‘E.Tea in the Ama-Zone’
part I
reading time: 3 minutes
-unedited-
part II press here
part III press here
It was the last full moon before the summer solstice and while the wind blew in gently from the East, the stars were shimmering all mysteriously.
Piped up and good to go I enjoyed one last coke laced cigarette before take-off.
Throwing on my gear grabbing my helmet, I looked around and performed the final visual checkup before climbing up the wonky ladder.
Fastening myself in the nose cone of my home made space rocket, I slid the key into ignition, punched on some random buttons and hit the snoozer tab of my revised Telefunken alarm clock, initiating countdown.
3
2
1
Pulling the levers towards me, I made my stack of batteries touch the crumpled up aluminium foil.
Shizzle bizzle.
Following protocol stuff started to fizzle. The gunpowder crammed in the propellant tank of the first stage booster lit up and…
Wham!
Ground Control to Major Tom
As the thrusters started to accelerate, I glanced through the porthole window and noticed the water of my bathtub was still running.
Take your protein pills and put your helmet on
Blast off!
Tik. Tok.
Thirty seconds into my galactic adventure.
The G’s and its forces were phenomenal.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
Whut?
The buttons on the control panel in front of me were melting and malfunction was being reported by the onboard computer.
Paf!
A puncture in the oxygen tank, a tiny explosion, an unexpected jolt of what the fek?
Noooooooo.
Instantaneously the ejection procedure self-activated, popping off the command module with a bang, leaving the rocket to self-destruct while hurling me unharmed back towards the surface of the Earth.
Thumbling through the canopy I…
Thud.
… landed smack in the middle of the dense Amazonian jungle.
‘Dammit!’
Frustrated at the botched attempt I kicked open the door, but just as I was about to step outside a faint wobble stopped me right in my tracks.
Motionless, through the vague light of the night, I assessed the situation.
There, right outside, I saw how my cone and I were dangerously dangling right on the lip of a roaring waterfall.
Unfazed I carefully, with the shoelace of my space-booth, lassoed myself to a more secure spot on a branch conveniently hanging close by.
Close call.
I thought, and sitting there slightly sweating, I watched how the relentless power of the Amazon River pummeled my hopes of becoming a space legend, tipping it all over the edge, crushing it on the boulders down below.
‘Goddammit!’
I yelled, but was immediately frowned upon by a smug looking cobalt blue Macaw quietly enjoying some juicy fruits from a nearby tree.
As it was night and I had no light I decided to wait till dawn, which came quick.
Dawn.
I stretched, yawned and ate the fruits the Macaw had left behind.
Having laboriously watched all Rambo movies at least tree times, I knew, being lost in the Amazonian wilderness, I had nothing to fear but boredom itself.
Rubbing some mud on my face I observed the vegetation as all of a sudden, I noticed something rather peculiar.
Quickly I triangulated the positions of the nearby trees and….
Then it hit me.
I knew where I was…
I knew where I was cause I had been here before. The trees, that Macaw, the waterfall, it seemed too coincidental to be true, but true it was.
Three years ago, in an undertaking to find the lost City of Gold, I had explored these very grounds I was standing on.
How now brown cow. It seemed my misfortune had unmasked itself as an opportunity and in doing so, was handing me a brand new start at finding El Dorado.
Hot dang!
I grinned and without further ado I added some more mud to my face, grabbed onto some loose hanging vines, jumped and abseiled down the side of the waterfall.
Once down I skipped through the gushing flow of water and entered the ancient elephant cemetery where I scoured the sacred soil.
Scour. Scour.
Finding one to my liking, I “borrowed” an elephant’s breastbone and carved it, using a splintered rock, into a razor sharp machete.
Well aware of the nefarious exploits about to unfold I knew it was paramount to up my reserves, so with my finger I caught me some native fish while brewing some good old Amazonian vine tea.
Raaaawr.
Sharp and ready, I wielded my elephant bone and chewing on the raw piranhas, gobbling down the tea, I started chopping through the undergrowth.
The spacesuit was hot as fek, so I kept drinking that jungle brew as if my life depended on it.
Days and days I wrestled through the foliage, throwing up, conversing with the unseen until…
… all of a sudden…
… at the rim of a sleeping volcano, things took an unsuspected turn.
Something was about to go down what could only be described as a disturbance in the inter-dimensional matrix of connectivity I was tapped into through my stretched out, tea infused pupils.
There, down below, I saw how an indigenous tribe was about to get ambushed by a pack of poison toads preparing a retaliatory raid over an old dispute pertaining the use or misuse of a pond not far away.
Enchanted by the tea it was impossible not to interfere.
HOOOOO!
Standing on the rim, swaying my elephant bone high up in the air, I yelled..
NOOOOOOOO!
Immediately all eyes were upon me and captivated by the spacesuit and my sweating face full of mud, the tribe as well as the toads froze up, starstruck and in total awe.
I skidded down from the rim and as they curiously rallied around me, I told them how I came from up there to help in order to keep the connectivity amongst them from unraveling .
A circle was formed and while sipping some more tea I listened, laughed hysterically and successfully guided both parties back towards common grounds where my sheer genius mind combined with my background in geotechnical engineering offered the solution in the form of a dam, thus creating two ponds out of one.
Applause ensued and as a token of gratitude the toads offered me a pouch filled with the finest of their skins a man could smoke while the tribe in their turn decided to hold a ceremony to include me as an honorary member.
More tea was produced and during the feast that went on for well over a fortnight, I, as the brown faced E.T. from the rim, became part of their myths for generations to come.
But…
As all good thing must come to an end, I one day decided it was time to get back on the track for El Dorado.
‘Bye. Yeah bye. Bye. You too, bye…’
Just when I had said goodbye to almost every member of the tribe, someone grabbed me by my spacesuit and pulled me into a trippy little tent of very green leafs.
It was the tribe’s shaman and with tears in his old eyes, he conveyed to me a story that was keeping him up at night, causing him great grievance. It was the story of the disappearance of his very own twin brother.
It had all started many, many moons ago when an expedition led by men in white coats looking to safeguard the ancestral knowledge of traditional medicine, came to the village.
Stunned by the knowledge of the twin brothers, the white coated men had offered a scholarship at one of the most prestigious universities of the United Americas.
Cautionary words were exchanged, but being the adventurous one, his brother was not going to let the opportunity slide. And so he left for a journey that would normally take a semester or two.
But…
That was five years ago, and with no modern means to contact him, the other brother wondered if I, with my great knowledge, could be of any assistance.
These past few weeks I had learned how everything was connected and that coincidence was not to be questioned, so I hugged the wrinkled little shaman and told him how I, by sheer chance, was an acquaintance of The World’s most Unbelievable Privates Investigator, and that I was sure that this World’s most Unbelievable Privates Investigator could help him in locating his long lost brother.
