The Life of Pi belongs to Yann Martel and Titanic's screenplay to James Cameron, but one day I was bored and wanted to exercise my goofy muscles, so I threw two distinctly different sets of characters through time and space, and for no better reason than because all were on boats. This is the result. Enjoy!
Pi-tanic
What is time and what do we know of it? Who rides atop the waves; who rides their undersides? The water flowing between continents also flows between centuries: the waves lapping against one boat in a long ago sunset, lash against the gunwales of a much smaller craft in recent memory. It is order, it is chaos; only it is not the whir of a hummingbird's wings, but the roar of a beast, which now stirs its shadow, buffeting the currents of time, opening the wells of possibility.
Or in this case, a wormhole.
Perhaps, sensing this, the woman on the prow of an unsinkable sailing ship loses her footing and slips from the arms of her lover. A lover who told her long skirts and high-heeled boots were not practical attire for climbing slippery steel steps or scaling decorative railings. The lark was his idea, nevertheless. He dives after her, plummeting to almost-certain death, chum for hungry seagulls that circle the boat like small plagues from the Old Testament.
Riding the swells of the universal conduit, a raft, a boy, and a battered white boat appear. Rescued lovers embrace, so engrossed with singing praises to a small boy's bravery and providence, they do not realize their ocean liner has disappeared into the sunset, cannot fathom why such a vessel no longer exists in these waters, beneath this sky, or why they find themselves suddenly sharing their small craft with a tiger. A surly, starving, seasick tiger.
They'll have eternity to ponder this.
The indigestion resulting from the sudden multi-national smorgasbord (kippers smothered in vodka sauce, toad-in-the-hole caprese, champagne, and whiskey-fueled hormonal urges) and eating too much too fast on a rocking craft, compounds its seasickness and puts the tiger off man-flesh forever. In tiger logic, this breaks the surface of its consciousness in a single utterance, which, in the secret language of large felines, sounds like this: "Gluu-aoowrrr-urk."
This is good news for the boy. Even better news for the seagulls, who populate any time-space continuum where mighty waters congregate. And for some reason, also landlocked public dumping grounds.
The boy and the tiger endure more hunger and wave-tossed tribulation. Not much more, mind you, mercurial as the universal conduit may be, it knows when it's had too much of a good thing. It deposits them, on white sands, where the jungle ripples and spreads before them like the shoals upon the beach.
In other words, not-so-long-ago in Mexico.
The tiger escapes, becoming the guardian of a ruined Mayan temple, elevated to a god and revered by its ghostly priestesses. He drinks only drops of the dew and daily rain that fall from broad, green leaves, and never seeks out rivers, ponds, or even puddles. The spirits of sacrificial children sometimes remind him of the boy–the bossy little boy who shared his craft–but never for long. The forest absorbs memories like the sun evaporates water. By nourishing absence, he finds fulfilment and flourishes. The last grains of sea salt fall from his coat; ground underfoot, they become like the temple stones, however broken, still solid.
Missionaries rescue the boy. Obsessed acolytes of a transplanted deity, they see, in the boy's fantastic stories, evidence of demonic possession. After their repeated attempts to cast out the "other," the "wanderer," leave the boy bruised and battered (not to mention, an atheist), he escapes to a place where, on every street, temples of steel and glass beckon all who seek permutations of darkness paraded beneath the gonfalon of pagan priests in the eucalyptus-studded smog. A fantastic citadel, where sacrificial altars of plywood, polystyrene, and pleather shudder beneath the blaze of multicolored stars, a drop-ceilinged firmament of lost constellations; a forest that never knew its druids:
Hollywood.