Reboot

Today was a critical day for the group's relations, in the sense that Fernweh could no longer pretend that he saw something worthwhile in Hades. He began to  consider Hades' every word to be a freakishly miscalculated attempt at intelligence, a waste of breath that sounded stupid and left people questioning why he was talking. The look of Hades' face was enough to enrage Fern (though I must admit, as Hades fumbled with change in a hungover attempt to buy cigarettes, his mouth hung ajar and a thin stream of mucus dribbling towards his chin, I could see his point.)

I knew how Fernweh felt. I'd met people similar to what he considered Hades - our pet Hippie from the year before could agitate me without speaking a word. Hades, on the other hand, I believed maintained his wisdom beneath his hungover, stumbling person. The whole dynamic left me largely silent - I had nothing to say in response to Fernweh's berating of Hades, yet speaking to Hades resulted in garbled sentences and contemptuous looks from Fernweh.

Fireworks burst, fading into once-bright ideas
whose points have already scattered throughout galaxies;
fragments of intelligence degraded to dust,
innovation crushed and blasted off to the moon.
you can't throw cognitive trash in a compactor,
your brain's got no bin to recycle,
rewrite, rehearse, reconsider -
ten billion terabyte trains of thought 
are worth allocating your RAM.

As the day progressed, I began to lose faith. Travelling had bewildered Hades. Overwhelmed by the heaps of new stimuli, adn by the incredible freedom of vagrant life, his neurons had misfired. There was too much to do, too much to see, too much to process - all of which was more important than forming a proper sentence.

Reboot yourself,

24 hours until automatic shutdown
unless you choose to postpone your powerchecks,
stand-by while creations clatter to the floor
soon to be swept back into the dustpan,
through the trashcan,
out the door and into the dumptruck.

Hades' first order of business was to toss a hundred bucks down on mushrooms. I was all down for this - we were in the party capital of Canada! Break in the celebration! I was a little bit worried for Hades dropping psychedelics in this mindstate (and rightly so) but the ease with which we found mushrooms convinced me that it was meant to be. Maybe a psychedelic journey would align him.

Nope. Things went awry once we ate the fungi. The shrooms (purchased from a bearded fellow who'd taken residence on a park bench) were unusually large and decidedly foul, and the effects were unlike any other. An hour later, we were struck by thick, hazy and unnatural hallucinations that came alongside a lethargic mindset. Thinking (let alone speaking) became too much effort, we were left wandering aimlessly in a city park painted grey by the sardonic hands of entheogens.

Hades' prior disposition and inability to think, coupled with this unproductive and peculiar mindset, led to him quickly lose his bag of mushrooms. His mind, exponentially degrading, told him to start flailing around, screaming to the Gods as if they would heed his calls and lead him towards his mushrooms. This sparked the incline of Fernweh's irritation; each cry that Hades wailed sent a twitch through Fern's temple. Finally, the two ended up in a screaming match which was compromised by Hades deciding he'd just by more shrooms the next day.

By now, rain had started falling with vigor and the shroomish lethargy had dragged us towards the most viable excuse for shelter around: a locked cabin. The four of us huddled under the foot-wide awning, sprawled across each other and blanketed by leaking tarps. Fernweh took the far right side, stewing in rage; Hades sat between him and Squanch, thinking unfathomable thoughts, me and Squanch lay huddled on the left side. Despite the water that was slowly sleeping through our sleeping bags and into a skin, the indolence provided by the psychedelics allowed our minds to shut down for a few sub-par hours of sleep.

The next morning cast away any last hopes we'd had for a good time in Montreal.