By now the temperature is probably up to 120 degrees. The heat makes the air contort and shimmer, turning everything into a hallucination. Thirst is constant. It's like being lovesick--the most obsessively lovesick you ever were. The ache pushes away all other thoughts. It's a dumb pain, a constant, numbing, anxious, flowering bloom of slow anguish. I wouldn't mind the heat if we were moving, but being stuck here (a possibility that seems increasingly likely) not only seems like slow death, but will be slow death. Another Sanity Playing Card vanishes with an imaginary wisp of smoke. After a couple of hours, some local Tuareg appear. They converse with our clan. My clan leader starts cursing at the other clan leader. He evidently doesn't want their help in any way. They (the visitors) offer me a ride on camelback to some town I can't find on my map. They want about 300 West African francs. It's too much for me. As scared as I am, I can't really afford to spend my money. I would also feel like a heel ditching my clan and leaving them here; not that I'm a lot of help, but who's gonna help 'em start their truck? The other Tuareg shrug and walk away. After a while their forms are swallowed up by the shimmering air. Of course, the second they're gone, I realize I should've gone with them. This is really, really dire. All I need is about another half hour of this to go totally bonkers. The baby cries without stopping now. My friends are just sitting there, doing nothing. They don't talk, they don't move, they don't drink water. They have been doing this for zillions of years. They pray. They believe in God. Maybe they can wait out the heat. I can't. The last Sanity Playing Card plays itself out. The baby keeps crying and crying and crying. It just will not fucking stop. It's strapped onto its mother's back, and it's squeezed by the papoose-thing. Its eyes are bulging, and flies are gathering around its eyes. Golden crusty shit is leaking out of its eyes where the flies suck out the goo. I fix on it and can't stop staring. I mean I really cannot stop staring. The baby is cringing and blinking. After a while, it stops blinking and stares straight ahead, as if suddenly, abruptly relinquishing all claims. I watch the animus evaporate from this definitely soon-to-be-dead baby, and all my cherished suburban shaman-in-training shit goes out the window with it, replaced by something harsh, brutal, and searing in the magnitude of its indifference. I am the baby, we are the baby. The baby is a symbol. The baby is crusty. The flies suck the eyes just like the people suck the well. Everything sucks whatever it can. We are here for the sucking, and that's about it. It's pretty simple, after all, this whole enlightenment thing. God isn't far away. He's right here watching, and this is how he made everything. And I'm an immature idiot who shouldn't go sticking his nose where it doesn't belong when I don't know what I'm doing. Something dies in me right then and there-- just flies out the window. The baby can't even cry any more. It just moans. There's no way it's gonna live. Ten, twenty flies on each eye, it looks like a mask. It is enraging. I wanna fucking kill it. I just wanna squeeze the life out of it. I know that I'm kind of hallucinating, but I still can't stop the train of violent thought. Suddenly, a truck comes roaring out of nowhere. It's a military vehicle, painted olive green. In back are faces--smiling, robust black Africans, shouting, holding onto the sides of the truck. The fact that they are black means I am nearing the beginning of the end of the desert. They look happy and alive. They aren't from another planet, like the Tuareg. They're from Earth. Their faces and arms and stomachs are all covered with pretty designs made of scars. They slow down and motion to us, to me: do we need a ride? I have no idea where they're going. Or what they want for a ride. But they look happy and alive. So... yeah, I think I need a ride.