Kayakers of Kennedy Space Center
Peak Bioluminescence

This is another tale of the Kennedy Space Center's multiverses, both in the distant past and the far future.
Follow ghosts, demons, gods, AIs, tourists, DNA experiments, vamps, and witches as they travel the multiverse only to discover their interconnections as allies and enemies across an endless history or future.

Every story is the true story.

"Bioluminescence is the creation and emission of light by living organisms" note by Fred the AI

Peak Bioluminescence

"Suffice for me to suggest a more amicable consideration? Have you ever been night kayaking?" I asked, attempting to break the ice with the two space center tourists.

One woman, a red-haired minx, was tattooed with too many Egyptian hieroglyphics, patterns of double helix mixed chimera of the Delta Pantheon; you could almost hear the white-robed minions chanting invocations of sacred associations. Fairly eccentric or fucking crazy, but of course, I wasn't seeking to marry her.

The afternoon Florida sun was burning her non-tattooed areas, and she lifted a ball cap and raked back her cinnamon hair plastered to her forehead.

"When flight hardware is present, there is also the risk of inadvertent initiation of pyrotechnic devices presupposed significance, agreeable combination influences and beautiful things," chanted the speaker at the visitor's center rocket garden where the obsolete rockets cast Golgotha spear-like shadows.

Nearness in space, time, or relationship proximity permissions I caught a whiff of her perfume, the brand one of my favorites: "Electrostatic discharge."

She leaned upon the handrail before the giant motion-activated astronaut memorial, expressing a feeling akin to exaltation,

"You are so lucky to work here!" said the redhead.

I nodded sheepishly; my preferred name for the monument was "The obsidian tombstone."

The other woman was playing stone cold, uninterested in me, ignoring my jokes; it could be she did not like guys, I reflected.

Blonde, a runner's body, a little too thin, angled face, weak-chinned, startling turquoise eyes that had to be fake.

We stood over the wishing pond at the base of the memorial; it was always full of unknown coinage from whatever tour group was visiting the Space Center Visitors Center. Indeed, a group of Japanese school girls were laughing, "Crocodile-crocodile," the only word I could understand, as they tossed change at the child-size alligator. It was one of the safe gators waiting for hotdog buns and popcorn. They would not know that all human-fed alligators had to be destroyed by the park service.

As we looked at the gator, all of our reflections were visible. A ripple made my face distort like a hawk or eagle, and I chuckled, recalling Halcyon Cove on Antiqua. Doesn't that mean Hawk Cove? Old memories of rolling the spliff out of banana leaves with the Indian-Lebanese girl. We coughed like hell and laughed, stoned. Then the BiWi maid came out of the hotel and caught a giant lizard with a string of long grass.

"A skry pond, said the blonde, looking at our reflections under the astronaut memorial. "You know, for Psychic visions and seeing the future."

Oh, one of those girls, crystals, tarot cards, out-of-body stories, or even a Wiccan or something. I tucked that information away for future use.

Of course, I was a pig with a great job and crummy pay as a KSC tour guide.

New ladies, a new challenge every week.

"Such an interesting study," I said, dwelling on my job, but the blonde took it otherwise and nodded, smiling for the first time.

"Weed?" asked the blonde while the redhead looked around and hissed, "Put that away, Eileen!"

The risk of losing my job per a random urine test versus getting to know the two ladies?

A quick cost-benefit analysis.

What other tattoos were tucked out of sight of the burning Florida sun?

"Follow me," I said, guiding them to the far side of the astronaut memorial lake, the walk ringed with shady oak trees.

"No cameras or people," I explained and pointed to a bench facing away from the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Center.

"Sit close and face away. We can smoke, and no one will know."

The two ladies sat on either side of me, and I was enjoying their heat, their pheromones, to be exact, I was a pig.

The blonde lady, Eileen, fired up the joint, the tip glowing carmine, inhaling deeply, and passed it to me. I inhaled and held the smoke and handed it to the redhead.

Something was wrong; the silver smoke tinged with crimson and yellow curled away like a slow rocket launch.

"Marcus," said the blonde, so she had at least read my tour name tag. "Marcus, you ever sit on this bench with other bedazzled tourists and smoke their pot?"

The two girls giggled.

"Not the first time on this bench?" repeated the redhead, her new ball cap spelled the four-letter word NASA.

I was stunned at their astute observation powers but was struck speechless by the drug.

Wow.

They had recognized my standard pick-up pattern. First, the Space Shuttle Atlantis display and this bench at sunset were my power plays, sealed by some glorious bioluminescence kayaking.

"Oh, don't pretend innocence!"

"Don't act so unconcerned!"

The joint was passed back and forth, and after an unknown time, with a start of mingled amazement and horror, I realized the sun had set to a violet afterglow.

The colors, the painful reminder of my ex in the rose light of evenings past, the exquisite mosaic of Caroline immersed in reflections of her koi pond, giant magnolia scented flowers, nimbus veil vermilion, except Caroline had dumped me and gone back to New York when she thought I had been unfaithful.

I had only kissed the other woman a few times, not more than thirty minutes, with a few strategic squeezes and her appreciative return groping, but absolutely had not been unfaithful with that one.

The pain of her leaving, I had hidden deep, but the joint was wrenching up old memories.

"What is in that stuff?" I asked when I could finally speak.

Cognitive shift in awareness achieved through transcendent perspectives of illegal drugs?

Titterings from the girls.

"Fuckin mushrooms or something?" I said and was positive I spoke with slurred speech.

Lips curled in a smile, a smile, impossible to believe the potency and power; she glanced at me in an adorable 'new to Florida' tourist manner.

"A little pot, a little crushed Datura," said Eileen, her lips curled in a smile, a smile impossible to believe. We had met somewhere before? The Orbiter Processing Facility? Her perfume of flowers wafted over me, her eyes holding me for longer than required—poetical ardor.

"Datura, eh Jimson weed? That is new to me," I said, unsure what I had just smoked, but the high was distinguished by flashes of imaginative double vision.

"Ophelia." said Eileen, looking at the tattooed redhead, "Wants to see a Falcon 9 rocket launch. Can you pull that off, Marcus-of-the-glazed-eyes?"

Ah, I thought, Ophelia & Eileen, Ophelia & Eileen, Ophelia & Eileen, don't forget their names again.

"Well?"

"A deep subject," said Ophelia, laughing at her own joke and, for the first time, her laughter fully exposing her pendant. That was called what?

"The Eye of Horus," I said, forcing my mouth to form words.

"Very good!" said Ophelia. "You are more than just a pretty boy toy, aren't you?"

The two women laughed again, the drugs, of course, but I faced the universal problem, the death blow to getting dates. How was I to split these two up?

I stood up on unsteady feet. "The visitor's center is closing. Have you ever heard of bioluminescence kayaking?"

"Yes!" said both women.

"There might be a Falcon launch just after midnight. We could kayak in those clear kayaks for rent, see the best of Mother Nature's light show, and then catch a rocket launch. It should be clear tonight."

Of course, as the tourist guide extraordinaire, I already knew the launch time, the winds, the clouds, the moon-rise, and whether the bio show was good this week.

Enjoying my job too much was why Caroline had dumped me.

The two tourist women were ecstatic.

"I have more joints," said Eileen.

"Peak bioluminescence season is between July and September," I explained, "Basically, hurricane season is bio season, at least for the dinoflagellate bioluminescence; the glowing comb jellyfish will extend the light show further into the spring and fall."

We made a quick stop at the lady's hotel and my apartment to gather insect repellant, bathing suits for the girls, and BDU pants for me; I was very aware of the possibility of the bug spray washing off your legs.

"Let's go see my buddy Limey."

"Limey owns and runs Osiris Kayak tours, the best bioluminescence tour on the Space Coast. Clear kayaks to experience the Indian River or Mosquito Lagoon light show. We both used to work on the space shuttles."

Had I dropped that line yet? That joint had me scatterbrained and even seeing chimeras.

And as anticipated, Ophelia perked up at the mention of the Egyptian god. I nodded my head.

"Limey is a little eccentric in how he likes Native American and Egyptian cultures." The Book of the Dead and weird shit like that, I did not say.

It wouldn't be the first time I lost a prospective tourist to the crazy Limey, who could out-crazy all of them—a pure and simple, unstoppable aphrodisiac to the crazies.

We arrived at Haulover Canal just as Limey launched a group of tourists into the dark waters. If they knew how many large alligators and bull sharks lived in that canal.

True to his word, Limey had held back two see-through kayaks for the ladies and a stable sea kayak for me.

"Have to sign the insurance papers, luv," explained Limey.

I was always certain that his English accent was fake because it seemed to shift from different parts of the UK depending on who he spoke with. Occasionally, with the application of warm brown beer or scotch, I picked out New Zealand or Jamaican English inflections; he could out-crazy the crazies.

I tried to resist the inclination to think about Caroline. The firmaments reminded me of other nights, Caroline, storm-black hair sitting by the fire wrapped in a blanket, cheeks slightly sunburned, indicating some distant Irish ancestors. She talked fast with that difficult-to-understand New York accent and snorted when laughing without hesitation. The firelight reflected the exquisite mosaic Caroline immersed in humor and good rum.

"You will drink to the dawn?" she asked with lively affection. She always expressed astonishment at the stars, something invisible in New York City.

Inexpressible pangs of longing. Afraid to breathe or hiccup, for fear of destroying the good memories and replacing them with the break-up emotions.

Where had it begun? The attraction to me had certainly required a certain nimbleness and faith. I failed her, recalling the pained look on her face as she caught the Uber to the Orlando Airport and escaped from Florida.

Her distraught face, so white and despair-stricken, haunted me afterward like a crime scene.

What was in that joint?

"Ladies, if you wish, you can thank me now!" said Limey. "My normally quite loquacious friend Marcus-who-never-shuts-up has gone suddenly silent. I do smell the hint of Ganja about him. Feel free to share! Please share! Everyone calls me Limey, not just because of my distant origins, but the occasional bouts of bile duct blockage, turns me yellow-green."

I knew that was his standard tourist line.

"Thank me now. Ha! You'll never experience anything like this all-natural phenomenon; you must see to believe. Ganja helps if you wish to share."

Limey smiled at the two ladies and the stoned silent Marcus.

"Osiris was the murdered father of the god Horus," said Ophelia.

Limey chuckled at the glassiness in her eyes.

"Very good!" yelled Limey, "You have more than the normal American schooling; are you by any chance English? Far too pretty to be Irish!" Ophelia beamed; the blonde, Eileen? The blonde looked like all the other bored Americans when missing their cell phone babysitter.

"Tonight, anything that comes in contact with the bioluminescent dinoflagellates- your boat, your paddle will emit an electric green-blue glow you'll never forget.

The fish, sting rays, mullet, and small-toothed sawfish will appear as millions of shooting stars or underwater fireworks illuminated in out-of-this-world glowing hues.

Sometimes, a dolphin or manatee will swim under you as a giant blue-green blob that will exhale blue-green water! Nothing in this world is more awe-inspiring than paddling or even swimming with the space coast's glittering dinoflagellates and pulsing Comb Jellies, nature's laser light show!"

Then a final plea to the ladies, "Ganja?"

Ophelia had a look of wonder, "Osiris was green-skinned in the temple pyramids, and Set murdered him!"

"Jesus wept," hissed Limey. They were fucked up.

The three kayaks pushed over calm water, shimmering like the stars in the night sky. Schools of mullet panicked as one, nearly lighting up the boats by the sheer amount of bio light.

Water cupped in hands dripped blue-green quicksilver or molten paint-like water, a mesmerizing spectacle, even before the second joint.

They stopped, sitting still under the still Florida night, with fish slapping all around them and taking turns holding all three kayaks together.

"This one has more Datura seed," explained Eileen as she fired up the joint. The butane lighter and glowing joint gave off the insane illusion that she wore wolf skin on her head, her face painted with magic symbols. The night shadows gave the illusion that Eileen's brow ridges were twice the size of a normal human while simultaneously making her chin seem to disappear.

She was beautiful in a feral way, a million times opposite Caroline or even the mysterious tattooed redhead.

Eileen handed the joint to Marcus and then played with the dripping quicksilver-bluish water while holding the smoke in.

I did not need more of this jimson weed, but I inhaled the smoke so as not to put off the two women.

Ophelia giggled and took the joint, her mind wrapped in the Egyptian gods, a pantheon of murder and rebirth in a silken diaphanous web of the ancient ones.

Ophelia handed the joint back to me, and I tasted her moisture on the paper, a faint perfume, delicate fragrance, and pheromones of cinnamon that sent shivers subtle and firey across my back as if in a caress.

The shiver sealed his choice of tourists.

Red enchantresses, a strange combination of the new and somehow familiar, tantalizing, permeated with an intense desire; however, the smoke took me away into a datura vision; in a distant past or far future, she rested in the arms of a great stone sphinx with painted red braids; Ophelia spread her wings over three green-tinted children. One of the children, Artemis, was her name, and she poked a finger into Odin's empty eye socket. The fighting began again. The third child, a feathered serpent, hissed in agitation.

The three kayaks drifted slowly apart, the three occupants dreaming the tainted dreams of Datura.

Various symbols, faint, nonlinear, and impressive in their terribleness, began to glow under the drifting kayaks; perhaps it was only the timeless fish shooting through timeless bioluminescent dinoflagellates under the timeless firmament.

"Shall we not meet again?" whispered one of them; however, it was impossible to determine who had spoken the words.

Limey lay in his transparent fiberglass kayak, smoking his Ganja, the stars above, and the bio below. Could life get any better?

"Metacognition, man, metacognition."

Right on time, the international space station drifted across the stars.

The powerful Ganja took over, and Limey spoke unknown words, unknowing, but knowing that somewhere else, Greenlee in an F-18? And Greenwald locked in a dark tunnel under the shattered VAB, Director Lyme struggling ashore on a hurricane-swept beach, a green-haired ghost photographer screamed silently in the night. Green-skinned Osiris warring on the delta mouthed the same words: "It's the leakage man, oscillating nonlinear paradoxes of fractal patterns connecting the here, the future, the past and the other, with deterministic quantum fluctuations, underlying patterns, unstable interconnectedness continuous stretching and bending of chaos and random states of disorder, monsters of the heliosphere, wild ghosts, barghests hungry. Indecently high sensitivity to pheromone receptors affecting desire and whims aggravate sensitivities to chameleon invisibility, dark-hidden monsters conceived as winding through space until a hard shutdown."

With a start, Limey watched the night turn into day as a SpaceX Falcon rocket lifted from the east coast launch pad; birds took flight, manatees, and dolphins splashed in panic. Bull sharks used the launch glow to snap up pale six-legged alligators.

Around him, the entire lagoon lit in a glorious blue-green bio flash that imitated the holy green flash at sunset that was the entrance to the next world, and another door to somewhere creaked open, just a tiny bit of leakage.

Limey tapped his ganja pipe on the clear acrylic boat, and a mullet shot away, leaving a blue-green trail of bio life.

"Metacognition, man, metacognition."

In another timeline, green-skinned Osiris, the immortal god of the tomb and hater of confined spaces, felt the rocket's tug on the heliosphere and a call for help.

With a growl, Osiris and his team of AI hunters slipped through the timelines, searching, following an echoing plea for help.

In his hand, the lever action rifle that had replaced his crook and flail after his war on the delta.

His son Horus was being held by witches.

Other tails of the Space Center:

Vampires of Kennedy Space Center

Demons of Kennedy Space Center

Demons of Kennedy Space Center, corpus callosotomy

Ghosts of Kennedy Space Center

Dreams of Kennedy Space Center

Aliens of Kennedy Space Center

Director of Kennedy Space Center

Hitchhikers of Kennedy Space Center

Witches of Kennedy Space Center

Cave Bears of Kennedy Space Center

Chimeras of Kennedy Space Center

Gods of Kennedy Space Center and the Nile

Dinosaurs of Kennedy Space Center

Kayakers of Kennedy Space Center

Remembering Kennedy Space Center

Shadows of Kennedy Space Center

Virus of Kennedy Space Center

Starman of Kennedy Space Center

Gate Jumpers of Kennedy Space Center

Allies of Kennedy Space Center (Pt 2 of Gate Jumpers

Savants of Kennedy Space Center

Gene Splicers of Kennedy Space Center

State Security of Kennedy Space Center

Rescuers of Kennedy Space Center

Ferals of Kennedy Space Center

Return HOME from Kayakers of Kennedy Space Center

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Author Bruce Ryba at Kennedy Space Center Launch Pad 39B & Artemis 1. "We are going to the Moon!"

Author's discussion (that's me) on You Tube of a book review on Amazon

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