Writing
- Thread starter SciWriter
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‘GOD’ ON TRIAL
“Jehovah’s” trial for crimes against humanity begins thusly, but ends well…
“Do you, God, swearest to tellest us the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so helpest you God?”
“Which scriptures of what Bible should I swear on? There are so many.”
“Oh; here’s a Mormon Bible with a whole extra section that was transcribed from the golden plates you sent.”
“I didn’t send those plates.”
“OK, let’s not worry about that now; we’ll come back to it later. You are truthful, are you not?”
“I can do no evil, and that includes not lying.”
“Finally, a believable defendant. What is your full name?”
“’God Damnit’ is what I am usually called.”
“Ha-ha, but what is your real and proper name?”
“None. I am what I am.”
“Um, any aliases, like Lord, Jehovah, Almighty, or such?”
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, those are just some names that people call me, plus even the very bad names.”
“But you do exist as you are?”
“Depends on what the meaning of ‘exists’ is.”
“You know, like ‘to be’, being one that is.”
“Depends on what the meaning of ‘is’ is.”
“Is that your lawyer, Bill Clinton, sitting over there?”
“Yes, for he can get out of anything.”
“But is he going to talk endlessly in your defense?”
“No, he has been going to ‘On and on anon’.”
“Good, now how come we can hear you but we can’t see you?”
“I am invisible, plus, you are schizophrenics.”
“Hey, no name calling, order in the court!”
“I’ll have a cheeseburger, no pickles, no onions.”
“That’s more like it. So you mean we are just hearing voices?”
“Yes—do you remember the study that showed that 17% percent of priests are schizophrenic, but only 1-2% of the general population is?”
“Oh, yeah, but you’re not getting off that easily.”
“I am innocent.”
“What did you do before you created everything?”
“I was being made myself by myself.”
“How did you do that?”
“Recursively.”
“OK, anyway, did you have intercourse with a teen-age virgin?”
“Hell, no, she was underage; I only date 30 billion year old women.”
“Still single?”
“Yes, for as Mr. Always Right I could just never find Miss Perfect.”
“So, Jesus was not your son then?”
“No, but he was a really good guy—a human telling stories that everyone expected to hear.”
“But, anyway, you are a ‘He’?”
“So they usually say.”
“Don’t you know?”
“No, for humans created me in their own image and with their own traits, so I am male.”
“Jealous of any of their other imaginary Gods?”
“I am above all that lowly human-type emotion stuff. I am perfectly good and absolutely totally full of love.”
“Love is a human emotion.”
“That is the only emotion I have, for it is the ultimate one.”
“So, you never do evil?”
“Depends on what ‘evil’ is.”
“Well, as in things like harming others, except in self defense, stifling the growth of mind, and creating false ways of living, arbitrarily, through use of imagination of what the concept of good ‘should be’.”
“I am not capable of evil. I detest evil. I would hate myself if I did evil. It is unthinkable. Then I would be in the category of a Devil.”
“Is there a Devil?”
“No, I would not tolerate any such thing, for then it would sway humans to sin.”
“You appear to be without fault, but we still have to continue this trial.”
“Thank you, but I have no-fault insurance.”
“Did you murder almost everyone on Earth with a great flood?”
“Heck no, human nature is exactly the way it is supposed it to be, as is. What do you think! God not a big fat goof, that is, if he was involved. He doesn’t make mistakes.”
“Some say that you invented the rainbow to proclaim that you made a mistake, claiming that you would never do it again.”
“Preposterous. Rainbows are an optical effect.”
“Do you ever do anything wrong?”
“I can’t. I am all love.”
“Did you give too much love, perhaps?”
“Yes, I give near infinite amounts, but there’s nothing wrong with that.”
“What was the purpose of having dinosaurs around for 650 million years, then extincting them via asteroids?”
“Just playing around; actually, I had nothing to do with it.”
“What was the intelligent design in this?”
“There wasn’t any, for God does not exist. Can I go now?”
“No, we know that nonexistence trick. Whose side are you on in football games?”
“I don’t take sides or play favorites.”
“Then where do humans get all these ideas about you?”
“You know humans—they just make things up.”
“Is there a Hell, like maybe in the heart of the sun?”
“No, there is no Hell. I wouldn’t torture my beloved creatures if I were God. Would you torture a kitten?”
“Some would, but, hey, it is you that is on trial here, not us. We only have our human nature that you may have given us and it can often go astray and awry.”
“True, plus I am a nice guy, the nicest ever. I would not fill your cup to the brim with temptations and then expect you not to spill it; I’m a giver, not a taker. Pure love is all giving; there are no strings attached.”
“Thanks. Does our free will have to match your will”? “Heavens no, for that wouldn’t be free will, would it?”
“So, there’s not even a Purgatory, like somewhere on Venus?”
“Negative.”
“How do humans come up with all these things? They make you out to be some kind of strict enforcer father figure type.”
“That’s it; they modeled the family experience.”
“Is there a Heaven?”
“Yes.”
“Ah-ha, where is it?”
“On Earth. What more could human beings want?”
“Oh, well they want everything and even think they are special and above all else, some even above their own kind.”
“Nope, humans are as organic as anything in nature. Anyone can see that.”
“Well, we have imagination.”
“Yes, a gift of nature, but that’s all it is.”
“Did you publish a book?”
“Yes, but no, for ghost writers wrote one.”
“Any movies coming out?”
“No, it would be hard to beat ‘The Dark Knight’ and ‘Avatar’.”
“Were Commandments were ever issued?”
“Love does not command; it frees.”
“That’s true. So you are innocent of all charges and plead not guilty?”
“How many times do I have to tell you. I am absolute good.”
“Ever tell a white lie?”
“No way, Jose. I am the truth.”
“Ever peek at a naked person.”
“Of course, people are made that way. If he didn’t want it that way, they’d be born with clothes or fur. Some fools even put fig leaves over Eden’s artwork.”
“I must confess to you, God, that I sometimes think of people naked.”
“No sweat, plus that’s also a way to make public speaking easier. I am naked myself. It’s OK.”
“Ever stick gum somewhere when no one was looking?”
“No, for I was looking.”
“You are a saint!”
“Higher than that. I am perfect, at least before I got conceited about it.”
“Ah-ha.”
“Just joking.”
“Did you make cosmic jokes, like, in sexual human anatomy, putting a toxic waste dump near a recreation area?”
“God does have a sense of humor.”
“How come you didn’t give humans everything?”
“If I gave them everything, they’d have no place to put it.”
“A dictionary has ‘everything’.”
“In a way, plus Wikipedia is good, too.”
“How come birth certificates have expiration dates, some even sooner than later?”
“They must, otherwise, evolution wouldn’t work.”
“Did some monkey types descend from the trees?”
“Yes, for your DNA matches theirs 98%.”
“So, evolution is true, but not you as a Creator?”
“I keep telling you, leaving signs all over the Earth, you fossil to be.”
“You don’t rule or lord yourself over anyone?”
“Love serves; love does not rule.”
“We have witnesses to some of your crimes.”
“No one can witness me, besides, they made all that up.”
“Likely story. Did you choose a special tribe and tell Moses to crush some other tribes?”
“Those are just ancient Jewish legends.”
“How come Moses didn’t ask for directions when he was lost for 40 years in the desert.”
“He’s a man; they never ask.”
“Ever let someone just make it through a developing traffic accident?”
“What! and let some other poor sap get hurt or die instead? You don’t know me very well.”
“So, you don’t write scripts for our human soap operas as “God’s will”.”
“No, for truth is stranger than fiction.”
“Why are you invisible?”
“I am a figment. Have faith.”
“What’s faith?”
“Belief in the invisible unseen unknown.”
“You can’t get off the hook that easily. We can still try you in absentia.”
“I’m being very cooperative.”
“Thanks. Now, Mr. God, sir, did you send a plague of locusts to harm the welfare of humankind?”
“I wouldn’t think of it; harmful options don’t even surface in my mind for consideration.”
“No lightning bolts?”
“That was mother nature, not me.”
“Well, as you are a self-made man, then what stuff did you use to make yourself out of, plus all that is?”
“I didn’t make all that is; I only made myself out of the fundamental stuff available; then I accidentally made humankind from the same stuff, some debris that I threw out.”
“So, you are not at all responsible for mother nature’s doings?”
“No, nor did I make the universe, for I am made of it.”
“You are not fundamental and absolute?”
“No, for a system of mind and emotion like mine or yours requires moving parts. I am perfect, however.”
“That’s still a lofty position.”
“I am just fortunate to be as I am; I never look down on anyone less; my talent is a given; I can’t even really take any credit. I am just further along in evolution than you are. Cats, too, have reached a kind of perfection for their form.”
“You evolved beyond the material plane?”
“Yes, I am pure waves and fields and thus not seeable. You all will get there someday, too. I just helped you all along the path, with only your best interests at heart.”
“We will all evolve to become Gods, eventually?”
“Certainly.”
“You don’t interfere in our world on Earth?”
“No, for then you would miss all the fun. Knowing everything is not really that great.”
“There would be no surprises.”
“Exactly.”
“Do you overrule all or part of reality in any way?”
“No, I’m not bossy.”
“Do you underlie all or part of reality in any way?”
“Nope, as I said, I am in this universe and therefore of this universe; I am just higher up the food chain.”
“So, in our terms, you are just a very powerful but loving alien.”
“That I am. And if any hostile ones approach me, I will defend myself.”
“Thanks, for that may help us, too.”
“True, but you are all completely free to be and do.”
“How come you allow/give this to us?”
“It’s the greatest gift that love can give.”
“Thanks, again. You seem a good guy, but we still have a few more questions, plus, you know, we can’t really consider any gifts that you gave to us when we make our ruling; I hope you understand, for we are often approached with bribes.”
“Money talks.”
“For me it just usually says ‘Goodbye’.”
“But when it returns you might say, ‘Hey, glad to see you; I’ve missed you; where have you been all my life?’”
“You’re a fun guy. So, what is all this holy-holy admiration stuff that humans do in and for your name?”
“I don’t know; it’s really weird, isn’t it?”
“I thought you knew everything.”
“Well, by staying out of the way, I chose not to know.”
“What made the stuff that we and you are made of?”
“I’m not sure; I only know everything from me onwards; that stuff could have appeared in the universe from somewhere else, or have been here forever, or appeared via some kind of possibility; it is not marked as holy or unholy.”
“Well, that’s immaterial, anyway. Back to our probe.”
“I ain’t never did anything terrible nohow!”
“Ever do anything wrong at all?”
“I threw some litter into space because there was no where else to put it.”
“What litter?”
“An excess atoms that then made your world.”
“Well, no harm done.”
“Thanks.”
“Do angels exist, having wings and all that?”
“No, not as humans have defined them. Wings are useless in space; there is no air. There are more ETs than me, however.”
“We thought so. Is there a Bigfoot?”
“Ha, ha. Those are just hoaxes put forth by some hicks in the southern US.”
“Isn’t ‘hick’ a bad name?”
“No, I am just describing an actual fact, for which the word ‘hick’ is perfectly descriptive. I have to use words that you can understand.”
“So, you’ve never been seen, and just about everything bad that was said about you by humans is false; so, what’s left?”
“Not much, just me as not ‘God’.”
“But you created us; you helped us along.”
“Well, in a way, but that was quite inadvertent. You would have formed somewhere sometime anyway. Some of my ‘trash’ formed your solar system; then you evolved. Your population was down to less than a thousand once, and I guess some of my good vibrations rubbed off on them as I passed by on my way to pick up some rare elements on Pluto. I was building a new house that can withstand all eternity. The weather in space is always bad; it’s full of radiation of all sorts.”
“Strange weather all over the Earth, too.”
“There are many hurricanes that began from a hint of a wisp of a breeze.”
“Mr. ET, is there way to tell the future of the weather?”
“The 2012 farmer’s almanac just came out.”
“So, how do we speed up evolution?”
“Takes time, but you could enhance your own chemistry, as I did.”
“Sounds dangerous.”
“It is; I was a Jeckyl and Hyde for a while.”
“Ah-ha, that’s when you committed crimes against humanity!”
“No, I was far away, plus that was 35 billion years ago.”
“Oh, but do you have an alibi?”
“No, I was all there was then, but I have pictures.”
“Let’s see.”
“I don’t have then with me, but they are very similar to those taken by the Hubble telescope.”
“You were there among those trillions of stars and galaxies?”
“Yes, but I was already semitransparent by then.”
“It would be like one of those “Where’s Waldo’ puzzles.””
“You’ll just have to take my word if you cannot prove otherwise.”
“What is the purpose of life?”
“To live.”
“What is life?”
“You are life.”
“Is life and all really just a bunch of atomic spinning things of various compositions?”
“That’s it.”
“Nothing more?”
“There can be no more, for that is all there is.”
“Why do we keep hoping for more?”
“Greed and having no gratitude, but, still, you are a sparkling billion years product, and quite amazing.”
“We are pretty cool when you think about it.”
“That’s all it takes to appreciate life.”
“Any other universes?”
“Sure, but many did not amount to anything. However, I am going on vacation to a good one next week.”
“Be sure to send a post card saying ‘Wish you were here’, that is, if there is oxygen there.”
“Will do. Lucky for you here that bacteria and plants came about and made oxygen. Thenceforth you began as you.”
“Yes, a lucky break; oxygen was a mere waste product from photosynthesis.”
“See, all is as it seems. No need to invent any supernatural intent to blame or thank for anything.”
“All is as it did?”
“Yes, that’s why it took so long.”
“Indeed, a true God type Creator could have done it instantly, not even needing 6 days, or getting tired on the 7th.”
“Yes, but the all is an origin, not a Creator. The ground-state was always around, and so there was no creation, and no Creator.”
“Yikes, then what should we do?”
“Just be.”
“OK, good advice, but, if we ever find that there was a culprit Creator who committed some of the very crimes that his Commandments spoke against, like murder, destruction, or hatred, then he is really going to be toast.”
“As he should be, for those acts would have been unconscionable, especially for someone of that high stature.”
“Thanks for your testimony. We’ll call it the third testament. Your judgment day is near at hand. I’m calling a one hour recess.”
…
“All please rise.”
“The court finds you not guilty on all counts, due to lack of evidence, plus your good nature.”
“Evidence for those like me is not even conceivable.”
“True. Thank you everyone. Please bring in the next case.”
SciWriter walks in. “Did you leave the toilet seat up in a household where there were females present?”
“Well, maybe, yes I did, but…”
“100 years of hard labor in Siberia.”
“Jehovah’s” trial for crimes against humanity begins thusly, but ends well…
“Do you, God, swearest to tellest us the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so helpest you God?”
“Which scriptures of what Bible should I swear on? There are so many.”
“Oh; here’s a Mormon Bible with a whole extra section that was transcribed from the golden plates you sent.”
“I didn’t send those plates.”
“OK, let’s not worry about that now; we’ll come back to it later. You are truthful, are you not?”
“I can do no evil, and that includes not lying.”
“Finally, a believable defendant. What is your full name?”
“’God Damnit’ is what I am usually called.”
“Ha-ha, but what is your real and proper name?”
“None. I am what I am.”
“Um, any aliases, like Lord, Jehovah, Almighty, or such?”
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, those are just some names that people call me, plus even the very bad names.”
“But you do exist as you are?”
“Depends on what the meaning of ‘exists’ is.”
“You know, like ‘to be’, being one that is.”
“Depends on what the meaning of ‘is’ is.”
“Is that your lawyer, Bill Clinton, sitting over there?”
“Yes, for he can get out of anything.”
“But is he going to talk endlessly in your defense?”
“No, he has been going to ‘On and on anon’.”
“Good, now how come we can hear you but we can’t see you?”
“I am invisible, plus, you are schizophrenics.”
“Hey, no name calling, order in the court!”
“I’ll have a cheeseburger, no pickles, no onions.”
“That’s more like it. So you mean we are just hearing voices?”
“Yes—do you remember the study that showed that 17% percent of priests are schizophrenic, but only 1-2% of the general population is?”
“Oh, yeah, but you’re not getting off that easily.”
“I am innocent.”
“What did you do before you created everything?”
“I was being made myself by myself.”
“How did you do that?”
“Recursively.”
“OK, anyway, did you have intercourse with a teen-age virgin?”
“Hell, no, she was underage; I only date 30 billion year old women.”
“Still single?”
“Yes, for as Mr. Always Right I could just never find Miss Perfect.”
“So, Jesus was not your son then?”
“No, but he was a really good guy—a human telling stories that everyone expected to hear.”
“But, anyway, you are a ‘He’?”
“So they usually say.”
“Don’t you know?”
“No, for humans created me in their own image and with their own traits, so I am male.”
“Jealous of any of their other imaginary Gods?”
“I am above all that lowly human-type emotion stuff. I am perfectly good and absolutely totally full of love.”
“Love is a human emotion.”
“That is the only emotion I have, for it is the ultimate one.”
“So, you never do evil?”
“Depends on what ‘evil’ is.”
“Well, as in things like harming others, except in self defense, stifling the growth of mind, and creating false ways of living, arbitrarily, through use of imagination of what the concept of good ‘should be’.”
“I am not capable of evil. I detest evil. I would hate myself if I did evil. It is unthinkable. Then I would be in the category of a Devil.”
“Is there a Devil?”
“No, I would not tolerate any such thing, for then it would sway humans to sin.”
“You appear to be without fault, but we still have to continue this trial.”
“Thank you, but I have no-fault insurance.”
“Did you murder almost everyone on Earth with a great flood?”
“Heck no, human nature is exactly the way it is supposed it to be, as is. What do you think! God not a big fat goof, that is, if he was involved. He doesn’t make mistakes.”
“Some say that you invented the rainbow to proclaim that you made a mistake, claiming that you would never do it again.”
“Preposterous. Rainbows are an optical effect.”
“Do you ever do anything wrong?”
“I can’t. I am all love.”
“Did you give too much love, perhaps?”
“Yes, I give near infinite amounts, but there’s nothing wrong with that.”
“What was the purpose of having dinosaurs around for 650 million years, then extincting them via asteroids?”
“Just playing around; actually, I had nothing to do with it.”
“What was the intelligent design in this?”
“There wasn’t any, for God does not exist. Can I go now?”
“No, we know that nonexistence trick. Whose side are you on in football games?”
“I don’t take sides or play favorites.”
“Then where do humans get all these ideas about you?”
“You know humans—they just make things up.”
“Is there a Hell, like maybe in the heart of the sun?”
“No, there is no Hell. I wouldn’t torture my beloved creatures if I were God. Would you torture a kitten?”
“Some would, but, hey, it is you that is on trial here, not us. We only have our human nature that you may have given us and it can often go astray and awry.”
“True, plus I am a nice guy, the nicest ever. I would not fill your cup to the brim with temptations and then expect you not to spill it; I’m a giver, not a taker. Pure love is all giving; there are no strings attached.”
“Thanks. Does our free will have to match your will”? “Heavens no, for that wouldn’t be free will, would it?”
“So, there’s not even a Purgatory, like somewhere on Venus?”
“Negative.”
“How do humans come up with all these things? They make you out to be some kind of strict enforcer father figure type.”
“That’s it; they modeled the family experience.”
“Is there a Heaven?”
“Yes.”
“Ah-ha, where is it?”
“On Earth. What more could human beings want?”
“Oh, well they want everything and even think they are special and above all else, some even above their own kind.”
“Nope, humans are as organic as anything in nature. Anyone can see that.”
“Well, we have imagination.”
“Yes, a gift of nature, but that’s all it is.”
“Did you publish a book?”
“Yes, but no, for ghost writers wrote one.”
“Any movies coming out?”
“No, it would be hard to beat ‘The Dark Knight’ and ‘Avatar’.”
“Were Commandments were ever issued?”
“Love does not command; it frees.”
“That’s true. So you are innocent of all charges and plead not guilty?”
“How many times do I have to tell you. I am absolute good.”
“Ever tell a white lie?”
“No way, Jose. I am the truth.”
“Ever peek at a naked person.”
“Of course, people are made that way. If he didn’t want it that way, they’d be born with clothes or fur. Some fools even put fig leaves over Eden’s artwork.”
“I must confess to you, God, that I sometimes think of people naked.”
“No sweat, plus that’s also a way to make public speaking easier. I am naked myself. It’s OK.”
“Ever stick gum somewhere when no one was looking?”
“No, for I was looking.”
“You are a saint!”
“Higher than that. I am perfect, at least before I got conceited about it.”
“Ah-ha.”
“Just joking.”
“Did you make cosmic jokes, like, in sexual human anatomy, putting a toxic waste dump near a recreation area?”
“God does have a sense of humor.”
“How come you didn’t give humans everything?”
“If I gave them everything, they’d have no place to put it.”
“A dictionary has ‘everything’.”
“In a way, plus Wikipedia is good, too.”
“How come birth certificates have expiration dates, some even sooner than later?”
“They must, otherwise, evolution wouldn’t work.”
“Did some monkey types descend from the trees?”
“Yes, for your DNA matches theirs 98%.”
“So, evolution is true, but not you as a Creator?”
“I keep telling you, leaving signs all over the Earth, you fossil to be.”
“You don’t rule or lord yourself over anyone?”
“Love serves; love does not rule.”
“We have witnesses to some of your crimes.”
“No one can witness me, besides, they made all that up.”
“Likely story. Did you choose a special tribe and tell Moses to crush some other tribes?”
“Those are just ancient Jewish legends.”
“How come Moses didn’t ask for directions when he was lost for 40 years in the desert.”
“He’s a man; they never ask.”
“Ever let someone just make it through a developing traffic accident?”
“What! and let some other poor sap get hurt or die instead? You don’t know me very well.”
“So, you don’t write scripts for our human soap operas as “God’s will”.”
“No, for truth is stranger than fiction.”
“Why are you invisible?”
“I am a figment. Have faith.”
“What’s faith?”
“Belief in the invisible unseen unknown.”
“You can’t get off the hook that easily. We can still try you in absentia.”
“I’m being very cooperative.”
“Thanks. Now, Mr. God, sir, did you send a plague of locusts to harm the welfare of humankind?”
“I wouldn’t think of it; harmful options don’t even surface in my mind for consideration.”
“No lightning bolts?”
“That was mother nature, not me.”
“Well, as you are a self-made man, then what stuff did you use to make yourself out of, plus all that is?”
“I didn’t make all that is; I only made myself out of the fundamental stuff available; then I accidentally made humankind from the same stuff, some debris that I threw out.”
“So, you are not at all responsible for mother nature’s doings?”
“No, nor did I make the universe, for I am made of it.”
“You are not fundamental and absolute?”
“No, for a system of mind and emotion like mine or yours requires moving parts. I am perfect, however.”
“That’s still a lofty position.”
“I am just fortunate to be as I am; I never look down on anyone less; my talent is a given; I can’t even really take any credit. I am just further along in evolution than you are. Cats, too, have reached a kind of perfection for their form.”
“You evolved beyond the material plane?”
“Yes, I am pure waves and fields and thus not seeable. You all will get there someday, too. I just helped you all along the path, with only your best interests at heart.”
“We will all evolve to become Gods, eventually?”
“Certainly.”
“You don’t interfere in our world on Earth?”
“No, for then you would miss all the fun. Knowing everything is not really that great.”
“There would be no surprises.”
“Exactly.”
“Do you overrule all or part of reality in any way?”
“No, I’m not bossy.”
“Do you underlie all or part of reality in any way?”
“Nope, as I said, I am in this universe and therefore of this universe; I am just higher up the food chain.”
“So, in our terms, you are just a very powerful but loving alien.”
“That I am. And if any hostile ones approach me, I will defend myself.”
“Thanks, for that may help us, too.”
“True, but you are all completely free to be and do.”
“How come you allow/give this to us?”
“It’s the greatest gift that love can give.”
“Thanks, again. You seem a good guy, but we still have a few more questions, plus, you know, we can’t really consider any gifts that you gave to us when we make our ruling; I hope you understand, for we are often approached with bribes.”
“Money talks.”
“For me it just usually says ‘Goodbye’.”
“But when it returns you might say, ‘Hey, glad to see you; I’ve missed you; where have you been all my life?’”
“You’re a fun guy. So, what is all this holy-holy admiration stuff that humans do in and for your name?”
“I don’t know; it’s really weird, isn’t it?”
“I thought you knew everything.”
“Well, by staying out of the way, I chose not to know.”
“What made the stuff that we and you are made of?”
“I’m not sure; I only know everything from me onwards; that stuff could have appeared in the universe from somewhere else, or have been here forever, or appeared via some kind of possibility; it is not marked as holy or unholy.”
“Well, that’s immaterial, anyway. Back to our probe.”
“I ain’t never did anything terrible nohow!”
“Ever do anything wrong at all?”
“I threw some litter into space because there was no where else to put it.”
“What litter?”
“An excess atoms that then made your world.”
“Well, no harm done.”
“Thanks.”
“Do angels exist, having wings and all that?”
“No, not as humans have defined them. Wings are useless in space; there is no air. There are more ETs than me, however.”
“We thought so. Is there a Bigfoot?”
“Ha, ha. Those are just hoaxes put forth by some hicks in the southern US.”
“Isn’t ‘hick’ a bad name?”
“No, I am just describing an actual fact, for which the word ‘hick’ is perfectly descriptive. I have to use words that you can understand.”
“So, you’ve never been seen, and just about everything bad that was said about you by humans is false; so, what’s left?”
“Not much, just me as not ‘God’.”
“But you created us; you helped us along.”
“Well, in a way, but that was quite inadvertent. You would have formed somewhere sometime anyway. Some of my ‘trash’ formed your solar system; then you evolved. Your population was down to less than a thousand once, and I guess some of my good vibrations rubbed off on them as I passed by on my way to pick up some rare elements on Pluto. I was building a new house that can withstand all eternity. The weather in space is always bad; it’s full of radiation of all sorts.”
“Strange weather all over the Earth, too.”
“There are many hurricanes that began from a hint of a wisp of a breeze.”
“Mr. ET, is there way to tell the future of the weather?”
“The 2012 farmer’s almanac just came out.”
“So, how do we speed up evolution?”
“Takes time, but you could enhance your own chemistry, as I did.”
“Sounds dangerous.”
“It is; I was a Jeckyl and Hyde for a while.”
“Ah-ha, that’s when you committed crimes against humanity!”
“No, I was far away, plus that was 35 billion years ago.”
“Oh, but do you have an alibi?”
“No, I was all there was then, but I have pictures.”
“Let’s see.”
“I don’t have then with me, but they are very similar to those taken by the Hubble telescope.”
“You were there among those trillions of stars and galaxies?”
“Yes, but I was already semitransparent by then.”
“It would be like one of those “Where’s Waldo’ puzzles.””
“You’ll just have to take my word if you cannot prove otherwise.”
“What is the purpose of life?”
“To live.”
“What is life?”
“You are life.”
“Is life and all really just a bunch of atomic spinning things of various compositions?”
“That’s it.”
“Nothing more?”
“There can be no more, for that is all there is.”
“Why do we keep hoping for more?”
“Greed and having no gratitude, but, still, you are a sparkling billion years product, and quite amazing.”
“We are pretty cool when you think about it.”
“That’s all it takes to appreciate life.”
“Any other universes?”
“Sure, but many did not amount to anything. However, I am going on vacation to a good one next week.”
“Be sure to send a post card saying ‘Wish you were here’, that is, if there is oxygen there.”
“Will do. Lucky for you here that bacteria and plants came about and made oxygen. Thenceforth you began as you.”
“Yes, a lucky break; oxygen was a mere waste product from photosynthesis.”
“See, all is as it seems. No need to invent any supernatural intent to blame or thank for anything.”
“All is as it did?”
“Yes, that’s why it took so long.”
“Indeed, a true God type Creator could have done it instantly, not even needing 6 days, or getting tired on the 7th.”
“Yes, but the all is an origin, not a Creator. The ground-state was always around, and so there was no creation, and no Creator.”
“Yikes, then what should we do?”
“Just be.”
“OK, good advice, but, if we ever find that there was a culprit Creator who committed some of the very crimes that his Commandments spoke against, like murder, destruction, or hatred, then he is really going to be toast.”
“As he should be, for those acts would have been unconscionable, especially for someone of that high stature.”
“Thanks for your testimony. We’ll call it the third testament. Your judgment day is near at hand. I’m calling a one hour recess.”
…
“All please rise.”
“The court finds you not guilty on all counts, due to lack of evidence, plus your good nature.”
“Evidence for those like me is not even conceivable.”
“True. Thank you everyone. Please bring in the next case.”
SciWriter walks in. “Did you leave the toilet seat up in a household where there were females present?”
“Well, maybe, yes I did, but…”
“100 years of hard labor in Siberia.”
(This was great, by Chimpkin, for both its excellent wordage and getting the point across.)
His postings almost seem to make sense...but you look for it somewhere in the jungle of motile metaphors and allusive alliteration...and it just gets lost in the florid unbridled undergrowth...seeming to communicate something, but never quite achieving the quivering arrow of passed thought...Despite how much one might stalk it like a tiger through the jungle, lurking, watching, with twitching tail and glittering eyes...nonetheless, it shall always elude you...much like the humble snipe, you may look for it, but never find it...it is perhaps the errant of a fool, who tilts at windmills thinking them giants, only to be tumbled, ass-over-teakettle, by the impersonal, universal forces.
His postings almost seem to make sense...but you look for it somewhere in the jungle of motile metaphors and allusive alliteration...and it just gets lost in the florid unbridled undergrowth...seeming to communicate something, but never quite achieving the quivering arrow of passed thought...Despite how much one might stalk it like a tiger through the jungle, lurking, watching, with twitching tail and glittering eyes...nonetheless, it shall always elude you...much like the humble snipe, you may look for it, but never find it...it is perhaps the errant of a fool, who tilts at windmills thinking them giants, only to be tumbled, ass-over-teakettle, by the impersonal, universal forces.
— 32 —
THE MOLE OF VLADIMIR
Questor had been mostly ‘out’ for the last 36 hours, sleepy, groggy, and recuperating from injuries, mostly very deep bruises from too many hits to his body armor, but was now up, walking a bit, around the hospital room, ever attended by Passiona. They had been given six months off, although probably needing only two.
“Honey, the news is reporting something big…”
VLADIMIR, RUSSIA
The Foreign Intelligence Service (or SVR) is Russia’s primary external intelligence agency. The SVR is the successor of First Chief Directorate (FCD) of the KGB since December 1991. — Wiki
Vladimir is famous for its unique white stone cathedrals, towers and palaces. Unlike any other northern buildings, their exteriors are elaborately carved with high relief stone sculptures. Only three of these edifices stand today: the Assumption Cathedral, the Cathedral of St. Demetrios, and the Golden Gate. —Wiki
It is also the home of the Secondary SVR, a misnomer, for it was here that many of the more outrageous plots were hatched, planned, and carried out.
Anton and Sergei had recruited and managed the insertion of the best of the Soviet era nuclear scientists into the secret Iranian nuclear bomb making facility, one that Iran was recently forced to reveal. Anton and Sergei were now busy getting the Russian scientists back out, coordinating it through Anna, for just about everything went through Anna.
The SVR had a mole in its building, one who had so far revealed the existence of the Iranian nuclear plant, but not yet the hand of Russia therein, nor the S-500 antiaircraft system being installed that would protect the plant from destruction. Therefore, the SVR building had been put under lock down, all transmissions and phones stopped, but for one.
Colonel Patov, the de facto and continuing head of the SVR in Vladimir, pondered the graveness of the situation, now wishing that he’d never had to run the damn place. The former Commander, the merciless General Burkov, had been done away with by Fredrick in San Francisco a few years back. Burkov had been replaced by General Nikitin, a man who ran the SVR remotely, and very poorly at that, one who had never even bothered to have set foot in the place, preferring the comforts of Moscow in the new digital age of armchair management.
Patov sat back. He’d been given a week to find the mole. (Must show progress in two days.) He didn’t miss Burkov, that crazy son-of-bitch, but missed Nikitin, strangely, having never met him, for it was all too lonely at the top here now, but, what-the-hell, for Nikitin had always taken the credit for Patov’s fine work. To blazes with them all and their kind, he thought. Who is spilling our secrets? Not me, that’s for sure. He thought of his wife, Patova (they usually added an ‘a’). Perhaps they could run away from this thing, but, no, the Russians left no survivors for events like this. Yet, Patov had already secretly moved his finances to Switzerland, knowing all to well how to circumvent the ever present prying eyes that were everpresent.
Anna had worked her way up, over 20 years or so, to a position of much importance, the coordinator of all actions and activities. She was pure Soviet-Russian from birth, reliable and untouchable, even having a golden heart within and without.
She was also a member of the Ninja Empire, their deepest plant anywhere. It was the end, she knew, for there was no micromanaging of this kind of leak, as had been done with the others, to make it appear otherwise. No way out. Duty now spelled death. Nor could she shift the blame to Anton or Sergei; that just wouldn’t be right. Still, she would try to hold out, and perhaps think of something. Her mind drew a blank.
Patov paced his office, then called upon his Major, Egorov, for company. Anything not to have to go through this alone. They finally decided to put all three suspects through the rigors of the new and improved ‘truth serum’ process that had never failed, although a few had died from it, this but a minor failure.
“Not Anna,” Egorov protested.
“Yes, Anna, too,” commanded Patov, “I know, but we must be sure. See you in the morning.”
On February 8, 1238, Vladimir had been besieged and taken by the Mongol-Tatar hordes under Batu Khan. A great fire destroyed 32*limestone buildings on the first day alone, while the grand prince and all his family perished in a church where they sought refuge from the fire. The bishop of Vladimir managed to escape. After the Mongols, Vladimir never fully recovered, and even though the most important Rus prince (usually the Prince of Moscow, but sometimes of Tver or another principality) was styled the Grand Prince of Vladimir and was the tax-collector of the Golden Horde. From 1299 to 1325, the city was seat of the metropolitans of Kiev and All Rus, until Metropolitan Peter moved the see to Moscow. The Grand Prince of Vladimir were originally crowned in Vladimir’s Assumption Cathedral, but when Moscow superseded Vladimir as the seat of the Grand Prince, the Assumption Cathedral in the Moscow Kremlin, loosely copied by the Italian architect Aristotele Fioravanti from Vladimir’s original, became the site where the grand princes were crowned. Even after the rise of Moscow though, Muscovite grand princes built several new churches in Vladimir City, notably the Annunciation church at Snovitsy (ca.*1501), three kilometers north-west of the city, and a charming church in the Knyaginin nunnery (ca.*1505), with murals dating to 1648. Remains of the prince-saint Alexander Nevsky were kept in the ancient Nativity abbey of Vladimir until 1703, when Peter the Great had them transferred to the Monastery (now Lavra) of Aleksandr Nevsky in St.*Petersburg. The Nativity church itself (1191–1196) collapsed several years later, when they tried to make more windows in its walls, in an effort to brighten the interior. —Wiki
Morning had dawned all too soon for Colonel Patov, who was now drinking a cup of strong black coffee to jolt him back into the day from a rather sleepless night.
He read the report. What! All three had passed the ‘truth’ test. Then it had been given again and all three had passed it again!
Major Egorov entered, saying “We double-checked the computers. Only those three had access, and, you, of course, but you did not do it.”
“Why not suspect me, Egorov?”
“Because I was sent here to keep an eye on you, Colonel, and it was not you.”
“Thank you, Egorov, at least in this case anyway, for spying on me.”
“My pleasure to vindicate you, sir.”
“But they are all pure-blood Soviets. Who, then?
“It can only be one of them, sir.”
The phone rang, displaying the name ‘Nikitin’.
Patov jumped out of his chair. “What does he want? I thought I had two more days for progress.”
Patov lifted the receiver and listened, as one must do when a superior calls, just saying “Understood” before hanging up, rather than being hung up upon.
“Egorov, our S-500 antiaircraft construction site has now been revealed to the world!”
“There is such a project?”
‘Yes, to protect the Iranian nuclear plant. It’s but one-third completed though.”
“What to do?”
“Make it look like it was abandoned. Put dust on it, Whatever. Get our people out of there immediately!”
“Will do, sir.”
“And, Egarov, one more thing.”
‘Yes?”
“We now have but one more day to find the mole or Nikitin is coming here tomorrow to personally execute all three suspects.”
“Damn. We need these people.”
“It’s the old way, Egorov. The sure way.”
“I’ll try, sir.”
“No try. Do.”
“Maybe Nikitin leaked the information himself.”
“Unlikely; he’s an old hard-liner. And if he did, there’s nothing we can do about it.”
“Agreed.”
“Find that mole or I’m dead.”
“Yes, sir.”
There was no progress during day, even after Patov had personally and intensely interviewed all three suspects.
Exhausted, Patov went to sleep early, sending nothing to Moscow.
…
General Nikitin’s armored limos pulled up outside the SVR building, around 3 AM, their flags flying. Major Egarov, being on night duty, received their demands at the front door and went up at once to wake Pavlov.
“You have to get up, sir. Nikitin is here.”
“What! In the middle of the night?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Tell them we’re under lock down. No one comes in.”
“They’re waiting outside.”
“And no one goes out.”
“I had to bring the three suspects out…”
“What!”
“I could hardly disobey him, sir.”
“Well, then, what else do they want?”
“You, sir.”
“Me?”
“They insist. Immediately, and as you are.”
“Egarov, take over. You will not see me alive again.”
Pavlov was already a beaten man, an inmate waiting on death row, and so, he, dazed as he had become, collected a few personal items and went out into the street in his night clothes.
The limo door opened. He got in. A General of the Russian Army was sitting there in full uniform, looking most unhappy.
The limos sped off, no one saying a word as all the while the miles passed on by through the empty city streets. Patov knew to stay silent unless spoken to. He noted the outskirts of the city passing, and yet no one said anything, the country kilometers now eating up the limo ride with their darkness. A perfect spot for an execution, he thought.
Patov couldn’t take it any more.
“Where are you taking me, Nikitin?” he bellowed.
No answer.
Patov stayed quiet, thinking better of his outburst.
They stopped at an old farmhouse, pulled the limos inside, got out, and lit a small candle. So, this is it, figured Patov. No one spoke.
Nikitin lit up a smoke and offered one to Patov, who gladly took it and lit it to calm his nerves.
Halfway through the smoke, Nikitin leaned in as if to speak. The face somehow seemed familiar, but Patov couldn’t place it.
“Colonel Patov,” said Nikitin very slowly, “You transferred all your funds.”
No one could know this, thought Patov, but they did.
“For safekeeping.”
“To use after you’d escaped this mess?”
“No, no…”
It was no use. They had him.
Another long silence ensued.
“Remember the tunnel, Patov?”
Patov was really confused now.
“What tunnel?”
“The one under the train tracks.”
Patov strained his memory… so many incidents over the years… then he began to recall some bits and pieces of it.
“I’m not exactly sure.”
“Remember, ‘It’s lights out for me?’”
“Ahhh… YES. It’s you… You reached up and smashed the only light bulb in the tunnel, leaving your sweater hanging there in the dark to fool us… then you escaped. You are… Fredrick!”
“I am. You should have shot me on sight.”
“I couldn’t.”
“I know.”
“And you’ve come to dispose of me like you did Burkov?”
“No, that was a different case.”
“He sure is… was.”
“Burkov was a madman. You, Patov were just doing your job.”
“Then where are you taking me?”
“To Switzerland, where you can meet up with your money and your wife.”
“With my wife?”
“Yes, she’s in the rear partition of the second limo.”
“You would do this for me, one who once tried to capture you? It this some kind of a trick?”
“Well, you can’t stay in Russia now, can you? And we will let bygones be bygones. Pardon my Russian translations, but it means that all is forgiven and forgotten.”
Patova stepped out and embraced her husband.
Patov looked up and over at Fredrick, finally, asking, “All this in exchange for what I know?”
Fredrick smiled. “We already know most of what you know. You are free, Colonel Patov. Is there such a word in Russian?”
“Yes, but… at least I will bring you up to date on our activities.”
“I know, Patov… just let it sink in while we get you some traveling clothes.”
Patov returned to his chair and sank into it, no longer fully knowing how or who to trust.
Patov added, “Anna must work for you, Fredrick.”
“She does, and she is now safe within the limo.”
“And the other two?”
“They have to come along.”
“I see.”
Anna stepped out and walked over to Patov.
Patov looked up and said, “Ah, golden heart, I knew it had to be you.”
“You were not meant for this cruel line of work, Patov. I put in a good word for you.”
“Thank you,” said Patov, almost crying now.”
“My treat.”
“If I may ask, how did you get the information out? All the e-mails, phones and such are monitored every second. We even look at strange conversations for unusual word use.”
“That would be telling.”
“Really?”
“It’s beyond all that.”
“Brain waves? That’s not possible, is it?”
“A novel idea, but one whose time has not yet come.”
Fredrick looked at a secure readout on his phone, indicating that Operation ‘Fire’ was now underway.
A few moments ago, the Israeli Defense Minister had been on the phone to the American President, who replied, just before hanging up, “Thanks for the notice… and God speed.”
Six Israeli jets were now in the air, one far out in front, three in the middle, and two lagging back, all of them quickly approaching the Iranian border.
The Defense Minister and his aides gathered around the computer screens.
“We almost waited too long,” said one. The S-500 site is partly operational, although they are now covering it with dirt.”
“It can still operate through the dirt. Yes, indeed, why did we wait for a madman from Iran to come through on his public promise to destroy us?”
“Yes, especially when such a boast would only make our actions tonight all the more necessary, right, and understanable?”
“We are getting soft.”
“Maybe.”
“Iran is even isolated from its Muslim neighbors.”
“Insanity.”
“The jets have crossed the border, sir.”
The S-500 antiaircraft system came to life through the dirt, noting one blip and taking out the lead Israeli aircraft. But it was only a drone, carrying no one and nothing of interest but a missile now tracking out of the debris and down through the sky toward the S-500 site, its approach obscured, at first.
“They will never see it coming; they will glory in the kill and will not even be checking their radars for a second or two.”
They didn’t, and so a large part of the S-500 apparatus was soon destroyed, the next three jets finishing the job and continuing on, the two jets in the rear now closing through the freed sky.
“What’s with those last two jets, sir? Are they special?”
“Ah, you do not have security clearance for that.”
“Indeed, I do.”
“Yes, you do. I am joking. Suppose that our bunker buster missiles do not complete the job, the Iranian site being too deep, as it is rumored to be?”
“Then they could salvage it, and if it was far enough along in its enrichment process…”
“Yes…”
“Are you telling me what I think you’re telling me?”
“Yes.”
“The first wave is at the target, sir, and dumping the bunker-busters.”
“Get me the live satellite on my screen. Analysis?”
“Those lines are the depths reached by the bunker-busters, sir. That block still beneath is the nuclear plant as newly illuminated by a special probe that we sent in first.”
“No good, was it?”
“The busters did not reach the target, sir.”
“The Defense Minister transmitted a code to the last two jets and then bowed his head in prayer.”
All waited.
…
“They’ve dropped their tactical nukes, sir, fighting fire with fire.”
Fredrick received an update.
“Gentlemen, ladies, and Colonel Patov and wife: we’ve entered a new age. The area of the Iranian nuclear plant and its surroundings will be uninhabitable for several centuries to come.”
“God save us all,” cried Patov.
…
Major Egorov took command of the SVR. He would later find that his command became permanent, for the real Nikitin had mysteriously disappeared, and no one would ask any questions of this, it being of the old Soviet way.
Egorov now sat at Patov’s desk, ready for the tasks to come. He took a rare moment to break character and smile to himself. No improved ‘truth serum’ injections had been applied, for he’d only gone through the motions. Egorov would carry on Anna’s legacy, for he, too, was a member of the Ninja WIA Empire.
THE MOLE OF VLADIMIR
Questor had been mostly ‘out’ for the last 36 hours, sleepy, groggy, and recuperating from injuries, mostly very deep bruises from too many hits to his body armor, but was now up, walking a bit, around the hospital room, ever attended by Passiona. They had been given six months off, although probably needing only two.
“Honey, the news is reporting something big…”
VLADIMIR, RUSSIA
The Foreign Intelligence Service (or SVR) is Russia’s primary external intelligence agency. The SVR is the successor of First Chief Directorate (FCD) of the KGB since December 1991. — Wiki
Vladimir is famous for its unique white stone cathedrals, towers and palaces. Unlike any other northern buildings, their exteriors are elaborately carved with high relief stone sculptures. Only three of these edifices stand today: the Assumption Cathedral, the Cathedral of St. Demetrios, and the Golden Gate. —Wiki
It is also the home of the Secondary SVR, a misnomer, for it was here that many of the more outrageous plots were hatched, planned, and carried out.
Anton and Sergei had recruited and managed the insertion of the best of the Soviet era nuclear scientists into the secret Iranian nuclear bomb making facility, one that Iran was recently forced to reveal. Anton and Sergei were now busy getting the Russian scientists back out, coordinating it through Anna, for just about everything went through Anna.
The SVR had a mole in its building, one who had so far revealed the existence of the Iranian nuclear plant, but not yet the hand of Russia therein, nor the S-500 antiaircraft system being installed that would protect the plant from destruction. Therefore, the SVR building had been put under lock down, all transmissions and phones stopped, but for one.
Colonel Patov, the de facto and continuing head of the SVR in Vladimir, pondered the graveness of the situation, now wishing that he’d never had to run the damn place. The former Commander, the merciless General Burkov, had been done away with by Fredrick in San Francisco a few years back. Burkov had been replaced by General Nikitin, a man who ran the SVR remotely, and very poorly at that, one who had never even bothered to have set foot in the place, preferring the comforts of Moscow in the new digital age of armchair management.
Patov sat back. He’d been given a week to find the mole. (Must show progress in two days.) He didn’t miss Burkov, that crazy son-of-bitch, but missed Nikitin, strangely, having never met him, for it was all too lonely at the top here now, but, what-the-hell, for Nikitin had always taken the credit for Patov’s fine work. To blazes with them all and their kind, he thought. Who is spilling our secrets? Not me, that’s for sure. He thought of his wife, Patova (they usually added an ‘a’). Perhaps they could run away from this thing, but, no, the Russians left no survivors for events like this. Yet, Patov had already secretly moved his finances to Switzerland, knowing all to well how to circumvent the ever present prying eyes that were everpresent.
Anna had worked her way up, over 20 years or so, to a position of much importance, the coordinator of all actions and activities. She was pure Soviet-Russian from birth, reliable and untouchable, even having a golden heart within and without.
She was also a member of the Ninja Empire, their deepest plant anywhere. It was the end, she knew, for there was no micromanaging of this kind of leak, as had been done with the others, to make it appear otherwise. No way out. Duty now spelled death. Nor could she shift the blame to Anton or Sergei; that just wouldn’t be right. Still, she would try to hold out, and perhaps think of something. Her mind drew a blank.
Patov paced his office, then called upon his Major, Egorov, for company. Anything not to have to go through this alone. They finally decided to put all three suspects through the rigors of the new and improved ‘truth serum’ process that had never failed, although a few had died from it, this but a minor failure.
“Not Anna,” Egorov protested.
“Yes, Anna, too,” commanded Patov, “I know, but we must be sure. See you in the morning.”
On February 8, 1238, Vladimir had been besieged and taken by the Mongol-Tatar hordes under Batu Khan. A great fire destroyed 32*limestone buildings on the first day alone, while the grand prince and all his family perished in a church where they sought refuge from the fire. The bishop of Vladimir managed to escape. After the Mongols, Vladimir never fully recovered, and even though the most important Rus prince (usually the Prince of Moscow, but sometimes of Tver or another principality) was styled the Grand Prince of Vladimir and was the tax-collector of the Golden Horde. From 1299 to 1325, the city was seat of the metropolitans of Kiev and All Rus, until Metropolitan Peter moved the see to Moscow. The Grand Prince of Vladimir were originally crowned in Vladimir’s Assumption Cathedral, but when Moscow superseded Vladimir as the seat of the Grand Prince, the Assumption Cathedral in the Moscow Kremlin, loosely copied by the Italian architect Aristotele Fioravanti from Vladimir’s original, became the site where the grand princes were crowned. Even after the rise of Moscow though, Muscovite grand princes built several new churches in Vladimir City, notably the Annunciation church at Snovitsy (ca.*1501), three kilometers north-west of the city, and a charming church in the Knyaginin nunnery (ca.*1505), with murals dating to 1648. Remains of the prince-saint Alexander Nevsky were kept in the ancient Nativity abbey of Vladimir until 1703, when Peter the Great had them transferred to the Monastery (now Lavra) of Aleksandr Nevsky in St.*Petersburg. The Nativity church itself (1191–1196) collapsed several years later, when they tried to make more windows in its walls, in an effort to brighten the interior. —Wiki
Morning had dawned all too soon for Colonel Patov, who was now drinking a cup of strong black coffee to jolt him back into the day from a rather sleepless night.
He read the report. What! All three had passed the ‘truth’ test. Then it had been given again and all three had passed it again!
Major Egorov entered, saying “We double-checked the computers. Only those three had access, and, you, of course, but you did not do it.”
“Why not suspect me, Egorov?”
“Because I was sent here to keep an eye on you, Colonel, and it was not you.”
“Thank you, Egorov, at least in this case anyway, for spying on me.”
“My pleasure to vindicate you, sir.”
“But they are all pure-blood Soviets. Who, then?
“It can only be one of them, sir.”
The phone rang, displaying the name ‘Nikitin’.
Patov jumped out of his chair. “What does he want? I thought I had two more days for progress.”
Patov lifted the receiver and listened, as one must do when a superior calls, just saying “Understood” before hanging up, rather than being hung up upon.
“Egorov, our S-500 antiaircraft construction site has now been revealed to the world!”
“There is such a project?”
‘Yes, to protect the Iranian nuclear plant. It’s but one-third completed though.”
“What to do?”
“Make it look like it was abandoned. Put dust on it, Whatever. Get our people out of there immediately!”
“Will do, sir.”
“And, Egarov, one more thing.”
‘Yes?”
“We now have but one more day to find the mole or Nikitin is coming here tomorrow to personally execute all three suspects.”
“Damn. We need these people.”
“It’s the old way, Egorov. The sure way.”
“I’ll try, sir.”
“No try. Do.”
“Maybe Nikitin leaked the information himself.”
“Unlikely; he’s an old hard-liner. And if he did, there’s nothing we can do about it.”
“Agreed.”
“Find that mole or I’m dead.”
“Yes, sir.”
There was no progress during day, even after Patov had personally and intensely interviewed all three suspects.
Exhausted, Patov went to sleep early, sending nothing to Moscow.
…
General Nikitin’s armored limos pulled up outside the SVR building, around 3 AM, their flags flying. Major Egarov, being on night duty, received their demands at the front door and went up at once to wake Pavlov.
“You have to get up, sir. Nikitin is here.”
“What! In the middle of the night?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Tell them we’re under lock down. No one comes in.”
“They’re waiting outside.”
“And no one goes out.”
“I had to bring the three suspects out…”
“What!”
“I could hardly disobey him, sir.”
“Well, then, what else do they want?”
“You, sir.”
“Me?”
“They insist. Immediately, and as you are.”
“Egarov, take over. You will not see me alive again.”
Pavlov was already a beaten man, an inmate waiting on death row, and so, he, dazed as he had become, collected a few personal items and went out into the street in his night clothes.
The limo door opened. He got in. A General of the Russian Army was sitting there in full uniform, looking most unhappy.
The limos sped off, no one saying a word as all the while the miles passed on by through the empty city streets. Patov knew to stay silent unless spoken to. He noted the outskirts of the city passing, and yet no one said anything, the country kilometers now eating up the limo ride with their darkness. A perfect spot for an execution, he thought.
Patov couldn’t take it any more.
“Where are you taking me, Nikitin?” he bellowed.
No answer.
Patov stayed quiet, thinking better of his outburst.
They stopped at an old farmhouse, pulled the limos inside, got out, and lit a small candle. So, this is it, figured Patov. No one spoke.
Nikitin lit up a smoke and offered one to Patov, who gladly took it and lit it to calm his nerves.
Halfway through the smoke, Nikitin leaned in as if to speak. The face somehow seemed familiar, but Patov couldn’t place it.
“Colonel Patov,” said Nikitin very slowly, “You transferred all your funds.”
No one could know this, thought Patov, but they did.
“For safekeeping.”
“To use after you’d escaped this mess?”
“No, no…”
It was no use. They had him.
Another long silence ensued.
“Remember the tunnel, Patov?”
Patov was really confused now.
“What tunnel?”
“The one under the train tracks.”
Patov strained his memory… so many incidents over the years… then he began to recall some bits and pieces of it.
“I’m not exactly sure.”
“Remember, ‘It’s lights out for me?’”
“Ahhh… YES. It’s you… You reached up and smashed the only light bulb in the tunnel, leaving your sweater hanging there in the dark to fool us… then you escaped. You are… Fredrick!”
“I am. You should have shot me on sight.”
“I couldn’t.”
“I know.”
“And you’ve come to dispose of me like you did Burkov?”
“No, that was a different case.”
“He sure is… was.”
“Burkov was a madman. You, Patov were just doing your job.”
“Then where are you taking me?”
“To Switzerland, where you can meet up with your money and your wife.”
“With my wife?”
“Yes, she’s in the rear partition of the second limo.”
“You would do this for me, one who once tried to capture you? It this some kind of a trick?”
“Well, you can’t stay in Russia now, can you? And we will let bygones be bygones. Pardon my Russian translations, but it means that all is forgiven and forgotten.”
Patova stepped out and embraced her husband.
Patov looked up and over at Fredrick, finally, asking, “All this in exchange for what I know?”
Fredrick smiled. “We already know most of what you know. You are free, Colonel Patov. Is there such a word in Russian?”
“Yes, but… at least I will bring you up to date on our activities.”
“I know, Patov… just let it sink in while we get you some traveling clothes.”
Patov returned to his chair and sank into it, no longer fully knowing how or who to trust.
Patov added, “Anna must work for you, Fredrick.”
“She does, and she is now safe within the limo.”
“And the other two?”
“They have to come along.”
“I see.”
Anna stepped out and walked over to Patov.
Patov looked up and said, “Ah, golden heart, I knew it had to be you.”
“You were not meant for this cruel line of work, Patov. I put in a good word for you.”
“Thank you,” said Patov, almost crying now.”
“My treat.”
“If I may ask, how did you get the information out? All the e-mails, phones and such are monitored every second. We even look at strange conversations for unusual word use.”
“That would be telling.”
“Really?”
“It’s beyond all that.”
“Brain waves? That’s not possible, is it?”
“A novel idea, but one whose time has not yet come.”
Fredrick looked at a secure readout on his phone, indicating that Operation ‘Fire’ was now underway.
A few moments ago, the Israeli Defense Minister had been on the phone to the American President, who replied, just before hanging up, “Thanks for the notice… and God speed.”
Six Israeli jets were now in the air, one far out in front, three in the middle, and two lagging back, all of them quickly approaching the Iranian border.
The Defense Minister and his aides gathered around the computer screens.
“We almost waited too long,” said one. The S-500 site is partly operational, although they are now covering it with dirt.”
“It can still operate through the dirt. Yes, indeed, why did we wait for a madman from Iran to come through on his public promise to destroy us?”
“Yes, especially when such a boast would only make our actions tonight all the more necessary, right, and understanable?”
“We are getting soft.”
“Maybe.”
“Iran is even isolated from its Muslim neighbors.”
“Insanity.”
“The jets have crossed the border, sir.”
The S-500 antiaircraft system came to life through the dirt, noting one blip and taking out the lead Israeli aircraft. But it was only a drone, carrying no one and nothing of interest but a missile now tracking out of the debris and down through the sky toward the S-500 site, its approach obscured, at first.
“They will never see it coming; they will glory in the kill and will not even be checking their radars for a second or two.”
They didn’t, and so a large part of the S-500 apparatus was soon destroyed, the next three jets finishing the job and continuing on, the two jets in the rear now closing through the freed sky.
“What’s with those last two jets, sir? Are they special?”
“Ah, you do not have security clearance for that.”
“Indeed, I do.”
“Yes, you do. I am joking. Suppose that our bunker buster missiles do not complete the job, the Iranian site being too deep, as it is rumored to be?”
“Then they could salvage it, and if it was far enough along in its enrichment process…”
“Yes…”
“Are you telling me what I think you’re telling me?”
“Yes.”
“The first wave is at the target, sir, and dumping the bunker-busters.”
“Get me the live satellite on my screen. Analysis?”
“Those lines are the depths reached by the bunker-busters, sir. That block still beneath is the nuclear plant as newly illuminated by a special probe that we sent in first.”
“No good, was it?”
“The busters did not reach the target, sir.”
“The Defense Minister transmitted a code to the last two jets and then bowed his head in prayer.”
All waited.
…
“They’ve dropped their tactical nukes, sir, fighting fire with fire.”
Fredrick received an update.
“Gentlemen, ladies, and Colonel Patov and wife: we’ve entered a new age. The area of the Iranian nuclear plant and its surroundings will be uninhabitable for several centuries to come.”
“God save us all,” cried Patov.
…
Major Egorov took command of the SVR. He would later find that his command became permanent, for the real Nikitin had mysteriously disappeared, and no one would ask any questions of this, it being of the old Soviet way.
Egorov now sat at Patov’s desk, ready for the tasks to come. He took a rare moment to break character and smile to himself. No improved ‘truth serum’ injections had been applied, for he’d only gone through the motions. Egorov would carry on Anna’s legacy, for he, too, was a member of the Ninja WIA Empire.
REMEMBER
It’s about time for a major revision to the calendar, one that’s reflective of modern times, for the only improvements made during the last few hundred years have been to skip leap days in years that are evenly divisible by 400, and, more recently, to add a few insignificant leap-seconds once a year or so. (“Wow, that seemed like a really long weekend!”)
The last truly major revision to the calendar occurred over a thousand years ago, when Omar Khayyàm realigned the Moslem calendar so that the seasons would arrive at the same time each year, as back then the year started in March with the spring, the logical time for a new year to start, I suppose, since nature is new in the spring. It took Europe another 700 years or so to pick up on this change. I suppose they got tired of celebrating Christmas in July-type weather or shoveling snow in the summertime.
Omar also revised his philosophic calendar to suit his mental outlook—by advocating that dead yesterday and unborn tomorrow be removed from the calendar; thus, he could truly live for TODAY. Later on, he refined this theory further by also removing dead and unborn minutes, so that he could live for the moment. My calendar revisions are more along those lines.
First of all, I am eliminating the months of January (Bran-new-airy), February (Feb-buries), and March (March!) because 1) They all contain cold and rotten weather, and 2) They totally lack holidays on which we could get time off with pay from work; it’s a heck of a long wait for a holiday between New Year’s Day and Memorial Day (we used to get Good Friday off, but now even that day is eliminated, since it’s a religious-ethnic holiday and so other religious-ethnic groups could have proposed other such holidays and thus there’d be no time left for actual work days). Note: don’t worry, Valentine’s Day is being retained and moved elsewhere in my calendar, as is New Year’s Day.
I am adding a whole new month, called Remember, which comes right after December. That way you will have some extra time to do all of the things that you meant or forgot to do during the year. Just think, there will be not as much need to say “wait until next year”. Therefore, my revised year starts in the spring, in April, which, as I’ve said, is much more appropriate since it is a time for renewal and rebirth.
By the way, it is easily proved that the year once started in spring by noting the Latin numbers from which the months got their modern names, i.e., 7-sept, 8-oct, 9-nov, 10-dec. We, of course, have now adopted these Latin numeric prefixes into general English, as well, for example, septuagenarian (age 70-80), octagon (8-sided), octave (8 musical degrees), novena (9 days of devotion), decimal (base 10), decimate (to kill one in ten), decathlon, decade, etc. I also discovered that the old names of July and August were Quintus (Latin ‘5’) and Sextus (Latin ‘6’), but Julius and Augustus Caesar changed the names to suit their own. As for May, June, and April, those were the names of the Caesars’ girlfriends. So, anyway, what all this means is that since December used to be the tenth month (dec), the year obviously once started in March. So, I am generally readopting this policy, except that, since I’ve eliminated March, my revised year must now start in April, on April’s Fools Day, in fact, which will have to share the honor with New Year’s Day—an appropriate combination considering all of the foolish things that some do on New Year’s Eve.
So, since my year as so far constructed is only ten months long, I must now distribute the excess days that made up the two missing months. I would like to make all the months thirty days long since people have problems with variations. So, I am introducing a new, unnumbered day into the week, called Funday, a day which does not have to be numbered or accounted for in any way whatsoever. Funday occurs between Sunday and Monday. On Funday you can do as you please. Funday doesn’t even have a numerical date, and so it cannot possibly count against schedules, deadlines, or bills. Weekends, as we all know, have always been too short, but now, with the introduction of Funday, weekends become three days long. I have, as have many others, already pioneered the concept that led to Funday: I get up late on Saturday and Sunday to recover energy spent during the work week, and then, by Sunday night, being so well rested, I go to sleep quite late or sometimes not at all and stay up all night reading or doing you know what. Of course, I pay for all of this by being very tired on Monday, but naturally it’s much better to be tired on company time than on your own time, and who ever expects much of Monday anyway. So, this is what led me to the idea of a Funday on which you could do whatever you want—you don’t even have to visit your relatives. Funday is totally dedicated to fun, and a new law will make it a crime for you to do anything else, although shopping and home chores are allowed if you whistle while you work or sing a happy song. Yes, people are so harried these days that we have to force them to enjoy life.
So, thanks to Funday there will be no more rush-rush or hectic feelings when the work week starts. People need no longer waste short weekends of great weather by doing silly and ridiculous things like going grocery shopping or doing laundry. Well, you might say, instead of lengthening the week why not just get people to do all their weekend chores during the week—but, of course, they can’t, since they’re so stressed out and exhausted when they get home from work that they just collapse and can’t even do the simplest thing. Yes, yes, I know that this is simply a matter of attitude and style, but, believe me, personal changes, even such common sense changes, seem to take huge amounts of effort; whereas, I can simply solve the problem much more easily with the introduction of Funday.
Ten months of thirty numbered days plus five undated Fundays each month equals only 350 days, so there are still fifteen more days that must be dispersed into the new calendar. I am solving this by adding a special summer and winter festival period of seven days each, the winter festival being no more really than a re-establishment of the old Saturnalian pagan festival held in olden times before the Christians put a damper on it. This winter festival is added between Christmas and New Year’s Day so that we can have a vacation from our vacation of visiting relatives and feasting and pigging out. The summer festival is inserted between July and August and centers around the true midsummer’s day. Naturally these festivals do not count against anyone’s vacation time.
There are just a few minor alterations left. There is still one day left to be accounted for, and I am inserting it between May and June as Valentines Day. I am removing a day from June, so that the saying “Nothing is so rare as a day in June” will actually be true. In the old calendar, a day in February was 4.2% more rare than a day of June, but, of course, February is gone now. The day removed from June will be called World Day. On this day we should try to get all the world’s peoples to coexist in perfect harmony. This day occurs between June and July. I am moving the Fourth of July to the first Monday in July so that we will have yet another extra long weekend.
Monday mornings and Friday afternoons are to be designated as home/work transition adjustment-recovery periods, during which one need not be present at work, thus reducing the work week to only four days! Yes, the computer age has arrived and it’s time that we reaped its benefits and gained more leisure time, for this was the promise of the computer age: that computers would free us—so why do we feel that they have become our masters?
Furthermore, the nebulous day called ‘Someday’ is being removed from the calendar and from everyday conversation—because what it really meant was “Noneday” (as in “Someday we’ll go out to lunch.”).
Also, just as a matter of information, note that the days of the week were named after the sun, the moon, and all of the known planets of the time, although some of the days derive their names from French or Latin: Sunday (sun), Monday (moon), Tuesday (Mardi in French, or Mars), Wednesday (Mercredi, or Mercury in French), Thursday (Jeudi in French, or Jupiter), Friday (Vendredi in French for Venus), Saturday (Saturn). However, this still leaves Pluto, Uranus, and Neptune unrepresented but I’ll probably leave those for my next revision. My new names for the days of the week are: Onesday, Twosday, Wedsday, Thirstday, Fryday, Satday, Sundae, and Funday.
Or, we could just forget all of these revisions and go back to Omar’s great idea about having a calendar with only one day on it called TODAY.
It’s about time for a major revision to the calendar, one that’s reflective of modern times, for the only improvements made during the last few hundred years have been to skip leap days in years that are evenly divisible by 400, and, more recently, to add a few insignificant leap-seconds once a year or so. (“Wow, that seemed like a really long weekend!”)
The last truly major revision to the calendar occurred over a thousand years ago, when Omar Khayyàm realigned the Moslem calendar so that the seasons would arrive at the same time each year, as back then the year started in March with the spring, the logical time for a new year to start, I suppose, since nature is new in the spring. It took Europe another 700 years or so to pick up on this change. I suppose they got tired of celebrating Christmas in July-type weather or shoveling snow in the summertime.
Omar also revised his philosophic calendar to suit his mental outlook—by advocating that dead yesterday and unborn tomorrow be removed from the calendar; thus, he could truly live for TODAY. Later on, he refined this theory further by also removing dead and unborn minutes, so that he could live for the moment. My calendar revisions are more along those lines.
First of all, I am eliminating the months of January (Bran-new-airy), February (Feb-buries), and March (March!) because 1) They all contain cold and rotten weather, and 2) They totally lack holidays on which we could get time off with pay from work; it’s a heck of a long wait for a holiday between New Year’s Day and Memorial Day (we used to get Good Friday off, but now even that day is eliminated, since it’s a religious-ethnic holiday and so other religious-ethnic groups could have proposed other such holidays and thus there’d be no time left for actual work days). Note: don’t worry, Valentine’s Day is being retained and moved elsewhere in my calendar, as is New Year’s Day.
I am adding a whole new month, called Remember, which comes right after December. That way you will have some extra time to do all of the things that you meant or forgot to do during the year. Just think, there will be not as much need to say “wait until next year”. Therefore, my revised year starts in the spring, in April, which, as I’ve said, is much more appropriate since it is a time for renewal and rebirth.
By the way, it is easily proved that the year once started in spring by noting the Latin numbers from which the months got their modern names, i.e., 7-sept, 8-oct, 9-nov, 10-dec. We, of course, have now adopted these Latin numeric prefixes into general English, as well, for example, septuagenarian (age 70-80), octagon (8-sided), octave (8 musical degrees), novena (9 days of devotion), decimal (base 10), decimate (to kill one in ten), decathlon, decade, etc. I also discovered that the old names of July and August were Quintus (Latin ‘5’) and Sextus (Latin ‘6’), but Julius and Augustus Caesar changed the names to suit their own. As for May, June, and April, those were the names of the Caesars’ girlfriends. So, anyway, what all this means is that since December used to be the tenth month (dec), the year obviously once started in March. So, I am generally readopting this policy, except that, since I’ve eliminated March, my revised year must now start in April, on April’s Fools Day, in fact, which will have to share the honor with New Year’s Day—an appropriate combination considering all of the foolish things that some do on New Year’s Eve.
So, since my year as so far constructed is only ten months long, I must now distribute the excess days that made up the two missing months. I would like to make all the months thirty days long since people have problems with variations. So, I am introducing a new, unnumbered day into the week, called Funday, a day which does not have to be numbered or accounted for in any way whatsoever. Funday occurs between Sunday and Monday. On Funday you can do as you please. Funday doesn’t even have a numerical date, and so it cannot possibly count against schedules, deadlines, or bills. Weekends, as we all know, have always been too short, but now, with the introduction of Funday, weekends become three days long. I have, as have many others, already pioneered the concept that led to Funday: I get up late on Saturday and Sunday to recover energy spent during the work week, and then, by Sunday night, being so well rested, I go to sleep quite late or sometimes not at all and stay up all night reading or doing you know what. Of course, I pay for all of this by being very tired on Monday, but naturally it’s much better to be tired on company time than on your own time, and who ever expects much of Monday anyway. So, this is what led me to the idea of a Funday on which you could do whatever you want—you don’t even have to visit your relatives. Funday is totally dedicated to fun, and a new law will make it a crime for you to do anything else, although shopping and home chores are allowed if you whistle while you work or sing a happy song. Yes, people are so harried these days that we have to force them to enjoy life.
So, thanks to Funday there will be no more rush-rush or hectic feelings when the work week starts. People need no longer waste short weekends of great weather by doing silly and ridiculous things like going grocery shopping or doing laundry. Well, you might say, instead of lengthening the week why not just get people to do all their weekend chores during the week—but, of course, they can’t, since they’re so stressed out and exhausted when they get home from work that they just collapse and can’t even do the simplest thing. Yes, yes, I know that this is simply a matter of attitude and style, but, believe me, personal changes, even such common sense changes, seem to take huge amounts of effort; whereas, I can simply solve the problem much more easily with the introduction of Funday.
Ten months of thirty numbered days plus five undated Fundays each month equals only 350 days, so there are still fifteen more days that must be dispersed into the new calendar. I am solving this by adding a special summer and winter festival period of seven days each, the winter festival being no more really than a re-establishment of the old Saturnalian pagan festival held in olden times before the Christians put a damper on it. This winter festival is added between Christmas and New Year’s Day so that we can have a vacation from our vacation of visiting relatives and feasting and pigging out. The summer festival is inserted between July and August and centers around the true midsummer’s day. Naturally these festivals do not count against anyone’s vacation time.
There are just a few minor alterations left. There is still one day left to be accounted for, and I am inserting it between May and June as Valentines Day. I am removing a day from June, so that the saying “Nothing is so rare as a day in June” will actually be true. In the old calendar, a day in February was 4.2% more rare than a day of June, but, of course, February is gone now. The day removed from June will be called World Day. On this day we should try to get all the world’s peoples to coexist in perfect harmony. This day occurs between June and July. I am moving the Fourth of July to the first Monday in July so that we will have yet another extra long weekend.
Monday mornings and Friday afternoons are to be designated as home/work transition adjustment-recovery periods, during which one need not be present at work, thus reducing the work week to only four days! Yes, the computer age has arrived and it’s time that we reaped its benefits and gained more leisure time, for this was the promise of the computer age: that computers would free us—so why do we feel that they have become our masters?
Furthermore, the nebulous day called ‘Someday’ is being removed from the calendar and from everyday conversation—because what it really meant was “Noneday” (as in “Someday we’ll go out to lunch.”).
Also, just as a matter of information, note that the days of the week were named after the sun, the moon, and all of the known planets of the time, although some of the days derive their names from French or Latin: Sunday (sun), Monday (moon), Tuesday (Mardi in French, or Mars), Wednesday (Mercredi, or Mercury in French), Thursday (Jeudi in French, or Jupiter), Friday (Vendredi in French for Venus), Saturday (Saturn). However, this still leaves Pluto, Uranus, and Neptune unrepresented but I’ll probably leave those for my next revision. My new names for the days of the week are: Onesday, Twosday, Wedsday, Thirstday, Fryday, Satday, Sundae, and Funday.
Or, we could just forget all of these revisions and go back to Omar’s great idea about having a calendar with only one day on it called TODAY.
I read the first one . Funny Funny . I know big foot by the by . Yeah funny as shit . The One in the movie . You know that old tired film footage of a black monkey Gorilla figure running threw the wood lands of Caleveris county California . The Big Trees . Cabbage patch area if my memory is right . His name was Harvey Masters and he was in a Gorilla suit . Little Jimmy and Dirty Dave were involved and we all laughed our asses off for the guy making the film was seriously duped. Sorry, Little Jimmy was like that . It was his plan . The funniest part was we always teased Harvey about how much B.O. he had and in that guys film he talked about how the smell was so bad . May you rest in Peace Harvey and Little Jimmy. I think Dirty Dave is dead now too . So if you are Dirty Dave may you reast in Peace also . Those were the days my friends
Shit I am starting to think Shit has Happened
Shit I am starting to think Shit has Happened
WHEN AN ANGEL CAME TO VISIT
Associative memory is a precious storyteller of those times which once were—that which ever yet becomes what we are. A park bench at Christmas time reminded me of this tale of once upon a young and magical time…
Living in Oak Park, I was yet within the parish of St. Bernadine Catholic Grammar School in Forest Park, Illinois, across from the Atomic Fireball Factory.
I had been incarcerated there since the early to mid 50’s. As the interminable hours wore on, I wrote the germs of some of the stories of today, to pass the time away. The clock of the wall hardly ever swept onward the time, but for when I wrote, the rest of the time it even seeming to run backwards. The school library was geared towards the lower grades, and so I always had some books in my desk from the town library. I usually sat in the back so that none (nun) would not know what I doing.
It was in the winter of ‘61 that I was in eighth grade. The school had two floors each of eight classrooms, two rooms for each of the eight grades. It was large, but the church across the way was even larger, with the rectory and the convent added on behind.
The disastrous seventh grade experiment of separating the boys from the girls was over; however, the constitution of the mixed classes now were not quite the same as they’d been before.
What had the hand of fate newly brought before me in the form of Karen Nichols? Whenever she got up and spoke, I always put down my pen. Thank God, finally someone normal, I thought.
An atomic fireball somehow rolled across the floor and I caught her eye. Her vision glimmered and twinkled, giving me an eye for an eye.
A while later, Frank Santoro, a reject sent back here once again from another school, was carrying a big stack of books across the room toward a shelf when he pretended to slip or trip—and sent the books flying in all directions. Of course there were laughs galore, and indeed he was really a funny guy, but in a few days he was gone again. So it went, but there are too many of these tales to tell.
My seat was still in the back of the room so I could study other things and also so I could sneak out the back door every now and again. Upon return, some kid would signal me back in when the nun was facing the blackboard.
In the basement of the school there was a lunchroom and an all purpose room having a stage and basketball hoops, kind of an auditorium combined with a gym. On the weekend and especially after church it became a roller rink.
I happened to be putting my skates on next to Karen and we said “hi” to each other. She had asked me to skate with her several times the week before during the Ladies Choice and such we had whirled the floor hand in hand to the music.
She now showed me that there were nails or screw heads sticking up on the inside of her skates, a constant problem with these ancient rolling shoes. I went to the counter and got her another pair that were smooth. She smiled and put them on and went out onto the floor as I finished securing the laces of my own finely selected pair from the 1800’s.
These were the prime times when cupid’s darts stuck into hearts, and sometimes they even stayed there, although many kids “went out” for but a week and then to nothing they much too soon returned.
Lady Karen chose my hand once again and we glided and rolled, ever awatch of the four pillars while our eyes met to look within, for it was too noisy to talk.
On Monday I moved my coat to a hook near hers, taking my sweet time there until she arrived. I asked for her hand and shook it, keeping it there while I put my other hand over hers, she doing the same with the one she had left. This girl was alive.
Of some things that I wrote were notes to be handed on to her as the receiving one, through and across the rows, this one recounting our rolling songs with which our feet and hearts had gone along.
She read it and turned back and looked, her desk being up and across near the front. She scotch-taped shut a note in reply so none could read it, echoing the joy of two as one in this rink of life.
Her name was next on the list for cleaning the erasers and so after she went, I was soon out the back door. If they noticed my empty seat, then maybe it was that I had to pee, but down the stairs I went and on through the bottom floor and out on to the front stoop of the three stone steps at the entrance to the school. There she was, somewhere within the clouds of chalk dust and the snowflakes, banging the erasers on the stone. The dust cleared and she emerged as an angel, like one sprung up from the snow. I chanced a hug out there in the cold air and she kept it snug, hinting, “You must be cold with no coat on.”
She then whispered, although no one was around, “I liked what you wrote today. Also what you said in class about love, for I knew it was about me.”
“What dream brings you forth to me?”
“I don’t know, but as you can see, I am now reality.”
A boy waved me back to my seat, more than enough time having been spent outside. I remember it clearly, for I had held her dearly.
A snowball crashed against the slanted window, as Frank Santoro was probably mad, but somewhat glad from being thrown out of school. The showers gave us a a cheery feeling, even later dripping off the ceiling. Human nature was a funny thing, I thought, it being so predictable if we only knew what demons haunted the soul, but otherwise such a surprise not knowing.
William Fox played his violin for the class, and it wasn’t bad, as I thought that this life was the best I ever had. Emil Hunt showed his rock collection.
The class soon went Christmas caroling around the town one night and there she was, singing next to me. We all crowded together from the cold, some closer than others. We sang God’s tunes under the moon of the Yule. Then the winter break, and many went away, she, too, and then the return to class, as it really became 1961.
Though apart, the love had grown and we dared to hug a “welcome back” within the coatroom, after all had left. She’d traded seats with someone and was now but a row away, and so the notes flew better this way. I heard the stories of Christmas past, and knew that we’d last.
Frank Santoro was back; he was really an OK guy with a lot of fun in him, but that didn’t sit well with the Catholic clergy. When the nun was out of the classroom for a while, which for some reason was often enough, I found my self sitting at her desk, telling some jokes, Frank soon arriving and sitting upon the edge of it. We carried on about school and everything, even the theory of… and it was just one of those spur of the moment things that worked. I wish I could remember the by-play of the stories and skits, but I do remember that a few days later Frank took out some curtains or something and wrapped them around himself, along with a funny hat, and pretended to be the Monsignor, sitting in a chair upfront and handing out report cards, as he was due to do, ever and always hardly even looking at them and telling everyone, even Frank, about how well they were doing, which of course had the last time brought on a lot of snickers. Well, the Monsignor walked in right then and good old Frank was never seen or heard from again.
Unlike Frank, at least I knew the limits and so I’d managed to remain on the good side of sin’s non-evil twin: fun.
In our geography book, someone found a half-inch figure of a naked woman within a picture of the Amazon Jungle and its tribes, and so soon everyone was on the same page. We did not have geography for awhile, but then it resumed again with a blacked-out section on that picture. But still, many could not help smile when we read about hills and valleys thereabouts.
There were no art classes given, nor any formal physical education (just the playground, plus outdoor baseball or indoor basketball).
Tom Jameson, an excellent student, had stayed home from school for months, with not even his mother knowing why, ending up being run over by a train a few years later.
One of our priests had just married our sixth grade nun, whom I had had at that time, they having run off together back then. The Old Monsignor went to Heaven and was not replaced on Earth.
I went out into the hall for a yet another stroll one afternoon, meeting Karen out there. Then it just happened somehow—our first kiss, right next to a statue of the Virgin Mary. Did Our Lady smile at us for just a second?
Winter still held its icy grip, but I began walking Karen home, sometimes with Jim Fitzgerald and Mary Fabrini, the only other couple of note, and so the fun was multiplied. Karen’s mother eyed me at times from the dim front window through the closed curtains. I’d already known that boys were not welcome here and so I could never go in. Parting was sorrow, but that only made the minutes more precious; but there was always roller and ice skating. From then on, we parted a few houses away from her home.
After the bell ending the lunch recess had been rung, we’d always end up next to Jim and Mary in a little nook of an indentation next to the convent and so here we would bend the rules and then hurry in as the end of the line began to disappear.
In school we learned history, math, religion, and English, but little science or biology, so these we had to remedy on our own.
Warm weather had arrived on some days, and when Jim and Mary would duck behind a tree on the way home, Karen would lift her eyebrows, and so the time for hugs and kisses was often made in the shade of a large oak tree.
Spring had now fully sprung and I’d told Karen of Maple Park, which was just across the border, in Oak Park, where we boys and a few girls sometimes played touch football after school. In the next section of the park there was a park bench out to the side of right field, secluded by the leaves and branches overhanging from the maple trees. It has probably been the same for a hundred years. What stories it could tell if it could talk. It was where I’d warmed up my pitching arm for evening baseball games. My life was much freer than hers. Here, though, we passed some longer and longer times of warming up after school, she supposedly rehearsing for a play when it was not even the day for it. Spring fever piled upon us, Mother Nature giving us her blessing.
That no one really knew to what lengths our relationship had gone in mind, body, heart and soul only made it all the more special and wonderful. Well, some kids knew, but they didn’t really KNOW. If only her mother had known that she’d crossed a busy street to get here… Well, we honor our parents, but often times we must humor them.
The baseball team was not of the school, but made of kids from around the neighborhood. There was lanky Pat Hickey at first base, using a special glove, quick and small Bobby Walsh at second, rangy Lanny Neilsen at shortstop, staunch Norm Neilsen at third, chunky Tim Anderson catching, and two of our three pitchers in the outfield, such as Jeff Anderson and me, plus two other alternates, including sometimes the crippled Billy Caraher who who would catch the ball with with his good arm and then take the glove off and then throw the ball with that same arm.
I was playing center-field one evening, we just having enough players that day, as I noted upon seeing our empty dugout when we were out in the field. Jeff was pitching a good game. There’s not always a lot to do in center field, although I loved it out there, for it needed a wide range and I was a runner who had a knack for getting to the ball and catching it, for, back when we were just in the park any old time, Pat Hickey would hit ball after ball to me and his brother, Dennis, to catch. While pitching a game was all action, center field was a meditative retreat. All this, of course, was back in the days when baseball was actually a game, as Ken Burns had noted.
I saw that a girl had come to sit on our dugout bench. Who was it that could be both so bold and wonderful? You know who. Just about then, a screaming line drive suddenly came bouncing into center field, but it was right at me. I picked it up and unleashed a throw to home on the fly; it sailed right into the backstop, for this is how pitching-outfielders throw when in love. It took a lucky bounce right back to the catcher and they caught someone in a run-down, putting him out.
“What kind of throw was that?” asked Tim the catcher afterwards.
“She throws me,” I said, pointing to Karen.
“Well, it worked out even better. The guy thought he could make it home.”
I headed toward the dugout, looking at Karen. “What are you doing out on a school night?” I wondered aloud as I got there.
“My mother had to go to my aunt’s.”
“And here you are.”
“In the flesh.”
After the game, we walked two blocks to one of the first McDonalds for our first “date”. Dust began to fall and she later crept back home in the silent dark.
Was she really here? I asked myself.
Recess was outdoors now, the school boys playing sixteen-inch softball, across the street from the church, in a big parking lot. Baseball gloves were not needed for this size ball. Sometimes freight trains would go by, making a lot of noise. There was also the building of a large expressway that would pass thirty feet below the main roads. It took a large swath out of the neighborhoods over there and was a very large project, three hundred feet wide. Some girls led by you-know-who came to watch us play and it was to be an eventual awakening for some of the other guys.
These were the wonder years, when the lilacs of love had bloomed for the first time, and so one is never the same again. The years yet come and go, but these first flowers remain ever fresh as a daisy in the hallowed corridors of the mind’s memory.
Love’s first emotion rose from the Lilac,
For it blooms when Nature is first aroused;
It is love’s youngest dream to us come back,
Where it will ne’er again remain unspoused.
Karen could not usually escape on weekends, she not only not allowed, but ever needing to care for the younger siblings, all seven of them, and so these were a long two days filled with more baseball and playing poker and all that boys do, like sleeping out in tents and lighting firecrackers.
School plodded on, but for her quickening love and friendship, all of us crusaders for Christ ever dutiful although rather restless as June began. It was just too nice out to be stuck in school. What would the summer bring? Without school, recess, the after school rendezvous, and Karen’s other infrequent escapes, where would that leave us? It occurred to me that we need not go to school on some days. Back then, the school didn’t call your house when you were out.
Oh for boyhood’s time of June,
Crowding years in one brief moon,
When all things I heard or saw,
Me, their master, waited for.
(John Greenleaf Whittier)
Everyone had been playing with yo-yo’s day in and day out for a few months, for that was the latest craze. There was a contest every few weeks in the school basement. We did “walk the dog”, “rock the cradle”, hundred of ‘loops the loops” and more.
The neighbor kid, slightly older, Jimmy Nelson, had a tree house that I had often been in. He smoked some cigarettes up there and within a few years the willow tree and the tree house would go up in flames.
Karen called me up just before her bedtime, as usual, and we made a somewhat risky plan for the next day.
After breakfast, I went out the back door, as always, but stopped in my tent and grabbed some sleeping bags and then climbed up into the tree house next door. I lazed around a while in the haze of a day that was not all that rare in June, (the honeyed moon having just risen the night before), waiting for my sweetheart to appear. I smoked some cigarettes that had been lying about, we noting the curved roof that had once been some kind of beach umbrella. It was all very much like a pipe dream. She the ever adventurous would manage to get here while there were still some school-goers on the streets, and so no one would be the wiser. Then in here we would stay all of the day.
My heart leapt as I saw the ladder jiggle and heard the footfalls rising. Halfway up, she whispered my name, which was my middle name “Patrick” in those days, for there were already two “Austin’s” in my household when I was born. The tree itself shielded her climb in case Mrs. Nelson was looking.
As you can imagine, the soft airs waved the curtains and the balm breezed and breathed over and upon us as we kissed and snuggled and told love stories through that long afternoon in June. A few days later we were right back up there.
The last week of grammar school was soon upon us and then the last day was at hand. I had been on patrol boy duty all week, before school, guiding the little ones across the last street to the church and school. I wore the white belt that also went diagonally across the chest and over the shoulder. There were no school buses for Catholic schools, and there are still none even now, so everyone had to walk to school even if it was ten degrees below zero. The school bell rang to start the day as the last batch of latecomers waited to cross. Then I could roll up the patrol belt in a certain way and secure it with a rubber band into a small tidy package.
A truck suddenly veered into another lane on the busier street of this corner and caused a lady’s car to come off the road, heading straight toward us. I spread out my hands, as if that would protect the little ones and stop the car. A telephone pole stopped the car. Fortunately she wasn’t going very fast, but there were no seat belts in those days and so she must have bumped her head, as it was bleeding, she half sliding out of the car when the door burst open. I told the kids to wait and I went over to care for her, situating her back into the seat and tilting it back so she could relax until the ambulance came. I was a bit late to school as I had to tell the police the story of what had happened.
At school, although a party had begun, the faces were somewhat sad at the prospect of the end of the eight years there. Plus, the Oak Parkers would go on to their town’s high school and the Forest Parkers to theirs, some of us making sure that the high schools were the public types instead of the Catholic ones.
I was caught up in the scene and didn’t mention the accident. Karen had been selected to give a speech and it went over so well that many tears came to my eyes. We didn’t say a whole lot during the walk home, but we didn’t have to, for we were joined at all points.
I went on vacation for a week with my family to a lake in Wisconsin and sent her a letter. We got back in time for an important baseball game the next Saturday at an away field. I pitched that day and it went well except for taking a line-drive in the shin. Jeff pitched the last two innings and sewed up the game that would advance us forward.
During the final inning a dented car drove up, the one that had encountered the telephone pole. Karen and her mother walked toward the diamond. What the Hell! I’m in trouble now, I thought.
There was but a band-aid where the blood had been and Karen’s mother gave me an unexpected hug.
“Are you the one who truly loves my daughter?” she asked with a smile.
“I am he.”
“It wasn’t the accident, per say”, she offered, “that brought me here, although it did knock some sense into me, but of my daughter’s eloquence all along persuading now me of you.”
“She’s like that in school, too.”
“She is a child beyond her times, but still a child like you.”
“We’ve grown together.”
“That you have accomplished, and I… I have just been… too Catholic.”
Karen interjected, “You were just looking out for me, mom.”
“Anyway,” her mother said, “Patrick, can you join us for dinner tonight? I need to get to know you. Karen says Shakespeare lives in your school desk, as well as many other books that you find time to read in school.”
“Love is an ever-fixéd mark.”
“I have to agree. You will always show kindness to her?”
“I can do no other.”
“I like that, Patrick. You didn’t just say “yes, maam” or some standard phrase.”
Whew, I thought. This mom is sharp.
“How’s your injury?” I inquired.
“I’ll be fine, but I have to admit that I was spying on you.”
Karen couldn’t resist, “So, God sent you crashing into a pole so you could meet Patrick?”
“He works in crazy ways,” her mother replied, purposely altering the quote.
Dinner went well, the little kids even knowing me as a patrol boy, and so after this we could even go out on real dates, at least as well as we could, walking to the movies or to the gigantic circular swimming pool in Forest Park and sharing a green river soda afterwards. And ever to the bench back we went as well.
The summer of love flew by and we entered our separate high schools, but whatever social lives we had in there were of no concern, for
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
—from a Shakespeare love sonnet
A few months later, the world crashed when Karen’s father’s company transferred him and the family to California…
…nothing much mattered for a while. I was at the edge of doom…
…but her letters soon perked me up. She had plans to return next year and live with her aunt in Oak Park. The letters stopped around Christmas and then this last one came from her mother:
Heaven has recalled our angel;
She died in her sleep;
The doctor said that her heart was too large.
She lives within you now—
As an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.
Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle’s compass come.
I had now gone well beyond the edge of doom, but, strangely enough, there was beauty there:
As sadness brooded over the morrow,
I visited the deep well of sorrow.
There enshrined, inseparate, Beauty said,
“It’s from me that sadness you borrow.”
Associative memory is a precious storyteller of those times which once were—that which ever yet becomes what we are. A park bench at Christmas time reminded me of this tale of once upon a young and magical time…
Living in Oak Park, I was yet within the parish of St. Bernadine Catholic Grammar School in Forest Park, Illinois, across from the Atomic Fireball Factory.
I had been incarcerated there since the early to mid 50’s. As the interminable hours wore on, I wrote the germs of some of the stories of today, to pass the time away. The clock of the wall hardly ever swept onward the time, but for when I wrote, the rest of the time it even seeming to run backwards. The school library was geared towards the lower grades, and so I always had some books in my desk from the town library. I usually sat in the back so that none (nun) would not know what I doing.
It was in the winter of ‘61 that I was in eighth grade. The school had two floors each of eight classrooms, two rooms for each of the eight grades. It was large, but the church across the way was even larger, with the rectory and the convent added on behind.
The disastrous seventh grade experiment of separating the boys from the girls was over; however, the constitution of the mixed classes now were not quite the same as they’d been before.
What had the hand of fate newly brought before me in the form of Karen Nichols? Whenever she got up and spoke, I always put down my pen. Thank God, finally someone normal, I thought.
An atomic fireball somehow rolled across the floor and I caught her eye. Her vision glimmered and twinkled, giving me an eye for an eye.
A while later, Frank Santoro, a reject sent back here once again from another school, was carrying a big stack of books across the room toward a shelf when he pretended to slip or trip—and sent the books flying in all directions. Of course there were laughs galore, and indeed he was really a funny guy, but in a few days he was gone again. So it went, but there are too many of these tales to tell.
My seat was still in the back of the room so I could study other things and also so I could sneak out the back door every now and again. Upon return, some kid would signal me back in when the nun was facing the blackboard.
In the basement of the school there was a lunchroom and an all purpose room having a stage and basketball hoops, kind of an auditorium combined with a gym. On the weekend and especially after church it became a roller rink.
I happened to be putting my skates on next to Karen and we said “hi” to each other. She had asked me to skate with her several times the week before during the Ladies Choice and such we had whirled the floor hand in hand to the music.
She now showed me that there were nails or screw heads sticking up on the inside of her skates, a constant problem with these ancient rolling shoes. I went to the counter and got her another pair that were smooth. She smiled and put them on and went out onto the floor as I finished securing the laces of my own finely selected pair from the 1800’s.
These were the prime times when cupid’s darts stuck into hearts, and sometimes they even stayed there, although many kids “went out” for but a week and then to nothing they much too soon returned.
Lady Karen chose my hand once again and we glided and rolled, ever awatch of the four pillars while our eyes met to look within, for it was too noisy to talk.
On Monday I moved my coat to a hook near hers, taking my sweet time there until she arrived. I asked for her hand and shook it, keeping it there while I put my other hand over hers, she doing the same with the one she had left. This girl was alive.
Of some things that I wrote were notes to be handed on to her as the receiving one, through and across the rows, this one recounting our rolling songs with which our feet and hearts had gone along.
She read it and turned back and looked, her desk being up and across near the front. She scotch-taped shut a note in reply so none could read it, echoing the joy of two as one in this rink of life.
Her name was next on the list for cleaning the erasers and so after she went, I was soon out the back door. If they noticed my empty seat, then maybe it was that I had to pee, but down the stairs I went and on through the bottom floor and out on to the front stoop of the three stone steps at the entrance to the school. There she was, somewhere within the clouds of chalk dust and the snowflakes, banging the erasers on the stone. The dust cleared and she emerged as an angel, like one sprung up from the snow. I chanced a hug out there in the cold air and she kept it snug, hinting, “You must be cold with no coat on.”
She then whispered, although no one was around, “I liked what you wrote today. Also what you said in class about love, for I knew it was about me.”
“What dream brings you forth to me?”
“I don’t know, but as you can see, I am now reality.”
A boy waved me back to my seat, more than enough time having been spent outside. I remember it clearly, for I had held her dearly.
A snowball crashed against the slanted window, as Frank Santoro was probably mad, but somewhat glad from being thrown out of school. The showers gave us a a cheery feeling, even later dripping off the ceiling. Human nature was a funny thing, I thought, it being so predictable if we only knew what demons haunted the soul, but otherwise such a surprise not knowing.
William Fox played his violin for the class, and it wasn’t bad, as I thought that this life was the best I ever had. Emil Hunt showed his rock collection.
The class soon went Christmas caroling around the town one night and there she was, singing next to me. We all crowded together from the cold, some closer than others. We sang God’s tunes under the moon of the Yule. Then the winter break, and many went away, she, too, and then the return to class, as it really became 1961.
Though apart, the love had grown and we dared to hug a “welcome back” within the coatroom, after all had left. She’d traded seats with someone and was now but a row away, and so the notes flew better this way. I heard the stories of Christmas past, and knew that we’d last.
Frank Santoro was back; he was really an OK guy with a lot of fun in him, but that didn’t sit well with the Catholic clergy. When the nun was out of the classroom for a while, which for some reason was often enough, I found my self sitting at her desk, telling some jokes, Frank soon arriving and sitting upon the edge of it. We carried on about school and everything, even the theory of… and it was just one of those spur of the moment things that worked. I wish I could remember the by-play of the stories and skits, but I do remember that a few days later Frank took out some curtains or something and wrapped them around himself, along with a funny hat, and pretended to be the Monsignor, sitting in a chair upfront and handing out report cards, as he was due to do, ever and always hardly even looking at them and telling everyone, even Frank, about how well they were doing, which of course had the last time brought on a lot of snickers. Well, the Monsignor walked in right then and good old Frank was never seen or heard from again.
Unlike Frank, at least I knew the limits and so I’d managed to remain on the good side of sin’s non-evil twin: fun.
In our geography book, someone found a half-inch figure of a naked woman within a picture of the Amazon Jungle and its tribes, and so soon everyone was on the same page. We did not have geography for awhile, but then it resumed again with a blacked-out section on that picture. But still, many could not help smile when we read about hills and valleys thereabouts.
There were no art classes given, nor any formal physical education (just the playground, plus outdoor baseball or indoor basketball).
Tom Jameson, an excellent student, had stayed home from school for months, with not even his mother knowing why, ending up being run over by a train a few years later.
One of our priests had just married our sixth grade nun, whom I had had at that time, they having run off together back then. The Old Monsignor went to Heaven and was not replaced on Earth.
I went out into the hall for a yet another stroll one afternoon, meeting Karen out there. Then it just happened somehow—our first kiss, right next to a statue of the Virgin Mary. Did Our Lady smile at us for just a second?
Winter still held its icy grip, but I began walking Karen home, sometimes with Jim Fitzgerald and Mary Fabrini, the only other couple of note, and so the fun was multiplied. Karen’s mother eyed me at times from the dim front window through the closed curtains. I’d already known that boys were not welcome here and so I could never go in. Parting was sorrow, but that only made the minutes more precious; but there was always roller and ice skating. From then on, we parted a few houses away from her home.
After the bell ending the lunch recess had been rung, we’d always end up next to Jim and Mary in a little nook of an indentation next to the convent and so here we would bend the rules and then hurry in as the end of the line began to disappear.
In school we learned history, math, religion, and English, but little science or biology, so these we had to remedy on our own.
Warm weather had arrived on some days, and when Jim and Mary would duck behind a tree on the way home, Karen would lift her eyebrows, and so the time for hugs and kisses was often made in the shade of a large oak tree.
Spring had now fully sprung and I’d told Karen of Maple Park, which was just across the border, in Oak Park, where we boys and a few girls sometimes played touch football after school. In the next section of the park there was a park bench out to the side of right field, secluded by the leaves and branches overhanging from the maple trees. It has probably been the same for a hundred years. What stories it could tell if it could talk. It was where I’d warmed up my pitching arm for evening baseball games. My life was much freer than hers. Here, though, we passed some longer and longer times of warming up after school, she supposedly rehearsing for a play when it was not even the day for it. Spring fever piled upon us, Mother Nature giving us her blessing.
That no one really knew to what lengths our relationship had gone in mind, body, heart and soul only made it all the more special and wonderful. Well, some kids knew, but they didn’t really KNOW. If only her mother had known that she’d crossed a busy street to get here… Well, we honor our parents, but often times we must humor them.
The baseball team was not of the school, but made of kids from around the neighborhood. There was lanky Pat Hickey at first base, using a special glove, quick and small Bobby Walsh at second, rangy Lanny Neilsen at shortstop, staunch Norm Neilsen at third, chunky Tim Anderson catching, and two of our three pitchers in the outfield, such as Jeff Anderson and me, plus two other alternates, including sometimes the crippled Billy Caraher who who would catch the ball with with his good arm and then take the glove off and then throw the ball with that same arm.
I was playing center-field one evening, we just having enough players that day, as I noted upon seeing our empty dugout when we were out in the field. Jeff was pitching a good game. There’s not always a lot to do in center field, although I loved it out there, for it needed a wide range and I was a runner who had a knack for getting to the ball and catching it, for, back when we were just in the park any old time, Pat Hickey would hit ball after ball to me and his brother, Dennis, to catch. While pitching a game was all action, center field was a meditative retreat. All this, of course, was back in the days when baseball was actually a game, as Ken Burns had noted.
I saw that a girl had come to sit on our dugout bench. Who was it that could be both so bold and wonderful? You know who. Just about then, a screaming line drive suddenly came bouncing into center field, but it was right at me. I picked it up and unleashed a throw to home on the fly; it sailed right into the backstop, for this is how pitching-outfielders throw when in love. It took a lucky bounce right back to the catcher and they caught someone in a run-down, putting him out.
“What kind of throw was that?” asked Tim the catcher afterwards.
“She throws me,” I said, pointing to Karen.
“Well, it worked out even better. The guy thought he could make it home.”
I headed toward the dugout, looking at Karen. “What are you doing out on a school night?” I wondered aloud as I got there.
“My mother had to go to my aunt’s.”
“And here you are.”
“In the flesh.”
After the game, we walked two blocks to one of the first McDonalds for our first “date”. Dust began to fall and she later crept back home in the silent dark.
Was she really here? I asked myself.
Recess was outdoors now, the school boys playing sixteen-inch softball, across the street from the church, in a big parking lot. Baseball gloves were not needed for this size ball. Sometimes freight trains would go by, making a lot of noise. There was also the building of a large expressway that would pass thirty feet below the main roads. It took a large swath out of the neighborhoods over there and was a very large project, three hundred feet wide. Some girls led by you-know-who came to watch us play and it was to be an eventual awakening for some of the other guys.
These were the wonder years, when the lilacs of love had bloomed for the first time, and so one is never the same again. The years yet come and go, but these first flowers remain ever fresh as a daisy in the hallowed corridors of the mind’s memory.
Love’s first emotion rose from the Lilac,
For it blooms when Nature is first aroused;
It is love’s youngest dream to us come back,
Where it will ne’er again remain unspoused.
Karen could not usually escape on weekends, she not only not allowed, but ever needing to care for the younger siblings, all seven of them, and so these were a long two days filled with more baseball and playing poker and all that boys do, like sleeping out in tents and lighting firecrackers.
School plodded on, but for her quickening love and friendship, all of us crusaders for Christ ever dutiful although rather restless as June began. It was just too nice out to be stuck in school. What would the summer bring? Without school, recess, the after school rendezvous, and Karen’s other infrequent escapes, where would that leave us? It occurred to me that we need not go to school on some days. Back then, the school didn’t call your house when you were out.
Oh for boyhood’s time of June,
Crowding years in one brief moon,
When all things I heard or saw,
Me, their master, waited for.
(John Greenleaf Whittier)
Everyone had been playing with yo-yo’s day in and day out for a few months, for that was the latest craze. There was a contest every few weeks in the school basement. We did “walk the dog”, “rock the cradle”, hundred of ‘loops the loops” and more.
The neighbor kid, slightly older, Jimmy Nelson, had a tree house that I had often been in. He smoked some cigarettes up there and within a few years the willow tree and the tree house would go up in flames.
Karen called me up just before her bedtime, as usual, and we made a somewhat risky plan for the next day.
After breakfast, I went out the back door, as always, but stopped in my tent and grabbed some sleeping bags and then climbed up into the tree house next door. I lazed around a while in the haze of a day that was not all that rare in June, (the honeyed moon having just risen the night before), waiting for my sweetheart to appear. I smoked some cigarettes that had been lying about, we noting the curved roof that had once been some kind of beach umbrella. It was all very much like a pipe dream. She the ever adventurous would manage to get here while there were still some school-goers on the streets, and so no one would be the wiser. Then in here we would stay all of the day.
My heart leapt as I saw the ladder jiggle and heard the footfalls rising. Halfway up, she whispered my name, which was my middle name “Patrick” in those days, for there were already two “Austin’s” in my household when I was born. The tree itself shielded her climb in case Mrs. Nelson was looking.
As you can imagine, the soft airs waved the curtains and the balm breezed and breathed over and upon us as we kissed and snuggled and told love stories through that long afternoon in June. A few days later we were right back up there.
The last week of grammar school was soon upon us and then the last day was at hand. I had been on patrol boy duty all week, before school, guiding the little ones across the last street to the church and school. I wore the white belt that also went diagonally across the chest and over the shoulder. There were no school buses for Catholic schools, and there are still none even now, so everyone had to walk to school even if it was ten degrees below zero. The school bell rang to start the day as the last batch of latecomers waited to cross. Then I could roll up the patrol belt in a certain way and secure it with a rubber band into a small tidy package.
A truck suddenly veered into another lane on the busier street of this corner and caused a lady’s car to come off the road, heading straight toward us. I spread out my hands, as if that would protect the little ones and stop the car. A telephone pole stopped the car. Fortunately she wasn’t going very fast, but there were no seat belts in those days and so she must have bumped her head, as it was bleeding, she half sliding out of the car when the door burst open. I told the kids to wait and I went over to care for her, situating her back into the seat and tilting it back so she could relax until the ambulance came. I was a bit late to school as I had to tell the police the story of what had happened.
At school, although a party had begun, the faces were somewhat sad at the prospect of the end of the eight years there. Plus, the Oak Parkers would go on to their town’s high school and the Forest Parkers to theirs, some of us making sure that the high schools were the public types instead of the Catholic ones.
I was caught up in the scene and didn’t mention the accident. Karen had been selected to give a speech and it went over so well that many tears came to my eyes. We didn’t say a whole lot during the walk home, but we didn’t have to, for we were joined at all points.
I went on vacation for a week with my family to a lake in Wisconsin and sent her a letter. We got back in time for an important baseball game the next Saturday at an away field. I pitched that day and it went well except for taking a line-drive in the shin. Jeff pitched the last two innings and sewed up the game that would advance us forward.
During the final inning a dented car drove up, the one that had encountered the telephone pole. Karen and her mother walked toward the diamond. What the Hell! I’m in trouble now, I thought.
There was but a band-aid where the blood had been and Karen’s mother gave me an unexpected hug.
“Are you the one who truly loves my daughter?” she asked with a smile.
“I am he.”
“It wasn’t the accident, per say”, she offered, “that brought me here, although it did knock some sense into me, but of my daughter’s eloquence all along persuading now me of you.”
“She’s like that in school, too.”
“She is a child beyond her times, but still a child like you.”
“We’ve grown together.”
“That you have accomplished, and I… I have just been… too Catholic.”
Karen interjected, “You were just looking out for me, mom.”
“Anyway,” her mother said, “Patrick, can you join us for dinner tonight? I need to get to know you. Karen says Shakespeare lives in your school desk, as well as many other books that you find time to read in school.”
“Love is an ever-fixéd mark.”
“I have to agree. You will always show kindness to her?”
“I can do no other.”
“I like that, Patrick. You didn’t just say “yes, maam” or some standard phrase.”
Whew, I thought. This mom is sharp.
“How’s your injury?” I inquired.
“I’ll be fine, but I have to admit that I was spying on you.”
Karen couldn’t resist, “So, God sent you crashing into a pole so you could meet Patrick?”
“He works in crazy ways,” her mother replied, purposely altering the quote.
Dinner went well, the little kids even knowing me as a patrol boy, and so after this we could even go out on real dates, at least as well as we could, walking to the movies or to the gigantic circular swimming pool in Forest Park and sharing a green river soda afterwards. And ever to the bench back we went as well.
The summer of love flew by and we entered our separate high schools, but whatever social lives we had in there were of no concern, for
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
—from a Shakespeare love sonnet
A few months later, the world crashed when Karen’s father’s company transferred him and the family to California…
…nothing much mattered for a while. I was at the edge of doom…
…but her letters soon perked me up. She had plans to return next year and live with her aunt in Oak Park. The letters stopped around Christmas and then this last one came from her mother:
Heaven has recalled our angel;
She died in her sleep;
The doctor said that her heart was too large.
She lives within you now—
As an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.
Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle’s compass come.
I had now gone well beyond the edge of doom, but, strangely enough, there was beauty there:
As sadness brooded over the morrow,
I visited the deep well of sorrow.
There enshrined, inseparate, Beauty said,
“It’s from me that sadness you borrow.”
— 5 —
THE LIGHT AT THE END OF THE TUNNEL
Fredrick, a master of foreign languages, flew the model of the unbroken universal vase to Oslo, Norway, then took a short vacation in Russia from working on nothing and was out and about the town and sitting in a restaurant awaiting a delicious roast-duck when he received an emergency evacuation order from Nobody’s ninjas to immediately hoof it over to the train station. Ciao, chow, he thought to himself.
On his way out, he grabbed a cheeseburger from one who wasn’t looking and calmly walked out the front door and down the street. Looking back, he saw the police, surrounding the restaurant, as well as his car. Holy King Tut’s tomb! he exclaimed. They really want to control the world with the TOE! They are probably after my drawing, too, showing the pyramidal opposition of the weak and strong forces and the transition of the electro and magnetic forces.
He patted his underarm, checking that his pistol was still there, and sauntered down the street. How did they find me? he thought. His cell phone rang and a voice said, “How find you, Mr. Fred, is by pyramid in front yard. Please proceed train station. 9:05 train north. Hurry. Click.”
Fredrick walked and jogged a ways without further incident and soon entered a tunnel that would take him under the train tracks to the station. He hesitated, at first, seeing that the tunnel was dimly lit by only a single light bulb in the center, but then moved on in, not wanting to miss the train.
His cell phone began ringing off the hook and alerted him as follows: “Four KGB red sedans arriving each end of tunnel. Make good plan fast!”
Fredrick reflected a moment, sizing up the scene. He quickly walked to the center of the tunnel, took off his sweater, draped it over his shoulder, and stood under the lone light. He could hear the KGB sedans screeching to a halt at each end, some of them going a bit too far and denting their fenders. Very poor drivers, he thought.
Eight KGB agents entered the tunnel, three approaching from either direction, the remaining two staying back as rear guards, one at each end of the tunnel.
“Hands up,” said the KGB leader in English, as they all pointed tranquilizer guns at Fredrick, front and back.
“No.”
“Must I repeat the command; raise up your hands or go to sleep!”
“No,” replied Fredrick, “I must know who asks me?”
The agents approached a bit closer. “I am famous Colonel Patov—you will follow orders or be subdued and severely beaten. Behind you is Demetri, my best and most merciless Captain, with his team. You have no where to go, Fredrick. Raise your hands, be searched, and come with us peacefully and we won’t even have to use the tranquilizer darts.”
“Okay,” answered Fredrick, “as long as you put it that way.”
The agents approached slowly from Fredrick’s front and back as he began to raise his hands. They were about twenty feet away now.
“No contest,” said Fredrick, “I’ll be passing on to the other side. It’s lights out for me!”
Fredrick raised his hands quickly and smashed the light bulb, attached his sweater to the fixture, having noted the spot beforehand, slipped off his shoes and left them there, and let out a blood curdling scream that seemed to echo from all directions at once. The KGB men thought Fredrick was charging them, but in actuality he had just slipped sideways, noiselessly, without his shoes and had squatted down, hugging the wall of the tunnel that had just been plunged into total darkness.
Darts began flying through the darkness towards Fredrick’s screech, but Patov, a seasoned KGB veteran, called out, “Stop, we’re only hitting each other—I have one down. Demetri?”
“One as well, Colonel.”
Patov added quickly, “Link hands and sweep ahead, touching the walls—he is still somewhere between us.”
Fredrick felt the edge of a coat almost touch him, but, just about then the agents reached his hanging sweater and his shoes on the floor. There was an intense struggle with Fredrick’s abandoned clothes and shoes, some agents even punching each other out in the darkness; so, during this time, Fredrick scooted along, found the napping agent and removed his coat. While moving toward the end of the tunnel, Fredrick encountered another body against the wall and thought, That’s funny, Demetri said only one was down.
Fredrick halted, noting that there was some ambient light at the end of the tunnel and that there would be no way to slip past the rear guard undetected. A whistle and a rumble indicated that the northbound train was arriving; Fredrick, wearing the borrowed KGB coat, walked calmly toward the rear guard, who tensed and pointed his weapon. Fredrick then whispered, in Russian, from several feet away, “It’s me—Demetri”, and so the guard relaxed a bit—and it was in this split second that Fredrick leapt toward him and clunked him on the head with his pistol, took the guard’s shoes, put them on, then ran up to the platform and jumped aboard the already departing train. I am really Rushin’ now, thought Fredrick.
It was Fredrick’s lucky day in that roast duck was on the dining car menu and so he ordered it. At the next station, Fredrick looked out the window and saw the five agents (minus one clunker and the two sleepers) running for the train and boarding the rear cars just as they were pulling away. Fredrick’s duck begin to take flight again as he ran to the end of the dining car and uncoupled the remainder of the train, pretty much leaving it sitting in the station. Good training.
The KGBers then notified their top man, General Burkov, of their latest defeat, he happening to be in the vicinity, aboard his own lavish private train. Burkov gave new orders to his engineer.
Fredrick jumped onto another train. He ran back through the dining car, the sleeper cars, the baggage car, and onto the engine, showing his ToeQuest membership card and advising the engineer that he should leave the train for his own safety.
About then, General Burkov’s train came off a siding at high speed and then onto Fredrick’s track, about three miles behind. Fredrick noted this, thinking that trains are not scheduled this closely. Fredrick continued onward until he saw a signal for an upcoming siding and stopped his train just beyond it, got out, and switched the main track onto the siding that led to an old abandoned mine, and just stood there to witness the action, carrying his duck. This should be good.
Burkov came roaring much too fast around a curve, spotted the track switch too late, and tried an emergency stop, but his train kept going onto the siding and off toward the deserted mine shaft.
Burkov and his agents jumped off at the last minute just before the entire train plunged into the mine shaft and was swallowed into the eighteen story depths, never to be seen again. Shafted! Burkov cursed—“No one does this to me and lives! Send forth every agent and every train!”
Fredrick hopped back on the engine, not planning to be on it much longer, for it wasn’t healthy and it wasn’t all that far to the ninja base, ten miles perhaps. He could take to the forest and walk. The roast duck was still with him and so he finally got to sample it. Ah, delicious.
There was a tunnel coming up ahead, and Fredrick thought, not this again, and stopped just before it, got everyone out and walked off by himself through the woods and toward the distant ninja base. A large bird pointed the way.
In a while, a shadow appeared and came to life beside Fredrick saying, “Good moves, Fredrick-san. I give you third degree now. I am ninth degree ninja Grand Master.”
“Hello ninth.”
“You not see me come; move like wind and go like water.”
“I heard you breaking wind and going water.”
“C’mon, that speech figure; beside, those awhile back. I wear black, come out of black between bush; appear as nothing.”
“I am an expert on nothing.”
They heard an explosion. “We take care of light at other end of tunnel, some kind of speeding red KGB engine.”
“Thanks, but where was my protection from the eight KGB agents in the first place in the first tunnel?” asked Fredrick.
“Good training. But I there in second place in tunnel to protect you,” said the Ninja, “but you not need me.”
“You were there in the tunnel?”
“Yes, I there. You touch me once.”
“Oh yeah, thanks for being there; I thought I had an arithmetic problem. Okay, but was that it, just you?”
“That even too much, just need half of me, but I no like banana split so bring whole self! Ha-ha.”
“Good one, half and half.”
They walked on, for many, many miles.
“How going, Fred?”
“I’m just putting one foot ahead of the other.”
“We getting near outer zone, Fred; maybe see some magic stuff.”
“Really?”
“Yes.”
“When cross zone, hear the sweetest saddest music ever. It go down deep, but also energize. No one can be ready for this.”
“I’m ready.”
“OK, here come.”
Tears streamed from Fredrick’s eyes. “You’re right; there was no way to be ready for that; it reminds one about the plight of humanity, energizing one to aid the cause.”
They arrived at the ninja base and went in.
“Now,” Fred, sir, “do some taste test: this Coke or Pepsi?”
“Neither; it is RC Diet Cola, from a can—nice try.”
“Ah, you have good taste. Now, what wine this be?”
“It’s a nonalcoholic sparkling grape beverage from Holland.”
“Ah, Fred, but what year.”
“This year. Now you taste this,” said Fredrick, as he pulled a piece of duck out of his pocket.
“Ah, yes, duck from Peking, south region. Very good. Now, what taste really consist of.”
“Well, although taste buds vary somewhat, there being 3 main classes, it all really comes down to the length of the vectors of the taste matrix of sweet, salt, bitter, and sour.”
“Yes, sir Fred. Fine taste. So, someone say something taste no good, then…”
“We don’t believe them since their taste buds may be different from ours.”
“Some see different color too?”
“Yes, slightly.”
“That why some look like dress in dark?”
“Yes, that could be, but you dress for the dark in the dark and go forth into the dark—so why wear anything?”
“Ah, good. Ha-ha. What best taste ever?”
“The taste of eternity that I am tasting right now.”
“Ah, Fredrick, you wise man.”
“As wise as wise guy you.”
“More ha-ha’s. Why not shoot pistol in tunnel?”
“Well, there was nowhere to aim, plus they could have identified my position from the chamber-barrel flash before I had a chance to shoot them all.”
“Good. What if they put light?”
“Then the better I know where they are to shoot them.”
“What if you get desperate or have to sneeze.”
“Then I cock the pistol and throw it where I am not, as I run away. Hopefully, it fires where it lands and draws their attention to it and away from me as I escape.”
“All this plan in one minute make?”
“Yes, I am a traffic planner and must consider all directions, even up and down, and underground through tunnels.”
“Well, you mind if we sell story to detective mystery writer DeMille, make money?”
“Fine, go ahead, but I always thought they made these things up.”
“No, truth stranger than fiction.”
“Any more tests?”
“How long is a China man.”
“Yes, that is his name.”
“No can fool you.”
“You hear of double negative, like ‘didn’t see no duck’?”
“Yes, they cancel and a duck appears, for since I didn’t see everything but a duck, then I must have seen a duck, but even this is not for sure.”
“Yes, maybe you ate duck. Now, there no such thing as double positives!”
“Yeah, right.”
“Good one. What you study lately?”
“Nothing.”
“Ah, that very hard state to maintain, so maybe not exist.”
“Really?”
“Yes, it would take a god or some force to keep nothing intact, but then not really nothing, for other stuff there. That my theory. It nothing really. Very little. A small point. A void to avoid. Not much. No big deal. Some zilch.”
“All right already—it’s not easy studying nothing, you know; but the TON thread is one of the longest threads ever.”
“True, Mr. Rick. I like do nothing. But first I relax, then sleep, then rest up, then prepare do nothing, remove all thoughts, try not move…”
“Okay, ninja, Welcome to NoQuest!”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e8RGj95Nllg&list=PLD764A89FA1671CE4&index=3
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MS3ivwV49d4&list=PLD764A89FA1671CE4&index=4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P11ZPifATWc&list=PLD764A89FA1671CE4&index=5
THE LIGHT AT THE END OF THE TUNNEL
Fredrick, a master of foreign languages, flew the model of the unbroken universal vase to Oslo, Norway, then took a short vacation in Russia from working on nothing and was out and about the town and sitting in a restaurant awaiting a delicious roast-duck when he received an emergency evacuation order from Nobody’s ninjas to immediately hoof it over to the train station. Ciao, chow, he thought to himself.
On his way out, he grabbed a cheeseburger from one who wasn’t looking and calmly walked out the front door and down the street. Looking back, he saw the police, surrounding the restaurant, as well as his car. Holy King Tut’s tomb! he exclaimed. They really want to control the world with the TOE! They are probably after my drawing, too, showing the pyramidal opposition of the weak and strong forces and the transition of the electro and magnetic forces.
He patted his underarm, checking that his pistol was still there, and sauntered down the street. How did they find me? he thought. His cell phone rang and a voice said, “How find you, Mr. Fred, is by pyramid in front yard. Please proceed train station. 9:05 train north. Hurry. Click.”
Fredrick walked and jogged a ways without further incident and soon entered a tunnel that would take him under the train tracks to the station. He hesitated, at first, seeing that the tunnel was dimly lit by only a single light bulb in the center, but then moved on in, not wanting to miss the train.
His cell phone began ringing off the hook and alerted him as follows: “Four KGB red sedans arriving each end of tunnel. Make good plan fast!”
Fredrick reflected a moment, sizing up the scene. He quickly walked to the center of the tunnel, took off his sweater, draped it over his shoulder, and stood under the lone light. He could hear the KGB sedans screeching to a halt at each end, some of them going a bit too far and denting their fenders. Very poor drivers, he thought.
Eight KGB agents entered the tunnel, three approaching from either direction, the remaining two staying back as rear guards, one at each end of the tunnel.
“Hands up,” said the KGB leader in English, as they all pointed tranquilizer guns at Fredrick, front and back.
“No.”
“Must I repeat the command; raise up your hands or go to sleep!”
“No,” replied Fredrick, “I must know who asks me?”
The agents approached a bit closer. “I am famous Colonel Patov—you will follow orders or be subdued and severely beaten. Behind you is Demetri, my best and most merciless Captain, with his team. You have no where to go, Fredrick. Raise your hands, be searched, and come with us peacefully and we won’t even have to use the tranquilizer darts.”
“Okay,” answered Fredrick, “as long as you put it that way.”
The agents approached slowly from Fredrick’s front and back as he began to raise his hands. They were about twenty feet away now.
“No contest,” said Fredrick, “I’ll be passing on to the other side. It’s lights out for me!”
Fredrick raised his hands quickly and smashed the light bulb, attached his sweater to the fixture, having noted the spot beforehand, slipped off his shoes and left them there, and let out a blood curdling scream that seemed to echo from all directions at once. The KGB men thought Fredrick was charging them, but in actuality he had just slipped sideways, noiselessly, without his shoes and had squatted down, hugging the wall of the tunnel that had just been plunged into total darkness.
Darts began flying through the darkness towards Fredrick’s screech, but Patov, a seasoned KGB veteran, called out, “Stop, we’re only hitting each other—I have one down. Demetri?”
“One as well, Colonel.”
Patov added quickly, “Link hands and sweep ahead, touching the walls—he is still somewhere between us.”
Fredrick felt the edge of a coat almost touch him, but, just about then the agents reached his hanging sweater and his shoes on the floor. There was an intense struggle with Fredrick’s abandoned clothes and shoes, some agents even punching each other out in the darkness; so, during this time, Fredrick scooted along, found the napping agent and removed his coat. While moving toward the end of the tunnel, Fredrick encountered another body against the wall and thought, That’s funny, Demetri said only one was down.
Fredrick halted, noting that there was some ambient light at the end of the tunnel and that there would be no way to slip past the rear guard undetected. A whistle and a rumble indicated that the northbound train was arriving; Fredrick, wearing the borrowed KGB coat, walked calmly toward the rear guard, who tensed and pointed his weapon. Fredrick then whispered, in Russian, from several feet away, “It’s me—Demetri”, and so the guard relaxed a bit—and it was in this split second that Fredrick leapt toward him and clunked him on the head with his pistol, took the guard’s shoes, put them on, then ran up to the platform and jumped aboard the already departing train. I am really Rushin’ now, thought Fredrick.
It was Fredrick’s lucky day in that roast duck was on the dining car menu and so he ordered it. At the next station, Fredrick looked out the window and saw the five agents (minus one clunker and the two sleepers) running for the train and boarding the rear cars just as they were pulling away. Fredrick’s duck begin to take flight again as he ran to the end of the dining car and uncoupled the remainder of the train, pretty much leaving it sitting in the station. Good training.
The KGBers then notified their top man, General Burkov, of their latest defeat, he happening to be in the vicinity, aboard his own lavish private train. Burkov gave new orders to his engineer.
Fredrick jumped onto another train. He ran back through the dining car, the sleeper cars, the baggage car, and onto the engine, showing his ToeQuest membership card and advising the engineer that he should leave the train for his own safety.
About then, General Burkov’s train came off a siding at high speed and then onto Fredrick’s track, about three miles behind. Fredrick noted this, thinking that trains are not scheduled this closely. Fredrick continued onward until he saw a signal for an upcoming siding and stopped his train just beyond it, got out, and switched the main track onto the siding that led to an old abandoned mine, and just stood there to witness the action, carrying his duck. This should be good.
Burkov came roaring much too fast around a curve, spotted the track switch too late, and tried an emergency stop, but his train kept going onto the siding and off toward the deserted mine shaft.
Burkov and his agents jumped off at the last minute just before the entire train plunged into the mine shaft and was swallowed into the eighteen story depths, never to be seen again. Shafted! Burkov cursed—“No one does this to me and lives! Send forth every agent and every train!”
Fredrick hopped back on the engine, not planning to be on it much longer, for it wasn’t healthy and it wasn’t all that far to the ninja base, ten miles perhaps. He could take to the forest and walk. The roast duck was still with him and so he finally got to sample it. Ah, delicious.
There was a tunnel coming up ahead, and Fredrick thought, not this again, and stopped just before it, got everyone out and walked off by himself through the woods and toward the distant ninja base. A large bird pointed the way.
In a while, a shadow appeared and came to life beside Fredrick saying, “Good moves, Fredrick-san. I give you third degree now. I am ninth degree ninja Grand Master.”
“Hello ninth.”
“You not see me come; move like wind and go like water.”
“I heard you breaking wind and going water.”
“C’mon, that speech figure; beside, those awhile back. I wear black, come out of black between bush; appear as nothing.”
“I am an expert on nothing.”
They heard an explosion. “We take care of light at other end of tunnel, some kind of speeding red KGB engine.”
“Thanks, but where was my protection from the eight KGB agents in the first place in the first tunnel?” asked Fredrick.
“Good training. But I there in second place in tunnel to protect you,” said the Ninja, “but you not need me.”
“You were there in the tunnel?”
“Yes, I there. You touch me once.”
“Oh yeah, thanks for being there; I thought I had an arithmetic problem. Okay, but was that it, just you?”
“That even too much, just need half of me, but I no like banana split so bring whole self! Ha-ha.”
“Good one, half and half.”
They walked on, for many, many miles.
“How going, Fred?”
“I’m just putting one foot ahead of the other.”
“We getting near outer zone, Fred; maybe see some magic stuff.”
“Really?”
“Yes.”
“When cross zone, hear the sweetest saddest music ever. It go down deep, but also energize. No one can be ready for this.”
“I’m ready.”
“OK, here come.”
Tears streamed from Fredrick’s eyes. “You’re right; there was no way to be ready for that; it reminds one about the plight of humanity, energizing one to aid the cause.”
They arrived at the ninja base and went in.
“Now,” Fred, sir, “do some taste test: this Coke or Pepsi?”
“Neither; it is RC Diet Cola, from a can—nice try.”
“Ah, you have good taste. Now, what wine this be?”
“It’s a nonalcoholic sparkling grape beverage from Holland.”
“Ah, Fred, but what year.”
“This year. Now you taste this,” said Fredrick, as he pulled a piece of duck out of his pocket.
“Ah, yes, duck from Peking, south region. Very good. Now, what taste really consist of.”
“Well, although taste buds vary somewhat, there being 3 main classes, it all really comes down to the length of the vectors of the taste matrix of sweet, salt, bitter, and sour.”
“Yes, sir Fred. Fine taste. So, someone say something taste no good, then…”
“We don’t believe them since their taste buds may be different from ours.”
“Some see different color too?”
“Yes, slightly.”
“That why some look like dress in dark?”
“Yes, that could be, but you dress for the dark in the dark and go forth into the dark—so why wear anything?”
“Ah, good. Ha-ha. What best taste ever?”
“The taste of eternity that I am tasting right now.”
“Ah, Fredrick, you wise man.”
“As wise as wise guy you.”
“More ha-ha’s. Why not shoot pistol in tunnel?”
“Well, there was nowhere to aim, plus they could have identified my position from the chamber-barrel flash before I had a chance to shoot them all.”
“Good. What if they put light?”
“Then the better I know where they are to shoot them.”
“What if you get desperate or have to sneeze.”
“Then I cock the pistol and throw it where I am not, as I run away. Hopefully, it fires where it lands and draws their attention to it and away from me as I escape.”
“All this plan in one minute make?”
“Yes, I am a traffic planner and must consider all directions, even up and down, and underground through tunnels.”
“Well, you mind if we sell story to detective mystery writer DeMille, make money?”
“Fine, go ahead, but I always thought they made these things up.”
“No, truth stranger than fiction.”
“Any more tests?”
“How long is a China man.”
“Yes, that is his name.”
“No can fool you.”
“You hear of double negative, like ‘didn’t see no duck’?”
“Yes, they cancel and a duck appears, for since I didn’t see everything but a duck, then I must have seen a duck, but even this is not for sure.”
“Yes, maybe you ate duck. Now, there no such thing as double positives!”
“Yeah, right.”
“Good one. What you study lately?”
“Nothing.”
“Ah, that very hard state to maintain, so maybe not exist.”
“Really?”
“Yes, it would take a god or some force to keep nothing intact, but then not really nothing, for other stuff there. That my theory. It nothing really. Very little. A small point. A void to avoid. Not much. No big deal. Some zilch.”
“All right already—it’s not easy studying nothing, you know; but the TON thread is one of the longest threads ever.”
“True, Mr. Rick. I like do nothing. But first I relax, then sleep, then rest up, then prepare do nothing, remove all thoughts, try not move…”
“Okay, ninja, Welcome to NoQuest!”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e8RGj95Nllg&list=PLD764A89FA1671CE4&index=3
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MS3ivwV49d4&list=PLD764A89FA1671CE4&index=4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P11ZPifATWc&list=PLD764A89FA1671CE4&index=5
— 13 —
THE DRAGON’S TAIL
Years passed. The Ninja Empire had come to operate covertly alongside some of the world’s governments, and, although the pursuit of terrorists seemed to be never ending, there were still many various and glorious triumphs.
What was it that was the very root of all evil? It was hard to pin down, as evidenced by a forum thread on that question, yet, it existed and continued to sprout anew around the globe. Was it the doom of man that s/he could err so thoroughly and so intensely?
Defenses and circumventions danced ‘round each other in a deathly tango. Just what was this inherent malevolence in so many? Emotions? Brain imbalances? Evolutionary relics? Greed? Disparity? Power? Earth could not answer; however, the angelic end of the spectrum was well peopled, too. And why was evil somewhat different on a natural or cultural level than on the personal?
Evil was ultimately pointless, for it assured its own destruction. Alexander the Great, Mussolini, Hitler, and so many others and their movements all came to untimely ends for their misdeeds.
Yet, there could be no absolute defense, for that would require eternal and infinite vigilance. Still, no extremist group had so much as crossed over the porous Mexican border to strike at U.S. industry or a shopping mall. Was it luck or did they know the consequences that the diplomats had relayed to them, off the record?
Rascal had risen to the rank of Field Commander, level 8, finding the missions a complimentary relief to the theoretical TOE analyses that had advanced greatly, lately—the secrets of the universal DNA beginning to reveal themselves, unveiling some very counterintuitive and astounding information.
Rascal was riding in a sleek black jet on a somewhat minor mission, proofreading his sequel, ‘The New Gravity’, the pilots flying at ease and granting a wide berth to the protected airspace that had just been extended for the President’s State of the Union address, the War on Terror predicted to have prominent mention.
The Coast Guard was already boarding a freighter that had been stationary a bit too long when when the ghastly glow of the arc of ascension lit the night. Then a second arc sprouted a few moments later and made for more frantic phone calls to the shore batteries, whose RADARs were already alight. Improved Patriot missiles were even already operating on automatic and had deflected or hit the first missile at its zenith, but had missed the second. The rockets had come too fast from too close. There was no time.
Rascal felt the plane performing a turnabout and went up to the cockpit to inquire.
“The mission has been aborted,” declared the copilot.
“By Field Command?”
“No, by Number 1 West himself.”
Rascal recalled the all-knowing visage of the old Grand Master, whom he hadn’t seen for many seasons now, and of his training by him back then—as detailed in the “Butterflies At the Edge of Forever” report now buried in the closed but still readable archives.
What gives? he thought, as he looked out the window, seeing a sight that he never wished to see. It was the sickening arc of descension, like gravity’s rainbow, into the center of D.C.
“Look away,” he cautioned the pilots as the chain reaction turned the placid night into a light such as inside the sun; it seemed to sear the cabin.
“Fly higher,” he commanded. “The shock wave will be less. Then head west, for the winds will blow the radiation eastward.”
Turbos lifted the aircraft ever higher and away, Rascal noting the flattening of the trees below. The craft was not responding well and was furthermore hampered by the thinning air as it struggled to gain altitude. The oxygen masks dropped after several minutes that seemed like centuries.
“It’s gaining on us, Rascal, sir. We’re not going to make it. Both engines are now out. Radio gone.”
“From the electromagnetic pulse; secure for shock,” advised Rascal.
The offending shock waves flipped the jet end over end and she whirled about for minutes while they struggled but hydraulically lowered the flaps to gain some measure of stability; however, she was now a deadweight stone gliding on into oblivion, but at least one that was plummeting from on high.
“That’s the worst of it,” said Rascal, bruised and battered, noting the pages of his book lying everywhere in the back. “Get us on a glide path out of here.”
Most of the electronics were out, but not all, and so they, after some ten minutes or so, got the left engine to restart manually, but it ran rough, for all of its checks and balances were off line.
“The engine won’t last long,” advised the pilot, as they limped on. “Not enough oil pressure.”
Some twenty more minutes passed. “God, that was some megatonage,” Rascal exclaimed.
“Radio’s back,” reported the copilot.
“What’s the Defense Condition status?”
“DEFCON is normal—at 5.”
“And the Terror Alert?”
“Still green, as well as the REDCON.”
“Something is terribly wrong,” stated Rascal. “Had the State of the Union address begun?”
“Indeed.”
“I suppose that The Vice-President, who customarily does not attend the address, was probably not far enough away. God help us all—the world will soon learn that America is defenseless.”
“Uh-oh,” answered the pilot.
“The other nations? Can you check?”
Some moments passed.
“Russia, France, Israel, India, Pakistan, and the U.K. are already at the highest alert.”
“It is… the end of all hope… Only the President or the acting President can initiate a retaliatory strike or raise the defense condition for a sub-orbital attack, although I hear that launch is mandatory for an atomic explosion, but not automatic.”
Meanwhile, on Niihau, Grand Master West had already entered the vault, having first picked up the red telephone that not only connected to the Oval Office, but to the secure cell phones of the President, Vice-President, and their aides.
There had not only been no answer, but, alarmingly, a long-in-coming indication that the phones no longer existed.
He carefully withdrew the secondary nuclear football from the vault and then from its case.
“Rascal, we have a message to overfly Silo 19, and there is call for you. We are in fact near the silo, but how…”
Rascal took the call from Number 1 West. “We’re coming up on the silo now.”
“What do you see?”
“It’s closed.”
“And Washington?” inquired the Master.
“This was no small dirty bomb—it was a big one—huge—a direct hit on the Capital Complex.”
“That’s what I needed to hear—that I did not want to hear.”
“Our engine is running very hot,” reported the copilot.
“Maybe rough landing, Rascal,” noted the Grand Master. “Advise me on Silo 20 just outside Richmond if you get that far. God speed.” The call ended abruptly.
The Master had a while ago picked up the blue phone to Number 1 East, half a world away. She had the launch codes, yet another fail-safe mechanism that had been insisted upon by the top generals who had quite opposed this whole arrangement in the first place, although they had to concede that such an event was possible and had thus given in. The blue phone was not connecting, the nonexistent secure hub of D.C. thwarting the signal’s approval. A cellphone call would not be considered authentic.
In a few minutes she and her city might not even be there, he thought.
Finally, after a 5-minute wait, the call rerouted through secure CIA lines via some obscure points on the globe. Luckily, Number 1 East was there, although likely since these were her sleeping hours. Like twin-genii, they had split day and night, as well as the world; his day was her night and vice-versa. It was his watch. Halfway around the world, she jumped out of bed and raced for the control room.
A brief conversation ensued in which neither gave any hidden meanings to convey that either were under duress. She looked up the day’s launch codes and relayed them promptly.
Still, the secondary nuclear transponder could not activate until it had ascertained for itself that the primary could not operate. This was accomplished through slow but sure under-ocean, mountain-eating ELF waves to NORAD and back, that seemed to take an eternity, due to their ultra low frequency.
Moments crawled like death worms in the desert. Would the top generals still go for it?
The Master, not known to be a nervous man, nor a smoker, picked up a cigar from his desk and lit it. He’d kept there as a constant reminder of the former and dwindling Conspiracy menace—and drew in several long puffs.
A seismograph clattered away, indicating a 9.99 earthquake in the U.S. capital, which was really the nuclear explosion.
Much time had passed, during which he had called Rascal to double verify the bad news.
He thought of Einstein’s warning to President Roosevelt about the power of atomic reactions and that Germany could develop the bomb. The President had taken the warning to heart, although Einstein himself, the man who had discovered E=MCC, had been declared a security risk and was never even notified of the Manhattan project, although he did do some work on isotopes, not really knowing why.
The Master knew the drill: 12 suspect cities in the middle-east and the Orient would soon be no more, among them Damascus, Beirut, Islamabad (now run by terrorists—and, yes, they had the bomb), Baghdad (now devoid of U.N. troops and long overrun by Shiite extremists), and more—not to mention the radioactive wasteland that would soon remain in the mountainous region between Afghanistan and Pakistan. Satellite data would be used to track the freighter’s origin and so that loophole would be closed.
It was not a black and white decision—the good would fall along with most of the bad.
Furthermore, the US State Governors would have to constitute the new emergency executive, legislative, and judicial branches of the American government, their Lieutenant Governors taking over the states. Life would go on; no one would launch against the alerted U.S., although Israel would probably seize the opportunity to destroy Iran—but, it would go no further.
A report came in stating that Pakistan had gone on nuclear alert even before Washington was hit.
The transponder finally showed ready and the GrandMaster did what he had to do, sending the tickle that would awaken the sleeping dragon. Did it bear the pearl of wisdom or the cinders of a once promising world? He then cut the end of the cigar and put it back on his desk as the U.S. went to DEFCON 1.
Rascal’s crippled, wobbling plane overflew Silo number 20. The jet’s lone working engine caught fire and had to be shut down; the silo was opening.
Rascal ordered his team off the doomed jet, he to jump last, as leaders did. They parachuted out the door as Rascal took this last moment to radio his last report, that of noting the retaliatory nuclear launch from the silo and that Richmond was already evacuating. The pilots would eject soon after he left the sleek Ninja jet, which had now become the silent and black Angel of Death.
Rascal next gathered up the strewn about proof pages of his book and stuffed them into his shirt, then leapt out the door into a slight free fall, a fall more heart wrenching than any roller coaster, in order to clear the jet and its draft, and then pulled the rip cord.
Many Homo Sapiens would die and die this day, all over the globe, from this prearranged plan that had been unconditionally engaged when the U.S. Capitol Complex and much of D.C. had been vaporized by an attack by unknown terrorists. This was evolution of a different order, not an eye for an eye, but 12 eyes for an eye, for the world’s evils had reached unprecedented levels by the year 2012.
Rascal floated down, steering toward a treeless area, a meadow perhaps, seconds away from landing. A few of his book pages floated free of his shirt, but he held tight to the rest, his tome almost literally becoming a Total Field Theory.
Rascal landed; no one was about. He walked on in the dark, noting the old moon holding the new one in its arms.
…
Fifty thousand years ago, Elder Sapiens, well nigh almost 30 years old, sat outside the shelter as twilight ended, noting that the moon was pale and sickly, dim and feeble, much as he felt himself. ‘Twas not the best night for the Hunter Sapiens to be out… but the ever-present worries bred by these ancient times had won over his weariness, halting, if only for a time, his vitality from slipping away any further.
The crescent was brightening, as best it could, and he half-slept a while; then a dragging noise in the bush brought him to life. They were back, hauling a carcass. If there was danger about, he would’ve waved them off, but there was none, so he waved them on. No one had eaten much but leaves and berries for five days now, except for Infant Sapiens, who feasted on Mother’s milk.
Elder pointed to the dying moon and then to himself, but the Younger Sapiens motioned that he was fine.
Many tens of millennia ago, their communication had begun, faint and ethereal, only within themselves—symbols forming and connecting. This eventually led to gestures, preserved even to this day, as when people talk, along with their hands, even while on the phone! Grunts and simple references followed, then the basics of language.
The moon set, and the Homo Sapiens gathered round, friend and family, the night enveloping them, as evolution continued to sift the best from the rest, as ever it had done through death, our ancestors waning and waxing in strength.
About 50,000 years later, around 1100 A.D., Omar Khayyam, a rebel among the Islamics of his day, would write about the moon. About 750 years later, Edward FitzGerald translated it into English verse; however, it never appeared in his published Rubáiyát, but had remained in his notebook:
Be of Good Cheer -- the sullen Month will die,
And a young Moon requite us by and bye:
Look how the Old one meagre, bent, and wan
With Age and Fast, is fainting from the Sky!
THE DRAGON’S TAIL
Years passed. The Ninja Empire had come to operate covertly alongside some of the world’s governments, and, although the pursuit of terrorists seemed to be never ending, there were still many various and glorious triumphs.
What was it that was the very root of all evil? It was hard to pin down, as evidenced by a forum thread on that question, yet, it existed and continued to sprout anew around the globe. Was it the doom of man that s/he could err so thoroughly and so intensely?
Defenses and circumventions danced ‘round each other in a deathly tango. Just what was this inherent malevolence in so many? Emotions? Brain imbalances? Evolutionary relics? Greed? Disparity? Power? Earth could not answer; however, the angelic end of the spectrum was well peopled, too. And why was evil somewhat different on a natural or cultural level than on the personal?
Evil was ultimately pointless, for it assured its own destruction. Alexander the Great, Mussolini, Hitler, and so many others and their movements all came to untimely ends for their misdeeds.
Yet, there could be no absolute defense, for that would require eternal and infinite vigilance. Still, no extremist group had so much as crossed over the porous Mexican border to strike at U.S. industry or a shopping mall. Was it luck or did they know the consequences that the diplomats had relayed to them, off the record?
Rascal had risen to the rank of Field Commander, level 8, finding the missions a complimentary relief to the theoretical TOE analyses that had advanced greatly, lately—the secrets of the universal DNA beginning to reveal themselves, unveiling some very counterintuitive and astounding information.
Rascal was riding in a sleek black jet on a somewhat minor mission, proofreading his sequel, ‘The New Gravity’, the pilots flying at ease and granting a wide berth to the protected airspace that had just been extended for the President’s State of the Union address, the War on Terror predicted to have prominent mention.
The Coast Guard was already boarding a freighter that had been stationary a bit too long when when the ghastly glow of the arc of ascension lit the night. Then a second arc sprouted a few moments later and made for more frantic phone calls to the shore batteries, whose RADARs were already alight. Improved Patriot missiles were even already operating on automatic and had deflected or hit the first missile at its zenith, but had missed the second. The rockets had come too fast from too close. There was no time.
Rascal felt the plane performing a turnabout and went up to the cockpit to inquire.
“The mission has been aborted,” declared the copilot.
“By Field Command?”
“No, by Number 1 West himself.”
Rascal recalled the all-knowing visage of the old Grand Master, whom he hadn’t seen for many seasons now, and of his training by him back then—as detailed in the “Butterflies At the Edge of Forever” report now buried in the closed but still readable archives.
What gives? he thought, as he looked out the window, seeing a sight that he never wished to see. It was the sickening arc of descension, like gravity’s rainbow, into the center of D.C.
“Look away,” he cautioned the pilots as the chain reaction turned the placid night into a light such as inside the sun; it seemed to sear the cabin.
“Fly higher,” he commanded. “The shock wave will be less. Then head west, for the winds will blow the radiation eastward.”
Turbos lifted the aircraft ever higher and away, Rascal noting the flattening of the trees below. The craft was not responding well and was furthermore hampered by the thinning air as it struggled to gain altitude. The oxygen masks dropped after several minutes that seemed like centuries.
“It’s gaining on us, Rascal, sir. We’re not going to make it. Both engines are now out. Radio gone.”
“From the electromagnetic pulse; secure for shock,” advised Rascal.
The offending shock waves flipped the jet end over end and she whirled about for minutes while they struggled but hydraulically lowered the flaps to gain some measure of stability; however, she was now a deadweight stone gliding on into oblivion, but at least one that was plummeting from on high.
“That’s the worst of it,” said Rascal, bruised and battered, noting the pages of his book lying everywhere in the back. “Get us on a glide path out of here.”
Most of the electronics were out, but not all, and so they, after some ten minutes or so, got the left engine to restart manually, but it ran rough, for all of its checks and balances were off line.
“The engine won’t last long,” advised the pilot, as they limped on. “Not enough oil pressure.”
Some twenty more minutes passed. “God, that was some megatonage,” Rascal exclaimed.
“Radio’s back,” reported the copilot.
“What’s the Defense Condition status?”
“DEFCON is normal—at 5.”
“And the Terror Alert?”
“Still green, as well as the REDCON.”
“Something is terribly wrong,” stated Rascal. “Had the State of the Union address begun?”
“Indeed.”
“I suppose that The Vice-President, who customarily does not attend the address, was probably not far enough away. God help us all—the world will soon learn that America is defenseless.”
“Uh-oh,” answered the pilot.
“The other nations? Can you check?”
Some moments passed.
“Russia, France, Israel, India, Pakistan, and the U.K. are already at the highest alert.”
“It is… the end of all hope… Only the President or the acting President can initiate a retaliatory strike or raise the defense condition for a sub-orbital attack, although I hear that launch is mandatory for an atomic explosion, but not automatic.”
Meanwhile, on Niihau, Grand Master West had already entered the vault, having first picked up the red telephone that not only connected to the Oval Office, but to the secure cell phones of the President, Vice-President, and their aides.
There had not only been no answer, but, alarmingly, a long-in-coming indication that the phones no longer existed.
He carefully withdrew the secondary nuclear football from the vault and then from its case.
“Rascal, we have a message to overfly Silo 19, and there is call for you. We are in fact near the silo, but how…”
Rascal took the call from Number 1 West. “We’re coming up on the silo now.”
“What do you see?”
“It’s closed.”
“And Washington?” inquired the Master.
“This was no small dirty bomb—it was a big one—huge—a direct hit on the Capital Complex.”
“That’s what I needed to hear—that I did not want to hear.”
“Our engine is running very hot,” reported the copilot.
“Maybe rough landing, Rascal,” noted the Grand Master. “Advise me on Silo 20 just outside Richmond if you get that far. God speed.” The call ended abruptly.
The Master had a while ago picked up the blue phone to Number 1 East, half a world away. She had the launch codes, yet another fail-safe mechanism that had been insisted upon by the top generals who had quite opposed this whole arrangement in the first place, although they had to concede that such an event was possible and had thus given in. The blue phone was not connecting, the nonexistent secure hub of D.C. thwarting the signal’s approval. A cellphone call would not be considered authentic.
In a few minutes she and her city might not even be there, he thought.
Finally, after a 5-minute wait, the call rerouted through secure CIA lines via some obscure points on the globe. Luckily, Number 1 East was there, although likely since these were her sleeping hours. Like twin-genii, they had split day and night, as well as the world; his day was her night and vice-versa. It was his watch. Halfway around the world, she jumped out of bed and raced for the control room.
A brief conversation ensued in which neither gave any hidden meanings to convey that either were under duress. She looked up the day’s launch codes and relayed them promptly.
Still, the secondary nuclear transponder could not activate until it had ascertained for itself that the primary could not operate. This was accomplished through slow but sure under-ocean, mountain-eating ELF waves to NORAD and back, that seemed to take an eternity, due to their ultra low frequency.
Moments crawled like death worms in the desert. Would the top generals still go for it?
The Master, not known to be a nervous man, nor a smoker, picked up a cigar from his desk and lit it. He’d kept there as a constant reminder of the former and dwindling Conspiracy menace—and drew in several long puffs.
A seismograph clattered away, indicating a 9.99 earthquake in the U.S. capital, which was really the nuclear explosion.
Much time had passed, during which he had called Rascal to double verify the bad news.
He thought of Einstein’s warning to President Roosevelt about the power of atomic reactions and that Germany could develop the bomb. The President had taken the warning to heart, although Einstein himself, the man who had discovered E=MCC, had been declared a security risk and was never even notified of the Manhattan project, although he did do some work on isotopes, not really knowing why.
The Master knew the drill: 12 suspect cities in the middle-east and the Orient would soon be no more, among them Damascus, Beirut, Islamabad (now run by terrorists—and, yes, they had the bomb), Baghdad (now devoid of U.N. troops and long overrun by Shiite extremists), and more—not to mention the radioactive wasteland that would soon remain in the mountainous region between Afghanistan and Pakistan. Satellite data would be used to track the freighter’s origin and so that loophole would be closed.
It was not a black and white decision—the good would fall along with most of the bad.
Furthermore, the US State Governors would have to constitute the new emergency executive, legislative, and judicial branches of the American government, their Lieutenant Governors taking over the states. Life would go on; no one would launch against the alerted U.S., although Israel would probably seize the opportunity to destroy Iran—but, it would go no further.
A report came in stating that Pakistan had gone on nuclear alert even before Washington was hit.
The transponder finally showed ready and the GrandMaster did what he had to do, sending the tickle that would awaken the sleeping dragon. Did it bear the pearl of wisdom or the cinders of a once promising world? He then cut the end of the cigar and put it back on his desk as the U.S. went to DEFCON 1.
Rascal’s crippled, wobbling plane overflew Silo number 20. The jet’s lone working engine caught fire and had to be shut down; the silo was opening.
Rascal ordered his team off the doomed jet, he to jump last, as leaders did. They parachuted out the door as Rascal took this last moment to radio his last report, that of noting the retaliatory nuclear launch from the silo and that Richmond was already evacuating. The pilots would eject soon after he left the sleek Ninja jet, which had now become the silent and black Angel of Death.
Rascal next gathered up the strewn about proof pages of his book and stuffed them into his shirt, then leapt out the door into a slight free fall, a fall more heart wrenching than any roller coaster, in order to clear the jet and its draft, and then pulled the rip cord.
Many Homo Sapiens would die and die this day, all over the globe, from this prearranged plan that had been unconditionally engaged when the U.S. Capitol Complex and much of D.C. had been vaporized by an attack by unknown terrorists. This was evolution of a different order, not an eye for an eye, but 12 eyes for an eye, for the world’s evils had reached unprecedented levels by the year 2012.
Rascal floated down, steering toward a treeless area, a meadow perhaps, seconds away from landing. A few of his book pages floated free of his shirt, but he held tight to the rest, his tome almost literally becoming a Total Field Theory.
Rascal landed; no one was about. He walked on in the dark, noting the old moon holding the new one in its arms.
…
Fifty thousand years ago, Elder Sapiens, well nigh almost 30 years old, sat outside the shelter as twilight ended, noting that the moon was pale and sickly, dim and feeble, much as he felt himself. ‘Twas not the best night for the Hunter Sapiens to be out… but the ever-present worries bred by these ancient times had won over his weariness, halting, if only for a time, his vitality from slipping away any further.
The crescent was brightening, as best it could, and he half-slept a while; then a dragging noise in the bush brought him to life. They were back, hauling a carcass. If there was danger about, he would’ve waved them off, but there was none, so he waved them on. No one had eaten much but leaves and berries for five days now, except for Infant Sapiens, who feasted on Mother’s milk.
Elder pointed to the dying moon and then to himself, but the Younger Sapiens motioned that he was fine.
Many tens of millennia ago, their communication had begun, faint and ethereal, only within themselves—symbols forming and connecting. This eventually led to gestures, preserved even to this day, as when people talk, along with their hands, even while on the phone! Grunts and simple references followed, then the basics of language.
The moon set, and the Homo Sapiens gathered round, friend and family, the night enveloping them, as evolution continued to sift the best from the rest, as ever it had done through death, our ancestors waning and waxing in strength.
About 50,000 years later, around 1100 A.D., Omar Khayyam, a rebel among the Islamics of his day, would write about the moon. About 750 years later, Edward FitzGerald translated it into English verse; however, it never appeared in his published Rubáiyát, but had remained in his notebook:
Be of Good Cheer -- the sullen Month will die,
And a young Moon requite us by and bye:
Look how the Old one meagre, bent, and wan
With Age and Fast, is fainting from the Sky!
— 14 —
NEMESIS
Meanwhile, a few days previous, Fredrick had taken some overdue leave from the secret TOE Center to travel and broaden his mind, if not his stomach, finding himself among the prodigious Inca ruins with the likes of Indiana Jones, perusing ancient glyphs and drinking-in the scenery.
Back at his hotel, while napping and dreaming in his comfy pool side lounge chair, Fredrick chanced to pick up upon several whirlpooling premonitions that had eddied back into a small vortex of the future passed remembered in a vision.
One such concerned a critical and crucial clue concerning his insight of the Theory of Separation of Fundamentals (vs. Unification, the natural inclination, but one that was standing still) that led him onward to thoughts about some relevance of his old and nearly forgotten papers still back at his abandoned apartment-condo complex.
Another, more of a nightmare, showed mushroom clouds.
The third, somehow related to the first, was of some general danger lurking about his vacated residence.
Fredrick was torn, but he needed those documents back… for the TOE Center to refine the Theory of Everything in time to prevent the flooding of the Earth, for now both of the ice caps were one-third melted and gone.
On the spur of the moment, Fredrick flew to Northern California, carrying only his emergency bag. Much of southern California had been ablaze for months now, and recently, a cyclone had killed 150,000 people in Myanmar, and earthquakes many more in China, as well as a record number of tornados that had swept across the central United States.
He waded through the haze of a city that still bustled, even in its wee hours, entering his old complex without much ado, having noted no one about at the rear, and headed for his storage locker near the laundry room, for this is where he kept his vault of information, not trusting it to his apartment or to the internet. It was all there. He sorted out the important papers and was off, a faint whiff of gas quickening his pace away from the danger zone.
Fredrick soon lost himself for concealment in a mini crowd of drunks waltzing down the street, catching a dim vision of a vaguely familiar face quite a ways behind, one that he couldn’t quite place. Perhaps the street wasn’t the place to be, he wondered, as he headed for the Muddy Waters Cafe. All were startled to hear an explosion about two blocks behind, Fredrick noting that it had centered on his apartment.
Something was certainly not right about this night, but how, who?—for he’d used a TOE-approved alias on the flight and had done some plastic surgery on his real credit card, cutting it in half, so that he couldn’t possibly use it.
Everyone outside stood and stared while Fredrick entered the cafe and ordered a warm cup of chai to sooth his nerves. What the heck was going on? He placed his papers in a trash can for protection just as the chai arrived. He and the documents should be safe here for a time until the people outside began moving about again.
After drinking of the elixir for a while, he held his head in his hands, not quite knowing what to make of this, for the CIA and the FBI were now on his team’s side and the dwindled Conspiracy had been lying so very low as to perhaps be nonexistent. Plus, there had been his stealth.
What happened next had not been seen in the dream.
As Fredrick looked up, there was none other than that unplaced face approaching, that of KGB General Burkov appearing at his table and pulling up a chair. The General bore a look of astonishment and that was probably all that would give Fredrick a few more seconds of life.
Ah, to be taken defenseless and unaware like this, even by some fluke, after all his training, Fredrick thought, but other, deeper wheels had already been turning from that same ninja training.
“Was the train ride enjoyable, General?” Fredrick asked in Russian—while unobtrusively searching for the wooden table flap levers underneath, the General’s right arm tendons betraying his own reaching under the table, for his trouser pocket perhaps.
“Nyet,” came the reply, “for my precious golden train is now at the bottom of a mine shaft.”
“It would have been a fitting memorial for you, General,” Fredrick goaded, as he lowered the table flap, the General’s poison dart winging its revenge into it and sticking there.
Fredrick quickly pushed the table into the General, sliding it and him, pinning him to a wall, but the General was a sturdy man and pushed back hard, so Fredrick tilted his end upwards and retrieved the dart, sticking it to the KGB man.
By now, everyone had run out, and so Fredrick headed for the kitchen, pulling the trash bag out of its can along the way. He put on a chef’s hat and whites and went out the back, picking out his old papers and even taking the time to dump the trash into the dumpster, then went back into the kitchen to grab some tasty pastry.
An astute investigator might link Fredrick’s apartment fire to the killing of a foreign spy ten minutes later, nearby, but all that any satellite video would show would be a cook emptying the trash and going back to work, then perhaps that same cook or another going home, where he could be interviewed later, for Fredrick was now back out the rear, getting into someone’s car, rolling it in neutral down a slight decline, toward a dark area, then exiting out the other side into a bush. Maybe the Police/CIA satellite wasn’t even around, but this was good practice, and, furthermore, there might be other Russians around.
Although someone with influence might have half a chance of freeing him, Fredrick saw no need to enter captivity, friendly or otherwise, wherein anything could happen, and slithered, then crawled, and then eventually walked into the night, through a treed park then through another alley, catching a bus to the airport, and not a taxi, for those drivers could often remember their passengers. He would make a report when he got where he was going, or along the way, and it would trickle down to the locals to exonerate him.
He found a flight to nowhere—Anchorage, Alaska, where he boarded a stopover refueling flight from New York and going to Tokyo via Guam, where he would get off, the best he could do on such short notice.
Fredrick relaxed and began to sort it all out: Could there have been some kind of signal attached to his locker? No, for it was unlabeled and it was not that area that had blown up first—they’d thought him to be in his apartment. What was Burkov doing near the cafe? Probably just oversight for his mission of retribution, for he had been astonished to see Fredrick alive. Did they still want TOE information? No, for only the living can tell tales, and anything else of interest left in the building would not have survived the inferno, one expanded by a the gas leak which was probably just a cover. But how did they react so quickly to his arrival back home after his being gone so long? Every city has street cameras now, but they are crude, having to focus on an entire scene, and, even so, his taxi had dropped him at the rear.
Fredrick closed his eyes and meditated for a bit.
I’ve got it, he thought, snapping up. Burkov, obviously a greatly unbalanced person, seething over their old encounter, had camped or lived in the area with a small team, perhaps, waiting for the day that there prey would show, but they couldn’t just hang around the complex day and night for months at a time, so, there must have been a special real-time facial-recognition camera or two at the front and back entrances of the unit, although a device nearly unheard of. What lengths does a man go to for revenge! But who has that kind of surveillance technology? Only the Conspiracy. Yes. When their centers had been overrun by the Russians from a tip by the ninjas, Burkov had madly appropriated some of the cameras unto himself. Then a signal to Burkov, and a few minutes to confirm, or even an automatic process if he was too sound asleep, then BOOM! Fredrick dozed, finally at peace.
A few hours later, the pilot announced that Guam was closed to air traffic and they they were diverting to Hawaii. What! thought Fredrick, although that was his ultimate destination. Guam can’t close, for most of these great circle flights need it for refueling. But, it’s also a U.S. military base.
Twenty minutes later, Fredrick noted an arc in the night sky that led back down to the ocean. It could only be a submarine launching a nuclear missile, for he’d already dreamt of its effects the day before.
Note: China had been a few minutes from launch, but thought better of it when the U.S. finally went to DEFCON 1, but not Russia, something the future would not soon forget.
Ground-based radar in Australia tracked a launch to the north. “Don’t let it be coming here”, the tracker gasped. It wasn’t.
When Islamabad went up in a chain reaction, along with 11 other suspected large cities harboring terrorists, Pakistan had launched on India, the only country they could reach—but also their old enemy for disputing their vision of the afterlife; however, India was ready, and intercepted all, then countered, and soon Pakistan was no more, as well as the mountainous region between it and Afghanistan, it being destroyed now twice over, since the U.S. had hit it as well.
Meanwhile. Israel destroyed the beginnings of yet another Syrian nuclear site, as well as all of those in Iran.
Silence followed, followed by a relative peace—the Mayan calendar had ended, but not the world—Homo Sapiens would continue, perhaps colonizing space some day before he died off on Earth.
As Fredrick deplaned at Honolulu International on the reef runway, crowded with jets without gates, an Egyptian girl who had become very dear to him waved him toward a black helicopter. They were soon off to the bunkers of Niihau.
A week or two later a mini-nuclear winter arrived and began to restore some of the lost ice shelves. That was indeed close to a prophesy that Nobody, rest his soul, had run into while lost in waves of time displacement on the CMBR trip. Perhaps some future things have already happened, but only in some general form or direction.
Back at the TOE center, they plugged in Fredrick’s updated formulas—the simulation would take about a month, so Fredrick and his sweetheart took off to roam the island of paradise, albeit 3 degrees cooler in its average temperature, building some pyramids in the sand along the way.
Fredrick and his friend sat on the beach at the Eastern shore of Oahu, where the road ended and turned to dirt before going off into the ocean due to the rock protrusions.
A familiar form beyond them sat in the sand and stared out to sea into the twilight and so they ventured near.
“Good evening, young Master Fredrick,” said the grand old man, without turning around.
“Hail to you, Grandmaster West,” what brings you here?
“Well, I am here because of you and you because of me.”
“How so?”
“Well, here is a paper on which I’ve written what I was going to say next. Tell me then, what it says before you open it.”
Fredrick knew. “It will say, as you would’ve have said, ‘Fredrick, as you know I’ve been busy lately with the atomic crisis, but that’s settled now and so I’ve taken some time off myself, but I haven’t forgotten you. I’ve read your complete and very detailed report, and would to it the fact that you went alone to spare any harm to others and also, most significantly, because you knew yourself to be invincible in this mission, for you had seen yourself alive in the premonition of the future that had you testing your new formulas at the TOE center.’”
“Amazing,” replied the Grand One, “look to the paper now.”
“It is nearly word for word,” said Fredrick, much amazed himself.
“Will the tests have a positive result—did you see that?”
“Yes, indeed they will.”
“There is much more between Heaven and Earth than meets the eye.”
NEMESIS
Meanwhile, a few days previous, Fredrick had taken some overdue leave from the secret TOE Center to travel and broaden his mind, if not his stomach, finding himself among the prodigious Inca ruins with the likes of Indiana Jones, perusing ancient glyphs and drinking-in the scenery.
Back at his hotel, while napping and dreaming in his comfy pool side lounge chair, Fredrick chanced to pick up upon several whirlpooling premonitions that had eddied back into a small vortex of the future passed remembered in a vision.
One such concerned a critical and crucial clue concerning his insight of the Theory of Separation of Fundamentals (vs. Unification, the natural inclination, but one that was standing still) that led him onward to thoughts about some relevance of his old and nearly forgotten papers still back at his abandoned apartment-condo complex.
Another, more of a nightmare, showed mushroom clouds.
The third, somehow related to the first, was of some general danger lurking about his vacated residence.
Fredrick was torn, but he needed those documents back… for the TOE Center to refine the Theory of Everything in time to prevent the flooding of the Earth, for now both of the ice caps were one-third melted and gone.
On the spur of the moment, Fredrick flew to Northern California, carrying only his emergency bag. Much of southern California had been ablaze for months now, and recently, a cyclone had killed 150,000 people in Myanmar, and earthquakes many more in China, as well as a record number of tornados that had swept across the central United States.
He waded through the haze of a city that still bustled, even in its wee hours, entering his old complex without much ado, having noted no one about at the rear, and headed for his storage locker near the laundry room, for this is where he kept his vault of information, not trusting it to his apartment or to the internet. It was all there. He sorted out the important papers and was off, a faint whiff of gas quickening his pace away from the danger zone.
Fredrick soon lost himself for concealment in a mini crowd of drunks waltzing down the street, catching a dim vision of a vaguely familiar face quite a ways behind, one that he couldn’t quite place. Perhaps the street wasn’t the place to be, he wondered, as he headed for the Muddy Waters Cafe. All were startled to hear an explosion about two blocks behind, Fredrick noting that it had centered on his apartment.
Something was certainly not right about this night, but how, who?—for he’d used a TOE-approved alias on the flight and had done some plastic surgery on his real credit card, cutting it in half, so that he couldn’t possibly use it.
Everyone outside stood and stared while Fredrick entered the cafe and ordered a warm cup of chai to sooth his nerves. What the heck was going on? He placed his papers in a trash can for protection just as the chai arrived. He and the documents should be safe here for a time until the people outside began moving about again.
After drinking of the elixir for a while, he held his head in his hands, not quite knowing what to make of this, for the CIA and the FBI were now on his team’s side and the dwindled Conspiracy had been lying so very low as to perhaps be nonexistent. Plus, there had been his stealth.
What happened next had not been seen in the dream.
As Fredrick looked up, there was none other than that unplaced face approaching, that of KGB General Burkov appearing at his table and pulling up a chair. The General bore a look of astonishment and that was probably all that would give Fredrick a few more seconds of life.
Ah, to be taken defenseless and unaware like this, even by some fluke, after all his training, Fredrick thought, but other, deeper wheels had already been turning from that same ninja training.
“Was the train ride enjoyable, General?” Fredrick asked in Russian—while unobtrusively searching for the wooden table flap levers underneath, the General’s right arm tendons betraying his own reaching under the table, for his trouser pocket perhaps.
“Nyet,” came the reply, “for my precious golden train is now at the bottom of a mine shaft.”
“It would have been a fitting memorial for you, General,” Fredrick goaded, as he lowered the table flap, the General’s poison dart winging its revenge into it and sticking there.
Fredrick quickly pushed the table into the General, sliding it and him, pinning him to a wall, but the General was a sturdy man and pushed back hard, so Fredrick tilted his end upwards and retrieved the dart, sticking it to the KGB man.
By now, everyone had run out, and so Fredrick headed for the kitchen, pulling the trash bag out of its can along the way. He put on a chef’s hat and whites and went out the back, picking out his old papers and even taking the time to dump the trash into the dumpster, then went back into the kitchen to grab some tasty pastry.
An astute investigator might link Fredrick’s apartment fire to the killing of a foreign spy ten minutes later, nearby, but all that any satellite video would show would be a cook emptying the trash and going back to work, then perhaps that same cook or another going home, where he could be interviewed later, for Fredrick was now back out the rear, getting into someone’s car, rolling it in neutral down a slight decline, toward a dark area, then exiting out the other side into a bush. Maybe the Police/CIA satellite wasn’t even around, but this was good practice, and, furthermore, there might be other Russians around.
Although someone with influence might have half a chance of freeing him, Fredrick saw no need to enter captivity, friendly or otherwise, wherein anything could happen, and slithered, then crawled, and then eventually walked into the night, through a treed park then through another alley, catching a bus to the airport, and not a taxi, for those drivers could often remember their passengers. He would make a report when he got where he was going, or along the way, and it would trickle down to the locals to exonerate him.
He found a flight to nowhere—Anchorage, Alaska, where he boarded a stopover refueling flight from New York and going to Tokyo via Guam, where he would get off, the best he could do on such short notice.
Fredrick relaxed and began to sort it all out: Could there have been some kind of signal attached to his locker? No, for it was unlabeled and it was not that area that had blown up first—they’d thought him to be in his apartment. What was Burkov doing near the cafe? Probably just oversight for his mission of retribution, for he had been astonished to see Fredrick alive. Did they still want TOE information? No, for only the living can tell tales, and anything else of interest left in the building would not have survived the inferno, one expanded by a the gas leak which was probably just a cover. But how did they react so quickly to his arrival back home after his being gone so long? Every city has street cameras now, but they are crude, having to focus on an entire scene, and, even so, his taxi had dropped him at the rear.
Fredrick closed his eyes and meditated for a bit.
I’ve got it, he thought, snapping up. Burkov, obviously a greatly unbalanced person, seething over their old encounter, had camped or lived in the area with a small team, perhaps, waiting for the day that there prey would show, but they couldn’t just hang around the complex day and night for months at a time, so, there must have been a special real-time facial-recognition camera or two at the front and back entrances of the unit, although a device nearly unheard of. What lengths does a man go to for revenge! But who has that kind of surveillance technology? Only the Conspiracy. Yes. When their centers had been overrun by the Russians from a tip by the ninjas, Burkov had madly appropriated some of the cameras unto himself. Then a signal to Burkov, and a few minutes to confirm, or even an automatic process if he was too sound asleep, then BOOM! Fredrick dozed, finally at peace.
A few hours later, the pilot announced that Guam was closed to air traffic and they they were diverting to Hawaii. What! thought Fredrick, although that was his ultimate destination. Guam can’t close, for most of these great circle flights need it for refueling. But, it’s also a U.S. military base.
Twenty minutes later, Fredrick noted an arc in the night sky that led back down to the ocean. It could only be a submarine launching a nuclear missile, for he’d already dreamt of its effects the day before.
Note: China had been a few minutes from launch, but thought better of it when the U.S. finally went to DEFCON 1, but not Russia, something the future would not soon forget.
Ground-based radar in Australia tracked a launch to the north. “Don’t let it be coming here”, the tracker gasped. It wasn’t.
When Islamabad went up in a chain reaction, along with 11 other suspected large cities harboring terrorists, Pakistan had launched on India, the only country they could reach—but also their old enemy for disputing their vision of the afterlife; however, India was ready, and intercepted all, then countered, and soon Pakistan was no more, as well as the mountainous region between it and Afghanistan, it being destroyed now twice over, since the U.S. had hit it as well.
Meanwhile. Israel destroyed the beginnings of yet another Syrian nuclear site, as well as all of those in Iran.
Silence followed, followed by a relative peace—the Mayan calendar had ended, but not the world—Homo Sapiens would continue, perhaps colonizing space some day before he died off on Earth.
As Fredrick deplaned at Honolulu International on the reef runway, crowded with jets without gates, an Egyptian girl who had become very dear to him waved him toward a black helicopter. They were soon off to the bunkers of Niihau.
A week or two later a mini-nuclear winter arrived and began to restore some of the lost ice shelves. That was indeed close to a prophesy that Nobody, rest his soul, had run into while lost in waves of time displacement on the CMBR trip. Perhaps some future things have already happened, but only in some general form or direction.
Back at the TOE center, they plugged in Fredrick’s updated formulas—the simulation would take about a month, so Fredrick and his sweetheart took off to roam the island of paradise, albeit 3 degrees cooler in its average temperature, building some pyramids in the sand along the way.
Fredrick and his friend sat on the beach at the Eastern shore of Oahu, where the road ended and turned to dirt before going off into the ocean due to the rock protrusions.
A familiar form beyond them sat in the sand and stared out to sea into the twilight and so they ventured near.
“Good evening, young Master Fredrick,” said the grand old man, without turning around.
“Hail to you, Grandmaster West,” what brings you here?
“Well, I am here because of you and you because of me.”
“How so?”
“Well, here is a paper on which I’ve written what I was going to say next. Tell me then, what it says before you open it.”
Fredrick knew. “It will say, as you would’ve have said, ‘Fredrick, as you know I’ve been busy lately with the atomic crisis, but that’s settled now and so I’ve taken some time off myself, but I haven’t forgotten you. I’ve read your complete and very detailed report, and would to it the fact that you went alone to spare any harm to others and also, most significantly, because you knew yourself to be invincible in this mission, for you had seen yourself alive in the premonition of the future that had you testing your new formulas at the TOE center.’”
“Amazing,” replied the Grand One, “look to the paper now.”
“It is nearly word for word,” said Fredrick, much amazed himself.
“Will the tests have a positive result—did you see that?”
“Yes, indeed they will.”
“There is much more between Heaven and Earth than meets the eye.”
IT WAS SO COLD
During a particularly harsh winter, it was so cold that my shadow froze to the ground such that I couldn’t even move. I almost died. I tried to call for help, but my words came out in ice-block letters. Luckily, a passerby saw this and lit up a match to read the words—but the flame froze, and so no one could hear the words I had said until they thawed out in the spring. I left my shadow there and retreated to my cabin and drank a hot coffee that had frozen so fast that it was still warm to the touch. That night I built a fire but I had to sleep with my head in the fireplace to keep warm. I knew it was morning when I saw light at the top of the chimney.
Times were so tough that winter that we had to make soup out of the pictures in the seed catalog, for we dared not even go outside. I tried to catch a mouse by putting a picture of some cheese in a mousetrap, but all I caught was a picture of a mouse! On some days we had to go up on the roof to chop off the smoke clouds that had frozen around the chimney.
The day was so windy that the fence posts blew out and all the potholes blew up onto the roof, causing leaks when it started snowing. The wind blew so hard that the sun went down three hours late. This really warmed things up, and soon the snow caught on fire but then it put itself out when it melted.
I ventured out that day to do some ice fishing, but the warmth had thawed the ice a lot and I soon fell through it and would have drowned had I not had the presence of mind to go back to shore and bring some logs out to float on—and so I escaped from the ice hole. This was the very same lake I’d tried to swim across last summer. After getting halfway across I decided that I wasn’t going to make it, so I swam back. Anyway, I caught a big fish. It was so large that even its picture weighed twelve pounds!
So, I did survive that winter, or I wouldn’t be writing about it, but it wasn’t easy, but that only goes to show: Never give up. Not giving up was a lesson that I’d learned from a couple of frogs: One day two frogs fell into a pail of cow’s milk. After struggling for a while one of the frogs soon gave up and drowned, but the other frog, our hero, kept on flailing away for hours, never giving up. The next morning, I found the frog very much alive, sitting happily atop a pail of butter.
During a particularly harsh winter, it was so cold that my shadow froze to the ground such that I couldn’t even move. I almost died. I tried to call for help, but my words came out in ice-block letters. Luckily, a passerby saw this and lit up a match to read the words—but the flame froze, and so no one could hear the words I had said until they thawed out in the spring. I left my shadow there and retreated to my cabin and drank a hot coffee that had frozen so fast that it was still warm to the touch. That night I built a fire but I had to sleep with my head in the fireplace to keep warm. I knew it was morning when I saw light at the top of the chimney.
Times were so tough that winter that we had to make soup out of the pictures in the seed catalog, for we dared not even go outside. I tried to catch a mouse by putting a picture of some cheese in a mousetrap, but all I caught was a picture of a mouse! On some days we had to go up on the roof to chop off the smoke clouds that had frozen around the chimney.
The day was so windy that the fence posts blew out and all the potholes blew up onto the roof, causing leaks when it started snowing. The wind blew so hard that the sun went down three hours late. This really warmed things up, and soon the snow caught on fire but then it put itself out when it melted.
I ventured out that day to do some ice fishing, but the warmth had thawed the ice a lot and I soon fell through it and would have drowned had I not had the presence of mind to go back to shore and bring some logs out to float on—and so I escaped from the ice hole. This was the very same lake I’d tried to swim across last summer. After getting halfway across I decided that I wasn’t going to make it, so I swam back. Anyway, I caught a big fish. It was so large that even its picture weighed twelve pounds!
So, I did survive that winter, or I wouldn’t be writing about it, but it wasn’t easy, but that only goes to show: Never give up. Not giving up was a lesson that I’d learned from a couple of frogs: One day two frogs fell into a pail of cow’s milk. After struggling for a while one of the frogs soon gave up and drowned, but the other frog, our hero, kept on flailing away for hours, never giving up. The next morning, I found the frog very much alive, sitting happily atop a pail of butter.
THE STAINLESS STEEL RAT ESCAPES
FROM THE COMPUTRONS AND GOES OUT TO LUNCH
The Computrons were everywhere—they were tabulating, computing, calculating, scheduling, producing, gaining visibility, and ever working as a team. It was rumored that they were devoid of feeling, although they did have a few circuits for that; however, those signals, weak as they were, were often crowded out by the sheer intensity of their work effort, for the Computrons were single-minded, focused, goal oriented, dutiful, diligent, market driven, and oh so busy, busy, busy!
It would be hard to get past them, I thought, as I looked longingly out the window of my office. Outside I could see freedom in the hills beyond the river, where there was a place that I could have a peaceful lunch, a place whose hidden approach was forever shrouded in mist—a secret spot hidden from all Computron scans, a haven that awaited me. But, how would I get away from work?
There were also the Robotrons and the Automatons to worry about. They were even more intractable than the Computrons since, being earlier models, they were much more inflexible. However, I thought, more philosophically, there has to be a work niche for everyone if a company is going to prosper. Ever needed were the soldier types, organizers, workers, go-fers, administrivians, bosses, whip-crackers, clock-watchers, foil-makers, harried secretaries, nuts, hectic people running around and sweating every little thing, and contented Smoos. Yes, I know, some of those jobs are horrible, but, remember, if it were not for these niche-fillers WE would have to do those jobs!
Some niches were filled and unfilled by a sort of natural selection process, for example, by managers who were not of the right mold, ones who were quickly weeded out of power and replaced by those who would live, eat, and drink the Corporation. Yes, you guessed it: management was soon all of one mind. This was my challenge, dear reader, the mass Corporate mind. It was strong, unyielding, and solid, and certainly one could not face it head on. Still, I would try to do the impossible—which was 1) to go to lunch, and 2) to do it without talking about work or hearing about it while I ate.
All this I kept in mind as I, the Stainless Steel Rat, planned my escape, for nothing could keep me inside on such a day of nice weather. Lunch, especially going out for it, was a long forgotten art that was last practiced by our forefathers, and now nearly impossible to pull off; for lunch had, sadly, become an unofficial extension of the workday. We had to beat the Japatrons! Everything had to be doable and viable—for there was no longer any such thing as a “non concurrence” or a “non commit” (translation: “no”).
However, there were no walls that could hold me—no building secure enough to contain the Stainless Steel Rat, for I lived and thrived in the cracks and small interstices where authority overlapped—in the gray areas of the corporate structure! I would vanish into the rootless world of the abstract, where computers reigned supreme in their silicon and stainless steel world, hence my name. In my world, justice was obtained from the heart, not from the book. Now then, how would I get out to lunch when I was expected to either work through it or to eat with people who would talk about work and nothing else?
My plan unfolded. I scheduled an official meeting in a conference room at 12 noon, a normal enough time for a meeting, but, I invited only myself and some fictitious people who, of course, would not show up. This fake meeting would guarantee that a meeting conflict would occur with those Computrons who often actually did schedule noon meetings (or even worse, 5 PM meetings). Meanwhile, I activated my Turing Machine, which would automatically answer my electronic mail by looking for certain keywords and names, thereby giving replies that would appease the sender, buying me even more time. Next I carefully unplugged my phone so as not to draw undue attention to the phone’s unanswered ringing during the next half-hour from the fools who would try to call during lunchtime, for it was now already getting near 11:30.
Then I changed into my Corporation camouflage clothes: a white shirt and tie, with sleeves partway rolled up; for, this would help me blend more easily into the crowd, making me quite boring and unspectacular, and therefore practically invisible. As a final touch I put fifteen pens and pencils into my shirt pocket and carried some foils and paperwork in my hand, as well as a briefcase containing the delicious lunch that I had prepared at home.
This was it. Do or die. I left my appointment calendar prominently displayed, so that anyone who was really trying hard to find me would stumble over the calendar and presume it to be the truth. Then I quietly looked both ways, for it was still a little bit early for lunch, and quickly left my office, even walking 300 feet out of my way just to avoid the office of a Super Computron who loved to delegate work on sight of the nearest person. For concealment, I temporarily joined a group of marching Automatons, walking close behind them so that no one could observe me in operation as an individual. Once in the clear, I eased off down a side hallway.
Oh, no, Red Alert! My previous manager was coming straight at me, though he was still a ways off down the aisle. He would surely bend my ear until it was swollen and red with pain, and make me late for lunch. Thinking fast, I quickly ducked into the place where no man had gone before: the ladies room. I counted to twenty to allow him time to pass and then exited, not even stopping to wash my hands.
Yes, I could have had lunch in the Corporation cafeteria, but, as I’ve said, that was much too dangerous, for work was being talked about in there, and also the food was poor and expensive. I just had to get out in order to save my mind from being narrowed down too much. I headed towards the freight elevator which would lead me to the unguarded exit of the loading dock.
The walk toward the elevator was the most dangerous part of my plan, for it was a one-way aisle with no side exits. Oh, no! I ran straight into an Automaton! My only hope was to ask it to join me for lunch, hoping to catch it off-guard—so it would think that I was joking. So, I asked it to lunch. I guess I reached its built-in humor mechanism, for it coughed out a mechanical laugh and said, “There’s not enough hours in the day for the celebration of life that you describe through social relationships, human interaction, dreams, art, nature, books, romance, joy, happiness, smiles, adventure, and certainly not lunch! Work, work, work! I must work on my foils for a one o’clock meeting. I cannot go out to lunch, ha, ha; my life is out of control because I’ve bit off more than I can chew—” I quickly slipped away while it was still mindlessly lecturing me from the automated tape of standard prerecorded answers.
So, lunch was still on, and I carefully left the building, taking no more chances, staying well out of the line of sight of any big shot’s office window, both for practice and to keep myself alert. Also, just in case anyone was watching, and for alibi reasons, I headed over to the actual building of my fake meeting, where, by the way, no one knew me. I entered the building and immediately exited it by a side door. This ruse was necessary because the badge reader would record my exact time of entry, in case there was an investigation later, but not the time of my departure.
Outside again, I hugged the sides of the buildings until I got well through no man’s land and past other obstacles and could gain cover from trees. All this was well away from the security gates, of course, for there was no getting through them at this time of day since they were laser equipped and therefore deadly to any moving object. I headed for the river portion of the Corporation “moat”, for it was the most lightly defended. I took the route most likely to succeed, the one through the Corporation graveyard, wherein every Computron epitaph read exactly the same: It lived; It was busy; It died.
I hoped that I could remember the path down to the water, a trail made by the Indians long ago. I found the secret entrance into the river bluffs, carefully passed the No-Trespassing signs, and snuck in through a small gap in the electronic fence. Of course, no one was allowed to use these wonderful trails since they might fall off of a cliff and then sue the Corporation.
A glorious view soon unfolded before me, and the world was once again bright, and beautiful. My spirit lifted upon seeing the sparkles on the water, the mountains, and the waterfalls across the river. My boat was waiting just where I’d left it. Naturally, I was careful not to touch the water, for it was poisoned with toxic pollution.
This was really it! I crossed the river—in the boat that I’d so carefully constructed from driftwood and fallen trees. I landed on the opposite shore, a still pristine county that both time and progress had somehow forgotten. I walked into a wild vineyard and picked a shady spot, among many, where nature was still new and fresh. There I savored my lunch without distraction, even read an old forbidden book, then began a wonderful nap on the grass. Looking across the river, I saw no sign of the Corporation, except for its two water towers. The Stainless Steel Rat had made it—I had gone out to lunch; I was across the river and into the woods.
FROM THE COMPUTRONS AND GOES OUT TO LUNCH
The Computrons were everywhere—they were tabulating, computing, calculating, scheduling, producing, gaining visibility, and ever working as a team. It was rumored that they were devoid of feeling, although they did have a few circuits for that; however, those signals, weak as they were, were often crowded out by the sheer intensity of their work effort, for the Computrons were single-minded, focused, goal oriented, dutiful, diligent, market driven, and oh so busy, busy, busy!
It would be hard to get past them, I thought, as I looked longingly out the window of my office. Outside I could see freedom in the hills beyond the river, where there was a place that I could have a peaceful lunch, a place whose hidden approach was forever shrouded in mist—a secret spot hidden from all Computron scans, a haven that awaited me. But, how would I get away from work?
There were also the Robotrons and the Automatons to worry about. They were even more intractable than the Computrons since, being earlier models, they were much more inflexible. However, I thought, more philosophically, there has to be a work niche for everyone if a company is going to prosper. Ever needed were the soldier types, organizers, workers, go-fers, administrivians, bosses, whip-crackers, clock-watchers, foil-makers, harried secretaries, nuts, hectic people running around and sweating every little thing, and contented Smoos. Yes, I know, some of those jobs are horrible, but, remember, if it were not for these niche-fillers WE would have to do those jobs!
Some niches were filled and unfilled by a sort of natural selection process, for example, by managers who were not of the right mold, ones who were quickly weeded out of power and replaced by those who would live, eat, and drink the Corporation. Yes, you guessed it: management was soon all of one mind. This was my challenge, dear reader, the mass Corporate mind. It was strong, unyielding, and solid, and certainly one could not face it head on. Still, I would try to do the impossible—which was 1) to go to lunch, and 2) to do it without talking about work or hearing about it while I ate.
All this I kept in mind as I, the Stainless Steel Rat, planned my escape, for nothing could keep me inside on such a day of nice weather. Lunch, especially going out for it, was a long forgotten art that was last practiced by our forefathers, and now nearly impossible to pull off; for lunch had, sadly, become an unofficial extension of the workday. We had to beat the Japatrons! Everything had to be doable and viable—for there was no longer any such thing as a “non concurrence” or a “non commit” (translation: “no”).
However, there were no walls that could hold me—no building secure enough to contain the Stainless Steel Rat, for I lived and thrived in the cracks and small interstices where authority overlapped—in the gray areas of the corporate structure! I would vanish into the rootless world of the abstract, where computers reigned supreme in their silicon and stainless steel world, hence my name. In my world, justice was obtained from the heart, not from the book. Now then, how would I get out to lunch when I was expected to either work through it or to eat with people who would talk about work and nothing else?
My plan unfolded. I scheduled an official meeting in a conference room at 12 noon, a normal enough time for a meeting, but, I invited only myself and some fictitious people who, of course, would not show up. This fake meeting would guarantee that a meeting conflict would occur with those Computrons who often actually did schedule noon meetings (or even worse, 5 PM meetings). Meanwhile, I activated my Turing Machine, which would automatically answer my electronic mail by looking for certain keywords and names, thereby giving replies that would appease the sender, buying me even more time. Next I carefully unplugged my phone so as not to draw undue attention to the phone’s unanswered ringing during the next half-hour from the fools who would try to call during lunchtime, for it was now already getting near 11:30.
Then I changed into my Corporation camouflage clothes: a white shirt and tie, with sleeves partway rolled up; for, this would help me blend more easily into the crowd, making me quite boring and unspectacular, and therefore practically invisible. As a final touch I put fifteen pens and pencils into my shirt pocket and carried some foils and paperwork in my hand, as well as a briefcase containing the delicious lunch that I had prepared at home.
This was it. Do or die. I left my appointment calendar prominently displayed, so that anyone who was really trying hard to find me would stumble over the calendar and presume it to be the truth. Then I quietly looked both ways, for it was still a little bit early for lunch, and quickly left my office, even walking 300 feet out of my way just to avoid the office of a Super Computron who loved to delegate work on sight of the nearest person. For concealment, I temporarily joined a group of marching Automatons, walking close behind them so that no one could observe me in operation as an individual. Once in the clear, I eased off down a side hallway.
Oh, no, Red Alert! My previous manager was coming straight at me, though he was still a ways off down the aisle. He would surely bend my ear until it was swollen and red with pain, and make me late for lunch. Thinking fast, I quickly ducked into the place where no man had gone before: the ladies room. I counted to twenty to allow him time to pass and then exited, not even stopping to wash my hands.
Yes, I could have had lunch in the Corporation cafeteria, but, as I’ve said, that was much too dangerous, for work was being talked about in there, and also the food was poor and expensive. I just had to get out in order to save my mind from being narrowed down too much. I headed towards the freight elevator which would lead me to the unguarded exit of the loading dock.
The walk toward the elevator was the most dangerous part of my plan, for it was a one-way aisle with no side exits. Oh, no! I ran straight into an Automaton! My only hope was to ask it to join me for lunch, hoping to catch it off-guard—so it would think that I was joking. So, I asked it to lunch. I guess I reached its built-in humor mechanism, for it coughed out a mechanical laugh and said, “There’s not enough hours in the day for the celebration of life that you describe through social relationships, human interaction, dreams, art, nature, books, romance, joy, happiness, smiles, adventure, and certainly not lunch! Work, work, work! I must work on my foils for a one o’clock meeting. I cannot go out to lunch, ha, ha; my life is out of control because I’ve bit off more than I can chew—” I quickly slipped away while it was still mindlessly lecturing me from the automated tape of standard prerecorded answers.
So, lunch was still on, and I carefully left the building, taking no more chances, staying well out of the line of sight of any big shot’s office window, both for practice and to keep myself alert. Also, just in case anyone was watching, and for alibi reasons, I headed over to the actual building of my fake meeting, where, by the way, no one knew me. I entered the building and immediately exited it by a side door. This ruse was necessary because the badge reader would record my exact time of entry, in case there was an investigation later, but not the time of my departure.
Outside again, I hugged the sides of the buildings until I got well through no man’s land and past other obstacles and could gain cover from trees. All this was well away from the security gates, of course, for there was no getting through them at this time of day since they were laser equipped and therefore deadly to any moving object. I headed for the river portion of the Corporation “moat”, for it was the most lightly defended. I took the route most likely to succeed, the one through the Corporation graveyard, wherein every Computron epitaph read exactly the same: It lived; It was busy; It died.
I hoped that I could remember the path down to the water, a trail made by the Indians long ago. I found the secret entrance into the river bluffs, carefully passed the No-Trespassing signs, and snuck in through a small gap in the electronic fence. Of course, no one was allowed to use these wonderful trails since they might fall off of a cliff and then sue the Corporation.
A glorious view soon unfolded before me, and the world was once again bright, and beautiful. My spirit lifted upon seeing the sparkles on the water, the mountains, and the waterfalls across the river. My boat was waiting just where I’d left it. Naturally, I was careful not to touch the water, for it was poisoned with toxic pollution.
This was really it! I crossed the river—in the boat that I’d so carefully constructed from driftwood and fallen trees. I landed on the opposite shore, a still pristine county that both time and progress had somehow forgotten. I walked into a wild vineyard and picked a shady spot, among many, where nature was still new and fresh. There I savored my lunch without distraction, even read an old forbidden book, then began a wonderful nap on the grass. Looking across the river, I saw no sign of the Corporation, except for its two water towers. The Stainless Steel Rat had made it—I had gone out to lunch; I was across the river and into the woods.
Fraggle Rocker
Staff member
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Many things in life are like chess, such as war and tennis.
HOPEWELL JUNCTION, NY
TACONIC TENNIS
MID-DECEMBER, 2010
I met Zbignew, again, from Poland, and tall, a semi-recent addition to the club pros, at the tennis xmas party, as well as the new and charming Jolantha, a princess of sorts.
The tennis warriors and gladiators assembled, as ever, twice weekly, for doubles. In singles, I wouldn’t be winning more than two games in a set over Zbig when I returned, for he could hit a soda can placed anywhere on the court at will, but this was doubles and he was my partner, as he often is, and of course I would otherwise in singles make sure that there were no soda cans lying anywhere around, except for out of bounds.
This is not about tennis, though, for, as I later sat out for a break to let another person in, who was Jolantha, I drifted off into the haze of another battle 40 years ago…
INDOCHINA
1971
We were on the wrong side of the river, by purpose, in Cambodia, which was fine, for we barely existed, with no records kept. We were in the wrong place, too, one of our rare mishaps, as it turned out, and actually one very early on, of a cascade of unfortunate events that was not totally unplanned for. Always have an out, for there will be those times of woe.
We, the intelligence officers, had been inserted along with the DIA [special] ‘troops’, another nameless non-designation, and they with us, for we each supported the other.
The action had been going fairly well, as planned, the many opposing rampagers led not so much by reason but by the beast that was ever part and parcel of man.
The fire-engagement was over, for now, in the main, as a retreat had been called by the Captain of the section upon detection of a larger than expected approaching ground force, this fallback being somewhat hindered by some opposition stragglers whose spirits had been bolstered by the sight of an entire Klemmer Rouge division boldly crossing a long and open field, which could become good luck, or not, for either side.
The tail end of the section retreaters was further slowed by the carrying and stretchering of our dead and wounded.
Actually, the surprise incursion had gone well, but for the fact that we two remaining were now pinned to the ground just inside the front edge of the tree-line, as all hell was breaking loose, shattering the forest trees and their branches. The special troops had just begun their slowed retreat, and we could leave no one behind but ourselves, my Major friend and I.
The lead Rouge were advancing, haphazardly, with some old and assorted mini-artillery, with an entire battalion or division some ways behind. We would not last where we were, but we had to stay behind for yet another reason, for we were the information and intelligence gatherers when in the field and on the ground, as well as back at our base in Hawaii.
All we had was a machine gun, but a large one, hidden a bit further back in the woods, recently dug out of the ground, where we had left it on a prior occasion of recon. Always think many moves ahead. Yet, it was not quite the right time to retrieve it and use it, which is of knowing when to move, not just where, on the chessboard, for we’d have to be somewhat exposed to use it, plus it wouldn’t be that useful against the machines firing into our area, and it would draw attention to our troops’ retreat path, for the KR didn’t exactly know where we were, or if any of us still were. Do not show yourself until you have to. We had to survive at least ten more long minutes.
The fire was beginning to converge on us, whether by luck or a good sense of sweep, from either side, but not yet straight on, where a medium size boulder sat, just up ahead in the grassy field, as why we had chosen the spot. Do or die.
We dashed out and crept up to it, it already having an end split just off of it. We needed more time, at least many or several minutes. We dug out the ground behind the really big rock a foot or so deep, exposing the part of the boulder yet underground, and laid in the depression. Another minute or so and the above ground portions of the rock would be gone, and soon they were, shattering and flying away.
The enemy would see no one behind the rock which was no longer there, but just might figure it out soon. I raised a small bending scope and noted the yet noiseless jets approaching on the horizon, behind the battalion, as well as a vanguard of Klemmers approaching at 600 yards. We just needed 60 seconds now, or even half, as it turned out.
The music began to play upon the drama…
At 30 seconds, the enemy first heard the sounds of the jets, crying to all the rest to retreat, yet some of the vanguard still ran toward our woods, perhaps preferring that over an open field. Not good, neither for us nor for the special troops that were still retreating through the forest, who could still become targets at the river shore clearing, while boarding.
At 0 seconds, the air-strike landed on the main battalion, a fine diversion for us IAs, and so we rose from our would-be graves and ran back into the woods, rolling out the machine gun, blasting most of the on-comers away for quite a while. The chess moves had come to pass, although still ongoing into new territory.
The machine gun finally overheated and jammed. We made no pause, which is more of the training, and so we were up and off into the jungle like bats out of hell, not wanting to become meat-loaf.
The enemy, a bit shocked at the silence, had taken rather too long to give chase, but that they then did, yet still a hundred yards off or more, their bead and their one lucky projection blasting the Major to bits and instant death with some great munition, just twenty yards behind me, he an older man and of a higher rank, as I was a lieutenant.
The rock had been hard, and the road of the trail was long…
Yet I knew that the General would not leave me behind, as long as I was relatively on time and/or could give him some indication that I was alive, pending, of course, the fact that we weren’t supposed to be here, and the less attention on it the better. The arriving enemies at the shore, if more came in greater numbers, could be better dealt with by firing on them from the other side of the river.
I reached for the radio, but then remembered that it had been assigned to the Major, my mentor and my friend, even though I wasn’t even a Captain yet… nor now even the total captain of my fate, for the chess board had now crashed and fallen to the ground.
He, this young lieutenant of myself of 40 years ago, believed that luck would never fail—so he ran like the wind through the jungle, surely knowing. He’d what he’d come for, now hopeful to find the help at the shore. The relentless ones were not far behind, that ill-fated menace of the bad kind.
Miss fortune laughed, and said, “No road could be too hard to tread, for we are fearless. To those, a boon—for they ever seize the opportune.”
“I see you, fairest happening.”
Just past a sharp turn, in the trees, he suddenly dropped to his knees and fired into his pursuers mean as they came upon the scene, using all his ammo but for one round, then hurried on, with nary a sound.
“I am wide aware,” Miss Karma, “Of this continuing dharma—that chance shines as my sun, for, she, in turn, happens on everyone.”
“Oh, say it is your lot, my friend and lover,” she answered back, granting him cover.
Listening, he could hear ever more troops rushing through the night, in groups, about a half-mile back, around the loops, far enough away.
“I gratefully welcome thee, Miss Lady Luck of Dice, though I may pay a late fee for my pick up so precise.”
Ms. Destiny Serendipity smiled, saying, “The game is on; we are yet alive and playing. Let joy and innocence prevail; believe that luck will never fail.”
He moved on, ever faster, cheating lame old Death, a third wind becoming of her vaporous breath, it blowing this DIA operative onward to the shore, ever toward. He could hear the whirling chopper, but now receding was its doppler, he thus grieving of its leaving.
“Am I much too late—still too far? Shall I curse you all, destined stars?”
“No,” said Lovely Dear Twist of Fate, for you have one bullet left for chance, not to use to sleep or dream perchance.”
But the chopper was rising nigh, up into the star-crossed sky.
“Shall to self I take this bullet now that the bus has left?”
“Oh, no,” Miss Lucky Break Encouraged, “Do not be at all discouraged, for you know it shall not be so and what with it you now must do.”
“Yes, perhaps it shall be so in some plight coinciding in a most kempt and hapful night.”
He smiled and then knelt to ground, and sent his last bright tracer round just ahead of the copter now departing, his minor wounds yet sorely smarting.
“I bless you with all my lucky charms, my good and well-fated man of arms.”
The door-gunner noted the red tracer and whence it came of the river vapors.
“Captain, turn back and take a look; here awaits a fortuitous accidental fluke.”
“I am an uncursed, non-jinxed agent man. Let my joyous innocence prevail again.”
He jumped into the rescue’s hovering haven, directing the door-gunner’s firings, wavin’.
“Fare thee well, my nightly knight” Dame Fortune wished upon his sight. “You recognized me even in the dark.”
“Oh, my angel, lovely lark, I might have known it was you who would ever see me through.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CfCj6CKeZVc
I married the lady in 1972, a foreign national, even.
…
“So, what happened at the end?” the General asked.
“Nothing happened there or anywhere else around here.”
“Please; humor me.”
“From what I could see back through the woods with the 3rd eye in the back of my head, but mostly heard with my ears, was that the air-strike was dead on target.”
“Lucky for you.”
“I live on luck.”
“Probability has no memory, Captain.”
“Captain?”
“Yes, and up to Major is as far as you can go, for anything beyond that is rather mostly a desk job with no desk.”
“Agreed, but how is it that you are out here in the field?”
“As for me, my desk does not exist.”
“That’s the clean desk policy, as they also had at IBM. So then of what use is a desk if nothing can be placed upon it?”
“None at all whatsoever in any way.”
“Good answer, in triplicate. Now, come to think of it, I haven’t noted any Colonels about.”
“We don’t have any Colonels. It’s the recession.”
“No desks?”
“None, and there have been several cutbacks in middle management.”
“Because we need a quick response team.”
“Yes, indeed. So the big gun still worked well?”
“Yes, but it jammed, although toward the end of its ammo.”
“Jammed! Darn piece of junk. I will find a new supplier. So, staying there longer would have made you too late?
“No, I would have made up the time.”
“Yes, indeed.”
Many things in life are like chess, such as war and tennis.
HOPEWELL JUNCTION, NY
TACONIC TENNIS
MID-DECEMBER, 2010
I met Zbignew, again, from Poland, and tall, a semi-recent addition to the club pros, at the tennis xmas party, as well as the new and charming Jolantha, a princess of sorts.
The tennis warriors and gladiators assembled, as ever, twice weekly, for doubles. In singles, I wouldn’t be winning more than two games in a set over Zbig when I returned, for he could hit a soda can placed anywhere on the court at will, but this was doubles and he was my partner, as he often is, and of course I would otherwise in singles make sure that there were no soda cans lying anywhere around, except for out of bounds.
This is not about tennis, though, for, as I later sat out for a break to let another person in, who was Jolantha, I drifted off into the haze of another battle 40 years ago…
INDOCHINA
1971
We were on the wrong side of the river, by purpose, in Cambodia, which was fine, for we barely existed, with no records kept. We were in the wrong place, too, one of our rare mishaps, as it turned out, and actually one very early on, of a cascade of unfortunate events that was not totally unplanned for. Always have an out, for there will be those times of woe.
We, the intelligence officers, had been inserted along with the DIA [special] ‘troops’, another nameless non-designation, and they with us, for we each supported the other.
The action had been going fairly well, as planned, the many opposing rampagers led not so much by reason but by the beast that was ever part and parcel of man.
The fire-engagement was over, for now, in the main, as a retreat had been called by the Captain of the section upon detection of a larger than expected approaching ground force, this fallback being somewhat hindered by some opposition stragglers whose spirits had been bolstered by the sight of an entire Klemmer Rouge division boldly crossing a long and open field, which could become good luck, or not, for either side.
The tail end of the section retreaters was further slowed by the carrying and stretchering of our dead and wounded.
Actually, the surprise incursion had gone well, but for the fact that we two remaining were now pinned to the ground just inside the front edge of the tree-line, as all hell was breaking loose, shattering the forest trees and their branches. The special troops had just begun their slowed retreat, and we could leave no one behind but ourselves, my Major friend and I.
The lead Rouge were advancing, haphazardly, with some old and assorted mini-artillery, with an entire battalion or division some ways behind. We would not last where we were, but we had to stay behind for yet another reason, for we were the information and intelligence gatherers when in the field and on the ground, as well as back at our base in Hawaii.
All we had was a machine gun, but a large one, hidden a bit further back in the woods, recently dug out of the ground, where we had left it on a prior occasion of recon. Always think many moves ahead. Yet, it was not quite the right time to retrieve it and use it, which is of knowing when to move, not just where, on the chessboard, for we’d have to be somewhat exposed to use it, plus it wouldn’t be that useful against the machines firing into our area, and it would draw attention to our troops’ retreat path, for the KR didn’t exactly know where we were, or if any of us still were. Do not show yourself until you have to. We had to survive at least ten more long minutes.
The fire was beginning to converge on us, whether by luck or a good sense of sweep, from either side, but not yet straight on, where a medium size boulder sat, just up ahead in the grassy field, as why we had chosen the spot. Do or die.
We dashed out and crept up to it, it already having an end split just off of it. We needed more time, at least many or several minutes. We dug out the ground behind the really big rock a foot or so deep, exposing the part of the boulder yet underground, and laid in the depression. Another minute or so and the above ground portions of the rock would be gone, and soon they were, shattering and flying away.
The enemy would see no one behind the rock which was no longer there, but just might figure it out soon. I raised a small bending scope and noted the yet noiseless jets approaching on the horizon, behind the battalion, as well as a vanguard of Klemmers approaching at 600 yards. We just needed 60 seconds now, or even half, as it turned out.
The music began to play upon the drama…
At 30 seconds, the enemy first heard the sounds of the jets, crying to all the rest to retreat, yet some of the vanguard still ran toward our woods, perhaps preferring that over an open field. Not good, neither for us nor for the special troops that were still retreating through the forest, who could still become targets at the river shore clearing, while boarding.
At 0 seconds, the air-strike landed on the main battalion, a fine diversion for us IAs, and so we rose from our would-be graves and ran back into the woods, rolling out the machine gun, blasting most of the on-comers away for quite a while. The chess moves had come to pass, although still ongoing into new territory.
The machine gun finally overheated and jammed. We made no pause, which is more of the training, and so we were up and off into the jungle like bats out of hell, not wanting to become meat-loaf.
The enemy, a bit shocked at the silence, had taken rather too long to give chase, but that they then did, yet still a hundred yards off or more, their bead and their one lucky projection blasting the Major to bits and instant death with some great munition, just twenty yards behind me, he an older man and of a higher rank, as I was a lieutenant.
The rock had been hard, and the road of the trail was long…
Yet I knew that the General would not leave me behind, as long as I was relatively on time and/or could give him some indication that I was alive, pending, of course, the fact that we weren’t supposed to be here, and the less attention on it the better. The arriving enemies at the shore, if more came in greater numbers, could be better dealt with by firing on them from the other side of the river.
I reached for the radio, but then remembered that it had been assigned to the Major, my mentor and my friend, even though I wasn’t even a Captain yet… nor now even the total captain of my fate, for the chess board had now crashed and fallen to the ground.
He, this young lieutenant of myself of 40 years ago, believed that luck would never fail—so he ran like the wind through the jungle, surely knowing. He’d what he’d come for, now hopeful to find the help at the shore. The relentless ones were not far behind, that ill-fated menace of the bad kind.
Miss fortune laughed, and said, “No road could be too hard to tread, for we are fearless. To those, a boon—for they ever seize the opportune.”
“I see you, fairest happening.”
Just past a sharp turn, in the trees, he suddenly dropped to his knees and fired into his pursuers mean as they came upon the scene, using all his ammo but for one round, then hurried on, with nary a sound.
“I am wide aware,” Miss Karma, “Of this continuing dharma—that chance shines as my sun, for, she, in turn, happens on everyone.”
“Oh, say it is your lot, my friend and lover,” she answered back, granting him cover.
Listening, he could hear ever more troops rushing through the night, in groups, about a half-mile back, around the loops, far enough away.
“I gratefully welcome thee, Miss Lady Luck of Dice, though I may pay a late fee for my pick up so precise.”
Ms. Destiny Serendipity smiled, saying, “The game is on; we are yet alive and playing. Let joy and innocence prevail; believe that luck will never fail.”
He moved on, ever faster, cheating lame old Death, a third wind becoming of her vaporous breath, it blowing this DIA operative onward to the shore, ever toward. He could hear the whirling chopper, but now receding was its doppler, he thus grieving of its leaving.
“Am I much too late—still too far? Shall I curse you all, destined stars?”
“No,” said Lovely Dear Twist of Fate, for you have one bullet left for chance, not to use to sleep or dream perchance.”
But the chopper was rising nigh, up into the star-crossed sky.
“Shall to self I take this bullet now that the bus has left?”
“Oh, no,” Miss Lucky Break Encouraged, “Do not be at all discouraged, for you know it shall not be so and what with it you now must do.”
“Yes, perhaps it shall be so in some plight coinciding in a most kempt and hapful night.”
He smiled and then knelt to ground, and sent his last bright tracer round just ahead of the copter now departing, his minor wounds yet sorely smarting.
“I bless you with all my lucky charms, my good and well-fated man of arms.”
The door-gunner noted the red tracer and whence it came of the river vapors.
“Captain, turn back and take a look; here awaits a fortuitous accidental fluke.”
“I am an uncursed, non-jinxed agent man. Let my joyous innocence prevail again.”
He jumped into the rescue’s hovering haven, directing the door-gunner’s firings, wavin’.
“Fare thee well, my nightly knight” Dame Fortune wished upon his sight. “You recognized me even in the dark.”
“Oh, my angel, lovely lark, I might have known it was you who would ever see me through.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CfCj6CKeZVc
I married the lady in 1972, a foreign national, even.
…
“So, what happened at the end?” the General asked.
“Nothing happened there or anywhere else around here.”
“Please; humor me.”
“From what I could see back through the woods with the 3rd eye in the back of my head, but mostly heard with my ears, was that the air-strike was dead on target.”
“Lucky for you.”
“I live on luck.”
“Probability has no memory, Captain.”
“Captain?”
“Yes, and up to Major is as far as you can go, for anything beyond that is rather mostly a desk job with no desk.”
“Agreed, but how is it that you are out here in the field?”
“As for me, my desk does not exist.”
“That’s the clean desk policy, as they also had at IBM. So then of what use is a desk if nothing can be placed upon it?”
“None at all whatsoever in any way.”
“Good answer, in triplicate. Now, come to think of it, I haven’t noted any Colonels about.”
“We don’t have any Colonels. It’s the recession.”
“No desks?”
“None, and there have been several cutbacks in middle management.”
“Because we need a quick response team.”
“Yes, indeed. So the big gun still worked well?”
“Yes, but it jammed, although toward the end of its ammo.”
“Jammed! Darn piece of junk. I will find a new supplier. So, staying there longer would have made you too late?
“No, I would have made up the time.”
“Yes, indeed.”
— 15 —
LIFE AND DEATH IN THE CRYSTAL PALACE
DECEMBER 20, 2012
The Mayan calendar was due to end on December 21, although an alternate method forecast December 23. Whatever the case, the world was in a frenzy, one much worse than when the end of the world had been predicted by the Jehovah Witnesses in the 1990’s, for radio, TV, and other electronic signals all over the world were all being disrupted by some unknown source. And there were the tremors.
Commander-Grandmasters East and West were already at the TOE Center in Hawaii when the President’s CIA chief called in.
East put it on speaker: We can’t track the source of the disturbing signals. My experts tell me that these signals are like none they’ve ever dealt with before; that whenever they think they’re getting a fix on them the waves relocate to a new and apparent source which soon does the same. Also, the waves are at a frequency which can’t—well, shouldn’t even function for their range. If we could only get near to the source, even in its vicinity, we could then probably hone in on it—I’ve got planes crisscrossing the world trying to localize it, but it will only be luck if we run into something stable. I’ve certified that the signals are not coming from space.
“Bad news”, she (East) said, to no one in particular. That means the signal doesn’t want to be found.”
West added, “Which means that if we did find it, we could possibly turn it off or neutralize it somehow.”
The speaker continued: …And I’ve got reports of small tremblers all over the world at once. That’s unheard of. They’re quite minor, and no quakes have been reported, but they’re been increasing and spreading since yesterday. Could the world really be ending?
East replied, “Could be. The signals are of an alien nature; that’s why you don’t recognize them and why they have such strange properties.”
West surmised, “So the radiating device was planted here ages ago, when…”
“…The earth was visited by them,” East continued.
“And the Maya somehow knew about it,” added West.
“And there’s that unexplained ancient runway in South America,” surmised East.
“Who do we have on ancient symbols and Megaliths?” West asked of the TOE Center Director.
"We have Leskey, right here, and Fredrick, who’s out and about the island right now."
Leskey piped up, “Sir, Fredrick found some new glyphs on the rocks near the runway a while back, for they had removed the 20 feet of soil that had accumulated over the millenia—and there seemed to be drawings of some lakes carved therein. I can access Fredrick’s photo files.”
“Good,” answered West. “And let’s fetch the young master; he has the Sight.”
“My God!” cried Leskey, “They are a much larger and detailed version of what I found at the end of the calendar stones at the Mayan Ruins.”
“Quick, match it to the globe, present and past.” pleaded East.
It was going to take some time to search all of the maps of the ages.
Meanwhile, Fredrick, surfing, heard the rotors and turned to see a black Ninja helicopter approaching and then hovering about two feet off the ground, creating a mini sandstorm.
A while later, Leskey reported, “I’ve got it, Grandmaster, it’s the Central Lake District in Canada—well, as it was a long time ago.”
“I heard,” chimed in the CIA Chief. “I’ll have an AWACS with a survey helicopter in it there within an hour.”
The action paused, as they awaited the over flight of the suspect Canadian area.
East asked for geographics of the site.
Profpat answered, “I’ve got it on Google Earth and Wikipedia—it’s a region with forests so dense that the snow cannot even reach the ground. All of the snow stays aloft, on the treetops, like a canopy. I wouldn’t try to land on it.”
“Thanks”, answered East. “I’ll pass that along. They sure picked an almost impenetrable area.”
“Almost?” asked the Prof.
“We can go anywhere—get one of our helicopters into the region.”
Lunch was served.
The CIA chief came back on: Some of the electronics on my AWACS are going haywire and burning out, but we have a general location—we’re dropping the chopper now to locate it and my AWACS is getting out of there.
The survey chopper dropped like a stone, the wind soon catching the rotors and stabilizing the craft— which they soon started.
All they can see is snow and ice.
“There’s a forest underneath.”
What the… I’ve got an infrared satellite coming over in 17 minutes… We just burned up half its fuel to get it there. What did the aliens want with us, anyway?
“Not all things are solvable. We have no answer of what is probably now some long abandoned agenda.”
Jeeese…
The survey helicopter headed off in the general direction of the strange signals; however, there came an avalanche of strange sensations as they began to narrow the source of the emanations—such as nausea, high heartbeats, a sense of suffocation, tight chests, panic, anxiety and much more than they’d ever known in the strenuous training of flight school…
Their very selves were fragmenting. One last effort reported all of this back to CIA Command as the craft begin its swan dive and crashed through the ice into the depths below.
Mission failed and crashed—the crew reported some kind of extreme mental disturbances—maybe your ninja craft with its mind-diciplined crew can get closer—close enough to pinpoint the source. My guys were still 5 miles away.
“I hope so. We’re about 7 minutes away from your copter’s last location”.
Go for it.
The Ninja Craft did make it much closer, to about a thousand feet of the source, its crew also bearing the waves of unreality washing over their psyches, but then, too, they came to be on the verge of blacking out. Only the pilot’s last bit of remaining logic stabbed at the autopilot, which carried the craft aloft and away to safety.
“We had to abort, but we’ve got the source to within three hundred yards,” reported East. “They dropped a flare.”
We’ll refocus the infrared satellite to that location—it can read a label on your clothes from space.
Grandmaster West sat back in his chair and pondered during the brief interlude, looking about the room of the dedicated ToeQuestors. Who can we send? he thought. And how much time do we have?
CIA: Sir, a Russian jet fired three missiles toward the target, but their electronics and guidance systems fizzled and fried, the missiles winging away erratically and plowing into the ice like harmless duds.
East interjected, “If it’s of an alien race from another star that can conquer space, then it’s no wonder that our primitive electronics can be thwarted.”
The satellite’s data came streaming in—a five minute high definition video of the device and it’s glowing control panel.
Fredrick walked in the door, noting the video just beginning to play, and studied it intensely until it ended. One of the symbols in the middle had been changing rapidly, and another one, too, but only every so often.
“I’ll bet it matches no known language, font, or number system,” said Fredrick.
“That’s true,” answered an associate. We just put it through the translator.”
“My Kingdom for a Rosetta stone,” replied the TOE Center Director.
“We have three hours, or so” answered Fredrick. I identified its ‘zero’ character and then deduced the rest from their structure and form—and from the sequence of the rapidly changing symbol—it’s a timer that has advanced six minutes in the five minutes that we watched it— it’s on its way down to all zeros.”
Fredrick sat down and went into a trancelike state.
Someone came over.
“No,” said West, “leave him be.”
CIA came back on: Have your craft clear the area—we have a Super Stealth inbound at a thousand miles an hour—the President has authorized a tactical nuclear strike. 10 minutes to arrival.
“We’re already clear, but the strike won’t work,” answered East.
It’s worth a try.
A while later, Fredrick looked up from his reverie.
“What did you see?” asked West of Fredrick.
“I saw the blankness of… no Earth… and a dim vision of a woman walking in the dark with a flashlight through a forest overcrowded with trees… that’s all, sorry.”
West addressed the room: “No sorry—that’s it. Who do we have that can approach this thing that so much disrupts human functioning?”
Prof offered, “Cyn-thea, on our ToeQuest team, has often reported on her numerous episodes of this disturbing nature, and has, apparently, acclimated to them.”
East, looking dejected, said “We may never get her there in time. It will be a long trip through the ice palace.”
West sighed, showing little hope in his visage, but suggested, “Find her and get her on a Supersonic Transport.”
“No need,” said Profpat, “she lives near the target area in a quaint cabin in the wilderness. Um, I like to get to know all the ladies, although at first I thought her name was ‘Michael’. In fact, she’s been following our progress here and is getting ready.”
“Holy smokes, it’s about time we had some luck. Send our Ninja copter to pick her up. Have it’s crew recovered from the onslaught against reason?”
“Our copter is on its way, Master. Your crew is fine.”
CIA: Our tactical nukes went nowhere and plopped dead into forest somewhere. An ICBM is now on its way.
“Find a snow-tread and take Cyn-thea in as far as you can from the closest approach. Maps with routes are on the way.”
“They are? Oh, I’ll get right on it.”
A few moments passed in silence.
“She’s probably going to have to walk the last few miles alone, sir—too dense for a snowmobile and too close for anyone else to survive…” reported the Geographics leader.
CIA: The ICBM and all its multiple warheads malfunctioned. What have you guys got for me?
West replied: “We’re going to have a ninja driving a Snow-Cat through the submerged forest, with a strong-willed lady on the back. We’re going to drop it as close as we can, put it through the treetop canopy of snow, and hope for the best. We should be off and away toward the forest in about an hour.”
You’re kidding.
“It’s what we came up with. Do you have anything better?”
No, we’re at a loss. And now we have a quake near the San Andreas fault. California may soon become an island.
Time seemed to be passing the world by as all sat and fidgeted.
The black Ninja Helicopter picked up Cyn-thea at her front door and was off for a 45 minute journey over the ice. When the crew started seeing blips and spots in their eyes, they headed back a bit and hovered over the canopy. Some of the crew got out, stepping gingerly, but found the footing firm and used a large pick and shovel to dig through the canopy, making a hole large enough for the Snow-Cat to be dropped through.
Cyn-thea and her escort followed, down a rope, into this forgotten world of icy darkness and silence, although a dim light filtered through in places. There was little snow on the forest floor, more like a thick frost. The headlights shone ahead through the stillness—it had become a subterranean world. Ice crystals adorned the trees. Some small wildlife darted about. ‘Eerie’ was not enough word for it.
The Snow-Cat was soon off and following the GPS signal for a seven mile trip, and barely squeezing through some of the gaps in the trees. They still had communication with Oahu, but it was was slight and fading with their every advance. 45 minutes passed. There was one hour left.
Trouble. A wake of nausea swept over them and prompted them to take their next dose of seasickness pills, but the meds weren’t helping much. They spotted some forms in the snow and dusted them off and soon radioed the TOE Center, as they had been doing periodically.
“Hello, Cyn-thea,” answered Grandmaster East. “Wherefore art thou?”
“We’ve covered four miles somehow in this entangled forest. We are seeing skeletons on the ground, some human and some animal. And I see many more up ahead.”
East replied, “I’m afraid that all who wandered and entered there have perished—probably scared to death. It’s up to you, Cyn-thea.”
“The world needs me, and I need me,” she said, clicking off the radio. They drove on for a while, sometimes having to traverse over the bones of the many unfortunates.”
A haze of distorted being soon enveloped them after another mile, sending their brain-traffic neurotransmitters spinning, struggling to maintain control. They tried hard to ignore the visions and emotions washing over them, straining to focus. She had been here many times before, cleansing the intrusions, but it was new to the driver and he soon began his collapse, the Cat burrowing into foliage of a bush, whose color was ever-during green—the renowned color of sanity.
He stood up, then fell again. She dragged him back a few hundred feet, where-at he revived a bit, but looked groggy. Her gesturing directed him back whence they’d come. He resisted, loyal to the mission, although quite unable. They tried the radio, but it had gone silent.
“It is for me to walk the last miles alone, my friend.”
Finally, he agreed and headed back.
Back at the TOE Center: “We’ve lost contact.”
Cyn-thea retrieved the SnowCat and drove on, the forest getting denser, her hallucinations increasing by the minute. The visions were now accompanied by horrible sounds. She was hearing the workings and meanderings of her own affected brain and mind, something never meant to be heard and endured for very long. She drove on quickly, the branches whipping her, until the forest became too dense for the snowmobile. She got off.
The shards of early man now appeared, formed, and then shattered—as the primitive brain stem began failing in its task to sort out human-radiated reality from all else that was out there. She was no longer totally Sapiens, but Homo Habilis, then Erectus and Handyman.
Taken aback, she fell to her knees, overwhelmed, and began to focus on the outlines of the trees and branches, desperately attempting to bring her mind to attention—an old trick she’d learned to quell panic attacks, but this was the last frontier of horror, even considering what she’d been through in her life.
Somehow she got up and continued walking, now privy to all of earth’s invisible radiation, but soon adapted, learning to put much of it out of her mind. She could even hear the noise of thermal vibrations as she moved on.
Cyn-thea next felt the actual emotion of death and dying via suffocation, but, again, through previous practice, noted that she was indeed still breathing in and out—and so she waved death’s ebon form aside. Waves of adrenaline now swept her body from head to foot, and she nearly fainted, and sat down, in case she did, not wanting to bang her head on a rock.
She arose slowly, to avoid the hypotension of quick-rising blood pressure. Her heartbeat had to be around 180 now, and this actually helped her along—but too much of this and she would be no more. 20 minutes left.
Cyn-thea stopped and meditated, trying to focus on nothing to quiet the intrusive thoughts—as she’d learned to do. It didn’t work here as well as it had elsewhere, so she switched to another, alternate method—which was to watch the maddening thoughts go by as if in a parade, but not watching or entertaining any of them. They appeared, marched across, and exited stage right, all unattended to by the witness, her, for she was sitting in the audience way back in the back row. As for some thoughts that wouldn’t leave at all, she colored them them dim and grey—and as such they dissolved into a fog.
She got up, her heartbeat perhaps now down to 140, but many night-mares and their foals were still passing on by as wide-awake dreams. It was almost too much, now. Her very self was beginning to disintegrate, she desperately trying to hold on to that last bit of logic in a back corner of a mind somewhere—a mind that was being overwhelmed with unreality. She stumbled on, heading in the direction of increasing sickness, her only means of navigation. What’s that?
She turned off her light, for there was a glow in the distance. That was it. Ten minutes left.
The pressure upon her sense of self grew worse as she approached the glow—logic’s last gleam was fading, for life’s last light was now upon her. She was only ten feet away when waves of confusion washed all thinking away. She fell forward a few more feet and collapsed. So close.
She didn’t know it yet, but she had entered a zone of safety, that perhaps the device itself needed to be free to function unaffected by its own emanations.
Her head spun round and round as consciousness returned, another familiar sensation, but one that was never very pleasant. Four minutes left. The mental disturbances were gone now, but she still reeled from their ravages. She felt cold for the first time—then freezing. Her body had been overloaded, its thermostat not functioning anymore. It took her a minute to regroup—-she’d known cold Canadian winters before. She willed her body to function.
She stood up and faced the alien device. There was a switch. She turned it off. The glow-lights dimmed, and the machine began to fade, then to oblivion went. Was it really happening or was it hallucination? She reached out her hand to where the device was—and felt nothing. She lay down to surrender to the night and fell asleep in the crystal palace—her tomb.
Back at the TOE Center, all looked to the clock: there were 3 minutes left.
As the countdown neared zero, nearly everyone tensed.
East looked at West. “It’s been fine—this life.”
“Indeed.”
At zero, nothing happened.
The CIA called and reported: The tremors have stopped, but for the earth settling back in. All emanations have ceased. It’s over.
Cyn-thea awoke, her cheeks flushed and pink with bloom, but she knew, she knew, that it was but endorphins flooding her brain and body—one last gift from the Angel of Light that is given to the dying—so that the darker Angel of Death would not soon approach one so fair…
She closed her eyes, drifting back off towards the netherworld, but then felt some snowflakes falling on her cheek. But it can’t snow in here, she thought…
The Ninjas above were hacking through the ice canopy with pickaxes, showering her with a cooling spray where she lay in her crystalline cathedral.
A bright light shone through the hole above and a rope came down, followed by some black forms. They wrapped her in blankets of warmth, then placed her in a harness, and she was lifted up and into the heated heaven of the helicopter.
The TOE Center erupted in cheers, having watched on screen.
What happened? inquired the CIA Chief a few minutes later.
“She turned it off with three minutes left—and the alien thing just evaporated!”
Just evaporated? That’s it?—she just turned it off, three minutes early, not even near zero?
“This was not an 007 movie.”
Ah, but you only live twice: once when you’re born—and again when you stare death in the face.
“Perhaps mankind will take some pause from this, valuing life more,” said East or West.
Yes, indeed. Perhaps it has scared the Hell out of everyone. I’m still not sure what to make of all this.
“Not all things are knowable. We looked for the device—it was gone—there was no trace, but you do have a video of it.”
Well, thanks for your help. I don’t know how you did it, but you sure pulled this one out of your butts.
“Great anal-ogy. I’m afraid we don’t really know how we did it ether.”
It’s beyond me. Now, about the news media and that alien thing—it never happened.”
“Ha, yes, I guess it never did, for it’s no longer there.”
Poet to poet, Austin and Cyn-thea rendered the details of Cyn-thea’s journey—he visiting her in the wildnerness—into the final TOE-CIA report, through the highest power of language: poetry, one that tries to flesh the truth in living words finely dressed.
Later, using the Grandmaster’s pass, he filed the account, after all had read it, into the tube of Secrets and That Which Never Happened, one that led to the vault, twenty miles straight down into the earth. He noted the maintenance stairway beside it, where none had ever gone, and looked in—the master knew he would—to see it spiral down into Neverland. So strangely compelling it was that Austin ventured down, underground, beyond all sight and sound…
To learn the Secrets—what IS and ev’r WAS,
One must brave the crypt and ghost of cause…
So, into the deep, he went, without pause,
To look down, ever down, no self to keep—
Through birth, death, and the shade of sleep,
Through paths unkempt, underswept—to the deep,
Through the cloudy strife
Of this hazy life,
Past the realm of the things which seem or are,
Even o’er the steps of the remotest bar.
Down, down! Where the mind whirls round and round,
Down, down! As the ear draws the sound,
As the eye the light,
As the dark the fright,
Beyond all death, despair, love, and sorrow,
Past yesterday, today, and tomorrow,
The body’s guide but the spirit of the soul.
Down, down! Through the fog, the not, and the void;
Down! Where reigns the night and the air is thin,
To where sky and stars are not, but within,
Where the radiant have not their throne,
Where there are some pervading, all alone.
Down, down! To the fathoms of the cryptic;
Down, down! Where substance slept with arithmetic,
Toward the spark yet nursed by embers,
To the first and last that Life remembers,
To seek the gem that shines—the wealth of mines,
The jewels so treasured by thee and thine.
Down, down! We guide thee, we must carry thee;
Down, down! We’re illumination beside thee…
Fear not the proof—it’s the beauty of truth:
Here, the enigma of the immortal
Is undone and unloosed, through life’s portal—
The Theory of Everything mortal—
The Idea That Became a door to.
CRYSTAL MEMORIES
From Spring to Winter
2013
From her hilltop cabin of logs, Cyn-thea
Recalls the ice—once in her veins, the freeze;
Lo, Canadian lilacs have bloomed, at last.
Nature Springs from Winter’s tomb,
The bloom already in the seed,
The tree contained within the acorn.
Crystal fragments remain—sharp memories
Of the ventures in which she shattered not.
Surging sprigs sprout from the soil;
Spring showers make the Summer flower.
All the seasonings arrive at her door,
For all things come ‘round to those who observe.
Summer wakes from Spring’s dying kiss,
Blooming when the rose does,
Sunning after the Spring’s running.
She could never be too warm—
She’d endured the frost;
The kaleidoscope revolves: life’s cycle.
Summer reigns upon the land,
Eventually fading in the night.
Life’s second bloom shines upon middle age,
Colors her mind—the rainbow’s shimmering.
Autumn Falls as Summer leaves,
Harvesting its sum of days,
Seconding the rose of Spring.
The hearthstone fire glows heartily with her self
As she stokes the flames of the wondering soul.
The smile meets the tear—
Fall’s embers last through December.
It snows atop the trees, ne’er falling in,
Entombing a spring that waits for the miracle.
Ice winds stalk the weed flowers,
The ghosts frosting the dead stalks,
Snow crystals barring all that grows.
She’s in the cabin safe, snug, warm, and whole.
Winter is death cooled over;
Melting snows feed Spring waters.
LIFE AND DEATH IN THE CRYSTAL PALACE
DECEMBER 20, 2012
The Mayan calendar was due to end on December 21, although an alternate method forecast December 23. Whatever the case, the world was in a frenzy, one much worse than when the end of the world had been predicted by the Jehovah Witnesses in the 1990’s, for radio, TV, and other electronic signals all over the world were all being disrupted by some unknown source. And there were the tremors.
Commander-Grandmasters East and West were already at the TOE Center in Hawaii when the President’s CIA chief called in.
East put it on speaker: We can’t track the source of the disturbing signals. My experts tell me that these signals are like none they’ve ever dealt with before; that whenever they think they’re getting a fix on them the waves relocate to a new and apparent source which soon does the same. Also, the waves are at a frequency which can’t—well, shouldn’t even function for their range. If we could only get near to the source, even in its vicinity, we could then probably hone in on it—I’ve got planes crisscrossing the world trying to localize it, but it will only be luck if we run into something stable. I’ve certified that the signals are not coming from space.
“Bad news”, she (East) said, to no one in particular. That means the signal doesn’t want to be found.”
West added, “Which means that if we did find it, we could possibly turn it off or neutralize it somehow.”
The speaker continued: …And I’ve got reports of small tremblers all over the world at once. That’s unheard of. They’re quite minor, and no quakes have been reported, but they’re been increasing and spreading since yesterday. Could the world really be ending?
East replied, “Could be. The signals are of an alien nature; that’s why you don’t recognize them and why they have such strange properties.”
West surmised, “So the radiating device was planted here ages ago, when…”
“…The earth was visited by them,” East continued.
“And the Maya somehow knew about it,” added West.
“And there’s that unexplained ancient runway in South America,” surmised East.
“Who do we have on ancient symbols and Megaliths?” West asked of the TOE Center Director.
"We have Leskey, right here, and Fredrick, who’s out and about the island right now."
Leskey piped up, “Sir, Fredrick found some new glyphs on the rocks near the runway a while back, for they had removed the 20 feet of soil that had accumulated over the millenia—and there seemed to be drawings of some lakes carved therein. I can access Fredrick’s photo files.”
“Good,” answered West. “And let’s fetch the young master; he has the Sight.”
“My God!” cried Leskey, “They are a much larger and detailed version of what I found at the end of the calendar stones at the Mayan Ruins.”
“Quick, match it to the globe, present and past.” pleaded East.
It was going to take some time to search all of the maps of the ages.
Meanwhile, Fredrick, surfing, heard the rotors and turned to see a black Ninja helicopter approaching and then hovering about two feet off the ground, creating a mini sandstorm.
A while later, Leskey reported, “I’ve got it, Grandmaster, it’s the Central Lake District in Canada—well, as it was a long time ago.”
“I heard,” chimed in the CIA Chief. “I’ll have an AWACS with a survey helicopter in it there within an hour.”
The action paused, as they awaited the over flight of the suspect Canadian area.
East asked for geographics of the site.
Profpat answered, “I’ve got it on Google Earth and Wikipedia—it’s a region with forests so dense that the snow cannot even reach the ground. All of the snow stays aloft, on the treetops, like a canopy. I wouldn’t try to land on it.”
“Thanks”, answered East. “I’ll pass that along. They sure picked an almost impenetrable area.”
“Almost?” asked the Prof.
“We can go anywhere—get one of our helicopters into the region.”
Lunch was served.
The CIA chief came back on: Some of the electronics on my AWACS are going haywire and burning out, but we have a general location—we’re dropping the chopper now to locate it and my AWACS is getting out of there.
The survey chopper dropped like a stone, the wind soon catching the rotors and stabilizing the craft— which they soon started.
All they can see is snow and ice.
“There’s a forest underneath.”
What the… I’ve got an infrared satellite coming over in 17 minutes… We just burned up half its fuel to get it there. What did the aliens want with us, anyway?
“Not all things are solvable. We have no answer of what is probably now some long abandoned agenda.”
Jeeese…
The survey helicopter headed off in the general direction of the strange signals; however, there came an avalanche of strange sensations as they began to narrow the source of the emanations—such as nausea, high heartbeats, a sense of suffocation, tight chests, panic, anxiety and much more than they’d ever known in the strenuous training of flight school…
Their very selves were fragmenting. One last effort reported all of this back to CIA Command as the craft begin its swan dive and crashed through the ice into the depths below.
Mission failed and crashed—the crew reported some kind of extreme mental disturbances—maybe your ninja craft with its mind-diciplined crew can get closer—close enough to pinpoint the source. My guys were still 5 miles away.
“I hope so. We’re about 7 minutes away from your copter’s last location”.
Go for it.
The Ninja Craft did make it much closer, to about a thousand feet of the source, its crew also bearing the waves of unreality washing over their psyches, but then, too, they came to be on the verge of blacking out. Only the pilot’s last bit of remaining logic stabbed at the autopilot, which carried the craft aloft and away to safety.
“We had to abort, but we’ve got the source to within three hundred yards,” reported East. “They dropped a flare.”
We’ll refocus the infrared satellite to that location—it can read a label on your clothes from space.
Grandmaster West sat back in his chair and pondered during the brief interlude, looking about the room of the dedicated ToeQuestors. Who can we send? he thought. And how much time do we have?
CIA: Sir, a Russian jet fired three missiles toward the target, but their electronics and guidance systems fizzled and fried, the missiles winging away erratically and plowing into the ice like harmless duds.
East interjected, “If it’s of an alien race from another star that can conquer space, then it’s no wonder that our primitive electronics can be thwarted.”
The satellite’s data came streaming in—a five minute high definition video of the device and it’s glowing control panel.
Fredrick walked in the door, noting the video just beginning to play, and studied it intensely until it ended. One of the symbols in the middle had been changing rapidly, and another one, too, but only every so often.
“I’ll bet it matches no known language, font, or number system,” said Fredrick.
“That’s true,” answered an associate. We just put it through the translator.”
“My Kingdom for a Rosetta stone,” replied the TOE Center Director.
“We have three hours, or so” answered Fredrick. I identified its ‘zero’ character and then deduced the rest from their structure and form—and from the sequence of the rapidly changing symbol—it’s a timer that has advanced six minutes in the five minutes that we watched it— it’s on its way down to all zeros.”
Fredrick sat down and went into a trancelike state.
Someone came over.
“No,” said West, “leave him be.”
CIA came back on: Have your craft clear the area—we have a Super Stealth inbound at a thousand miles an hour—the President has authorized a tactical nuclear strike. 10 minutes to arrival.
“We’re already clear, but the strike won’t work,” answered East.
It’s worth a try.
A while later, Fredrick looked up from his reverie.
“What did you see?” asked West of Fredrick.
“I saw the blankness of… no Earth… and a dim vision of a woman walking in the dark with a flashlight through a forest overcrowded with trees… that’s all, sorry.”
West addressed the room: “No sorry—that’s it. Who do we have that can approach this thing that so much disrupts human functioning?”
Prof offered, “Cyn-thea, on our ToeQuest team, has often reported on her numerous episodes of this disturbing nature, and has, apparently, acclimated to them.”
East, looking dejected, said “We may never get her there in time. It will be a long trip through the ice palace.”
West sighed, showing little hope in his visage, but suggested, “Find her and get her on a Supersonic Transport.”
“No need,” said Profpat, “she lives near the target area in a quaint cabin in the wilderness. Um, I like to get to know all the ladies, although at first I thought her name was ‘Michael’. In fact, she’s been following our progress here and is getting ready.”
“Holy smokes, it’s about time we had some luck. Send our Ninja copter to pick her up. Have it’s crew recovered from the onslaught against reason?”
“Our copter is on its way, Master. Your crew is fine.”
CIA: Our tactical nukes went nowhere and plopped dead into forest somewhere. An ICBM is now on its way.
“Find a snow-tread and take Cyn-thea in as far as you can from the closest approach. Maps with routes are on the way.”
“They are? Oh, I’ll get right on it.”
A few moments passed in silence.
“She’s probably going to have to walk the last few miles alone, sir—too dense for a snowmobile and too close for anyone else to survive…” reported the Geographics leader.
CIA: The ICBM and all its multiple warheads malfunctioned. What have you guys got for me?
West replied: “We’re going to have a ninja driving a Snow-Cat through the submerged forest, with a strong-willed lady on the back. We’re going to drop it as close as we can, put it through the treetop canopy of snow, and hope for the best. We should be off and away toward the forest in about an hour.”
You’re kidding.
“It’s what we came up with. Do you have anything better?”
No, we’re at a loss. And now we have a quake near the San Andreas fault. California may soon become an island.
Time seemed to be passing the world by as all sat and fidgeted.
The black Ninja Helicopter picked up Cyn-thea at her front door and was off for a 45 minute journey over the ice. When the crew started seeing blips and spots in their eyes, they headed back a bit and hovered over the canopy. Some of the crew got out, stepping gingerly, but found the footing firm and used a large pick and shovel to dig through the canopy, making a hole large enough for the Snow-Cat to be dropped through.
Cyn-thea and her escort followed, down a rope, into this forgotten world of icy darkness and silence, although a dim light filtered through in places. There was little snow on the forest floor, more like a thick frost. The headlights shone ahead through the stillness—it had become a subterranean world. Ice crystals adorned the trees. Some small wildlife darted about. ‘Eerie’ was not enough word for it.
The Snow-Cat was soon off and following the GPS signal for a seven mile trip, and barely squeezing through some of the gaps in the trees. They still had communication with Oahu, but it was was slight and fading with their every advance. 45 minutes passed. There was one hour left.
Trouble. A wake of nausea swept over them and prompted them to take their next dose of seasickness pills, but the meds weren’t helping much. They spotted some forms in the snow and dusted them off and soon radioed the TOE Center, as they had been doing periodically.
“Hello, Cyn-thea,” answered Grandmaster East. “Wherefore art thou?”
“We’ve covered four miles somehow in this entangled forest. We are seeing skeletons on the ground, some human and some animal. And I see many more up ahead.”
East replied, “I’m afraid that all who wandered and entered there have perished—probably scared to death. It’s up to you, Cyn-thea.”
“The world needs me, and I need me,” she said, clicking off the radio. They drove on for a while, sometimes having to traverse over the bones of the many unfortunates.”
A haze of distorted being soon enveloped them after another mile, sending their brain-traffic neurotransmitters spinning, struggling to maintain control. They tried hard to ignore the visions and emotions washing over them, straining to focus. She had been here many times before, cleansing the intrusions, but it was new to the driver and he soon began his collapse, the Cat burrowing into foliage of a bush, whose color was ever-during green—the renowned color of sanity.
He stood up, then fell again. She dragged him back a few hundred feet, where-at he revived a bit, but looked groggy. Her gesturing directed him back whence they’d come. He resisted, loyal to the mission, although quite unable. They tried the radio, but it had gone silent.
“It is for me to walk the last miles alone, my friend.”
Finally, he agreed and headed back.
Back at the TOE Center: “We’ve lost contact.”
Cyn-thea retrieved the SnowCat and drove on, the forest getting denser, her hallucinations increasing by the minute. The visions were now accompanied by horrible sounds. She was hearing the workings and meanderings of her own affected brain and mind, something never meant to be heard and endured for very long. She drove on quickly, the branches whipping her, until the forest became too dense for the snowmobile. She got off.
The shards of early man now appeared, formed, and then shattered—as the primitive brain stem began failing in its task to sort out human-radiated reality from all else that was out there. She was no longer totally Sapiens, but Homo Habilis, then Erectus and Handyman.
Taken aback, she fell to her knees, overwhelmed, and began to focus on the outlines of the trees and branches, desperately attempting to bring her mind to attention—an old trick she’d learned to quell panic attacks, but this was the last frontier of horror, even considering what she’d been through in her life.
Somehow she got up and continued walking, now privy to all of earth’s invisible radiation, but soon adapted, learning to put much of it out of her mind. She could even hear the noise of thermal vibrations as she moved on.
Cyn-thea next felt the actual emotion of death and dying via suffocation, but, again, through previous practice, noted that she was indeed still breathing in and out—and so she waved death’s ebon form aside. Waves of adrenaline now swept her body from head to foot, and she nearly fainted, and sat down, in case she did, not wanting to bang her head on a rock.
She arose slowly, to avoid the hypotension of quick-rising blood pressure. Her heartbeat had to be around 180 now, and this actually helped her along—but too much of this and she would be no more. 20 minutes left.
Cyn-thea stopped and meditated, trying to focus on nothing to quiet the intrusive thoughts—as she’d learned to do. It didn’t work here as well as it had elsewhere, so she switched to another, alternate method—which was to watch the maddening thoughts go by as if in a parade, but not watching or entertaining any of them. They appeared, marched across, and exited stage right, all unattended to by the witness, her, for she was sitting in the audience way back in the back row. As for some thoughts that wouldn’t leave at all, she colored them them dim and grey—and as such they dissolved into a fog.
She got up, her heartbeat perhaps now down to 140, but many night-mares and their foals were still passing on by as wide-awake dreams. It was almost too much, now. Her very self was beginning to disintegrate, she desperately trying to hold on to that last bit of logic in a back corner of a mind somewhere—a mind that was being overwhelmed with unreality. She stumbled on, heading in the direction of increasing sickness, her only means of navigation. What’s that?
She turned off her light, for there was a glow in the distance. That was it. Ten minutes left.
The pressure upon her sense of self grew worse as she approached the glow—logic’s last gleam was fading, for life’s last light was now upon her. She was only ten feet away when waves of confusion washed all thinking away. She fell forward a few more feet and collapsed. So close.
She didn’t know it yet, but she had entered a zone of safety, that perhaps the device itself needed to be free to function unaffected by its own emanations.
Her head spun round and round as consciousness returned, another familiar sensation, but one that was never very pleasant. Four minutes left. The mental disturbances were gone now, but she still reeled from their ravages. She felt cold for the first time—then freezing. Her body had been overloaded, its thermostat not functioning anymore. It took her a minute to regroup—-she’d known cold Canadian winters before. She willed her body to function.
She stood up and faced the alien device. There was a switch. She turned it off. The glow-lights dimmed, and the machine began to fade, then to oblivion went. Was it really happening or was it hallucination? She reached out her hand to where the device was—and felt nothing. She lay down to surrender to the night and fell asleep in the crystal palace—her tomb.
Back at the TOE Center, all looked to the clock: there were 3 minutes left.
As the countdown neared zero, nearly everyone tensed.
East looked at West. “It’s been fine—this life.”
“Indeed.”
At zero, nothing happened.
The CIA called and reported: The tremors have stopped, but for the earth settling back in. All emanations have ceased. It’s over.
Cyn-thea awoke, her cheeks flushed and pink with bloom, but she knew, she knew, that it was but endorphins flooding her brain and body—one last gift from the Angel of Light that is given to the dying—so that the darker Angel of Death would not soon approach one so fair…
She closed her eyes, drifting back off towards the netherworld, but then felt some snowflakes falling on her cheek. But it can’t snow in here, she thought…
The Ninjas above were hacking through the ice canopy with pickaxes, showering her with a cooling spray where she lay in her crystalline cathedral.
A bright light shone through the hole above and a rope came down, followed by some black forms. They wrapped her in blankets of warmth, then placed her in a harness, and she was lifted up and into the heated heaven of the helicopter.
The TOE Center erupted in cheers, having watched on screen.
What happened? inquired the CIA Chief a few minutes later.
“She turned it off with three minutes left—and the alien thing just evaporated!”
Just evaporated? That’s it?—she just turned it off, three minutes early, not even near zero?
“This was not an 007 movie.”
Ah, but you only live twice: once when you’re born—and again when you stare death in the face.
“Perhaps mankind will take some pause from this, valuing life more,” said East or West.
Yes, indeed. Perhaps it has scared the Hell out of everyone. I’m still not sure what to make of all this.
“Not all things are knowable. We looked for the device—it was gone—there was no trace, but you do have a video of it.”
Well, thanks for your help. I don’t know how you did it, but you sure pulled this one out of your butts.
“Great anal-ogy. I’m afraid we don’t really know how we did it ether.”
It’s beyond me. Now, about the news media and that alien thing—it never happened.”
“Ha, yes, I guess it never did, for it’s no longer there.”
Poet to poet, Austin and Cyn-thea rendered the details of Cyn-thea’s journey—he visiting her in the wildnerness—into the final TOE-CIA report, through the highest power of language: poetry, one that tries to flesh the truth in living words finely dressed.
Later, using the Grandmaster’s pass, he filed the account, after all had read it, into the tube of Secrets and That Which Never Happened, one that led to the vault, twenty miles straight down into the earth. He noted the maintenance stairway beside it, where none had ever gone, and looked in—the master knew he would—to see it spiral down into Neverland. So strangely compelling it was that Austin ventured down, underground, beyond all sight and sound…
To learn the Secrets—what IS and ev’r WAS,
One must brave the crypt and ghost of cause…
So, into the deep, he went, without pause,
To look down, ever down, no self to keep—
Through birth, death, and the shade of sleep,
Through paths unkempt, underswept—to the deep,
Through the cloudy strife
Of this hazy life,
Past the realm of the things which seem or are,
Even o’er the steps of the remotest bar.
Down, down! Where the mind whirls round and round,
Down, down! As the ear draws the sound,
As the eye the light,
As the dark the fright,
Beyond all death, despair, love, and sorrow,
Past yesterday, today, and tomorrow,
The body’s guide but the spirit of the soul.
Down, down! Through the fog, the not, and the void;
Down! Where reigns the night and the air is thin,
To where sky and stars are not, but within,
Where the radiant have not their throne,
Where there are some pervading, all alone.
Down, down! To the fathoms of the cryptic;
Down, down! Where substance slept with arithmetic,
Toward the spark yet nursed by embers,
To the first and last that Life remembers,
To seek the gem that shines—the wealth of mines,
The jewels so treasured by thee and thine.
Down, down! We guide thee, we must carry thee;
Down, down! We’re illumination beside thee…
Fear not the proof—it’s the beauty of truth:
Here, the enigma of the immortal
Is undone and unloosed, through life’s portal—
The Theory of Everything mortal—
The Idea That Became a door to.
CRYSTAL MEMORIES
From Spring to Winter
2013
From her hilltop cabin of logs, Cyn-thea
Recalls the ice—once in her veins, the freeze;
Lo, Canadian lilacs have bloomed, at last.
Nature Springs from Winter’s tomb,
The bloom already in the seed,
The tree contained within the acorn.
Crystal fragments remain—sharp memories
Of the ventures in which she shattered not.
Surging sprigs sprout from the soil;
Spring showers make the Summer flower.
All the seasonings arrive at her door,
For all things come ‘round to those who observe.
Summer wakes from Spring’s dying kiss,
Blooming when the rose does,
Sunning after the Spring’s running.
She could never be too warm—
She’d endured the frost;
The kaleidoscope revolves: life’s cycle.
Summer reigns upon the land,
Eventually fading in the night.
Life’s second bloom shines upon middle age,
Colors her mind—the rainbow’s shimmering.
Autumn Falls as Summer leaves,
Harvesting its sum of days,
Seconding the rose of Spring.
The hearthstone fire glows heartily with her self
As she stokes the flames of the wondering soul.
The smile meets the tear—
Fall’s embers last through December.
It snows atop the trees, ne’er falling in,
Entombing a spring that waits for the miracle.
Ice winds stalk the weed flowers,
The ghosts frosting the dead stalks,
Snow crystals barring all that grows.
She’s in the cabin safe, snug, warm, and whole.
Winter is death cooled over;
Melting snows feed Spring waters.
Sciwriter, I am happy to finally be here!
I hope you do not mind some company in um,*say maybe we could write a story together like the good old days.
I admire your work, you are a truly dedicated writer.
I especially liked the frozen winter, and the frog sitting in the butter. I must admit I have not yet read all of your written work on this page as it is 1:37 am and I am tired.
So Sciwriter, I am unable to write you messages yet since I only have 1 thread written so far, and I am really happy to be here. I can't wait to start a piece with you!
I am about to embark on an incredibly dangerous mission with my special agent partner, who is yet to be named.(I'll leave that up to you, for your own character), we are going where nobody has yet to go, but where people have already lived and are a partof the World's History. I will start the new story tomorrow, seeds of imagination are sprouting again-it feels great. I await your response A. from your lovely friend, TaWriter
I hope you do not mind some company in um,*say maybe we could write a story together like the good old days.
I admire your work, you are a truly dedicated writer.
I especially liked the frozen winter, and the frog sitting in the butter. I must admit I have not yet read all of your written work on this page as it is 1:37 am and I am tired.
So Sciwriter, I am unable to write you messages yet since I only have 1 thread written so far, and I am really happy to be here. I can't wait to start a piece with you!
I am about to embark on an incredibly dangerous mission with my special agent partner, who is yet to be named.(I'll leave that up to you, for your own character), we are going where nobody has yet to go, but where people have already lived and are a partof the World's History. I will start the new story tomorrow, seeds of imagination are sprouting again-it feels great. I await your response A. from your lovely friend, TaWriter