The Stoned Apocalypse by Marco Vassi

cold war. She returned and sat facing me; she was conciliatory and warm. “It’s quite simple,” she said. “You’ll just have to disconnect your friend.”
    Disconnect was the term used for severing all social, emotional, and honorable relations with anyone, including one’s mother, who disparaged the organization. “Tell him you won’t see him anymore,” she said.
    I went to Francis’ loft with a heavy heart that night. This was my friend of many years. We had gone through all the scenes together, both understanding our mutual roles as mere costumes we wore as we went through the round of life, sharing the same space and time. We both realized that the fact that out of all the aeons of time, destiny had chosen us to know one another, was the single greatest miracle one might imagine, and all the details paled into insignificance beside that. We had sat for hundreds of hours, quietly smoking hash, reliving in our own form the partnerships of the ages, from Socrates and Plato to Lenin and Trotsky, with him always taking the path closer to the edge. While I was a Communist, he was editing a magazine called Treason, the editorial policy of which accepted any article on the single qualification that it would carry the death penalty if printed in time of war. When I was a hedonist, he was a solipsist. He had a permanent chair of philosophy on the astral plane, and was the founder of the East Village Wittgenstein Fan Club, of which he was one of three members. And now, I had to climb those familiar decaying stairs off the corner of Sixth Street and Avenue A and dispatch him, cleanly and with regret, but unequivocally.
    We sat and smoked some grass, listened to Mozart, played a game of chess. Midway through the middle game, I looked up. “Francis, I must tell you something,” I said.
    “I see you coming,” he said.
    “I’ve become a Scientologist,” I said.
    He puffed on the pipe a moment, gave me a quick look, and said, “Vassi, that’s vulgar.” Then he paused and added, “But if you have to take the trip, you have my blessings.”
    “It’s worse than that,” I said. “I had to turn you in.”
    His eyebrows shot up, an extreme change of expression for Francis. “Turn me in?” he said. “Turn me in for what?”
    “I told them that you said they’re fascists.”
    “Oh,” he said, “that’s quite true.”
    “And I have to disconnect you,” I added.
    He puffed some more hash. “Well, if that’s part of the trip, sure, I can understand that.”
    “I hope this doesn’t affect our friendship,” I said.
    He smiled. “No, not at all. In fact, I’m rather enjoying the irony of it.” And with that we settled down to a quiet evening of serious smoking.
    On the fourth day, I confronted Lana with a clear conscience. “I disconnected my friend,” I announced.
    “Oh, how wonderful,” she bubbled. Then paused, and said, “How do you feel about it?”
    “Oh, it’s all right,” I said. “We’re still friends.”
    Somehow, the nuance of the transaction escaped her. She stood up once more, but with none of the gentleness which had marked yesterday’s exit. As Cummings would say, straightway she got grave. Once again she disappeared down the rabbit hole and this time came back with an order. “You are to accompany me to the Ethics Officer,” she said.
    The Ethics Officer! My blood ran cold. And with good reason when I saw the man who served as the Scientological Gestapo. He was short, thin, and fish-eyed. He was totally devoid of expression or inflection to his voice. He was implacable. “You are playing games,” he said. I began to object but realized that from his point of view, I was. “You must disconnect your friend . . . totally,” he said. I looked at him and for the first time began to get an appreciation of the actuality of the situation. They were doing a tin-soldier version of fascism, but the stakes were real. “I can’t do that,” I said.
    For an answer, he reached into a