Incompatible Read online

  Incompatible

  Mauricio Robe Barbosa Campos

  Translated by João Rosa de Castro

  “Incompatible”

  Written By Mauricio Robe Barbosa Campos

  Copyright © 2019 Mauricio R B Campos

  All rights reserved

  Distributed by Babelcube, Inc.

  www.babelcube.com

  Translated by João Rosa de Castro

  Cover Design © 2019 Laercio Messias

  “Babelcube Books” and “Babelcube” are trademarks of Babelcube Inc.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  I N C O M P A T I B L E

  Mauricio R B Campos

  PREFACE

  PART I — THE GARDEN OF FORKING PATHS

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  PART II — FINDING THE WAY

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  PART III — CROSSROAD

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  EPILOGUE

  WARNING

  CHAOS MAGIC — GLOSSARY

  OTHER BOOKS URBAN MOSAICS

  I N C O M P A T I B L E

  BABELCUBE PRESS

  WWW.MAURICIORBCAMPOS.COM.BR

  Copyright © 2018 – Mauricio R B Campos. All rights reserved.

  Cover art by Laércio Messias

  Translated by João Rosa de Castro

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written consent of the publisher, except where permitted by law.

  AKNOWLEDGEMENT

  I would like to thank some people who played important roles during the process of development of this book. Firstly, I thank the Government of the State of São Paulo, in the figure of the Secretariat of Culture and all the team of Public Notices, without which this work would not have been produced. Samuel Bono, for his incentive in the comics script that served as a basis for this book to come to the world. Vinicius Ferreira, from Penumbra Livros, for the authorization for use of the passage of the Brazilian translation of Liber Null and the Psychonaut. Luiz Alberto “Toco” Labadessa, for the information about the geography of São Carlos and the pathways of mountain bike. Rafael de Araújo Vioto for our conversations about the Way of Santiago. Marcelo Fernandes, for the beta reading and the valuable hints. João Rosa de Castro for the nonstop support of my literary productions. And all of those who follow up my work, especially the readers who follow me since Urban Mosaics and The Yellow King. You are all very important to me.

  “I dedicate this work to Luciana, my most important fostering fountain. Compatible with love, romance and understanding.”

  Mauricio R B Campos

  “The only clear view is that of the top of the mountain of the dead ‘egos.”

  Peter J. Carroll

  PREFACE

  This story begins at a summer night, when a young magist[1], after having come from an open bar party, visited a blog post that remained online for only one week, by Alastrai Skull, who proclaimed himself to be the major magist[2] ever. After having read a quite interesting post about the Khaosfuzer server[3][4], she evoked it and never reminded this fact anymore.

  PART I — THE GARDEN OF FORKING PATHS

  “The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom...You never know what is enough until you know what is more than enough” — William Blake.[5]

  CHAPTER 1

  Water reflexes flickered in the swimming pool on the white walls of the mansion, under the deep blue sky. The white house was composed by three circular floors, all with balconies and garnished with columns. Vases with cactus, arrowroots, cordylines, lounge chairs, wicker little tables, in addition to morocco poufs, decorated the balconies. Sliding glass doors were successively laid out and gave the place openness and shine. A staircase of large white marble steps led to the upper floors. Between the mansion and the bluish swimming pool there was a play area with wood and tissue lounge chairs and big neutral colors sunshades.

  A visiting couple headed to the house, slowly and amazed before the cinematographic view. She went calm, carrying her vintage case that contained the portable tattoo studio that Cesar Del Manto, who accompanied her, had nicknamed Felix the cat’s case. In her red and long hair there were two colored locks, one pink and another of teal, around her eyes there was a dark shadow that gave her a gothic charm. A silver piercing shone on her nose, right above another pierced through the fleshy lips. On her right arm she had yakuza east-style tattoos: the flying dragon Ouryu around Magoi, the black carp, and on her left arm she had a leather bracelet covered with tacks. She wore a white basic tshirt, black pants and a pair of leather boots.

  “For the prior notice of God!”, Cesar exclaimed, by gesticulating and aiming to each detail of the fully astonishing landscape.

  His style wasn’t similar to that of his young partner, he didn’t have tattoos, his black hair was thick and well cut, and his clothes were casual: black t-shirt, a pair of jeans and tennis-shoes. Yet for that visit he wanted to impress, so he was wearing a black blazer.

  “Dude, I don’t believe we’re at Tony Perry’s house”, he went on, with excitement, “Do you know his name is Antônio Pereira?”

  “Whatever, the guy is such a metal god”, she answered laconically.

  “Thank you very much!”, they turned with surprised heading to the voice. Tony Perry came from the side of the house, getting out of a track of trees that concealed the garage. The rocker was skinny and tall, bright eyes, a starting baldness was going through his thick greyish brown, as his goatee. He wore a few clothes: a silk robe with cartoons print in black and white, a black swim briefs with the red tongue of Rolling Stones on the front, NY Yankees cap and mirrored sunglasses of model aviator.

  He stared at them with a hand holding a glass of whisky and the other a thick cigarette. The red-haired girl stamped a yellow smile as Cesar was melting.

  “I see there’s an admirer in the house!”, Tony Perry smiled.

  “Hi, I’m Jean, the tattooist, and this is Cesar”.

  “Exactly”, the owner of the house agreed and took a sip. “Jean?”

  Cesar answered promptly before she could try to explain in a less embarrassing manner:

  “Jean Grey like in the X-Men, because of her hair, she gained the nickname, I think it was on the first day of class, in the middle of the college hazing. And it was stuck. Not even I know her real name”. “For sure you know, it’s...”

  Cesar interrupted her:

  “I have all the records of the band, since the demo Nemo in the Abyss up to By the Ass of God!”

  Tony approached so that it was possible to feel the odor of the Scotch malt and calmly gave his opinion about the admirer’s taste.

  “I hate this record. And nobody buys compact disks anymore, boy, don’t you have I-tunes?”

  While Perry distillated his despise for his last work, an elegant woman appeared. She was tall and slander. Her tan skin contrasted her blond hair and the white b
ikini. A pair of high-heeled shoes helped give her a sensual look.

  “This is my girlfriend, she’s American and doesn’t understand a single word in Portuguese[6]” then he lowered his voice and said lowly. “I call bad words of her mother easily in the old Portuguese language when we fuck, but she thinks it’s the Brazilian version of oh yes, oh yes. The tattoo is for her”.

  “Hi!”, she nodded and smiled.

  Cesar smiled back and felt a sudden heat getting to his body while he stared at her surgically modeled breasts. He felt his mouth full of water as he looked through the anatomy of the North-American girl. She’s a goddess, he thought, a goddess produced with the best that money can buy.

  Jean’s eyes got straight becoming two gaps, but her companion didn’t even realize it.

  “Let’s go to the living room to talk about the tattoo”, the owner of the mansion suggested, and indicated the way with the glass.

  They covered the way up to the huge room in the first floor and crossed the balcony and the glass door. They accommodated in the black leather sofas, the tattoo artist removed the drawings from her case and displayed them on the large glass table.

  “According to what we had talked, I made some drafts, and this is my favorite”, the showed a picture that was in the center. “It’s a montage I produced by mixing this image of Artemis, the goddess, with Gisele Bünchen”.

  The image she mentioned showed the face and the long hair of the model Gisele Bünchen, and representing the Goddess of Hunt there was an arch held by her right hand. The picture was framed by large petal flowers, and on the opposite side of the arch, there was a quiver with some arrows. Her shock of hair was ornamented by some laurel wreaths and a jewel pended on her forehead in a half-moon format, from which two thin chains came down and got lost in her hair.

  While the tattoo artist explained the tattoo, Cesar contemplated the details of the luxurious house. However, the rocker wasn’t too interested in the details of the composition of the tattoo. The tattooist had hardly finished explaining, when he concluded:

  “It’s great! Fuckin’ great! Do your magic!”

  The professional girl stared at him with surprise. She had prepared to face a marathon of objections, suggestions and changes, but, anyway, Tony Parry wasn’t of the diva kind of man.

  “You can use the erotic device, it’s in the other room, I think it will serve perfectly for the work”, he said and indicated the direction.

  The two girls stood and headed to the erotic games room. Since Cesar remained sitting and observing the North-American girl’s gestures, Tony wanted to know what his function with the tattooist was.

  “I just came to keep company”.

  “I thought you were some kind of clerk or something like. You are just her womanizer, isn’t it?”

  “You can say so”, Cesar admitted and smiled.

  “Good for you! So, Mr. Womanizer, let’s drink a beer by the swimming pool”.

  “Sure!”, Cesar stood up and examined his host wondering if he could sell his ideas to him.

  They headed to the swimming pool illuminated by the sunrays of the end of the afternoon.

  I gobbled up your biography, I’m an old fan of yours, your run until you became the bass player of the biggest metal band of the world is amazing”, he praised.

  “Destiny leads what it grants and drags what it resists”, Tony philosophized.

  “Deep”.

  “Seneca. An almanac phrase never dies! My grandfather taught me”, he smiled, and nodded to a domestic worker.

  They sat in front of the table, covered by a large sunshade. The worker returned and brought the tray with a bottle of whisky.

  “Take it back”, he ordered, harshly, and put his empty glass in the tray, “bring a bucket of beer”.

  There was a moment of silence as they observed the worker getting out.

  “As far as destiny is concerned, is this girl your destiny?”, Tony wanted to know.

  “Jean? No. We only share an apartment and a bed. It’s the kind of agreement while we’re in college”.

  “I see. What do you study?”

  She’s taking up architecture and I study Cinema. I’m developing my first feature film. Actually, it’s fully run in my iPhone, which is not only my camera, but also my edition station, sound effects studio and I still compose the sound track in a composition software”.

  “Oh! Spielberg is in the room! Is it serious? What’s it about?” Tony asked and lit up a cigarette.

  A worker approached and placed a bucket full of Heinekens.

  Cesar puffed up to explain about his masterpiece as he had rehearsed.

  He answered and gesticulated like an Italian ice-cream seller:

  “It’s the story of a steward who receives a case from a man getting around from CIA. In this case there’s a set that records people’s dreams. Then she escapes from her chasers. At the same time the astronomers discover the moon is getting broken because of the fall of a meteor and that the world is going to come to an end in a few weeks”.

  Tony smiled while he lit the cigarette:

  “Men, this is a mix of Melancholia, by Lars Von Trier, with Until the

  End of the World, by Wenders!”

  “Impossible!”, Cesar exclaimed, incredulous.

  Tony put the cap on the table and began to laugh, more and more, as he noticed Cesar’s expression taken by surprise in his epic plagiarism crossover.

  Is it true? I don’t believe...”

  CHAPTER 2

  The American girlfriend stayed the whole tattoo session on the phone with a friend. The tattooist wasn’t fluent in English, but she knew it enough to understand that her friend was splitting up or finishing a relationship and was drowning in a bath of hysteria. The call wasn’t in the speakerphone, but the person on the other side of the line spoke so loudly that it was possible to clearly hear what she said. It was a long direct international call that included intermittent crying and maniac fury attacks, but her friend stood calmly on the other side as a good hearer. Sometimes she released an awkward interjection, such as oh fuck... holy shit... whatever... motherfucker... and many aham, aham.

  When the first session finished, the tattooist cleaned and protected the area of the tattoo and when she was keeping her work materials, the client invited her to join the boys at the deck of the swimming pool. The sun had already hidden in the horizon and now delicate shades of light illuminated the environment, from invisible openings of the decoration, perfectly integrated in the landscape project.

  In the retractable screen, a soccer game was being projected, the rock star and the young movie disciple were watching the match between Celtics and Seattle Sounders. When the girls approached, Tony was releasing all of his collection of swear words in English, because his team, Seattle was losing one more opportunity to overcome the score, that was two to one. Cesar followed the game of the North-American teams with a certain boredom that the amount of beers only helped to increase. In the little table in front of him, many empty bottles of Heineken shone slightly, and reflected the artificial lighting. When the musician saw them girls, he raised and said to his girlfriend:

  “Oh! There you are! I didn’t stand our Tarantino anymore; this environment is now illuminated. How about the tattoo? Let me see”, he asked holding delicately his girlfriend’s t-shirt.

  “Don’t see it now because it brings bad luck”, the skin artist informed, “There’s still one session to get it done”.

  The American woman held the hand of the bass player before he raised her t-shirt in front of all.

  “It will be difficult to see this tattoo, sweetheart, but, anyway... Let’s make a game here, at last, let’s get rid of working hard, now it’s time to relax. — And when he said that he stuck his hand in his robe pocket and removed a little plastic box that by keeping between the thumb and the index fingers, he twisted, something small was shaking inside of it and making a noise, like a rattle. He opened the plastic box imitating a theater mag
ician and bending his body, he showed the inner side of it to the small audience: four little pills, different in colors and formats. One was rectangular and bluish with the symbol of Apple in low relief, one was red in a heart shape, one yellow with a happy face printed on it and one was green with a crown drawn on it”.

  “Look at the coincidence”, he went on, “I have four little candies here with me, one of which, I don’t know what, is a special meal coming straight from Israel. The other three are ecstasy pills”, and by increasing the dramaticity he repeated it in English, as if he was in an international spectacle.

  Cesar stood up and took two hesitating steps trying to keep them on an Earth that seemed to twist slightly under his feet:

  “Count me in!” he stated and was the first to take a pill from the little box and put in his mouth.

  “I want the red love”, the blonde-haired woman took the red one in a heart shape, smiling loudly.

  When Cesar took the yellow pill, Tony Perry said to the tattooist:

  “Mr. Scorsese here took the yellow one; there’re now only the green and the blue ones for us, Jean Grey, which one do you want?”

  “Avanti, palestra[7]!”, she exclaimed and took the one with the low relief crown.

  “So, I’m taking the blue one, I hope it’s not a Viagra from Apple! Have you imagined everyone stoned and I horny!”, he joked, and Jean had the impression this was a provocation. “I propose a toast to this special night”.

  He went to the bucket where the beers rested in the ice and gave one to each of them, while the tattooist wondered what would be special at that night. It could be especial for her and Cesar, who were two real nobodies at the house of a famous rocker man. For the star couple, there wouldn’t surely be anything special. She took that phrase as an innocent eccentricity.