IVANPAH

 there are three

Have you got the largest crystal? Called a man in a hat.

I’ve got it! Cried JP Moonsberry. [[He had the crystal in the back of a big rig. The door to the carriage was open and the pink crystal sphere was bulging inside.]]

Are all the children on board? Called the man.

Yes, here we are! Cried the children.

Have the children got all their dogs and pets?

We’ve got them!

How about a lunch box? Have you all brought one?

We have!

Well then! Shouted the man in the hat. Well, let’s be off!

Hurray! Shouted the children.

Bring the crystal! Called the man. Go to the Mulberry tree!

And with that JP Moonsberry began driving slowly across the park. [[Paradise Park marked the eastern edge of the heart of Paradise, and so also the heart of Las Vegas, and so too the heart of America. The citizens of the park are about to secede from the town of Paradise (and so from Las Vegas and so from America). If they do this, the rest will be left with a hole where there was its heart, and no one can be quite sure what this will do, though some are certain that it will give the place a certain buoyancy, so the body might become as a reptile, or a bird.]]

And what about the fabric of space eternal? We think that this cannot exist.

And what about the fabric of time and of timelessness? Well, nothing is certain. And yet, how should there be more than one piece? We think there is only light.

And…

We don’t know. This is the key to our awareness.

Make certain you’ve got your lunchboxes!

Now sing! [[And the children and JP Moonsberry begin to sing: For beautiful, for spacious skies, for amber waves of grain!

                                For purple mountain majesties, above the fruited plain! ]]

                                America! America! God shed his grace on thee!

                                And crown thy good

                                With brotherhood

                                From sea to—]]

Stop singing! Hollered the man. It’s good, very good! You’ve got it!

Now, what would happen if the crystal rolled out of the big rig? (There is nothing holding it in.) JP Moonsberry drove carefully, watching for places where the earth rose and receded, driving as smooth and steady as he could. It was not easy to drive a big rig this way, on account of it being so large—containing the world’s largest crystal! [[ the stone did concede to this, though whether or not it was contained is a question. And you know sometimes chicken that has been cooked long and well falls right off the bone, even when it isn’t expected, because the night has come for it at last. ]]

Now SING! Yelled the man once again.

Stop singing!

And when the time had come, nobody knew it. The man and the children and JP Moonsberry—everyone looked through the air as if it were an animal, and all of their breathing took the form of a raincloud, and the crystal was blushing in its big round—indeed, it could hardly contain itself—and the children were looking up at the man and the man could see beyond the trees; he was the only one who could, and in the distance he saw something coming down, something big. It was a series of discs, a kind of spiral, like a slinky.

Hey! The man yelled. And time around them actually stopped. Except for the mulberry tree and the world’s biggest slinky, which was coming down slowly, past the treeline.

And so the ball rolled out of the big rig. Carpe Diem! Yelled the ball, and time was still stopped.

In the sky, a soft cloud appeared. It was being played by a violin and a candelabra. The cloud could see the rosa rotunda, rolling fast now towards the conservatory. The cloud put its face out as if to kiss the thing, of course knowing she could not be kissed, because she was a kind of bait; if the cloud touched her, the whole place would go back to being music: an orchestra with a section of trombones and a piano.

So the cloud did not kiss, but he put his face very close, and the cloud’s face and the crystal ball (or was it the space between them?) made the park start up again, the heart shocked as from the entrance to a night circus, the lights in the trees and on the ground as a great glowing nest, and the rotunda—