Chuck Palahniuk - Rant - The Oral History of Buster Casey

All's left is smoking metal. Even the middle part of the train looks torched, and the fire guys are wrestling to haul the Jaws of Life over to the biggest balled-up chunk of a Lincoln Town Car. All down this side of the tracks, the smoke blows wedding streamers and junk. A white lace veil soggy with blood. A red rosebud boutonniere.

Allan Blayne ( Firefighter ):The minute I opened my yap, I knew what I said sounded stupid. What I said to the girl. This job, the worst accidents, I go into automatic pilot.

The situation was a two-car scenario: Vehicle Number One is parked at a railroad crossing, waiting for a freight train to pass. According to witnesses at the scene, Vehicle Number Two rammed the parked vehicle and allegedly forced it against the side of the passing train. Vehicle Two then continued to travel forward in a straight line, colliding with the train. Both automobiles underrode the train's wheels and were crushed and dragged a distance of approximately four hundred feet.

Tina Something:I know all the EMTs, 'cause of working for Graphic Traffic, and when Wax stops to rubberneck, I yell out to this guy I know with an emergency-response service. I ask him what's up, and this EMT says I wouldn't believe it if he told me. Some chick's still alive inside the wreck, all her clothes burned off but not a scratch on her. Shaking his head, this EMT says, "Not even a long fingernail busted."

From the Field Notes of Green Taylor Simms ( Historian ):The chief argument against the possibility of time travel is what theorists refer to as the "Grandfather Paradox"; this is the idea that if one could travel backward in time one could kill one's own ancestor, eliminating the possibility said time traveler would ever be born—and thus could never have lived to travel back and commit the murder.

In a world where billions believe their deity conceived a mortal child with a virgin human, it's stunning how little imagination most people display.

Neddy Nelson ( Party Crasher ):You want I should risk telling you about Historians? You know what happens when a fellow spreads those rumors?

What? You can't think up a faster way to get us both killed?

Shot Dunyun ( Party Crasher ):Besides Reverse Pioneering, becoming a Historian is the other secret guilty dream of every Party Crasher.

From the Field Notes of Green Taylor Simms:One theory of time travel resolves the Grandfather Paradox by speculating that, at the moment one changes history, that change splinters the single flow of reality into parallel branches. For example, after you've killed your ancestor, reality would fork into two parallel paths: one reality in which you continued to be born and your ancestor did not die, and one branch in which your ancestor died and you would never be conceived. Each revision one made in the past, the subsequent new reality it created, theorists refer to as a "bifurcation."

Neddy Nelson:Don't you think the biggest, richest fuckers in the world aren't Historians? And you really think they want the rest of us to know that? These rich fucks? Don't you think they can't fake their dying every six decades or so, then transfer their money and property to their new identity?

From the Field Notes of Green Taylor Simms:Within Eastern or Asian spirituality exists the concept that only an individual's ego ties him to the temporal world, wherein we experience physical reality and time. Within this concept, enlightened beings recognize this self-imposed limitation and attachment to the immediate world, and can choose to free their consciousness and travel to any place or period of history. With apologies to Mr. H. G. Wells, one requires no time machine. Anyone can relocate throughout history or space simply by relaxing his grip on his current reality through meditation and spiritual growth.

Neddy Nelson:You think anybody smart is going to tell about Historians? As much as I've already said, what do you think that says about my smarts?

From the Field Notes of Green Taylor Simms:A third possibility does exist, although it's never been widely discussed. Aside from bifurcation and time travel via a freed consciousness, this third option also resolves the Grandfather Paradox and places the traveler in Liminal Time, suspended outside of the linear movement of time which human beings experience. Simply stated, Liminal Time has no beginning and no end. Nothing is subject to the natural processes of decay and replacement. In Liminal Time, nothing is born and nothing dies.

Quite understandably, only deities ever existed in this immortality.

Until now.

Allan Blayne:Both Vehicles One and Two burst into flame, igniting the cargo of adjacent railroad cars as well as the creosote-treated ties of the track bed. Witnesses place the time of the incident at 11:35 p.m., and four engine crews responded initially. It took one additional crew to bring the event under control, but the wreckage was sufficiently cool for investigators to recover the bodies by 4:15 a.m.

From the Field Notes of Green Taylor Simms:Throughout all mythology, the gods have created themselves as mortals by bearing children by mortal women. The deity simply emerges from the infinity of Liminal Time and manifests himself in the form of an angel or a swan or beast, and completes the seduction or announcement that will result in a mortal offspring. The divine made flesh. The infinite made finite.

It's when you cross this mythology with the Grandfather Paradox that the reverse occurs and mortal flesh might be made divine.

Allan Blayne:Over the course of the search, our unit recovered the charred remains of two adult males and two adult females who witnesses report being in the first, parked vehicle at the moment of impact. In the process of searching the remains of the second automobile, this crewman heard what I took to be sobbing from the collapsed, forward portion of the passenger cell. Using a hydraulic chisel to relieve the buckled, tightly folded structures of the passenger compartment, further investigation revealed a single survivor, an adult female, apparently the driver of the second vehicle. The sound originally believed to be sobbing could now be heard to be laughter, most possibly hysteria-related.

From the Field Notes of Green Taylor Simms:If a deity can make himself flesh by conceiving a life with a mortal, perhaps a mortal can achieve immortality if he's able to travel back in time and destroy one or both of his parents. In this response to the Grandfather Paradox, the time traveler eliminates his physical origins, thus transforming himself into a being without physical beginning and therefore without end.

Stated simply: a god.

Allan Blayne:In my capacity as a crewman, I counseled the survivor, a woman approximately twenty-five years of age, coaxing her to remain calm until she could be examined by paramedics already at the scene. Encasing the survivor was what can only be described as a shell or cocoon of rigid netting. Inspection of the inside surface of this shell proved it to be the burned and melted remnants of synthetic-fiber apparel and headwear, apparently the remains of a long white dress and veil of the type worn by brides at traditional wedding ceremonies.

In my effort to keep the survivor calm, I asked her age, her name, and birthdate.

Perhaps due to shock, she responds, "One hundred and sixty-three years old next month." Twisting her shoulders and torso inside the cocoon of debris, the survivor then said, "That was way fun; now get this burned shit off me…"

Tina Something:Waxman watches this miracle girl walk across the tracks, barefoot and wrapped in a blanket, and Wax says, "That's where I want to get…"