REKT - Chapter 20
Ram a Dam
I am in Paia Town. Andy is in Chicago. Nikola is in Nicosia. We need to hold it together for seven more weeks. I’m doubtful we can. Andy is on the lam from me. Niko has grown homesick. I’m starting to crack under pressure, wanting the whole thing to be over. That trip to the moon everyone in crypto is on? We’re there too, but we are on the rocket’s tip, the burning edge of first resistance. The journey is consuming us, eating away at unity, tearing off pieces of ourselves and flicking them into space. Somewhere back on Earth a kid is looking to the sky dreaming of bitcoin and catches a glimpse of a shooting star. That star is a piece of me, of Andy, of Niko. It’s a piece of Icarus escaping orbit, not worried about getting too close to the sun, instead worried if we’ll make it to the moon on the magic Lamborghini. The air is getting thin. There’s less to breathe. Radiation is penetrating us. My bones are beginning to glow.
This isn’t working for me. I’m not sleeping. I’m having a hard time separating what we owe each other from what we owe crypto. Our bond, our love, our partnership is at cross purposes. Am I interested in Andy getting better because I care for him as a man, or am I interested in Andy getting better because I’m seven weeks from walking away? I tell myself both, but I don’t know anymore. Would I love Niko outside this situation? Am I only attracted to her because she’s one the few people who can fathom what I am going through? Those bitcoins we handed Fritz are worth two and a half million now. If the chart keeps going this way, they’ll be worth three before the month is out. A third of that belonged to me, now it’s gone, and I don’t care. If I am not in this for the money, what am I in it for? What do we owe each other?
Paia Town in the morning. Pastel rows of storefronts, wooden boardwalks connecting them. A remnant from a muddy past before the roads were paved, when this was a cowboy town or a plantation town, maybe both. It is now a hippy town. A new age center for affluent burnouts who live above concerns like money. They are on spiritual journeys. They are seeking wellness. They need a white sand beach to soothe their souls.
Ram Dharwarjan asked me to meet him at the juice store in town. He didn’t tell me there were seven juice stores in town. The economy here is based on freshly squeezed juice, surfboards, Kona beer and slack key guitars. I can see why Willie likes it out here. It’s six-thirty in the morning. Light is teasing the backside of the volcano. It will sneak out from the north side of the Road to Hana and spill into town, illuminating the beach with a million gigawatts of solar powered goodness, but for now we are in the shadows. The stores are locked. CLOSED signs across them. There’s no one out and about this early. I’ve one juice store to check. There’s a mural on the wall outside it. A giant melting crushed ice cone, psychedelic drips raining from it, fabulously colored toads with drugged pools for eyes underneath, tongues catching the drops like rain. There’s a light on inside. A woman in a white robe opens the crooked screen door and steps onto the boardwalk. I look both ways to cross the street. There’s no need this early.
“You are looking for Ram,” the woman says to me. She’s in white cotton ashram garb, her head shorn by clippers, big wooden beads around her wrists, a Green Machine smoothie in her hand.
“I am. You must know him,” I reply.
“I know him, I am him. Let’s walk Ryan.”
I’m beyond being surprised at this point. It’s early too. I don’t like mornings much, my body is slow and sluggish, nighttime is my natural territory. There’s not much in the reaction tank to give. She’s disappointed. I can tell. She was looking to shock me. She doesn’t realize the people I run with. She doesn’t realize how desensitized I’ve become to strange.
“Let me get a coffee first. If you don’t mind, of course.”
He shouldn’t, he doesn’t. There’s a big black labradoodle on the wood beamed floor inside the juice place. The inside smells of pineapple and caffeine. The coffee has that rich aroma of a perfect cup. They brew with peaberry beans. I’m in heaven. The sun has cleared the hills, scattering through the screen door, warming the shirt on my back.
The door bangs off the frame once, twice, three times as I leave. Ram is walking up Route 36 into the sun. He’s making me chase him. This is a trick the mystical pull. Always recede, offer promise and recede. What Ram doesn’t know is that I love a good walk. I can walk for miles. I can walk for days. I can walk all the way to Hana if he wants. I’ve got my comfortable kicks on, sixteen ounces of peaberry coffee, and polarized sunglasses. Today is my last day on Maui. My flight is not until ten tonight. I’ve got more patience than a sutra. My day is a mandala. He’s a pale woman in a thin cotton dress wearing worn flip flops.
Ram never turns back. Fifteen minutes in he tosses his smoothie in a recycling bin left out for collection and not taken in yet, some spiritualist. That smoothie is trash, not recycling. That plastic cup will live there for weeks until the homeowner finally unties a nearly bursting garbage bag to squeeze the by now smelly and dry rimmed smoothie into it. An offering from a yogi. Why did Andy listen to this person? Why am I bothering to hear what they have to say?
Ram turns off the little coastal highway and disappears down a sandy path between two fences. I’m in no hurry to catch up. This is beach access; he will be easy to find on the sand. There’s a staging of this conversation that’s taking place. No need to make small talk before it. I’m not going to tip him off, reveal casual details that can be turned against me. My coffee has a tang on it, notes of cherry. Instead of following close, I stop, finish off the cup and throw my empty into a municipal bin for proper collection. After that, I remove my Vans, roll my ankle socks into a little ball and shove them into the toe of a shoe. I’m ready now for whatever this supreme layer of bullshit has cooked up for breakfast.
I love a Hawaiian beach at sunrise. The energy is enormous, cosmic, undeniable. It works with the caffeine to wake me, my brain cranking up from a four to an eight. I’m ready to play a game of slippery snakes with Ram. He’s up ahead, still walking, never looking back. The beach is a half mile maybe, hard to tell but there’s an end to it. A large pile of volcanic rock frames the east end of the bay. It crops out past the hills in dramatic fashion. He’s got nowhere to go after that. We’ll speak there. I walk by dogs off their leash, tennis balls in their mouths. I greet their masters, happy retired couples on morning walks. Locals getting ready to paddle out flash the shaka. I flash it back, head bowed. Children spread out towels, parents carry down breakfast. Everyone is so friendly here. I want to let my guard down, but I’m playing a different game than them. This set piece is a designed distraction. I’m supposed to open my soul for Ram. I’m supposed to get conned.
Ram stops and assumes the lotus position on the rocks. I have half a mind to walk right on past him, just strip naked, jump into the ocean and keep swimming up the coast. Instead, I engage. He’s taken the larger rock, a position of superiority. My choices are standing or sitting on one of the lesser rocks underneath him. We look at each other, Ram flashes a disarming smile, penetrating eyes unblinking and fixed into mine. I cannot make eye contact like this. Skeeves me out to no end. I sit on a rock, my back to Ram, facing out to the sea.
“Deacon Joe said I needed to speak with you before leaving.”
“Yes, you need to.”
“What about?” I ask.
“About the future, the nature of things to come. I have an opportunity to help you on your path.” “Joe tells me that I’ve got a different path than I thought. He tells me that I’m being left behind. He says that Andy is being elevated.”
“All of those things are true. Some in the way you think, some not so much.”
Slippery snakes indeed. This Ram a Dam is dangerous. I look out at the sea, kite boarders are chasing the winds, waves break out on the reef, in the distance I can make out a ship. It looks military. Time to cut to the chase.
“Ram, did you know anything about Andy before you spoke with him? Did you know where he’s been, what sort of shape he is in? Were you aware how dangerous it is to fill his mind with fancies right now?” I ask.
“I knew nothing about those things. I still do not, and I care not to. That is not my purpose. I am not a mother. I am not a nurse.”
“No, I am both at the moment, so I care very much about those things. Whatever you said to Andy has sent him off this island. It sent him into danger.”
“My job is to position the pieces on the board. I’ve been reincarnated to put people in the field when they are needed. Andy is needed in the field now. Let me say this in a different way. Ninety percent of life is showing up. Andy needed to show up.”
I get off my rock, turn and stare Ram down. Woody Allen? Woody fucking Allen? That’s what I walked out here for. These people and their wisdom of the pedophiles.
Ram locks into my eyes. He freezes me with the power of intent. I’ve only ever seen Andy pull off this trick. The stone-cold stare down that soothes the most savage beast.
“Andy is going to want Nikola now. He’s going to try to take her from you. You and Andy will fight for Nikola’s soul. It will threaten to tear apart your love for each other. In order to stay together you and Andy, you and Nikola, the three of you as is meant, you will need a scapegoat. Deacon Joe is the scapegoat. His death is the founding murder you will base your future on. The myth of Joe’s sacrifice will be the story that the future of money is founded upon. The three of you, will lead the destruction of capitalism, the removal of gatekeepers, and the emergence of a decentralized society that can take us into the future. We need the three of you to save the planet by killing capitalism, to kill capitalism you must kill Joe.”
Ram, Ram, Ram. I’m supposed to be blown away by this revelation. It sounds good, but I’ve read Rene Girard. Well, I’ve not read him, but I’ve read a long read about him. Ram has just fed me a condensed version of his scapegoat theory using our lives as characters. I see right through this prophecy. This is a huge load of horseshit and I’ll figure out why Ram is shoveling it. At least I know what I am working with. Joe was right, I did need to speak with Ram before leaving. Now I know what waits for me in Chicago.
“You have no idea how dangerous you are Ram. You have no idea what your nonsense has set in motion. Thank you for showing me though. Thank you for filling me in on the latest mess I need to clean up. Messianic eggs. Money. Murder. Betrayal. That’s a real bitches brew. Fuck you. You have no idea at all how dangerous you are.”
“Everything is dangerous in Kali Yuga. Ram is here as a reminder. Ram is here to place pieces on the board. Your anger is a drop in the ocean. My mission is divine. Go now Ryan Declan. There’s nothing else for us to say.”
I’ve got one more thing to say.
“Go fuck yourself.”
A fat chihuahua that looks more like a tootsie roll than a dog waddles up from the beach. He starts barking at Ram, baring little fangs. I pick him up and walk back down to the sand. His owner is all smiles and apologies, she’s in a bikini, brown skin in the morning sun. I hand her the dog and walk on. I’m going to walk until my legs fall off and then I’m going to sleep all the way back to Chicago.