Free The Bend of the World: A Novel by Jacob Bacharach Page B

heterosexuality reacts violently to even the thought of contemplating a masculine physique, but I find it impossible to believe that you haven’t noticed the hirsute girth I’ve wrapped myself in since we were kids. I am impervious to cold. I’m a goddamn hrimthurs.
    A what? And not since we were kids. You were still skinny in college.
    True, but too hairy to be a twink, so I decided to go all-out bear.
    What’s a twink? I asked.
    Really, Johnny answered, you know perfectly well. I know you’re terrified that people think you’re a fag, as if the sad heterosexual dystopia you’ve left in your life’s wake isn’t evidence enough of a shameful sexual parochialism, but no one buys the ignorance act.
    Okay, I said. Christ.
    So. Let’s talk about the flying saucer some more. Now, Pringle is a little, let’s say, inconsistent on the issue. In Fourth River, Fifth Dimension , he’s pretty clear that UFOs are extradimensional and that they travel back and forth from our universe and their own through a basically magical process, but then in Fountain of Spooks , which is the third book in the series, he implies that they come out of the hollow earth. He doesn’t say much in the second book, about UFOs anyway. Your descriptions are pretty consistent with the hollow earth variety. The extradimensional ones are more like balls of light.
    Ball lightning, I said.
    Shut it down, Johnny said. It is very strange, though, that we’re seeing both varieties in close proximity.
    Yes, I said. You’ve definitely identified the part of this story that’s very strange.
    Speaking of very strange, any progress on the Where’s Winston?
    No, I said.
    You haven’t even tried. I shrugged. Not that I expected otherwise. You’re such a materialist. It’s depressing. Maybe your close encounter will awaken some basic human curiosity in you.
    It was definitely curious. How many books did this guy write?
    Well, there are five that are under his sole authorship and another two that he cowrote with someone named Dr. Wilhelm Zollen, and then there are a bunch of sort of fan-fic, self-published versions that have popped up, apparently from people who heard him speak at conventions or whatnot and became convinced that they were participants in Project Pittsburgh. I’ve read the first three so far.
    Project Pittsburgh is the thing.
    Project Pittsburgh is the everything. It’s pretty awesome. You should read this stuff instead of shooting your load in bullshit liberal blog comments all day. It’s sort of an all-encompassing conspiracy theory. I mean, usually you get a Nazi, a time portal, and a train full of gold, or you get aliens and Feds, or you find out that Tesla was really Rasputin or Gore Vidal’s grandfather created chemtrails or AIDS was caused by sexual congress with bigfoots, but Pringle’s got a real conspiracy puttanesca thing; it’s all in there; he’s the Whitman of wack jobs; containment has failed on the multitudes.
    Well, that all sounds very elaborate. What’s the upshot?
    The upshot? Jesus Lord Mother of Mercy, you are becoming a corporate hack.
    In a nutshell, I said.
    Fuck you, Johnny said, but he could never resist; he was a pedant at heart. So basically, he said, you’ve got this ancient sacred geometry, sacred topography, what with the three rivers and the underground fourth river all meeting at the Point. Usual backstory. Indians knew it was holy, blah blah blah. So the Marquis Du Quesne, who’s the governor-general of New France, and who also just happens to also be the grand master of the Priory of Sion, hears about this, in particular the fourth river, which is, duh, obviously, the underground stream of medieval European esotericism, immediately puts together an exhibition, kicks out the Indians, and builds Fort Duquesne. So then Adam Weishaupt, the thirty-third-degree Freemason and immortal founder of the Bavarian Illuminati, gets wind of this, and basically does the Illuminati version of Aw No She Di’in! Now,