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Chapter Four:
The Purple Cobblestone Bridge and where it led

Agents Excitement and Passion looked at Agent Bliss in silence.
Agent Bliss gave the ends of flourish like a model parading a new dress.
“Pretty sweet, huh?” asked Agent Bliss with a smug smile. He was surprised to find his comrades remaining silent. “I’ll make you ones too. I’m not really sure how I made the first scarf, but I’m sure I could do it again if I tried.”
“Won’t be necessary,” said Agent Passion, holding up his hand. “Now what are we going to do?” He looked around. The birds had resumed their frolic and the cascades still fell endlessly upon each other. The trees still swayed ever so slightly in the ever so slight breeze, which ever so slightly whistled in the three Agent’s ears. Only one thing stood out, different from the rest.
“Where did the floating purple cobblestone bridge come from?” asked Excitement more in curiosity than in surprise.
No one knew, but they did know that there it was, sprouting off from one of the islands sides and ending in the open air, was a purple cobblestone bridge. One stray bird had wondered onto it and was looking over the far end of the bridge cautiously. It even poked its foot over the edge suspiciously, as if to see if it continued invisibly. Finally, the bird gathered up its resolve, and jumped off the end. It fell with an alarming squawk. Soon it fluttered back up to solid ground and started preening itself indignantly.
“What are we going to do about it?” asked Agent Passion, sucking his teeth. Agent Bliss chose to respond.
“We should act upon the eternal words of the munchkins.”
“Which are?”
“Follow the purple cobblestone bridge.”
“That’s follow the yellow brick road.”
“Well, yes, but the two are very similar. And the message is the same.”
“What, the message that if you see an oddly colored walkway, you go along it?”
“Now you’re catching on.”
“You guys talk all you want, I’m going!” shouted Agent Excitement, walking off purposefully.
“Going where?” called Agent Passion after her, starting to walk himself.
“To follow the purple cobblestone bridge, of course!” shouted Agent Excitement back, quickening her pace.
Passion and Bliss set after her in a jog until eventually they caught up with her at the start of the purple bridge. They looked ahead at the bridge that ended nowhere. Then they looked at the bird whose feathers were still slightly ruffled from its fall. Without a word they stepped onto the bridge in unison. Their steps perfectly aligned each other as they walked side by side, solemn as a funeral procession. They knew what they must do. Agent Excitement did it first.
“Cannonball!!” she screamed and leapt off the edge, curling herself up and falling down through the pink air.
Agent Bliss tightened his scarf and squeezed his nose.
“Why are you plugging your nose? Were jumping into oblivion, not the pool,” asked Agent Passion, not sure that they should do this.
“Just a precaution,” Agent Bliss said in a nasally voice and hopped off, plummeting out of sight.
Agent Passion sighed in resignation, and simply fell face first off the bridge without a sound. He tumbled head over heels, suit coat flapping in the wind. He fell like a rock tossed over the edge of the Grand Canyon. He punched a hole in layer after layer of mist, not paying any mind to it at all. His eyes were closed and his mind was blank, his arms seemed to flutter in their limpness. There he was, alone in this insane dream that didn’t seem to belong to anyone, plunging through sickeningly sweet Pepto-Bismol pink colored air at breakneck speed with not a single thing he could do about it. He supposed he could try to conjure up some sort of parachute, but something told him that nothing would happen if he concentrated. So, in a piece of twisted, but actually quite ingenious logic, he hoped something might happen if he did the opposite. He didn’t concentrate at all. And what do you know, something did happen. Agent Passion saw something.
He realized this was odd since his eyes were closed, but he didn’t think about it. He saw rocky hills studded with sparse grass. Thunder clapped and rain poured down in several carved out wash ways. Great skeletal trees stood against the roaring wind that whistled through eroded rock formations.
Smaller trees were uprooted by the torrent and carried away, bashing in two against slabs of sedimentary rock. And off in the distance there was a cluster of light that was coming from something that was so familiar. However, his very revealing, dramatic vision was interrupted when he landed unceremoniously on a painful spiny shrub.
“Yowww!” he yelled opening his eyes. He was lying on a gravelly surface and rain pelted down on him like a heavy metal drum solo. Sticking out of his leg was a needle covered pale green plant. He reached down and to gingerly pull it off, but as soon as his finger touched the spikes they got stuck too. Luckily he pulled away and didn’t get stuck further. Grabbing two larger sized rocks that were around him, he sandwiched the plant between the two and yanked out of his leg. Searing pain shot through his shin and calf, but the plant had loosened its grip. He looked around to Find Agent Bliss and Agent Excitement sitting under an out jutting rock so they would stay dry. It didn’t seem to be working very well. Agent Passion limped over to join them.
“Any idea where we are?” Agent Passion asked, wincing as he looked at his bleeding leg.
“No,” said Agent Bliss in response, “but something seems so familiar.”
“I noticed that too,” Agent Passion responded, thinking about that cluster of lights. He scanned the scene. It was the exact same as in his vision. Except that the cluster of lights was gone. There were four tall, rocky hills arranged like pints on a compass, one in the north, one in the south, one in the east, and one in the west. It was upon the eastern hill that they sat, and this hill, like the other ones, sloped down into a small valley at they very bottom. At the valleys lowest point there was a circle of spiny green barked trees, water pouring off of them in little streams as the rain pummeled the land.
“There’s something about this place that I just can’t put my finger on,” said Agent Excitement, clearly frustrated.
Suddenly the constant rapping of the rain on rock slowed to light pitter patting of rain drops, dancing playfully across the rock slabs like faeries performing an elaborate, much faceted ballet. The three listened to the rain drops leap and pirouette on the dirty ground, disappearing after one splendid moment into the heavily saturated soil. Then the clouds parted, like the creaking gates of an ancient castle and let in the shining knight that was the sun. Now each pellet of rain water glistened with the light of the glowing, fiery star.
“It’s beautiful,” gasped Agent Excitement.
“You’re the beautiful one,” cooed Agent Passion, slinking up to Agent Excitement.
“Like to take a closer look?” asked Agent Excitement seductively.
“I’m taking a walk,” said Agent Bliss abruptly, standing up. “You two have fun.”
He walked away from his partners, not following any particular route. The rain finally petered to a stop and the landscape seemed born anew. All dead trees were washed into jumbled, sodden heaps at the bottom of flood plains. The rest of the land was clean and the spiny shrubs green and vibrant. Even small orange and yellow flowers stretched their stalks and spread their petals, as if waking up from a year long slumber. Agent Bliss stood in his yellow suit and smiley face scarf and marveled at how heavily symbolic the rain was.
He was planning on spending a good amount of time thinking on this, but he decided that would be kind of boring. So he kept walking until he came to the base of a very tall hill. He looked up at its precipice, and standing sullen and crooked and alone was a single stone obelisk. The obelisk was the typical obelisk like you read about in books about Ancient Egypt. This was just a tall stone, free standing, that could only have been made by the force of nature. Clearly the power of the elements had done its best to fell this rock, but it still stood in defiance. Like a rebellion before tyrannical government, the stone challenged the winds and the rains. It was a monument to all fighters who never give up.
Though the obelisk was glorious, it was in no way a joyous symbol. It was all by itself in the good fight, all other allies either beaten down or abandoned. Its surface was rough, its tip crooked, and its base worn. This rock was a desperate one, one that cried out to all who could hear to lend it their strength so that it could stand for just one more storm, one more flood, and one more gust. Agent Bliss planned to do just what it cried for. He removed his scarf, wrapped it around his right arm and set up the hill with silent determination.
Soon the back of his neck beaded with sweat as the newly arrived sun beat down with gusto, as if it had to make up for the time it lost during the storm. It couldn’t have stopped Bliss’s climb even if it just went up and exploded. The monument atop the hill had touched the Agent, and he wouldn’t rest until he helped the obelisk of desperation.
Soon the heat radiated off the rocky ground and the atmosphere was like a bake oven. Agent Bliss loosened his collar and trudged on up the deceptively tall mountain. A hot wind was coughed up from somewhere and breathed its warm, stale breath across the landscape. The wind was not welcome, nor did it seem to be wind at all. It more resembled a gust belched from a deep cavern. Agent Bliss wiped his brow as he mounted the summit at long last and he gazed upon the stone.
It was even more moving up close. Layers of crimson streaked through blotches of obsidian and chalk, while the whole thing was stained with the washed out mahogany of rain long passed. It was taller that Bliss, and he had to look up and squint in the sun to gaze at its tip. The tip held the color of decay, grey and lifeless, like the hue of a year old cigarette butt. The area around its worn base was completely devoid of all but dusty, gritty dirt. Not even gravel would stray near to the tormented obelisk, abandoning it to its fate.
Agent Bliss stood in solemn silence in the shadow of the stone. Slowly and ceremoniously, as if performing an important ritual in an important procession, Agent Bliss unraveled his scarf from his arm one loop at a time. Taking one end of the smiley face handkerchiefs in each hand, he looped it around the boulder and tied it off. Agent Bliss then bowed deeply to the rock, as if to say how glad he was to help. He gazed at the dead tip one last time, and he could have sworn some color surged into the tip, resurrecting the very stone.
Bliss turned his back and took a deep breath, pleased with his work. He smelled the air, still slightly fresh from the rain. Though most of the scent had since disappeared, he caught just a trace on the dank breeze. He froze. He recognized that smell. And he finally knew what had seemed so familiar about this place. He darted to one of the thorny pushes. He tore off the leaves with vigor, holding them in his cupped hands. Agent Bliss hurriedly spit in his palm, as if he was in a race against time. He lowered his nose to the soggy leaves and inhaled like a man who had gone without a breath for an hour. A familiar, fresh, earthy aroma filled his head, an aroma that Agent Bliss knew all too well. He flung the leaves to the ground and took off at a sprint down the mountain.
He sped up until he was essentially falling down the hill, but he kept his feet in pace with his body so he stayed upright. Soon he skidded to a stop at the base the mountain. He could see Passion and Excitement sat with their arms around another, gazing at the landscape.
“Passion!” he yelled, rushing up to the rock. Agent passion turned to face Bliss and found his co-agents palms, still retaining the scent of the leaves form the hill top, flung under his nose. “Smell my hands,” Agent Bliss demanded gruffly.
“Okay,” said Passion awkwardly, taking a cautious sniff. His eyes widened, like he didn’t dare believe his own nostrils. “Is that…”
“Yes, that’s the good old fashioned smell of good old fashioned Earth.”
Agent Excitement leaned and took a whiff of Agent Bliss’s still outstretched hands. “Creosote,” she whispered under her breath.
“What did you say?” asked Passion.
“Creosote. It’s a bush. More importantly, it only grows on our home planet. After a rain creosote gives off that fresh smell from its leaves,” Agent Excitement explained. She turned to look at a very tall green barked, branch-less, leave-less, spiky tree. “That right there is Saguaro cactus. Guys, we’re in the Sonoran Desert.”
“Hold on a sec,” said Agent Passion, obviously working something out in his mind. “If this is Earth, was that weird pink floating island thing Heaven? And was that random French guy God?”
“You mean Obnoxiously Cryptic Dude?” asked Agent Bliss.
“No, I mean the other random French guy.”
“He couldn’t be God,” broke in Agent Excitement.
“Why not?”
“Because then things wouldn’t be set out so nicely and clearly in the Bible. Everything would be all self contradictory and written entirely in questions or something stupid like that.”
“Why are we pretending that the Bible is the only option here?” asked Agent Bliss, irritated.
“I though you were Christian?”
“I am.”
“Then what’s the problem!?”
“You might offend somebody.”
“Were the only ones here!” shouted Agent Passion in exasperation. His voice echoed a few times before petering out. No matter what planet they were on, no matter what dimension they were in, they were still completely alone.
“I haven’t been this confused since my 10th grade trigonometry exam,” moaned Agent Passion, burying his head in his hands.
“Hey,” said Agent Bliss encouragingly, patting his friend on the back, “It’s a freaky universe.”
“And we have the one of the freakiest jobs in the universe,” Excitement chimed in rationally.
“I guess you guys are right,” said Agent Passion, shrugging. “I signed up for this, I better get used to all these freaky things happening.”
“That’s the spirit,” his comrades added.
“In fact, I refuse to let freaky things bother me anymore!”
As if to test Agent Passion’s mettle, a squad of four ground squirrels popped from the brush carrying small white picket signs with red lettering. They hopped up on a small rock, all in a row. One at a time they lifted their signs, all in synchrony. The words on the sign were, in order, “GO”, “THAT”, and “WAY”. The final, and smallest, ground squirrel shoved his sign into the air like a warrior lifting his blade and brandished its marking. It was a simple arrow pointing down to the bottom of the valley where the circle of trees grew. The small furry mammals disappeared without a sound, obviously proud of their role in the grand scheme of things.
Some clarification is required at this moment. The three Agents were actually not in a dream, but in a separate reality. Separate realities are often mistaken for parallel dimensions, but entirely different. Realities can be almost exact copies of each other or be completely dissimilar. There are many, many realities floating around, and most people just stay in their own to avoid confusion. In the reality that the three Agents have been placed, everything is pretty much the same as in our reality, except things are just a bit stranger and more bizarre. As is with all separate realities, it cannot be physically visited by residents of other realities. There is a one group of people who, through great effort and personal sacrifice, have been able to overcome this barrier, but they are not important. Yet. Anyway, typically, you can only visit a separate reality mentally, as through a dream. This is what the three agents were doing at the moment.
In this reality, ground squirrels were a highly sophisticated and organized creature that had a fully developed culture. These four particular specimens were recognized as heroes for guiding the lost agents. There histories were recorded as well as the history of their entire lineage from that point on, even though most of the tales were embellished significantly. For you see, this reality’s ground squirrels, though quite different from ours in the area of intelligence, are like normal ground squirrels in one way: They don’t lead very interesting lives.
“What in the world was that?” asked Agent Excitement in awe and to nobody in particular.
Bliss, however, decided to answer this rhetorical question personally. “I believe that is what they call a sign.” He thought for a moment. “Hey, that was a play on words. That was clever,” he said, and was, as usual, very happy with himself.
“Think we should listen to what they say?” asked Passion, eyes still fixed to the rock on which the ground squirrels had put on their display.
“Of course we should,” answered Agent Excitement with gusto. “Think about it this way. When we will ever get the chance to listen to what ground squirrels have to say? I say we grab the opportunity by the horns and blow this china shop!”
Both Bliss and Passion stared at Excitement in a funny way. It was Agent Bliss who brought up the obvious.
“Where were you when they passed out the clichés?” asked Agent
Bliss, snickering at his own joke.
Agent Excitement punched him playfully on the arm. “You know what I meant!”
“Was it something about horned opportunity and exploding China?”
“Shut up!” she cried, half laughing herself. “Let’s just get a move on.”
The three of them stood up and stumbled down the rocky slope and neared the circle of trees. They tried to peer through into the inside of the circle, but the trunks of the ancient trees blocked the view. The trees stood like desert sentinels, guarding their quarry with thorny branches and scarred bark until oblivion. When the trio of agents finally reached the circle of trees, they expected to be somehow unable to travel into the circle. They expected correctly.
Agent Excitement strode adamantly in between the trees but she hesitated when a slight grinding noise, like the turning of gears, met her ears. All of a sudden the tree to her left was now the tree directly in front of her. Shaking her head and rubbing her eyes, she took a step to her left and tried again. She found the same tree was blocking her path as defiantly and firmly as before. Narrowing her eye at the stubborn piece of greenery, she tried a new tact. She inched around the circumference of the tree, and found she was almost to the inner circle when a branch came out of nowhere and hit her in the stomach. It lifted her into the air and tossed her like a large pillow. Agent Excitement soared through the air and into the waiting arms of Agent Passion.
Unfortunately, Agent Passion wasn’t as hefty as he would have liked and was also sent falling backwards. The two of them fell into the sufficiently sturdy arms of Agent Bliss, who set them upright right again, thus avoiding near catastrophe.
“Those are some tough trees,” murmured Agent Excitement.
“I handle this my sweet,” said Agent Passion said, stepping in chivalrously. Taking a few steps back, he took off at a sprint towards the trees. A few yards away from the circle he flew from the ground, twisting his body sideways. He slid though the trees as they tried to crush him, but his shoe got out just in time. However, the botanical sentries had a second line of defense. A root, paled from lack of sun, erupted from the dirt and tethered around Agent Passions airborne shins. He stopped abruptly in mid air and hit the ground. He hit the ground hard. Yowling in pain, he was dragged out of the circle and sent skidding across the gravel. The root retracted itself into its underground home like a snake retreating to its burrow.
Agent Bliss looked at both of his injured comrades. “You guys are going about it all wrong,” explained the yellow clad secret agent. Walking calmly and slowly up to one of the trees, he flung out his arms and wrapped them around the tree in a tight embrace. He pressed his cheek against the cool green bark and whispered ever so softly, “You can trust us. We were sent here. We wouldn’t even dream of hurting you or what you care about.”
The trunk quivered, clearly anxious to smash both of Agent Bliss’s arms, but he whispered again.
“You can trust us. I promise.”
Agent Bliss peered up into the branches of the tree. Smiling, he raised one of his arms slowly, and extended the smallest finger of his hand.
“Pinky swear?”
With the slightest rustle, a single branch lowered down to Agent Bliss’s level. One knobby twig extended itself and wrapped itself around his outstretched pinky. The two of them stood for a moment before Bliss stepped back and the tree slid to the side, clearing an opening for the three lost agents.
Bliss beckoned his fellows into the circle as he stepped in himself. Finally past the trees, the three feasted their eyes on what was being so tenaciously guarded.
It was a pit. A very deep pit. Some would even say it was a bottomless pit. In a way, they would be a right. A few yards down in the center of the pit was a blue, frothing orb of water the size of a very large boulder. The sphere’s surface was covered in the crests of a thousand waves which rolled endlessly around and around, crashing in on one another over and over.
The three of them stood staring at the bubbly white foam of the orb, completely transfixed. They were drawn in, captured by the tumbling waves that were free from all restrictions of gravity. Their minds become one with tremors, tumbling around in an infinite whirlpool of thought and vision.
“Which way is down?” murmured Agent Excitement without knowing it. Their limbs grew weak and they fell to their knees at the rim of the hole. Slowly, they tipped over the edge like drink glasses placed too close to a table end and began to fall. Quietly and smoothly, a giant red scaled fish leapt from the surface of the water ball. Its sides shined and rippled like a flag in a slight wind as its toothless mouth gaped wide, a portal into the abyss. It was into this portal that the agents fell, one by one, like stones slipped under the surface of a cold glassy lake.

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