don Ignacio pilots a narrow path smothered in snarling vegetation with the help of a lantern and a machete. Shadows from the lantern warp the surroundings into a vibrant milieu, made more ominous by his violent whacks at the encumbrances and constant nocturnal chatter. Clark Cunningham is in The Amazon, following a Sorcerer whom he had just met the day before.

They approach a small round hut. The door screeches from its grinding hinges as Clark Cunningham follows don Ignacio inside. A single lantern in the middle of the floor furnishes minimal illumination, enough for him to see figures, figures which appear to be human. But before Clark Cunningham’s eyes can fully adjust, the lantern goes out.

Two red dots slowly come into focus as lit cigarettes, and the two sorcerers are puffing on them anxiously, obsessively. They blow the smoke into their heavily chipped ceramic jugs, producing short, “tooting” sounds. The octaves ascend and descend like a carnival organ. But the rhythm is deranged and sinister. It tames the nearby predators, for now the jungle is eerily muted.

“They are making final preparations for the ayahuasca,” says Amela, seated next to Clark Cunninghman. “The smoke cleanses the potion. The chant is said to tame it.”

don Ignacio pulls out a small chalice, spills the ayahuasca into it, and offers it to Clark Cunningham. Clark Cunningham brings the chalice about an inch to his lips, then hesitates. His eyes pan the dark room as if trying to ascertain the witnesses to the crime that he is about to commit.

His memory spontaneously presents the critical frames of his past. At first, it works. The shame of relapsing, of throwing away his sobriety for some psycho-spiritual joy ride, extrapolates itself into the lexicon of addictive behavior. Yet somehow he knows that the great spirit of alcoholism is not in the room, and that the Otorongo ceremony, a shamanic exorcism of sorts that he undertook last week with a short, chubby and very jolly dona Bernadina, had indeed chased the great spirit away. Clark Cunningham begins to chuckle to himself as he recalls the portly shaman chasing the demon up a tree with a broom.

So it is with a relaxed, peaceful grin that Clark Cunningham slams down the potion with a single jerk. As he does, the ayahuasceros stagger to their feet, still chanting and now crazily shaking banana leaves above his head. The swooshing sounds are amplified by otherwise deprived senses.

Profuse perspiration overtakes the glands around his temples and skull and forearms and chest, but Clark Cunningham is shaking from cold. His mind sputters to the point where memory and basic processing of external stimuli is disrupted by a pure state of unknown. At first, he feels he is having a nervous breakdown, but then realizes that a nervous breakdown is the result of overcontextualizing. This is much different. There is no content, and thus no time, space and causality/acausality for which to contextualize anything.

Content, that great metaphysical package containing the aforementioned three dimensional aspects commonly understood as “reality”, returns soon enough, and Clark Cunningham finds himself staring at his furry, black paws. At first, he almost laughs nervously, but the fantastic spectacle inundates his intellect with curiosity. He watches impartially as thick black fur overtakes his entire body.

By the time the transformation is complete, Clark Cunningham is brushing his feline face up against Amela’s, fangs showing, purring and growling simultaneously.

Undaunted and stoic, Amela comes to her feet, shuffles over to the door, and opens it. As Clark Cunningham starts to head out, she grabs him gently around his shiny black furry neck, and whispers, “Ask for ‘Joe the Condor’,” then out leaps the enormous jaguar.

***

Clark Cunningham is pacing nervously when a strange man on a horse approaches him.

The man hits the ground hard, so hard that the impact creates a visible cloud of dust, as he unsaddles his horse. Clark Cunningham fidgets, uncertain what to say, but eventually says…

“Excuse me, sir. Can you tell me where I can find Joe the Condor?”

Still rummaging, “There it is,” says the man. He spins around, sporting a pensive demeanor, and affronts Clark Cunningham.

“What can I do for you?”

”You’re Joe the Condor?”

“Sure am, sonny.”

“Ahh. Hmm. I… I… I’m not sure. I was just told by Amela to ask for you.”

Joe the Condor stares down Clark Cunningham. “You’re not sure?” The red skinned man pulls out his flask from his inner vest pocket, takes a hearty gulp. “Ahhhh.” Screws the cap back on and drops the flask back into his vest pocket. ”Certainty is faith taken to the extreme. It leaves no room for knowledge, no room for the truth. That is good.”

“You’re an alcoholic!” Clark Cunningham cries out.

“I prefer the term “drunken Indian.” Joe the Condor pulls out his flask again.  “Have a nip. Go ahead. Ayahuasca is a cure for alcoholism.”

“Then why don’t you take it?” asks Clark Cunningham.

”Because it is good medicine, at least for me,” he says, as he takes another nip. “In fact, it’ll be good for you. Everyone deserves to cut loose once in a while. And sonny, you’re way overdue!”

Joe the Condor holds out the flask again.

“Maybe later,” says Clark Cunningham

“It’s okay, sonny,” says Joe the Condor. “I am familiar with your tribe; the cult of ‘powerlessness’ and ‘unmanageability’.”

Clark Cunningham is silent, not sure what to say.

“Ahh. Forget about it. It’s a trivial point and is getting in the way of your tour. Come. Let me show you around.”

The surroundings are junglesque, but surreal in that the light comes from everywhere, not just the sky, but the ground and the rocks and the trees. Clark Cunningham notices that the temperature is absolutely perfect. No wind either. And no dirt on the ground. A perfectly manicured and controlled environment that would do B. F. Skinner proud, with a new car-like smell.

Joe the Condor pulls out a cigarette from behind his ear, strikes a match off the sole of his boot. “You know, sonny.” Lights the smoke. “None of this should be happening. It defies the laws of the code, you know, how the universe operates.”

“What code?” Clark Cunningham asks incredulously.

Joe the Condor takes another hearty swig. “Human experience is the presentation layer of certain stimuli rendered from a complex algorithm we call the Viracocha code.”

“You mean like a computer?”

They approach a tree. Joe the Condor picks an apple. “Want one?”

Clark Cunningham nods. Joe the Condor cuts the apple in half and pours whiskey over each piece where it has been cut, allowing it to soak in thoroughly. “They’re good for you, you know?

Clark Cunningham picks an apple and begins to eat it.

“You are interacting at a level you don’t see or understand – the source code. All you see are the results of the source code as pictures on a screen, what you call reality. Yes, like a computer,” Joe the Condor continues.

“So the image of God is what the code renders, which really has no likeness to God’s actual image?”

Joe the Condor bites into one half of the apple. His speech is affected by his chewing. “God is the source code of the Viracocha. There is no image on the presentation layer. The image of God is just bits and bites, ones and zeros, stuff that makes DNA and things like that.”

Clark Cunningham stops suddenly, pans his surroundings. “Hey! What is this place?”

Joe the Condor grins. “Pretty amazing, isn’t it?”

The man who calls himself a condor but is very much human, extends his arm out toward a path. They begin to walk slowly.

”So we weren’t kicked out after all?” asks Clark Cunningham.

“How do you like your forbidden fruit?” asks Joe the Condor, laughing.

Clark Cunningham stops, jaw hanging.

“Tastes better spiked,” says Joe the Condor as he takes another drag off his smoke, exhales while still chewing.

They resume their walk, approach a beautiful waterfall.

“It can’t be. No way Condor!”

“Oh we were most definitely kicked out,” says Joe the Condor. “Look at it this way… If you want a child to do something, all you have to do is tell them they can’t. Don’t eat the forbidden fruit, while at the same time, you got the snake encouraging them to do just the opposite. So in effect, you got these two huge biblical heavyweights who are really saying the same thing: ‘Do it!’ Think about it, sonny.”

Joe the Condor finishes his apple, throws the core into the stream, wipes his hands in his pants.

“So Adam and Eve were entrapped into committing original sin?” asks Clark Cunningham.

“Sonny. When you’re God, and you’re creating a universe based on the principle of free will, you kind of work yourself out of a job. Your own rule prevents you from pulling the trigger, you know, the whole Big Bang – time, space and causality thing. So God had to apply pressure tactics and manipulation in order to get Adam and Eve to pull the trigger for him. That was the whole point of the forbidden fruit. And Voila! Original sin.”

Clark Cunningham stares at the ground and shrugs. “They never stood much of a chance, did they?”

Joe the Condor laughs heartily. “Nope.” He then shapeshifts into a real condor and flies away.

“Wait!” yells out Clark Cunningham. Not sure what else to say, but needing to say something that will coax the condor back, he adds, “I’ll have that drink now.”

***