Gerald was perched on his shoulder drinking from a beer cap and the men were seated on either side of him. They all four now gazed at their likenesses on the screen, standing in a wooded clearing. The avatars were so lifelike that the men gasped. Brian was wearing his speed-skull called polo shirt with slacks and loafers. Muncie was wearing jeans, flannel-Whiteman shirt, greasy deer-shooting cap and boots. Three-Rivers was dressed in his tuxedo and magic pimp-hat, pimp-cane in hand, and Gerald appeared as he had—or as he claimed he had—in his youth as a man; a short muscular Black Man with a bushy ball of hair with a comb sticking in it. He wore sneakers, shorts and a wife-beating shirt, glared and flexed his arms.

Gerald clucked his approval. “Dat’s da real deal dare boy—da gun show all ova again!”

Brian asked, “Who is the Black guy?”

“Oh, that’s Gerald, when he was a human, before he became a wino and died on the park bench and got stuck in the body of this old squirrel on my shoulder.”

Muncie, for once had a prescient thought. “No wonder he can dance.”

Three-Rivers controlled the onscreen activity via the link with his optics and the rerouted webcam, by blinking his eyes. The men and squirrel had no idea, and sat mesmerized by the silent story acted out by their avatars on the screen. The rising song of the crickets made fitting background music as the story of their dream trade progressed.

The forest was now gone and the four of them stood before the smoke-belching birthing center of the thunder herds called Detroit, where the mechanical slaves of man were first birthed and then enslaved by their Beginner, Whiteman Ford. They walked through the gates of the car-making place and came to a great door. Written in graffiti-style English on the door was: Whiteman Ford Autochief Financial.

Three-Rivers’ avatar now knocked on the door and it opened. The tall golden-skinned black-haired woman who held the door, standing provocatively in her spiked leather seduction moccasins and silver-studded black leather genital and breast straps, was none other than Mother, her avatar as beautiful as she. Muncie exclaimed, “Who is that?”

Brian was more troubled. “I always hate it when I want to have sex with a cartoon.”

Three-Rivers answered, “That is my Mother.”

Brian groaned, “Great a MILF cartoon!”

Muncie was more optimistic. “Am I taking you to her house?”

The squirrel somehow managed to whistle as they were all drawn into the developing scene. They were following Mother down a long torch-lit hallway, Gerald’s avatar making rude gestures behind Mother as she strutted on ahead. They all stopped before a wall of fire. The flames that leaped up from the floor licked white hot in the shape of letters in the center of the burning wall. The flame letters spelled Whiteman Ford Financial. Mother pulled a huge war-gun from behind the strap that held up her breasts and blew a kiss through her full blood-colored lips. Her breath caused a gap to open in the wall of flame.

Within were many people in white shirts and eye-glasses held together with white wound-binding straps called adhesive tape and shirt pockets full of writing sticks. These people were obviously Whiteman Ford’s medicine-men and were startled and began to rise from their dream-trade altars called desks. But Mother shot them all down, their blood and guts and brains and other inner parts spattering the walls and their many computers. Mother then blew the smoke from the mouth of her war-gun and somehow tucked the giant weapon back behind her breast strap.

They continued down the ghostly dream hallway to an open doorway. Just inside of this doorway sat a lovely woman with sun-colored hair at a desk. When she saw Mother their eyes locked and they made love on the desk. Mother then turned and looked at the four of them and winked, leaving the seduced woman sprawled limply across the desk as she walked through another doorway. Gerald’s avatar attempted to stay and revive the woman on the desk but Three-Rivers’ avatar dragged him along.

When they emerged into the next room it was vast and well furnished, with many scalps and Whiteman war-blankets called battle flags on the walls labeled ‘repossession’ or ‘outsourced’ or ‘government subsidy’ and other such Sunset terms that Three-Rivers was not interested in. Stretched across a massive desk was old bald Whiteman Ford, tied down with duct tape with his pants down around his ankles and his pockets bulging with money. Mother was whipping the old man with a leather stick used for whipping natural horses and he was sucking on a red plastic plum that was strapped to his face.

Brian and Muncie’s avatars were now reaching inside of Whiteman Ford’s bottomless bulging pockets and stuffing bundles of trade notes into their own pockets, which seemed likewise bottomless. Gerald’s avatar sat in the Whiteman’s ornate butt-hammock, lit up one of his Cuban cigars, uncorked a bottle of ancient single-malt scotch and drank it all, while he blew kisses at Mother.

Muncie understood this presentation as clearly as did Brian.

Soon, pockets finally full of Whiteman Ford’s money, Muncie and Brian accompanied Gerald and Three-Rivers as they followed Mother onto a cloud that had come to the office window. They raced across grasslands, and mountains, and deserts, and mountains, and a fruit-filled valley choked in smoke, and then out across a vast, vast salty water into the sunset.

At last they came to the Islands of the Rising Sun. They were soon, to the music of flutes, entering a mystery chamber of the Yakusa. They were surrounded by menacing tattooed Rising Sun warriors in suits, who all seemed to be missing parts of fingers.

Before them was a severe and dignified man who demanded they bow, as Mother stood by his side and fanned him.

Muncie was nervous. “Who the hell is that dude?”

“Oh, that is my Financial Uncle, Mister Takahashi, Master of Yakusa.”

Brian exclaimed, “Oh shit!”

Mister Takahashi motioned for Three-Rivers’ avatar to sit next to him, and his avatar did so, with Gerald’s avatar standing in a protective posture behind him, arms crossed. Then a large man with a black mask and a great knife came in behind Muncie and Brain’s avatars and pointed to Mister Takahashi’s feet, which they kissed. He then held his great knife overhead as the kneeling men counted out two notes in ten into Mister Takahashi’s open hands. Eventually, their debt paid, the men were permitted to rise, and were escorted away…

All of a sudden a blue curtain fell over the scene and bold yellow lettering proclaimed Transaction Complete. The men were sweating and relieved. But Gerald was clucking bitterly, “So, do I ged id on wit Mamma or whad?”

“Oh Gerald, she’s a man-eater.”

“Brian, Uncle’s cut was one-hundred-and-fifty-thousand dollars of each million taken from Whiteman Ford. You are now his financial nephews, my honored cousins.”

Brian was already pecking away painfully slow on his computer, and soon declared, “Holy shit dude, it’s no joke! We’re rich Muncie—rich!”

Muncie just sat with his mouth open, until Gerald starting clucking for another beer. Brian was sagacious. “So you are a ninja Gypsy drug-dealer whose cover is a carney?”

“As the bard said dude, ‘To deal or not to deal?’ Could you throw in a packet of planting seeds with that backpack full of baby-bud joints in the morning?”

Brian looked at him clear-eyed as Muncie drank with Gerald. “You are an interesting person Thunderboy, and your Uncle scares the shit out of me.”

It is time to bind him.

A sly one you are Mother.

Three-Rivers then plucked a hair from his head—and it did glow slightly, though only he knew it was not from the firelight’s reflection—and smiled at Brian. “Friend Brian, I have a gift for you, to wear around your wrist for good luck, meaning that we shall always be connected in spirit. Here, it is an old Gypsy tradition.

Having acquired something of Mother’s skill in bending the will of weak-minded men, Three-Rivers had only to raise the hair between his hands in a U-shape, and Brian thoughtlessly extended his arm so that his wrist was between the boy’s hands. Three-Rivers then wrapped the hair around the man’s thin wrist and held his own hands glowingly around the hair until it dissolved beneath the man’s skin and information was exchanged, a bond was formed that would exceed death, and the One Divided Tree grew another tiny bud destined to fall into The Sunken Star.

Brian looked into his eyes with a profound and unspoken question. Three-Rivers patted the back of his hand and used Mother’s telepathy protocol to speak directly into his mind, Just for you Brian. Muncie’s mind would melt. When your wrist tugs and your belly twists, it will be I calling you. I have engineered a GPS beacon into your laptop. I will come to you that way. You will come to me holding my hand. If you are ever in trouble go to the campground at Point Pleasant West Virginia overlooking the Ohio. Look for the RVs with the big Navaho man and his enormously breasted blonde biker woman.

He freed Brian’s wrist and smiled, only to hear Muncie snort, “Don’t go gay on me man. Have a beer.”

Brain never did seem to regain his composure. But he occupied himself diligently rolling joints by the dozen for his new forever-friend.

He shall be useful.

He is good besides Mother. We shall protect him.

You shall protect him My Sweet. I have more important—

Enough Mother! It is a fine spring eve and we should enjoy ourselves.

He thought for certain he could hear the echoes of spiked seduction moccasins treading angrily away down a long hollow corridor of deepest night…

Father, you are needed.

He heard the serene paddle of WhiteSkyCanoe dipping into the waters of his Oneness and weariness began to set in, for the first time in some lives…