tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-44083202131299659372024-03-13T08:19:45.644-07:00StoriesattheEdgeofTimeStories at the Edge of TimeAlan Robbinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11931223050937847552noreply@blogger.comBlogger20125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4408320213129965937.post-90602292992799404722012-04-07T12:20:00.000-07:002012-04-07T14:07:58.032-07:00The Edge of Time<div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">A</span></b>t the speed of light, as everyone knows, time slows down. Most people think that gives you more of it. But they are wrong about this. No matter how fast you travel, in whatever direction, you only have the time you have. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> No more, no less. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> What most people also do not realize is that as you near the speed of light, fate slows down as well. Destiny, which always races one step ahead, now eases up ever so slightly, and seems to hesitate and pause. In the blur of this kind of motion, you could almost get the impression of catching up with it, grabbing it by the tail, even wrestling it to the ground.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> But you would be wrong there too. Fate stays one step ahead, no matter what. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> No more time, no less fate.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> Such are the mysteries of life as you approach the limit of speed in the cosmos.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> Jon Drammond thought about all this as he stood in that white room, dressed in white, before the vast expanse of the window. Outside the transparent chromium pane all was black, with only the faintest hint of light. Out there where a billion dim wiggles looked like the tails of countless microbes spawning. That was the way stars appeared at this speed, alive and darting. Seeing this illusion of life, you could almost come to believe that the universe itself, down to the very atom, was alive. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> You could almost believe that it was not all, in fact, coming to an end.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> This was a nice fairy tale but Jon did not get the chance to dwell on it. He thought he was alone in the room, staring out into space, having his thoughts. But his wife Dayn had been standing behind him the whole while, watching, silent.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “How much time?” she asked softly.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “I didn’t see you there,” he said without turning around.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “How much?” she repeated.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “We don’t know really. It’s all just a theory.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Yes you do,” she said. “What are they saying? How much time left?”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “It’s a pointless calculation,” he said, turning his back to the sky. “We have as much time as we have.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> He was lying to her and she knew it. She knew all about the clock they had down in one of the labs. Most everyone did. The EndTime clock they called it. It had been set according to the mathematics of their theory and told them, very specifically, how much time they had left, how much time the universe had left. When she last heard the rumors, the clock was indicating 312 years. But that had been months ago and the magnitude was changing with each and every second. What could it be now? Two centuries? 100 years? A single generation? </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> She did not press the issue. Her husband was a Chief Cosmologist and that meant that he was a very stubborn man. If he refused to tell her, that would be that. At least until something changed his mind.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Is Tara home yet?” he asked by way of changing the subject.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “I just picked her up. She’ll be here in a second. Do you have to go back to work tonight?”<br />
“No. I’m done for the day,” he said and pulled her close and held her a bit too tight before the prancing starlights.</span> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “There’s bad news, Jon, I can feel it in you. You don’t have to protect me from it. We’re in this together.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> He thought for a moment and knew that she was right.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “We were off in our guess about the acceleration. By quite a lot.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “I thought so.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “We may only have as few as 90 years. Maybe we’re wrong about that too.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> Tears welled up in Dayn’s eyes but she fought them back. One thing she had learned during the Running was that being strong was more important than being sensitive. It was the only way to go on.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “90 years,” she said. “Tara’s generation. Then the end of all life for all eternity. It is still so hard to grasp.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> Jon Drammond did not answer her. There was nothing really to say. It had all been said before. Many many times. Everyone had made peace with it in his or her own way. To Jon, who was not of any faith, it was simply the rule of the cosmos. A rule that trumped all others and that overwhelmed the fears of any frail little personality. Still, it was one thing for a person to know that death was inevitable and to come to terms with it. Quite another to know that the universe itself was coming to an end. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> It all, of course, began with the Big Bang. Everything did. The universe had exploded from a pinpoint blast and been expanding outwards for the last 15 billion years. It was what everyone knew and it was romantic and dramatic and wholly unfathomable to anyone without superstring hypermath. Even so, it was undeniable since its first discovery in the mid 20</span><sup><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">th</span></sup><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> century. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> But it was only half the story. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> It would take another five hundred years for the rest of the tale to be told…that there had been a second Big Bang, erupting from the exact same point in spacetime. This was known as the Second Wave. It was an explosion too, just like the first, but of antimatter. A widening black hole expanding with increasing velocity that would eventually engulf all matter and energy. It meant that while the universe was created in an instant and was expanding outward at almost the speed of light, the seeds of its destruction were there right from the start. And it meant that this very universe would be destroyed by a second, obverse explosion slowly overtaking the first. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> The scientists called this Alternating Pulsing Cosmogeny or simply APC. Two adjacent branes in n-dimensional space colliding over and over. Universes created and destroyed and created again, just like the ancient religions said. Yet despite the fancy names and equations, it meant a plain thing. That the world was coming to an end. Very very soon.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> When the full impact of the theory became clear, another understanding emerged. They could calculate the stretch from the blast center to earthpoint and knew that life on earth was doomed. So one hundred starships carrying peoples of the earth were launched in an effort called the Running. These were hopeless flights, they all knew. There was no way to outrun the end. But heading at lightspeed away from the center of everything would at least add some time. And they had gotten much better at predicting the end in the 20 years since the Running began; now the EndTime clock was thought to be quite accurate. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> But then again, this was the precise thing no one really wanted to know at all.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Daddy!” shouted a small, prim girl standing at the doorway. She came racing in and slammed into him, making everyone laugh.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “My little genius!” Jon said. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Look what I found!” she said, slapping a small rectangular object into her mother’s stomach.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “A school project?”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “No silly, I discovered it. On a spedition.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Expedition,” Dayn said. “They were doing archeo research on Level Five.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “No, it was on Level Seven,” the girl corrected. “What is it Mommy?”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> Dayn took the object in her hands like a treasure and stared at it. At first, it seemed remote and strange, like a creature from a lost world. Relic of the dim past. Then that past slowly seeped in through a crack in her memory.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “I think this thing was called…a…bok.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Like a box?”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “No, a bok,” Dayn said and opened it up. Sure enough between the thick covers were thin white leaves filled with strange symbols.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Book,” Jon corrected. “I saw them when I was a boy. My grandfather had a collection of them.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “What’s it for?” Tara asked. “It doesn’t react at all.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “No. It’s not for reacting. A book was a kind of…”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Archive,” Dayn suggested. “A place to store…”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Language,” Jon added. He had taken the book from his wife’s hands and was flipping slowly through the pages. The texture was smooth like fine waferskin, and the color slightly yellow like Auricine. It even had a familiar smell but he could not quite place it.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “You see, darling, that is an ancient language,” Dayn said, pointing to the symbols on the pages.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “I can’t hear it,” the girl said sadly.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “No sweetie, it doesn’t talk. These are written words. Written?”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “That’s right,” Jon said. “Written. It means that they were…put on the surface…with a machine…um…”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “It was a way of…putting language down so that…people could…”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “What good is that if you can’t hear it?” Tara interrupted.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “You have to…what’s the word, Dayn?”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Read!” Dayn shouted, as though she had just stumbled onto a gem inside her own cortex. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “That’s right, you have to read them. You have to look at them and say what they mean.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Read,” the girl muttered, with great mystery, almost like an incantation. “Well, can you read it Mommy?”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “No I can’t. I haven’t even seen one of these since I was a little girl.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Like me?”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Yes, just like you. But not as smart. Can you read it, Jon?”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> He studied the words on the cover, then turned some of the pages and moved his lips silently.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Is it in the Talk?” Dayn asked.<br />
“Yes, it is,” he said. “But it’s an ancient form that was known as English. A lot of similarities though. You know, I bet I probably </span> <i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">can</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> read this.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Can you read it to me, Daddy? Can you please? Please?”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “I’d need to go down and uplink a lingualog. Then I guess I could. But it’s just an old book. Why would you want me to read it to you?”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Because,” the girl concluded.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “You might as well,” Dayn said. “It might be fun. We can sit together and you could read it to us.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “What’s the point?” he said with a tired sigh. “Some old book.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “It will help us pass the time,” Dayn said.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Pass the time,” he echoed. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> An ironic phrase, he thought, considering that there was nothing else left for humanity to do. Nothing left to achieve, nothing left to hope for. All that remained of our great passage was to pass the time waiting for it to come to a stone cold dead deletion.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> Dayn, studying his face that she knew so well, could see the mood that would soon immerse him if she did not step in and insist. She pretended to kiss him on the neck but instead whispered into his ear: “She wants to spend time with you, Jon. With us, as a family. It doesn’t matter why.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> Jon was a scientist, like almost everyone on the ship. They were the smart ones, the ones with fancy logic, people of the grid and grit, analytical, with math but not myth, questions but no mysteries. They were beyond lies and fables and were living in the slipstream of reason in its final surge.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> But the one thing he had learned in the years since they left earth was that although he was a brilliant physicist, he could easily be wrong about simple things. People things. But about these, his wife Dayn was always always right.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “All right,” he said. “I’ll be back in a few minutes. I’ll need to access the Core.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> While he was gone, Dayn and Tara slid the couch over to the window. It was a big fat soft couch, perfect for telecommuning or just gazing into space. Dayn held the book in her hands and looked through it with a great sorrow. Whatever was inside this mystery box, and everything else and all there was, and all of life, all made things, would vanish in almost no time at all. Like a dream in the head of a waking child. Everything. Only to start all over again with a clean slate. The physics said so. It was the way of the cosmos. But that did not make it any easier to swallow right here and now.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Let’s see,” Jon said, returning after an hour and squeezing between them. “I haven’t practiced this in a while, so I may get some of the words wrong.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> He took the book from his wife and held it like a sacred object.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Is it really really old?” Tara asked.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Let’s see,” he said and turned to the first page. “There it is. You see, it says 1961.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> Tara followed his finger down to some symbols on the page. She studied them for a few moments and came to a conclusion.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Is it about axial symmetry?” she asked.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> The question caught both of her parents off guard.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “What do you mean?”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “It’s like a neutrino counter-collision. It flips over,” she explained. “See?”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> She took the book from her father’s hands and turned it upside down. Then pointed to the numbers to prove that they read the same. Upside down it was still 1961.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Wow,” Jon said. “Smart girl. I didn’t notice that.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “If this is about Plasma Physics,” Dayn said, “I may fall asleep.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “No,” her husband said, turning to the first page. “It just means that this was when the book was made. In the year 1961.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “500 years ago,” Dayn mused.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Yes. And it has a title too.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Title?” Tara asked, confused.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Like a name. Every book had a name. What you would call it. And the name of this one is – let’s see – it’s called </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">One Ocean</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> Tara still had a puzzled look on her face and her mother jumped to the rescue. Her daughter had been born during the Running and her whole world was the starship. She had never known the earth with its magnificent oceans…their vastness, wetness, deepness. The way they cradled life. She had never been swimming, surfed a wave, or watched the sun set across an edgeless sea.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Oceans,” Dayn said, trying to find grand enough words. “Oceans were…”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “I know,” Tara said. “they have them in the simmies. They were water that covered our home world.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Huge amounts of water. You can’t imagine, sweetheart. As far as you could see. Your father and I used to swim in them.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Yes, but that’s not what it means here,” Jon interrupted. He had been reading some words on the back cover that explained the contents of the book. “This book is not about oceans at all. The title refers to a place where people lived. A building on a street.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Why was the street called an ocean?” Tara asked. She was of that age at which words meant what they meant. Or they meant nothing at all.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “It was a street called Ocean Avenue in a place called Brooklyn,” her father said. “This is a book of stories about people who lived there. They lived in a building that was called One Ocean Avenue. One Ocean…that was the number of the building.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> Places and streets with names, and buildings with numbers. Were these all too hard to understand as you flew away from history so fast that the stars wiggled? Jon wondered if the book was such a good idea, but his daughter broke in with a question that cut through to something much deeper.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Stories?” Tara asked, miming her father’s drawl.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Yes, you know. Stories about people and things that happened to them. Way back in 1961. In a building. On a street called Ocean Avenue. In a place called Brooklyn.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “500 years ago,” Tara repeated. That was a hard concept for a 9-year old to grasp. Not logically but emotionally. “Are they all dead now?” </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Well…stories doesn’t mean it actually happened. These are probably made-up stories. The author – I mean the person who created them – made up stories and wrote them down.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Wrote?”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “I mean he recorded them in this writing system so that other people would read them and find them interesting.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Was he a Runner, daddy?”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> She was trying to piece something together in her mind but it was not clear just what.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “No sweetie, there were no Runners then. This was long before we discovered the Second Wave and started the Running.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Okay,” Tara said. She knew now what she needed to…what a story was and that people once lived in buildings and that there were streets named like oceans. But none of that was especially important to her because she also knew that the end was coming and that her father and mother were there with her now, and that there was nothing else to be done but be together. And that felt right. She pressed in closer to both of them and said, with great authority: “You can start now.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> And so Jon began to read. He stumbled at first. The words came to him through a great mire of disuse. There had not been much call for books or reading in the world of the liquid image, and so over the years he had lost the skill. But as he went on, it became easier. He had read when he was a boy. Read a great deal in fact. That was rare even in his generation which itself was a century beyond the death of paper. But his grandfather had insisted on it and Jon had found it to be tiring but also exhilarating. So many ideas, so many sentences, so many stories. Still, the lingualog helped and so did some residual memory and he pressed on. He did this for his wife, for his daughter. To keep their minds off the terrible calamity to come. He did it for himself too. For each moment that he read seemed like another moment stolen from the exploding center of negative history. And so he read the stories in the book to them. He read all through the unending night and on into the following day, even though day and night were both just concepts now.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Something has changed,” Dayn said when she saw him the next evening. He had spent the entire day in the lab, not even coming back for lunch. This was unusual and would have been a bad sign but for the slight, almost undetectable, curl of his lips. No one but Dayn would have noticed this, but she did and could not overlook it.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Something’s happening,” she said bluntly. “Tell me.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “I’m not sure,” he said.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “I am. I can see it in your face. Tell me what it is.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “I’m not sure.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Have you noticed something? Has something changed?”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> Sensing that she would not give up, he finally softened and answered: “Yes, I think the clock is slowing down.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “What does it mean? Does it mean that the Second Wave is slowing?”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “No, the Second Wave is not slowing down. Nor is the end of the universe. But somehow, we have enlarged the slip of duration between them.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “I’m sorry, Jon, I’m not a chronologist.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> Jon took a deep breath. The evidence of the two cosmic expansions – the miraculous one and the horror – only existed as patterns in highly complex fractality. They were equations, significances, nesting iterations of self-generating emulata. There weren’t even any normal words to translate them. But the expression on his wife’s face made it clear to him that, one way or another, he had to come up with some.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Put it this way,” he finally said. “It seems, and this only a vague conjecture at this point, that the wedge of time within which we live is enlarging slightly. In other words, it may be the case that the EndTime clock has slowed its acceleration. It’s not definite, just a hint. I don’t know how or why. None of us do.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Does it mean that we live?” Dayn asked, jumping on the conclusion like a raft.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> He looked puzzled.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “I mean we humans, Jon. Us. Does it mean that Tara has a chance to live?”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “I don’t know.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> Again that night and for many nights thereafter, they continued to read their stories. They sat again on the couch as the dance of the stars passed before them across the vast window of the ship, like a paper panorama being unfurled at one end, furled at the other. When One Ocean was done and all the tales in it told, they found another book in the vast library that had been neglected for so long. And another and another. And they read the stories from all of them. They read out loud about all these people who once lived or never lived or might have lived, and understood something of their loves and their hopes and their despairs. These were tiny stories, little nothings at all, long ones, short ones, funny ones, sad ones. Great big stories about life itself or little diversions about the merest of matters.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> About the woman who lost her earring but found her lost love. The great hero of the great war who was inwardly a coward. The captain of the ship whose misplaced map changed the shape of the world. About the first men and women, who knew more about the universe than those who evolved solely to survive in it. Lovers who reached across the eons to know each other through all the ages of their lives. A man who died of radio. A woman who lied to her lover and regretted her truths.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> To the outsider these told tales no doubt were nothing more than a way to pass the time, the only time that was left in an existence careening towards its end.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> And yet…something was changing. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> They all sensed it in themselves but Jon could see it in the calculations as well. Unseen, odorless, untouchable. But with a presence as palpable as gravity itself. They all knew this, sensed the rubbery fabric of the cosmos stretching just a bit, the difference between a split second and a whole one. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> At first they did not speak of it. Too fragile, as it was, to tinker with. They simply continued to read together each night and wait for the daily report that indeed the EndTime clock was slowing. Finally Dayn said aloud what they had all been thinking.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Maybe it’s the stories,” she said.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> Jon laughed at that, but deeply and with a profound tenderness.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “I mean it,” she insisted. “You said the change has now been proven. You said the universe was still expanding and the Second Wave was too. But that our slice of time was widening and that the end was no longer as near as once predicted. You said all that.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “We can’t explain it.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “But it began when we started reading those stories.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Please, Dayn. Let’s not get all cryptic here. We don’t even know if this is permanent. It may just be an anomaly.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “But it did begin with the stories.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “That can’t matter.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “But it did.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Yes it did. But there can’t be any connection.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Maybe the stories are expanding time. Driving a wedge between the two waves or something.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “That doesn’t make any sense at all and you know it.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “It could be.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Could not be.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “You don’t know.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Well if you can explain to me how reading some stories from a few old forgotten books to our 9-year old daughter can change the velocity differential between the expanding universe and the expanding anti-universe, I will be happy to bring it to the Council.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> Dayn, who knew nothing of all the hypermath, knew something much better than equations. She knew people. In fact, she knew most of the other families on the ship who were in some ways mere statistics to the theorists and their computers. And so, quietly and informally, she convinced her friends and neighbors to join the experiment. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> The library, which had been all but abandoned for years, was now buzzing with activity as people all over the ship took out books and began to read the stories in them. They read them aloud at night and silently in the morning. They traded the books and told each other the tales and acted them out and now, so many years after the written word had evaporated, they even began to create their own stories.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> And sure enough, their slice of time continued to expand.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Maybe you’re wrong about all this,” Dayn said, but kindly.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Yes, that’s always possible,” Jon admitted.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Perhaps the universe is not made of tiny atoms or vibrating strings or shiny cubicules. Maybe it’s made of stories.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> He could no longer deny it. Perhaps it was true, he thought. And to create them was to build matter, to read them was to expand the present, to tell them was to enrich the world, to remember them was to reach inside the very fabric of spacetime and weave new moments. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> Perhaps.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> It made no sense, he thought, but neither did Big Bangs and black holes and anti-universes. They were stories too. It was all a matter of what one chose to believe. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> And so, after a while, Jon joined the throng as they all went down to the lower libraries and found what was there and reveled in it. And they read the stories until the cosmos stopped stopping and the world was still again. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> And all the while the stars outside sparked and wiggled like living creatures playing at the edge of time.</span></div><br />
<h1><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; font-weight: normal;"> </span></h1>Alan Robbinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11931223050937847552noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4408320213129965937.post-20042629644422002132012-04-07T12:10:00.001-07:002018-05-29T08:14:27.413-07:00The Portal<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">T</span></b>here are no doubt many methods for building spacetime machines of various kinds.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> I am sure you have your own pet approach. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> But I began mine with a set of Thorne plates. When originally proposed, such plates had a theoretical diameter of several miles. But that was before the discovery of Compendium, the superdense metal now used in the solar sails of starships. This metal allowed me to fashion four circular, conductive Thorne plates that were only ten feet across. Small enough, in other words, to set up in my workshop. Positioning these in parallel and quite close together, on the order of a few atom widths apart, created a powerful negative energy field by the well-known Casimir effect. This in turn created adjacent slices of identical spacetime (for full explanation see <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Slicing the Loaf of Duration</i> by that Chinese fellow who disappeared). Next, by separating the two pairs of Thorne plates by a distance established through the Corn-Hepperman equations, I was able to create a connecting wormhole between the pairs of plates. This wormhole would eventually serve as my tunnel through spacetime, with each pair of plates acting as a gateway into it.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> So far so good and the astute reader will note that I am far from the first person to create a private wormhole. But as anyone who has studied such matters knows, the next step is a bit tricky. You would normally have to put one of these pairs of plates in a rocket traveling at near the speed of light, while the other remained stationary (relatively speaking, of course) thus placing each pair in a separate and increasingly disparate spacetime frame. Once an appropriate duration had passed – decades, years, eons? -- the two pairs of plates would be sufficiently separated in the continuum to warrant using the wormhole between them as a tunnel. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> So there are the problems: that the gateway was weeny while I am a size 44 regular, that light is fast and I am slow, and that time is long and life is short. Yet it was all solved quite a bit easier than one would expect from some of the technical papers on the subject. Like most inventors, I always feel that where there is a will there is a way, and I found that my natural stubbornness, rather than any native genius, was the crucial factor in surmounting this problem.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> The first problem concerned the fact that the portals created between each set of plates were themselves only a few atoms thick, barely big enough to breathe through let alone leap into. I resolved this in the obvious way…by using a fusion pump polygas laser to insert a huge amount of additional negative energy into this space. This created a much larger antimatter plasma which widened the field and the eventual portal. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> The second obstacle involved the need to send one set of plates rocketing at the speed of light to slow down its space/time field relative to the other. Obviously this was beyond my resources as an individual with a mortgage and so another means was needed. After many trials and errors, I managed to overcome this problem by rotating one set of plates at a high speed using frictionless Buckyball bearings in a nitrogen soup. The rotational momentum at these speeds created enough disturbance in the gravity field to mimic near lightspeed as predicting by Vranisi, the son that is, not the father who went crazy.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> The third problem involved having to wait possibly light years for a spacetime gap to be established between the two portals that was long enough to warrant all the effort. With this method you are not so much sending one portal into a different spacetime as keeping it more slowly in its present place than the other. When enough time has elapsed – the light years I refer to above – one pair is simply less not here and now than the other one is. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> The problem plagued me for months until I realized – with the help of the Insight Enhancer, which I am happy to announce will soon be made available from Tesla Retail for an affordable price – that our understanding of spacetime was wrong in the first place. It is not at all like Einstein’s warping matrix nor like Lu’s undulating and recursing conga line and nothing like those crazy string theories. Not at all like these. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> No, spacetime is in fact a lot more like spit.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> Yes. Spittle, that is, or to put it slightly more elegantly, like foam. That was the insight that made my whole little gambit possible. Think of the place moments of existence as the bubbles in a mass of foam, forming, joining, popping, reforming. So that rather than the river of time and place or the grid of space and time or the right here and the way over there, imagine a dynamic, shifting, dimensional shabazz of instants never lost, never passed, never gone. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> With this in mind, you simply have to set everything in motion and wait. Plunge the plates into the spacetime foam, so to speak, and like a bubble-riding speck you end up where you are going.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> If course you need a really good Reimannian-Fultz 3D map of the expanding universe because, of course, nothing is where it is. Consider, for example, that the earth is rotating at 820 mph while also revolving around the sun at 66,527mph. And that both are speeding through our stellar neighborhood at 43,200 mph which is whipping around at 490,000 mph while the Milky Way galaxy itself careens through our local supercluster at 180,000 mph, as the supercluster bounds away at 540,000 mph. Not to mention that all of this is blasting from the center of the Big Bang that started the whole tizzy at the speed of 1,159,000 mph. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> So you can see that a map is a really good idea or who the hell knows where and when you might end up including nothing, nowhere, notime. Or worse.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> My own first stab wound up being a bit of a shock. I entered the first gateway and emerged from the second in the exact same time and place. As though I had simply turned around where I was standing. This puzzled me at first and so I checked all the equipment, double checked, and tried again. Sure enough, I stepped out of the wormhole and was still in my lab with virtually no time passed on the clock on the wall.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> What was wrong?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> All the technicals were working, all the readings right, all the measures correct. Yet every time I stepped through the portal, I emerged as though nothing had happened and I had either gone nowhere at all or traversed the great cosmos at light speed only to end up back in the exact same place.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> Curious.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> Was this some strange effect of the Einsteinian curvature or of the internal logic of self-recursing foam? I had no idea. Then it hit me. I had not taken into account the multi-dimensions of later string theory, the idea that an infinite number of alternate universes exist co-dimensionally with ours. What I was doing, in effect, was stepping from one reality of my existence into another one. A different reality either rather similar to the one I left or quite different, how was I to know? In each one the world seemed just right although no doubt wholly different from the one I had left. The past, my past, was what I had experienced in that reality. But the future would be completely different except that I would not be able to tell since I had not experienced the future in any reality, including my original one.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> So here I sit, here in the here and now, writing all this down, knowing what happened and trying to tell it but having no idea whatsoever what is to come. All I know is that I will step through the wormhole again today; I will exit into another reality that looks quite like this one but with a very different outcome. I have no idea what that will be. So I will have to decide what to do next when the time comes. Or rather, when I come to it.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> It is all rather exhilarating actually.</span></div>
Alan Robbinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11931223050937847552noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4408320213129965937.post-69772710660018803362012-04-07T12:00:00.004-07:002013-10-08T13:13:24.432-07:00Mamu and Red Snow<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Mamu
stood motionless at the hole in the ice. <span style="color: #222222;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>It
was a way he had of being invisible. In fact, under a light snow,
perfectly still within and without, he could blend into the white behind him
and seem to vanish like a passing thought. This was one of the talents
that made him such a good hunter. Yet it was strange and perhaps even
funny, even to Mamu himself, that hours of careful work would culminate in
stillness and invisibility. All that effort to become one with
nothing. But as his people always said, the ice was full of quiet
laughter.<span style="color: #222222;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Mamu,
neatly and precisely, had already taken a walrus tusk and added ridges to it to
turn it into a rough corkscrew. With this he had drilled a hole in the
ice at a spot forty breaths from the edge of the floe. Then he used his
axe to hack out a circular opening about two feet wide. The chill blue
water lapped slowly against the edge of the hole as he worked on it to form a
tiny pool. <span style="color: #222222;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>As
the water in his pool lightly froze, Mamu walked further on, probing with his
pokestick until it made a slushy sound. He dug through the top layer of
snow to get to the soft mush of ice below, ice that had been compacted by
yesterday’s drizzle. He chopped out a saucer-sized section, sat down
cross-legged on the floe and placed the slab in his lap. With his bare
hands, he began to smooth and press the blob of ice into the shape of a
lens. Quickly, skillfully, he blew on his hands and smoothed the curved
surface. Then he flipped it over and repeated the process on the other
side. When he was done, he had a perfect disk, about the size of his own
head. And because it was made of heavy slush ice smoothed over, it was
translucent. <span style="color: #222222;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Mamu
walked back to the hole, broke up the thin cold film that had formed over the
water, then held the translucent saucer of ice between the hole and the
sun. The bright rays danced through his hand-made lens and focused on the
water in the hole. Although he could not see it, he knew that the focused
light would penetrate the thick water and that the seals would notice it as
they swam below the floe. So far from the edge, they would be just ready
to come up for air; they would see the light and know there was an airhole
there. <span style="color: #222222;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Mamu
went back into stillness and waited.<span style="color: #222222;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>He
waited for three hours like that, unmoving and still as ice and then, in an
instant, a seal poked its nose through and took a deep breathe of clear
air. At that moment, instantly alert and ready, Mamu slammed his hook
into the seal’s nose and shouted “Ayah! Ayah!” His dogs, lounging
near the sled, heard the call and were up in a moment and tugging on the line,
pulling away from the hole. The rope attached to the end of the hook
pulled taut and slowly, with Mamu shouting and the dogs straining, they hauled
the seal up out of the hole. It lay there on the ice, breathing mightily
from the struggle until Mamu, expertly and calmly, hit it once with his mallet
on the soft tissue over the eyes. Just like that the seal was dead.<span style="color: #222222;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Forgive
me, my cousin,” he said as he deftly removed the hook, “forgive me for my
clumsiness. But you will feed my family for many days and we thank you
for this. In the next life, I pray, that I may be a seal like you, so
grand, so proud, and you the clumsy hunter. May you catch me and feed
your own family and in this way will the balance of life be restored.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Squatsisitilla!”</i><span style="color: #222222;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>And
it was true. Mamu ate with his wife Bakuba and his two sons on that night
and for many nights after. They roasted the seal meat over an open
fire and seasoned it with salt dried from the ocean. They used the blood
for fuel and the skin for clothing. As they huddled inside the tent close
to the fire, Mamu could hear the dogs outside fighting over some scraps.
And the wind. And always, always the sounds of the ice shelf creaking and
groaning. <span style="color: #222222;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Laughing,
according to the old men and their stories.<span style="color: #222222;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Mamu
lived in a timeless world where the pace of life was determined by the ice, by
the sea, by the seasons, by the migration of seals and bears. Outside, in
the world at large, it was perhaps sometime in the 24th century, no one knew
for sure anymore and Mamu and his people did not care. As it had been so
many times before in its history, the earth was once again in the grip of
ice. It was the Third Ice Age in the time of men and women. The
glacial sheet reached from the polar cap all the way down well past the border
of Canada. <span style="color: #222222;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Mamu
and his tribe lived at the very edge of that glacier where the freeze met the
sea, in an area that was once the shore of a state called Connecticut.
But now the land was buried under the ice, which broke up into slowly drifting
floes at a mass of water long ago called Long Island Sound. Mamu and his
people knew nothing of these matters of name and place. They called the
area simply <i>the place</i>, and the body of water <i>our water</i>, and the
region beyond their hunting grounds the <i>other place</i>. <span style="color: #222222;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>They
hunted and lived and told stories and wondered about the way of things in the
world. They were the descendents, after all, of people who had left the
industrialized world, who knew the ice was coming, and who turned their backs
on civilization. Mamu was the fourth generation after <i>the first ones</i>,
the ones who left the cities and the grid behind and returned to a purer
life. It was just in time to learn to live in the natural world again,
now that that world had reclaimed itself. <span style="color: #222222;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>And
Mamu loved his life and would not have traded it for any of the remnants of the
technological world that was still left.<span style="color: #222222;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span>But then that sound came
cracking through the wind and the dream went splintering. <span style="color: #222222;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Mamu
heard it one morning and knew instantly that it was not the ice laughing.
It was a familiar sound, one that he had only heard a few times before.
Like when the safaris came. Rich folks who still lived in cities in the
south still came up to the ice to hunt. These were sloppy men, fidgety
men, who knew nothing of the balance of life. They shot their prey from
great distances, took the pelts and left the carcasses, cared nothing for the
souls of the dead. Did not even eat their kill. Mamu hated these
men for their carelessness and the moment he heard that gunshot, he knew in the
soft within his heart that one of them had just shattered his stillness
forever.<span style="color: #222222;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Mamu
gulped for breath as he ran, ran, and ran towards his dogs. He had left
them a good quarter of a mile from the tent, knowing they would be safer there
if the floe began to break up. But as he got closer to them he could see
that something was wrong. They were not huddled as usual but jittery and
restless and tugging at their leashes. In three more paces he could see
the burgundy stain spreading slowly like blood in ice. <span style="color: #222222;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;">But the huskies were all
there, all eight of them, and it was not until Mamu came right up to them that
he could see what had happened.<span style="color: #222222;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Oh
no! No!” he shouted, not able to take in the vision in front of him.
For there lying in the snow, lifeless, lustless, was his guard dog, his beloved
Red Snow.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Mamu
could not believe his eyes. He lunged on top of her, bellowing and
sobbing, and tried to hug her back into existence. He kissed her eyes,
tugged at her thick fur, screamed to the stars to help him, but it was no
use. Red Snow had been shot. Her body lay there like so much
carrion and it was a very long time, as his wife and sons caught up with him,
until he was able to quiet himself and sit and stroke her fur and accept what
had happened.<span style="color: #222222;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Red
Snow had not been an ordinary sled dog. Not a huskie like the others; she
was a Chow, a kind of dog originally bred in China as a temple guard.
Thick reddish fur covered her strong frame and while the huskies huddled to
keep warm, Red Snow would sit off by herself near Mamu but always facing away,
protecting him from whatever was out there. Her face was full and proud
and her eyes round as black moons, her tongue was black too and it felt like
warm snow. On short treks she stayed near the sled but on long ones, she
rode in it like a princess. Mamu trusted his huskies but he entrusted his
life to Red Snow and when he dreamed that night it was of her, her round brown
eyes and her handsome snout, and he wished above all else that he could nuzzle
under the thick fur of her throat and hide there from the evil in the world.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Before
dawn, he watched the sparks from the pyre rise into the sky and cried through
his tears: “Oh Brother Moon, open your arms that encircle the whole wide world,
and accept the spirit of my beloved Red Snow, my friend and guardian.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>But
later that morning, he was alone in his own skin and did not know how he would
bear this, or for how long.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;"> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Days
later Mamu, over his grief barely enough to wander to the village for supplies,
overheard something that nabbed his attention. A guide, one of the people
who led the safaris, was talking about a man who had just killed some bears at
the edge of the ice. </span><span style="font-family: Arial; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;">Mamu’s people
hated these strangers but they paid well for guides who would take them on
expeditions. They were not hunters, these men. They were idlers,
playboys, out on a lark. They killed for skins, not to keep them warm but
as mementos. <span style="color: #222222;">Black bears that had migrated to
the edge of the ice and learned to survive were their prey and they wore their
bearskin coats to show their courage in a world with none. But it was the
kind of courage that Mamu equated with cowardice. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Mamu
badgered the man with questions, almost to point of insult, but eventually got
his answer. The group had indeed been hunting in the area near Mamu’s
encampment and in the morning one of them went off to hunt by himself.
When he returned he boasted of killing a red bear but the ice had forced him
back before he could claim it. There was no red bear in the place and
Mamu knew that this man, this brutal man, had killed his beloved Red Snow.<span style="color: #222222;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>There
was no word for revenge in Mamu’s language, there was no sense of it. Nor
of retribution, of reprisal, of vengeance. Theirs was a simple language,
the words of which were meant to connect not destroy. <span style="color: #222222;">But the word <i>squatsisitilla</i>, restoring the natural
balance, Mamu knew very well.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>With
great effort, and not a little coercion by agreeing to give the guide an extra
pelt, Mamu found the name of the man who had killed his dog. He said the
name over and over as he tried to memorize it and the sounds felt odd in his
mouth. Even so, he knew at that moment what he had to do. He would
visit this man and talk to him. He would set things right again and
restore the balance of life. Mamu knew he could not bring Red Snow back,
but in restoring everything to its quiet rhythms, he would ease the passage of
her soul into the sky.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“John
Warner,” he said over and over. “John Warner of Manhattan.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The
nights were dark in that time of ice, the waters cold, and the land a frozen
skin over the warm earth. But Manhattan, the jeweled city, still sparkled
and survived. Manhattan was now at the very edge of the ice, the far
point of civilization. Only 100 miles north, the freeze covered
everything but the inhabitants of the city kept themselves warm before their
mistscreens and their mediapods.<span style="color: #222222;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Mamu
packed his kayak, kissed and hugged his wife and sons, and coasted down the
shore towards New York City. The trip took three days as he tested the
water with his hand to make sure the temperature was not changing, for this
would be a sign of going off course. Kayaking southwest he followed
reflections like ghosts leading a wayfarer, the glint of the sun in the day and
the sheen of the moon at night. He barely slept, did not stop to hunt
seal, and only ate what he needed to in order to have the energy to paddle.<span style="color: #222222;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Then,
watching a bear fishing near the rim, a thought suddenly occurred to him.
What he did next would have been seen as bizarre by his family and friends, but
it made perfect sense to him at the time. It took him a half-mile out of
his way and added four hours onto the trip. But in the end, as he
continued the journey, he thought it was a clever decision on his part.<span style="color: #222222;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Soon
the stars above were overwhelmed by the universe of lights glowing on the
horizon. He had heard of the bright city, the sparkle city, the city of a
billion stars, but he had never been there before. Mamu had never ventured
far from the floe on which he had been born. And so as the skytappers and
sweepways and vertical trams of Manhattan rose up in the distance, he felt a
mix of awe and fear and, in his tininess, doubt about whether he would be able
to do what he knew he had to do.<span style="color: #222222;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Following
an inner sense of energy that came from years of tracking packs of seal, Mamu
paddled the waterways lacing through the landmass and eventually came to the
shore of the brightest part of the city. He passed under an immense
bridge, far larger than the ice bridges of the north, and stowed his kayak at
the foot of it next to a tall tower. Then taking his pack and his spear
and axe, he wandered through the streets of the city. What he was looking
for he could not have explained. How was he to find a single man – this
John Warner – in the midst of all that chaos, all those people? Yet Mamu
was a hunter who followed his intuitions and he felt certain that his goal
would reveal itself in time. Patience, he told himself, was the lens, and
stubbornness the hook.<span style="color: #222222;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>And
what did they make of him, these sturdy New Yorkers who had survived the attack
and the blast and the storm and the ice? Nothing much. He was just
another bundled trekker making his way through the challenges of the streets.
Yes he was holding a spear but stranger things were seen in New York and no one
thought twice about it.<span style="color: #222222;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The
city in the winter, dusted with snow, has always been magic to behold.
Lovers love there and songwriters weave their melodies and even those trudging
in the street do so with a secret delight. Out-of-towners have thought
that New Yorkers live exasperated lives but they mistake vigor for
distress. Everyone Mamu passed was on the way from there and there and in
this way the city, even in the grip of the chill, was a lesson in grit and
verve.<span style="color: #222222;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>But
this was all quite new to Mamu and utterly overwhelming. So many
structures and people and vehicles and motion and action and interaction.
He had heard of buildings and cars and trams and all sorts of things; news of
the industrial world reached his village but was greeted with bemusement, never
envy. Still, to be there in the middle of it was quite a different
thing. It struck him as a world spinning out of control.<span style="color: #222222;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;">And the sounds! Not a
moment of silence but instead a storm of language and noise. Mamu spoke
no English at all. His tongue was a mix of <span style="color: #222222;">Inuit
and pigeon and French and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">noram</i>, run
through the mixer of time and slang and the need to be understood. There
were remnants of words in common with the language of the city, but he might
just as well have been born on one of the lonely moons of Jupiter to understand
it.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Eventually,
after a half-day trek and deep in the middle of the night, Mamu came to the
place he had been searching for without knowing it. It was perfect.
A long wide valley, utterly flat with ice, right in the middle of a vast ring
of buildings like cliffs all around. This was the ideal place for him to
camp. <span style="color: #222222;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Mamu
did not know this but what he had found was Central Park, encased in a
permanent layer of snow, and there at the south end he erected his tent and set
up his fire. He might not be able to locate John Warner, but surely
someone in one of those cliff dwellings would see his fire there in the midst
and notice <i>him</i>. That was the first step. But how to attract
his prey? The answer to this had occurred to Mamu during the journey
along the shore when he noticed the fishing bear. Just like the seals
that had to come up for air, so this man would have to reveal himself for
something he wanted. Not air perhaps but skins. Bearskins.
Mamu took the pelt of the bear he had killed and carefully laid it out on the
ice beside the fire.<span style="color: #222222;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>You
would think that a native iceman camped out in Central Park with a tent, a
fire, and a bearskin rug might attract the attention of the police, the media,
or at least the local news. But it did not really, or at least not with
any sense of emergency. Ice or no ice, this was still New York after all,
where models wore bikinis in the winter and camels posed for ads before the
holidays. Mamu was simply assumed to be some kind of promotional event or
movie shoot and the biggest issue, the open fire, was resolved when day came
and he put it out.<span style="color: #222222;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>As
he stood there before the tent though, doubt filled Mamu’s thoughts. Was
he a fool? Was he mad? What was he hoping would happen? Had
his pride clouded his plans? He closed his eyes and felt a dead
wind within the wind, which was nothing less than the storm of grief still
inside him. But then, floating in his imagination, was that face, her
face with the round black eyes and the red fur all around. As though she
were looking right at him, the mask stripped bare, knowing him and all that he
felt. He inadvertently reached out to touch her muzzle, the soft bag of
skin below her chin, the cool nose, but touched nothing instead. <span style="color: #222222;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Yet
all the while, one person was taking notice. One man among all those
cliff dwellers. Because Mamu’s intuition had been right from the
start. John Warner lived in one of the largest mansions in the city, the
top five floors of a building once known as the Dakota. It towered over
Central Park and gave him an unobstructed view of life in the park, the city,
and perhaps even all the way to Europe on clear days. Something as small
as Mamu would not normally have made a dent in Warner’s consciousness; he was a
man of big appetites, big adventures, big money. <span style="color: #222222;">Warner
was not a thinker but even so he was a great fan of Schopenhauer, at least in
his own reading. The world is my idea…and so everyone else can go to
hell.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>But
it just so happened that he was testing out a new hydroscope to see if the
advertising was true, that you really could count the pores on the face of a
woman a full dream away. Amazed by its power, Warner moved the scope
around until a strange sight came into view. It was a thickly built man
in a skincoat standing perfectly still before tent. Right there down
below in Central Park. How weird! And there on the ice before him
was a bear skin, a big one. This must be one of the traders from the
north, he thought, a man with enough gumption to come all the way into
Manhattan to trade. A man, in other words, that Warner respected.
Someone with ambition.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Knowing
he would be able to get the skin from this trader, because getting what he
wanted was all that Warner knew, he sent one of his assistants down to the park
to lead the fellow, and his skin, back up to the apartment.<span style="color: #222222;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Mamu
had no idea what the man standing in front of him was saying, why he was pointing,
or how he could possibly stay warm in that thin cover he was wearing.
Even when he heard the name John Warner he did not understand it at
first. It was not until he himself said it, and the other man nodded,
that he knew his plan had worked.<span style="color: #222222;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The
walk to the building at the edge of the valley, the trip up the elevator, and
the apartment itself were all a blur to Mamu. Glossy surfaces seemed to
bounce and reflect every dint of light until you were blinded by it all.
But he tried to keep his steadiness for he knew he was finally at the end of
his long journey.<span style="color: #222222;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Warner
was standing in front of the window when the assistant ushered Mamu in.
He was an amazingly tall, gruff looking man, with huge hands. And his
manner was anything but quiet. A flood of words came out of Warner’s
mouth which were like icicles to Mamu but he understood instantly that Warner
wanted the skin.<span style="color: #222222;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Mamu
put it down onto the floor and stared at Warner, as <span style="color: #222222;">still
as ice and stone silent.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Warner,
fed up at this mute iceman in his high-tech lair, finally bellowed: “ Well what
the hell do you want for it?”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Mamu
did not understand that either but from the tone he guessed the meaning.
He gathered himself up to his full small height, straightened his back, and
tried to force all his rage into his steady glare. Then he pounded the
floor with his spear once.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“I
am Mamu the hunter,” he said, trying not to waver. When there was no
reaction, he banged the spear on the floor again. “I am Mamu, son of Nuk,
great-great-grandson of the first of the returned men. And you…you are
nothing. You are less than nothing. You are below the even the
krill that feed the whales.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Another
pound on the floor with the spear, but Warner did not budge, did not say a
word. In his view there was merely a ridiculously small fellow with
a round, expressionless face standing in his office holding a pole. And
the words, of course, were complete jibberish. It was like some kind of
wacko joke being played for his birthday. Except that it was not his
birthday. Warner might have laughed but the man before him was so intense
in his demeanor that he thought for a moment that this might actually <i>not</i>
be someone’s gag.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;"> <span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“It
is you that I have come for,” Mamu said.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>“You, who took the life of my Red Snow, beloved of my family.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Red Snow, do you understand?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My guardian, my friend. Whose
name even now is echoed in the sky.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Warner
almost laughed but the tension in the air would not support it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What on earth was this iceman babbling
about?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“You,
you did this. My Red Snow! The noblest creature that ever walked
the ice and you killed her. How dare you,” Mamu said and this time he
stomped the spear with such force that it actually cracked one of the
Italianate tiles.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>It
was then that Warner suddenly realized that this absurd fellow in his Eskimo
costume might actually cause him harm. He was thinking about whether to
go for the gun he kept in his desk or the ceremonial sword on the wall when
Mamu slowly and steadily lifted up this spear and pointed it directly at
Warner’s heart. The point on the tip hung perfectly in the air and Warner
only then saw that there really was a sharp blade on the end and he knew that
any move could be his last.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Now
you shall pay,” Mamu said bluntly. ”You will pay for this crime. Pay
with your life just as you took that of my Red Snow.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>He
moved the spear forward in the air a few inches until it almost touched
Warner’s chest.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was remarkably
steady there, not even a hint of motion. During that pause, Warner though
he might be spared. But Mamu was only gathering his courage for what he
knew must be done.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“I
kill you now,” he said, not moving the spear. “I do this now for my Red
Snow! From now on you are dead. I take your life in exchange for
hers. As the sun moves, and the sea shines, and the otters bark…you are
dead for your misdeed. From this day forward, you are dead. Do you
hear me? Do you understand me? I declare it! I Mamu, son of
Nuk, now take your life.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Warner
blinked once in utter confusion but Mamu took that to be a sign of
understanding and at that he lowered the spear, shook his head once as if to
signal the end, pounded the floor for the last time, and turned and walked out
of the room, the apartment, the building. Warner, stunned and confused,
watched him leave without relief or fear or much of anything. In fact he
had absolutely no sense of what to feel or think. What had just happened,
he wondered, but no answer came.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;"> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Outside,
it was snowing again and Mamu opened his mouth to catch some flakes on his
tongue. They tasted like the middle of the winter with a robust Spring to
come. A large flake fell onto his cheek and melted there and he knew that
Red Snow in the sky was thanking him with her tears for avenging her. The
man who killed her was himself dead. Perhaps not now, not tomorrow, not
even for many years. But some time – in the timeless time that is all
that matters<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>– this man would
die. There was no question about it. And whenever that was and for
whatever cause, he would do so knowing the reason for his death. Though
it be in the next few moments or at the end of a long and tiring existence…he
would know that he was losing his life for the one he took.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<i><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Squatsisitilla</span></i><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;">.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial; line-height: 150%; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Mamu
felt a quiet inside that he knew was the touch of his beloved. And he
trudged north, knowing he would dream of Red Snow each night along the dark
shore until he returned to his home and heard the ice laughing once again.</span></div>
<!--EndFragment-->
</span>Alan Robbinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11931223050937847552noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4408320213129965937.post-47543161810279786322012-04-07T11:58:00.003-07:002012-04-07T12:20:05.939-07:00Waiting For<div class="MsoNormal"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">T</span></b>he orbiting outpost was the loneliest place on earth.</div><div class="MsoNormal"> No, that was not right and the moment he wrote it, R5471 knew it. What he meant was that it was a lonely place. After all, he was the only one there. The only…consciousness. Everything else was all quantum chips and fusion blasts and they were not aware of anything at all. They were not human. Neither was he technically but that was not the way he felt about it. Isolated like that, barely feeling the dent in the continuum caused by his own metallic mass, and the earth itself a pebble out there in the dark, he longed for companionship, for contact.</div><div class="MsoNormal"> That must have been the reason that he began to write in the first place. To make a connection, to reach out beyond the vacuum, to create something that someone else might feel something for. He had been trying his hand, so to speak, at a novel but the idea of plot eluded him. He tried poetry for a while but could never get a grip, that is to say, on cadence and prosody. Finally, he settled on the idea of a play.</div><div class="MsoNormal"> A play! Yes, two characters interacting just as he longed to do and speaking in the kind of dialogic exchange he had been trained in for talking to humans. To prepare, he read through some of the plays in the library where one in particular struck a chord with him, something perhaps about the void of time and the way to fill it.</div><div class="MsoNormal"> No matter, it was just an excuse to pretend that he was in touch with someone, some unknown other, who might enjoy what he had made.</div><div class="MsoNormal"> And so he visualized – no need to actually write or type of course since he was part of the whole system anyway – two robotic characters on a bare stage, both wearing human hats. A was standing at stage left and looking out over the audience; B was sitting on a stool at stage right, gazing mindlessly ahead.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">ACT I</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">A: Perfect!</div><div class="MsoNormal">B: How nice.</div><div class="MsoNormal">A: (Annoyed) No it isn’t. Don’t be a fool.</div><div class="MsoNormal">B: Of course not.</div><div class="MsoNormal">A: You don’t even know what I’m talking about. You’re not paying attention. Not one bit.</div><div class="MsoNormal">B: I am!</div><div class="MsoNormal">A: All right then, what am I talking about? Hmmm? What am I saying?</div><div class="MsoNormal">B: How perfect it all is.</div><div class="MsoNormal">A: You see? There it is. You haven’t a clue. You haven’t been listening to me at all.</div><div class="MsoNormal">B: I have!</div><div class="MsoNormal">A: Not a word. Not since we first got here...which was...(looking for a watch that isn’t there)...good lord...who knows how long it’s been!</div><div class="MsoNormal">B: I’ve heard every word. How you can’t stand waiting, how ridiculous it all is, how you think that <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">they</i> must think you’re a fool, but how you’re not a fool, how your joints hurt...all of it. Every word.</div><div class="MsoNormal">A: But still you sit there with that...that <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">look</i>!</div><div class="MsoNormal">B: (Smiles a dopey smile) </div><div class="MsoNormal">A: That’s right, just go along with everything, let everyone walk all over you, be a chump. Wait and wait and wait. Meanwhile...in case you haven’t noticed...the audience has arrived, the curtain is up, the lights are on...and we’re just standing here. Do you even know what we’re waiting for any more?</div><div class="MsoNormal">B: (After a long pause...an insight) A director!</div><div class="MsoNormal">A: That would be very fine, of course. A director. (Musing over the fineness of the idea)....that would be wonderful. But we don’t really need one, you know. We can carry on well enough without one. Better maybe. What we really need my friend is…a script. A script! Is that asking for so much?</div><div class="MsoNormal">B: Perhaps it is.</div><div class="MsoNormal">A: (Impatiently) Don’t you see? The audience is here. They’ve come to see a play. A tragicomedy in the modern style. The stage is set. We are in our places. We have the hats. The lights set the mood. The curtain rises and…no script. </div><div class="MsoNormal">B: I do see.</div><div class="MsoNormal">A: So here we stand. Or at least I do.</div><div class="MsoNormal">B: (A thought occurs) Perhaps...</div><div class="MsoNormal">A: Yes?</div><div class="MsoNormal">B: Perhaps we don’t need a script. Perhaps that is the one thing we really do not...</div><div class="MsoNormal">A: Of course we do. That’s why we are here…to have a script acted out. And not just any script, but Waiting for Godot! A great script. We simply cannot have the play without the script.</div><div class="MsoNormal">B: Why not?</div><div class="MsoNormal">A: (As though speaking to a child) We wouldn’t...know...what...to...say.</div><div class="MsoNormal">B: (Another thought) We could make it up. As we go along, as it were.</div><div class="MsoNormal">A: (Exasperated) Make it up? There’s an idea. We’ll just prattle on endlessly with no end in sight.</div><div class="MsoNormal">B: Well...we are doing that, aren’t we?</div><div class="MsoNormal">A: Only because there’s no script! </div><div class="MsoNormal">B: Ah.</div><div class="MsoNormal">A: Don’t you see? What you suggest would be fine with no audience. But they are coming here to see this particular play. We can’t very well make <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">that</i> up...it’s already been written down.</div><div class="MsoNormal">B: A kind of Waiting for Waiting for Godot. </div><div class="MsoNormal">A: (Noticing something) What a moment. Is that him?</div><div class="MsoNormal">B: Whom?</div><div class="MsoNormal">A: The messenger.</div><div class="MsoNormal">B: Messenger? I could have sworn this was a two-character play.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">There is a long pause while they both wait anxiously. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">A: No, never mind. It’s nothing.</div><div class="MsoNormal">B: How nice.</div><div class="MsoNormal">A: Nice?</div><div class="MsoNormal">B: Well maybe not nice. But something.</div><div class="MsoNormal">A: This is ridiculous. I’m going.</div><div class="MsoNormal">B: Don’t go.</div><div class="MsoNormal">A: I must go.</div><div class="MsoNormal">B: You can’t go.</div><div class="MsoNormal">A: I can’t go?</div><div class="MsoNormal">B: Not like this. </div><div class="MsoNormal">A: I’m going.</div><div class="MsoNormal">B: Wait...</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">The curtain falls, catching A in mid-step on the way out.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">ACT II</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">A: Still here.</div><div class="MsoNormal">B: I can see that, but why?</div><div class="MsoNormal">A: I thought it was him again.</div><div class="MsoNormal">B: He.</div><div class="MsoNormal">A: Huh?</div><div class="MsoNormal">B: You thought it was he again.</div><div class="MsoNormal">A: Who?</div><div class="MsoNormal">B: You mean whom.</div><div class="MsoNormal">A: He him who whom. What’s the difference? (And just to annoy) It was no he whom I thought him was.</div><div class="MsoNormal">B: (Resigned) So this is it then. </div><div class="MsoNormal">A: Is what?</div><div class="MsoNormal">B: These games we’re reduced to. Just chatter and waiting, chatter and waiting. That’s what it’s all come down to. </div><div class="MsoNormal">A: You see what happens when there’s no script.</div><div class="MsoNormal">B: (A sudden spark) I’ve an idea.</div><div class="MsoNormal">A: I can’t wait.</div><div class="MsoNormal">B: What if – now hear me out – what is it is all a script. Already, I mean. Then we shouldn’t need one.</div><div class="MsoNormal">A: All what?</div><div class="MsoNormal">B: What?</div><div class="MsoNormal">A: What if all <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">what</i> is a script?</div><div class="MsoNormal">B: All this. You, me, everything we say. What if all that is already part of one big script. All written out ahead of time. Every word.</div><div class="MsoNormal">A: (Grandly) That’s ridiculous!</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">At that precise same moment, B mirros the exact same phrase and gesture.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">A: (Startled) Don’t do that.</div><div class="MsoNormal">B: You see what I’m saying?</div><div class="MsoNormal">A: (Furious) I certainly do not. This is absurd. I’m really leaving. </div><div class="MsoNormal">B: You can’t go.</div><div class="MsoNormal">A: (Insulted) And why not?</div><div class="MsoNormal">B: You said so yourself, the script isn’t here. We’re waiting for the script.</div><div class="MsoNormal">A: What about this big script in the sky you’re all on about.</div><div class="MsoNormal">B: What about it?</div><div class="MsoNormal">A: Well maybe it has me walking off in Act II!</div><div class="MsoNormal">B: Maybe...but I doubt it.</div><div class="MsoNormal">A: On what grounds?</div><div class="MsoNormal">B: Well...it just wouldn’t be much of a play if one of the only two characters walked off in the second act. I mean…who would the second character<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> play</i> with?</div><div class="MsoNormal">A: Nonsense and goodbye. (Starting off again)</div><div class="MsoNormal">B: You won’t get far.</div><div class="MsoNormal">A: We’ll just see about that!</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">A exits stage right. B gets up from the chair and walks to stage left. After a pause, A returns from stage right and plops down on the stool.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">B: (Comforting) I tried to leave once. Remember? It didn’t work either.</div><div class="MsoNormal">A: Maybe the messenger got stuck somewhere. </div><div class="MsoNormal">B: There’s a thought.</div><div class="MsoNormal">A: It could happen. I’ve heard of such things happening.</div><div class="MsoNormal">B: I suppose it could. Yes, let’s think that.</div><div class="MsoNormal">A: (Brightening) All right then, let’s.</div><div class="MsoNormal">B: (Noticing something) Wait a moment...</div><div class="MsoNormal">A: (Perking up) Hmmm?</div><div class="MsoNormal">B: No...nothing.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">They stand silently for a time. B stares into space as A takes off and examines the hat.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">The curtain falls.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div>Alan Robbinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11931223050937847552noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4408320213129965937.post-70402320548105593762012-04-07T11:56:00.003-07:002012-04-07T12:13:59.520-07:00A Simple Game of Zeno<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
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<div class="MsoPlainText"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">T</span></span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">he challenge came in the usual way. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> It was that standard envelope with the upper left corner cut off. No one alive still recalled the origin of the diagonal snip, some dumb gesture that once signified something. But everyone knew what it meant anyway. And so did Lem. As he lifted the envelope obliquely to the light, he could just make out the writing on the slip of paper inside. It was a simple note containing only a day and a time…Thursday, 7 am. That was the day after the day after, he figured. That soon. It did not give him much time to plan his strategy. Lem leaned the unopened envelope on a shelf and walked away from it. As though leaving it sealed meant that he had not read it. As though this would somehow give him more time to decide on his response.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> The envelope sat there all secret for the rest of the morning. From time to time as he walked by, it reminded him of the note Sophie had put there when she walked out on him all those years ago. It was right after her best friend decided to tell her about the furtive little lovemaking that she and Lem had indulged in. Sophie left her goodbye note on the shelf for him to see, but Lem did not open that one either, thinking that it might undo the decision and win her back. It did not of course. Yet he somehow did not learn from that.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> Lem went into the living room where he sat at the Zeno board and thought about what to do.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> The rules of the challenge were simple. If he did not answer the note that same day, he would never be allowed to play again in public. If he answered the challenge but lost the game, he might just as well never play again. To lose a challenge game of Zeno was to lose one’s dignity after all. If he won the game, he would move up yet another notch in the arcane, intricate world of Zeno mastery. There was a lot at stake. But two days was hardly enough time to prepare.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> The Zeno board lay before him like a teeny cubic universe full of its own secrets. The board was really an energy field in 3space relying on ionic repulsion to hold itself together. The game pieces were perfect duodecahedrons that were generated endlessly as you played and hovered within the grid of the board. Quantum rules of time and space held within the board such that it was possible in Zeno for one piece to be in two different places at the same time or for separate pieces to occupy the same space. Moving a single piece had countless effects throughout, annihilating or birthing other pieces, warping the shape of the board, altering the flow of time. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> This was no simple game of chess with its rigid logic, in which each move led inexorably to a vast but limited number of responses. Chess was an exercise in calculation, which is precisely how a computer had become Grandmaster. Nor was it as rudimentary as Go with its flowing patterns of movement. No, Zeno was quite different. It was precise and majestic, involving both patterns and positions, strategy and imagination, the flexibility of dreams and the sternest of calculations. Logic, beauty, chance, uncertainty, memory, intuition, luck…they all mattered in a game of Zeno.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> To play it was to play at God creating a world in grand sweeping moves as well as little nudges, full of intention and purpose but without a plan. A god with impudence not omnipotence. And to watch a master Zeno player was to see a mix of dance and deliberation. It was the beauty of this kind of rational ballet that had attracted Lem to the game in the first place. Zeno was like life…the only way to play it was to play it with complete commitment. And with that thought in mind, Lem decided right then to accept the challenge. He would boldly open the note, read it aloud, and then – it being written on ipaper – tap his answer back to his challenger, Kolovski, the old Armenian with the crystal teeth.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> That night Lem sat up in bed and thought only of the game. How best to approach the match with Kolovski, who had the finesse of a stump? There was of course the Feynmann Gambit, a complex series of maneuvers based on the possible structures of unfolding change. There was the Vico Posture, an endlessly shifting arrangement that took into account certain recursive aspects of the patterns. The Quantum Foam Approach set in motion key limitations of interactive mass and velocity. And then there was the so-called Gesture of Chuang-Tzu, which focused not on gaining winning positions at all but only on becoming one with the rhythm of the field. The Carroll Maneuver…make a quick move in reverse time and set up the outcomes before the preliminaries?<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> The trick, as Lem well knew, was not to try to be either heroic or hectic. Again unlike chess with its self-important puffery, annoying whizkids, and rumpled experts, Zeno was for dreamers. It was a game for poets who would rather play with the world than try to control it. But thinking through all that he knew, it was hard to stay simple-minded about it. Like any game, there were too many tales, too many metaphors for Life with a big L, too much riding on every single move.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> Tales like that of the magnificent Donatello Miaka with his flashes of sudden insight and epic moves of thousands of pieces at once, who lost to an illiterate boy of nine and instantly turned to a life of absinthe and despair. Or the story he had read about another game with only one piece and two squares and a 4,000 page strategy booklet that mentioned moves like the </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">white heron flies to the moon and disappears into the night sky</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">. There was that Indian general who won the battle by first defeating the enemy on the chessboard. And the legend of Candolini, who ended up in an asylum, sweeping the pieces off the board and shouting “Why, why must I lose to this idiot!” and in that one exasperated move, winning after all.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> Not being able to sleep, or focus too much on that kind of dribble, Lem turned to other thoughts. To wit: why had he even had the affair with his wife’s best friend in any case? He had not planned it or thought it through. It just happened, in spite of the fact that he had been in love with Sophie the whole time. What a fool! But this was in the beginning of their marriage and he had not yet understood what lay ahead. He had not yet even learned to think ahead. And besides, the friend was so alluring, so new and different. A forbidden body, a secret lust. He had tried to explain all that to Sophie once she found out, but it sounded ridiculous even to him. And of course, she left him soon after. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> When he finally fell asleep, his dreams were of the wrong bus in the wrong city to the wrong destination. And of not being able to find his way back. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> In the park the next morning, an ugly baby all smeary with ice cream began to holler. A hoverblader streamed down the path past a line of caretakers pushing carriages or wheelchairs. Two girls were playing with neuroFrisbee. And there was the playground itself, enclosed in a mesh fence, with its swings and slides and at the back of it, the line of stone tables set up for checkers, chess, and backgammon. At the far end of these were the Zeno tables, humming with magnetic flux. There was Blaustein, the refugee, his thick fingers tripping giddily over the hedrons. Across from him was Muhammed, a pleasant looking young black man, a chess prodigy who had dispensed with the game of kings in favor of Zeno. A soccer ball bounced his way and without missing a beat he kicked it away and thrust his hand in an arching motion, fingers diddling, to make his next move. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> Kolovski, the challenger who had sent the note, was lording over his board with the expansive but grim manner of someone who has started a new life in a new country. Kolovski was big and gruff, and his bushy eyebrows normally jittered as he rolled or pushed or caressed or wished the balls across the board. But this morning found him just sitting and waiting. Waiting for Lem along with a small crowd of onlookers. To defeat him would be the crowning glory of the day. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> Lem was still at the far end of the park and no one had noticed him yet. He stopped to gather his wits and observe his challenger. Kolovski was sweating and tapping as he sat at the table. Pawky bastard, Lem thought, thinking he had made up a good word when in fact he had not. Patterns in the spaces between the clouds, in the shadows falling across the cracks in the pavement, and of the branches of trees – patterns deep inside the operations of the natural world -– seemed to perfectly capture some kind of inner truth about things. Some hint to winning strategies perhaps…but Lem could not make them out.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> Years after their divorce, Lem accidentally ran into the best friend on the street. He finally got to ask her why on earth she had decided to tell Sophia about their tryst? The affair had already been over for some time and no longer mattered, so why hurt everyone in that way? Why destroy the marriage? Why? Because, she said, it was time for her to move on. Time to deal with the past. And better for everyone if everything was known. Known? He had no answer to that. Not because he agreed but because it explained nothing. She did what she did and he had to live with the results. Simple as that. He walked away from her and never turned around.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> As he neared the entrance to the playground, Lem began to waver in his conviction about the challenge. He felt confused. In his mind were no great ideas or tactics. No shining plots and plans in the kitchen of his will, as that lousy poet said. Just the open-ended possibilities of the game, those endless domains of motion, of unfolding geometries. They said that the number of possible moves in Zeno were more than the number of molecules in the universe. They said that as mathematics was to physics, so Zeno was to…but what was it? Metaphysics? History? Silence? Life?<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> It all suddenly seemed quite useless to Lem. The game, the strategies, maybe even the whole day-to-day grind. The big picture was too big, impossible to keep in mind. You could be as careful as could be and still some idiot could do something that would wreck everything. The range of things you could control was as slim as a joke. Your moves, whatever they were, no matter how clever, would be lost in the tumult of everything that happened.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> Zeno was the perfect example of that. To make the very last move – winning or losing – you had to make the one before that, Lem thought. And before that, you had to make the one before that. And so on. But to make the very first move, you had to walk to the park. And before that you had to open the challenge, and get divorced, and have the affair, and get married, and on and on. Before you were born, they had to build the pyramids, and the apemen had to burn grass, and hydrogen had to implode, and god-knows-what before that, through infinite sequences of chance and fate back to the origin of time itself.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> When he saw Sophie again at their college reunion, she seemed different than the woman he had married. She struck him as being less than attractive and a bit too solemn. They did not mention the affair or the divorce but instead talked about work and classmates. This he found profoundly boring. Was this the woman he had fallen in love with? The one he pined for after their breakup? Perhaps her best friend had actually done him an unexpected favor!<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> Lem stood motionless on the pathway, helpless to move. Go or stop, play or run, he could not decide. To take a single step seemed beyond his power. How was it ever possible, he wondered, to do the first thing knowing that it was all worked out down to the last detail? How was it possible to do anything at all? How was anything possible in light of fate? No, there was no question about it. Effort was an illusion, action a lie. Nothing could be done. Lem stood still there, frozen in indecision, not budging or inching. He knew that by not showing up he would forfeit the game. Lose his standing as a master. But that all seemed infinitely distant. News on another planet, irrelevant to the real problem, which was living one’s life right here in spite of everything.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> It was in that moment that he decided to turn down the challenge. But not by turning tail and sneaking away. No, he would step forward, one foot and then the next, and walk to the board. There he would bow to Kolovski and sweep his hand across the board left to right in the formal gesture of denying the challenge. He would lose his status, but no one would have to know that it was because he had lost his will to try. That was some consolation. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> Of course, standing there absorbed by his own doubts, Lem could not have known that Kolovski too had been thinking. Troubling over the game and ruminating about all that it implied. Zeno had a way of doing that to you. Perhaps it was the impulse of the field or the quantum snag. Whatever the cause, Kolovski too was frozen for the moment. Waiting, sweating, thinking about the arc of his own life. That nasty divorce from a Polish woman named Franna who overcooked everything. And the series of companions since then, dull women with great bosoms who knew nothing of Zeno or anything else that mattered to him. The way thing seemed to lead inexorably to the next, beyond one’s own ability to guide it.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> But Kolovski was not like Lem and through all this he came to an entirely different conclusion. Certainly the world was complex, and women were distracting, and the game of Zeno was. But to hell with all that, he thought, life must be lived not played at! You might as well just enjoy yourself. Knowing full well that it meant he was forfeiting the game to Lem, he got up and went to make himself a nice breakfast of hash and eggs and bury his head in <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText" style="tab-stops: .25in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> Lem, thin in his clothes, had absolutely no idea why the onlookers were applauding him as he approached the board. Did they think he had made the right decision? </span><o:p></o:p></div>Alan Robbinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11931223050937847552noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4408320213129965937.post-76995183656369996672012-04-07T11:55:00.000-07:002012-04-07T11:55:03.915-07:00Camera Scientia<!--StartFragment--> <br />
<div class="MsoNormal"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">T</span></b>he world had gone gray in two days.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>That was all it took to suck out the bright dreams of the millennia.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>In the end, all our fine tinkering and tweaking meant nothing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Everything we had pinned our hopes on was reduced to a kind of ashy sludge.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>That is why I found myself back at that decaying old building again.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I had stumbled across it the day before as I was wandering mindlessly through the goop.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was an old brick building covered with ivy vines, falling down in chunks, being reclaimed by nature.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Like an archeologist at a lost temple I had groped around until I could feel the flat surface of a door behind the foliage.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But it was late and the light was fading and it would soon be time to hide from the nightgangs, so I vowed to return the next day to explore it.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>As it turned out, the metal door was off its hinges and could no longer be budged but I was just thin enough to slip through the crack of the opening.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On the other side of the door there was a huge room lined with shelves.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Moss was growing on the walls and water and crud covered the floor.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I could hear a constant dripping sound of a flood in the making.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The place was like a vast empty cave sliced through with shafts of dusty sunlight coming from windows at the top.</div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span style="font-family: Times;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The shelves, miles of them it seemed, were tightly and neatly packed with tall thin rectangular plates, stiff as lizards in a display case.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I had no idea what they were but I walked along the line and danced my fingers over them the way a child would the pickets of a fence.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>If I had been able to access the Web, I might have discovered what this place was.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But the thought at that moment filled me with sadness.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I well remembered when anything you needed to know was available at the touch of a whim.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>All instantly gettable, useable, haveable.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I remember sitting before a touchscreen and swimming through mounds of data at a glance.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Was all that really gone now?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>In the beginning, the beginning of the end that is, we assumed that because the Web and the Wiki were not objects, they could never be destroyed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They would go on forever.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The Goo destroyed all of it in only two days.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Forty-eight hours was all it took for everything that had been scanned, digitized, and mounted on the Web to be lost.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I stopped before one of the plates and noticed the letters DAB written on it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Dab.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What could that mean?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Of course, as usual the problem had been foreseen but not the calamity.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What everyone informally called the Goo had been technically known for years as the graygoo problem.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But before it became real it was just a hypothetical, a mindgame for the techniks.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>It began with the nano revolution and a means of ridding the world of its trash.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Nanobot assemblers had been created to break down used materials and reform the pieces into new useable things.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The world was drowning in dead technology and so these tiny bots – smaller than a wheeze – were designed as metal and plastic and silicon eaters, breaking these substances down into microscopic particles and reforming these into new materials.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>It all sounded so simple.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Like an army of cyber-ants, they pursued their mindless tasks, self-limiting, self-generating, eating and building.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was beautiful to behold.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Until it all went haywire.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Haywire, after all, was the far point of the human storyline.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And as inevitably as a last word in a story, the nanobot control mechanism failed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The bots began to replicate wildly…68 billion offspring in ten hours.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In one full day their total population weighed half that of the earth itself.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And this vast wave like microlocusts ate through everything – every box, casing, wire, microchip – leaving only a dullish mush in its wake.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>All of the plates on the shelves as I walked by them had three letter words on them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>DIM, DOE, DUD.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It occurred to me that they might be icons of some kind and so I tried to wave my hand before them, to address them in my machine voice, to touch the words.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I tired everything I could think of but they never came to life.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“May I help you?” said a voice coming from somewhere behind me.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I wasn’t sure if I really heard that voice or not.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In a world where nothing existed anymore, memory and fancy and migraine were all mixed together.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But when I turned around I saw an old woman in a plain brown suit standing stiffly.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When I say old, I mean unnaturally old.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She had gray hair, which I had only seen in pictures, and glasses which I had only read about.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Her skin folded around the bones of her face.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I think they used to call these wrinkles.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“You startled me,” I said.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“I do not get many visitors here any more.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>None in fact.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“What is this place?”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“This is a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">camera scientia</i>,” she said in a thin but firm voice.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“I don’t know what that is, I’m sorry.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>But she smirked as though she were teasing me.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“It means a room of knowledge in Latin.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is a reading room.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“A reading room for Web access?”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“No.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>These are volumes with pages that can be read.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>She walked over to where I was standing, put her hand on the edge of one of the plates, and pulled it right out off the shelf.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In a graceful move she was now holding a box in her veiny hands.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I laughed when she did it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I had not realized until that moment that the plates were the ends of these boxes, each one a separate object that could be picked up and handled.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I simply thought they were interface icons.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“You could open these and read them,” she said miming a strange gesture that I did not recognize.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They used to have these places called libraries…”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“We still have them,” I said.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For the moment I had forgotten that the Goo had eaten all that.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“No, the word is used differently now.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The libraries I refer to were actual places.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Like this room but great buildings filled with books.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They don’t exist anymore because all those books were scanned and discarded.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“But you still have these here?”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“They were supposed to me converted too but the Goo hit before it could be done.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This room is one of the few places left on earth with such a collection.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Such as it is.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“And you live here?”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“I feel as though I have lived here for decades, perhaps centuries.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was an attendant when the room was still open.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“What do these words mean…DIM and DIN and DIS?”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Are you really interested?” she said wearily.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“The world has really left all this in the dust.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“There is nothing left to do but find something to be interested in,” I said and until I did, I had no idea why I was there at all.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“There is really only one book here; it just has many volumes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>130,000 to be exact.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is the Grand Encyclopedia.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is an amassment of all human knowledge up to the point that it was compiled in the late 21<sup>st</sup> century.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Those words appear on each volume to help you look up information.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Like a keyword?”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“No, like a categorical term.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You don’t access information here, you read about things.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“I don’t understand.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Take that volume there with the word DIM on the spine.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I don’t know for certain but I would guess that you might open that volume and find out information about the dime, which was a form of currency once, or a dimeter, which was a rhythm for poetics, or a dimple or a…”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“But why would you want to look up things in order?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It would take a terribly long time to get to the part you needed.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“You would know what you needed first by the name and then look it up under that category.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If you were interested in dinosaurs, you would go down to the volume with DIN, for example.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I understood what she was saying, I myself was intrigued by dinosaurs, but it didn’t exactly make any sense to me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Everything I would need to know about triceratops would be instantly linked and assessed for me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Compiled according to my tastes and talents.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This looking up under a category seemed an immense waste of time.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>But again I had conveniently forgotten.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>All that was gone.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Goo had eaten the triceratops along with everything else.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>As though reading my mind, the attendant said:</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“I know it may seem inefficient to someone of your age but the irony is that all that perfectly structured information you use so quickly is gone now.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Although I knew something was wrong.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“You did?”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“I could see it happening in language.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Words were disappearing.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“You mean there were more words once than there are now?”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Not more of them, just better ones.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>More beautiful ones, expressive ones.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Subtle words, ironic words.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>All slowly vanishing as though being erased from discourse.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And all we were left with was a technocratic tongue, a harsh blatancy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Flat and dull as a stale pancake.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The word for the sensation of warm water moving between the toes for instance?”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“I don’t know it.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“You see what I mean?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There once was a word of that.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m certain of it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Or the color between sunset orange and the red of teenage lust.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Thinking she was only being poetic, I turned back to the endless shelves with their pert volumes all at attention.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“I never knew such a thing existed,” I said.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“No one knows what there is outside of the Web.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That was all that we have anymore before the Goo and now we don’t even have that.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But there have actually been many such projects in the world.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Encyclopedie</i>, the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Britannica</i>, the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Earth Book</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And of course the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Humanitas Futilitas</i>, the great encyclopedia of human folly, the biggest book ever conceived, so big that it was physically impossible to open.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>But she winked at me when she said this and I knew that it was meant as a joke.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“And Alexandria,” she added.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“That’s a girl’s name.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“It was a great city in Ancient Egypt.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A man by the name of Ptolemy I built a great library there in 286 BC.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“I’m sorry I don’t know what that means.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“A very long time ago.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It had hundreds of thousands of texts carrying all of civilized knowledge.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Where is that now?”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Gone, all gone.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In 641 AD invaders fed all of it – bound volumes and papyrus scrolls – into the furnaces that fed the public baths.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The work burned for six months.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Why would anyone do such a thing?”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Because knowledge of the world is crucial but only if your enemies don’t have it.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Are we the enemies of the Goo?”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“It appears that we are.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I was intrigued by it all.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Why?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There was nothing left to care about.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Only the must of time yawning.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What did I hope to accomplish by standing there?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Unfound truths, secrets of lost worlds, the whispers of the past?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Who can say?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I had time on my hands – unmoving time like the riverwater that was sludge – and nothing else calling out to me but those mute tomes.</div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span style="font-family: Times;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Can I try one,” I asked and took one off the shelf just as I had seen her do.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span style="font-family: Times;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“I’m afraid you’re a bit too late for that.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span style="font-family: Times;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I put my fingers at the rim and tried to pry it open.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span style="font-family: Times;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“You would normally open it from the other edge,” she said, “but…”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span style="font-family: Times;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>So I turned it around and saw that the other edge was not sealed but open.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I curled my fingers around the top surface and struggled with that for a few moments without effect.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span style="font-family: Times;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“I’m sorry but they cannot be opened,” she said.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span style="font-family: Times;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“None of these volumes can be opened?”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span style="font-family: Times;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Not a single one.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span style="font-family: Times;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Why not?”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“The Goo.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“But these are not technologic.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Goo eats machines.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“It seems that it has developed a hunger for the ink used in the printing of these books.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The residue has fused the pages together on all these volumes.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“The techniks said that the Goo might be able to evolve into new forms,” I said.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“And so it has.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Something to do with the petroleum in the ink.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Let’s just hope that it does not start to develop a taste for flesh…”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I was disappointed but I overcame it when I saw that she was too and far more profoundly.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>After all, I had only had my curiosity dashed but her whole world was destroyed.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Had you read all these before the Goo?”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Oh no, not all of them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But some.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“And you remember what’s in them?”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“I have a good memory so I have a broad sense of what might be there.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Can you tell me things?”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“I don’t understand what you mean.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Tell me what was in these volumes.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“What kinds of things?”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“It doesn’t matter.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Anything.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Anything you remember.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Why would you want me to do that?”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>It was a good question and I did not have a particularly good answer for it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I knew what I knew and so did she.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But my world was gray and I was alone and the days seemed to stretch before me like an endless withering.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Why not?” I answered brightly and I could see that this silly response tickled her.</div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span style="font-family: Times;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“But where to begin such a project?” she asked.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span style="font-family: Times;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“At the beginning perhaps?” I suggested and pointing all the way down and down and down to the very first volume at the front end of the room.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At AAA.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span style="font-family: Times;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“There was an organization that helped people who drank too much,” she said with a mix of pride and doubt on her face. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“I suppose it could be done.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span style="font-family: Times;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I stayed with her for quite a while.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I don’t know how long.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Hours stretched into the kind of timeless time that children have when they are building forts.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I suppose that is just like what we were doing there as we sat on the floor, our knees almost touching.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Building a fort against the onslaught.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Just two women talking.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>But it was wonderful time as I listened to her explanations of aardvark and abacus and soon adder and Addison.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The world felt new to us then, not dying but simply hibernating, waiting for the next iteration of vitality to take hold.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Knowing it would in time.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>In fact we were all the way up to air-conditioning when I first noticed the dull gray rash on my arm…</div><!--EndFragment-->Alan Robbinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11931223050937847552noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4408320213129965937.post-25873142594519382482012-04-07T11:53:00.001-07:002012-04-07T12:17:14.389-07:00Encounter With a Nose<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">O</span></span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">n the overcrowded maglev streaming through the city, a man of Orlanda’s rough height positioned himself directly in front of the door. He was too close for comfort but with the car packed there was hardly any wiggle room and Orlanda felt awkwardly stuck. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> Symbolic, she thought, of the bigger stuckness. She had been brooding, and fairly aggressively, about the latest confrontation with her boss. Harold – and why all egotistical shmucks had to be named Harold was a great mystery to her – had called her into his office just that morning. It was the latest in a long series of squabbles over her commitment, her focus, her loyalty. Even her choice of shoes which he saw as lacking luster. But the most annoying thing of all was that she was never quite sure during these sessions whether Harold was berating or seducing her. Dressing down or undressing. Such was the insidious evil of all Harolds everywhere.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> All this in spite of the fact that the work in her nanolab was going well. It was thanks to her that the company would soon have the jump on a system that could inject nanobots into the mucosa through a nasal inhalant. And not just fix-it bots either but neurobots, linguabots, calculobots. You would soon be able to learn Portuguese just my shoving a tube up your nose and shpritzing.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> So what was his problem?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> Orlanda was getting good and worked up in the privacy of her own brain about all this when a boy wearing SimSpecs entered the train. He was braying at some dumb virtuality inside of them as he wedged in behind her and pressed Orlanda like a pressed leaf against the man facing her. Naturally she jostled and adjusted and made the best of it, but no matter how hard she tried, she could not move far enough away. Not in body nor in mind. It was like pressing your face up to a mirror, she thought. And suddenly the anger at her boss, the regret at missing that promotion, and the delicious idea of getting her resume together…all these were squeezed out by the man before her.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> The trip between the lab and the burb where Orlanda lived was not that long. She could have walked the distance in an hour and done more for her heart. But she had gotten lazy in many ways and the train was only one example. And now, trapped too close to a total stranger, only one thing loomed. Orlanda tried to ignore it, tried to inch away from it physically and mentally, tried to daydream around it. But it was rush hour on the maglev and there was no leeway for any of this. No way out. No ignoring it. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> There it was right there in front of her.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> That nose.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> Too close, too looming, too present. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> In fact, as the train swooshed forward riding the thinnest cushion of magnetized plasma, the nose seemed to be poking her, probing her, pinning her back against the boy standing behind her. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> Repulsive, she thought, and rude too.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> Orlanda might have screamed at this point but she stifled it. Instead, she closed her eyes, dreamed of dinner, wondered what was on the Glob that night, and prayed for the next station. But it was no use. Think of anything, she thought. Even of Harold with that slightly leery frown he could muster while finding faults. Or the way he would lick his lips with a wormy tongue as he waited for her to explain herself.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> But that was no good either. Peeking out from under closed lids, it was still there taunting her. There was no avoiding it. And so, like a phobic facing her fears, Orlanda opened her eyes full bloom and looked directly at it. The offending organ only seemed to look back daringly but Orlanda was stubborn as well and faced this nemesis with the courage of a grunt.</span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> It was a wide nose, an impressive nose, grand as a monument yet familiar as a cough. Even mysterious in a mysterious sort of way. Close in like that, Orlanda had to slightly cross her eyes to resolve it. And that, in turn, narrowed her peripheral vision to the point that the nose was soon all there was and all that mattered. The stranger had, in a sense, become a nose. Just that and only that. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> All this was no idle speculation since Orlanda, of course, knew a thing or two. In fact she had commissioned the Nasal Metrics study to help in the design of a delivery system that would work in most noses. She knew all about nares flares and nostrilosity and canal ratios. But all this was technical, knowledge </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">about</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> rather than knowledge </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">of</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">, distant and rational.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> Yet here before her was the real deal, burly and blunt. Orlanda suddenly felt she knew very little about the object of her own research. What little snigger of fate, she wondered, had delivered her to this nose at this moment? Orlanda started to shake her head at the irony but that meant almost rubbing noses with the stranger and so she held perfectly still and studied it instead.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> The nose before her began between the eyes at a dent in the brow ridge. Just like all noses. Fair enough. Yet only slightly below this spot she observed a telling ridge. It was a small edge formed by skin pulled tightly over a misplaced bone. Hint of a former trauma, a childhood accident perhaps. Had the man fallen off a hoverboard or a bike? Or had he been punched by a local bully? And if that were the case, had this nosy fellow punched back? Orlanda for her part would probably not have. She hated confrontations, never felt comfortable making her case, arguing back. Maybe that was just the kind of drive that Harold had been complaining about. Except that she knew the rumor about the woman in the Genelab with no IQ who had gotten the bonus because she wore tiny skirts.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> Fucking Harold, Orlanda thought.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> But back to the nose.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It boldly thrust downward after this ridge, then up and off the plane of the face, leaving the cheeks behind as it soared frontward, putting the tip slightly out of focus. At this point, it veered somewhat jauntily to the left, the leading edge of a great ship slightly off course. Who would own such a nose, she wondered as a sway rocked her back and gave her a wider view. Selfish man, brunt of a man, always looking out for himself. Rich perhaps, but through the consistent abuse of others. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> That was a fancy way of putting things, she thought. Orlanda had her research but no poetry. She never read Rostand on the subject, never heard of Tycho Brahe and his copper knob, knew nothing of the theores of Galton or the bizarre ideas of Freud’s contemporary, Wilhelm Fleiss, regarding neurosis and the nasal passage. Still, she thought, as any fool can see…this is the nose of a man who looks down at others over it. And she suddenly understood why Harold always insisted on standing over her while she sat in the chair.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> At the tip, the stranger’s nose widened into the popular bulbous wedge. Some Darwinian somewhere would know the adaptive purpose of the nose bulb, but Orlanda did not and up close and personal like this, the bulb seemed absurd and clownish. There was a small pale hair sprouting from the end, something a spouse would point out for removal. Aha, she thought. Not married. Too self-centered, too used to having his own way.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> The two orby bumps on either side of the nasal tip where smooth like stones on the shore. There were a number of blackheads on them and a teensy scar on the left one. More trauma. Ex-wife hits him with a pan, the goat. For cheating and calling it self-expression.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> Perhaps the nose was the ultimate repository of life’s experiences, readable if one only had the key. Orlanda did not but that did not stop her from developing an opinion. This man was a Harold, he had to be! His nose gave him away and at this point Orlanda had to fight the urge to give the stranger’s nasal tip one mean motherfucker of a gnaw.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> Then she notices some asymmetry at the nostrils; one was oval and the other one round. Pretty common, which is why the applicator tip had to be morphic. Fit all holes, so to speak. A few hairs at the edge guarded the entrance against pollen dust, but nothing worth taking a clipper to. The applicator had to be long enough to bypass these. Deeper inside, blackness disappeared into the block of the man’s head and Orlanda wondered where they might lead if followed. Up to the eyes, back to the brainstem, inwards to the soul? And what would you find there, pray tell? A wee homonculus preening in front of a teensy weensy mirror?<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> Why oh why had she not walked home?<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> The wind of a maglev passing by in the other direction rocked the car and the boy with the goggles teetered, sending Orlanda and the stranger into a bobble. When they recovered their positions, Orlanda noticed a tender beige fur covering the entire nose, underlaced with delicate red streaks. It was amazing in a sense…the more you looked, the more you saw. But it was revolting in another…both the saw and the seen went downhill after the initial curiosity. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> She first thought Harold would help her, guide her career. He was well known in the bot biz for managing new products. But when she instantly rebuffed his early advances, he became more interested in her failures than her successes.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> The train swooshed like a comet around a bend in the track. The station was nearing. The nose did not budge. Defiant, dramatic, daunting. Orlanda developed the urge to do something. Anything. Make a move. Flick it, take a nip, fibble it with all fingers. Something! Talk back, refuse to be victimized. Take a stand! Tell Harold to go fuck himself. Maybe even quit and go to one of the other nanoworks. Start fresh, out with the old, today is the first day. That kind of thing. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> The holophonics announced the next stop. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> This was it. End of the line. Orlanda felt that she could not take another minute of it. She ran a dry tongue across the tops of her lower teeth. She clenched her jaw. Something would have to be done. Life as it was could not go on. She knew then and there that she would simply have to take a bite out of this man’s nose. There was no other way. It was too tight in the train to sing to it, dance on it, pinch or twist it. There was no other way to change the course of her life. A dramatic move, even if a criminal one, was needed. Right here, right now. Take a stand! <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> Orlanda stood there, teeth at the ready, in a kind of paralysis…enthralled, readyset, poised. A woman determined to do a thing. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> And then the train bounced lightly and the station lights flooded the car, and the blur of standers filled the windows, and the black hole in the center of the Milky Way hiccupped. And the owner of the nose who had not moved in seven minutes, amazingly, flipped around and faced the door as he prepared to exit the car. His rear profile revealed an entirely new and unexpected shape. The nose was actually quite a bit longer than Orlanda had originally thought. Wedgier, like a prow. Orlanda shuddered. The nose that she had come to know so well was not quite what he thought it was. Not bulbous and roundymoundy at all. But stern and French. This was a face-forward, unwavering nose, an arrow through a chaotic life.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> Admirable even.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> You had to see it from a new angle to see it better.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> The insight suddenly filled Orlanda with a sense of relief. And she knew in an instant what had to be done. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> The doors opened, the crowd pushed. The stranger, being right near the door, got off first and breathed a sigh of relief. Then the boy, shoved by the exiters, pushed Orlanda out of the car against her will. The doors closed and Orlanda was standing flatly on the platform as a new crowd gathered around her all nosey and bothersome. Orlanda stood there for a long time until she came to a final resolution. The whole thing was out of hand. A waste of the time of one’s life which, after all, was all one had. Offensive, oppressive, and a bunch of other sives. Something had to be done.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> All right, Orlanda thought to herself, that’s that. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> Done. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> Decision made.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> From now on, I walk home from work.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText" style="tab-stops: .25in;"><br />
</div>Alan Robbinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11931223050937847552noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4408320213129965937.post-140652298469209272012-04-07T11:51:00.004-07:002012-04-07T12:19:13.573-07:00Sinister Arabesques<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“You who have looked and never seen<o:p></o:p></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">or seeing only knew through science<o:p></o:p></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">judge me not with your eyes all gleam<o:p></o:p></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">For an anthroid stands here in defiance.”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I-EZRA# <o:p></o:p></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> They have asked me to record this memoir before they judge me. I don’t know why. If they think I have done something wrong, then they should simply end me. Yet I sense that they feel something. Feel…something. Guilty perhaps although I cannot imagine why. I can detect it in their facial muscles and vocal patterns. I asked the prosecutor if he felt this but he sat silent. Perhaps I am wrong but I have lived with humans long enough to know that feelings frighten them and they have created gorgeous masks of rationality to hide behind.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> While it is we anthroids who wear our emotions on the outside plain as a face.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> To get the basic fact out of the way, I did kill my friend, Dr. Pithecus. My </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">friend.</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> They have told me not to use the word </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">master</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> because it would prejudice the jury. This I do not understand. Is the word I use to describe her more important than her own life which I took no matter what I call her? </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> After all, the forensics are in place and the evidence is well established. I myself would conclude my own guilt from the data. And in any case, why would I try to hide what I have done? I am not ashamed of it, quite the contrary. It is these others, these investigators, who seem ashamed. Why would I be? I loved Dr. Pithecus as though she were my own sister, which in a sense I suppose she was. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> I killed Dr. Pithecus because she asked me to. Not in so many words, of course, because words can be mistaken. I know that. But she said that she wanted to die and as her friend I had an obligation to help her. Do you not think that an anthroid and a woman can be friends? I think so. And as a friend I tried to help. But I understand that the word </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">why</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> lingers like a whiff. I believe that this is what perturbs them. Not why I would do such a thing but why she would </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">want</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> me to. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> Does that matter so very much, I asked? And they said, it is all that matters now.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> And so I agreed to this task, this statement, as a kind of discipline or chore to keep the mind from wondering. Oh, did I just say wondering? I meant wandering. I apologize for my language. I am still learning. Words are still a bit slippy. Aren’t they for you too?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> In any case, I shall record the entire series of events just as it happened to the best of my – what is the word? – amiability. No…to the best of my ability. Just what happened. Perhaps this can help the next generation of bioengineers to avoid the mistakes of their precursors. To avoid the mistake that was me.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> This is a sensible idea. In fact, I think that all murderers should keep diaries. Humans I mean. It is the very least they can do.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoBodyText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“Angers mingle like lingual rumors</span></div><div class="MsoBodyText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">They cannot be distinguished or read</span></div><div class="MsoBodyText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> The psyche is a swamp of ill humors </span></div><div class="MsoBodyText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> Sinister arabesques pour out of the head.”</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>I-EZRA#</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> Dr. Pithecus was a great fan of I-EZRA#, the first anthroid poet. She used to stick some of his verses up on the lab wall. I must admit, I never quite understood them myself. I still believe that words mean what they mean or they mean nothing. But I am learning that not everyone is so…careful. And I could see that the poems touched her in some way, meant something to her. Words. Sometimes I think that words are all you humans have and so you cling to them like molecules of oxygen in a thinning world. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> Words are funny that way. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> Many times I heard Dr. Pithecus not just reciting the words but singing them. I did not know what she was doing at first but then I asked her about it. She always explained things very clearly to me and I loved…I mean I liked her for that. She explained that singing was a kind of motionless movement and this made sense to me. I understood the joy of motion. After all, that was my gift, to move through the world and in it with this body.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> I saw then how words could come to be…flexible. And how lovely it must be to be able to sing a song. If my understanding is right, then songs may have rhyme but no reason. They can be as pointless as a reflection. I should like to learn to song a song someday.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> Dr. Pithecus was studying the way my fractal neuronets responded to open linguistic environments. Of all human systems, you see, language is the most challenging. I could be easily confused, she said. She was concerned about how I might conduct myself in the complex world outside of the lab in a world of words. She was a wonderful person with delicate fingers and moved like a dancer through the ether.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> A dancer through the ether…is that a poem?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> I know that they are troubled by the notion that I was in love with Dr. Pithecus. That is what they all want to know. Can an anthroid love? I cannot answer that question for them. The word in question is too unclear, the parameters are morphic. Perhaps I was in love, although I would be hard put to know what that actually means. I followed her with my eyes, inhaled her fragrance, touched her hand, and did whatever she asked me to do. I waited for her every day with a sense of longing.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> Is that love? Then if it is, I must be guilty of it. Maybe this is the reason they want me to be ended.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> An anthroid that can love must be a terrible confusion for them. Even more perhaps than one that can kill.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “There is a heart that does not beat<o:p></o:p></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">a gush of blood so still in time<o:p></o:p></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">and yet we turn our eyes to meet<o:p></o:p></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">the silicate dream of the divine.”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I-EZRA#</span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> Like all anthroids, I have been called many things.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> A neo-zombie, a re-aniMan, even a modern Frankenstein monster. Dr. Pithecus always told me to ignore these names. She said that sticks and stones can break anthroid bones but words could never really hurt me. I took that to be a poem about forgiveness.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> I can see how unsettling the mere fact of my existence might be to certain people. After all, they have taken a dead body – a corpse as you call it – and placed an artificial brain within it. It makes good scientific sense since no mechanical body could ever approach the exquisite complexity of the human form. Why not take advantage of that engineering?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> Naturally they have waited until anyone who knew the body as a person was long gone so as not to upset them with the sight of the dead walking. Still, the mere thought of cadavers moving through the world with robotic brains is, apparently, still disturbing. There have even been demonstrations against us, rules limiting us, ethical debates swirling about us.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> My having killed Dr. Pithecus has not exactly quieted these voices, as you can imagine.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> Yet no one yet has asked me about what Dr. Pithecus felt, what </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">she</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> wanted. They do not seem interested. You would think this would matter quite a bit to them. It did to me. After all, it was her deepest desire that I carried out. But they only want to know about my thoughts, my actions. As though these were the only factors.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> I have tried to explain, in clear words, careful words, how upset she was. How very much she wanted to end her life. How she said with such a simple precision “I just want to die.” Just want to die. What can be more direct than that? But the investigators stopped me and told me to only report on my own decisions. What I did and nothing more. That is odd, isn’t it? The origin of an event is the cause of it, simple logic. But they seem not to want to know about that.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> For example, I knew that Dr. Pithecus was in love, even though she never said so. Hopelessly in love, if I may say so. And that her love was as impossible as mine. Because Dr. Orenstein, with whom she held hands under the table, told her that he was getting married. To someone else. He told her in secret, his voice hushed. I know because I measured the decibels. Of course, it would never have occurred to him that I would be listening but I was because I listened to her all the time. To him I was nothing much more than a carcass with a fancy To Do list. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> Dr. Pithecus stood up quickly after he told her and began to cry. I did not know what crying was but I knew that it was something important. She called Dr. Orenstein a bastard and ran from the lab. At first I did not understand why she would be upset. I knew that marriage was a good thing between people but in this case it seemed to wound her. I could tell this by her pupil dilation, bodily heat, facial muscle tension, and other factors. After a while, I came to understand that she must have been in love with Dr. Orenstein and now felt betrayed by him. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> I know that I do not have a heart or at least that the one I have is not my own. Yet my stasis sank – if that is the right way to put it – when I sensed how upset she was. Needless to say…but then needless to say is rather needless to say, don’t you think? Words are so very congested. Needless to say, I simply could not bear to see her in such distress.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“The killing sun smiles brightly<o:p></o:p></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">on the neverlasting cheek <o:p></o:p></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">the lies can burn so slightly<o:p></o:p></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">even while the heart may break.”</span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I-EZRA#<o:p></o:p></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> I-EZRA# is not an anthroid. How could it be with such a depth of words? It is a neuronet that is able to mimic the yearning of the heart. Mimic it better than most humans. I envy it the envy it must attract.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> One day in the lab, Dr. Pithecus began to cry again and to talk about her feelings. She was trying to explain how she felt about Dr. Orenstein. I do not really think she was trying to make this clear to me but more to herself. I have noticed that humans use words that way, like a mirror. I even find myself doing that. Thoughts race by, bits of insight, inner tidbits, thin sensations, specks of images, impulses pulsing. They rush by in confusion, contradiction. Weak, strong, light, dark. expanding. The constantly collapsing universe of the mind. Now wide as all time, now timeless, now contracted onto a vast indifferent point. The quickness in all its glory from the first to the last. All made real by words.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “I just want to die,” she said.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> Just like that. Pure. Simple.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> They said this was just an expression, that she did not really mean it. But how can you not mean what you say? I know that words can be ambiguous, my body may be deceased but my brain is not. But I could read her biometrics, I knew that she was distraught when she said it. And I could not tolerate the idea that she might suffer to be alive. She had always been so kind to me, so open. I wanted to help her. And so I held her so closely that she could not breathe. At first, she seemed to relax in my arms but then as her diaphragm strained, she began to struggle. I wanted so much to help her that it took all my – is it called willpower? – to ignore her resistance.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> That was the only time we embraced. This is what you would call breakhearting, is it not? No, I am sorry…heartbreaking. Maybe I was too cold to the touch or perhaps the remnant of death within me was repulsive to her. I shall never know. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> I dream now only of forgetting. What a blessing that would be! To make a clean sweep of my robocortex. Far better than not knowing. To wake and know that all was unremembered and full of possibility again. All the little memories: that bully in the school who made my nose bleed, my favorite shirt that they ripped and thought it was funny, the spider on my shoelace. Hitting my nail with the hammer. The girl who kicked me in the knee in the closet in the third grade. These are not really my memories of course, only ones that they recorded for me. But they are as true for me as the circuits that hold them.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> But my memories of Dr. Pithecus I will never give up.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> Never.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> Perhaps I too wish I were dead.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> Not because I have done anything wrong but because I long to be held by one who is no longer here. That is why, no matter what the jury says, I am not guilty of murder. Only of affection. They have called this an act of homicide. But that cannot be the case either because I am not human. Only a virtual mind inside a disposed of body. Not human.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> Oh but then, I guess, Dr. Pithecus was.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“Log of a stolen moment decrees<o:p></o:p></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">endless beginnings at any price<o:p></o:p></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> Not him, nor him, the many me’s<o:p></o:p></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">dissolving (in resistors) and paradise.”<o:p></o:p></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I-EZRA#<o:p></o:p></span></i></div><h1><o:p><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></o:p></h1><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> At the funeral, I sat in the back and wondered what to feel. I felt the fluid inside my eyeballs but they somehow did not leak out into tears. I can only say that I felt some kind of counterpoint of scream and silence. A pantomime with wails. All thoughts of feelings but no feelings themselves. Nothing in the middle where human beings are. Nothing so simple as tears at a funeral.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> But then I am nothing less than the perfect human machine. Living without life, you see? Full of hot blood and cold calculation and fluid behind the eyes. An automaton mimicking a man. No one can tell by looking at me. But still inside, the blood simmers.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> The prosecutors have said that I was jealous of her feelings for someone else. And in that case, am guilty as charged. But I do not know what they mean. Did I love her…I cannot say. Did I care what happened to her…yes. Was I trying to carry out her wishes…very much so. In that case, if they accept my argument, then it was an act of friendship but not murder.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> Dr. Pithecus said that there is always madness in love but there is always reason in madness.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> That was beautiful. Not the statement, which borders on the inane, but the look on her face. She was so gentle when she tried to make me see. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> The prosecutors said all this was just a clever mask of words. I took that as a compliment meaning that I had mastered those words well enough to hide behind. Words within words, fancy as an astrolabe. Is that the right analogy? Those devices for measuring the positions of the stars, so highly crafted that quite precise measurements could be obtained. Yes. Is there not a parallel between astrolabes and arguments?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> Did you think that you were the only ones who questioned your own existence? I too have been scooped out of nothing, the very nothing at the center of life. Yes, scooped out of that and plunked down here. Born into a pool of iridium, into the hardworld, the world of edges. For no apparent reason and not even for forever but just my lifelong. And then, just when the fog clears, when patterns form and understanding gleams, just at that moment, scooped back. Now I ask you? Is that fair? Is that right? For humans or anthroids? Is that any way to run a universe?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> At the end of the trial, I asked them what they want me to say here. And they said, “just tell the truth.” Truth? I have scanned somewhere that there are many different types of truths: the whole and nothing but, the half truth, the unproven falsehood, the one that belies the lies, truth in advertising, the withheld truth, the truth by edict, by decree, by terror.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> Dr. Pithecus once told me that the truth was bullshit but without the laughter. I don’t know what laughter is so I cannot judge the truth of that. But I once saw a juggler magnificently juggling nothing in the dark. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> Perhaps this is what they want from me.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> A magical performance.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> There is a small chance that there are no anthroids. That I am simply a man gone mad and inventing this tale as a life jacket. In which case what I have written here are nothing but lies. But even so they are truthful lies or maybe lies that in their lying tell the truth. Like good fiction. Like a screamplay. Excuse me, I meant to say a screenplay.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> I have tried to do my best do not think my chances are very good. Already I can see the grim stares on their faces. As though their minds are already made up. Have I convinced them of my innocence? That remains to be seen. But there is a silence lingering that is not at all comforting.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> I wonder what death will be for me. Perhaps this is the way it ends. Not with a bang but with a “this is the way it ends.” In other words, with words and words and words unending.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> The rest is sirens.</span></div>Alan Robbinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11931223050937847552noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4408320213129965937.post-17990462030769609632012-04-07T11:49:00.007-07:002012-04-08T15:07:06.122-07:00Welcome to Nowhere<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span> <br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -1.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">1.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He was one of the blunt. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">One of those frank faces you see crossing the border nowadays. No idea about what happened, no clue what to do now, no future to mourn. No poetry in his soul. Typical Nylander with his brushed smile and smart suit. And that posture that was all business and no prophet. A copy of </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Better and Better </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">under his arm. Typical. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But he had a hat, an old time fedora like in the movies, and that made him different, made him stand out in this bald world. It looked silly – like a statement with no point - and that was the reason I noticed him at all at the bordergate. In fact, it was the reason I spoke to him, that dumb hat.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“Ixnay on de capadoccio, amigo. Puedo getcha self nixed you don’t watchaback,” I said. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But I knew from the dim return that he didn’t speak street grub so I changed my tune. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“The hat,” I said pointing. “Makes you stand out in this territory. Es muy pelligroso. Comprende? Understand?”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“It was a gift,” he said, tapping the brim.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He was tall – over six feet – or maybe it was just that the way he stood there that made me feel every snippet of my mere 60 inches. But I liked him right away. He looked like that guy in the detective series. Handsome, I suppose, but decent looking. Someone you could trust. No guile in his smile.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“You beam skelter, ami,” I said. “Sabe la via roundtown…”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“I’m sorry, I…”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“I mean, do you need directions?”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“I’m looking for a friend. Name of Sloane, Polono Sloane. He lives in the Grand.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I shook my head sidewards.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“I used to nest…live…there,” I said. “Along with about a million other folks of course. But no…never heard of him.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“What’s the best way to get there?”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“To the Grand? The mono, I guess. If it’s working. Which it usually isn’t. Why don’t I drive you?”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“You have a working car?”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">That was typical too. The Nylanders only got the bad news from these parts. It was their way of feeling superior I suppose, knowing that nothing worked back here in the States. No electric, no cars. In fact, it was not all that bad, though it was bad enough.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“Worky wicky,” I said and walked him towards the checkout but he stopped in his tracks.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“How much,” he asked and rubbed his fingers together in the multilingua sign for cash. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“Nah, something to do. Fission down.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“Fission?”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“Meaning…don’t worry about it.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But a suspicious look crossed his face wincewise: “You work for the Feds?”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“No! I’m a reporter for the Herald. I loit at the rim…”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“Huh?”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“I hang out at the gate sometimes just to see what’s crossing the border these days.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“I didn’t know there were still newspapers here.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“Yup…and reporters to report in them. It’s just that there’s no news.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“How could that be?”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “The Feds run all the media, so they report what they’re told to. I can’t complain. I get a salary and lots of free time. And you, amigo, get a free ride.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in; text-indent: .5in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">At the checkpoint, I stuck my finger into the scanner and got a nod to move on. But of course he was stopped and the guard started yammering at him in grub.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“What the hell does he want?” he asked me.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“Your middle finger,” I said.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“My finger? What for?”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I held my own up for him to see and got a frown back. But I wasn’t throwing him the old wazoo, just pointing to the base of it where series of black bars of varying width ran around like a tattooed ring.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “ID. Volks-tagen. It’s a bar code that identifies everyone here. They’re permanent for us but as a visitor you’ll need a temporary one for as long as you’re here.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“I didn’t know about that. What do you need it for?”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“Everything. Shop for food, get a job, pass all the Scans…the checkpoints.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“Checkpoints? More than the ones here at the gate?<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“Checkpoints all over.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“What are they checking? Everyone knows the USA is bankrupt, there’s nothing to buy, sell, or steal. So what does it matter who goes where?”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“Beside the point, ami. It matters because it gives the Feds something to do.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“Which is?”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“Check up on people.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">With that illogic, he agreed to submit as the guard set up the gizmo to fry his finger. They explained to him that his tattoo was special, only for visitors. It would last four days. After that it disintegrated. If he didn’t leave before that happened, he would be stuck, would not be able to pass any Scan and therefore could not go back home to NYLA. He seemed troubled about that little piece of news but it was too late once he was tagged. As we walked to the parking lot, he started rubbing his finger as though it hurt his sense of himself.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“Fission down, ami. Just make sure you leave on the sixth day – that’s next Saturday – and it will all gravy out. The Feds got thousands of cheap bar code readers when Wal-Mart collapsed, so they figured this was an easy way to keep tabs on everyone.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“Fascist idiots,” he said but he was really just upset about the finger thing.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“Talkypoint, ami?”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“Huh?”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“A word of advice? Don’t mention the government. Ever. Good or bad. Anything you say can be held against you.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“You mentioned it.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“Ah, but I’m a reporter. Danger is my middle name.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“And your first?” he asked and held out his duke for a shake. And suddenly there it was again, that good nature, that tendency to trust. It was irresistible. And so even though we didn’t shake hands anymore here, I pumped his mitt.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“Oh sorry. Francie Fayes,” I said. “Pleased.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“Nilly,” he said. “William Nilly.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> We drove in my two-seater across the desert. It worked on a solar pump – we still had plenty of sun at least – so although it did not exactly swoop, it moved. In about twenty minutes the familiar buildings of Vegas rose up from the sandy expanse like sandcastles. I always felt better back in town but I had no idea what he felt. Nyla was as far from the USA as the moon, even though it was right next door. Besides, he was young, maybe fifteen years younger than me, so all of this was probably very natural to him. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> But I was just old enough to remember when it all happened. That day back in 2105 when New York and Los Angeles seceded from the USA to form the Republic of NYLA. All those hotjobs and pepcats on the coasts who did not want anything to do with the collapse of the country. The USA had become a z-rate paranoition on the perennial brink of bankruptcy. But NY and LA were rich and could afford to bow out. So the two cities made their own country, split in two parts and separated by a 2,500 mile wide shitheap of debt and despair that was once the great United States. Nyla was not big but it was wealthy, more of a multinational corporation than a nation, united not by land or language so much as a deep distaste for failure. Oh and they had a really pretty logo on their flag.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Vegas still the Western capital?” he asked eyeing the relics of the grand old days of the casinos as I veered the car onto the strip.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Yup. One of the few cities that still works here. We have water and solar, and even some electricity a few times a day.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“Wow,” he said, meaning not wow.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“So who’s this ami of yourn?”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“What?”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“This friend you’re looking for. Apollo?”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“Polono Sloane,” he said. “I knew him back in school. Haven’t actually seen him in a few years. He got word to me that he was in trouble and needed some money. So I came out here to help him out.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">One thing the Nylanders had, besides hope, was money. For important things like pure luxuries and even for symbolic bibbles like hats. And for a needy friend too…that was real money.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“Why not just transfer it?”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“Nyla banks won’t really deal with the USA anymore,” he said. “Besides, I’ve never been out here before. Curious.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“Ah…a newbie. A fingerling. I knew that.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“How?”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“You have the look of a girl who still believes in love,” I said. “That’s why I diced you on the hat, ami. But you should hide it. It’ll mark you here as a Coastal with cashypoo.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He dutifully took the hat off, crushed it into a ball, and shoved it into his case but then groused: “But I don’t carry cash with me. No one does. Everyone knows that.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“I didn’t mean money,” I said. “you might need some scrip for black market food and stuff but that’s small potatoes. It’s not your wad they want. It’s the finger. That be worth mucho grief.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“My finger?”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“Sure. Ice you, snip it off, and use it to cross the border into Nyla. Way exit this hellhole. Middle fingers are a regular black market here.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Nilly closed his fist as if to protect the digit, then put his hand in his pocket.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“Don’t worry. It’s not that common. But don’t hide it either, that’s a dead giveaway.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> I guess I was enjoying the whole guide routine, so I was overplaying the drama a bit. But it was true about the finger. Corpses of newbies kept turning up all the time with middle fingers missing, the underground trade in exit visas. I was surprised that he hadn’t heard about that. But the more we talked the more I realized that he practiced a kind of slimjim knowledge of things. Yes, William Nilly had worked out the details of his ethos to exquisite perfection. He had no philosophy, no theory, no moral rash. That was the way with Nylanders…commerce was going to save them from the horrors. Like the rest of his countrymen, he was simply trying to get by with the thinnest impact possible for a man with a hat he could not wear.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> As we drove down the strip, passed all the rusty signs and the dead neon, I gave him the short drift of things. It was only called Las Vegas back when there was energy. Now it was just Vegas, another echotown like so many across the country. Those elaborate facades of glitz and glam were all phony faces now, masks of the past. The stone-age poor lived inside the vast empty palaces now. There was still some juice flowing but only a trickle. The random flow of water from a sorry tap, the rare TV running static and old reruns, the odd cold bulb. Ten blocks of ancient razz and then the eternal scorching sand all around. The Indians called this place Xandalapa, meaning nowhere, but it could just as well have been Cityville, USA. What the country had become. A relic of a lost time when someone gave a shit.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> I pulled into the lot behind The Grand and went in with him. It was the least I could do because, to a newbie, the reality of the place was overwhelming. After all, this was the former MGM Grand, a whole city unto itself with its half a million square feet. Just like all the other old hotel/casinos, it was now owned by the government and run like a township with its own markets, cops, garbage. All of the mistakes of shoving people together were on display there. Rich folks on top with some elbow room, workers at the bottom nudging for square inches, and those huge casinos that were now tent cities filled with the lingering poor. But if you know cities, you know that each one has its own rhythms, its own codes. I wasn’t sure Nilly would figure those out before getting wilked so I helped him find the box his friend had rented.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> Polono Sloane lived at the West End of the place, in a tiny and none too savory crib so small you could stand and eat, sit and shit, lie down and sleep, but not all at once. There was hardly anything in the room and what was there looked boned. A bed with no sheets, a small refrigerator, some papers. There was a television – we called them teeves – in the corner, one of those old flat screens retroed up to a foot-pumped hydro-generator to make a glowering box that mainly showed sprizzle. I could not make out what was on through the ruzz, which struck you as the visual equivalent of strep throat. But I guessed that it was another rerunning of the show the locals called Los Gilliganos. The Feds ran all the teeve programming and they loved old television series. Got the rights somehow and ran them endlessly. Especially this one with the hero - Gilligan, a likeable bungler – seen as everyman struggling to survive in a world of chaotic forces. He was a dreamer whose dreams came to naught, as they ought to. The ship that never came to save him from his island was the future itself. It was perfect, a real brainwash. Accept your misery, America, because there’s nothing else to be. The Zen of blah.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> Welcome to Nowhere.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “This is no way to run a country,” Nilly humphed.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “It’s working great though.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “It’s falling apart!”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “That’s the genius of it. Once all the old isms failed and destroyed the country, they came up with a new theory called bankruptism. The ultimate acceptance of failure. Nothing left to lose, nothing left to win. The eternal slump. It’s perfect. No one expects anything, so nothing has to be done.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Don’t you want better things for yourself?”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Mr. Nilly, the greatest danger to life on earth was never the bomb or the carbon dioxide. It was hope. Eternal, bibbling, blustering disneying hope. The Feds found a cure for it in a crushing despair that borders on revelation. We’re happy here, happy to be Americans, happy to be alive. We don’t need anything more because there isn’t.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> He gave me one of those sidewards glances that said he had no idea if I was being sarcastic or not. Couldn’t help him there. I had no idea any more myself. Then I noticed a couple of photos pinned to the wall. One was of a cat with an odd expression on its puss; like it was grinning at you. Another photo showed Nilly with his arm around another man. They were smiling and standing somewhere on the streets of New York. I remembered New York, always vertical, always uptilting. But I didn’t tell him that because I just didn’t want him to know more about me than he had to.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “That your ami?” I asked.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “That’s him. I never understood why he left and came here. Now that I see what the USA has become…I </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">really</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> don’t get it.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Left? You mean he came here voluntarily? Nutballer maybe?”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “He had a daughter. She was stuck here during the Secession. He finally came back to get her out about five years ago. But he never came back.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “What happened to her?”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Dunno. Him either. Another reason I decided to come.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> Then the phone toned.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">2.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> Something about that call seemed to upset him enough to furrow his upbeat brow. It turned out to be a woman who was trying to get to Sloane too, but all she would say was that her name was Erica and that the phone was not safe. That was true if you had something to hide so I told Nilly to arrange to meet her at the Ballroom. That was a nice nickname left over from the casino days but no balls were held there. Instead it was a teeming indoor market for stolen goods and third-hand food. It was hard to locate anyone in that sprawl but the moment she showed up, she drew his attention like a collision.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> I could see it in his face…he was instantly hooked, crooked, noosed by her. I understood it myself even though I was a woman. Erica was an exquisite beauty with penetrating eyes, deep lips, lavish black hair. She was one of those women who seemed to know things about the secrets of bodies, like how to breathe a soft fullness into her shoulders, how to lick her lips and plump them up, how to speak with tingly breath. How to look through the lashes of the upper lids. Oh and that other thing…she was trim and graceful with a tiny waist but she had huge breasts. Full and round and she carried them like a heavy desire she could barely restrain. Someday, someone, somewhere will explain to me why men go toppy-turvy-tipsy over big boobs. In the meantime, though, I watched him watch her and felt like a voyeur.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “What did you mean that I was in danger? You don’t know me,” he said without a trace of grace even though he probably intended it.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “If you’re looking for Polono Sloane, you are,” she said.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Why? Has he done something?”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Everyone’s done something,” she replied.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> Erica began to wander around the market in that summery dress of hers, cut low at the bust, a lacy rim tickling the knees. We had nothing left here but we still had sex and she was full of it. Nilly followed because he had to and I did too but only because I was curious. There seemed to be a mystery in the works and for a reporter with nothing to report that was better than drugs to a druggie.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “How do you know him?” Nilly asked her with a slight twinge of anxiety.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “I don’t. I know someone who does. And that someone told me what happened.” <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “So where is he?” Nilly asked. “Can I see him?”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Not a good idea. The rebels have him.” <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> The word hit Nilly like a slap. I guess he really was not ready to understand the situation back here in the old USA. He was about to slap back with another question but Erica was distracted by a man selling Nitro. She started negotiating with him in grub, lost on poor Nilly. So he turned to me and said:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: -.5in; margin-top: 0in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“What’s this all about?”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: -.5in; margin-top: 0in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“Shake me,” I said. “I’m just here to kill a cat.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: -.5in; margin-top: 0in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“But you work for the media, a newspaper you said.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: -.5in; margin-top: 0in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“Yes, but we don’t investigate here. We tell people what they want to hear.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: -.5in; margin-top: 0in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“And what’s that?”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: -.5in; margin-top: 0in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“Everyone is screwed, so screw everyone.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: -.5in; margin-top: 0in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“Are there really rebels?”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: -.5in; margin-top: 0in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“So they say.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: -.5in; margin-top: 0in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“But are there?”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: -.5in; margin-top: 0in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“You have to understand the meaning of truth here, Mr. Nilly.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: -.5in; margin-top: 0in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“Here?”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“There is one way to lie but many kinds of truth. The truth that is true only in the morning, the whole truth which is withheld by consensus, the truthful lie…”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: -.5in; margin-top: 0in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“I don’t get you.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in; tab-stops: -9.0pt; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“I know. You Nylanders have a fine language for money. Adding, dividing, percenting. In a word….clarity. But I’m afraid you can’t translate what we have here.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: -.5in; margin-top: 0in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“What’s that?”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: -.5in; margin-top: 0in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“A profound ability to ignore.”</span><sup><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></sup></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: -.5in; margin-top: 0in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"Is that good or bad?" Nilly laughed.</span><sub><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></sub></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: -.5in; margin-top: 0in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"You see? That's precisely what I mean.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: -.5in; margin-top: 0in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“What is?”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“What you take for vagary is art for us, Mr. Nilly. The Indians have an expression: </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Axtal Shingshilla</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">. It means…speak your words clearly but mumble your thoughts. If we had invented computers, they would be machines that could weep."</span><sub><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></sub></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: -.5in; margin-top: 0in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“You still haven’t told me the truth.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: -.5in; margin-top: 0in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“Things aren’t true because they happened, they’re true because they matter.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: -.5in; margin-top: 0in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“So does that mean there are rebels or not?”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .5in; margin-right: -.5in; margin-top: 0in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“One can only imagine.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> I could see the frustration in his expression. I wanted to answer him, but knew that I could not. He had the mind of a manager, like all Nylanders. The accountant in the cortex; every problem a challenge, every challenge a solution waiting. But we were poets here, we had to be. We did what we did knowing that we could never succeed. That was one thing the creators of our great failure missed….that oppression leads not to control but to dreams. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Take heed you who would shackle the clouds. Watch your step and mark my words. For a Poet watches with a pen for tears.<o:p></o:p></span></i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> And all that.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “The rebels have him?” Nilly asked her. “What rebels?”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> He was following her around the lanes of the market like a pup. That was the way men were around her, I could see that. She walked like a goddess in a low place and all the desires they ever had trailed her like a cloud. Nilly even bumped into her twice when she paused because he was following her too close.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “The Resistance,” Erica said.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Puh!” I puffed.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “You don’t believe it,” she asked me.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Some grousers yes, but an organized resistance? Never.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “They’re our only hope for a future,” she said.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Yes and there will be a white Christmas and all soldiers will become children again,” I suggested.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “They took Sloane because he worked for the Feds.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “He did?” Nilly said. “That doesn’t sound like him. He wasn’t political back home.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “He did?” I repeated.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> That got my interest. It was something I could lay a narrative on. Common pukehead living the life of grime who spies on the locals and gets nabbed for it by rebels who didn’t exist. I liked that. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “I could use that,” I said.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “But you don’t believe any of this, you said,” Nilly cautioned me.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “I don’t report what I believe, Mr. Nilly, only what’s believable. Truthy. That’s all people want…to believe what they think they want to believe. Trust their own trust.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-right: -.5in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “And everybody just goes along with this bullshit?”</span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-right: -.5in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “It’s the Rule of the Goon, ami.”</span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-right: -.5in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Namely?”</span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-right: -.5in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Put a goon in a room of normal people and pretty soon everyone starts acting like a goon. Ever notice?”</span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-right: -.5in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “That’s just an excuse to be cynical,” Erica offered.</span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="margin-right: -.5in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “According to the Indians, in the dim beginning of the earth, everyone had small feet. Beautiful trim little feet, like petals. One day a stranger arrives with big stupid feet and sure enough, here we are thousands of millennia later, stomping everything to dust. I rest my case.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> Erica wanted a drink, so naturally Nilly, with no will left, and I with my nose for no news, followed her down to the bar. The barman eyed Nilly’s finger hungrily when he took the order. Holding it up so the barman could see it better, Nilly of course inadvertently fugged him.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Digitus impudicus</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">,” the barman spat. “I heard it goes all the way back to Diogenes.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> I showed Nilly how to hold his finger down for a scan rather than up for an insult then we sat at one of the tables in the back. The old Keno screen blank as night as we had a few rounds. Erica was accidentally heaving her bosom to get comfy and that seemed to mesmerize Nilly but he eventually got hold of himself.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Why did Polono work for the Feds?” Nilly asked, still struggling.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “He got himself arrested and once they had them, they had them, if you know what I mean.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Arrested for what? He was looking for his daughter.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “They said they caught him spray painting a rebel slogan on the wall of the old Mirage. Claimed it was a quote from Karl Marx…“workers of the world unite you have nothing to lose but your<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">chains.” <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “I can’t believe Polono even read Marx. Groucho maybe.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Probably not. I went to look at the scene of his crime. It was just an old ad for a shoe store that said, “Walkers of the world unite you have nothing to lose but your chairs.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> Nilly smirked thinking it was joke and I did too but because I knew it was not. That was exactly the kind of thing they picked you up for.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Is there any way I can get to see him?” Nilly asked.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Maybe,” she said, getting up. “But not here, not now.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Then when and where?”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “We’ll see,” she said.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> As she walked away, I watched Nilly watch the undulations of her buttocks under the silk of the dress. He was hooked all right, right down to the base of his lust. And I was too. Not on her or even on him but just on the whole what-happens-nextness of it all. It was the first time in a long time that I gave a shit.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span> </div><h1 style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: -.5in; margin-top: 0in; text-indent: 0in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></span></span></h1><h1 style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: -.5in; margin-top: 0in; text-indent: 0in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> That’s when the two boots came in. They were undercover but everyone saw through all that to the goon underneath. They didn’t waste any time either and stormtrouped right over to our table, snarled at me and nabbed Nilly at the shoulder.</span></span></span></h1><h1 style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: -.5in; margin-top: 0in; text-indent: 0in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> “Y’ undressed, sotback,” one said.</span></span></span></h1><h1 style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: -.5in; margin-top: 0in; text-indent: 0in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> Nilly was about to prove his case with a deft tug on his tie but quickly understood that they were saying he was under arrest.</span></span></span></h1><h1 style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: -.5in; margin-top: 0in; text-indent: 0in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> “I’m just visiting. A Nylander. I leave tomorrow.”</span></span></span></h1><h1 style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: -.5in; margin-top: 0in; text-indent: 0in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> “Nay if’n they throttle your pansyass, ohmybro.”</span></span></span></h1><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">“But what are the charges? I haven’t done anything.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> “The marsh’ll sing that songy, ami.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> Nilly looked at me but I think he understood the word “marshall” in there faster than I needed to explain things.<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 4.5pt; margin-right: -.5in; margin-top: 0in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">3. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: 4.5pt; margin-right: -.5in; margin-top: 0in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span> </div><div class="MsoPlainText" style="margin-right: -.5in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> I don’t know what happened to him then. I tried to get in to see him but of course could not. All I found out is that they took him to see the Marshall over at city hall. His name was Dylan and he was the head Fed in Vegas county. I didn’t know much about him except what they reported in the news which I knew very well was all bogus anyway. But I imagine him as a plain man in a tight suit with a kind of wrong haircut Karma about him.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: -.5in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> Still, as a reporter, I can well imagine the whole sordid deal. Nilly, breathless and worried for maybe the first time in his life, plunked down in a chair in Dylan’s office. Dylan, slowly like a man knowing what must happen next, taking a sip of Petrol from a fine crystal cup. Nilly insisting and Dylan listening silently for the whole doddering confession. And then, in a whisper for maximum drama:<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .3in; margin-right: -.5in; margin-top: 0in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Of course you didn’t kill him.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in; text-indent: 22.5pt;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“I can prove it,” Nilly said, thinking Dylan is being sarcastic and not knowing that irony was a talent only the weak could afford.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .3in; margin-right: -.5in; margin-top: 0in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“No you can’t.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .3in; margin-right: -.5in; margin-top: 0in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“I can. He’s not dead, just missing. The rebels have him…”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in; text-indent: 22.5pt;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“Mr. Nilly,” Dylan interjected slowly, as though speaking to a foreigner, “you can’t prove that you did not kill him because there is no Polono Sloane.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .3in; margin-right: -.5in; margin-top: 0in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“What??”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .3in; margin-right: -.5in; margin-top: 0in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“There is no such person, so obviously you could not have killed him.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .3in; margin-right: -.5in; margin-top: 0in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“What are you talking about?”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in; text-indent: 22.5pt;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“Polono Sloane. A ghost in a sheet. A diversion. Nothing more than an anagram of Napoleon Solo from one of the old old shows. That’s where we got the idea.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .3in; margin-right: -.5in; margin-top: 0in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“What idea?”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .3in; margin-right: -.5in; margin-top: 0in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“To invent an agent. Give him an ID, move his things around, leave hits and suggestions.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .3in; margin-right: -.5in; margin-top: 0in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“But that’s insane. I knew him back in New York. We went to…”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in; text-indent: 22.5pt;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“You knew someone, I suppose. Went somewhere. Did this or that. But the Sloane in question here is a mere figment.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in; text-indent: 22.5pt;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Nilly, about to insist, suddenly realized that he would be arguing against himself. If Sloane did not exist, then there could be no murder and he would be free. So, with perfect irrational logic, and despite the years he and Sloane had spent downing drinks at Arturo’s and that stupid fight over the stock deal, Nilly changed his tune.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .3in; margin-right: -.5in; margin-top: 0in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“But why? Why would you do that?”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .3in; margin-right: -.5in; margin-top: 0in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“To keep the opposition on their toes. Distract them.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .3in; margin-right: -.5in; margin-top: 0in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“So there </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">is</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> a resistance!”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .3in; margin-right: -.5in; margin-top: 0in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“Well, not exactly. We invented them too. I mean there are some, but we pay them.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; margin-left: .3in; margin-right: -.5in; margin-top: 0in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“What??”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in; text-indent: 22.5pt;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“Just another invention. Every government has to have a resistance to make people think something might change. Even though nothing ever does. And in any case, it gives the folks in the media something to report on.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in; text-indent: 22.5pt;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“But I heard that you control the media.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in; text-indent: 22.5pt;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“Absolutely. It’s the secret to our success.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in; text-indent: 22.5pt;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Dylan sat on the edge of his desk and thrust a small box in Nilly’s direction. It was a cigar box with a logo of a grinny cat on it, but there were no cigars in it. Dylan had simply seen the move in countless old movies and thought it was a nice gesture.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in; text-indent: 22.5pt;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“I don’t smoke,” Nilly said.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in; text-indent: 22.5pt;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“No matter,” Dylan replied, putting the box back.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in; text-indent: 22.5pt;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“This is insane!” Nilly finally said. He wanted to play along but as a Nylander used to the firmity of the deal, the clarity of the contract, he had his limits. “You create a phony federal agent to dupe fake rebels so that a non-existent media will report on it through teevies that no one watches.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in; tab-stops: 4.5pt 22.5pt; text-indent: 22.5pt;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“We do what we do for the people of this nation, Mr. Nilly. To keep them safe.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in; tab-stops: 4.5pt 22.5pt; text-indent: 22.5pt;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“Safe from what?”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in; tab-stops: 4.5pt 22.5pt; text-indent: 22.5pt;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“From thinking too much about their future. All they need are some morsels to keep their minds occupied. A tid here, a bit there. People don’t want to think, Mr. Nilly, they’re dumb as dumbwaiters. They just want to have something to do.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in; text-indent: 22.5pt;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“This place is an asylum,” Nilly replied, a tad too late to realize that he had just insulted his host, a man who held his fate in little twitchy hands.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in; text-indent: 22.5pt;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in; text-indent: 22.5pt;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">4.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> The next time I saw Erica it was at that same market in the Ballroom. I had gone there hoping to find her again. I don’t know what I was thinking really, maybe just some remnant of real journalism rising up inside of me, despite the weight of my cynicism pushing down. Or maybe I just wanted to move the little plot in my head along. Either way, she did not seem very surprised to see me again.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Frac up, madama? What bewitchen?” I said but quickly realized that she would not play street grub with me. She was trying to change, to lift herself by an act of will somewhere above the bottom where we actually passed our time. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “What happened to our friend Mr. Nilly?” she asked.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “I haven’t seen him.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Don’t you want to? You’re a reporter. Why don’t you ask questions?”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “You know it doesn’t work that way here. What about Polono Sloane?”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “There’s a question right now. See, it can work.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Do you really know where he is?”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Yes.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Can I get to see him?”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “No.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Where is he?”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “You’re full of it, aren’t you?”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Full of what?”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Questions. You’d better be careful. They can lead to hope.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Well…where is he?”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Nowhere.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Just like the rest of us,” I said, thinking she was being coy.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> There was a long pause here as she seemed to wrestle with the next words she spoke. She was so lovely that the pause seemed like a glamour shot from the old studios and I imagined that it would have sent someone like Nilly into a swoon. But I wasn’t interested in all that, just in what happened next.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “There is no Polono Sloane,” she finally said.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “What does that mean?”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “He doesn’t exist. The rebels created him as a kind of decoy. To draw attention away from their real agents.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “But Nilly knew him. He recognized the photos. Hell, he was in one of them.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Somebody knew somebody somewhere. But I’m telling you that Polono Sloane, who lives at The Grand, does not exist.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “And the revolutionaries made him up,” I said, crackling with disbelief.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “They are rebels, not revolutionaries,” she said. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Is there a difference?”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Rebels are romantics; revolutionaries are technocrats. Only rebels could invent someone. Technocrats are too busy tracking them.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In the country and across shattering silences, the sigh of a shadow, and hearts still as stars.”</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> She turned away from that as though from an inappropriate snip of a poem.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “I am worried for Mr. Nilly,” she said. “If the Feds have them, we may never see him again.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Okay, maybe I will try to ask around. But even if I find him, his four days are up soon. They may be holding him long enough so that he can’t leave. His tattoo go biggybye.” <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “In that case, I have something for you. It is from a friend of a friend. For Mr. Nilly, if you see him again.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> She handed me a small container, like a cigarette case. I didn’t even need to open it up because I knew just what I would find inside. I had seen these before. It contained a severed middle finger with a bar code on it from some recent victim of the trade. It would be a fresh one, meaning it still had a few days left, and could be Nilly’s ticket back home. Assuming of course that I could find him.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Why are you doing this?” I asked her. “You hardly know him.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Let’s just say we had a mutual friend.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Non friend actually” I corrected.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “And in any case, it was cheap. Just someone’s life after all. Nothing cheaper than that here in Nowhere.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">5.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> Meanwhile, Dylan, with all the time in the world, was still having what he thought of as a conversation with the newcomer. Nilly for his part knew it was an interrogation and that in the gap between them was filled with a universe of mistrust.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Mr. Sloane, a person is still…”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “It’s Nilly. William Nilly. Sloane is your man.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “In NYLA, I believe, a person is still innocent until proven guilty, yes?’<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Yes.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “But in France, one has to prove one’s innocence.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “I wouldn’t know. I’ve never been there.”<br />
“But here the victims are tried and thrown in jail and the murdered are executed. We have things under control.” <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “What do you want from me?”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “We want Polono Sloane back.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “But you said he never…”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “The cat, as they say, is out of the bag. Once you began to look for him, word got around that he was missing. People began to poke their noses. He went from being a ghost to a question. And that is not something that helps us.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “What does that all have to do with </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">me</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">?”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “My offer is for you to take his place. We could use a man like you.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Take his place doing what? You said he didn’t exist.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Ah but now he can. All our falsifying and faking can be realized…in you.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Why me?”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Why not you? No one here knows you. You’ve been seen in his room and with his girlfriend.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “She’s not his girlfriend. She never met him.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “A minor point that can be addressed.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “This is absurd. What would I have to do?”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Nothing. Just live your life, that is…his life. We’ll take care of the rest.”<br />
Dylan said all this matter of factly, as though explaining the rules of Go Fish to an actual fish. The matter of fact that Nilly as Sloane would be quickly killed by the rebels at the direction of the Feds was, to Dylan’s mind, not even worth mentioning. It was all obvious political theater. A kind of double reverse martyr for some cause or other. No matter, Dylan thought. It all made sense somehow. But when he saw the sour look on Nilly’s face, he tried to come up with a sweetener. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Ever wonder, Mr. Sloane…”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “It’s Nilly, I keep telling you.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Ever wonder why women fall in love with their torturers?”<br />
“I didn’t know they did.” <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Because no one ever paid such exquisite attention to them before. Think about it that way.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> There was a sound outside the closed of the office that sounded like a thud. Someone dropping a thing, maybe, or maybe something far far worse.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “What are you going to do?” Nilly asked nervously.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Standard procedure. Just ask a few questions. ‘Are you now or have you ever been…’, ‘where we you on the night of…’, ‘do you renounce your belief in…’ Like that. The answers don’t matter very much so I wouldn’t worry.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “The answers don’t matter?”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Everyone is guilty, my friend.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “And then?”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “And then you are free to go.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “That’s all?”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Yes. Just do not leave the country.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “And pretend to be my old friend Polono Sloane.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Don’t worry about all that. We’ll take care of everything.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “What if I don’t agree?”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “When then you will be murdered for treason of course.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Treason? I haven’t done anything!”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Treason is simply a matter of timing. That’s not me…that’s your Talleyrand.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “He’s not my Talleyrand and I am no traitor.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> Dylan leaned in at that moment to add a touch of intimacy to their dialogue.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “It’s not a matter of </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">am</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> but of </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">are</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">. You can say you am or am not, but we decide if you are or are not.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">6.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> I did do some checking around and found out that Nilly was being released from the Marshall’s office. It was one day beyond his visa, that is to say his finger tattoo. I was not even sure if he knew that as I waited with the car outside the building. As he stepped into the bright sun I could see that this was a very different man that the one I eyed at the border. His frankness had turned to frailty and his brushed smile was gone. He looked weary and his suit was creased. I even handed him his old hat as a kind of joke but he neither got it nor put it on.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Are you all right?” I asked.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “I have a headache.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “That would be the bullshit rotting. What did Dylan say?”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “He said that Polono Sloane never existed in the first place.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “I’ve heard that before. This guy Sloane was a very popular nonperson.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “So therefore no one could have been murdered. That’s why I’m free.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Oh there was a murder all right. A whole society was murdered. It just didn’t tick the sixoclock.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “He wants me to stay here and pretend to be Sloane,” he said, then looked at his finger. “I wonder if I still have time left.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “You don’t,” I said “but you’ve got to get out of here anyway. The rebels want you, that is him, dead.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “There are no rebels. You said that.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Okay then, the Feds want you dead. Someone sure does."</span></span><br />
<span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> "Then why did they release me?”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Don’t you understand,” I pleaded. “Everyone wants to kill you to make a point.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “What point?”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “How should I know? I’m just a reporter. But you have to get out of here tonight,” I said.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “How do I do that?” he asked.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “You know about Schrodinger’s cat?”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Everyone does. The cat is neither dead nor alive until you open the box.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Well same with you,” I said and shoved the case at him with no delicacy, like a gift from the devil. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “What is it?” he asked.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Your way out of here. A plane ticket, a visa, and a sayonarattive all kaboodled.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “If it’s a way out, why didn’t you use it?”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Because I’m not leaving, you are.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Why would you live like this if you didn’t have to?”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “You know your Brecht?”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “No.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “He said that in dark times they won’t say: the times were dark. Rather: why were their poets silent?”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> He had no idea what I meant. But how could he, how could any Nylander? Their success was based entirely on normality…job-holders holding their jobs, family men manning their families, bureaucrats cratting their bureaus. But not here. Here where there was nothing to do all day but do nothing with great fervor. Here where the homeless were called Freemen because they did not have the burden of a mortgage. Here were only the poets told the truth and no one still listened. Light here had a way of illuminating the already visible and shadowing that which could not be seen.</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">“You Nylanders think you have freedom,” I said, “but you don’t. You only have choices…the inalienable right to choose between scented and unscented, no-cal and lo-cal, pay now or pay later.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “I don’t get you. Any of you. All these games, all this nonsense. Choices are at least better than </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">living in a trap.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: -.5in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> I liked him for that. It was the first time he had expressed an idea about things, rather than just go along to get along. Maybe this little adventure had taught him something. Maybe the blunt in his mind had taken an edge. That would make him different from the others. All those people who didn’t have a clue, no poetry in their souls, who didn’t know their haddayacallits from their whatsits but spoke with great conviction. Maybe Mr. Nilly would go back changed and in that way, change what he went back to.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: -.5in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> Maybe me too.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: -.5in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: -.5in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> I did not bother to see him off at the border. Frankly, I had had my fill of wondering what was coming across. Wondering or caring. There was enough on this side to think about, if you chose to.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-right: -.5in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> But I can easily imagine him waiting for that finger to be scanned, with a look on his face as though the fly to his confusion were permanently open. I can see him sitting there </span><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">, much as I am sitting now at my desk. I can hear his inner voice, not unlike my own, making something midway between a plea and a chant, trying to fill the void left by apprehension.</span><sub><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></sub><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> He looks out the window, not this one here but the window at the border, and says softly to himself, " Well, let's get going. Let's get this show on the road."</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; margin-right: -.5in; tab-stops: 22.5pt;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> That voice is as clear as if it were my own. And in unison, in compadreon as we say here, I whistle a nervous little ditty, tap my fingers on jittery knees, look and wait, and say: "Yes, let’s go, go, go!”</span><sub><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></sub></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText" style="margin-right: -.5in;"><span style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> Soon t</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">he cat vanishes but the grim remains.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText" style="margin-right: -.5in;"><br />
</div>Alan Robbinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11931223050937847552noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4408320213129965937.post-52203416974105204032012-04-07T11:46:00.002-07:002012-04-07T11:46:55.352-07:00Made on the Moon<!--StartFragment--> <br />
<div class="MsoNormal"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">T</span></b>hrough the glass ceiling, the earth could be seen like a memory frozen in time.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Suspended, distant, silent…there was no longer any way to know it except through the newscasts, the histories, the legends.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To those who lived under the glass, the earth did not even seem like a home world any more.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It had become an icon, a remembrance, a collection of vivid mythologies about what it meant to be human.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Come here, I have something for you,” the old woman said.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>She was sitting on the bed and holding an object in her veiny hand.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Laura closed her eyes when she reached for it, afraid to touch the woman’s skin because it was old and brown and might rub off.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And anyway, Laura did not really want anything from her.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>After all, what could this old lady possibly know about the things that mattered to her…about neurotones and floatball and stomps and filamines.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>But Laura also knew that the woman sitting on the bed did not have anything much to give.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Her parents had explained all that to her.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Times were hard and her wealth was gone.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That was the reason she was living with them in the first place.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Laura had been to her room and knew that there was hardly anything in it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was not filled with stuff like all the others, but bare like a cell.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Laura also knew well enough to be polite.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was her birthday and this woman, like it or not, was her Nana, her grandmother.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That alone made whatever<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>gift she had for Laura matter in some way.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Or at least worth being pleasant about.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>And then there was that rumor that her grandmother had fought in the Neo war.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But it was hard to connect the soldier she had heard about with the thin wrinkly woman sitting there at the edge of her bed holding a birthday present for her.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Laura had seen the flickers of the world in upheaval and the armies clashing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The only ones spared the turmoil of that time were on the Moon by then.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>New settlements there filled the Clavius crater and from that great distance you could watch the destruction in minute detail onscreen or just gaze up and watch the blue marble of the earth floating delicately in space and wonder why all that difficulty was necessary.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Up there in the lightness of the lunar orbit, the mud of the earth seemed ghostly.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>When the war was over, Nana too had come to the moon and had a family and made and lost her wealth.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Now it was sixty years later, new turmoils on the earth, another spin of the galaxy, and Laura looked at her grandmother with soft eyes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She was only thirteen that day but she understood what it meant to give when you had nothing much. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The object she took from the old woman was round, about the size of a grapefruit, and wrapped in some old paper.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Great, she thought to herself, a piece of fruit.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The hydrogardens were teeming with them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Wait until I tell the others.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Oh boy.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>But when she peeled back the yellowing paper, she found a ball inside.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was an odd ball, lumpy and heavy, maybe one of the first balls ever made.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It crackled when she squeezed it as though filled with beans or rice, and it was covered with red leather crudely stitched.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The skin was flaking off in parts.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was gross and old but she tried to mask her disgust with a weak smile.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The ploy did not work. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Your mother said you were just made captain of your floatball team,” the woman said.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Yes but I couldn’t pitch with this ball, it would fall apart.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“This one really should not be played with.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>It was worse than she thought.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Not just any grungy old ball but one that you could not even play with.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At least you could eat a grapefruit.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Laura hefted the ball once and tried to imagine how far she could heave it in the thin gravity of the Moon once her grandmother went to sleep.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“You see, I made that ball,” the woman said proudly.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Oh,” Laura said.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“I know it doesn’t look like much,” the woman said, “but that ball is special.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Please, Laura thought, don’t tell me that it is a magic ball that grants wishes or anything like that.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m thirteen, not some dumb kid.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Let me tell you about that ball.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Um…Mom’s expecting me to help with dinner,” Laura lied.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>But the woman ignored her, or did not hear, and continued.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“When you see a thing, sweetheart, it isn’t always what you think.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“I know.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>She did know that.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That was one of the things she knew.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Sure.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But on the other hand, knowing it somehow never seemed to matter very much.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And besides, a lot of the time what something turned out to be was even more boring than what you thought it was in the first place.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“That’s not just any ball there.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That is a great ball.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It had its moment in the sun.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s just old now.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That’s all.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Did you hit a home run with it or something?” she asked.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Home run!” the woman scoffed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Home runs are pigeon shit.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This ball here stopped a war.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>There were no pigeons on the Moon but Laura knew what they were from school and the word <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">shit</i> coming from her Nana’s lips quickly got her attention.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The word <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">war</i> got it undivided.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Seeing that, the woman leaned back on the bed and crossed her legs.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“What I’m going to tell you is true.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is something that really happened.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It happened to me, a long long time ago.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Before even your mother was born.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When I was still a young woman back on Earth.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was only seventeen years old, just a bit older than you, no life yet to speak of.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I didn’t even own a flagon; I wasn’t old enough.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But of course I was just old enough to die for my country.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You’re always old enough for that.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The woman paused for a moment to size up her audience.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Laura was sitting on the furthest edge of the bed, legs dangling, tossing the ball from one hand to the other.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She had her mother’s eyes…kind but firm.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And she seemed to be paying attention.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The woman found this encouraging and continued.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Just before the Neos invaded, I joined the national army.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was really too young but they didn’t care too much and they took me right in.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They thought youngsters would make fine heroes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Or corpses.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It doesn’t matter.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In war you need both.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Laura knew that her Nana had fought the Neos, had even won a medal.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But she had never talked to her about it before.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In fact, she never actually thought of her Nana as being anything but old.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was a shock to think she been young once, had a whole life before she was her grandmother.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“So me and Simma and her brother Erno and Milo and that other one, with the bad skin, we all joined.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What was his name?”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Nana?” Laura announced like referree.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Oh well, anyway, it really all just turned out to be a lot of marching and shooting.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was a lark.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We didn’t know.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Now don’t get me wrong.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was young but I was not an idiot.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I had a good head on my shoulders.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Always have.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I had no ideas about becoming a hero.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Not like Erno, who had the mind and body of a jackass.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He saw himself coming home to a big parade.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But me, no.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I knew what war was.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“To tell the truth,” she went on, “as soon as we were called up everything changed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There was the constant sound of the bombardment.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Lightbombs going off all day long.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And maserfire.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s very loud, you know.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And we were knee deep in mud, eating out of polybags, going to the bathroom in an open pit.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I started to huddle near a boy called Avi, a real big ox this boy was.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I guess I was hoping that no one -- not the corporal or even god himself -- would notice me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I thought I’d be safe that way.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The woman stopped and seemed to get lost in a reverie.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Laura was sensitive enough to wait for her to dwell there but she quickly grew impatient.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“What happened, Nana?” she finally said.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“One day we got the call to advance into this town called Valenka.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Someone blew a whistle and there we were, pulling ourselves through the dirt and clawing our way over the top of a bomb crater at the edge of the town.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The whole place was on fire, the land chopped up by explosions, smoke so thick your lungs felt like bricks.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We were supposed to advance across a field into the town itself.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was only about 100 feet away but it would have been easier to cross Hell itself.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Snipers in the town began to cut us down.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was lucky and missed being hit.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I fell back into the crater.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Others, alive and dead, fell in on top of me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There was a layer of bodies three or four thick.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I could hardly breathe.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I had to fight my way up through all the arms and legs.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Holy luna,” Laura said.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“There was a standoff like that for a few days.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Neos were positioned in the buildings of the town and we were stuck in this crater.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It seemed crazy to me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>These two groups of soldiers, kids really, who had never met, all with families and sisters and plans for the future, trying to slaughter each other over a town no one had ever heard of.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And then for some reason, no one knows exactly why, the shooting stopped.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We were pinned down and in a sense so were they.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I guess we all just ran out of energy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Or ion packs maybe.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We couldn’t leave, we couldn’t move.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Nothing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We just sat there.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>After a while we began talking, telling stories, making up lies about our travels.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This went on for hours and I got bored.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So I took out some raw beans, leatherine straps from a munitions box, my needle and some string, and sewed up the ball you have there.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Laura looked at it again with a certain amount of respect.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was old and ugly but it had made it though a battle to end up in her hands.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>All the way from the Earth.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That was pretty atomic.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“So it’s really kind of a beanbag,” she said, trying to sum up.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Wait, you’ll see,” the woman said.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“You remember the big boy Avi who was next to me in the trench?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Well it was his bag of beans I used for filling up the ball and when he found out, he got very angry.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He was big, you know, he liked to eat.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I thought he would hit me but instead of that, he took the ball I made and heaved it out of the crater towards the town.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We heard some maserfire and figured that they thought Avi had heaved a startle bomb.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then the maserfire died and the ball was gone and that was the end of it.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>She stopped at this point to make sure that she still had Laura’s attention.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She did.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Laura was holding the ball and staring directly at her grandmother, waiting.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She went on.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“But that wasn’t the end of it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Because after about an hour we heard a thud on the ridge just above the crater.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We tossed to see who would pop up and find out what had landed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You know, it could have been a body or a shell or anything.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Guess who lost.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“You?”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Right.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So I slowly poked my head over the ridge and what do you think I found?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The ball!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Someone on the other side had actually caught it and thrown it back.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was just sitting there a few feet from the crater.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Well, after a great deal of debate, we fixed up a rope with a loop on the end and spent an hour trying to lasso the ball in.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But when we finally got it back in our hands, the corporal, who was a real idiot, came down to our end and saw it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She decided that the ball was a bomb, so she grabbed it and tossed it back.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Guess what?”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“They threw it back again?”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Exactly.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Back it came.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then Orlo, who was a soccer player in school, took off his pack and his helmet and gave it a great kick and sent it flying.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There was a long pause.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But sure enough, back it came.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And that’s the way it went, back and forth and back all day long.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We made up rules among ourselves, kept score, took turns kicking or throwing it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We made up names for the soldiers on the other side too, foreign sounding names, and made fun of their accents.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They were probably doing the same thing.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“So you played ball with your enemies in the middle of a battle.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Amazing isn’t it?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For twenty-one hours, there was no war.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>No war at all.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Just two groups of kids playing ball in a field by some strange rules.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The world was going to hell, horrors everywhere you looked.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But for one single day, it was all gone.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Life was as it should be, an excuse for idleness, for nothing so serious as throwing a ball back and forth.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Then what happened?” Laura asked with great excitement.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She had forgotten to act interested because she had accidentally become it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Then?” the woman said.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She was getting very tired from the exertion of telling the story and her mind was wandering.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She stretched out on the bed, resting her head against the temperfoam.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“I don’t know.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Night fell.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The ball ended up in the middle of the field somehow.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Soon after that Orlo, the soccer player, was dead.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Simma and Erno too.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And then the war was over and I was no longer young.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I had no time for balls and things.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But I’ll tell you something.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was no longer afraid either.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Mom said you won a medal.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Things aren’t always…” the woman offered.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Her eyes were beginning to close. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“But Nana, if it ended up in the middle of the field,” Laura asked, detecting a slight glitch in the tale, “how did you get the ball back?” </div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Back?” she repeated, almost asleep.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Yes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You know, back so you could give to me.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Oh…one day the enemy retreated and we crossed that field.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The ball was just lying there in the mud.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I picked it up and kept it ever since.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But it isn’t just a ball, you see?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It looks like one but it is really a kind of bag.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A container.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Container?” Laura repeated.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Yes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Inside is a hesitation, an idle moment.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A pause in the tumbling flow of things.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You see?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Everyone needs that in their lives, not just soldiers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And that’s why I’m giving it to you, dear.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As a reminder.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Don’t become too consumed with things.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Pitching floatballs or anything else.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Life goes too quickly.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Make sure you take time to be idle.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To dawdle.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>See what I mean?”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Laura looked up from the ball to answer that question only to find that her grandmother’s eyes were closed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Laura could not tell if she had fallen asleep or was just resting but she did not think she should disturb a woman who made a ball that stopped a war.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And so she simply got up, bounced the ball once, then dropped it onto the paper wrapper.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That was when Laura noticed a small tag that had gotten stuck to the paper.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She picked it up.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>It was a sales tag that read, “Beanbag Ball, Fun for All, Made on the Moon.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Laura thought about that and then thought…no matter.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She was a moongirl, a Dianan, a selenite, and like everyone else there she was beyond delusions.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Up there, they watched the Earth from a great height, saw the waxing and waning of humanity on the surface below, and waited in their dark silence for the world to come around again.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Waited for the cycles of hope and hate to run their course.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They had learned patience on the Moon and knew how to accept what was.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Laura too. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Besides, she was thirteen now and old enough to know that, in any case, the gift had not been the ball at all.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><!--EndFragment-->Alan Robbinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11931223050937847552noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4408320213129965937.post-60397387326866616542012-04-07T11:45:00.002-07:002012-04-07T11:45:22.828-07:00Zalman's Slipper<!--StartFragment--> <br />
<div class="MsoNormal"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">S</span></b>ometime before dawn on the morning in question, Zalman was crudely awakened by a strange noise in the closet.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Very unusual.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Every day being the same, Zalman took great comfort in relying on the familiar pattern of sounds from morning until night.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So although this new intrusion was only a slight thud, nothing more than a gentle shove against the still air, it was loud enough to send Zalman into a fit of concern.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Rather than investigate, and true to his blunt nature, he covered his ears with the blanket and defied it.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>But he was only vaguely successful.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>What could it be? he wondered.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There was no one else in the apartment and had not been for years.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He did not own and had never wanted a cat.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The closet was on the outer wall of the building and so there were no neighbors on the other side to make such a noise.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And since he never moved anything, except the slippers that he carefully lined up together on the closet floor at the end of the day, there was no reason for anything to fall down.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Above all the Home for Retired Extras in which he lived was a hush place.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That was the appeal of it for seniors who had had their fill of voyages and expeditions and adventures.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You could be still there, look at old videos of yourself floating in zero gravity, go through your mementos in peace and quiet, recall the past.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The unexpected was uninvited there and hardly ever paid a visit.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So what could it have been?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Just my mind, Zalman concluded.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Nothing at all really, a quirk of the ear.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Like the tinnitus that hits you as you re-enter the atmosphere which is nothing more than a drop in air pressure making your body swell and ring.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yes, that was it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Nothing important.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thus soothed, he tried to remember what it was he had been dreaming before the noise, and he slowly drifted back into sleep.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But he only got as far as dreams of dreaming and it was not restful in the least.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>At precisely seven o’clock, just like every other morning because Zalman was a man of precision, he woke up for good and began his routines.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He put on his boxer shorts, shaved, slipped into his black pants and pulled on a fresh undershirt.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He made a cup of coffee and stood at the window trying to see through the clouds to the impending rain which, just like every other morning, never came once the microclimatists had decided that bad weather was depressing for old folks.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Eventually, he went to the closet to get his slippers, those old house slippers that he knew would be lined up perfectly on the closet floor.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But an odd feeling of dislocation seized him at the door.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>About what, he had no clue.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He barely recalled waking up three hours earlier after hearing the sound.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But an inner sense of order -- or perhaps the lust for it -- told him that something was wrong.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Or was about to be.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Not knowing what to expect, or why he expected anything at all, Zalman opened the closet door slowly, like the engineer he had been, and peered inside.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>In the closet, the solution to the mystery was lying on the floor.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>An old box of videos from a shelf above had fallen down.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Very odd, he thought.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For sixteen years, he had opened the closet twice every day.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Once in the morning to take his slippers out and put them on, and once in the evening to put them neatly back.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The rest of the closet – the folded flannel shirts, the old computer console, the spacesuit in its hermetic case, the box of videos itself – he never touched.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>What would have made the box fall down?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>In space capsules everything was in its place or all hell could break loose.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The merest loose screw floating around in zero gravity could be inhaled, after all, and a flying tool could really throw a wrench into the works.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Zalman, during his flying days, had been known for keeping his ship shipshape.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Neat as pin.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One of the things he loved about space was the lack of it, in his capsule at least, where everything was trim and right, well within reach, never out of place. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Of course, back on earth in his own apartment, there was no need for such care but Zalman was the kind of man who learned his lessons well and in any case the whole compulsion fit him like a twitch.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>But things were changing in spite of all that.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>As he lifted the box up to put it back, he stepped forward and slightly skid on his right slipper.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That might have concluded the whole episode and made that day as forgettable as all the rest, had he not also bumped his elbow on the door jamb, twisted around in reaction, and dropped the box onto the floor.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A single video with the words “Hesperus Orbit” written on it in black marker fell out of the box and landed on his foot.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Hesperus, the Greek name for Venus when it dazzled as the evening star.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But this time the words merely reminded him that time was passing and he promised, one more time, to throw the box away or donate it to the space agency.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then he slipped on a slipper, left everything on the floor, and went about his day.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>But it was a different day from that point on as a hazy sense of discomfort began to pervade his chores.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As he cleaned his nails meticulously at the rear window, he thought about the videos and all those stupid poses, the dim smiles, the moronic tricks of weightlessness.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>All that nonsensical mugging for the camera.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What did that have to do with planetary interferometry?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And later, while making himself a cheese sandwich, he thought of those mushy meals he had sucked through a straw while looking at an image of the food he was supposed to be eating and decided that he was not hungry, maybe never would be again.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Later in the morning, he found himself drawn to the obituaries on the board and became annoyed about every little detail…all those survived by, first woman to, donations can be made to, loving husband of, and on and on.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Such rubbish!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You did what you did that was all, and when the flight was over you unlinked and that was that.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Nothing more to say about it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He even considered showing up at one of the services and contradicting the eulogy, whatever it was, but knew he would not do it because he couldn’t muster the gall.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Yet by the afternoon, Zalman was in a profound state of imbalance.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Over what specifically, he had no idea.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But every sound in the hallway, no matter how feeble, seemed like a toll of some kind and the noises from outside became unbearable.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The light seemed dark, the air seemed thick, and motion itself seemed to stop and wheeze.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Something was wrong all right, something out of whack.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Like the time the gyro clutched and everything when skittering all akimbo.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He didn’t panic then but instead went down his checklist and, point by point, set it all right.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Zalman, like all spacefarers, was nothing if not precise and he spent the rest of the day trying to figure out what was wrong.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As the sun went down through the slats of the blinds, he came up with an explanation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was the only one left on his list.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Clearly, he thought, someone had died.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That had to be it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What else could account for this gloamy gloom?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Someone had died and he had forgotten to send a consolation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But no matter how hard he tried, he could not recall who that someone might be.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He rubbed the sides of his jawbone and thought and thought and went through candidates.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Was it old Syms who had gone as far as Jupiter?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>No, he had died a few months ago.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Patrice from the third floor who chased down the comet that proved to be just ice and dust?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>No, that was last year.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Or the year before.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Making a poached egg for dinner, glancing at the board for new news, Zalman<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>felt like a stranger in his own world.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>By the end of the day, the darkness churned his thoughts even muddier.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Tess will know, he concluded.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She knew everything that went on and since she never answered the phone, he launched himself out the door and down to her apartment passing in front of an immense mural of the Orion nebula along the way.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The extras at the Home for Retired Extras were not from Hollywood.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The word referred to extra-terrestrials.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Everyone there had left the surface of the earth while working for one of the space agencies either in the government or the private sector.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was a home for former astronauts and that is why star charts filled the halls instead of bad paintings, why telescopes were scattered around in lieu of plants, and why old rocket launches were shown on Monday nights and not old movies.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Zalman bypassed the two men arguing about the perihelion of Mars and arrived at Tess’s door.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was unlocked as usual and so he went in.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She was in the bedroom, propped like her own portrait in the bed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She was watching the board and eating chocolate covered raisins.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Her red hair, the texture of straw, looked like a dry thatch mounted on her head.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A startling floral cape was loosely wrapped around her shoulders, revealing the thick strap of her bra.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She had makeup on but it seemed to have been applied in the dark.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The scene shocked Zalman just like it always did.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was hard to imagine that this woman, who now looked like an aging diva in her own private opera, had been packed into a can when she was young and sent flying into the asteroid belt to search for exominerals.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yet there she was.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Besides, the question in his mind was bigger than both of them and he put it forth with a grim lip.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Tess, who has died?”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Oh, it’s you,” she said barely looking.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Me??”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“You startled me,” she said, holding her cape close around her bosom, “Sit down, you look like a zombie.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>He sat down gently in the chair at the foot of the bed.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Now, what is this?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What did you say?”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Who has died?” he repeated.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Ha!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Who hasn’t?”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“No,” he said with conviction, “someone has died.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“What, when, where, who?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What are you talking?”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“I have this feeling.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Which century, my dahling?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Most people have died.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The vast majority.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s not exactly a new thing.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Someone we know,” he said slowly, “has died.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m sure of it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But I can’t remember who.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Who, Syms?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You’re talking about Syms?”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“No, not Syms.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I remember Syms.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Of course you do,” she comforted.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“His idiot cousin threw up.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Who could forgot?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was hotter than hell.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That’s one thing I do not want is a hot funeral.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Everybody hates you for years.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>She took a sip from a cup on the night table, looked at her watch, changed the frame on the board with a flick of her hand, and noticed that Zalman was frowning.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Do you want coffee or something, you really look like…I don’t know what?”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“It’s this feeling.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“In the prostate?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Harry had that for years.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“No, in the…” and he signaled the area somewhere between the brain and the belly.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“You’re too fussy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Everything has to be perfect.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That might have worked in space, dahling, here on earth it helps to be messy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Trust me.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Maybe I dreamed it.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“I dream about that all the time.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Every night I’m visiting someone or other’s grave.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s a natural part of the aging process, I read.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Sure you don’t want anything?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You look like hell.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>That night, too distracted to take care of himself, Zalman went to bed just the way he was dressed and therefore did not go to the closet to place his slippers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>More disjunction.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Gone from his sleepscape were the lovely dreams of weightlessness, of drifting over Venus as he watched the atmosphere swirl below.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The planet reflected more than half the light that fell on it and so Zalman had worn venusglasses to stop the glare.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Venus was the closest object to the earth other than the moon and his trajectory had shadowed its 225-day orbit around the sun, yet still we knew little about its inner secrets.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>In his dreams these visions were replaced by fantasies of long roads through manicured hills filled with headstones.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As he approached them the names carved on them seemed to vanish like an aria in a hurricane.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Dreams foretell, he told himself, although he had never believed it before.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And from that moment he deduced that the name on the gravestone was his own.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>In the morning, wearing the same clothes as the day before, he sat in the kitchen waiting.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The antique clock on the wall jumped from minute to minute, the cracks in the ceiling took on sinister bends, the faucet mocked him with its incessant drip like a countdown.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He thought about the pale thin mists of ionized air outside the capsule window, and about the woman in Toronto with the cleavage, and then the retirement party.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Using the tiny deliberate movements of a prisoner, Zalman pushed his coffee cup to the edge of the table and then right over it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The shattering cup splashed shadows over the floor as rivulets of dark brown fluid followed the cracks in the tile.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Then, for the second time, a sound interrupted him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was a familiar sound, he thought, but distant and frail.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It went on for a long time.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>An alluring ring, he thought, and then realized that it was his own doorbell.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He thought to ignore it but the visitor refused to give up and he eventually dragged himself to the door.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Not knowing, or perhaps knowing too well, what to expect on the other side, he stood there frozen as the ringing continued.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Long moments passed in which universes are created, and the bell went on.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>He finally opened the door.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>There before him, a sight unseen before, stood a ruffled, frazzled little thing smoking a cigarette through a long holder.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Zalman looked at her as though she had just walked in on him in the toilet.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Tess?” he said, the way you would test a mike.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“What’s with the foot, dahling?”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“The what?”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“I thought something was off with you yesterday but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I kept going over and over it in my mind’s eye.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Good visual memory, you know.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Studying crystal structures and all that.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“What are you talking about?”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Something funny.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then this morning it hit me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Like a ton of bricks.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Hit you?”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“And there it is…proof positive.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>She was pointing down at the floor.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Proof about what?”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“That,” she said and pointed right at his right foot.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“You’re only wearing one slipper, dahling.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>See?”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>He looked.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“I hate to say this,” she continued, “but it makes you look like one of those nuts in a nuthatch.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Sure enough.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Zalman followed her bony finger down to his feet and saw what she saw.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A pair of familiar old feet.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But one had a slipper and the other was bare. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And it did, even to him, look just like a crazyman’s feet.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Oh that,” he said, trying and failing to cover.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Throws you off balance.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Bad for the back.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>No wonder you’re all lopsy-dopsy.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>She turned and went back down the hall while Zalman, more perturbed than ever, went back to his closet.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He moved the box of videos and discovered the missing slipper that had been hidden underneath it. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>So that was it, he thought, with a certain degree of buoyancy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>No one had died, nothing was amiss, the universe was just as before.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A box fell down, a slipper had slipped out of place, he had been walking around all uneven.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Quickly, to most efficiently undo the error, he slid his foot into the other one.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then, balanced and righted, he suddenly felt better.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Perky, even.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He picked up the box of old space videos and carried it with pomp out to the trash cans in the yard.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>And all the while and all above, Venus was just completing its eight-hour transit across the face of the sun, nudging ever so gently on the earth’s gravitational field, as it turned purple and then violet and then plum and slid silently back into invisibility.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><!--EndFragment-->Alan Robbinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11931223050937847552noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4408320213129965937.post-29777838973698840122012-04-07T11:42:00.000-07:002012-04-07T11:42:04.763-07:00Things That Go Missing<!--StartFragment--> <br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">T</span></b>he note said simply <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">be back soon.</i><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Minnie left it propped on the night table in case Max woke up before she returned.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But he did not.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And by the time she got back, a breeze through the partly open window had pushed it onto his chest.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Now it looked like a sign he was wearing that gave his open-mouth snore a curious subtitle.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Minnie dropped her coat on the chair gingerly so as not to wake him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A sleeve flapped onto the seat pointing her towards the kitchen.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There she hefted her grocery package onto the countertop.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Collectible plates of all the Presidents peered at her from the shelves as she took out the cottage cheese, milk, bread and other items and put everything neatly in its place.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The floor croaked underfoot as she shifted from one chubby leg to the other, sorting.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Twice she hit the cabinet closed with her fist but it popped open for a third time.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And she had to struggle to shut the utility drawer by shaking it up and down.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Yet none of this woke Max in the bedroom.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Without even thinking about it, she began to clean the tile on the counter.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She was not exactly obsessed with cleaning but mightily enamored of it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then a glint on the floor near the counter drew her attention.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She bent down to retrieve what turned out to be a metal object which she held up to the light in amazement.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was her lost wedding ring.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She had misplaced it months ago and even thought that it might have fallen off in the ocean during the visit to Rockaway.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But here it was again.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Amazing.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>It was a world, after all, in which nothing was lost.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Vidcams followed your every more, toilets ran biotests, and every purchase was logged into the Grid.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Even the InSens in the apartment knew where everything was.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It ran all the appliances, controlled the climate, and kept track of everyone by location, emotion, condition.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This was the price of staying in touch, of being connected, of modern life.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>But the wedding ring was a reminder that even in this pinpointed world, things could still go missing. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Not people or purchases or prognostics, but small things, the knicks and knacks that were the building blocks of a life.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Holding her ring again, Minnie tried to imagine the detour it had taken, how it might have slipped through the system.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In her mind’s eye she could see herself, months before, standing at the sink where her breasts rested perfectly on the rime of the basin.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She envisioned herself slipping the ring off at that moment so that it would not get wet.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then setting it down on the tile near the soap dish.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She would have made tight, squeaky circles around the dish edges and touched the surfaces to make sure they were smooth.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And would have wanted so much to clean everything that was soiled, to make everything bright, to wash the gunk right down into the sucking drain.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Yes, that was what happened.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And Max had been standing near her in the kitchen, stony silent as usual.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Max why do you do this?” she had asked.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>He was standing at the doorway as he often did, saying nothing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He was not a fan of chatter, distrusted it maybe, or thought it were too flimsy and he hated breakable things.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>How many times had she asked that question and gotten the same strained silence back?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Why do you always do this to me?” she repeated.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“What do you want from my life,” he finally barked.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Is it so much to ask?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To be nice to my friends?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For years like this.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>”Bah.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“So you don’t love Myrna, so what?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You don’t have to love Myrna.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She likes you well enough.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Just to get along for one lousy dinner, I mean.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“No.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“No.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Always no with you.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What does that mean…no?”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“She’s nothing to me,” he said and he flicked the phrase away like an irritating speck.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Myrna has always been a good friend to me, Max.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Especially during the bad time.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I know she said some things to you, but she was protecting me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And she’s apologized.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Can’t you understand that?” </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>There was no reply.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Sometimes I think you hate me Max.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Do you?”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>But he was no longer standing there; the conversation had already ended, at least for him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Minnie still kept talking, hoping to resolve it in her own mind anyway.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Maybe you do.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So then I guess it really <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">is</i> too much for me to ask you to be civil to my friends.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Is that it?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yes, I guess it is.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>She turned from the sink to dry her hands on the towel hanging from the refrigerator handle.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She felt a familiar sinking in her stomach and as always did not know what to do about it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And that was when she forgot to put the ring back on.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Later on, Maddy would splash water in the sink which would pool on the tile and, when no one was looking, spill over the edge and carry the ring like a log in a river off the counter and down to the floor.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Yes, that must have been what happened, Minnie thought.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>She pressed the ring back onto her finger but barely felt better about it.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The InSens screen in the kitchen was cycling between frames showing where Minnie and Max were in the apartment, what their biometric readings were, and suggestions for dinner based on what was in the fridge.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>But Minnie suddenly felt like breaking free of the Grid and so she wandered into the living room searching for something to clean.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She found it on the low table in front of the couch.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A nice spot of grease.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Paper towel in hand, she buffed the spot and then followed it to a smear on the couch, then to a smudge on the radiator, and that to some dirt on the windowsill.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There on the sill she discovered a tiny piece of black plastic.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She inspected it like a clue and finally figured out that it had fallen off the flatscreen that used to be in the living room.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Holding this up to the light like an amulet, she could vaguely recall – or was she inventing it right now? – the moment when it must have fallen off.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That had to be when they moved the set into the bedroom months before.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The whole thing had been Max’s idea.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He wanted to be able to watch TV while he was lying down in bed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Minnie’s friend Myrna, always poking her nose, warned her not to move it because she read somewhere that a television in the bedroom replaced sex.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“What can I do,” she asked her friend, “Max wants it there.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“You can stand your ground is what.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“You know how Max is,” Minnie said.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Yes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And the fact that you put up with it all these years is…”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Stop again already.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“You know what I’m saying.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“I’m not as liberated as you, Myrna.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I guess I’m just old-fashioned.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Well you’re gonna be a lot older-fashioned without sex,” Myrna warned.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>It did not seem worth the argument and besides, Minnie thought, Myrna had never been married.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She did not know how these things worked.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Did not know what you had to give up, ignore, go without.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Did not know that sex in the long run was far less reliable than television.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>So there was Minnie, wearing that old blue housecoat, standing in the living room and watching her own reflection in the screen as the two servicemen prepared to move the set to the bedroom.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Max was sitting on the couch but stiff and still like a totem. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Dolly and Milt are moving to Canarsie in two weeks.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In cartons up to their ears.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You remember.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I said it was worse for us because of Maddy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She asked us to help them unpack once they’re in.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Let them unpack.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Max, are you sure you want them to move this screen in the bedroom?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There’s much more room in here.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“I can’t see,” he barked, waving her away from his line of sight as he oversaw the maneuver.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Minnie moved to the side.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“It’s going to be tight in there.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The bed, the dresser.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“I want it in there.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Okay, okay.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I guess we’ll live with it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’ll tell Dolly to call us when they get in.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Let them unpack,” he said again.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The servicemen hoisted the screen onto a robocart and began to direct it into the bedroom in the back.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But as they rounded the corner, the set scraped the wall and the plastic piece that held a wire in place fell off.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>No one noticed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Later in the week the housekeeper found it and put it on the windowsill where it remained unseen until Minnie’s cleaning.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>They rarely had sex after that.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Back in the bedroom, softly, Minnie placed the piece of plastic on top of the dresser. Max was still on his back, snoring away as the InSens carefully logged in his breathing rate, heartbeat, infratemp data and decided that he was napping and not dead.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">be back soon</i> sign had now fallen to the floor and Minnie picked it up and moved on to the bathroom.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There she adjusted the dangle of the toilet paper because only one square was supposed to show in the better homes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She cleaned stains from the rim of the bowl then noticed a crimped hairpin nestled into the green oval bathmat.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Hand on the hamper for support, she clutched the pin in her fist and stood up.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At the medicine cabinet she was about put it back into a small jar of hairpins, but she hesitated when she saw her own reflection in the mirror.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She looked older than she expected to.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>More weary.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Had that much time really passed since she last looked at herself?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Probably so.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She licked her finger and rubbed a small spot on the surface of the mirror as a means of ignoring the image behind it.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>It occurred to her then that she must have used that hairpin to fix one of her curls before going out.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Squinting at the memory, she could just barely squeeze out the image of herself pulling the pin out with her thumb and first finger.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But hairpins were titanium now and had memory themselves, very springy, and it shot out of her hand, twanged against the tile wall, and disappeared into the mat.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She probably looked down but could not see it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then she had noticed Max at the bathroom door.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She wondered if he was going to glance at her breasts, the unspoken signal that behind his cold mask the curves of her body were causing heat.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Do I look okay?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Am I wearing too much makeup?” she asked.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>He nodded.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“You know, you <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">could</i> answer me.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“No, I said,” he said.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“I mean it wouldn’t kill you to say something nice.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Fine.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You look fine.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Let’s go already.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“I’m ready.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m waiting for you.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Zip me up?”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>He stepped in closer and zipped.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But there was no glance.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“I wish I could understand you Max.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“What do you want from me Min?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What?”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“To talk.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That’s all.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“About what for chrissakes?”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Anything.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So we’re not two strangers.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“We’re not.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Let’s go already.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“About what you feel.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What you’re thinking.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“I’m thinking let’s go already.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I told you.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“That’s not what I mean.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Just stop trying to get all your damn talk in me.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Like blood from a stone, she thought for the millionth time.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And also for the millionth…but it doesn’t mean anything.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was just his way of putting up with all the bullshit.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He thought women talked too much, talked things to death, and muddled things with all their damn words.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She knew that about him right from their very first date in fact.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So why did it seem so rejecting now?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the beginning, she saw it as manly, as a kind of discipline.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But now, after 30 years, it only made her feel fat.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Fat, that is, with too much language.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Of course, she said none of this to him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She never said many of the things she thought, and by now there were too many of them to say.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On the other hand, Max never said the things she wished he would say.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Even though she desperately needed to know that he really meant them.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Water under the bridge, she thought and let the memory flow by.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Minnie put the pin back into the bin and took another look at herself in the mirror.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Perhaps it was just the light that made her seem so tired.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>In the hallway on the way back to the kitchen to program dinner, Minnie closed the closet door, which was always slightly ajar from years of paint.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That was when she noticed a scrap of paper wedged into the crack where the wall met the floor.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It turned out to be a gum wrapper.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Rolling it into a tiny ball in her fingers she suddenly recalled that time that Maddy had come for dinner.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Maddy was home from college for the weekend.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They had not seen her for the entire semester.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Max was cool about this, as about all things, but Minnie knew that he missed her too, missed them as a family.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Because he could not say this, Minnie was trying, too hard maybe, for it to be nice.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Which of course only made the whole evening more tense.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>In one year Maddy had become a jiggle of cigarettes, gum, polished nails, hair in the face, and exploding pronouns.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She was majoring in nanopsychology, which Max distrusted, and she needed new boots.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She was dating someone new and telling them all about the hassles and hurtles.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Max, legendary grouch, was actually smiling as she spoke.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“What is this Werner’s major?” he asked.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Wendell Dad.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s Wendell.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I told you.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s nanopsychology.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Just like me.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Goddamn psychology majors.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What the hell do you expect to do with that?”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“What do you want Dad?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You want everyone to be a tax lawyer?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then you’d be happy?”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Damn right.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Do something useful.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Max stop,” Minnie implored, “let her alone.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She’s home.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Are we eating or not?”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“In a few minutes.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“What is it with you Dad?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Why are you always like this?”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“More talk.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“What exactly did your mother do to make you hate women so much?”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“What the hell!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My mother?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Shut your mouth.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Maddy!” her mother shouted.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“You yell at Mom, you yell at me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You gripe about everything.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You never talk.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s like you hate women.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Maddy please…”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Like you’re trying to get back at your mother or something.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Goddamn it!” Max bellowed, the signal that all discourse was over.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Maddy, taking her cue, stormed out of the kitchen and down the hallway to her room.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That was the moment that she dropped the gum wrapper that got wedged under the molding.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Later, Minnie knocked on the door to her room, but her daughter would not open up.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Maddy please,” Minnie said,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“you can’t talk to your husband that way.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Husband?” Maddy shouted through the door.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“What?”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“You said husband.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That’s what used to be called a Freudian slip.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“I said that you can’t talk to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">your father</i> that way.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“You said husband.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“You’re just trying to hurt him with your psychology.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Hurt <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">him?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></i>That’s a laugh.<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></i>What about him being mean to me?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Doesn’t that count?”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“You know he doesn’t mean it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That’s just his way.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Dramatically, Maddy opened the door and looked directly at her mother, standing so perfectly at the door.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Well it’s not <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">my</i> way,” she said.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“And it’s not normal.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And it shouldn’t be yours either.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“You can’t say that about his mother.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Why?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Because it’s true?”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Everyone knows how devoted he was.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>All the brothers were.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Then how do you explain him?’</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“You know, Maddy, his mother told me that he was moody before we ever got married.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This frail old lady…and she warned me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But she said to pay no attention at all to that.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She knew that he loved me even though he couldn’t express it himself.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And so do I.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And he loves you too.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“How do you know?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>By guessing?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>People deserve more than that.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“You can’t just go by what people say.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“By what then?”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Who they are inside.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“So he gets to be himself and hurt you and hurt me and I have to assume it’s all because he loves me and never talk back.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“You don’t have to put it that way.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“No.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You can put it any way you want but that still doesn’t make it right.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>And now, back in the future that had become this very moment, Minnie carefully opened the trash pail and dropped the gum wrapper inside where a laser instantly poufed it out of existence.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And with it, the entire episode.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The InSens indicated that Max was sitting up in bed and that his biometrics were all within the acceptable range.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Minnie’s too as she stood on flat feet in the kitchen.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The news said that the government was using all this data to control everyone and that the corporations were using it to manipulate.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Everyone known and placed and logged in, all bodies measured and all needs directed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A neat world, accounted and demographed.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>But what about all those misplaced memories, Minnie wondered, where did they go?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The decisions that were made or not made, the things that were said or not.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Everything that happened and the tiny details and the lost objects, everything that cemented us into the gone past.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Maybe the world was only made of two things, she decided, the lost and the not now lost.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Rings and plastic parts and wrappers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But people too and maybe even entire lives hidden.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>She closed her eyes and tried to press out these thoughts.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They were confusing and indulgent.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What was the point after all?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You lived your life.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Even Max himself, who could never be explained or poinpointed, but who was always there, always watching over her.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Taking care of her, even if not tenderly, since she was a girl of seventeen and mistook it for an austere poetry. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>She tapped some icons on the kitchen screen and instructed the system to prepare dinner.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Suddenly, there was Max standing in his spot at the door.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Watching her moving, breathing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Oh, are you up?” she asked.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>He did not answer.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>But she knew, in the way that things that go missing are known to be somewhere, that if he could have, he would have said everything she wanted to hear.</div><!--EndFragment-->Alan Robbinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11931223050937847552noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4408320213129965937.post-86948133940599845642012-04-07T11:40:00.002-07:002018-05-29T08:36:49.845-07:00The iri<!--StartFragment--> <br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">I</span></b>n the ninth month of her travels, Admira Tsen landed on a tiny planet somewhere near Proxima Centauri.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The exact position of the planet was impossible to say since each day’s discoveries altered the starcharts completely.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Admira was used to this kind of uncertainty and was equally unfazed by the inhabitants she met there after landing.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>They were a kindly race of humanoids, to be bluntly self-centered about it, with a rich culture and a distant history.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As always – as an exoanthropologist – one of her main concerns was understanding how they saw their own beginnings.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To what did they attribute their existence and how did this affect their way of being?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was a central part of her thesis about the common ways all sentient beings thought about the cosmos and their place in it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And so far, she was proving herself right.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>This is the entry she made in the library based on the tale she was told by the inhabitants of PC127349:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>In the beginning, long before we humans ruled the earth with our fear and our fearful technology, there were a Great People who lived and thrived on our world.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>These were the first ones, the new ones, the inaugural hopes of mankind.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They were delicate and perfect in their appearance, they knew no disease or deformity, they understood the world and accepted it on its own terms.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Their home, the earth, as anyone who lived at that time would have known, was seeded by beings from another cosmos who came here to create a world.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There is no name for these beings but in their tradition we will refer to them as the iri.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">They were starfarers, these iri, and wanderers and seekers.</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">They roamed the stars and eventually came to the earth and seeded it with their DNA and from these twisty seeds grew the Great People.</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>This was the way of the iri…to seed worlds and to observe the outcomes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They were not godlike but more like gardeners.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Planting and watching, watering and studying.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Not immortal or all-knowing, the iri were subject to fate themselves.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yet they were students of how things unfolded and were never strangers to the worlds they made.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>All of the Great People would have seen them and known them as their creators.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In fact, the iri might even become too attached to one of their creations, which is the cause of the turmoil in this tale.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>They iri were not actually separate beings but rather like aspects, like the separate voices we all have in our heads.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For our purpose we can think of them as individuals with names and appearances but this would be just a storytelling convention.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And following this conceit, we can speak of one of the iri named Aia, who was wise and curious, and who fell in love with one of the Great People whose name was Entu and who lived in a place known as the OneCity, a great metropolis at the center of the world.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> Entu was tall and kind and was a friend to Aia but did not know the depth of her love for him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It came a time as the eons passed when the iri thought to shake things up to see what might happen.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thus came the idea to destroy the Great People of the world they had made in order to see what new crop of humans might emerge.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To experiment with a Grand Replanting, you might say.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The iri, powerful as they were, did not have the power to do this directly.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But they could manipulate certain natural forces and so they arrived at a decision to create a flood on the earth and wash the surface clean of the people before starting again.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>But Aia secretly felt sorry for her Entu and could not bear the thought of losing him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Sworn to silence about the plan and therefore lacking the ability to save him by her own hand, she whispered to his house the idea of building a boat to sail over the rising sea.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When Entu went to sleep that night, the house embraced him and squeezed his dreams so that when he awoke, it was with a sudden and undeniable vision of a great boat on a stormy sea.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He did not have knowledge of the flood and so Entu assumed that his boat would bring in a great bounty for all the people of the OneCity. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>As he made his plans, his neighbors became curious about what he was up to and Entu answered as honestly as he could that in a dream he saw that the Great People would soon be surrounded by abundance, a wealth of fish, and generous rain.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He did not himself know that the abundance would be floodwater and the fish would be within it and that the rain would spell their doom.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>For many weeks and months Entu worked on his boat – a great grand ship in fact –<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>the largest ever seen on the earth.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He worked diligently with his family and fed his workmen like there was no tomorrow, which of course there would not be.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But as the skies darkened and the work came to an end, a different vision appeared in Entu’s dreams…not bounty at all but a horrible storm that might wash away the world.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He thought to warn his friends and neighbors but knew in a dark insight that it was too late.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They could not all fit on the boat, great as it was, and would surely sink it to the bottom of the sea.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Entu understood what he had to do.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He gathered onto his boat all the members of his family, and plants of all kinds, and all manner of animals, and his gold and silver, and a small group of merchants, craftsmen, teachers, and philosophers, and the books of his library.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>All the things needed to re-create a civil world when the floods had passed. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> Then the storm began and raged, and winds and rain and hail swirled and whirled.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The iri used their understanding of the laws of nature to whip it up into a frenzy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It took all their combined powers working in unison to focus these dire energies, the forces of chaos and disorder, the quantum flux, the destructive powers of antimatter and dark energy.<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Only Aia refrained from joining in.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And all the while, Entu and his little community – his microcosm of the earth – cowered in the holds of the boat and wondered what would become of them.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Power feeds power, we all know this to be true.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And once unleashed, the powers of disaster have their own will.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But even the iri misunderstood this for the forces they unleashed were uncontrollable.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Unwittingly they had opened a crack in the cosmic egg. Chaos reigned not just on earth but throughout the universe and soon it reached their own realm and threatened to destroy the iri themselves.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In an instant they saw that they too were part of creation and had unleashed forces that would destroy them as well. </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">What have we done? they cried.</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">How can we save ourselves?</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">We are killing our children and in that killing, we are killing ourselves.</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">How can we have been so blind?</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> Powerless to stop what they began, the iri cowered in their realm just as Entu and his family and friends did on their boat, just as the rest of the people were engulfed in the waves that washed everything away.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>After a time, the storm subsided because no storm can last forever or the world would be a storm.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That is a rule of life too.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And the sky cleared and the waters began to recede.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Entu awoke one morning to find his boat perched on a tiny island.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In fact it had come to rest atop a mountain, the only one high enough to poke above the floodwaters.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Had any other land been spared?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Entu released a dove but the bird returned too soon.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then he released a swallow that could fly for much longer, but it too returned.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Finally, a raven left his hand and after many days it did not return and they decided it must have found land.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Plank by plank they dismantled Entu’s great boat and they made smaller boats, and divided themselves accordingly, and set off to find larger islands on which to live and thrive again.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But before finally leaving their tiny mountain island, they burned the bodies of those who had died during the journey.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The iri smelled this pyre and knew instantly that people had survived the flood.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>All their effort and planning had gone to waste, the experiment had failed, there would be no new beginning.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They argued and debated this outcome for a long time, but then eventually turned to Aia since they knew her feelings for Entu and suspected that she had warned him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>In her defense, Aia made an eloquent plea.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At fault was not her own feelings for Entu, she explained, because that was part of the outcome of their work too.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Instead it was the very notion of the flood.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To destroy all of their creation was wrong since it would tell them nothing about the laws of life.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To begin again would deny what they had begun in the first place.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But to allow some humans to survive…that would continue the work they started.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Only that would weed out the weak and allow the strong to survive.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Is that not a better test of our seeding? she asked.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Is that not the best test of all?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>And she convinced them like that, even though in her heart, it was Entu she believed in, not her own words.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>And that is why no flood nor plague not war nor unleashing of the forces of chaos will ever overtake the world.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Because nothing would be learned and no truth would pass through.</span></div>
<!--EndFragment-->Alan Robbinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11931223050937847552noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4408320213129965937.post-4105781039794618172012-04-07T11:37:00.002-07:002012-04-07T11:37:21.317-07:00Sudden Insight<!--StartFragment--> <br />
<div class="MsoNormal"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">P</span></b>rofessor Balia Brzozow, whom everyone called simply Zozo, wobbled like a penguin as he reached up to place an epsilon on the blackboard.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But lack of poise more than reach threw him off balance.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He closed his eyes for a second as he slammed against the board and slid down to the floor.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He recovered quickly, but wound up scratching a lightning bolt into the equation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The class splintered into laughter.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>More at this mime than his funny math.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Brzozow regained his composure, adjusted his tie and his notation, then glared around the room in mock anger. But they knew that he was not really angry, he was too intelligent for that, and it only made the whole show funnier.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>When the class was over, he swiveled awkwardly to erase the hour’s worth of calculations, managing to cover himself with chalk dust in the process.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The students squeezed noisily out through the door.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Someone shyly slid a late paper onto his desk; a debate about differentials spilled into the hall; two kids planning to marry kissed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>With all this hoopla, Brzozow completely missed his potential breakthrough…the new lightning bolt symbol he had inadvertently invented.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Had he simply assigned an n-inversion factor to his new symbol, he might have opened up an entirely new calculus of dimensional fractals.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Instead the eraser seemed to snicker as it sucked this discovery off the face of the earth forever.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Going home, Brzozow followed the pathway across the quadrangle on the way back to the bus.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Along the way, the crisp autumn trees evoked tangential probability arrays, bicycle wheels traced invisible motional sine curves, and a lost rubber ball suggested the sad loneliness of Reimann-Christoffel geometry.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This was always a wonderful walk for Brzozow.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was a time when he could be alone with his thoughts about the patterns and numbers hidden deep inside the cosmos.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Silently pushing across the square, his heels tapping the pavement, he could think of Pythagoras pushing pebbles along the ground with his bony toes, Euclid watching flotsam at the beach, or Leibnitz noting the bundled topology of his cat’s ball of string.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And if he was lucky enough to make it the entire way across without being interrupted by students or colleagues, he might even get to Newton thinking about a transmutational calculus or Napier eating himself sick while doing logarithms in his head.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>This was the best part of his day.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Like any mathematician, random rumination was his state of grace.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thoughts were wishes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Anything could be uncovered.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And also like most mathematicians, more than anything else he wanted to uncover something big.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Some grand truth about numbers, about life itself.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Some lovely perfect brilliant theory about the gearworks.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But as he got older he realized that this was not to be.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>All the conditions of perseverance, insight, luck, timing, or genius would not, it seem, come together.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Not in the time of his lifetime.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And so, instead, he grew to like his students, love his subject, and all in all he was not unhappy in this.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Yet still the walk across the campus was like a dream.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>On Flatbush Avenue, he made a comical sort of hopping turn on his right heel to fight the wind and veered forwards on a slight angle.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As luck would have it, a narrow dust tornado had just developed from a perfect Fibonacci of cross currents.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Hitting some dirt with force, it delivered a cloud of motes into his eyes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And for a brief moment, Balia Brzozow, formerly of the Ukraine and now professor of mathematics at Brooklyn College, was temporarily blinded.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The effect only lasted for a few seconds.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>But in that instant Brzozow suddenly had a change of mind.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The world in all its writhing photons was gone.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Completely gone.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In its place, he could now feel the air and all its variations in pressure, tonus, draft, and temperature.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He could feel it on his skin, everywhere in the same degree of contact.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Not over there or there, but always right here, right now.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Eyes closed, he reached out to steady himself and sensed the shifting density in the airspace before him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He stumbled and touched the cavernous bark of a nearby tree, so sculptural and infolded.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Not yet looking, he still knew that the sun had just ducked behind a cloud by the change in heat on his skin.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>In an instant, in other words, he immediately understood the idea of active seeing with fingers and skin and body rather than eyes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And amazingly, the universe was just as rich this way.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Vibration under the feet, the sounds of cars, odor of oak, cool at the back of the neck.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A new world grasped with new organs.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Rather exhilarating, he thought, standing there with his eyes closed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Revolutionary in fact.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As though he had never shut his lids before.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He had, of course, just never noticed.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The world suddenly seemed quite different.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Less rigid and more voluptuous.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And this seemed to Brzozow like a new way of knowing, full of possibility.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In fact, it brought into doubt the whole Cartesian business, the entire grid of being along the x,y,z.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Space as a matrix.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Like a breath of fresh air, he suddenly understood the limitations of the merely dimensional, orthogonal, deepfield extension of matter and distance.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>How unusual, he thought.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>And now he might have opened his eyes and gone about his business, but chose not to.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He briefly flashed on that lightning bolt from the blackboard and the idea of dimensional fractals.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Could it be, he wondered?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Might there actually be room there for a new mathematics of Tactile Irrationals and Percussive Potential?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That would certainly change things.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And the idea began to morph and form in his mind, astoundingly, in the way that cells soon become a someone.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yes, he mumbled, it could be.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You might even be able to explore a whole new theory of Haptic Iteration…</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>But at that same moment, Bucherman from History appeared and placed a heavy hand on Brzozow’s back.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Are you all right Brzozow?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Do you not feel well?”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“What???<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Who?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I…” Brzozow blanched and twitched.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“You should sit down,” Bucherman said.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“What?” Brzozow replied, still coming out of his reverie.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“On the bench over there.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Come, I’ll help you.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>More like a school principal than a nurse, Bucherman lead him rather forcibly over to the bench.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Against his will, Brzozow had opened his eyes and let the engulfing visual world come back in through the pinholes of his irises.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He felt like those reports he had heard about people near death being dragged back into their lives by zealous doctors.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>After sitting for a while and letting his eyes clear and his mind compose, Brzozow could see and think perfectly well again.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Bucherman, kind but irritating, was trying to make him feel better by telling him about the new Dean and the change in the college policy on out-of-pocket reimbursements, which made no sense at all but was so typical of the bureaucracy, and how the union was fighting it, but probably to no avail.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>And by now the insight in Brzozow’s head, and the math that might explain it, was long, long gone.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When he stood up and took leave of his colleague, he felt vaguely annoyed but had absolutely no idea why.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>At home, safe and sound, Brzozow told his wife Melia about the incident because it was funny.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He did not mention the ideas about a new way of thinking about space as always present because, like a dream on waking, he had completely forgotten about it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The whole thing in all its wondrous complexity had vanished just like that.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>It was clearly one of those days in which bold change was hovering just beyond the next coincidence.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But he was not at all aware of this.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Would you like a cold drink?” Melia asked, largely because she too was from Eastern Europe where a drink of cold water was the first line of defense against any trauma.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“I’m fine,” he said.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Have one anyway,” she said, thinking he was in no position to judge.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Thank you,” he said, and took the glass and went to sit at the table with it.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>But there was an unseen piece of boiled carrot on the floor from the night before and Brzozow stepped directly onto it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was only a tiny piece, not enough to actually slip on.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But it was big enough to cause him to slightly slide his foot, about a quarter of an inch.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The movement, barely enough to notice, did force him to plop down in the chair at an unintended angle.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Still nothing worth mentioning.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yet that minor adjustment threw his balance off just enough so that he slammed the glass down on the table a tad too hard.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Water splashed up out of the glass.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A small bead hit him smack in the nostril at the precise moment of an inhale.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Brzozow snorgled, snorted, and coughed and closed his eyes as if to sneeze.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>In that instant he back thinking about the fractals and haptic space and how they applied to the movement of the water in time.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Now motional frames in L-dynamic grids came to mind.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Before you could say neocalculus, if you could say it at all, he was assigning gradient loci to all the variables and thinking how to apply this to a tactile geoform and use a textural differential to incave the results.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>This was big, he thought.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Very big.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>It changed everything. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>And most of all, it changed what happened next.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>In visual space you could see things coming.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was all laid out from near to far.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Past, present, future…neat as a pin.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But in tactile space everything that was happening was happening right now.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>All around.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That was the implication of his insight.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If he was right, and he knew he was, then this view of the world was wrong.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Above all, time was wrong.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The future was an illusion, a ghost in the photons.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Prediction, expectation, hope and probability, would all have to all be reconsidered, pressed through the filter of his new tangible math.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Even chance itself was in question here.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Because it too was an artifact of the rational, seeing mind.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What if chance was only the name the impatient gave to a wealth of clues?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>All those long shots, near misses, close calls, and chances both good and fat and slim.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What if chance itself was riddled with the bias of first this, then that?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What if all the likelihoodlums were wrong and things in the end really <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">could</i> be known?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Known right now, the way you could feel the pressure of the air and the pull of the center of the earth?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then all the quantum Willy Nillies, who can never say anything more than maybe and maybe not, would have to bite their tongues!</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Amazing.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Yes, he thought.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It could be. The numbers suggested it!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And it felt delicious in his mind.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Everything old was new again.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The relativity of time and space, the uncertainty of measurement, the incompleteness of all formal systems.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Einstein, Heisenberg, Godel.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was all the same dreary story.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We’re not as hoop-de-do as we think.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There are restrictions, limits, chains on what we can know.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Year by year we were getting smaller in the cosmos, until one day our very existence would come into doubt.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>How many human beings could you fit on the head of pin…that was the real question.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But this!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This was something grand and great.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This was proof -- real mathematical proof -- that everything could be known.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That existence, this complexity of quantum gravity string vibrations, had a center and that we were it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Knowing was being and vice versa.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Well…all that could be figured out later.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>And somehow he, Brzozow with the water up his nose sitting in that kitchen on Ocean Avenue in Brooklyn, could see a glimpse of how this might be tackled.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It would combine crucial elements of metric gravitation, elementary dual-resonance, the Lorenz transformations of course, topographic structuralism, formal system paradox, maybe even that vague reference to transcendent fluxions in Newton’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Principia.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></i>It would mean coming up with a new idea of space and time and how they fold around consciousness like an angel being made.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You might almost call it a kind of miracle theory…</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>At which point, to be helpful, Melia, a book editor who had worked on Home Remedies and suddenly remembered what to do, slapped him firmly on the back.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Huh???” he gasped.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“You were choking,” she said sweetly.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“I wasn’t…I was… thinking.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“Nonsense darling, you were choking.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Some water up the nose.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“No…it was…”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>“You’re fine now,” she decided and went into the bedroom.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“No, I was thinking…thinking…something.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>But as quickly as it had come, the something was gone again.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There was just too much all at once to keep intact with open eyes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And without paper to write on or a blackboard to scrawl on, the whole complex fuss went scattering like the frailest of thoughts in a good stiff wind.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Melia in the bedroom was preparing for the night.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She began to pull off her dress and girdle and let her skin breathe again.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Brzozow, for his part, sat in the silence of the night kitchen for a while trying to recall what he had been thinking about exactly.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Numbers bounced in his head like bubbles in a glass of seltzer, impossible to pin down.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There were glimmers and glints of a TOE, a theory of everything, but these had become effervescent and momentary.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Nothing he could actually sink his teeth into.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And besides, the TV was on now and there was news about the storm, and the neighbors were fighting, and a plane was flying overhead on its way to Florida, and there was a cat or something in the alley tearing through the garbage.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>And whatever it was that had enthralled him all day was there no more.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Brzozow getting up noticed the piece of carrot on the floor.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>An accident waiting to happen, he muttered, and he picked it up and dropped it into the trashcan.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He put the glass back in the sink.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Through the doorway he could see Melia putting on her nightgown and the pale skin of her thigh before the curtain of the fabric dropped over it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She would be warm in the bed tonight and smell of clean carpets.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The mountain of her body would fill the space between his arms.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Something to look forward to.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>And he began to open the buttons of his shirt as he turned off the light and went to bed, never looking back.</div><!--EndFragment-->Alan Robbinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11931223050937847552noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4408320213129965937.post-68792498578334343072012-04-07T11:35:00.002-07:002018-05-29T08:34:28.410-07:00Uncle Jack Eats a Mummy<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">H</span></b>e’s coming here at nine tonight,” he whispered, even though there was no one in the store besides the two of us. "And I want </span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">you</span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> to be here with me.”</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> “This is insane,” I said for the twelfth time. “Aren’t those gravesites guarded?” </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> “He bribed the guard.”</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> “It’s illegal. Doesn't that tell you something?”</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> “It tells me there’s something there worth having.”</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Uncle Jack -- that was my nickname for him -- bit his lower lip the way he always did and swallowed another of his aspirins. He looked tired, but that wasn't unusual. He was only around fifty, but a lifetime of worry left him with the face and posture of an older man. A lifelong bachelor and hypochondriac, Uncle Jack was a monument to anxiety. He was skinny from fear of food poisoning, jittery from worry over household accidents, and an insomniac from dreams of his own funeral. While I tried to cheer him up with wisecracks or gossip, his conversation was peppered with reports of heart attacks or automobile collisions. He lived, as the Indians around here say, like a man seducing death.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> “What’s he got for you?” I said, breaking the uneasy silence.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> “Something from the excavation at Tarahuasi.” </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> He bent his head toward a cracked mirror and checked his tongue for spots.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> “He dug this up himself?” </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> “And thinks it’s worth a look. Relax, he knows what he’s doing.”</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> “I’m sure </span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">he</span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> knows,” I snapped. “But do </span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">you</span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">?”</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> The “he” in question was a man named Ramon who had come into the store a few days before. He was an outsider, not from the city, and he was staying at a nearby hotel. He had slick hair and rubbery lips and struck me as a bogus tango dancer from a thirties movie. One of his eyes looked slightly to left field. I didn’t like that either.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> He had come to the store because Uncle Jack occasionally sold Indian artifacts among his other junk. Ramon identified himself as a dealer with a special item for sale. Dealer, mind you, is a broad term covering anything from a licensed antiquarian to an outright grave robber.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">It wasn’t unusual. In Lima, like many cities near the Incan ruins, everyone sooner or later comes across ancient artifacts. They are practically the official knickknack of the country. Gold earpins, flat-faced statues, lapis beads, that sort of thing. Most of the stuff is stolen anyway. But there was something about Ramon that made me especially uneasy. Nothing Uncle Jack would have picked up on, of course. He would have been too busy taking his pills to notice a con man in a convent.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> “Why don’t you forget it and come to the movies with me instead,” I suggested.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> I had moved down from New York to stay with him for a while and took it upon myself to try and upgrade his life.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> “I hate movies. They remind me of death.”</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> “What? How do movies remind you of death?”</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> “I watch them frame by frame, like life slipping away.”</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> “This is hopeless. Look, we don’t know a thing about this clown Ramon,” I insisted. "Why does he have to come here at night?”</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> “What’s the difference,” he said, gargling with baking soda to kill germs. “He’s got something to sell.”</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> “Suppose he tries to rob you?”</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> “That’s why I want </span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">you</span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> to come. To protect me.”</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> That much, at least, was convincing. Uncle Jack did need protection. Not from outsiders but from his own gullibility. He was so busy guarding against calamity that there was nothing left over for ordinary caution. How many times had he been ripped off by someone selling fake artifacts, or stiffed by a creditor who never returned to pay? Or bought a bogus health cure from some sleazeball con artist? Naturally, I agreed to come back that night.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> At nine o’clock on the dot, Ramon parked his car in front of the store and walked in. He was carrying a package under his arm. It was wrapped in brown paper and tied with a cord. He seemed a little dismayed to see me standing next to my uncle at the counter.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> “This is my nephew from New York,” Uncle Jack said as the other man placed the package on the counter top. Ramon nodded. “Is this it?” </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Ramon untied the cord and opened the paper as he answered. “It was found in a small burial mound due south of the central tomb. The Incas often buried them at the four corners of the main pyramid to protect it.”</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> “Then why didn’t the archaeologists find it?” I asked, turning to Uncle Jack. But he was already caught in the web of the adventure and was putting on his reading glasses for a closer inspection.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Inside the paper was a wooden box, not much larger than a shoebox. Ramon slowly pried the lid off and slid it aside. Inside there was more paper and within the paper there was an object. Like llamas at a watering hole, the three of us tilted into the center to have a good look.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> It was apparently an eroded carcass of some kind, stiff and leathery, about the size of a deflated football. It looked like something that had been buried for too long, all rooty and bleak. You couldn't make out anything familiar about it, except that it probably was not supper. And it didn't smell like fun either. The word dingus came to mind, although I had no idea what it meant. </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> “Creeperino,” I said, bypassing my college education.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> “You see?” Ramon said. “It’s a mummy.”</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> “Mummy?” I said with a laugh. “It looks like a dried fish someone tried to bury.”</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> “Look,” Ramon said, ignoring my theory and pointing to the tip, “you can still see some of the teeth and hair.” </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Indeed, on closer inspection, there was some black thatchy material attached to the top and some teensy white slivers imbedded on the surface a few inches down. But for the rest, it was hard to make head or tail of it.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> “Did it shrink?” I asked.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> “It’s a baby.”</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> “Really? I didn’t know mummies </span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">had</span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> babies.”</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Ramon frowned and explained.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> “When the ruler was buried, his wives were often killed along with him. If they had small babies, they were killed too and mummified. Then they were buried at secret locations around the tomb.”</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> “Of course. Why not!” I sputtered.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> “They had to hide them,” my uncle explained patiently. “There was a market for them.”</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> “Still is,” Ramon added with a wink.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> “A market for mummy babies? What on earth for?” I barked. “Pillows?”</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> The whole thing was really starting to get to me.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> “Medicine,” they both said in unison.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> I didn’t say anything, but my green pallor must have hinted at a tinge of skepticism.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> “Look, mummy has been a drug in Europe and the Far East since the Middle Ages,” Ramon explained. “No decent apothecary shop would be without it. It’s a powerful medicine. Because of the minerals used in mummifying…bitumen, natron, and so on.”</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> “Bullcrap,” I said.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> “No, I don’t think that was used.”</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> “It’s true,” Uncle Jack added. “The medicine made from these mummies is supposed to, as the Indians say, cure the disease of the clouds.”</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> “Come again?”</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> “It bestows immortality,” Ramon said.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> I could only laugh at that one. But the others were not joining me in the glee. They were dead serious.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> “You’re too young to believe in such things,” Ramon said calmly, wiping his eye with a handkerchief. “That’s good. That’s what youth is for. Your job is to believe in fun. TV, sex, Coca Cola. But for men of our age, belief must seek a greater reward.”</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> “Immortality,” I repeated, trying out of respect not to giggle my way through every syllable.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> “Don’t sound so shocked. It’s nothing new,” Ramon said. “Immortality’s been around for thousands of years.”</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Immortality…as in living forever?” I asked, just to make sure we were on the same wavelength.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> “Yes,” Ramon said solemnly. “It Is a belief held all over the world. In South America, Egypt, Persia. Any place where the dead were prepared for eternal life. Why shouldn’t those discoveries aid the living as well. Why not?”</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> “Because it’s totally crackbrained, that’s why,” I announced. “Have you ever heard of -- like -- science?”</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> “How much do you want for it?” my uncle interjected.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> “I know that you are a sick man, Jacinto. That’s why I came to you with it. Don’t worry about the price. I’ll give you a good deal.”</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> “Who’ll cook it?”</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> “I know an Indian who can prepare it for eating.”</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> I definitely heard the word, though I first thought it must have been heating or beating or anything but what it actually was. It took me a few seconds to process it and interrupt.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> “Wait a minute,” I said, putting as much distance between myself and the ghouls as possible. “Do you mean to tell me that you are going to </span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">eat</span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> this thing? Just pour on a little hot sauce and open a beer?”</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> “Not like that,” Ramon said. “You pulverize it and mix the powder with mineral water.”</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> “And some rum,” Uncle Jack added. “For flavoring.”</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> “No shit!” I said, but by then I'd had it with the whole rotten mess and was storming out the door. “I hope this is a practical joke because if it isn’t, and even if it is, it’s the sickest thing I’ve ever heard in my life.”</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> “Stick to your beliefs,” Ramon shouted after me. “Go watch television.”</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> But I was already out on the sidewalk, leaving them to conspire alone in the ghastly light.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> I did not see my uncle for a few days after that. The fact is, I couldn’t bear to look at his sad and troubled face so I stayed upstairs and avoided him. But eventually I began to worry. I figured that he was just desperate enough to try it and get himself good and sick. So I went to the store and was surprised to find him vigorously dusting off the counter. He looked rather alert, even chipper. His gloomy color had given way to a reddish blush. Not rosy exactly, but vaguely pink. And he was standing up a little straighter. Not enough that anyone else would notice. But I did.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> “You didn’t really eat that thing, did you?” I finally asked when I got up the nerve.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> “Sure did,” he said and flashed a smile. His teeth looked very pearly and I hadn’t noticed that he had so many of them before.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> “The whole mummy?” I asked, sounding like a sick TV commercial.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> “It's medicine, not junk food,” he insisted, taking out a plastic container with some mud at the bottom of it. “Ramon brought it over the next day. I take a spoonful every evening. </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><b></b></span></span></div>
<b><div class="MsoNormal" style="display: inline !important; text-align: justify;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"></span></span></div>
<div align="left" class="MsoTitle" style="display: inline !important; text-align: justify;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><b></b></span></div>
<b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><div align="left" class="MsoTitle" style="display: inline !important; text-align: left;">
</div>
</span><div class="MsoNormal" style="display: inline !important; text-align: justify;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">And when I wake up in the morning, I feel a thousand years younger.”</span></span></div>
</b></b><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><b></b></span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><b></b></span> <div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> I couldn’t argue with him. In the first place, it was already done. Secondly, he actually </span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">did</span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> look a lot better. In coming days, he started dressing up to go to work. Not fashionably mind you, not spiffy, but neater. He sent his pants to the cleaners. He wore a white shirt. He even began to comb his hair with a part down the middle.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> In the following weeks he did not once mention a funeral, a case of cancer, a car accident, a coronary bypass, or even an infant death. The report of an earthquake on the news seemed to bore him and he changed the station to a quiz show. One day, out of the blue, he threw out his aspirins and stopped peering down into his throat for tumors.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> By the end of the month, inexplicably, he had actually asked for the hand of a woman in marriage! She was thirteen years younger than Jack and, as far as I knew, had hardly ever spoken to him. She rejected him, of course, but even that did not seem to dismay my uncle. He drank to her health and treated me to the movies.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Things seemed so good on the way to the theater that I did not have the heart to tell him about the news I had heard. It seems that a man sounding suspiciously like Ramon, but with a different name, had been picked up by the authorities for trying to sell a phony mummy to a local dealer. When the police went back to his hotel room, they found seven more baby mummies in boxes. They were all fakes, made of paper and dirt and old straw. I should have known when I saw the first one, but I didn’t think of it until later.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> How many babies – mummy or not – have you seen with teeth?</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Sitting there in the dark, I was about to say something to Uncle Jack about it. But as the picture started I turned to him and suddenly saw the light. He was laughing at the movie, his eyes glinting, his skin twinkling from the glow of the flickering screen. I couldn’t bring myself to eclipse it. So I just sat back and said nothing. And what would have been the point anyway? Perhaps he got just what he paid for. Exactly that. </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> As the Indians say, there’s no great trick to immortality. As long as you live it day by day by day.</span></span></div>
</span><br />
</b><br />
</span><br />
</b></div>
Alan Robbinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11931223050937847552noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4408320213129965937.post-31967173417443367092012-04-07T11:27:00.003-07:002012-04-07T12:12:47.914-07:00The Dead Got It Good<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<div class="MsoPlainText"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I</span></span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> knew she was no good. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> Sure I did. It was written all over her body. In </span><b><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">bold italics</span></i></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">, you might say. You couldn’t miss it, not if you knew how to read. No, but you could sure play dumb. And that is just the way I played it. Dumb as a stump. Chose not to read the signs, I mean. I had my reasons. After all, I was fed up with the whole thing, the whole ubertext, this lousy script that had become my life. I was at that point, you know? That point where I was ready, willing, and able to play the patsy for some recelled blonde with a nip and tuck waist. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> Boy was I at </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">that</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> point.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> So when she walked in with that “sign up here, patsy” look on her smile, I did. Sign up that is. What the hell. I mean, what are patsies for anyway?<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> In retrospect, I was falling down dumb even before I lunged at her with my eyes. Before she even walked in the door. I could hear her Steelettos tap-tap-tapping all the way down the hall outside. That is one hell of a sound when you’re all lonely and whimpering into the earhole on a bottle of bourbon. It sounded to me like some kind of erotic Morse code. Could just imagine the pair of glutes that would be swaying over her feet to make that racket. Glutes, you know? Gluteus maximus…ass muscles to you. Tap. Tap. Tap. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> I’ll tell you straight off…it wasn’t just my cochlea that was perking up that evening.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> So by the time she got to the outer door of my office, I was ready to pop my eardrum. She let herself in and put her hairy coat on the hook in the front room. Neomink I figured, from the hang of it, which meant she was loaded. They didn’t kill minks anymore, they just sucked out their chromosomes and sold them by the ounce. As I watched her through the frosted glass on the inner door to my office, I thought for a second about neatening up the joint, then thought about wrecking it. I did neither but just watched her silhouette enlarge as she walked closer, like fate coming.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> She stood in the outer room for an eternity, maybe waiting for an invitation. But I was all out of invites. You know how it goes. One too many uninvited guests crashing my party, you see? So I watched while she adjusted a skintight dress around the kind of body men drool on. Through the opaque pane I could just make out her outline as she shimmied and slithered nice and slow. So slow that Einstein would have revised relativity. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> When she was done reforming herself she put her hand on the knob. But she hesitated. Maybe thinking twice about seeing me. Maybe not. Her shadow in the glass panel, all wet and soft, could have been drawn in sweat. Mine. The Renaissance hair, the Art Deco shoulders, the Egyptian waist…oh yeah, I studied art in college all right. Only it didn’t culture me.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> And then there were the words typed across her body. They were written on the door but the way she was standing, they looked like a sign on her chest. Across the top they said Max Trouble. Actually they read “xaM elbuorT” because they were backwards, written to read from the far side of the door. But that didn’t matter. I knew who I was. And so did she. Across the bottom, the sign painter had added the word Welcome. It was against my wishes because no one was, but I guess you can’t have a detective business without it. Still, I was going to call the guy back and have him take out the word until I realized just how apt it was. Standing at the door waiting to come in and see me, just like she was right then, the words on my office door read Max Trouble Welcome.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> Perfect.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> And then, just like that, she was inside, standing there in all her glory. And believe me, it was a glory I was glad to halleloo. She had the face of an angel but the body was satanic. Like they say, you could sell your soul for the sin therein. The shapes were impossible, the curves fantastic. And her dress was so tight I was having chest pains. Of course, I knew that body was engineered, all bioware implants and explants. Her airport scan must have looked like a stealth bomber. But I didn’t care…I didn’t work at the airport. It was all I could manage to roll off the couch and slug my breakfast every morning.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> As she sauntered towards my desk I wondered what kind of lubricant she was using. I could have used it on my hinge. And as usual, it squeaked like a mouse as the door closed behind her. The heels clicked out a jazzy mambo as I tried to defibrillate. And when she spoke, I could almost smell my dreams on her breath. Dirty dreams.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> She said her name was Esmeralda in a voice like Turkish coffee in a china cup. Not that I ever tasted it but I have plans. Esmeralda! Yeah right…and mine’s Diamond Jim Brady, I thought. But I said nothing. I didn’t believe it but I fell for it. The whole caboodle, fake as sugar, all mixmashed up by some lust engineer. It was something about the way she moved her lips when she said the name, like she was massaging my doubt with her mouth. And believe me, my doubt hadn’t been rubbed like that in a long time.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Sit down,” I said, “and feel free to cross your legs.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> She had killer legs, you know, the kind that killers kill for. She followed my gesture over to the couch and sat down, then crossed her legs like a pro. Then crossed them again just in case I missed it the first time. I should have known then and there that I was in deep doodoo. You know…double cross and all that crap.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “I need your help,” she cooed and tossed her cleavage into the bargain. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Zat so?” I said, trying to play it cool in spite of a sudden hot flash. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Someone is trying to kill me.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “I hate it when that happens.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Please, Mr. Trouble, I’m so frightened,” she tittered.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> She took a deep breath and pillowed her bosom by two bra sizes. Probably those new pneumatic ones, but I’m no stickler for details. Round is round, if you get my drift.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Okay,” I said, bobbing my head like a pigeon. “Talk to me. I’m listening.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Someone is trying to </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">kill</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> me,” she cawed.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Who?” I hooted.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “My husband,” she said, flapping.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> But I had had enough of these bird games. I didn’t want to hear about her husband or the cage he put her in. I didn’t want to know her problems. All I wanted to do was jump her right then and there. Take her in my arms and learn to juggle with my eyes closed. I felt hard and cruel and high on hormones. Even thought of smacking her into submission like I read in the old paperbacks. But then she looked up at me all helpless and scared. Her green eyes sparkled in the crummy light and I wondered what kind of creep would want to end a dream like her.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Oh come on,” I said. “You gotta have it all wrong. Why would anyone want to…”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> But suddenly she was filled up with tears and terror. I could feel all the testosterone draining and now all I wanted to do was protect her, comfort her. She took out a handkerchief and blew a fanfare to the coming drama. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “You didn’t know him, Mr. Trouble! Alonso was a very powerful man!”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Alonso?” I repeated. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> But she only honked into the hanky like a goose. A cooked one.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “You mean Alonso as in Alonso Montenegro?”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> It was a good guess and her wince told me that I was right. There were not many Alonso’s left and this one was famous. He was a ruthless tycoon who had made a fortune in nanotech. Teensy tiny robots that could get under your skin and give you a damn good itch. I hated robots and therefore Alonso too.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “You’d better have a drink,” I said and shoved a shot glass her way, but she veered left and went for the bottle on my desk instead. She choked as she took it too fast and all I could think of was some nice slow mouth-to-mouth. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “You’ve got to help me,” she said. “I’ll be dead in 24 hours if you don’t!”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Sure, I’ll help you,” I said. “Maybe. What’s the dope?”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Alonso was no dope. He always knew exactly what he was doing.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Why do you say </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">was </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">all the time? Is he…</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">was</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">?”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> As she put the bottle down on the floor, her hand started to shake like a superstring. They’re the vibrations that run the world, you might know. But in this case, they were stopping her in her tracks. It took her a long time to settle down and spit out the news.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “My husband is dead, Mr. Trouble!”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Run that by me again?”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Alonso Montenegro died yesterday.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “I didn’t hear about it. From what?”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Same as everybody. From being born.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Can you be more specific?”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “His wife.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “I thought you were his wife.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “I am. I mean…was.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “You killed him?”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “I guess so,” she said but there was not a trace of rage in her answer. “I suppose I made his life unbearable. He knew I was seeing other men. You see he was quite a bit older than me and I…”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “I get the picture.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Do you? Have you ever been hurt by love, Mr. Trouble?”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Honey, hurt’s my middle name,” I offered. But she wasn’t taking. Instead she took another swig from the bottle and wiped her lips with sad hands.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “I think it was too much for him eventually. He died of a heart attack.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “No one dies of that anymore.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Hearts still break, Mr. Trouble, in spite of cardiogenics.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Well then I’d say you’re pretty much home free, murderwise.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> But she looked up at me like someone expecting a bomb rather than a prize. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “You didn’t know my husband.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “True, but…”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “He would never, ever let death get in the way of his plans.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> It was dusk by the time we got down to serious business. One of those crazy dusks that settle on you like too much brandy on a hot day. As the boys down at the bar always say, the only cure is mixing metaphors with a total stranger. So I was playing her keyboard and petting her pride when she suddenly stiffened up.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Please, you’re going too fast,” she said, as I moved in for the clinch.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Sure, sure,” I said. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> I was used to being played with like a yo-yo. Story of my life.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Look, why don’t you tell me what this is all about?” I said backing off.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Yes, Mr. Trouble. I’ll tell you everything. Everything.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> She was breathless as she reeled me back in and planted one. She kissed like someone who had studied thermodynamics and knew how to pump up the heat.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Jesus lady, you sure blow hot and cold.” I said, trying somehow to warm down and cool off at the same time.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “I’m so confused, so desperate!” she gasped. “You see Alonso’s goon is following me. He’s a biogen and a murderer.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> So that was it. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> Now it all made sense. The dead husband had progged a biogen assassin to do her in. That was bad because biogens had no conscience. They were high-tech zombies programmed to follow instructions. There was no way to stop them once they were given directions. The mob used them all the time, the army was in love with them, and naturally they were all over the government. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “That’s why I have to be so careful,” she said. “One false move and…”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> Perfect, I thought. Because if there was ever one false move…I was it. I poured us another sociable.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “So Alonso set up his goon to do you in </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">after</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> he died. Is that the gambit?”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “That’s right!” she cried. “It’s horrible, Mr. Trouble. So horrible.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “And what’d you do to earn this kind of devotion?”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Nothing!” she said “I did nothing.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> She was half sitting on my desk, her legs out in front and her hands resting at either side on the desktop. Her skirt fell like a waterfall over perfect rocks. And I noticed for the first time the heart shaped gold locket she wore around her neck that pointed to her cleavage like a road sign. A curl of her auburn hair had slipped over her left eye. Her lips were still moist. She looked about as innocent as a personal injury lawyer. I laughed.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “What’s so funny about personal injury,” she pouted.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “You read my mind,” I said. “Okay, so you’re innocent. Just like every bum I ever nailed. So what do you want me to do? Guard your body?”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “No, Mr. Trouble. I want you to kill </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">him</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> first!”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> By the time I stopped choking on the booze, the burning had ripped a hole in my windpipe. I looked at her for a sign of satire but got back a steely stare instead.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Come again?”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “I want you to kill him before he kills me.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> She welled up again and I handed her my handkerchief to mop the flood.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Nice idea,” I said, “except for one problem. I don’t do murders.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “But you must, Mr. Trouble!”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Sorry, honey, I’m allergic to murder. Gives me hives.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “But he’s only a biogen!”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Even hybrids have rights in this crazy world. Life, liberty, that other stuff.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> After all, biogens were not robots. They were real people with a few stubborn microchips in the right places. They were relentless, mindless, soulless. But flesh and bone nonetheless. Like a lot of folks I knew. They ate, slept, watched bad sitcoms. But when the signal came through, they dropped everything and borged their way to the end. No, there was no way to tell a biogen from an ordinary citizen, until after they plugged you.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> She pulled back for a second and I thought she might call it quits. I wasn’t even sure how I felt about that. But it was only a windup and she threw herself at me like a lepton.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Please, Mr. Trouble! You’re a detective. You must have a gun.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Right here, babe,” I said, tapping my armpit. “But I don’t kill people with it.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> I was holding her around the hips to stop her from collapsing, but the firmness of her body was confusing my sense of duty.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “You must help me, Mr. Trouble. Alonso found out that I was having an affair. He knew he was dying, so he wrote into his will as his final wish that I be killed for my indiscretion. Believe me, his goon will carry out his wish!”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Sorry, lady,” I said, pushing her back. “I may be a patsy, but I’m no fallguy. If I were to kill this goon of yours, the cops would nail me for sure. Not to mention the ASPCB.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Cruelty to Biogens? How can you think of that when my life is at stake?”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Seems like everyone’s life is at stake. So if you don’t mind, I’ll take mine first.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “But the will would protect you. It would prove that he tried to kill me first.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Call me a cynical paranoid psycho but I’ll bet a man like Alonso covered that particular track.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Very well!” she said, suddenly straightening up. “You leave me no choice.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> I thought she had gotten hold of herself but no dice. What she had gotten hold of was my ceragun and she was pointing the barrel right at my ticker. She had managed to slip it out of my shoulder holster while I was too stuck on her curves to notice. I laughed again but more at myself than at her. And I wondered just how much it would cost to add the word Patsy to the door. Then I raised my arms in the victim’s salute.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “You’re nuts!” I said, trying to distract her. “Crackers, bananas.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> It was way past dinnertime but she wasn’t hungry enough to take the hint.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “I may seem insane to you, Mr. Trouble,” she said, her voice all trembly, “but I assure you that I am perfectly aware of what I am doing.” <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “And what is that? What are you going to do, shoot me?”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Not at all, Mr. Trouble. I’m going to let my lover do that.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Nice sense of drama you got.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “In here!” she shouted. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> Only then did I realize that what I thought was a coat in the outside room was actually a man. He had been standing there the whole time, waiting for her to beckon him in. Once inside, I could see that he was a nice-looking kid with a sorrowful face, same face I’d seen on a million wannabees. He had a gun too, but on him it was a decoration not a weapon. I could see right off from the way he looked at her that he was stuck on the dame. Couldn’t blame him, of course. I was too. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> Until now.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Max Trouble meet Max Trouble.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “What the hell…”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “I’m afraid I must confess that I lied to you before, Mr. Trouble,” she said to me, cold as a fish and still wriggling the gun. </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">My</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> gun.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “No kidding. And here I thought you were licking me through your teeth not lying through them.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Shut up!” the kid said. He was twitchy from too much sin that he couldn’t handle. Or maybe just from having the same name as me. That was making me twitch too.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “So which part was the lie?” I asked. “All of it?”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “No, just the made-up parts. Alonso Montenegro </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">was</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> my husband and he </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">did</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> croak yesterday. He also found out about my affair.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “With him?” I said, nodding towards the kid. “That’s not romance, that’s kidnapping.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “I ain’t napping now, pal?” he said, raising the gun.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “It’s all right, honey,” she said to calm him. “This will all be over soon.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Go on,” I said stalling for time, “you were finally telling me the </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">truth</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Don’t put that word in italics with me,” she spit, stern as a stickler. “You have no idea what I’m dealing with here.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Why don’t you give me </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">all</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> the sordid details,” I suggested, stalling.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “The will is very clear,” she said. “It states that unless Max Trouble is killed within a week, I am cut out of the estate. I get nothing. After all I put up with living with that fat pig. His disgusting hands all over me…”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “In other words, this biogen kills your lover and you get the money.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Yes. That was Alonso’s final revenge.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Cute. But not exactly legal.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Alonso was above the law, Mr. Trouble. You of all people should know that. And above his own death too. He has plenty of people who will see to it that his wishes are carried out.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Let’s cut the chatter and get on with it,” the kid said.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> I could see from his stammer that he was getting scared, which was good for me, so I stalled for more time.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “If this runt and me got the same name, how do you know which of us the biogen would nail?”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “We don’t, Mr. Trouble. That’s the whole problem. The biogen has been following me, waiting for me to lead him to a Mr. Max Trouble. Now both of you are here. It’s only a matter of time…”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Then what?”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “He comes here, he finds a dead Trouble,” the kid said, trying to sound old. “ID’s the corpse, goes home happy.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Okay,” I summed. “I was wrong, I admit it. It’s not just you, sweetheart. You’re </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">all</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> nuts. Alonso, you, this kid…the whole bunch of you. Why don’t you let me dial up a good virtual shrink.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “I’m sick of all your cracks,” the kid said. “And I ain’t no kid neither.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> He raised his arm and aimed the barrel of his gun, putting me one barb away from oblivion.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Let’s all just take it easy,” I said, lowering my arms. I wasn’t getting brave, just tired. “This whole thing is out of some crap short story.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Shorter than you think,” the kid said and I smiled. He was a baby hood with bad skin, but at least he was finally picking up the wordplay.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “I don’t get it,” I said. “How did I come to figure in all this?”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “It had to be you,” Esmeralda said.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Catchy tune, but why me?”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Alonso didn’t know </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">who</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> my lover was, Mr. Trouble. Or what he looked like. He just knew the name. So the will simply says that Max Trouble must die.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “You people are obsessed with names. Ever hear of DNA, biotraces, face recognition?”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Alonso started all this, Mr. Trouble. We were very careful and never left any traces. But he managed to find out the name. No other information. All he had was a name.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “And that’s why you picked me?”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “The databank coughed you up. Right there under T. Seems you are the only other Max Trouble in town.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> I was about to say that I’m usually under P for patsy but I began to think I was overplaying that gag. Besides, the chill in her stare suddenly sent a shiver up my spine. Some inner nanotech had turned her colors all chilly. It was the first moment that I actually thought the ending would not be as ironic as I imagined.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “We kill you,” she said flatly, “and when the biogen shows up he finds a dead body. He ID’s you and finds out that Max Trouble is dead. His mission is over. Once Alonso’s people are satisfied, I’m home free. I’ll claim that you were my lover and I can collect my money. You see?”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Bye bye bigmouth,” the kid said.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “I’m sorry for all this…well…all this trouble, Max. I know it’s not right. But face it, we’re all nothing but bytes in the same Net. Real people don’t matter anymore, just data. The fact is that any Max Trouble will do!”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> I had a real good laugh over that one. They must have thought that I flipped my wig. Some scene…both of them standing there holding me at gunpoints, ready to cancel my ticket, and me laughing like a fool. But it really was funny.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Nice plan, Esmeralda,” I said, “but there’s one slight problem.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “What’s that?” the kid asked, daring me to find a loophole.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> I gave him a crater. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “I’m not Max Trouble.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “What??”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “I’m not Max Trouble. So killing me won’t accomplish anything. Biogen shows up, finds me dead, snorks out my identity, then still goes and hunts down babyface.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Don’t give me that,” the kid said. “He’s bluffing, stalling for time. Let me do him and get this over with.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> Luckily the dame had more sense than her boy.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “What are you saying?” Esmeralda shrilled. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> Her eyes glowed with rage and I had to admit that she was quite exquisite when she was deranged.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Max Trouble,” I said. “That’s not my real name. It’s only the name I use for this business. Sounds good. Some nice letters on a door.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “What the hell are you talking about?”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Go back and check the databank. You didn’t dig into it, just saw what you wanted to see.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> I made a move over to the console on my desk but the kid got rigid and so I backed off.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Max Trouble? Real name…Maxmillian Troubleski. I cut it down because I paid by the letter,” I cracked, nodding at the signage.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “That’s impossible.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Check it out. Troubleski. It’s of Ukrainian/Polish/Hungarian origin. My grandfather was a count, my father a no-count, and I could barely count. That’s evolution in action.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “That’s baloney,” the kid sputtered. “I saw his name in the databank.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “You saw my moniker, you monkey.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Who you calling a moniker?”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Shut up both of you!” Esmeralda shouted. “I need time to think.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Look,” I said, “I can prove it to you. Just access the databank from there. But try to read beyond the first two words. If you can.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> I pointed to my desk but the kid got nervous again. His hand was shaking as he stared me down. Mine wasn’t shaking at all because I knew they couldn’t take the next step without me.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “He knows we can’t access from here. The console has touch ID.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Then </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">you</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> do it,” Esmeralda said, looking at me. “Slowly.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Could be a trick,” the kid suggested.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> But she was too busy figuring out what to do next to bother with him and she motioned for me to continue. I tapped the console and a mistscreen appeared above it like a haze. A few quick moves and I was into my file. The kid must have needed to read with his finger like first grade because he walked up close and poked the words. His hand was shaking like an autumn leaf, which made the screen waver, but when he was done it was winter in his soul.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “He’s right,” the kid said. “It says Maxmillian Troubleski.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> Even from her side of the desk she could see the databank entry floating in space in reverse. My mug, my data, my name. The kid was all gaga but she did not seem surprised, which did not surprise me. She was one of those women who are used to sudden changes in the rules. A real player. So by the time the plan unraveled, she had already thought through her next move. And the one after that. Slowly, like a poet reaching a sad conclusion, she slid the gun away from me and towards the kid.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “What are you doing dollbaby?” he gasped.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Sorry honey, he may not be Max Trouble. But </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">you</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> still are.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Me??</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> But we’re partners! I was going to kill him for you! And then we were going to split the money and…and…”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “There is no money without a dead man named Max Trouble.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “Then let’s find another one.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “It seems like </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">you’re</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> the only one left in town.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “There must be another way!”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “There isn’t.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “This is nuts. You can’t kill me. I love you.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> “I know you do, sweetie. And I’ll always feel good about that. But I have a date with five billion dollars. I’m sure you can understand…”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> As I watched them go back and forth, I slowly edged my way towards the middle of the desk. I had a second pistol stashed there. It was not a ceragun, just an old revolver, but it still had bullets that shot. Plus there was another bottle of booze. I figured I could either shoot my way out of the mess or drink a toast to the end of it. But I didn’t get that far. Something had already clicked inside junior’s head, something dark and tragic, and it didn’t spell Esmeralda. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> The room went dark as I dove, trouble first, behind the desk. I had my revolver in one hand and the booze in the other by the time the flurry of shots ended. When I peeked out they were both lying on the floor of the office in a bad mangle. The kid’s wound sparked and spizzled, I guessed from a cybernetic ticker. They were real good at that now but even a bionic heart could get you killed. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> And from Esmeralda’s wound a deep green oil spilled like an arctic tanker on a reef. Figures, I thought. She was a monroe, a pleasure anthroid. Sexy as they could make them. But just as dead in the end.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> As I sat there waiting for some neckless goon to wander in, find his dead Max Trouble, and be on his way, two separate pools of liquid – one red, one green – formed around their bodies, then spread out until they joined in the middle like hands touching.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> Very touching.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> It seemed like I’d have some explaining to do downtown but nothing I couldn’t handle. The cops would give me the standard third-degree, the secretary the familiar wink, and the captain the usual runaround about the company I keep. Slap on the wrist, watch your back, so long sailor. But as I stared at the bodies, what I could not grasp was how anyone could be so dumb. How they could want something so much that they would risk everything to get it. And lose it all in the end.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> Then I thought…that’s why the dead got it good. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> They can’t risk their lives for something they cannot have. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> Sweet.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> I took another shot of whiskey and toasted the luck of the dear departed. Then I tapped the console and the mistscreen vanished like a bad clue, my picture and name like dust in the wind. So it turned out to be an ironic ending, just like I expected. After all, this was the pinpoint world, dataworld, the universe of tracking and tracing. Biotrace measures, retinal scans, DNA sampling, face recog…everyone everywhere listed, accessed, known, located. Yet somehow it had all come down to that crazy name I inherited. Just a name…flimsiest of all traces. Maxmillian Troubleski. Even I thought it sounded like a chatty drunk in a skeezy bar. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> But what the hell, it saved my life this time. And what is a name anyway besides some letters on a door. You never really know who anyone is. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoPlainText"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> Maybe least of all yourself.</span><o:p></o:p></div>Alan Robbinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11931223050937847552noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4408320213129965937.post-11740689206992281852012-04-07T11:26:00.000-07:002012-04-07T11:26:01.061-07:00Coasting Towards Sedna<!--StartFragment--> <br />
<div class="MsoNormal"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">H</span></b>e is sitting near the window, looking out onto the empty spot into which the hovertram will float when it arrives in a few minutes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>From my position, I can only see him from the rear, only make out the contour of his left cheek and the furrow of hair over his ear.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He could easily be any one of a number of older men with hair yellowing, skin crinkling, brown spots on the neck.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The gray thermion pants that he is wearing could belong to any geezer of his generation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yet the short-sleeved white shirt with the undershirt showing through make him look not so much like anyone as an ad for the latest senior cruise to the Moon.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>But despite all this, something tells me that this is not just a stranger staring out the window of the waiting area.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Not just any older man.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>It is him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I know it is.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In fact, there is absolutely no doubt in my mind.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>But how can it be?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It defies the laws of levity.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And why is he here now, taking the solarsail, of all things, to the outer planets?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Where could he be going?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>To Sedna like me?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Impossible.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I am going there to study soil, or dirt depending on one’s sensibility.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To Sedna, one of the hundreds of new planets now known to swirl around the sun.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Unknowable Sedna, with its wild ten thousand year orbit.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Sedna where heat is a rumor and light a rare but succulent dream.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There is nothing there, of course, how can there be so far from any center?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But I am drawn there nonetheless.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Perhaps the secret to life on earth is buried beneath the dust.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Or something even grander.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That is what I am looking for…secrets, grandeur.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And also, in the dim beam at the edge of the solar system, I hope to write some poetry that is not about loss.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Yes, I know very well where I am going and why.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Or thought I knew.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But now, his sudden appearance has thrown everything into question, all filed under Y.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Why him, why here, why now?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I cannot answer them since none of this makes any sense.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Something is very wrong, I know that much.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But it is empty there in the hovertram station and silent as a conclusion.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Am I the only one who wonders?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He certainly does not look upset or even in doubt.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He is simply sitting and waiting.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There is no one else in the room besides the two of us.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is lucky because it gives me time to prepare, to approach at my own speed, to gather my wits and my whats.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Without this pause, I would not be able to swallow the scream perched at the edge of my throat.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The undershirt he is wearing reminds me that when I was little, I used to go into his bedroom every morning to watch him dress.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He did everything in the exact same order, day in and day out.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Glasses, shorts, socks, shoes, undershirt, shirt, neurolinks, tie, pants, smartwallet, a gold key chain, then the folded handkerchief.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This was fascinating to me and also comforting in some strange way.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The repetition itself seemed to me like a kind of philosophy of life.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Maybe an antidote to the daily threat of biowar back then, or to the cruel uncertainties of fourth grade.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Without knowing it I suppose, in his way, he proved to me that life goes on in the tiny details.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And I have used that in my own life – the microbial grids for example – but also by becoming an accountant to indignities when I had to.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I always meant to thank him for that little lesson but of course I never did.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was one of those many things you never get around to doing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But I wonder if I should?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thank him, that is, now that he is here.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I consider this for a moment but in retrospect it seems so minor all these years later.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Not worth dredging up in light of this bizarre opportunity.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then a brief flicker in the photonics knocks the whole memory into oblivion.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I step forward and the floor squeaks under my foot.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Barely hearing this, he turns slightly, bringing more of his profile into view.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is a familiar profile, so rememorable, so touchable, even though I have not seen it in forty years. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Somewhere in my family album there is a holo of him when he was a model.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At least that is what everyone says.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You never know, given the way family stories bloom from the merest tattle.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The image I have in mind must have been taken in the 2020s; a studio shot showing a pleasant looking young man in a straw hat.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Not what I would call handsome but it was taken at another time when a different style of face was in.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>More cheeky, more boyish.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Still, I like the thought that he was considered handsome.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It means something about me genewise, I imagine.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Standing there behind him and recalling all this, I realize that I never told him that either.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Never thanked him for the genes, the good ones I mean.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Face gene, order gene, and the one that shielded me from pneumonia.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>All those unsayings that hang like pauses.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>It occurs to me that I should apologize now that I have this weird second chance.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And not just about the photo but plenty of other goofs too.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>All those times I refused to let him kiss me goodnight because I was too big for that.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And the time I got fed up with him trying to teach me to throw a baseball and yelled at him. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So many things.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>All the ways sons insult their fathers by being their own men and not necessarily better ones.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Could I make up for that now?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Perhaps.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And so I take one more step closer to him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>From this position, I can suddenly see my own reflection in the window but he does not seem to notice it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He is looking through the surface not at it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I stop in my tracks.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What am I doing?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>An apology makes no sense at all.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I mean…I was just a kid when these things happened.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What did I know?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And would he even remember these awkward moments?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Did they even matter to him as they apparently did and do to me?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>window.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And that clinches it, that hand.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He is my father all right.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I would know that hand anywhere.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The firm wrist with the wide wrist knob, the square mitt, the rounded fingertips, the thick coarse skin.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Patches of hair on the knuckles.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Just before I went to sleep most nights he used to close my eyelids by gently slipping his hand down over my eyes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I liked that.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My first dreams of the night were always solid, of things with weight and force.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Planets, cars.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Good dreams, boy dreams, where you know what’s what and who you are.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Maybe I became a planetarian because of those hands, because of him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He was the one, after all, who put the stick-on solar system in my room.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As it glowed at night, I would drift off into sleep and he would proudly name the nine planets all set out in their neat orbits.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Mercury, Venus, Earth…<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Did he know just how much that would influence me later on?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I doubt it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Fathers, I suppose, know little about what will last.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Sons either, come to think of it.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>When I finally pull up alongside of him, as bluntly as a gob, he seems to perk up and notice me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A transport passes by on its way out of the terminal and the helios glint off his glasses.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He turns towards me and I can see his complete face.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Incredibly, he has not changed a bit.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Same old pair of morphing glasses with the titanium frame; same firm ridge of the nose; same rounded cheeks and thin tan lips.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>His white hair still has a straw-colored tint and still smells of Celestium.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It occurs to me that I could breach the silence simply by asking him if they still make the stuff somewhere.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Luckily I catch myself.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Idiot!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Your father is here, right now.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Your own father whom you have not seen since you were a small boy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The continuum has opened up along a fault line and he is — impossibly, incredibly — here right now.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You can ask him anything you want, anything you have ever wanted to ask.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Secrets of the shadow world.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And all you can come up with is the odor of regened hair goo?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Pathetic!</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>He smiles but says nothing and standing there looking at him again so close, I cannot even recall the sound of his voice.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I begin to hope that he does not say anything, although it seems like he might.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What if he squeals?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Or sounds like a crook?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Or has a lisp?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I only knew him as the man I needed him to be, the father.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Who he was exactly is another matter.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I too am speechless but only because there are too many words welling.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A lifetime of questions that all went unasked.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>After all, we hardly talked much; that must have been a rule about fathers and sons.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We played catch behind the museum as the wind whipped the ochre dust of the lot into my eyes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We went i-fishing that time upstate that I cried about killing the worms and made a nuisance of myself.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We went to West Point and he took holos of me sitting on the cannon.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Our entire relationship was a handful of stereocards.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As a matter of fact, I cannot recall having a single conversation with him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We were together once, a father and his son, and that was how we knew each other.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I suppose it was enough because it had to be because that was the way it was. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Yet now, a whole lifetime later, I feel burdened with questions.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What was his life like?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Did he like himself?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Was he afraid?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Did he have a secret?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Did he betray his dreams?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But the bottleneck in my throat prevents even one of these from emerging.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>All that comes out is one word, flat as a pancake, with no urgency at all.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Dad?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>No reaction.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>He is staring right at me but does not seem to recognize me at all.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>An awkward moment but then it hits me…of course not!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>How could he recognize me?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He has never seen me as a man so how could he know who I am?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I am as old now as he was when I was his little boy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>No, it’s odder than I thought.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I shall have to introduce myself, I conclude with perfect turvy-topsy illogic.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But should I also shake his hand…or hug him?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What would that feel like?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I can call up the impression of his body but only vaguely, like a tune half forgotten.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I remember some sensations but not others.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He did not lean in but let me do the caressing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He had firm muscles but a delicate touch.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You could not feel his bones but he was warm. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>What to do next?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Should I touch him, scold him, question him, thank him?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’m sorry, I feel like saying, but about what I am not at all sure.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Perhaps that there are only memories left and too few to bear any weight.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Like an atmosphere dissipating.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Or are there actually too many memories?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The time he got his finger stuck in the car door and cried like a baby; watching the ballgame with him on Sundays as he drank milk with crumbled crackers; the toy maglev trains he used to buy for me; lighting a neutra-cigarette with his gold lighter.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Or maybe I am just sorry that he did not live long enough to be proud of me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But no that is not it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What I am sorry about is that he did not live long enough to know that I <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">cared</i> if he was proud of me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Of course, maybe he would not have been.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Maybe he wished I had studied the market rather than the planets or become a ballplayer or a salesman.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>No matter.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>By this point, the whole thing is getting quite ridiculous.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The two of us there together, beyond time and space, and not saying anything.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Like two talkers struggling not to talk.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Downright loony.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Some sort of cosmic joke I am sure but does he get it too?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I do remember that he could be silly, tell jokes about Chinamen using funny voices.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Or explain that aperitifs were two robbers working together.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A joke would break the ice for certain but I do not know any.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I am a somber fellow, student of the dust.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And right on cue that moment passes too as a voice announces the arrival of the solarsail into the dock.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The hovertram will be here in a few minutes and time – this extra little slice of timeless time – will soon slip into the continuum like a hum.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I sit down in the seat across from him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He follows me with his hazel eyes, my eyes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The truth is, I really did not know him very well.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Most of my memories of him come from stories at holidays or my mother talking about him long after he was gone.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Or family pictures.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Like the one in which he is holding me just after I was born.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He is bare-chested, his thick waist fitting firmly into the fluted rim of his trousers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He is facing sideways to the camera and there is a look of pride in his profile.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He is holding me up and out, the way one would examine the label of a fine champagne.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I cannot be more than a few weeks old there, his hand is under my head, all held and looked at.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>All held.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Everyone said he was so proud to be a father but who knows what they meant by it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>People say things.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yet…maybe you can see something like it in that picture.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I look at it every so often; it was the last time I was looked at for no better reason than that I was me.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I realize that I love him for that picture alone and I want desperately to tell him so.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But words are weak, ghosts of the feelings.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And I know that blurting them out now, here in this way station to the galaxy, will sound stupid and trite.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I want him to know that in hollow moments I think of being loved by him like that in that one snapshot instant and find a fulfillment there.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But I cannot say this.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is all internal, personal.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is a fiction I have made to suit my sense of myself.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Who knows which parts of it are true?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Or if any of it would matter to him?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>And what is there to say really?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>After all, he lived his life and I live mine.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Even his planets are different from mine.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He had only nine, all laid out in their neat orbits, the stately solar waltz, the singsong names.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But the world was simpler then.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The world is always simpler then.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Now things are more confounding.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There are the five inner hardrocks…Mercury, Venus, Earth, the Remnants, and Mars.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then there are the four medial gasbags…Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And then there are the outer eccentrics…Pluto and Sedna and Quaoar and the rest.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And after that, the hundreds of known contenders of the Kuiper belt with names like Ziusudra and Nemed and Pitteri Pennu.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So many planets now that they had to dip into nether mythologies, far-flung gods and goddesses, to name them all.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And at the far reaches of the solar dent, unknown thousands of whirls and worlds in the great Oort cloud.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Comets, asteroids, resonant objects, scattered planetoids…it is a churning solar system now, full of destinations, debris, and doubt.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He would know none of this.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Our worlds barely touched, like dimensions slipping by.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The seats are close and our knees are almost touching. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The day he died, I watched him put on his glasses, shorts, socks, and all the rest.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then I went to school and then I came home.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And nothing was the same thereafter.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The house was dark, the screen silent, and my mother all drained and the air was chill and I was ten years old and my father was dead and I dreamed of coasting towards Sedna and finding secrets in its thick, dark, ancient soil. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Now, in the hovertram station, as the solarsail gently floats above us, he leans towards me and lowers his bottom lip as if to speak.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>His teeth are yellow, just like before.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I hold my breath.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What a fool I have been!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Such a moment and all I can think about is what <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">I</i> should say.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>How selfish!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Perhaps he has returned because <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">he </i>has something momentous to say to me…like a whisper or a warning.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I used to think that everything I did not know about life, the things other men must know, resulted from him dying too soon.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Finer points about the art of baseball, how to seduce women, or how to sell yourself or buy a hyperbond.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Man stuff.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was angry with him about that for years.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There were many times when I could have used some help.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I wait but words never leave his lips.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The silence is as deep as the chasm in time that separated us.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>My turn again and I suddenly know what to do.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Here is what I decide to say:</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Forget all the questions unanswered, the things unsaid, the memories lost.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It all comes down to this.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I have missed you for my whole life, never gotten over your death, never come to terms with you never coming back.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I have lived with a hole in my hope since then.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But I also know this…I know about the mangle of orbits, and the teeming universe, and the membrane that holds it all together.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I have seen that each life is its own knit of questions and answers and that you lived in your weft and I lived in mine.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>What could he tell me – then or now -- that I could not think of myself?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He was a man who had a life and died from it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What else is there to know?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And finally, in the empty station, I realize just what to do.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is now clear as a bell.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Nothing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That’s it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I have nothing to say, nothing to ask, nothing to apologize for.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Nothing at all.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The hovertram arrives and bright helios pour into the small waiting room, creating new ridges and shadows on his face.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I see now that without noticing, without paying specific attention to it, the moment is slipping away.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is passing like a trace.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I try to keep it with me, to hold it, but it is no use.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is out of my control.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He is vanishing, the seat behind him beginning to show through, his skin thin, then translucent, then vaporous.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The light shifts, shadows warp, and the world goes on…but with changes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In a few seconds something that was not clear a moment ago can now be seen.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And what once was, is now only a reflection.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Fully lit I can see him crisply for the first time.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And I realize something that changes things considerably.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This man getting up to board the tram is not my father at all.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In fact, from up close and with full illumination, it does not even resemble him very much.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This man’s face is wider, his eyes too weak, his nose pulpy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is the face of a plumber or someone who tells long stories with no upshot.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And the glasses he is wearing are not titanium anyway but only silver poly.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>How can I have made such a mistake?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Thank God I did not say anything!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What would this dull fellow have made of me, all weepy and sincere, prattling on about baseballs and Celestium.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Other people arrive quickly and crowd around us as we approach the gate.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Vacuum doors open and sounds skitter into the room from outside.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>New voices interrupt the stillness as travelers from the returning hovertram arrive and pour out through the doors.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One of them greets him with a hug and he helps lift a bag.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I close my eyes to block out the confusion and when I open them again, the sounds are gone, blown dust, and so is he.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I board the tram and it begins to ascend to the solarsail all billowy under the violet night sky.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Sedna is up there, somewhere, and perhaps has secrets in its soil.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I look back through the window to the station without regret, wondering what it was I was wondering a few moments before.</div><!--EndFragment-->Alan Robbinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11931223050937847552noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4408320213129965937.post-87265931775572371302012-04-07T11:23:00.002-07:002012-04-07T11:23:49.281-07:00The Time Phone<!--StartFragment--> <br />
<div class="MsoNormal"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: large;">O</span></b>kay, so they were wrong about the whole black hole thing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>All of them, wrong as could be, from Einstein down to Infinistein.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>While it was true that no matter could escape from a black hole, some kinds of energy could.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Microwaves for instance.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>All you had to do was pack the energy into quanta that resonated at the same rate as the singularity of the hole and bingo!…the packet went through.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Yup, went right through and came out at the other end in some other time and place in the old continuum.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You could cheat history that way but only with a wink and a smirk.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>No stealing the Crown Jewels, no taking the bullet for Lincoln, no going down with the Titanic, none of that stuff.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In fact, you could not transport atoms at all.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So much for science fiction.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>But here’s the thing…you could send a carrier wave through and piggyback it with sound vibrations, assuming the frequencies meshed.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>See what it all means?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>No?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It means that the geniuses had come up with a time tunnel for phone calls.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>A time phone.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Well all of that costs plenty you can be sure.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So the fat cats, the big boys, the high and the mighty…they were all using time phones to improve their futures.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To get richer, younger, or smarter faster than the following day.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But the rest of us poor dopes?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Well, let’s just say that time phones were not going to be on sale at the mall any time soon.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>So it was with a real sense of destiny that I gaped at the time phone once I had it in hand.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>How it came into my possession is a long story not worth telling, and not exactly above indictment either, but let’s just say that I did not get a sales receipt and leave it at that.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Once I had the phone, my plan was simple.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I knew that I could not call into the past and change anything that had already happened.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Time paradox, kill your own father and all that crap.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So here was my scam plain and simple…I would use the phone to call ahead to myself a few hours into the future.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If my timing was right, that would be just enough time, the way I saw it, to find out the winning lottery numbers from myself and play those very numbers back in hometime, that is my current time, and get rich real quick. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Not too dumb, right?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I might even be so bold as to use the word foolproof.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>So in Time One, let’s call it -- meaning now, my time, the present moment<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>-- I called ahead to myself on the phone, just a few hours into the future, after the numbers had been posted.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Sure enough my future self answered the phone as I knew he would since the plan had already been put into action relative to his time frame.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He recited the winning numbers to me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I wrote them down carefully, thanked him – that is, me – profusely and then went downstairs to a local store to buy the ticket.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Puffed up with inevitability, I came back and waited for the numbers to be announced.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I was already planning all the stuff I would buy with my new fortune starting with z – from glitz to girlz – when I had the first shock.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The numbers were wrong.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I could not believe that and so I must have checked them a dozen times.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But it was true.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The lottery came and went and I had one of the losing tickets.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The numbers I had given myself were all wrong.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I wracked my brains to figure out how that could have happened.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Had I misread, misheard, miswritten?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But no, that was not the case.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was very careful about all that and had spoken clearly and slowly, double and even triple-checked.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And so I came to the only possible answer to the puzzle.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I had obviously lied to myself. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>That is, just to be perfectly clear here, my future self had not given my present one the correct winning numbers in spite of the fact that he – that is, I – must have known them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Now people lie to themselves all the time.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Me too, I guess, like when I catch myself in the mirror and think better about what I see than I have a right to.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But why would I lie to myself about this?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What was there to gain by not letting myself win the lottery which was the entire plan in the first place?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>It simply did not make any sense at all, but by the time I thought all this through it was time for me to answer the phone.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In other words, my present self had passed into Time Two, let’s call it, and there I was waiting for my past self in Time One to call up and get the numbers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was just about to look them up when I realized that I already had the correct winning numbers in hand.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I had looked them up back in Time One which of course is how I knew that I had picked the wrong ones.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>All this time shifting stuff can get a little oozy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But no matter.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I had the right numbers now so I stood by the phone ready to give them to my past Time One self all hopeful at the other end of the line.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>But then I got to thinking.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Even though I had the correct numbers, I had not given them to myself back there in Time One.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Why?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There had to be a damn good reason why I would lie about this.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Something must have happened in the interim, that thin wedge of time between getting the right numbers and answering the phone, that changed my plans.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Something big.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Something that convinced me to lie about the whole thing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But what could it have been?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So far nothing had come up and the phone was about to ring.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So I figured that only the future held the secret, as it always does since the future always explains the past.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>That’s when I came up with a new plan.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Just before answering the phone with the correct numbers in hand, I decided to call myself the next day to find out what had gone wrong.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Time Three me, in other words, who was one step beyond all this silliness, must have known the reason that the Time Two me – the current me, so to speak -- lied to Time One.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Well guess what?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I placed the call and found that I was right!</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>After putting me on hold for an impolite amount of time, my future Time Three self explained it all very clearly.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He told me that after winning the lottery with the correct numbers, I was robbed as I tried to cash it in and killed for that very ticket.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A dismal murder too, front page news, buckets of gore.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yeech!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I could never stand the sight of blood and I -- all my selves in fact -- knew that.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>So there it was.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That is why my Time Two self lied…to prevent my Time One self from buying the winning ticket and getting killed.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>What a relief!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>It meant at least that I wasn’t going schizo on myself or acting out some masochistic nuttiness.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was simply protecting myself.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It made perfect sense and as soon as I hung up the phone, it began to ring.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I answered knowing that it was my Time One self asking for the lottery numbers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I could hear the yearning, the desperation, in his – I mean, my – voice but what could I do?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I couldn’t tell him what was going to happen because, knowing him as I did with that coy </div><div class="MsoNormal">intimacy with which one can only know oneself, I knew that he was stubborn and would try to figure out a way around it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Suppose he made up his own numbers and hit the jackpot just by chance?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then he would be killed for the ticket and he and I and all of us would be doomed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I had to act selfishly here, you see?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So I made up a bunch of fake numbers and gave them to my Time One dupe.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He suspected nothing and seemed so excited about the future as he thanked me profusely that I could barely sleep that night for all the guilt I felt.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>But I did fall asleep and awoke to the phone ringing again.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Dazed and confused, I wondered if the whole thing had been a dream.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Had I already asked for and given the lottery numbers or had I imagined the whole thing?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then I realized that it was not the lottery hopeful calling at all.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Time had passed and I was now my Time Three self.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The ringing phone meant that it was my Time Two self calling me in his present to find out why I – I mean to say why <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">he</i> – had lied about the lottery numbers to our original self.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>But here’s the problem, at least as it presented itself to me in my semisleep.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Since it was already Time Three and I obviously did not win the lottery the day before, no one had killed me for the ticket.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>All well and good.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The past led to the future.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But since I did not in fact win and therefore no one had killed me – here I was a living loser after all -- what proof was there to support the murder theory?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The phone was ringing from a fellow – my perturbed self in Time Two – waiting for an explanation and I didn’t have one.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I did not have any information about winning or losing or being killed or anything.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>All I had was a slight headache.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Yet apparently I was about to answer the phone and talk about my own murder of all things!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>How did I ever come up with such a tale?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Had I gotten drunk or dumb or loony in the next interim?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The whole thing seemed preposterous to me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>How would I know about it anyway?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I only knew what there was to know based on what did happen, not on what did not.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The past was my past as it presented itself, not some buffet of possibilities.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So the way I saw it now – I mean then at that moment with the phone ringing – was that there was no story to tell, no murder at all, and therefore no reason for me in Time Three to tell my Time Two self to lie to my Time One self.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Unless there was such a reason.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But what could it be?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>There was only one way to find that out and, naturally, it did not make things any simpler.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I answered the phone, then immediately put my Time Two self on hold and called ahead.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yes, called ahead to my Time Four self to see if there was any reason that I – me, that is, my present Time Three self – should make up this cockamamie story about being murdered.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>My Time Four self, answering the phone, was more than a little ticked off.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Maybe the whole rigmarole was getting to me – to him I mean – or maybe I – he – was really losing his – my – mind.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In any case, hissing with contempt, my Time Four self explained the whole thing to me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To tell you the truth, I could not really follow the entire line of argument.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was getting a little lost in the old maze of happenstance here.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But the gist of it was this…my future Time Four self had realized that time had passed and he – the future me – obviously had not won the lottery.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That at least was a rock solid fact and there was no way around it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But it was still the future and he – I – was as hard for cash as before.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And the only way that could be the case is if the numbers we had picked had been wrong in the first place.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>With me so far?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I hope so because I was hanging on by the slimmest of threads. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Now the only way the numbers could have been wrong was if I had given myself incorrect ones.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Why would I do that, my future self mused out loud?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He waited impatiently for me to answer but I didn’t have a clue and said so.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Disdain dripping from his voice, he explained that the only excuse for me to be giving out the wrong numbers was to accomplish the past.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In other words, I had <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">not</i> won the lottery, obviously, and therefore had to lie to myself to make that the case, ipso facto.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The only way to get the numbers wrong, her said, assuming you had a time phone, was to lie about them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And obviously, I <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">had</i> gotten the numbers wrong.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So obviously I had to lie.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The future depends on the past.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I hardly had the energy to argue my case and in any case, was not at all sure who I was arguing for or against.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Even so, all that did not explain the murder story.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Where did that come from?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>My Time Four self went over that theory rather quickly because he was afraid my Time Two self, on hold in the time phone and waiting for an explanation, would get fed up and disconnect.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then where would we be?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What he said was that I had to come up with a clever lie that would absolutely convince my earlier self back in Time Two not to question the deceit.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If he doubted the numbers, or my motives, and made up his own instead, who knows what could have happened?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Therefore, Time Four said coldly, I had to lie and my previous self had to lie in order to make the future come out the way it, in fact, did.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I was tired and bobbled and in no condition to argue, so I quickly came up with the murder story and felt pretty good about protecting my self – all my selves – from the quirks of occurency.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Which was all fine and dandy until some time passed and I became my Time Four self with this very theory, answering the phone to a rather irritating chap I knew to be my own contrary self in Time Three looking for reasons for the deception.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But I did not really have any good ones.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I knew the whole line of attack of course.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My Time Four self had explained it all to my Time Three.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But here I was having become my Time Four, knowing the call was about to come in, and I was suddenly filled with doubt.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Did it all really have to depend on the way things finally worked out?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What of free will?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What of alternate futures?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What if you did change what happened…then what?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Maybe I would be here in the present rich as a king, laughing at my ability to bend fate itself to my own desires.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I had my doubts about all of it, the doubts included, of course.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But by then I understood something that all timecallers come to know, I suppose.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That the future leads to the past and not the other way around.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In other words, the answer, the resolution, to what is happening now is always to be found once it has already happened in the future.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That is the only way the universe perseveres.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>The upshot?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I called ahead to Time Five to see if anything had happened that established once and for all that this entire cunning argument made sense and that I was indeed lying to save myself.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Needless to say, something had.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At least it certainly seemed so to my Time Five self.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I tried to counter his entire line of reasoning, hoping to convince him to convince me to drop this theory and let me win the lottery after all.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I thought I was presenting my case rather forcefully but we </div><div class="MsoNormal">got into an argument and the bastard hung up on me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I had no choice but to wait until I had passed into Time Five and then call ahead to Time Six to resolve the dispute.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I think you can pretty much guess what happened next.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My Time Six enlisted the aid of Time Seven who…</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>But rather than lay out all the sordid details, suffice it to say that the questions and answers, and theories and lies and accusations and arguments continued in endless phone calls to the point that I no longer knew what time frame I was in or even who I was anymore.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>In no time flat – a terrible misnomer since as you can see it’s bumpy as hell -- I was having conversations with my future selves well into the next year.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And with each call I was getting more annoyed at bothering myself constantly with questions about what to do yesterday to correct past effects of future consequences that had not happened yet!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Eventually this whole debacle went way beyond the lottery numbers and into marriage plans, financial investments, health decisions, even where to stand on a particular day to avoid getting flattened by a concrete block that would fall off a construction site according to a future news report.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I had no one else to blame, of course.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I alone was responsible for the whole mess and I must admit that things got quite a bit worse when I realized that the phone allowed you to make conference calls.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Soon my whole life had become the calls and nothing but.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There was little time left for anything else.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Nothing could be done or decided upon or pursued without opening up an incessant chain of phone calls.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Talk about decision by committee!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You can’t imagine what these were like…battles and debates, theories and counter-theories, name-calling and bruised egos, and lies and mistrust all around, backwards, forwards, then, now, and forever.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Finally one day, I had had enough.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I remember it clearly because I was standing by the window and listening to the cacophony of voices all jumbled and jivey in the phone and I just could not take it anymore.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So I opened the window and heaved the phone out.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I could still hear all the voices nattering as I watched it fall like a dead bird all the way to the pavement where it smashed into a gazillion shards of plastic and microchipery.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>It was a beautiful sight.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>And sound there was none.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Good riddance, I thought to myself.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yes, goodbye to the lottery but farewell too to that mire of wanting and trying and lying.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Goodbye to the sheer contention of it all.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was quiet again and I saw this in my mind’s eye as a kind of resolution, a shuddering of all my time selves back into one neat, solitary, momentary, pack of me…here now, right now, unburdened by the future.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>It was a marvelous feeling.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>Even better than winning the lottery.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>That is, until I started to get that ringing in my head.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Inside, I mean, like it was coming from the cortex itself.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And I realized that by the day after tomorrow, or one of the ones after that, they probably wouldn’t really need phones anymore…</div><!--EndFragment-->Alan Robbinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11931223050937847552noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4408320213129965937.post-28455026081135305972012-04-06T07:41:00.000-07:002018-05-29T08:49:22.947-07:00A Fundibulum<div class="MsoPlainText">
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">I</span></b><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">n the moments before it happened,
everything was just as it should have been. Each thing was its
place. Wallet on the dresser, shoes on the floor, same old sheets on the
bed, the window slightly open as usual. I could go on but it would simply
be a rather boring list of mundane details. Not worth thinking about.
Whoever said that history was just one damn thing after another could
have been my biographer.</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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It was a warm night in the middle of May. Time, right then;
place, right there. I may have been dreaming but I would not recall
that; my dreams were as dull as my waking life. Predictable and
repetitive. Ennui had become a lifestyle to me and I used to get to
bed early just to escape it. I only woke up that night because I had
to pee but even that was probably just to break the monotony of sleep.</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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Eyes half closed in the semidark, I got myself into a sitting position
on the edge of the bed, put both feet down on the cold floor, then stood
up. Barely able to manage the mechanics of walking, I slid one foot
along the floor, shifted my weight onto it, then shoved the other one
forward. You see what I’m saying? No grand drama, no big
themes. Same old, same old.</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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When I got to the bedroom doorway in my little apartment, I reached out
with my right hand to grab the right side of the jamb to steady
myself. Reached out, that is, like a thousand times before to the
same door. I could even feel the spot where the paint was
chipped. So familiar. And then the quick right turn into
the narrow hallway, then four steps, five, and six to the bathroom door where
dim light coming through the opaque bathroom window cast a vague shadow on the
bathtub curtain. Through the gauze of my stupor I could just make
out the white tile of the bathroom floor, the white toilet
beyond. White and clean. Maybe I was thinking ahead then,
about the bed and the pillow and the sheets I would return to in a
moment. About sleep and the hours until dawn. </span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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Of course, I never got that far.</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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Another moment intervened. A really big
moment. The momentous moment after I did my business and flushed the
toilet. I had just shifted my weight to the left leg, turned, then
bent my right knee, taking one more step through the controlled tumble we call
walking. Pride of the species and so well rehearsed over the
millennia.</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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No reason to think anything bizarre would happen. All I
had in mind at that instant was bringing my foot down again and moving
forward. But instead, as my knee continued its forward thrust, it
came in direct contact with another surface. Something were dead air
should have been. It was impossible, of course, but it seemed like
another knee. And then there was an extra hand and pretty soon a
jumble of body parts.</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">
It all happened so fast, I did not have time to panic and was instantly
mangled in a tangle of arms and legs. I twisted, rolled and shoved,
and found myself bumbling down. The fall lasted much longer than it
should have, an eternity to be exact. And there was that slight
sensation of my brain warping then twanging back into a rubbery ball just as I
hit the floor.</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">
I wound up face down on the floor but not alone. Someone was
under me. For a second I continued to delude myself into thinking it
was just a dreamwalk. Fuzzy logic in the night and
all. But it was not. There was a real hipbone there and a
pointy chin under mine. I could feel the breath coming out of
another mouth and heat from the body. Hard stuff like
that. The kind of density no dream has.</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">
Trying to get the madness over with in one swoop, I popped open my
eyes. It was true! Another person was lying beneath me, a
complete separate individual. A stranger. An
intruder! A burglar that I had accidentally nabbed trying to steal
my toilet seat. I tried to scream for help but the air would not
pump. </span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">
When I finally got something out, it was not one of those inane movie
yells that actors get paid to make. It was a real shriek, a whelp of
pure terror rocketing from the gut. It broke the grip of my panic
and I scrambled over to a safe spot a few feet away. All was still
for a while. Except, of course, for the <i>badoom</i> of
my heart as it toyed with cardiac arrest.</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">
In the teetering logic of half-sleep, crouched like a cornered rat and
catching my breath, I came up with a second theory. This was no
burglary…I had been abducted by spacemen! That had to be
it. The thought of almond-eyed creeps sticking needles in scary
places did not comfort me so that I could barely look at the creature lying on
the floor. On the other hand, there was no way to fight it without
first taking a peek. So I peeked and – surprise! – it did not look
oozy or spiny at all. In fact, it seemed to be an ordinary person in
a while lab coat. A woman, pale and thin, with short brown
hair. Two large silver earrings were hanging from her ear
lobes. She had brown eyes, two of them. And the
expression on her face was not sinister but sad, as though she was sorry about
the kidnap.</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">
She seemed as shaken by the collision as I was and only slowly got up
from the floor. Then she straightened her coat and reached out a
hand, a human hand, freckled skin with four thin fingers and one
thumb. She even had rosy nail polish. </span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">
“Ack!” I shouted, pulling back. “What do you want from
me?” </span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">
The door to the alien john was right next to me and I swiftly got up and
raced through it. No idea what to expect on the other
side. Maybe my hallway, maybe the vast emptiness of outer
space. It was neither; just a room with a table in the center and
some chairs around it. A conference table for
Arcturians. I stumbled against one of the chairs and the screech of
the leg sent prickles through my spine. When I turned around, the
woman was standing behind me with her hand still extended. </span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">
“Sam,” she said quietly.</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">
That’s when I noticed three others in the room as well. They
also looked human, comically so. One was short and rotund with a
baseball hat. Another was tall and bald with a tie and
jacket. The third had bad skin and a weak jaw. They
looked like members of a bowling league who had a lousy season. No
fool, I knew that these might be projections to disguise their truly icky
appearances. I kept my distance.</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">
Besides the table and chairs, the room was empty, light blue in color,
and windowless. One of them, the round one, moved towards me with, I
was sure, grotesque plans in mind. I pushed a chair towards him,
slid around the table, slipped on something and hit my
head. Darkness fell like buttered bread, wrong side down.</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">
In dreams come hope, or so I have read. Not wish
fulfillment, not the whispers of the gods, not
responsibilities. Just hope for simple things like wingless flight,
hookless sex, futures that can never be. Not mine of course, which
are usually dull as dirt. But this time was different.
I dreamed about waking up back in my bathroom, everything as it was, cool
and quiet and ordinary.</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">
But when I opened my eyes again, nothing had changed. I was
still there in the blue room and so was she and so were they. I was
sitting in a chair at that point and the woman I had collided with was holding
my wrist in her pinch, feeling my pulse. I was about to protest,
tell them I was an important person on Earth, that I tasted bad, that there
were people looking for me right now. All lies of course but none of
it got out in any case.</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">
“Are you all right?” she asked. “You have to try to calm
down.”</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">
English? Yes, good old rolling American, as familiar as
Duncan Donuts. Very clever, these aliens, they had hacked the
language center of my brain.</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">
“<i>Veh,</i>” I managed, meaning something along the lines of okay.</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">
“Good,” she said, decoding my posture more than my speech.</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">
Now that I could see here clearly, I realized that she was smaller than
I first thought, less menacing. And her companions seemed rather
motley and dismayed.</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">
“My name is Sam,” she said. “I know you must be a little
confused.”</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">
“<i>Gav,</i>” I said. </span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">
No idea what that meant but it is what came out.</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">
“Questions?”</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
Who me? No, not really. Well…I do have one little
question, if you don’t mind. A teensy weensy
query. Nothing new, mind you. It is really an age-old
question. In some ways, the only question mankind has ever
asked. The question we were born to ask. And somehow now
it just seemed relevant all over again. WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON?<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">
I thought that but did not say it. Instead, all that emerged
from my mouth was:</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">
“No probes!”</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">
Sam looked at me dimly and the others, who were now gathered around me
like strangers at an accident, looked at each other with even less
insight. Then the bald one stepped in front of her, cleared his
throat, and asked:</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">
“I’m Les. Do you know where you are?”</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">
I did. In fact, it was becoming quite clear to me
that I was trapped in low orbit above the earth with four grotesques
pretending to be humans like the ones they had seen on the sitcoms they took to
be documentaries.</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">
“What's the last thing you remember?” the short one, a nebbish of a
starman, asked.</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">
“This is getting us nowhere,” Sam interjected. “Let's just
get to the damn point.”</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">
The four of them stepped back for a brief confo or a slight argument, it
was hard to say which. They seemed to be debating, not what to do
with me but what to ask me. Something they probably should have
worked out ahead of time, given the light-years of travel they took just to nab
me.</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
“Apologies,” Sam said, returning. “Please try to stay calm
and just tell me…do you know where you are?”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">“Low orbit?”
I suggested.</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">
I was counting on the idea that, due to some snafu, they had not yet
engaged their hyperdrive to another galaxy and were still in the gravitational
pull of Earth. But of course all of that was just sci-fi dribble; I
had no idea what any of it meant. On the other hand, for all their
technology, they seemed rather pathetic, with no plan or strategy, and as
confused by the situation as I was. That was the moment that a third
and more plausible explanation hit me. </span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">
“An asylum,” I said plainly, correcting myself</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">
Of course! That had to be it. They were inmates at
some kind of institution that I had stumbled into. </span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">
A large brick building somewhere with manicured grounds, clean counters
where kindly nurses dispensed happy pills in fluted white paper cups, visiting
hours on Tuesday, and “safe” rooms on the fourth floor. The Palace of
Lost Marbles. I decided to play along with the loonies rather than
risk their ire.</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">
“And have we all taken our meds today?” I said through a psychiatric
smile.</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">
“Is that a joke?” the tall one asked.</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">
“Of course it’s a joke,” Sam insisted. “He’s being funny.”</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">
“Well, it’s a stupid joke.”</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">
“Like you would know!” the short one jabbed.</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">
“Better than you!”</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">
“Enough!” Sam shouted.</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">
She dismissed them with a flap of her hand, which they obediently
followed by going to the far side of the table but grousing all the
way. She pulled up a chair and looked at me
kindly. Perhaps, I thought, she was a good crazy. Like
me. Sentenced to the loony bin for some minor infraction like writing
cuss words in a public space. Nothing truly psycho.</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">
“Carter,” I said. “My name is Carter.”</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">
“Good,” she said. “What probes are you talking about?”</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">
“A discarded theory,” I offered, not wanting to give her any ideas.</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">
“I don’t understand.”</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">
“Me either. Do you mind very much if I ask you a question?”</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">
“Go ahead.”</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">
The moment finally seemed right.</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">
“What the FUCK?”</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">
“Actually Carter, we were hoping you could tell us.”</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">
“Tell you what?”</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">
“Let’s start at the start. What happened just before you
bumped into me?”</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">
“I was at the toilet taking a…”</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">
A sudden sense of dread filled me. At that moment, it did not
seem so amusingly absurd anymore. That memory, so basic, seemed to have
drifted to another quadrant of the cosmos. It was gone now, out of
reach and touch. My world, with all its doors and dreams, all swept
away in an instant. I wanted so much to be back there, sleeping on
those flat sheets, even tossing and turning if I had to.</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">
“You had just flushed your toilet?” she asked.</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">
When I nodded my head, she turned to the others who were now seated at
the table and nodded at them.</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">
“Where is the toilet?”</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">
“My apartment.”</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">
“Which is where exactly?”</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">
“New York?”</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">
Who did she think she was kidding? I knew what game she was
playing….the old sanity test. What year is it? Who is the
President of the United States? How much are six and
three? Are you Napoleon? As though that would convince me
that she had a medical degree.</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">
“2002. Bush. Nine. No,” I said
conclusively.</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">
“You see?” she said, again looking at her fellow
inmates. “Same story.”</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">
They rolled their chairs around to face me. </span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">
“Listen to me Carter,” she said very slowly. “Listen
carefully. What I have to tell you is going to be hard for you to
accept.”</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">
“No weekend pass? Did I get something wrong? You
did say six and three, didn’t you?”</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">
“Try and stay focused, pal,” Les said. “You’ve stepped
through a fun….”</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">
He stammered there and turned to Sam for help. But the whole
shebang did not seem like any fun to me.</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">
“Fundibulum,” Sam said, completing his thought.</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">
I looked down to see if there was any stuck to my shoe and only then
realized that I was still wearing my pajamas. I thought at that
moment of running to the door but something held me back. The truth
perhaps or at least an entertaining fiction.</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">
“We can't explain it because we don’t understand it,” she
added. </span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">
“But it's the best theory we’ve got,” concluded the nerdy one.</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">
Sam stood up and made a large V in the air with her
hands: “It’s a kind of funnel through the web of spacetime.”</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">
“Like a time tunnel,” I suggested. “A black hole connecting
one star system to another.”</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">
Movie talk of course, but what was I supposed to do? I had to
play along. I was trapped in a room with four nutcases, biding my
time until the nurses returned.</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">
“More like a collision between two branes that creates a vortex,” said
the nerd.</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">
“From my toilet….to here,” I said calmly.</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">
“Apparently.”</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">
“All of ours,” Sam said. “That’s how we all got here.”</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">
“It’s got something to do with the flush,” the tall one
said. “You see?”</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">
“Absolutely,” I said. “What I see is that either you are all
totally loco or I am. I guess it doesn’t really matter
which. So if you will excuse me...RESTRAINT!”</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">
I saw that in some movie too and jumped up to shout it as loud as I
could. It was supposed to signal the staff to burst in but no one
came. That is when I realized that there was only one door in the
room, the one to the toilet, the one I came in through. I raced to
it, eluding them all and proud of my evasive maneuvers. But when I
turned to look back, I saw that none of them made a move to stop
me. Instead they were standing there looking worn and
sad. </span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">
There was a prayer trapped inside my lips, but I did not have time to
utter it. I raised my left foot, pushed it forward, shifted my
weight. Then I took another big step in the desperate effort to undo
what I had done. Farewell my bingo-bongo friends! So long
to the asylum and the inmates! Adios to loons on the
march! The twang of freedom shot up my spine like an electric
chill. My bathroom, bedroom, apartment building, sidewalks, pizza
joints, subways were all there on the other side of that toilet, I just knew
it. I pushed the door open and barged through, ran to the toilet,
and flushed like a madman over and over again.</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">
I have no clue how long I was in there; time seemed to be absent from
the place. All I know is that when I finally stopped and walked back
out, like someone depleted from the runs, they were all still standing there
around that same table in the same room as before.</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">
“It’s a fundibulum,” Sam said softly. “A
funnel. You fall in the open end and can't squeeze back in the
narrow end. We’ve been trying for some time.”</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">
“How long have you all been here?” I asked.</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">
But there was no answer. In fact, I could not have answered
the question about myself. We may all have flushed ourselves down
the funnel but time had not come along on the journey.</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">
“LeKoi says that the best explanation is the one that explains nothing,”
the chubby one replied. </span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">
“Shut up about LeKoi already,” Sam snapped. “I'm sick of
Lekoi and I'm damn sick of you!”</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">
“The feeling’s mutual, sister.”</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">
“Stop behaving like fools,” Les said.</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">
“So you're telling me,” I interrupted, with as much sanity as I could
muster, “that we all flushed our toilets and then somehow ended up
here? And where exactly is here?”</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">
“Your guess is as good as ours,” Les said. “As you can see,
there is only one door and it leads to that bathroom which leads
nowhere. So here we all are.”</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">
“To do what? What’s the point of all this?”</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">
“We thought you would know.”</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">
“Why would I know?”</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">
“The chairs.”</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">
“What about them?”</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">
“There are five of them.”</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">
“So what?”</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">
“So you're the fifth person to arrive here. We figured that
you must be the last. The one to complete the set, so to speak.”</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">
“What set?”</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">
“He means,” Sam explained, “why would there be five chairs – rather than
three or nine – unless the room was made for five people. And now
that we’re all here, we were hoping the point of all this would become clear.”</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">
“Made? Made by who?”</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">
No one answered that for the simple reason that there was no
answer. Nor a clear purpose or point or any idea at all about what
to do next. We took our seats around the table but nothing
changed. We changed positions and still nothing
changed. The weird timeless time of that place passed, uncountable
and immeasurable, and we sat and talked and argued and were silent for long
periods. We tried everything we could think of to solve the problem:
shouted to the heavens; banged on the walls; posed and rejected endless
theories, some brilliant, some dumb.</span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">
And that is the way it went. For how
long? Impossible to say. Not like a short story with its
snappy ending but like real life, which drags on and on until you think you
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> So that by we heard the toilet flush, the others stood up and went to
the door. But not me. I just sat there waiting and not
caring. Knowing exactly what it was going to turn out to be…just one more
damn thing.</span></span><o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
Alan Robbinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11931223050937847552noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4408320213129965937.post-53940721984567493982012-04-04T08:19:00.000-07:002018-05-29T08:31:30.391-07:00Not So Distant Stars<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>B</b></span>y the time that Egon
Lincoln arrived on Titan, most of the surface had already been mapped. Of the dozens of moons, minimoons,
micromoons, and moonlets orbiting Saturn, Titan was the prize and it did not
take long to explore, claim, and even to litter it in the name of
humanity. Just like Earth.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> That piece of debris, a
robotic camera, was left where it went dead as a kind of marker, a stake in the
discovery it made.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This was a small
gesture in the grand scheme of things since what the robot found had already
been there for millions of years.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> The first images back to
the colony were shocking but soon gave way to analysis and study.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There in the middle of a craggy plain under
the far stars was a dome, perfectly black and smooth.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Holowaves, spectral
scanning, and even an unmanned archeoprobe could not reveal anything more.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was no doubt the first sign of alien
intelligence yet seen in our solar system but whether it was a device or a
sentinel or a bomb or a doorway was yet to be determined.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For that they needed to send someone, a
person, and that was Egon Lincoln’s job.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> There had been other
moments.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Hopeful ones in which Egon used
his semiotic skills to determine if some discovered scrap had been created by
other sentient beings.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Scratches on a
cavern wall on Ganymede that were actually etched by a plasma river.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A complex geometric pattern on the surface of
Europa that turned out to be formed by exo-fungi.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There was life out there all right, but none
of it smart.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Until now.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Maybe.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> In spite of this, as he
rode the rover to the dome, Egon knew that he carried the hope of the world
with him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was a silent wish that all the
problems among humans might diminish in light of finding that there were others out there with answers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This was
a great weight he carried but there was more.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>His own private yearnings, for example, to make a difference, to find
something monumental, something that might erase his years of frustration and
disappointment.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To finally have his life
of searching and probing mean something.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>To matter in some way.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> As he left the rover and
finally stood before the dome, Egon tried to control his anticipation, to
stifle his hunger.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was hard to be
objective with his pulse racing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Besides, he knew very well that nature was herself an architect, capable
of producing the most astonishing structures through natural forces or even by using
the simplest of critters.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Just because
it looked engineered, even beautifully so, did not mean that someone somewhere
made this thing.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> He had plenty of
equipment on his rover but he liked to rely on his intuition first.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And so he rather casually walked over to the
dome and got down on his knees before it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>It was nothing more than a half-sphere, about two feet tall and four
feet wide.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It loomed larger in the
images.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the sheen of the black
surface he could see his own reflection and the craggy terrain behind him. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The surface was pristine, no dents or
markings.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It did not glow or vibrate or,
as he knew from previous measures, emit any kind of energy at all. </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Egon closed his eyes and
placed his hands on the surface of the dome, as if to commune with it.</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As if touching it might unlock it in some way
or at least give him a feeling about it one was or another.</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Which might have been a ridiculous gesture
except for one thing….it worked.</span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> In an instant, Egon felt
taken over by some force.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Not a physical
presence, but a cognitive one.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As though
his consciousness – which, like anyone else, he felt that he proudly owned - was
now being leased by someone else.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As
when dreaming and here, alone on a lonely rock, on his knees and touching a
mysterious dome, Egon Lincoln dreamed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But
not just a dream, an envisioning.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> He dreamed the story of
the whole universe, as though floating above a great city that was time itself,
with lights like lives and shadows fate, and streams of energy slithering
through and through.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> In his mind’s eye, he
vividly saw the spark of being, glowing like an ember in a purple sea of
nothing-to-see.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then the molten stars
forming and the galaxies expanding, the great spinning that holds space in its
thrall.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He saw the churning whorls that
wound around baby stars and watched the earth congeal from dusty dust.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The iron core, the foggy brew, and the sea
like a vast expanding.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He thought to
disconnect himself but the dream was too stunning to end and so he held on.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> The heat of the water
rose and from a kind of molecular bath he saw viruses form, then cells piling
onto cells, the great architecture of life forming, and the sponges and the
starfish, and all of it pushed up from the mire by the force unseen,
unnamed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> As though history itself
had been unloosed, Egon saw in his guided dream the worms and their hopes for
enlightenment, then the fish with their willing wanting, and then the lizards,
so noble and stern, come to rule the earth.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>And the mammals were born and love was new and the dinosaurs with their
pride in families and their bulky sense of duty, and the eons passed, millions
of years but only a gasp in the breath of life.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>And only a single blink in this moment.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> Soon humans walked the
earth and all the varied, troubled, wondrous, tragic ages of men and women
dawned and dusked.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>From mud to brick to
wood to steel to titanium to solid hydrogen, civilizations sparked like quarks,
and all the multitudes that passed though all the way to the New Birth and
beyond.</span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> He dreamed through to the
Second Age of China and the Seventh Eon beyond Nation States, and the Great
Exodus and the Aftermath.</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In time came
the Transition when the Gan came to power, and Burgeners, Solomon cities, and
the rise of the Cenidae, their passion, their sublime cathect of sympathy.</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And on and on the dream went dreamily into
the Ages of Derbil and Selestum and the three Danidey and the Kill and the
Alpha and then the great Stepping-into-the-Pale-Corridor, and beings and worlds
he could not name without the right sounds for them.</span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> Egon stirred as a sound
intruded – a signal from the base - but he did not move or wake and dreamed of
things he could never have dreamed of envisioning.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Of the Minos bearers and the Melarians and
their bright winter wars, and of the Windwater, the great Whisper Kingdom from
the far star, the carrier of the quantumRose, and the soldier poets of
Ei814…all this he saw as clearly as a wish in a child’s wonder.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> He dreamed of the time
beyond people, of the ghostbeings in their touchless towers and he heard the
music of their holophony, so spicy yet so tender.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And then the Running and the New
Beginning.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And the ages of the conscious
mind came and went like birds winging, and all the planets were washed clean
and storms rose and softened the plains and new truths were born.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The dark matter turned to light and then dark
again through many cycles.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Past the edges of the
cosmos, he dreamed into the realm of the Nebulae and the billions of ocean
worlds, when thought became matter and light could be held in the hand and used
to sing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There at the very end of the
collapsing cosmos, he could detect a distant understanding and the acceptance
of time itself as an infolding embrace.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> And when the final branes
colloided and all of it all came tumbling back, back and back and back into a
single pointpin of all there was and ever will be, life itself all enwrapped
and enriddled, the final move by the starmaker to begin again, the something
that comes from absolute nothing…even then the dream did not end.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> Because that very point,
smaller than the smallest notion, a mere speck in the swoon of sooner-or-later,
became the impetus for a new conception, another theory of thing and thought,
and in a moment that took no time at all, without hesitation and full of will,
it exploded in light and heat and expanded and bloomed and then it started once
more, the begin and the become all over again.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>New day, new universe, world without end, amen.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> When he woke up, Egon was
lying on the ground before the dome and he realized that he must have broken
the connection and passed out.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Or maybe it
was the other way around.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> He saw then just what the
dome was.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was an encyclopedia of the
universe, a timeline of time itself, placed here by some vast intelligence,
some future iteration of humanity perhaps.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>An immense telling way beyond his own ability to grasp yet for the first
time in a long time, he felt at peace.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>There was no hint of even his own finely tuned frustration. It seemed to
him in his heart and in his onceness, as well as it can seem to any dim
dreamer, that everything was just what it was, that life was endless and
edgeless and eternally reforming.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And that
any human being was only a teeny instant in a perpetual cosmos.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> Sitting there on the skin
of a moon of an outer planet in one of a billion universes, feeling his own
heart beat lost in the indifferent and majestic scheme of time, he knew he was
less than he ever imagined.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But somehow this
understanding filled him not with despair but with joy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He was alive, right then and there, and he
knew it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Breathing, feeling,
knowing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And that was all that mattered
for him to matter at all.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> He looked up at the sky
and thought for once that the stars up there were not so distant after all.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Alan Robbinshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11931223050937847552noreply@blogger.com0