he's just flown in from old hong kong, i'm flicking through the photographs on his iphone camera device. big chinese buildings at kowloon, under thick heavy skies, polluted and grey doom hanging in the atmosphere, the smell of industry hovering over a city in a never zone, taken from the island. 
dr. crack shows me some large buildings disappearing into the heavy toxic atmosphere, '...going up so fast, completed in six months, that's how long it would take just to get your proposal read out at a council meeting in sydney,' he says, and there is the photograph, a massive construction, it's the size of three street blocks, it's going to be a super tall sky scraper eating up the space like a big hungry concrete monster.

i imagine in fifty years there will be these cities filled with skyscrapers towering up to the upper stratosphere and after a little earth tremor they will be at the mercy of forces that dominate height, gravity will pull them back and anyone unfortunate enough to be in them. my head plays out the disaster movie.
the phone rings and crack grabs it faster than i could even see in a big sweeping paranoid blur.

dr. crack is out and about in the world, he's a desperate character, where did he come from, did i invent him, how did i do that, he's a bad ass mother from hunter s thompson land, i don't know if i can trust him to get me home safe and sound.

he has his fat fingers in to many pies, he's constantly changing his appearance, he's hiding from everyone, juggling his patterns, his mobile never stops ringing, people called nick the fish, harry the axe, swifty macshades, lisa the whore and lamb chop helena, on it goes, an endless parade of characters and caricatures, he's talking about things i don't want to hear, he's a bad dangerous man, my spider sense is tingling, danger danger captain mission a robotic voice screams in my head, an echo from a song i heard, 'get out of denver baby.' 

i'm watching him, those big shanghi chubby hands, big round head, mean underground hong kong eyes, a new york lower east side lips, this guy's face tells a hard boiled story. 
he smiles at me, and hangs up, 'that was my man in tokyo, he's buying me some seaweed, i'm going on a special seaweed diet, green algae. you should try it mission, it's the future of food.'

i know he's lying, he was talking about shipping containers vs air freight, something about australian customs and manifests. i think about eating plankton burgers in the future.

i sip on my coffee, dr. crack tells me about an experience he had on hash, his mind darts from one subject to the next, i'm wondering about how rare hash is these days and the last time i smoked it.

i tell dr. crack about the day i smoked some nepalese temple, a block of hash that comes in big heavy spheres, it was so strong we couldn't move for about four hours, no one could even get up to turn the record over, it was the clash, 'london calling' i remember staring at the album cover for ages, that pennie smith photograph captured the spirit of the age, paul simonon smashing his base guitar up, i recall hearing that song, 'train in vain' through my nepalese haze and thinking it was strange as it was not listed on the cover, i thought that nepalese must be far to strong for me. i couldn't quite understand the idea of a hidden song. all i could focus on was how my body had turned to stone, but crack had changed subjects now, he was talking about gardens, growing vegetables and starting a family, then it was about the type of noodles they make in xinjiang provence, then we switch back to his special system he devised to out smart the australian postal system, he thinks he can use postmen as couriers for untaxed transactions, then he talks about the his travels through alaska, eating whale, arming inuit with weapons, radical anarchist groups in south america, he's citing constitutional law, then we hit the ground running as he talks about the monkey mind and some zen type of parable which i just about grasp. 


i have to go, crack is meeting a mutual friend called minnie the minx, she's a sexy blond ex model type who channels a extra terrestrial entity these days, she has made a fortune from mind body spirit festivals and dvds sales plus a large internet following who hang on to every channelled word.


i get a lift with crack to the next town where i have an appointment with another person. we listen to his mix tape on the way, everything from miles davis to the stones, his car is filled with paperwork and envelopes. my friend is late, but i figure i can kill time in the bookshop, i pick up a book about the moon.
and there walking past is minnie, dressed in a fake fur coat, wearing big riding boots sipping on a take away coffee. 
'the doctor just dropped me off,' i say as we hug.
'i have to drive him to the city, he's picking up a new car.'
'nice, well have fun.'
i go to meet my friend near the library, i sit on a bench and flick through the moon book, apparently the authors believe the moon is artificial, hollow, i start reading but she arrives and we go for coffee. this meeting has taken about six months of planning, myself and her, we debrief and then get down to business coming to the conclusion i can assist her company in a project. i hear her proposal, to which i add another, we agree, it sounds good, we have created the position right there, i'll write about it later but it's quite exciting and will enable me to help a few friends out. i leave and head back to mission control. on the way i am accosted by a lady offering me a free berry drink. who am i to refuse, i wander up a flight of steps into what looks like a strange teenage cults office or a clinic for severely depressed people. there's a bar with some very exotic looking photographs plastered over it, the walls all promote healthy drinks, and some of their products. i sit down and she starts talking to me about her special diets, i chose a drink, blueberry smoothie, which she makes, she asks me what i do and tells me about her son who is some sort of anxiety ridden young man on lots of medication. she says, he should play sport but all he does is sit on a computer. i say he's probably just anxious because life is complex these days. she says he should play football with the other boys, for some reason i think of coney island. i don't want to be here, drinking fruit drinks in a health bar talking about her anxious son, it's making me feel anxious. i gotta get out of here before she asks me more questions, but it's to late, i'm sinking in questions, i have to escape, this is bizarre, i was just heading home when she kidnapped me, started feeding me healthy drinks and making me feel anxious. i look around for an exit, she's chopping a banana up and feeding it to a blender, all the while letting me know about her sons anxiety and how it was never like that when she was young. that's because you didn't have to deal with half the things kids have to deal with these days, you had a bright future, lots of jobs, you could afford to buy a home, you had good food, back in those days the government respected you as a citizen, you had a fucking future, i think, the youth of today don't even have that, they know it's all fucked, i'm fucking anxious now, the awfulness of being young, facing up to the next big conflict, the debt we inflicted them, the useless waste of resources, the poison of growth and technology, that generation will be enslaved, they will be just like the people in the matrix, nothing more than batteries, keeping the few in luxuries the last generation wasted. fuck in the old days the moon wasn't fucking hollow, it was a moon.
outside on the street i breath in, the panic attack passes, i head home back to my dog.