. Magazine set afire. Forced to pull remaining gunnery crew to fight it.

Had to strike sails from and cut loose damaged mizzen. Rudder seized. Gave order to prepare to repel boarders. First mate gone missing. Enemy maintaining distance, giving no signal. Still no man visible on her deck.

Panic seizing crew. Had to subdue boatswain gone mad with fear.

Taking on water fore and aft.

Listing badly to port. Situation hopeless. Gave order to abandon ship. Remaining on board.

Enemy turning away. She flies no flag. Caught first sight of the name on her stern, fading into the fog as she disappeared. It read:
UNTETHERED

...

He stands on the corner addressing the cars that speed or creep by, oblivious to him. When traffic stops at the light he singles out a motorist whom he then appeals to directly, taking on a familiar air, as if speaking to an acquaintance, smiling. Most don't see him, some give him a moment's bored glance. None seem find him as alarming as his appearance should merit, long unwashed and transmitting the incoherent, insect energy of the manic; as the car moves on he effortlessly goes from intimate to stage manner of speech, back to engaging the multitude.

A crumpled cardboard sign lies at his feet, something is scrawled on it. Occasionally he turns about, addressing a pedestrian; none acknowledge him. His ranting grows more impassioned, his gestures grander, the longer you watch him. He pauses occasionally for effect, in a professorial manner stroking a beard that looks as if it's made of cigar ash, with his other hand a fist pressed against his hip and pulling back an overcoat bearing the satiny sheen of of caked-on dirt; sometimes he nods with pursed lips, as if to punctuate some earnest and frank aphorism; he sighs as if having unloaded a weighty truth.

You can't help yourself; you move in closer to try to catch what he's saying. Bits of it come through the crashing, rising and falling sound waves of traffic and the continual hum of everything else: "...representation; representation not of reality--no! Representation of representation..." he repeatedly reaches a climax of excited declamation, then falls back to a quiet, musing tone, gradually ascending until reaching the next peak, against which the flood of his thoughts spends itself like a crashing wave, and back again, on and on, important-sounding and nonsensical: "...closed to the real; not an alternative, no; a refutation..." Everything is so very important, so vital, so much the release of concentrated and long restrained energy that you think at any moment he will simply blast off from his feet, whistling and spiraling in a failed arc like an errant firework, to smash himself against one of the buildings nearby.

He sees you watching him; his eyes somehow grow even more intense; he is delighted, enlivened anew, as he addresses you directly. You are across the broad and busy boulevard from him, but, unnerved, you find yourself stepping back slightly, alarmed and repulsed but more curious than ever.
He breaks into a chant. He is increasingly agitated now, from all the way across the street you can see that he is trembling. You can't hear him, the wind-noise of the traffic seems to be coming out of his mouth as he repeats a single word over and over. Pedestrians are starting to notice him now, people are watching him warily as they hurry past behind him, cutting him a wider swath. He is leaning back, as if to give his words a higher trajectory to carry them farther, leaning back dangerously, deliriously, until finally he falls to the ground, and your stomach contracts in response to the crack of his head against the pavement.

Now a few people have stopped; most are merely staring; one man is kneeling near the fallen man. You move toward him reactively, without thought, stepping off the curb; as your foot lands in the street it somehow makes the sound of a foghorn; how odd, you think in the fraction of a second within which this occurs. But the sound is not coming from the ground, but from the side; still held within this clear, surreal pixel of a moment, you turn to face the noise.

The bus is so large, so impossible, you think that you are hallucinating; because if it is that near, coming that fast, it can only mean...
There is a flash of white, followed by a freeze-frame snapshot, the photo-finish produced by billions of synapses in unison sounding their last alarm, of what you know is your final glimpse of the world: the driver's mouth in a little o, obscured behind the sunlight reflecting off of the big, flat windshield, and the destination sign above it. In this boundless split-second of final consciousness, only vaguely aware that you're tumbling headlong in space, you realize the word over the windshield is familiar, and another realizaton follows, as now you find you're reading the lips of the street corner lunatic after the fact, because this is the word he was repeating; it's not possible, it simply cannot be, but there it is in black and white, printed on the brow of the bus that is bearing down on you:
UNTETHERED

...

A foul smell arouses you from slumber, twisted into a painful position amidst piled bags of garbage in the dense black of a deep alley at night. Your head feels leaden, sagging toward your chest. You labor to pull yourself into a one kneed crouch, cradling your throbbing head in your hand for a moment like a bedraggled version of The Thinker.

Shouts from the other end of the alley startle you and you look over to see three cholos surrounding another of their kind, fallen and prostrate; they are assaulting him with kicks and insults. You slink back into the garbage pile, hiding. Suddenly a blast of light flares from amidst the three; three times accompanied by the crack crack crack of a small handgun.

They run off, leaving their victim on the ground. Silence falls instantly; the man is motionless under the rising smoke of the pistol shots. Your heart is beating so hard and fast it seems it is trying to pound its way out of your chest.

After what seems like hours you overcome your fear and get up and start slowly toward the fallen man. As you near you think you see him move slightly and you break into a run. You reach him and look down to see a boy of about sixteen, Latino with black hair slicked back in classic vato style. He's pleading at your through uncomprehending eys. Not knowing what to do you kneel down next to him, examining his torso for the wounds you expect to find. He is wearing a thin white undershirt, but you cannot find a mark on him. With great effort he moves his right hand over his chest and points to his left shoulder. You lean over, expecting to see a bullet wound. With a horrifying shudder he lets out a final breath, his forefinger pointing to a tattoo. You can just make it out in the light; in low rider style calligraphy it reads:

UNTETHERED

...

You don’t remember how you came to be in the park, sitting Indian style under a tree, drawing long drags from a cigarette yielding a strangely metallic taste. Looking up through the canopy of the large tree above your vision flattens out, all effective depth perception gone as the world appears as if projected onto a screen of water twenty feet in front of you. You blow impossibly voluminous clouds of smoke upward; they are captured and made to radiate outward by the flat ceiling that is the world overhead. Your vision is atomizing everything you see into pixels, like looking closely at an old black and white newspaper photo. You are unnerved. Time is gone.
A small voice calling out to you from somewhere deep in the cavernous recesses of your mind warns you to turn back; but from where? Your chest heaves slightly as you soundlessly laugh at the voice within.
The trees across the field from you expand and contract like giant lungs; you notice they are moving in unison with your breathing, and the weight of this sudden realization flattens the frenetic jangling in your mind. You feel an emergent panic in your chest, finding the knowledge that the trees are breathing with you, for you and you for them, unbearable; so you close your stubbornly resistant eyelids.
A madly swirling paisley print dances before you now, then becomes a squirming mural of cartoon animation psychedelia, turning over and over; now an Indian tapestry of gilded elephants and dancing girls, spinning in little circles across the screen of your mind’s eye; finally it morphs into an alphabet soup, churning and twirling letters of various sizes and styles until you notice they are falling into line, forming a word which becomes clear against a fading backdrop. You read as each letter takes its place:
UNTETHERED

...

You don’t know how long you've been laying here in the park. You only know you can’t move. Outwardly, you are as inanimate as a piece of lead. Within, however, is all churning motion. You can’t believe she rejected you. You started the day in love’s vise grip; you lay here now, crushed.
Endlessly, compulsively, you turn over in your mind memories of her, progress you thought you had made, moments at once soaring passion and earthbound embrace, now endless freefall into an abyss within and the hard ground without.
You attempt to escape your thoughts, but every contemplative path circles back slyly and lands you before her cruel, indifferent image. Unable to distract yourself and not really wanting to, you torture yourself with images of her with him; as if you can make the reality of the two of them together vanish by turning and twisting the image about in your mind until it wears away. Instead it only fades and recurs over and over in endless variation.

Something draws your attention out of the corner of your eye: a small bird has landed within arm's reach. You have been motionless for so long it must not realize you’re there, you think with grim humor, picturing yourself in a time-lapse film, molding over and decomposing into the earth. The bird turns its head about with short, abbreviated movements that make it appear as if it is projected by an old, flickering film.

You've never before found yourself engaged by the beauty of something commonplace, of anything really, but in your weakened state this creature you would never have noticed before, with its fine, intricate markings and exquisite fragility, with the novel grace of its movement, appears to you as something divinely transcendant.
It is just then you realize you will survive, even as you know the ache is not nearly over. You will pass out of oblivion, leaving the pain behind. You are still in the darkened wood, but a peak above the treetops marks your way out: the journey before you is still long, cold, and tiring, but now it has a destination. You have been released.
The bird flies off. Free as a bird, you think, watching it flit away.
You rise and lean forward, slapping the grass from your pant legs. You hear a small airplane not far overhead. You look up. Squinting up at the plane obscured by a brilliant sun, you see it is trailing a banner. Putting your hand up to shade your eyes you read:
Untethered.

...

EXT. TYPICAL SMALL TOWN MAIN STREET, CIRCA 1962, DAY

A malt shop with a young soda jerk wearing white apron and hat out front, sweeping the sidewalk; next door a pair of old men lounge out in front of a barber shop, chewing the fat; kids race down the street on bicycles, a pet dog joyfully in pursuit; a young couple moving down the sidewalk filly back and forth flirtatiously. It is a beautiful day. The camera pulls back and pans over to a sparrow which has alighted on a nearby branch. The sudden, rude intrusion of the distinctive sound of several Harley Davidsons sends the bird to flight. Refocusing into the distance we see scores of bikers streaming into the town.

A SERIES OF QUICK CUTS THROUGH SEVERAL CLOSE SHOTS

The soda jerk looking over his shoulder at the sound;
The old timers, one lowers his pipe, the other reaches for his glasses as they turn toward the commotion;
The dog that was chasing the children, stops and looks, gives a yelp and scurries off;
The young couple turns to look, the girl drawing in close to her boyfriend.

ORIGINAL SHOT

Now a biker gang fills the street, countless modern day Visigoths pouring into the town center on their choppers raising a cloud of dust. The racket grows, drowning out everything in a bone rattling commotion. The bikers start to park their bikes with disciplined precision, two and three at a time pulling up to and gently backing up against the curb, each giving a defiant, noisy twist or two of the throttle before shutting down.

CLOSE SHOT, THE LEADER OF THE GANG

He is forty-something, wearing an old leather bomber’s helmet. Removing his goggles he reveals heavy, weather beaten slits for eyes. A misshapen nose bears an old scar across its bridge. He scans back and forth, with the air of someone who's about to devour a meal. He gets up from his bike and turns away from the camera, revealing his "colors", stitched across the back of his weatherbeaten cut-off denim vest, reading:
UNTETHERED

...

I came to laying on my side on a concrete bench. My head was at such an extreme angle and my neck so stiffened by this unnatural position that I knew raising it would be a painful, if not impossible, affair; I opted to roll over onto my stomach and slowly push myself up into a sitting position while leaving my head, more or less, in its listing attitude. This too was no easy feat, accomplished by grunting, groaning effort. Laughter, accompanied by a lewdly malicious voice, attracted my attention from the other end of the cell. Two locals were sitting there watching me. He spoke again, the fat one with the leer in his voice and eyes, in a colloquial Spanish that I didn't understand. I said nothing.
Looking down I noticed my pockets had been turned inside out; my shoes were gone. I did not yet know how I arrived there; I sensed a partially formed, vague memory lurking just below the surface of consciousness. I tried retracing my steps mentally: the girl in the bar, dancing, being led onto the beach, rolling around in the sand. So far so good; too bad there's no way this one ends well. Sort of like a movie that reveals the hero's death in the first frame. Closing my eyes I tried to pierce memory's fog, at once afraid and enticed by what I might find there.
A dim scene played out: the girl was suddenly screaming at me; I was beseeching her to be quiet, asking in broken Spanish what was wrong: trying to say, ¿Cuál es la materia?, and just managing to stammer, qual estimer, qual estimer? At the same time thinking her hysteria seemed odd, acted. Get away, a foreign and sober impulse welled up into my sloshed mind, get away from her. Several missing frames later and I'm struggling in the deep, loose Baja sand; wheezing, stagger-running, covering as much distance from side to side as forward but making progress back toward the plaza, and the hotel. Memory submerged, and only briefly resurfaced to reveal a glimpse of being herded into the back of a Mexican police car by baton blows, kicks, and epithets.
I was now staring at the wall across from me; it was covered in a profusion of graffitti, mostly vulgarities in Spanish. I realized I had been staring at a word. It shimmied and danced as a pair that separated, nearly aligned, and separated again repeatedly as I fought my double vision. I tried closing one stinging eye; I couldn't, like a very young child who can't yet move his eyelids indepently. So I placed a hand, trembling slightly as if a small electric current was running through it, over one eye.
Slowly the word came into focus. No, I thought, no possible way. But there it was. Faint and weathered by countless years, crudely etched in jagged lines; I could just make out:
UNTETHERED

...

Three days. It doesn’t seem possible that it’s only been three days since Mac died, the last of a crew of seven which once seemed so few; now an unbearable weight of responsibility, a psychic pain to accompany the physical pain in your belly which is killing you. The ice has built up overnight again, heavier this time, cancelling any hope you had that the weather might turn warmer. You try to muster some grim amusement at the knowledge that you, the captain that managed to get his crew lost and icebound aboard a rust bucket you knew to be unseaworthy, would be the one who would fade out last; alone, starving and freezing in a slowly constricting cell of ice on a point of the earth no man has any right to expect better from. No, you only find yourself thinking over and over, as if to transmit your thoughts across the mortal divide to the dead men bundled below deck, I'm sorry.
Not having the strength or will left to chip away pointlessly at the ice as you have been in an attempt to keep warm and sane, you go below deck to try sleeping again. You've been huddled under a pile of blankets for what could have been hours or minutes, you've lost the ability to tell; in your blank state you only slowly recognize the tapping sound you've been hearing this whole time is patterned.
It's Morse code. You're on your feet before the realization settles. Removing and turning over the drawers of the radio cabinet you find your code translation book. You can barely hold it open with stiff, frostbitten fingers as you decipher the message.
One word, repeated over and over, making no sense, damn it; it reads:

U-N-T-E-T-H-E-R-E-D

...

Trudging through white-out conditions against stinging needles of snow slashing at a horizontal angle, feeling as if they are cutting right through you, you make out in the faded distance a dark speck. You determinedly put your head down and make for it, your upper body at a forty five degree angle as if you were dragging a plow behind you. You are moving in an incremental start-stop fashion, heaving yourself forward with each labored thrust. You lift your head periodically like a swimmer raising up to breathe so you can sight back in on the spot in the distance; you are relieved it grows larger the closer you get. As it gradually takes form you are heartened to see that it is a shack. You draw close and it is revealed as a ramshackle, poorly designed structure. A fading sign above a door ajar says:

UNTETHERED

You go inside...

...

The front of Untethered is done up in gaudy carnival finery; flashing red, white, and blue lights blink out a manic, vertigo inducing dance. Out front stands a barker, one eye covered with what appears to be a makeshift patch, wearing a tattered top hat and a flag patterned tuxedo coat which doesn’t quite match his striped trousers. As you pass he assails you with:

Step right up folks. See a man attempt the impossible. Armed with no education, little sense, common or uncommon, this reckless daredevil attempts political analysis possessing only the most rudimentary command of the language. You sir, come on in and witness this reckless, some would say insane, daredevil as he attempts to walk the tightrope of cultural commentary with no net protecting him from the hard floor of embarrassment and humiliation below.

Watch as our resident lunatic reveals the most embarassing secrets of his life, with no regard for his personal dignity. Come inside, you won't be disappointed. Witness the insanity up close.

Come on inside, folks; see the dog faced boy. Half man, half God only knows. You’ll be appalled, you’ll be terrified; you won’t be able to look away. Some say he’s only half human; others say he isn't human at all. Come inside, you won't be disappointed.
Warning: if you have a heart condition or are easily made ill you should not step inside. No, ladies and gentlemen, this is not for the weak of heart…
Parents hold your children close. Do not get within reach of the enclosure. Untethered takes no legal responsibility for what may befall you inside.
For an extra fifteen cents you can pelt him rotten vegetables and insults.
For an extra dollar he will eat anything you throw at him.
Come on in, what are you waiting for?

Two policemen appear and accost the barker. They seem to be demanding he produce identification. The barker gestures plaintively, arguing his case. The policemen quickly become impatient and, one on each arm, lift him up and carry him off, his legs working away as if he were riding an invisible unicycle. Noticing the unattended door is ajar, you come inside…