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...
QUENTIN MET BÄBEL ON KOH SAMUI, A PALM AND COCONUT TREE-RIMMED WONDERLAND FLOATING OFF THE SOUTHERN COAST OF THAILAND. Bäbel was garbed in only a g-string and was happily skimming a frisbee to some g-stringed Israelis. Quentin was wearing sandshoes and jeans but he nonetheless conspired, on the beach and all, to ask Bäbel for the time. He caught the frisbee as a pretext.
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<<Who cares about the time?>> she replied, in a totally unabashed German accent. <<I'm on vacation.>>
Quentin left the island that afternoon and flew home to Sydney, Australia. He forgot all about Bäbel, enticed as he was by James Redfield's The Celestine Prophecy, which he was reading then. It took him three months to get through it. When he was done he walked down to the shop to buy some groceries and saw Bäbel waiting at the service counter.
He assumed it was one of those spin-out situations, like when you're off your head in a club, and all you can do is gawk at everyone because suddenly everything, everything seems so familiar. Except, this time, she was gawking back. <<Oh?>> he said. <<It's you, isn't it? From Thailand!>>
Squinting at the moth-blown Windfield clock behind the counter, she said <<Jawohl. It's twenty past six.>>
Quentin plonked his milk, bread and magazines on the counter, next to her tampons or something. <<This is quite strange, isn't it? Meeting like this again, on the other side of the world. It was fucking paradise, that Koh Samui!>>
She stroked a bead of condensation rolling down his milk; he found the gesture oddly suggestive but didn't wonder why. <<The day after I met you I came down with the shits. Then dengue fever in Kalimantan. I'm backpacking in this land of yours now.>>
The scabby Greek behind the counter cleared his throat and said: <<Ten bucks eighty.>> Quentin interpreted it as a sign.
<<I'll have to show you around>> he proposed. It was one of his trademarks. He took her to Abu Hussein's for pipes and shawarma, Mascarpone for coffee and cake, the Burdekin Hotelfor a bottle or two of e-33. If they'd met in the daytime a Harbour snapshot or trip to Manly would have been appropriate; being a Friday night, cocktails in the Luna Lounge were more in order. They saw Demi Moore in the foyer. Quentin bought some speed on Oxford Street and whisked Bäbel into SubDub.
The scene inside was hard house, handbag and spice. Quentin hugged Bäbel in the happier set and said <<Just like Koh Samui, huh?>> He wasn't referring to the sweaty walls and boobs.
At 4am it was time for microwaved burgers at 7-Eleven, drowsy Opera House panoramas on the cab trip home, Quentin's shoulder as good a pillow as any. Cigarettes on the townhouse balcony, blister comparisons in the bedroom. The sun came up and the tour ended its vertical phase.
