First Contact is a multidimensional narrative connecting centuries, continents and sub/cultures, unravelling coincidences and conspiracies, computer viruses, and viruses which infect your mind. It details a kaleidoscope of revolutions and counter re...
JEREMY PASSED MUCH OF THE AUTUMN SEARCHING FOR THE SECRET OF EXISTENCE IN PRAGUE. He didn't find it, although he met some cool people and took his first line of speed. It was a typical autumn in Prague, in other words. The dark skies of winter set in, and life retreated to the bars and Christmas markets. Jez, being Australian, became annoyed by the high numbers of young Americans in Prague because it was trendy or a good place to reflect. One particularly depressing December morning, stuck on a koan on devotion, he bundled up his diaries and self-help manuals, Walkman and cassette tapes, loaded his backpack and caught a train to Hungary.
Budapest was like Prague before grunge. It was due to the Danube River, of course, and all the remnants of Warsaw Bloc regalia. Still lugging his backpack Jez caught a tram down Kosztolányi Dezső tér to Deák Ferenc tér, traversing a good part of the inner city. He strolled over Vörösmarty tér, a large grey square, followed the Danube to the granite Chain Bridge. Crossing in a narrow pedestrian lane, elaborate ironwork sprouting, stout men in overcoats touting, Jez felt some sort of Old World nostalgia, the type of nostalgia in which it doesn't matter if you've never lived in Europe, even if you don't have a single European gene. It just was (or thereabouts).
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On the far side of the bridge, Jez, who was puffing in the pale air, watched as a steep cable car clambered to Castle Hill. He climbed it and spent close to an hour just entranced by the view. A Korean couple in ski jackets asked if he could take their photo.
That evening he stopped at a cafe which looked cosy enough and ordered a big plate of gulyás (goulash). He drafted quick character references on the patrons for future reference, in one of his journals:
Some bloke who had to be called László, a wannabe kickboxer;
A dour actor who had discovered that now his plays were legal, no-one came to see them;
A doodling youth in a Béla Tarr T-shirt;
X, y, and z, the smoky atmosphere of the place, the streetlights distilled through the fogged windows and the cobblestones beyond, all that nostalgic stuff. The revolutionary newspapers folded paprika-stained around the cafe. It was the sort of establishment Jez could set a spy thriller in, if he ever got around to it. Then there was this woman with dreads and what appeared to be a marble threaded in her hair sitting in the corner, reading an anthology of lesbian fiction.
Not really Warsaw Pact regalia at all, and barely Old Europe. Their eyes met.
She went back to reading her anthology. An hour later, while Jez was struggling with a Hungarian phrasebook to order Rövid kávé, served with a shot of espresso, she strutted over carrying her anthology still open to the page.
<<I just knew you were a foreigner>> she announced flopping into one of the empty chairs. <<Let me guess: English?>>
<<Australian>> Jez confessed. She was American and sounded Californian. <<I'm Jez. Let me guess: LA?>>
