The Subtopian Magazine Issue Twelve

The Adventures of Vernon Q. Public

by Eric Suhem

Subtopian Manifesto XII.

by Trevor D. Richardson Here’s the lesson I’ve discovered while researching for my current novel: There doesn’t have to be a God for there to be an Apocalypse.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mean this in the sense of a coming, unavoidable end that you hear about from the global warming people or astronomers or people like that. The idea I mean to convey is that if there are people in the world that believe God will smite the earth then they will find a way to make it so. They’ll create their Tribulations, their Anti-Christ, their Armageddon. They can make God real if they want him to be. This is a frightening notion, but important to think about. The dangers of doomsayer religion is that it teaches people to hope for fire and brimstone. It makes people wish for destruction. Nietzsche called this “preaching death.” It was his main issue with religion, it makes you live for the afterlife instead of for the real world, sometimes even at the expense of the real world. I truly believe that this is at the heart of why everyone seems so preoccupied with the next “end of the world.” Why we’re always looking for it.

The message of Subtopian has always been that we could find Utopia by studying our place in between Armageddon and Paradise. My message, on the basis of the idea of a self-made wrath of God, is that we could just as easily create a selfmade Utopia. With enough minds believing and pursuing a notion, anything is possible. The issue is that our society is pre-programmed to look for death and smiting because of our cultural, religious heritage. The only way to make a better world is to change that, to let it go, to abandon our attachment to the idea of God destroying the world someday because if we are going to move forward as a society we have to stop waiting for the end and start building for the future.

Be on the lookout for Subtopian Press’ upcoming release of

Collaborating with Angels Rob Lee’s photo-memoir

Spring 2013

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A Nation of Lone Nuts

How exceptional is the U.S.A.? Shall we count the ways? It is definitely exceptional that we can expect, on a regular basis, guys with multiple guns to walk into schools, shopping malls and even restaurants and start shooting people.

The shock value of these shooting incidents has been diluted by repetition. And we know that each one is treated as an individual “lone-nut” thing. Because we must not address the larger social/cultural/political/ spiritual reasons why this has become a regular and frequent thing in exceptional America.

The seminal Lone Nut, the model, was Lee Harvey Oswald, the designated patsy in the JFK assassination. Oswald, for extra measure, had been to Soviet Russia and so could conveniently be tagged as a communist or at least a sympathizer. You know, un-American for sure. Then we got Sirhan Sirhan, who took the rap for killing Bobby Kennedy and gave us an early taste of Islamophobia. Not long after, a southern white guy named James Earl Ray (don’t they all have three names?), all on his own of course, shot Martin Luther King Jr. The fact that the Kennedys and King had serious enemies in high places was mere coincidence. Then some guy called Mark David Chapman shot John Lennon, a musician who obviously didn’t know his place and had the temerity to protest war in a big, loud way that reached a whole lot of people. Each of these men, killed by Lone Nuts, 1

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just happened to be messing with the wrong forces. Thank goodness these powers were relieved of these annoyances by unhinged individuals, who of course were connected in no way to government, big business or any other institution threatened by the murdered men.

Conspiracy Theory became a popular buzzword and still serves handsomely to dismiss or trivialize anyone questioning the Official Story. And the official story is always of a Lone Nut. We do have real Lone Nuts of course, after all there is no political reason to fire on random people in a school, shopping center or restaurant. Is there?

So the question becomes, how do they get that way, and why do they do it. We have theories and statements from experts of all stripes. The gun control dialog is a complete waste of time and energy, since like drugs, people who want them will get them. The legality - or not - of these commodities is irrelevant. The question is, why do they want guns? And there are those who would like to blame violent movies and video games, but why are people drawn to these? Are we an inherently angry and vengeful lot? We sure do like to see the “bad guys” get it, don’t we? Shouldn’t the vicarious experience of violent entertainment be enough? Apparently, not for everyone.

Well these are the questions, and I won’t pretend to answer them. But I am suggesting that our culture refuses to examine itself. And why is that? As the head monkey said to Charlton Heston as rode off to find the truth, “You might not like what you find.”

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INNOCEN pened, rather than look for a word or a place for our blame or our sorrows we say it shouldn’t have been.

It defies logic. It defies reason. It... I don’t have the words.

Nobody ever talks about how hard it is being a writer during those times when you’re not supposed to have the words. That’s what everybody says, you know?

It’s our way of voicing the size of a tragedy or the weight of our gratitude in any number of situations.

You say you’re speechless. You say, “I don’t have the words.”

When your bread and butter, the lifeblood of your soul, and all your hope in the world is words it can be very difficult to hold up under the responsibility of honoring the dead with silence. That’s what writers are, after all, the ones who won’t keep silent, the ones who feel compelled to voice what cannot or even must not be voiced. It’s a twofold problem. On the one hand, you hear people saying “words cannot describe this tragedy” and on the other you have a society clamoring for anyone to find the right words.

The duty of the writer is to find those words. Talk about “no pressure.”

“What can you say after something like this?”

That’s one that seems common when things go bad.

I’ve always been intrigued by the way we express emotion by expressing our inability to express it.

Reread that sentence, I promise it makes sense.

Rather than saying, “Thank you,” we say “I can’t thank you enough.” When something is beautiful we say it’s “indescribable.” That’s right, think on that, “indescribable” is a descriptive term. When a sick man hurts people we say it never should have hap-

Can I just sit back and ask for a moment of silence?

Can I express my emotion by describing how they 3

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Rachael Johnson, the founder and writer of this particular regular feature in Subtopian, has moved on to new challenges and has, to use a familiar comic book expression, hung up the cowl. But the mission continues and the search for a replacement will likely be long, difficult, and bittersweet. Her insight was as keen as her journalistic sense for story and it seems to me that if she were here writing today she would have something important to say about the recent shootings. I guess, like so many heroes hanging up the cape, the responsibility falls to the next in line, the one nearest by, someone fighting the fight beside them. The cowl goes to me until we can find a suitable replacement.

NT BLOOD cannot be expressed? I can’t. I’m a writer. It’s a tough job but I’d die if I couldn’t do it. The only thing there is to say is that the pain created in that moment in Sandy Hollow will ripple through time, likely creating more victims and more pain. But make no mistake, you and I have no right to say we are all victims here. The arrogance of such statements goes unnoticed far too often. For me to say “I am a victim of the Connecticut shootings,” even as a message of solidarity and support, is a slap in the face to those that lost loved ones, suffered physical injuries, or will feel the lifelong pain of knowing one of the fallen dead. We have no right to that pain. We are bystanders. To us it is hearsay, nothing more. I pity the people, I feel a rage and a compassion side by side that make me want to build a better world for those that were hurt, but I cannot put myself in the same proverbial boat as those that were actually in it. I honor them too much to cheapen their pain with such petty words. Though the victims are innumera-

ble, we are not all victims. And despite the shock of this utterance we should take comfort in one thing, those who were not victims can be there for the hurting to help, support and rebuild. In the end, what else is there to say? If I can help I will.

The moniker of this literary venture in journalism is “Stuck On Repeat.” In the past, we’ve taken a look at the repetition of heroic forms in literature throughout history, we’ve analyzed dangerous predators, poor sanitation in the meat industry, and have dissected books, politics, and all the et cetera that make a society whatever it may be, but this is a different type of topic altogether. This goes beyond the age old question of why people still kill each other. We’re beyond the outcry for gun control or the arguments about how people are still animalistic in nature. After all, humans are the only animal that creates weapons to commit mass murder. If we want to unpack that argument the conclusion will always

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What makes us this way? Why do we go to war over trivialities? Why do so many young men throughout our history wind up sublimating dark urges through ghoulish murders repeated as meticulously as a religious rite? And above all, why do people keep shooting up our schools?

Only in the darkest pages of our history have people allowed violence against children. Piles of infants in Holocaust photography come to mind, but there are other instances, a large percentage of the lives lost during the Trail of Tears were children, for example. But this is something else. No matter the darkness of such examples, there is always something else going on, a kind of unfocused rage that takes down father, mother, and child alike. Shootings like the events at Sandy Hollow, Connecticut are targeted at kids. Such refined hatred, selective killing, has historically only been seen in events with a religious bent to them like human sacrifices in primitive cultures to appease gods for a harvest or, maybe a little more familiar, King Herod’s slaughter of the innocents in the New Testament. A man, ruled by fear of losing his kingdom to the newborn Messiah, orders the murder of every child in Israel. There are other examples similar to this, the last plague of Egypt killed all the firstborn children in the country – this time it was God doing the killing, but it’s still worth noting. Jonestown, perhaps the most famous suicide cult occurrence in our history, involved the poisoning of the city’s children when Jim Jones, the town leader, declared the world was ending as the FBI closed in.

The reason I bring in all of these comparisons to religion and occult practices is to say that there has always been a desire to hurt children when people have felt that their world was crashing down around them. In some cases, like that of Herod or primitive human sacrifices, the children were harmed in order to prevent a loss or achieve some kind of goal. In others, however, the children have been killed as a means of protecting them from the evils of the world or from some kind of perceived doomsday.

The fact of the matter is, no matter what the reason, whether it is fear or self-preservation or insanity or even a warped kind of faith, these things are happening almost regularly. America has had a similar shooting nearly every single year going back farther than I care to list. I looked it up, expecting to find that the violence had only really begun in the past few decades, and was shocked to find instances going back to the 19th Century and beyond. The list is appalling, some you’ve heard of, others you haven’t, but the sad truth is we have never been more “stuck on repeat” than we are when it comes to this. It isn’t just the occasional shooting that you hear about in the media. It seriously happens nearly every year, sometimes more than once. There are entire libraries on the topic of why this happens or how we continue to allow it to happen, but what truly interests me is how we ever reached this point at all. In some cases the shooters have been children, often pushed to the edge by bullying or abuse, in others they are adults targeting children in places that should otherwise be safe havens. The shootings in Norway some years ago come to mind in which a man swam out to an island where some boy scout types were having a summer camp. Maybe you remember the details... it was dark, tragic, and for some reason immediately following a bombing in Oslo.

I only bring it up because I have found myself wondering if these things are a response to something in the social climate. I’m not talking about video games or violent movies. Many school shootings in American history predate film anyway. What I mean is, if you take the Oslo event you have a massive tragedy, a kind of doomsday in an otherwise safe, peaceful place – the first terrorist attack this city had ever faced – and almost immediately after, as if in response to this, a man takes a gun out to an island and shoots a bunch of kids. I’m not a particularly educated person and by no means do I intend to present an argument here that is 5

regulars any kind of a scientific hypothesis. Nor do I intend to claim that this is researched, quantifiable, or factual. I just have a thought, more like a question. When I thought about Oslo and the feeling of Armageddon in their streets it made me wonder if the two were connected. Does the climate of inevitable destruction inspire a certain type of person to violence?

When I take a look at the Sandy Hook shootings I can’t help looking at the date. December 14, 2012. One week prior to the over-hyped ridiculousness of December 21st, 2012 and the supposed “End of the World.”

I look at Columbine, the end of the last century and the brink of “Y2K.” Another doomsday scenario and another batch of shootings. There were more to follow that year, enough that it almost seemed contagious.

I can think back to early last year, a man named Harold Camping spread rumors that May 21st would be the date of the Christian Rapture. The only school shooting that took place last year in America happened in the spring, right around the time the hype was really picking up for this particular end of the world scenario.

There are tons more examples like this, moments where the troubled, the weak or the frightened hurt people when the social atmosphere is one of potential catastrophe. I imagine a man on the edge looking to take a few with him, someone crashing a plane full of passengers, mothers driving their cars into lakes with their babies in the back – the point is, when people think their lives are ending they are extremely dangerous.

Add to that the prevalence of those wishing to be noticed in their last violent moments in this world and it’s a hazardous mixture. Many school shootings in our history have involved suicide. Some on record were nothing more than a child committing suicide in front of his peers as if to say, “You did this to me.” People on ledges don’t just jump, they wait for the news. We want an audience to our destruction. Somebody with this urge might select a location where they’re apt to get the most news coverage. Someone with these issues might be pushed somewhere they weren’t likely to go if it weren’t for the voices out there telling them the world was ending anyway. And, like King Herod, I can even envision a kind of “slaughtering of the innocents” when someone thinks destruction was imminent. A kind of sacrifice to preserve the kingdom.

Or, conversely, I can envision the thought process of an emotionally disturbed young man envisioning such action as a kind of mercy kill to protect the little ones from the coming Tribulation.

Put it all together and my point is simple. We’re a society obsessed with destruction. Our religions feature violent, fiery ends and our gods are either wrathful or recovering wrathful genocidal maniacs. Worse than any of this, we are entertained by destruction. This entertainment goes beyond violent film or bloody games.

We are entertained by the notion of social collapse, nuclear fallout, zombie apocalypses and the seemingly inevitable end of our world. It is conversation for friends over drinks or people on dates, fathers with their sons, wives with their husbands: what would you do if the world ended? That has to contribute to the pressures of those sad few who break in a way that takes countless others with them – and do it bloody. Whether they’re trying to speed the destruction along or fend it off with the sacrifice of innocent blood, one thing is clear: our society is so inebriated with a coming end that we still look for it in any corner or rumor imaginable. The belief in Armageddon is so integrated it is practically genetic, dating back to the earliest roots of our religions, yet even as we have moved away from God toward secular philosophies and science some of us still seem to be making our blood offerings to appease the old gods.

So what is there to say next? What can a writer pen to put hope back into a hopeless situation? Only this, perhaps the issue isn’t in violent media, but a cultural fascination with disaster. Maybe things won’t get better until people stop hoping for Armageddon and start hoping, and fighting, for Paradise.

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I was living in Frisco at the time. Can’t remember why...maybe a girl, maybe a job, maybe no reason at all, maybe I just wanted to be there, then. So I was feeling bored one afternoon and decided to take a road trip north up U.S. Route 101 into Canada via Vancouver. I was driving a 1958 Mercury Turnpike Cruiser, not that anyone noticed—noticed that I was doing the speed limit, going about 5-10 mph over the posted speed in fact. But cars kept passing me. A loaded dump truck with a loaded trailer even passed me...going up a long, steep hill. I felt slow, like gas passed between Rastas, as cars cut in front of the old Merc close enough to force me to swerve at least a half-dozen times between Frisco and V city.

No one signals. No one cares.

But it starts with something as simple as a signal—the mounting, ominous, high-speed problems pending: this country’s problems; society’s problems; our neighbor’s problems...our problems--start with a signal. Common courtesy? Common sense! Christ on a crutch! It is not, in my experience, a large or heavy instrument: it is not constructed of cast iron and it does not consume such a space as to squeeze out the driver or impair his or her vision intolerably, or a sentient instrument that is offended by touch, touched by the soul or soiled by the skin... It’s just a fucking signal...right there by your fingertips...USE IT!! You inconsiderate pigfucker!! I yell and curse, and give another driver the finger as he pushes dangerously in front of the Merc, into my lane. I then notice with incredulity that there are no cars behind him; no other cars can be seen--no cars pushing him pressuring him to speed up and pass me. And yet, he cuts right in front of me. I swerve once again and wonder why?

Fucking flabbergasted, I then find that the driver is in fact fingering me back...?

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From Vancouver, it was east across beautiful British Columbia, over the Rocky Mountains and down into Alberta to the city of Lethbridge where I somehow managed to get myself kicked out of the Galt Museum (a stunning, magnificently massive glass structure that commanded my entire attention for well over an hour) after shoving an obnoxiously arrogant aristocrat type from behind, down a flight of freshly wet-mopped and pudding-polished cement stairs with no handrails. Well, he cut in front of me without even saying ‘excuse me’—almost knocked me over in his hurry to get in front of me in line, and then had the audacity to step on the rare and revered Pandit Ravi Shankar autographed hemp sandal adorning my left foot. He didn’t even say he was sorry. Inconsiderate shitheel bastard that he no doubt had to have been...

Now, there may have been a singularly specific something that had grasped my senses with such commanding totality as to leave me outside staring at the building’s architectural aesthetic for that long, but for the life of me I can’t remember what it could have been... (A family of fifteen eventually became concerned at my long-standing motionlessness, asked if I was alright, then the wife who had a particularly pinched and puckered face—really, the face of an asshole, accused me of being drunk or stoned after which they all pushed past me in a most brazen fashion in their quest to get to the front door first—I wasn’t drunk goddamnit. I mean, I ask you honestly, what kind of a fucking flask-addict freak would willingly enter a glass building drunk? That would be irresponsible and dangerous now wouldn’t it...?) After the Galt Museum incident, I drove down across the 49th parallel. No hassles at the border thank Christ, considering the body I had in the trunk...well, it wasn’t actually a body—not a dead body anyway—just a guy I met at a bar who’d bet me fifty 8

bucks and a ride across the border he could drink a bottle of Canadian whiskey upside down through a seventy-five foot length of industrial-strength, kink-free garden hose while masturbating to some old Motorhead song (might’ve been “Dirty Love” come to think of it...) that was crashing out of the sound surround speakers. Claimed he could shoot the moon before the song ended. I told him nobody was interested in watching a drunken cowboy perform in that way...now if he would be willing to incorporate a lasso into his twisted act, I suggested softly, and succeeded in roping one of the waitresses round the waist from an impressive distance...perhaps, but even then, probably not. But, he insisted, despite heavy protestations from many of the patrons present. He was no doubt, a stubborn sort.

Anyway, I won the bet because the stupid bastard passed out halfway through Lemmy’s second chorus. We were both bodily removed from that fine establishment and not knowing what to do with the guy (I had him slung over my shoulder in a fireman’s carry), tossed him in the trunk and decided to drop him off at any one of the many Denny’s in Denver whenever I eventually passed through. After crossing the border, I drove down, then across and down again through Montana into Why-oh-whyWyoming?! (I might think of retiring to this blank sheet of a state one day...or not), then made my way down to a little town just outside of Aspen to hook up with an outlaw journalist friend of mine for a botanically-fuelled weekend in the woods. From there I made the long descent into Lost Vegas.

A few miles outside of town, the air-conditioning on the Merc decided to take its own vacation. Bad timing, I thought...95 degrees in the desert; vultures in the sky...vultures on the road.

My associate was in Vegas attending a...convention of sorts. He insisted I meet him for drinks at the Circus-Circus Casino when I arrived in town. With no AC and in no hurry to get anywhere anyway,

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I obliged.

As luck would have it, my associate had an associate who knew a guy who had an air-conditioning unit for a 1958 Mercury Turnpike Cruiser. Just like mine. Said he’d install it for a small fee. Right... the small fee turned out to be a long night of hard drinking, dangerous drugs and dancing naked in the storm tunnels beneath the Vegas strip. There I met the tunnel people: Rank, the dude who would install the AC unit for a SMALL fee, and a determined dyke named Nancy who Rank loved a lot but felt frightened of when she would yell at him in very high operatic tones and run her “short and getting shorter” fingernails over a rusty cheese grader in the dark just to scare him. So he would feel real fear but refuse to face it and find he had no voice—no choice, but to yield to her aggressive verbiage and sharp knuckles. Nancy liked Rank a little but felt like kicking him in the balls hard at least twice with her heaviest boots on when he talked tearfully of their love washing away should the rain fall four days and the tunnels turn to rivers. Despite their complicated relationship, they invited my associate and I into their humble subterranean lair, where they fed us fudge and entertained us with strange sex and even stranger stories of survival. But hey! What the hell! They were real nice folks. Kind, considerate, and respectful of the feelings of others—not like the selfish, heartless, line-jumping, god-fearing greedy fucks up above, on the strip, with their noses so high in the dry desert air that they bleed multi-colored neon twenty-four hours a night.

Sometime late the next day, I headed the Merc towards Frisco—towards home, and ignored all the people that cut me off without signaling. I had come to expect it—to accept it—and in a weird way, to understand it. My circle had finally come to a close.

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Michael K. White Delmonte, Indiana October 29, 2028

And here are the Gribble brothers, Scott, and James, driving with aimless determination in their Shop Rag Delivery truck, Scott merrily drinking beer but James moodily sober due to beer’s hazardous interaction with his Herbal Prozac regimen. It was Internet Herbal Prozac which contained, “Tanna leaves, Bitterroot, Ginseng, Caffeine, ground Peruvian mummy extract, Goyana, Valerian Root, Progesterone, adrenechrome, laxatives, strychnine, laudanum and fluoride,� and James was using it to medicate himself for his chronic depression.

It was a cold gray day and the air inside the delivery truck was fetid and oily smelling. People sometimes threw rocks at the truck, not because it delivered greasy rags to industrial buildings but because it was one of the dwindling fleet of diesel powered vehicles that had become so political incorrect in recent years.

Not that the Gribble brothers cared about what was and what as not politically incorrect. In fact the whole PC concept was alien to them for they were throwback to a simpler time of chemical rather than biogenetic drugs, throbbing house music and thin metallic shirts.

It was almost Halloween, usually a day of no particular interest to the Gribble brothers, except for the parties. There was a smoke smell in the air and the odd flash of orange against the grayness of the world. The orange was the synthetic pumpkins that adorned every doorstep, huge monstrous hybrids that lasted seven months without wilting and were made from the finest polymer/vegetable fibers bundling in existence. Their orange color was almost fluorescent. It made James feel depressed.

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James grabbed at the huge four foot acrylic bong that rested between him and his brother. It was filled with stinky bong water that sloshed around and onto the floorboards.

“Fuck man!” Scott said, bobbing his head intently to the pulsing beat of “Robot March” by the industrial retro band Cameltoe. “Watch that shit!”

James paid his fraternal twin brother no mind. Scott did not have the intelligence or sensitivity to understand James’s depression. Scott just liked to party. James felt sorry for him.

Scott shifted gears in time to the music while James sifted through a neon green baggie. The tobaccojuana they had bought was called Carolina Kind. It was a hybrid of two illegal substances, tobacco and marijuana and sold for a thousand dollars a quarter ounce. This was no big deal to Scott and James since they made seven hundred dollars an hour delivering rags to machine shops. They were slightly ashamed of their low paying jobs, but as long as they could afford the weed they were happy.

James looked closely at the gray, slightly oily dried flower tops he was about to smoke. There was a time, a long time ago, when he could remember colored flowers. The smell strips and neon dyed flowers they had now which replicated the way flowers supposedly used to smell and look all seemed the same. His memory of their smell was different. Sweeter. Less chemical.

“Fuck man!” James sputtered as his brother inexpertly drove the truck over a speed bump and full throttle. James had dropped a particularly nice bud onto the floor board where it now rested in a pool of greasy bong water.

“You fuck,” James said sadly as his brother cackled and spat through his side window onto the rutted, shredded rubber street.

“Give me one of them beers.” James said gloomily and drank without reflection. James’s depression was based on the hopelessness of it all. He was born twenty years previously, without the usual psychic defenses ordinary people had. He didn’t believe in God because he knew there was no God, only a random series of events which in retrospect looked like some kind of half assed destiny. He had no illusions about anything at all, therefore he had no hopes or dreams, realizing as he did that everything was random chance and dumb luck. He saw the world not as a wonderful beautiful place, but as a random and chaotic nightmare, a giant boot always poised over his head to come crashing down at the first sway of the Giant Pendulum.

Scott did not share his brother’s view and it maddened James to see Scott believing in things like ghosts, ESP TV and government by republic.

“You better wise up Scott,” he’d warn. “Get off it,” he’d snarl, but Scott would laugh, LAUGH at him. It galled James that his brother could laugh in the face of such hopelessness. James only laughed when something bad happened to somebody else. Then he laughed so hard his sides hurt.

Something shifted in the back of the truck.

“Look out for Sir Clement, you dick!” James said to his erratically driving fraternal twin. Both jerked their necks and glanced into the back of the truck to see their seven-year-old dachshund Sir Clement Atlee twisting a bundle of fluorescent orange rags violently back and forth in his mouth.

“He’s pissed.” Scott said.

“Maybe we should’ve fed him.”

“Fuck him. He puked in my bed. I’m going to make him fight Larry.”

“He just ate those flowers mom got. From that Volleyball lawyer.”

“I hate that guy.” Scott said.

“Yeah.”

“I’m glad then Sir Clement ate his fucking flowers.”

“Yeah.” James said in a tragic tone which was utterly lost on his uncomplicated brother.

They pulled the rag delivery truck into an apartment parking lot. It was a boxy apartment complex that adjoined the new Green Highway, so named for its bright and unnaturally green asphalt. The idea was from the environmentalists who insisted that all roadways be green to mimic the glory of nature. The result howev12

er, was a catastrophic increase in sudden off road single vehicle accidents and accompanying fatalities. Gradually the populace grew used to it however and now, like orange golf balls, no one gave it a second thought.

The apartment complex was a pink stucco affair that looked like someone had poured Pepto Bismal over a milk crate. The single bedroom units rented monthly for seven thousand dollars, one water faucet per unit to conserve water. The hum of the cars gliding down the Green Highway and the oily smell of the gray flowers growing wildly in the median mingled with the usual October smells of distant burning fireplaces and snow heavy clouds.

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The song playing on the tape player was “Erecta” by Tekmania and its marching stomping churchy litany of growls ceased abruptly as Scott turned off the rumbling truck. The lack of heavy sound jolted James, who felt jerked down to earth like a balloon on a string in a tight little fist. Instead in his tight little fist was the gray tobaccojuana bud, staining his fingers with the oily resin that made it so delicious to smoke.

The doors squeaked like all old truck doors do and the Gribble brothers each made their way to the identical blocks of low rent apartments behind the mall. Scott was dressed in wide ugly elephant bell-bottom jeans with a red velvet shirt sporting oversize collar and cuffs. James was wearing skintight black rubber pants and a silvery shirt which made his hair gel liquefy with inner heat, jeopardizing his careful coif. The Gribble brother’s fussy fastidiousness was greatly mocked at the Rag Delivery Company, but the Gribble brothers didn’t care. They were going to get their Industrial Techno Band off the ground any day now. And FUCK everyone who ever mocked them. They would shove it all up their noses and

“I don’t see Larry’s bike.” Scott said.

They went into a pink Building with a giant black 2 painted on the outside wall and made their way up to Apartment 75 where they gave the secret knock. This knock consisted of the drumbeat to the hideously popular candy metal song “Flora” a song with such a distinctive beat that even a room full of schizophrenic gasoline huffers could recognize it. There was no answer, as usual, so they went in. Sir Clement could be heard barking furiously downstairs.

“God damn him!” James complained.

The apartment was fetid and trash strewn and populated by three guys other than themselves who sat more or less in a circle, surrounded by scraps of paper, trash, knives and other accoutrements. They were also surrounded by at least ten gasoline cans and the room reeked of gasoline, a liquid now almost on par with gold in a per ounce market.

Apartment 75 had started out to be just another rag drop until the Gribble brothers figured out what these guys were using the rags for. Scott and James said nothing because they knew nothing was expected.

James tossed the bundle of rags he brought up into a corner and took his place in the circle and lit a cigarette.

The room was hazy with cigarette smoke. James grabbed an oily rag and a gas can and gingerly poured the precious gas onto the rag. Then he held the rag against his face and inhaled as deeply as possible.

Each guy had his own way of huffing gas. One guy would pour it in a cup, like coffee and sniff and savor it. Another guy would literally snort it, his face perpetually red, and his nose taking on a rotten purple sheen, like bad fruit. Most guys though, like Scott and James, just used rags and huffed.

When the blood rush drained from his head, James noticed Orlando was next to him talking. Orlando was their schizophrenic leader and it was his apartment that they used to huff gas in. He gesticulated wildly with his cigarette and James could see that Orlando had been Dumpster diving behind Social Services again and was meticulously piecing together shredded documents because he believed in his schizophrenia that they all related to him.

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“I’ll tell you one thing or two I’m not gonna spend my whole life running from the chalk. Chalk is a flaky thing like passion and ideas and I won’t run from flaky things anymore without permission from Bob Cummings.

It’s all related the underground war polite war a war of politeness because nothing is as it seems everything is alive and thinking and watching and we walk around in a cloud and the cameras see everything and nothing is unspoken except in your mind. In the light of your mind. Your mind is the sky and the thoughts are lights like shooting stars. God is everywhere except when he’s not. His limousine has eight wheels because the axles are too light to hold His golden robes. Why do you think he made all the flowers turn gray because He’s sending a message that’s why. He’s saying send more gold. I need more gold. That’s why the flowers are the color of lead because they’re bullets bullets from God. BANG! See? See?”

Orlando’s eyes were pinned and the intensity of what he was saying was palatable. Encased in layers of gas fumes smoke curtains and closed windows Sir Clement’s barking could be heard faintly like a ticking clock or a chirping cricket; a background noise in metronymic syncopation with the scene happening within.

James handed the gas soaked rag to Larry who was slumped next to him. Larry, a lumpen, dull witted man with jet back hair parted like an open book, took it wordlessly and inhaled, the waistband of his sweat pants heaving at his chest.

“Where’s your bike Larry?” James asked and watched while Larry lowered the rag. He was head rushing and James knew he couldn’t answer him. Larry’s eyes were fixed but unknowing and his face was turning a bright red. The odd thing was that he wasn’t blinking. James waited until the red went down in his face and he blinked, once, twice as if in surprise.

“It broke,” he said to James sullenly.

“Drag. You need a ride back?”

Scott shot James a dirty look. The other guys in the room were in their own little worlds, each smoking like a chimney, waving gasoline soaked rags around and trying to reassemble bits of shredded paper with scotch tape.

“Man you don’t understand. I’m talking about power. God himself comes here and tells me, Orlando, take a shower Orlando wash the sink. He pulls up in his limo. I know it’s him because I can hear his voice with my heart. Do you understand? The others whisper but God speaks out plainly. You guys be careful. Be careful out there. We live in a world without color. We live in a world..”

“Let’s go,” Scott said looking at his watch. “We got two more deliveries.”

James stood up and handed Orlando a gas soaked rag. Orlando laid the rag over his face like a holy handkerchief, completely covering his features. Then he placed his cigarette in his lips, over the rag and puffed, inhaling the smoke through the gas soaked filter, listening to whatever God wanted to tell him.

“Can I still have a ride?” Larry demanded.

“Yeah okay. You got a fifty for gas?” Scott demanded back.

“No,” Larry said, but he did have.

“Then walk.” James said.

“Okay, I have a fifty.” Larry admitted and gave Scott the hundred-dollar bill he had gotten in the mail from his mother in Florida. As he took the bill out and handed it to Scott, something else fell out of his pocket.

It was small with a green stem. James picked it up. It was a bright yellow flower bud.

“What’s this?” James asked Larry, almost accusingly.

“A flower. My mom sent it from Florida.”

James scrutinized the flower. It didn’t feel like other flowers, had no oily residue at all. At first James 14

assumed it was a syntheflower but this one felt like a real thing, not some bonded genetic polymer. It was as if James could feel that it had once been alive. And the yellow wasn’t right. It wasn’t yellow enough, like the flowers at King Safeway, or Lunamart; the dyed ones that were the way flowers used to be. This bud was another kind of yellow, a kind that touched something deep inside of James and surprised him with its precise penetration into his soul.

“Give it,” said Larry, holding out his hand for the bud. Scott was walking out the door, putting the hundred dollar bill into his pocket. James held onto the flower bud, this was something special, he could feel it.

Now it was his. Larry held out his hand.

“Give it.”

James just looked at him. He wished Larry could understand that this flower no longer belonged to him.

James held the bud up to his nose and sniffed. Beneath the rank stench of gasoline, cigarette smoke and body sweat was something sweet, deep and atavistically familiar all at the same time. It was something he was just on the edge of defining. James wished Larry would understand that this flower was his now.

3

The clouds had come down lower and harder and the afternoon had gone gray while the boys were huffing gas. Scott and James walked to the delivery truck, in a Technicolor octane haze gesturing for Larry to ride in the back, like a dog.

“You ride in the back, like a dog.’ Scott told him and Larry obeyed because he had no choice. He needed a ride to get his bike. He wanted his flower back though. He thought maybe James would give it back to him soon. Larry possessed a simple mind, largely unaltered by thirty six years of neglect, sweatpants and basketball.

And his bike.

“Where’s your bike?” James asked him as he held the impossibly beautiful flower bud up to his nose and inhaled deeply, as if huffing the finest premium gasoline there was.

“At the elementary school. I play basketball there.” Larry anxiously watched James bond with the flower. He knew on a primordial level what this meant. It was HIS flower but he was helpless to reclaim it. He just wanted to get what was left of his bike at the elementary school.

As the truck lurched toward the school, Larry hunched down in the back and tried not to be cold. His remembered his bike; his beloved bike and he felt a twinge in the pit of his stomach and a flash burn of anger.

Then he remembered his humiliation last night, or had it only been a dream a horrible dream. Yes, it had been a dream. He cheered up instantly. He felt warm in his chest. It hadn’t really happened. Hadn’t he dreamed things before that hadn’t really happened? Like prison? He wondered what he would eat when he got back to the tiny room he lived in by himself. He had already forgotten about the flower his mother had sent him from Florida.

“I just don’t think it’s right to give him a ride.”

“What the fuck? It isn’t our diesel. We could drive around all day charging mutants like Larry...”

“That’s just it James. We could get our asses fired. For what? Hey what is that?”

James felt a stab of anger and he reflexively hid the bud in his hand.

“It’s just some floureoflower Larry had. I like the way the benzene smells.”

Scott was instantly suspicious. “That didn’t look like no floureoflower. The colors weren’t neon enough.

You got a real flower don’t you dude. Old school. That shits worth bucks”

James was silent. He hated Scott. He hated him but he also pitied him that all he could see was the monetary value while James realized the true beauty of owning such a rare and natural thing. He leaned his head back against the rear window glass and mirrored Larry’s confused head right behind him.

15

“I just don’t think it’s right to give him a ride. That’s all. I don’t like him.”

“It’s the right thing to do man. He’s a mutant. Consider it a good deed.”

“Dude, I don’t need to make any good deeds, alright? Me and baby Jesus are cool.”

James snorted in derision, a flash of emotion running through him like a current. He glowed a bit like a light bulb receiving a power surge then resumed his usual shade of gray.

“We need to get some money. We need to buy that voice box amplifier for our band. Help me think of a way to get some money you fucker!”

“Calm down James. Take one of your pills dude. I was just reading this book that this dude wrote like a hundred years ago or some shit. And this dude like lived by himself at a lake or something and like he lived pure off the land and shit and make all his own stuff and he didn’t spend any money at all, he made everything he needed. It’s all about the simplification dude.”

“No,” James said sadly. “I read that book too. He did buy some shit. Like sugar or salt or something. The guy was totally bogus.”

Scott brightened. “Let’s get Larry to fight Sir Clement and charge for it. We can use the abandoned arena when it’s not cat fight night or extreme bingo.”

“Yeah,” James agreed. “I don’t want to mess with those cat fight people.”

“That should be good. We need to make some money though.”

“Well what about my ideas?”

“Shit man I don’t remember them. We were drunk.”

“Okay. There was the ice bullets. We sell that idea to the cops and like man, we be fucking rich”

“No you never told me that one. “

“Ice bullets dude. Think about it. No evidence.”

“Dude they already got that shit.”

“No they don’t dude. You’re thinking of TV.”

“Fuck no man. I saw it on a documentary.”

James is silent. Fuming. Rolling the flower in his hand ever so gently.

“How the fuck we supposed to make money on that dude?”

“Well you like copyright it and shit.”

“I’m telling you they already got that shit.”

James fumes.

“Sorry dude.”

“Well fuck man. We’ll fucking sue them for stealing my idea!”

The truck hit a pothole making Larry bounce in the back like a rag doll. Larry was thinking of his mother who moved to Florida years ago, quite suddenly and left him in a room with a race car bed. The cold wind was making his pasty face bright red. His mind floated as if suspended in an ocean of self aggrandizement and self pity.

“What else you got?”

“What about auto-erotic insurance. That’s pretty self explanatory.”

“What would you cover?”

“Well like shit like incompetence.”

“You mean incontinence?”

“Yeah that’s what I said.”

James was silent for a moment. The truck chugged along in the cold, not quite cold enough to see your breath yet but cold enough to let you know that this was coming.

Scott brightened, beginning his pitch to his depressed brother “Fuck yeah dude! FUCK YEAH! We could sell that fucking flower! We could sell this flower. I bet we could get a shitload for it on ebaymart.”

James looked down at his prize. The bud was still tight and fresh.

Scott was worried. “Dude we got to get that shit into something wet.”

James, realizing his stupid fucking brother was right plunged the flower into a half full can of beer.

16

“That’s better,” Scott said, relieved.

4

“Who would buy this thing?” James Gribble asked his dipshit twin Scott as they drove recklessly toward Buzz Aldrin Elementary School in a diesel powered Industrial rag Delivery truck. Sitting forlornly in the back of the truck was Larry, a middle aged, self obsessed mutant whose bike was mysteriously vandalized while he played basketball the night before.

“Man, I don’t like him. He creeps me out.”

“Dude, he’s a mutant. He can’t help being a moron.”

“What if he tells someone we tried to rob him or some shit?”

“Dude whose he going to tell?”

“The fuckin’ people in charge of mutants!”

“James, you’re overreacting like shit Man. Think about it.”

“Think about what?”

“We could sell that fuckin’ flower dude! I bet some rich old ladies up on the hill would pay megabucks for that shit. You gotta get it out of the beer though. I think the glycol is bad for it.”

James gingerly removed the flower, gently caressing it. Scott was purposely hitting the potholes in the green street and laughing as he watched Larry bounce and curse from his rear view mirror.

“Plus think about Larry.”

“I don’t want to think about Larry.”

“Well he lives with his mom or some shit.”

“Yeah. So what?”

“So we can rob them or something.”

James laughed.

“Seriously.” Scott said and James laughed again. He laughed as if this were the funniest idea in the world.

Scott frowned. “Dude, you’re not thinking. If he’s got one of them flowers I bet he’s got more. Comprehend?”

James smelled the flower. Beneath the gasoline and the beer his nose detected something delicious, atavistic, and deep.

“What if I don’t want to sell it?”

“What the fuck you taking about?” Scott hit an especially jarring pothole, sending Larry sprawling and spewing invective he didn’t wholly understand.

“Well, I mean it isn’t all about money all the time Scott. This is a thing of beauty and purity. Look at my life. There’s nothing pure or beautiful. Everything is dirty and ugly and used. This is a special thing and I want to keep it. For myself.”

Scott was silent, fuming. Then he turned to his brother.

“Well, it’s half mine dude.”

Appalled, James looked at his brother who he now hated with white hot rage.

“Who says it’s half yours motherfucker?” James said in a low, ominous and emotionless voice that Scott long ago learned preceded an extremely violent outburst.

In the back of the truck Larry could smell fireplaces and pumpkins. It must be Halloween. He felt a pang of nostalgia but Larry didn’t really know what nostalgia was. It was just a pang, one of many and as he watched the Gribble brothers talking in the cab, he felt comfortable in his outsider ness. His bike loomed into view, askew and akimbo and another pang replaced the one before it. Larry squinted into the cold wind and for a mo17

ment he was heroic. Until he realized that he was sitting in a stinking pile of wiener dog shit.

As Scott swirled the truck impudently onto the grass of Buzz Aldrin Elementary, James turned his head to look back in the cab. He saw Larry looking at his hands in amazement and James immediately felt his heart and brain flood with panic.

“SIR CLEMENT!” He gasped and Scott instantly knew what he was saying. Sir Clement was gone! He was nowhere. They had put Larry in the back without thinking that if the excitable wiener dog had been there he would’ve torn Larry apart. Instead Larry had survived and Sir Clement was gone.

Scott slammed on the brakes, hurtling Larry from the bed of the truck onto the soft well-tended grass of Buzz Aldrin Elementary, breaking his nose. Or at least bloodying it pretty damn good.

“Sorry about that Dude.” Scott said. But he didn’t mean it. He was only scared Larry would sue him.

5

Sir Clement Atlee, the Gribble brother’s dachshund was extremely annoyed and hungry and when he saw Scott and James go into the Pepto-Bismol coloured apartment building and he thought to himself fuck this, fuck those guys, I’m running away. Sir Clement was a highly intelligent animal, much more intelligent that anyone ever thought. He could reason and understand English and could even understand the world with all its convolutions and troubling connotations.

Sir Clement was sick and tired of Scott and James and had been for some time now. He was getting old, almost seven years old and Scott and James were just boys when they first became acquainted and Sir Clement still had vivid memories of their abuse. They made him so mean with their teasing that they decided to have him fight their friends as a way to make cigarette money. Sir Clement relished these battles because even though he was small and his legs were the size of cigar stubs the kids ran from him in fear of his frenzied barking, his total ever advancing fighting technique and the sharp sure nip of his jagged yellow teeth.

Sir Clement especially liked fighting Larry. He could see in Larry’s eyes, every time Scott and James gave him five dollars to fight that he was truly afraid of Sir Clement. Their battles were epic and usually well attended by a pack of young stoners and freaks. They often bet on the outcome with Sir Clement, of course, almost always being the favorite. Larry, who was, as they say, a bit on the slow side, only knew that he was getting five free dollars to fight a wiener dog, so he gamely tried his best, but honor was not on his agenda as much as the five bucks was and the illusion of friendship.

Sir Clement was growing tired of his tedious life in the Gribble household where everyone spoke to him in either a sickly high pitched voice or with sharp menacing commands often punctuated by kicks or smacks.

Sir Clement was tired of watching the same old TV shows, listening to the same old arguments between Scott, James, and their coke snorting mother Elaine. Sir Clement was sick and tired of the cheap King Safeway dog food they gave him made from pulverized compost, compressed cow bones, cardboard and various ashes and powders. He killed cats when he could catch them and ate them whole and no one knew it. He even came in the house one time with cat blood all over his mouth and Elaine had taken him to the vet because she thought he had been hit by a car.

Here in the bed of the pick up truck Sir Clement was cold and he voiced his displeasure by barking loudly; raging at the kind of world where an old wiener dog can’t even get some decent food and a warm place to sleep on a cold day. He could see the silhouettes of the gas huffers upstairs and he knew that Scott and James would be in there for a while. This made Sir Clements’s short temper boil and he continued to voice his displeasure in most vociferous terms.

“What’s wrong there little fellow?”

18

The voice was gentle and unexpected and for some instinctual reason Sir Clement shot his tail between his legs in an uncharacteristic gesture. Sir Clement, like all dogs, was extremely aware of people’s vibes and he knew when not to like a person. The person he was looking at now, with his ears down and his tail reflexively between his legs, exuded cheerful friendly good vibes and Sir Clement released his tail and wagged it cautiously back and forth. He did not understand why he went into such a self protective mode, usually used only for bigger dogs and guns, but it faded as he allowed the goodness of the man to wash all around him. He opened his mouth and let his tongue air a bit. He raised his eyebrows and wagged his tail a little more enthusiastically.

“What a good boy. You cold in there?”

The man, whose name was Vern, stroked Sir Clement gently and talked in a soothing voice. Vern was fast approaching fifty but his appearance was ageless because he sported an unfashionable long and luxuriant beard. However, instead of the badass ZZ Top look he was undoubtedly going for, he more resembled an elfin gnome, with big pointed ears sticking out of his Beatle bowl hairstyle and squinty, friendly eyes darting behind ineptly taped silver framed glasses. He was small and short and wiry which only accentuated his elfishness.

He untied Sir Clement and stroked him. Sir Clement was limp and grateful. The man’s touch was powerful and Sir Clement was thrilled. Vern picked him up and lifted him to his face. Vern had something hanging near his neck, something sweet and fragrant stuck into the button hole of his equally unfashionable denim overalls. It triggered a dim memory in Sir Clement’s mind, and he sniffed at it curiously.

Vern held Sir Clement just inches from his face smiling with his eyes. Sir Clement could smell the food in Vern’s beard. He wanted to snap and bite Vern in the face but he couldn’t understand why. Vern was nice. He was nice and Sir Clement liked him. Way better than he liked Scott and James. Vern looked into Sir Clement’s eyes and said. “I know that you can understand me. I know it all. Do you want to come home with me?”

Overcome, Sir Clement did the only thing he knew how to do which was to snap and bite. He didn’t snap and bite at Vern however, but at the thing which smelled so old and heavy with so many deep memories and evolutionary programming. The red flower in Vern’s buttonhole disintegrated into floating scarlet petals which drifted onto the asphalt of the apartment building parking lot like a swarm of tiny parachutists. The cold October wind blew the velvety red petals across the parking lot and under some cars where they would eventually wither, turn gray and die.

Vern beamed. “Plenty more of those.” He chuckled, putting Sir Clement in his shopping cart full of Dumpster treasures. He pushed the cart underneath the window of the gas huffers and out of the apartment building parking lot. Sir Clement had stopped barking now. He was waiting to see what would happen to him next.

6

Larry stood uncertain and confused on the plastic neon green grass of Buzz Aldrin Elementary School.

His nose was broken and bright red blood poured down his face, into his mouth and all over his jersey. He was dazed but held his arms up to his head to protect him from Scott and James who were flailing at him, screaming and shouting, something about their dog, something he could barely comprehend, because the cherries and lemons inside his head were still rolling from his being ejected out of the back of the truck onto his face.

“WHERE IS SIR CLEMMENT YOU FUCK?” Scott demanded, shaking Larry and kicking him. James was frantically searching the back of the truck, looking for some sign of his old dachshund. The Industrial Rag Delivery truck was parked akimbo right on the unnaturally green lawn of the school, black tire marks burrowed into the brown concrete and torn up plastic lawn. The truck was still chugging and spewing diesel smoke into the air, overpowering the more subtle aromas of fireplaces and burned pumpkins.

“WHAT DID YOU DO TO OUR DOG?” Scott demanded, shoving Larry toward the front doors.

“WHAT DID YOU DO LARRY?”

James finished his frantic search and was slumped over the back of the pick up truck bed, utterly spent.

“Forget it,” he said wearily. “Forget it Scott!”

19

Scott immediately backed away from Larry and turned toward his brother. Larry took the opportunity to unlock his bike from the bike rack and started to walk away from the weeping Gribble brothers, trailing dime sized drops of blood after him. The front of his jersey was now streaked with blood and his face was turning purple. His mind was still working on some reptilian level. Dog? What dog? That vicious little wiener dog wasn’t even back there with him. How could they get so mad at him? He hadn’t done anything.

“How can you say forget it!” Scott screamed at his brother, who started emptily at the ground. “It’s Sir Clement dude! That fucker killed him or ate him or some shit. .”

“Larry didn’t do anything!” James said, looking up at his fraternal twin. “Remember? When Larry got back there, Sir Clement was already gone! He wasn’t there Scott. Remember?”

Scott stopped, confused. James was right.

“We have to go back to the parking lot then. We have to go back. Sir Clement must be lost. He must be looking for us.”

James agreed. They got back into the truck and backed off the plastic lawn. They could both see Larry walking his bike away from them. They drove the truck along side of him but he didn’t seem to notice.

“Dude, you okay?” Scott asked pleasantly. Larry did not answer. “DUDE!” Scott said more forcefully.

Larry stopped. He looked at the Gribble brothers with uncomprehending eyes.

“Can I have my flower back?” Larry asked thickly, through blood filled sinuses. His eyes were starting to turn black.

“What flower?” James quickly asked, instinctively squeezing the bud in his pocket. “There ain’t no flower. Are you goofy from your accidental fall or what?”

Larry looked at James with all the sadness and hurt in his thirty seven years. He may have only had the mind of a ten year old, but the flower was important to him. Because it had been sent by his mother from Florida. She was his mother, even if he couldn’t exactly remember what her voice sounded like or what her face looked like.

James saw the look and pulled the flower from his pocket. He held it out to Larry who reached for it, but Scott pulled it away. “Just smell it one more time,” James said gently and watched as Larry tried to sniff the flower through a broken nose full of blood. He choked and coughed and James quickly put the flower back into his pocket.

“You get the flower back when we get our dog back,” James said sternly, then signaled to his brother to turn around. Scott swirled the truck around the parking lot, leaving Larry standing with his bike, spitting up blood and wondering how he would find the Gribble brother’s dog.

Scott and James returned to the parking lot of the Pink Pepto-Bismol apartment building. They drove slowly through the back lots and the alleys, looking for their beloved dog, but there was no sign at all. The harder they looked the more desperate they became, until Scott pulled the truck into the parking lot of a nearby abandoned Wal-K-Mart.

The Gribble brothers sat in the truck, saying nothing. On the other side of the parking lot were a giant bank of mega dumpsters and a bunch of abandoned cars and a couple large RVs. James broke out the bong and loaded it with tobaccojuana. He took a hit and silently passed it to his brother. Scott inhaled deeply then broke into tears. James, uncomfortable at his brother’s uncool showing of emotion, tried to look out the window until the storm passed but Scott sobbed harder. Finally in a gesture of brotherly concern James spoke to his twin.

“Dude, quit crying like a little pussy.”

Scott started to slow down, wiping his eyes and taking another hit off the bong.

“Dude we can sell this flower and get another dog. I hate to say it Scott but Sir Clement is gone. You know as well as I do that the animal control wagon probably got him and gassed him and ground him up into cat food right away. Maybe it’s for the best. He was getting old. Larry almost beat him the last time they fought and..”

James did not finish his sentence because his brother was on top of him, pummeling him with his fists, which were no bigger than a couple of lemons, red faced and swearing. James covered up, mainly to protect the 20

bong. He let his brother punch himself out them he slapped him hard upside his fool head. When Scott reeled back, James hit him again.

“Let’s go see Ron about the flower,” he said evenly. “We might even get fifty bucks for it.”

Scott sat back, staring out the window for a moment then he started up the truck. Cars whizzed by but no one gave the abandoned Wal-K-Mart a second glance. Scott put the truck into gear. James rolled down the window to dissipate the air inside the truck cab. Sharp, cool October air filled the cabin. James held the flower to his nose and inhaled.

7

Vern’s old 1999 RV was parked in the empty Wal- K-Mart parking lot with a crudely hand lettered FOR SALE sign in the window. It was a sturdy RV, made in the time when it was still legal to own aluminum and although Vern had no intention of selling his home, but he could park it there for as long as he wanted without anyone hassling him. The Wal-K-Mart had closed down ten years ago and except for an occasional laser bingo game, the place was as deserted as the woods. Of course the woods didn’t have a neon green interstate exchange right outside, but the anonymity of the parade of rushing cars led Vern to feel that he was practically invisible.

And he was.

He dwelled peaceably among the whizzing cars and dispirited laser bingo players, Mega-Dumpster diving and cheerfully living out his version of Walden Pond in the parking lot of an abandoned Wal- K-Mart on 25th Avenue. When the flowers turned gray, Vern had taken matters into his own hands, as Thoreau would have done. He had reduced his complicated life into s series of daily tasks which gave his existence a deeper, more fulfilling meaning. He relied on the Universe to provide him with his needs and he did the best to accommodate his wants. He used little or no technology and paid very scant attention to the world around him.

Sir Clement Atlee, the elderly wiener dog didn’t care one way or the other about Vern. All he knew was the trailer was snug and cozy, and he immediately made himself at home. He wagged his tail, something he hadn’t done in ages and was thrilled with heart pounding when Vern smiled and picked him up, hugging him.

It had been a long time since anyone had hugged Sir Clement, except Larry, and that was just when they were locked in a vicious bout and Sir Clement was about to beat his ass.

Out of habit he snarled and nipped at Vern anyway because he thought that’s just what you did but he didn’t mean it he really LIKED Vern. Vern didn’t take it personally either, he gently set Sir Clement down on his threadbare carpeted RV floor and chuckling to himself, and after wiping away a spot of blood, began his meticulous preparations for dinner.

Sir Clement, temporarily at loss as to what to do, gingerly made his way around the trailer, exploring what he hoped would soon be his new domain. It was much like Scott and James’s domain in their mother’s basement; the smells particularly were similar. Sir Clement hoisted himself up on his stubby legs and dipped his snout into the toilet bowl to taste the water. It was not flushed water and Sir Clement made a mental dog note while he continued his exploration.

He came upon a small room that had black dirt on the floor. Sir Clement immediately recognized the dirt and used it for what he assumed was its purpose. He peed on it. But his dog nose also captured a whiff some something else in the dirt, a sweet smell, one that Sir Clement recognized in the foggy memory banks of his wiener dog brain. The little flowers sprouting in the dirt were all gray to Sir Clement, but that’s because dogs can’t see in color. Sir Clement bit at one of the flowers. It was delicious. He was about to have another when he felt Vern standing behind him.

“No sir,” Vern said, not unkindly. “You can’t have those, my friend.” He picked up Sir Clement and held him tightly, closing the door to the little room with his feet. Sir Clement thrashed his tail and, beside himself with Love, licked at Vern’s oily smelling beard. Vern gently placed Sir Clement down and walked back into the kitchenette.

In the kitchen part of his RV Vern prepared what he needed to make his dinner that evening. He hummed 21 27

and was cheerful because that was his nature and even seven years dodging bombs in Iraq paralyzed with The Fear had not eradicated that from him. It made him all the more focused on surviving without anything but what he could gather around him.

This independent ethic had galvanized him when he first encountered it in the Army, with a flaky ancient paperback copy of WALDEN someone had left in the latrine as toilet paper. Up to then he had imagined Thoreau to have been some kind of snooty French philosopher with a white wig and ruffled shirts not a plain solid man like himself, walking the earth under his own sun, moon and stars.

Sir Clement ambled back into Vern’s presence and he made a mental dog note of the knives and spoons and saws and other cutlery Vern was laying out like a surgeon. What caught Sir Clement’s eye was the many fur pelts and skins that lined the inside wall of what had once been the driving compartment. Sir Clement didn’t know that the RV didn’t drive anymore because it had no engine. He didn’t particularly care. The furs and pelts smelled delicious and he walked over to them with more curiosity that he had felt in a long time.

With the sweet delicious taste of the flower still in his mouth Sir Clement felt himself being picked up

by Vern and kissed tenderly on the head. In ecstasy, Sir Clement Atlee allowed himself give over to wiener dog dachshund nirvana contentment and so he never felt anything when His Time Came in the following moment and in just that blink the world was different but still the same. pp

As one half of the semi-legendary playwriting team Broken Gopher Ink, MICHAEL K. WHITE spent his youth tricking and fooling producers into investing their dirty money in his lurching, lumbering plays.

Incredibly this led to forty play productions, including fifteen off-Broadway runs that cloaked the author with a bogus literary credibility he misuses to this day. His low cholesterol mega monologue play, “My Heart And the Real World” ran for almost two years in New York City, enabling the authors to eat at John’s Pizzeria. In 2007 his story “13 Halloweens” was chosen as one of the ten best stories published in 2006 by the super cool folks at Story South. In 2010 “My Apartment” a “micro-novel” was published

by Blueprint Press. His work has appeared in BluePrint Review, Foliate Oak, Tongues of the Ocean, Eclectica, Insight Outpost, 5923 Quarterly, Burner Mag, and 6Tales, among many others. In January 2012 Lap Lambert Publishing/Just Fiction Books published the full version of “My Apartment.” In October 2012 his new play “The Six Realms of Pizza Delivery” played in Auburn, New York and won some festival up there or something. White was pleased to recieve a t-shirt and a dvd which his girlfriend said was too dark and too loud.

A shy, humble man who lives with the cows in Colorado, White, a frequently published, deeply scarred veteran of the tragic and furious litmag scene of the 80s, is now content to live in solitude with his debts and addictions. Recently he was unpleasantly surprised to find an extended family of black and yellow snakes living inside the crack between the steps and his house. He found this out the hard way. www.brokengopher.com

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dystopia

A s y o u a l l k n o w b y n o w, D e c e m b e r 2 1 s t ,

survival and resources, saying, “Who is the

2012 was the end of the civilized world as real master now? Is it us or is it Money?” w e k n o w i t . We a r e a l l d o i n g o u r b e s t t o S i n c e t h e w o r l d e n d e d i t w o u l d s e e m t h a t cope with this new Dystopian nightmare the abstract notion of Money has become we’re forced to live in, but life in a Post-

more important than the people, their sur-

Apocalyptic reality is strange, challeng-

v i v a l , o r p r o s p e r i t y. We m u s t g r o w m o r e

ing, and mind-numbing. At times it seems

M o n e y. We m u s t t o i l t o e n h a n c e i t s p o s i -

the soul-crushing pressures of struggling tion. The term for this bizarre anthropot o s t a y a l i v e a r e e n o u g h t o w e a r a n y o n e ’s l o g i c a l o c c u r r e n c e i s “ E c o n o m y. ”

Econ-

m e t t l e d o w n t o a f i n e p o w d e r, s o o n t o b e o m y, i t w o u l d s e e m , i s t h e m y t h i c a l l a n d blown away on the arid wind of the wasteland.

But we deal.

in which Money lives to escape the harsh

I t ’s w h a t p e o p l e d o . c l i m a t e s o f t h e A p o c a l y p s e .

T h e Wo r k

Force, for that is what these refugees As a survival tactic, people have taken of Armageddon have come to be known, to working tirelessly in menial tasks like seem to spend endless hours discussing serving food, stacking boxes, or taking how to enhance the borders, foundations, c u r r e n c y i n m a r k e t p l a c e s a s a m e a n s o f a n d d e f e n s e s o f t h e K i n g d o m o f E c o n o m y. f e n d i n g o f f t h e o n c o m i n g c h a o s . M o n e y, “ We m u s t r e b u i l d t h e E c o n o m y, ” t h e y s a y. a n a b s t r a c t c o n c e p t o f v a l u e a n d c r e d i t O r, “ T h e E c o n o m y m u s t b e s t r o n g e r. ” applied to slips of green paper portraying the faces of long dead heroes of the old The caretakers for the state of Economy world, is used as a means of trade in ex-

are men known as stock brokers or stock

change for sundries, fuel for transporta-

traders.

They work in a holy sanctum

t i o n , e v e n l o d g i n g , p o w e r f o r w a r m t h , o r k n o w n a s “ Wa l l S t r e e t ” w h e r e t h e y m a k e a s p a y m e n t f o r w o r k e r s a s c o m p e n s a t i o n t h e i r s a c r i f i c e s t o M o n e y, p r a y i n g a n d for their time.

People work with grim- exchanging alms, tithes, and promises in

faced diligence in the knowledge that if the hopes of strengthening Economy and they stop the onslaught of Armageddon

ensuring the survival of their people in

w i l l c o m e b o o m i n g i n t o t h e i r l i v e s l i k e a D y s t o p i a f o r o n e m o r e d a y.

The prayers

t s u n a m i . M o n e y, o r r a t h e r w h a t i t i s a b l e o f t h e s e m o n e t a r y c l e r g y m e n w i l l s o m e to procure for us, is the only thing keeping

t i m e s c u r r y f a v o r i n E c o n o m y, w h e r e o t h e r

us alive in a post-Apocalypse America. times they go unanswered and their stocks plummet, along with their hopes and faces.

In the labor camps and the ghettos known as “cities” you can hear the outcry of the Perhaps even more shocking than the labor class, the misbegotten slaving for primitive worship of Money on a par with 25 16

dystopia

the sun gods of the ancient worlds is the

fMr ao n my at hf ai nl lg so rc aa nc ob lel issai iodn oofnt ht hee “A h img eh rwi -a y s elaborate transportation network used to or maybe after falling prey to one of any c a n D r e a m”. I t c a n b e s a i d t h a t e v e r y maintain the infrastructure of the Post- number of ailments lying in wait for a surtime we “tweet” from our iPhones that A p o c a l y p t i c Wo r l d . D r i v i n g o n t h e r u i n s v i v o r o f A r m a g e d d o n . I n a d d i t i o n t o t h e we’re experiencing it first hand. On the of the once great United States of Amer- risk of broken bones, lacerations, gun shot o tohuenrdhs a, nodr , htehaed da cuhdees i n ica, the survivors travel in automobiles, w t h “eWa r e ti sc ham l we an”y s t h e a kind of steel wagon which burns a fuel

derived from the fossils of long dead spe-

g eg saos r t o f cs eh ea m n ceedt ht oa tt yh oi nukmi itgw h ta sp ilcaku n u pc hsionm

Burning the dead, they travel on the ruins

might turn against you producing cancer-

fgor oe n d -abdoersn aisl ldniesscso f dr oa m n c oe nr se. oI fgtuhees sv ei nt ’dso r s c i e s b u r i e d d e e p b e n e a t h t h e E a r t h ’s c r u s t . od fi f ft eh ree Wo r creyoonr et.h a t y o u r o w n c e l l s n t frokr Feove o f a n c i e n t “ h i g h w a y s ” a n d “ i n t e r s t a t e s ” o u s t u m o r s o r, p e r h a p s w o r s t o f a l l , t h a t I s u p p o s e t h e “A m e r i c a n D r e a m” i n p a r and “streets.” The fires from these ve- after years of overwork and overuse your r itghhatt wI ’eda rl i k r e swsr ii nnktlhe e, t u r n h i c l e s p r o d u c e a d a n g e r o u s k i n d o f s m o k e tbiocduyl am o eu tt, od ae d c ady, known as “Smog” which is said to pollute

i nng. tIon a n y g“ Gr eeyt aRni cdhi nWe vi tiht aobulty Dj o u isnt gs hAunt ydtohw

t h e a t m o s p h e r e a n d r i s k s t h e s l o w, s t e a d y oE fa rt n h eIste” ct ha si ne gs . i Ye t maahy… bTeH nAT e c oe snsea. rAy dtm o iste ietk, increase

in

planetary

temperatures

to m c a la lalt tt ehnotui og h n taanbdo, ugti vi te…t D h eR Ep A r oMc El iDv i t y yoeud’ive t h e p o i n t o f s o m e d a y m e l t i n g t h e f r o z e n t o w a r d M o n e y Wo r s h i p , s u c h t r e a t m e n t s a b o u t i t . S o w hy a r e p e o p l e s t i l l t e r r i poles and flooding what is left of civili- will not come cheap. It would seem that f i e d t o a c t u a l ly d o i t w h e n t h e y h a v e t h e z a t i o n . H o w e v e r, t h i s d o e s n o t d e t e r t h e i t i s t h e r e s p o n s i b i l i t y o f e v e r y s u r v i v o r perfect opportunity? I’m of course rer e f u g e e s , n e i t h e r i n t h e Wo r k F o r c e n o r i n o f t h e A p o c a l y p s e t o g o u g e t h e i r f e l l o w r yu cAhmwe er iacl at hn a“nf rdi vr o t h e h o l y c l e r g y o f Wa l l S t r e e t . I t w o u l d fseurr rviinvgo rtso ftohre ave s m e sl oo uu sr c r isctaann c e . s e e m t h a t , t o t h e m , t h e w o r l d h a s a l r e a d y el aswassupi to”… s soi br l ae si nI caanlyl igt i, vtehne c“A i rm c uem been destroyed and is beyond saving so D L oetstpeirt ye ”.t h e o b v i o u s h u m a n i t a r i a n a s p e c t s

why not increase efficiency by traveling of medical attention and the apparent to their work stations at higher speeds?

moral responsibility to care for the sick I’m gonna paint a scenario for you here.

Given the state of the world, this is dif- and dying, such care is not given away I m a g i n e yo u ’ r e i n l i n e a t a m a j o r r e ficult to argue against. In Post-Apoca- lightly nor is it offered free of charge. t a i l e r. Yo u ’ r e b uy i n g s o m e t h i n g s m a l l … l y p s e A m e r i c a t h e o n l y t h i n g l e f t t h a t a p - Yo u m u s t b e p r e p a r e d a n d c a p a b l e t o p a y s .i sYo p e a r s t o m a t t e r i s M o n e y a n d t h e S t a t e tl ihkreo uagph a ct hkeo fn oAsAe biaf t tyeorui e w h ut ok i snudrlvy i v e o f E c o n o m y, s o i t w o u l d n a t u r a l l y f o l -

t aa tnhd owf h tehne t A h epyo caaslky pi fs e . lpiaf ye tihne tm h ee racfht ae n rm

l o w t h a t e f f i c i e n t t i m e m a n a g e m e n t i n t h e yo u ’ d l i k e a b a g yo u s a y s o m e t h i n g r i earning of Money would be paramount. L e lo i su ss tlriakneg“eYei ns pDl ey as tsoep! iDa .o n’Tt hwe abnenaau t y d ii cf u There are a great deal of hazards in a

P o s t - A p o c a l y p t i c Wa s t e l a n d a n d s o m e times people need to get patched back up

standard has shifted to favor starvation g e t t a c k l e d o n my w a y o u t ! H a h a ! ”. rather than health, as though the people FREEZE! Allow me to break this down have attempted to find a sexuality in the fpol irgya h t : oYo f ut ’hve e i ra llrievaedy s . PA F IeDn df ionrg a oTfIfN hYu n -

26 24

dystopia

ger and death through forced labor has of ancient Rome for the glory of cities, its slimming effects and people have cho-

flags, banners, colors and sponsors. Fans

sen to embrace that to the point of eating

purchase slips of rigid paper that fea-

less than is healthy and, in some cases, ture the image and moniker of their faeven vomiting up meals.

The entertain-

vorite players which are traded like cur-

m e n t i n d u s t r y, s u c h a s i t i s , h a s g o n e t h e r e n c y b y c h i l d r e n a s a s o r t o f s a c r e d r i t e , f u r t h e s t t o p r o m o t e t h e Wa s t e l a n d e r l o o k , a p r a c t i c e r u n f o r t h e d a y s w h e n t h e y encouraging people to eat less and have will be educated enough to handle hard tanned skin like the wanderers in the des-

c u r r e n c y a n d j o i n t h e r a n k s o f t h e Wo r k

e r t s s a i d t o e x i s t o u t s i d e t h e c i t i e s . A n d , F o r c e o r, f o r s o m e , e v e n t h e h a l l o w e d as is present in all facets of post-Apoc-

vestments

of

the

Wa l l

Street

traders.

alyptic living, the prestige of wealth is elevated, worshiped and sought after by When I questioned refugees about leadall.

S t r a n g e l y, t h e s t o r i e s t o l d b y f i l m -

ership

or

makers, authors and the video game in-

to

learn

dustry favor violence and the way of

al

system

government the of

details order

I of and

was their

alarmed unusu-

legislation.

the villain over anything seen in peace There is a government of sorts, but the time

as

though

training

the

populace word on the ground is that it is barely a

for possible incursion even while sit-

shell of what it used to be. Acting more as

ting in the comfort of a theater or living a figurehead or perhaps just out of habit, room.

Ye s , l i f e i s s t r a n g e i n D y s t o p i a .

the government feigns Democracy while crushing itself under the weight of its

Entertainment holds a special place in own reckless commitment to Money and p o s t - a p o c a l y p t i c s o c i e t y. I t i s a n i m p o r -

t h e L a n d o f E c o n o m y. A s t h e d a y s g r o w

tant distraction from the trials of day to darker there are fewer survivors with any day life.

Powerful men and women are faith that the government will ever do

celebrated in the arena in organized com-

anything to change the world or even it-

bat and sport for the viewing pleasures

self.

of millions.

It would appear that the true ruler

G a m e s o f p h y s i c a l p r o w e s s o f P o s t - A p o c a l y p t i c A m e r i c a i s E c o n o m y.

a n d t e c h n i c a l s k i l l t a k e p l a c e i n e n o r m o u s Wi t h o u t E c o n o m y y o u p e r i s h .

Wi t h o u t

coliseums assembled in a bygone age as participation in its kingdom you lose all, c e n t e r s o f a c h i e v e m e n t , c o m p e t i t i o n , a n d s t a r v e , f a d e a n d d i e w i t h o u t s h e l t e r. M o n gambling, noble offerings to the gods ey is the only thing keeping the dangers a n d g o d e s s e s o f E c o n o m y.

The games of Apocalypse at bay and for this reason

have names like “football” or “baseball” it rules, without challenge, by fear and and the warriors compete like gladiators doubt.

27 16

And the survivors of Doomsday

dystopia

h a v e n o c h o i c e b u t t o o b e y. B u t w e m u s t

of Economy and its dark priests.

M a n y t h i n g s c a n b e s a i d o f t h e “A m e r i never forget, the men controlling governThey wish to change the system c a n D r e a m”. I t c a n b e s a i d t h a t e v e r y ment are every bit at the mercy of Econofrom the inside out. While many time we “tweet” from our iPhones that my for they themselves are survivors too. fester in the streets or hide away w e i’ rne tehxep ewriiledn, c di nogi nigt fliirtst tl eh amnodr.e Otnh at h ne But what is the real lesson here?

What

o t hsecrr ohuanngde, ft ohre fdouoddea innd “m Wa a ktec hnm o eon” ther

h a v e w e l e a r n e d ? Ta k i n g t h i s l o o k a t L i f e s e el m a set d i n tgo itmhpi na kc t i, t t w h easse l apue n o cp hl ei ndga gr ea st o i n t h e A f t e r m a t h o f t h e A p o c a l y p s e m u s t g r ewnoardke sa na ds dt oi si cl owdi at hn ctehres . aImgbuiet isos ni to’ sf have taught us something. I can see only

m a k i n g t h i n g s b r i g h t e r. T h e y w o u l d d i f f e r e n t f o r e ve r yo n e . three survival tips for the refugees in the say that sometimes the only way to ruins of the United States of America: 1 ) H a v e M o n e y.

Life is so much

easier in Dystopia if you’re rich.

2 ) D o - I t - Yo u r s e l f . I f y o u c a n ’ t h a v e money than ability is the next best thing.

The man that can stitch his

own wounds, mend his own clothes, catch or grow his own food, or build his own business will be that much more likely to survive and even t h r i v e i n t h e A f t e r m a t h o f D o o m s d a y.

3 ) N o Yo u r E n e m y a n d C h o o s e Yo u r B a t t l e s We l l .

I have encountered

many survivors in the city refugee centers who would say that they do not believe in “The System.”

They

a r e n o t w o r s h i p e r s o f M o n e y. H o w e v e r, t h e y a l s o m u s t e a t . T h e s e p e o ple have learned to be a part of this world without letting it corrupt their h e a r t s o r l e a d t h e m a s t r a y.

These

are the true visionaries, the someday revolutionaries for a world free

beat them is to join them and that, I s uI ’pdp os sa ey,t hi se “A a m n oetriiocna nwDorr et ha m” a ci n l o ps earr t i c luol oa rk .t h a T t hI ’eds el i kaer et o tahded rpeesospilne t hweh o e lilt hyoouut Dt hoai n t gt hAen ybtehsitn gt htion g “ G ewt oRuilcdh tW

d go . iYe s awho…r kT HhAT a r do na ne .d Andem v ietr i t , E a ryno uI t ”c at nh i n expect someone else to make change yo u ’ ve a l l t h o u g h t a b o u t i t … D R E A M E D for you.

Not government, not a b o u t i t . S o w hy a r e p e o p l e s t i l l t e r r i g o d s , a n d d e f i n i t e l y n o t E c o n o m y. f i e d t o a c t u a l ly d o i t w h e n t h e y h a v e t h e

p ? iIt’ hm r ou fl ec on uu rmsbeerr eo- n e .

Beurt f seecrt i oo up sploy,r tsutni ci tky w fHearvr ei n gm toon et hy.e veI tr’s y Asm r iuc ca hn “efarsi vi eor.l o ups p o em l a w s u i t ”… o r a s I c a l l i t , t h e “A m e r i c a n L o t t e r y ”.

-----

David Renton is a church brat by heriI ’ mtage g o nonly. n a p a iAs n t aa man s c e nhe a rfirmly i o f o r believes you here.

I m in a g the i n e importance yo u ’ r e i n l iof n eskepticism, a t a m a j o rmental re-

spiritual education t a i land e r. Yo u ’ r e b uy i n g s o mwithout e t h i n g sindocmall… trination, and is a conspiracy theorist l i k e a p a c k o f A A b a t t e r i e s . Yo u k i n d l y only where the Catholic church is conpay the merchant and when they ask if cerned. David is a struggling novelist yo u ’ d l i k e a b a g yo u s a y s o m e t h i n g r i and works a day job where he watches d i cpeople u l o u s ltreat i k e “ retail Ye s p lworkers e a s e ! D olike n’ t second wanna g e t class t a c k l ecitizens d o n my w aloses y o u tmore ! H a hfaith a ! ”. in and

F R E E Z E ! A lhumanity l o w m e t obybthe r e a day. k this down

f o r ya : Yo u ’ ve a l r e a dy PA I D f o r a T I N Y

28 24

13

14

UTOpia T h e A p o c a l y p se came down on us like a hamm e r o n D e cember 21st, 2012, tota lly u n s u s p e c t i n g and unaware, people went t o w o r k a n d w ent shopping and drov e on r o a d s . W h e n it hit no one could have k n o w n t h a t i t would happen so silently, so s u b t l y, b u t i t hit hard nonetheless. One m i n u t e e v e r y t h ing w as norm al, the ne xt m i n u t e e v e r y t hing was normal and also A p o c a l y p s e . But we survived. We lived t h r o u g h i t b e c ause we’re humans and t hat’s w h a t w e do and that’s how w e’ r e o n t o p o f t h e food chain and stuff. But h e r e ’s t h e r e a l trick. What do we do now?

W ha t ’s n e x t ? How do we start to rebuild a f t e r a l l t h e d estruction?

de e pe r tha n tha t. The y me a nt tha t , d espite the similar doomsday scenar i o s o f the past like Y2K or whatever, the M a y a n stuff and December 21st, 2012, an d a l l t h e the or ie s a bout pola r shif t a nd a ster o id s o r whatever people talked about was u n i q u e .

Which it was. It was unique beca u s e a n ancient civilization planted the se e d s o f doubt for entire generations of his t o r i a n s and conspiracy theorists and sci-f i n u t s .

Unle ss we c a n dig up a nothe r a nc i e n t c iv i liz a tion with myste r ious, c osmic u n d e rtones that have another date for us t o b e afraid of this really is a once in a l i f e t i m e oc c ur r e nc e . Still the r e is mor e to it th a n that. See, the people were also sa y i n g that we will inevitably look for an o t h e r Doomsday to be afraid of, as if it i s i n o u r na tur e to do so. This, I think, is s ig n if icant beyond the historical uniquen e s s o f the Mayan Long Count Calendar a n d a l l the f un we ha d.

I h i t t h e st r e e ts and asked random s tr a ngers w h a t t h e y thought. I got a lot o f ins i g h t f u l f e e d b ack like: “ G e t o u t o f h ere you weirdo, 2012 was a m yt h . ”

“ Wh a t w i l l b e the next big end of the w o r l d s c a r e ? 2012 was a scare that was c e n t u r i e s i n t he making. We’ll never have an o t h e r o n e l ike it.”

People like being afraid of the wo r l d ending. People enjoy the idea of s o c i e t y c r umbling. Mor e tha n tha t, the y lik e ta lking a bout wha t it will be like a f te r w a r d a s a survivor, what they would do to g e t b y, or how they might rebuild the wor l d i n a better way. There is an innate hop e f o r Utopia be hind ma nkind’s de sir e f o r D y stopia. This is important. This is w o r t h y of analysis in longer studies and i n d e p t h pa ge s f a r be yond my r e a c h, sc ope o r in te llect. If people want to world the e n d a n d we can assume it is not because th e y a r e suicidal then we must ask ourselv e s w h y.

I can think of a few reasons.

A n d t h a t ’s t r ue. It is. There will never be a n o t h e r 2 0 1 2 because that’s a number and nu m b e r s c o u n t up so that makes it imposs i b l e f o r t h e m to repeat. However, upon p r e s s i n g m y s ources for more information, i t b e c a m e c l e ar that what they meant was

1) People in the civilized world h a t e the syste m but f e e l he lple ss to ch a n g e it. Their only hope is a purging f i r e , me ta phor ic a l or lite r a l, it doe sn’t ma tter. They want to wipe the slate c l e a n to ge t r id of a ll of the f la ws a nd c o r-

And: “Th a t ’s n o t a microphone in your hand, i t ’s a p e n c i l . ” B u t o n e t h i n g that kept coming up in my i nt e r v i e w s w a s a remark that I foun d c ha ll e n g i n g , p r o v ocative, and impossible to co n f i r m . P e o ple kept saying:

31

utopia ru p t i o n t h a t have becom e so permane n t l y i n t e g r ated w ith the infrastr uct u r e o f o u r society. So, despite the d e s t r u c t i v e desires, they are looking to m a k e a b e t t e r w orld.

I purposely left out the religious a n g l e a nd the whole “ Ra ptur e ” thing or J e s u s c oming ba c k or a nge ls blowing tr u mp e ts that usher in the End of Days and G o d pouring out the seven bowls of hi s w r a t h .

I left it out because it’s silly and d u m b .

However, to be fair, there might b e a fourth reason why people keep loo k i n g f o r the next “End of the World” and th a t i s be c a use God told the m to.

2 ) P e o p l e i n the civilized world are re a l i z i n g t h at the civilized w orld wa s a m i s t a k e . It isn’t about building a b e t t e r g o v e r nment or a better economy o r a m o r e e nvironmentally friendly ci t y. I t ’s a bout realizing and accepti n g t h a t w e are meant to live in nature, no t i n c o n c r ete colonies, and the o nly wa y t o g e t b ack to our origins is to l e v e l so c i e t y and start again as pea c ef u l m e m b e r s of an ecosystem. In this i d e a t h e r e h as already been a Utopian h u m a n c i v i l ization and we destroyed i t t o m a k e A merica. The only way to g e t b a c k t o Utopia is to destroy what we b u i l t . T his is an interesting idea, f l a w e d p e r h aps because medicine and e l e c t r i c i t y a re nice, but still worth c o n s i d e r i n g when you look at what we h a v e d o n e t o our world since the dawn of t h e I n d u strial A ge.

The c onc lusion of the ma tte r : There is something profoundly wr o n g w i t h our world and our way of living if p e o p l e c ontinuously se e k out de str uc tion a s a philosophic a l ine vita bility. W he n w e s u rvived this Apocalypse we didn’t s a y, “ O h boy, look at us, we made it! Now l e t ’s get to building a better world.” In s t e a d we began looking for the “real” en d o f t h e wor ld, the thing tha t would c ome n e x t.

If we are to ever see a truly great h u m a n c iviliz a tion it will r e quir e us to st o p lo o king for gods or asteroids or plague s t o clean up our messes and start look i n g t o our se lve s to r e nova te soc ie ty top to b o ttom and make the world we dream w i l l ma gic a lly a ppe a r f r om the a she s o f A r mageddon.

3 ) F i n a l l y, and most drastically, the p e o p l e b e l i e ve a destructive force will wi p e u s o u t because that is the only wa y t o r e s t ore the natural order. In t h i s p h i l o so p hy, humanity is not a c onqu e r i n g , t r i umphant paragon of evolut io n , b u t a blight, a destructive plague t h a t i s d e v o uring everything good and b e a u t i f u l t h is world has to offer. The o n l y w a y t o restore Utopia is to g et us o u t o f t h e p icture. This motivation for a b e l i e v e i n the coming End believes t h a t w e c a n n ot continue on our pr e se nt c o u r s e a n d t hat extinction is what we de se r v e . I don’t like this idea, bu t it is wo r t h m e n t i oning since I am trying to be t h o r o u g h .

My vote – skip Armageddon, build U t o p i a now. pp ----Trip Markham believes that ar t w i l l save the world faster than scie n c e .

Art is the true he ritage of any c iv ilization and outlasts the scien t i f i c achievments of any ancient cul t u re .

He is a student of art and litera t u re a t the Univ e rsity of Te x as.

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It Is What It Is she put off going back to school even longer.

Then one evening, many years after all of these decisions were made, she decided to go home to her husband instead of stopping at the bar where an old friend said he’d be waiting for her.

After the last one, Lexi decided on the first nice boring guy to come along. It went well and they moved into an apartment together. As fast as fall leaves the calendar pages fell away and when he asked, she decided to say yes and they got married. A year or so down the road, she decided to have the child and leave college for a while, although she wasn’t quite ready for children. After that came cars, new jobs, family deaths, more projects put on the shelves, foreseen and unforeseen debts, wrinkles, stretch marks, a few extra pounds carried around the waist and thighs, and one day when she found she was pregnant for a second time,

Lexi pulled into her driveway at just a little after eleven that night, after the roads in her neighborhood had turned quiet and orange with streetlights. She got out of the car, removing the groceries from the passenger’s seat. Tired, she stood on the cracked 33

concrete drive, taking a moment from her busy day to simply breathe.

Holding the brown paper bag, Lexi looked up at the dark sky.

Clouds passed across a half moon which hung low and red on the horizon.

Lexi thought it was just the type of thing Henry would say was some kind of omen.

She scoffed and shut the car door.

Porch lights came on as she walked up to the house. Shifting the brown paper bag from one arm to the other Lexi reached out with her keys to unlock the front door.

“Ew,” she said.

A large green caterpillar sat on the top of the doorknob. It had orange dots above each one of its legs and black eyes.

Its body rippled as it moved along the knob. Lexi took the tip of her key and slid it under the caterpillar then flung it out into the bushes.

“Gross,” Lexi said, unlocking the door and stepping inside.

As she walked down the hall to her living room, Lexi thought about what Henry could have been doing at that moment. He would have figured out by then that she wasn’t coming.

In the living room, Jessie sat on the couch in front of the television. The room glowed blue and smelled of marijuana.

Sandy’s toys lay on the floor. Anne’s coat and backpack were on the chair next to the fireplace.

“Damn it,” she said, almost tripping over Anne’s running shoes. She picked up the shoes and put them to the side.

“Hey, babe,” Jessie said looking at Lexi and then back at the television.

“I told you to smoke outside. I don’t want the girls to know.”

“I’m sorry, I’ll try better next time,” Jessie said, not taking his eyes off the television.

Lexi walked across the living room to the dining room and set the bag of grocer-

ies on the table. She turned towards Jessie, intent on telling him why it was important to hide his smoking from the girls, but instead she stopped, halted by the sight of Jessie on the couch. He sat in exactly the same position he had been the last time they had talked about his habit. Lexi got a strong sense of Déjà vu but couldn’t tell if it was genuine or just the familiar feeling of having done the same thing many times.

Lexi took off her coat and set it on the table. Glancing at Jessie who raised the remote to change the channel, she thought about her lunch with Henry. “I could listen to you talk all day,” Henry had said just before they parted and just after he had asked her to the bar that evening.

Lexi looked at Jessie and in just looking she noticed a different kind of silence there that she had never noticed before.

Jessie looked at her. “What?”

“Nothing,” she said. “I was just spacing out.”

Walking into the kitchen, she felt weary. Her back hurt from being hunched over the monitors all day. She rubbed where it hurt.

Switching on the kitchen light, she eyed the dirty pots sitting on the stove, a drying white sauce caked one. Burnt dried rice stuck to the inside of the other. Dishes covered the bottom of the sink, encrusted with the same white sauce. Glasses stood like scattered soldiers on the counter.

Lexi slouched and sighed heavily. “I thought you were going to do the dishes today?” she called.

There was a beat of quiet. “I had a long day. I’ll do them tomorrow before I go to work.”

“ Hmm. What’d you do at work today?” she asked, moving the pots to the sink.

Jessie sighed. “Well, I spent part of the day changing the oil on the fire engines.

Chief says we’re not supposed to but I did it anyway. Then I went around the firehouse grounds with the edger, raked up some 34

reviews of the leaves that had fallen and pressure washed the sidewalk and gutters. That’s about it.”

“Well, I guess firemen don’t spend all their time fighting fires,” she said.

“This is true.” Another moment of quiet and then Jessie added, “I also went to the store, got some rice, milk, some lunch meat and bread and a few lottery tickets.”

Lexi moved the dishes around on the counter. “Lottery tickets?” she said. “We’re supposed to be saving money for a new dishwasher.”

“It was only a few, no big deal.”

“Did you at least win anything?”

“Not a thing,” Jessie said.

Lexi shook her head. Walking into the dining room, she picked up the groceries and returned to the kitchen. As she set the bag down on the counter she thought of the car Henry drove and how nice it was to be in that sky blue convertible with the wind going by. “Where do you want to go? I’ll take you anywhere in the world,” Henry had asked as he drove.

“How was your day?” Jessie asked.

Lexi pulled a tub of butter out of the grocery bag and slowly set it on the counter. “I don’t know. Same as always, work was work.” She wondered for a second if she should tell Jessie about her lunch with Henry. She decided that no wrong had been done. “Although,” she began, “something strange happened.” Pulling a hair tie from her pocket, she stepped around the corner to where she could see Jessie. He sat in the glow of the television, not looking away from it. “Do you remember Henry Burns?”

“That guy you knew in college?” Jessie said, still focused on the television, he smirked. “Yeah, I remember him. Why?”

“Well I ran into him today. We had lunch together.”

Jessie looked at her, making a face she hadn’t seen in years, it made her stomach sink, just like it used to. “And?” He asked.

Lexi shrugged. “That was it,” she said,

pulling her hair into a ponytail, using the action as a means to end the conversation. Stepping back into the kitchen, she glanced into the grocery bag for a second, then reached over and opened the refrigerator. She turned around to find Jessie standing in the kitchen doorway leaning against the wall, hands in his pockets.

“What do you mean you had lunch with him?” he asked.

Lexi took the butter off the counter and put it in the refrigerator. She left the door open. She sighed. “He was at the hospital and I was coming in from my break,” she said, taking a pack of sliced ham from the grocery bag. “He was there seeing his mother. We bumped into each other and he said he’d stay around to have lunch with me. So we had lunch together.” Lexi put the ham in the bottom drawer of the refrigerator. She reached into the grocery bag and took out a head of lettuce and put that in the other drawer at the bottom of the fridge.

“So it wasn’t like a planned thing?” Jessie asked.

Lexi stepped away from the fridge and leaned against the counter. “No. Just random chance,” she said.

Jessie crossed his arms in front of him.

“Where did you go for lunch?” He asked.

“Just up the road to the coffee shop,” Lexi nodded, “just talked and caught up on the last fifteen years.”

Jessie nodded. “How is he? What’s he done with himself?” He asked.

Well,” Lexi began, pulling on the collar of her shirt. She turned back to the bag on the counter. She took the eggs out, opened the carton and looked at the eggs to see if they were cracked. “He writes screenplays now,” she said, shrugging a shoulder. “He said he was doing small movies but just sold a script for a bigger one. He also has a house in Seaside. We just talked about stuff like that.”

Lexi bent over to look into the fridge. A blue Tupperware container sat on the top shelf, toward the back.

35

Jessie nodded. “Nice,” he said.

Lexi pulled out the Tupperware. She placed the carton of eggs in its place.

“I’m glad to hear he’s done well for himself.”

Lexi remembered what the Tupperware contained.

“You going to see him again?”

Two months ago Jessie had made dinner for their wedding anniversary. Lexi came home to candles and Italian food, some type of shrimp fettuccini and salad with breadsticks. She thought it was cute.

What she didn’t eat of her meal she took and placed in the Tupperware, putting it in the fridge. “No I don’t think I’ll see him again. He’s a pretty busy guy,” she said.

“Oh, I see.”

Lexi opened the Tupperware. Inside a coating of mold had grown across the noodles and covered the container. The odor made Lexi grimace. She turned to toss the whole container in the trash but hesitated. Jessie wasn’t standing in the kitchen doorway anymore. She heard him walk across the hard wood floor of the living room followed by the sound of air escaping the leather couch as he sat down.

Lexi paused for a moment, then dropped the entire container of rotten anniversary dinner, in the trash.

the conversation was about up to that point but for some reason she always remembered what followed.

“I hate that phrase,” Henry had said.

“Why?” Lexi asked. “I love it. It’s a catch all for everything in my life.”

“I hate it because it’s dismissive. It allows a person not to think about something or try to figure out what that something is.”

Henry paused. “Or what something could become.”

“I don’t think it does that at all.”

“It’s true. No one can know what something truly is unless they see it from all sides. That phrase just provides a false sense of security, so you don’t have to think.”

“What do you mean?” Lexi asked.

“It’s like tragedy. What seems like a tragedy at first may actually be a blessing in disguise. Say a guy smells a flower and there’s a bee inside. The man gets stung by the bee and has a bad allergic reaction. He ends up spending days in the hospital in agonizing pain, racking up horrible bills. And that’s a tragedy. But while in the hospital he meets a nurse and after he’s discharged he keeps in touch with her. Eventually they start dating and get married. Some months later she buys a lottery ticket and they win millions of dollars. They pay off their debts, retire early and live happily ever after.”

Lexi thought about this. “I still don’t see what you mean,” she said.

“It wasn’t tragedy at all. What seems bad at first could just be a prelude to something wonderful,” Henry looked away, into the night around them. “And, sadly,” he said, soft and low, “vice versa.”

Lexi stood at the open window, back in her own time. She still didn’t understand what Henry meant. She pushed the memories of him away. She focused on the smell of the night air, tried not to think about the way her back hurt. She peered out the

Lexi stood at the window in the hall, contemplating the moon, which had risen higher in the sky and was now more orange than red. She tried to figure out what the moon could be prophesizing. Henry used to talk all the time about signs and symbols. He always read too deeply into things, when she knew him in college.

As she opened the window, a small gust of night air came in.

Back in college, Henry and Lexi used to go on walks together after their night class. One evening Lexi said the phrase: It is what it is. She couldn’t remember what 37 36

reviews window at the leafless trees swaying in the breeze. Their branches resembled hundreds of thin spider legs clinging to the sky. When she thought about spider legs, she remembered that she had told Anne she would talk to Jessie about the family going to the science museum and seeing the insect exhibit they were having.

Lexi slowly shut the window.

be so hopeful. They used to go out and do things and make plans. Jessie used to be so determined. When they dated in college, he used to go out and do things and see friends.

He used to be different.

Her thoughts returned to Henry. In college, Henry rarely went out to parties or saw people. When Lexi and Henry went on their walks they would talk about all the places they wanted to travel to or the type of lives they wanted, but Henry never seemed to pursue anything. Usually Henry just talked about movies. He used to care little for the rest of the world or school. Jessie would fix cars and build things. He’d meet new people and make friends. Henry just stayed at home and watched movies or read books about filmmaking. He couldn’t even comb his hair right most of the time. It was just movies, movies, movies.

But today, fifteen years later, Henry drove a sky blue 1964 Mustang convertible.

He owned two houses in two different states.

He even flirted a little with the baristas during their lunch.

Jessie hadn’t made love to Lexi in nearly a month.

Jessie had been so determined and Henry hadn’t even finished college.

Lexi still remembered vividly the last time she saw Henry, after he dropped out.

Henry stood on her parent’s front lawn.

“Let’s just leave,” he had said.

“No,” Lexi said, shaking her head.

Henry stood on the edge of the porch light’s reach. He wore his ratty leather jacket and his hair looked like he had just climbed out of bed. “If we stay here, we’ll end up just like our parents. What about all those places we talked about seeing? We could go see them.”

No, I’m staying here. I need to finish college. That’s the only way I’m going to get the life I want to have and that’s what I’m doing.

And you should stay and do the same.”

Henry cringed. “That’ll never get you the life you want. If you do what everyone else

Jessie still sat on the couch. He watched an old movie starring John Belushi.

“Hey, you don’t have any major plans for Sunday do you?” Lexi asked as she walked through the living room to the kitchen.

Jessie hesitated. “No, not really,” he said.

In the kitchen, Lexi spread the two pots out in the sink and turned on the water. She plugged the drain and squirted a small amount of dish soap on the bottom of the sink. Bubbles formed. The pot with the dry crusted rice started to fill.

Lexi stepped into the doorway between the kitchen and living room. “Well, I was thinking that on Sunday we could take the girls out to OMSI to see the insect exhibit.

It’s been a while since we all got out and did something together,” she said. “I think it would be good for all of us.”

Jessie sighed and opened his mouth as if he were about to say something. He stopped for a moment. “Sunday is my only day off,” he said, not looking away from the television.

“I was hoping to just relax and not really do anything.”

Lexi leaned on the corner of the wall.

She crossed her arms. Jessie sat on the couch.

The light from the television flickered and changed around him. Somebody on the show laughed. She thought to say something but changed her mind. She looked away, her head turning first and then the rest of her body. She stepped back into the kitchen.

Lexi tried to figure out what happened between her and Jessie, what happened in her life in general that got her here, but each time she got to that point she failed. Life used to 37

does you’ll only get what everyone else has.”

Lexi crossed her arms and sighed.

“What about Jessie? What would I tell Jessie?”

“Forget him. Maggots beget house flies.”

Lexi gasped. “Jessie is not a maggot.

What does that even mean? Damn it Henry, stop being so dramatic. I’m staying here and finishing school. And you should stay here and do the same.”

“No,” he whispered, “I’ll always be this if I stay here.”

There was a silent pause between them.

“If you leave,” Lexi said gently, “will I see you again?”

“I don’t know,” Henry said.

They stared at each other, there on the lawn. They said nothing. It was quiet and time passed. Then Henry stepped forward and kissed Lexi and she let him. It was a slow kiss.

Henry stepped back. “Bye,” he said.

Then he got into his car and drove away.

That was the last time Lexi had seen Henry and the second time he kissed her in the two years she had known him.

Standing in her kitchen, Lexi wondered if she should have left with him that night.

She shook her head. “He was crazy,” she said to herself. She picked up one of the dishes with left over food on it. She thought that this was just a rut. She thought things would change between her and Jessie. Maybe after some of their money problems were out of the way. Maybe if she went back to school or if she and Jessie got marriage counseling things would change. It was just a rut.

Lexi picked up a fork and turned to the garbage can. She stood over it and was about to scrape the leftovers into the trash when she looked down and saw the scratch it lottery tickets sitting under the Tupperware container. She put the fork on the plate and slowly reached down, into the trash. She moved the Tupperware and thumbed through the tickets. Jessie said he had only gotten a

few but there were two dozen tickets sitting in the garbage, all of them losers.

Lexi stood and stared down for a few moments. Moments turned into minutes. She realized then what Henry had been talking about those many years ago. It is what it is.

What seems like a bad thing at first could just be a prelude to something wonderful and, sadly, vice versa. Maggots beget houseflies. Nothing had changed, this was what had been bargained for and this is what was received. Lexi scraped the food off the plate and into the trash. She washed the dishes and set them in the dish rack on the counter to dry. She turned off the kitchen light and walked through the living room.

“Goodnight,” Lexi said to Jessie.

“Goodnight,” he said and changed the channel.

Lexi walked to the back bedroom. Without turning on any lights, she changed her clothes and climbed into bed.

Lying there, Lexi wondered if she would see Henry again. She wondered what her life would have been like if she had left with him. She wondered about many things, what was, what could have been, and what things might soon become. But as she drifted off to sleep, for some reason, she thought of the caterpillar she flung into the bushes, just an image really. Spring was coming and soon that caterpillar would be wrapping itself in a cocoon and soon that caterpillar would be flying. Lexi imagined standing on the porch in the summer heat, watching the caterpillar turned butterfly flutter its wings against the breeze, drifting from flower to flower and in the thought, as sleep descended, she felt an unnamable dread.

It kept her awake for but a moment and then she fell asleep. pp

38 37

poetry

Frederick Pollack

Sensei An old temple, gods so old they have lost worshippers, names, all but menace. Buddha among them, unintimidated, impotent, an observer. Dazed by darkness and a boundless incense as I enter, I forget what I’m here to learn. Could be anything, for there are flowers dying perfectly in domesticated rocks beneath illegible scrolls, and swords. And I can imagine the long arm of the gnomelike master who materializes describing in each case a definitive and arbitrary arc. But what it touches, when it comes, is a nerve-plexus, and the pain goes on longer than is needed to get my attention or instruct, longer than life, longer than art.

13 39

poetry

Evening in the Fresco I allow someone, friend or cousin, to fix me up, because I’m tired of loneliness at the outer tables, of ham and cheese and warm soda, and, worse, the bologna scraps that fall like fate to the masses deprived of chairs; and pick my way for ages through the latter’s feeble, envious clutches that crease and stain the trousers of my tux. The light is nil, then bad and smoky, then somewhat improved toward the center, where my date – known by her ribbon, I by a paper boutonnière – awaits. The perfection women achieve and maintain despite this crowding! And her beauty, brunette this time, and clean in jaw and gaze, transcends the toilsome light. The wine-list comes before matter crumbles, and we vie in constructing toasts sufficiently pleased with each other. Over dinner we discuss, responsibly, the hunger rumored at the edge – the loss of color and contrast, the triumph of grime.

Then at ease with brandy (one lingers as long as one can), she confides that she was stooped and gray, quarrelsome and cruel; and I 40 14

that I was monstrous, shunned. Predictably the question of beauty conferring grace or compensating for its lack arises, while our mutual attraction swells to the point that vulgar figures in the flaking distance urge us to get a room. But there are no rooms.

Cure When they awake, three days after the procedure, they promptly sit upright, to show themselves our equals, or in fear.

And unless the family that cut them off when violence, theft, and filth grew too intense survives and is there, it’s us they see and talk to first. However disoriented, they seldom look for their carts or bags or squares of cardboard, at most for trinkets that were always with them; and are plainly glad of louse-free hair, white sheets and teeth. Some ask if they’re in heaven.

We run our tests: eye-hand, simple performance.

Some find it hard at first to concentrate on voices undisturbed by other voices.

Then they worry where they’ll have to go and what to do, and some what town or year it is; then, invariably, they cry. But only one in my experience said, “It came on early with me. I never had a … center,” and stared at us with his new sharpness.

“We’ve given you,” I told him honestly, 41

“something generic, liberal and benign; you won’t hurt anybody and can learn.”

The patient, after a long pause, said, “OK.”

North Tampa Mud daubers base their nest in the darkness under the eaves on a paralyzed spider the young eat.

They work in mud, paper wasps in something like paper. Palmetto bugs, seeking the sweetness of fruit and hair and their own or related dead, enter. There is no outside, no inside unless defined by the vulnerable coolness of rooms, steady innocence of television, the music thrashing somewhere the pool of the street.

Who would not seek, then, a right turn out of jungle onto the boulevards that are themselves the highest species? breeding, extending space against termite time?

Breeding and feeding themselves on chains that offer grits, wings, sports, the sweetest beer, or things of an assumed higher class; and clinics, and billboards endorsing clinics, where presumably pedestrians are.

42

The swelling boarded windows themselves are offspring, a brand. All names are brands.

At night there are only names, glowing like algae, and crosses.

Directions among the hundreds of boulevards seem nominal despite numbers. One would have to know them, like the police cars that pause at eddies in the shallows to graze; or, in the greenish searing dawn, the old man in wool with a sign protesting the murder of the unborn.

From a Monk’s Desk He lights the candle, prays presumably, weeps at times theatrically, but looks at me without seeing.

Or thinking there was once an I who might not have wanted his company. That the famous grin eroded lips that had something to say he would countenance less than what bone says. That being cozy with bone means befriending

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my enemy. That he is my enemy.

Well, it’s a job. If paper were in use in this age, I’d hold it down.

If the wind ever entered this cell. One clings to whatever I is available. Better this than to drown

l

on a sea voyage, dissolve, and contribute to the growth of future stupid continents.

Frederick Pollack is the author of two book-length narrative poems, THE ADVENTURE and HAPPINESS, both published by Story Line Press. Other poems in print and online journals. Adjunct professor creative writing George Washington University.

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The Critic’s Critic

Attack of the Prequel

by Tyler Fisk

His explanation for this is that The Hobbit predates WWII while LOTR was written during wartime. A very useful observation, for sure, but not as important as the fact that The Hobbit was a blast to read and the other books weren’t. The main reason I was excited to see the Hobbit is because I found the other movies exceedingly dull and, as a fan of the book, saw potential to leave behind a lot of the bad pacing of the prior films in exchange for something done in the spirit of more of a yarn rather than the play-by-play coverage that took so long in the Lord of the Rings movies. The Hobbit had the courage and the wisdom to leave a lot of stuff out. It would just say, “In this chapter here’s another cool thing that happened on our long-ass journey,” and leave it at that. As such, it was more enjoyable, not slow at all, and nowhere near as serious or heavy handed. But Jackson took all that and said, “No, we’re gonna get all that Lord of the Rings stuff back in there.” I can’t help but feel that a large part of that motivation was to reignite interest in his first trilogy, now nearly a decade old, a sort of three-part commercial for the DVDs and merchandise people stopped buying for Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, and Return of the King. However, as always seems to happen with prequels, the mastermind behind them has forgotten his audience, gone for market practices, shameless plugs, and unnecessary story arcs to mesh these two stories into one giant, money-earning franchise.

The concept behind “The Critic’s Critic” is to analyze the claims of the professionals and hold them accountable, as if to say that they can be wrong and should not be the be-all end-all of American cinema, nor which movies go unwatched on their word alone. However, I feel that punching holes in their argument is a limited perspective on this idea.

This segment has had more than one run-in with Mr. A.O. Scott of the New York Times but today I would like to stand by him for a fair, true, and insightful review of Peter Jackson’s “The Hobbit.”

I watched this movie recently and found myself weighed down in the cheap attempts to tie this adventure story in with the Lord of the Rings trilogy.

The right word for it wasn’t coming to mind until I read Scott’s review: “‘The Hobbit’ is just one book and its expansion into three movies feels arbitrary and mercenary.”

Mercenary. It’s a perfect word. Meaning “in it for the money,” you know, like Leia to Han Solo. “If money is all you care about then that’s what you’ll receive...[to Luke] Your friend’s quite the mercenary...”

This is what I’m talking about. When people talk about “selling out” in music they mean that the band has sacrificed their integrity and the quality of their art for the sake of sales. Well, as a mercenary maneuver, turning a single adventure novel into an epic trilogy, “The Hobbit” has done just that.

Now, on that topic, I had a lot of similar emotions watching this movie as I had watching the Star Wars prequels. Everybody got amped up to watch them just because they were excited to see more Star Wars, and even when the reviews were coming back bad nobody really cared, they still wanted to see for themselves. The problem was, after so much time had passed, nobody really knew how to make a Star Wars movie anymore. They’d lost sight of what made them great, what story elements made them stick in the hearts of people across generations and, ultimately, what elements could have been let go for

Scott also says, “The comparative playfulness of the novel could have made this movie a lot of fun, but over the years Mr. Jackson seems to have shed most of the exuberant, gleefully obnoxious whimsy that can be found in early films like ‘Meet the Feebles’ or ‘Dead Alive.’”

He’s comparing the playfulness of the novel to the brooding tones of the Lord of the Rings stories.

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the sake of the current story. Knowing the inevitable result of the events you couldn’t help seeing any number of cheesy hints and flawed foreshadowing for the days ahead and it took you out of the story.

The feeling of old sci-fi/western serial novels that inspired the original movies was totally gone. The archetypal characters were completely lost, and the classic pattern for a hero’s journey were all exchanged for cheap thrills, one liner puns, distracting special effects, and fight scenes so elaborate they seemed either silly or impossible to the point of no longer being cool. I said all that to say this: The Hobbit makes the same mistakes as the Star Wars prequels. Rather than making The Hobbit, and due to a desire to recreate the Lord of the Rings and its successes, it winds up making little more than a parody of the movies that preceded it.

The entire film plays out like a children’s theater reenactment of the Lord of the Rings. We get some orcs in there for no reason at all, we see some of the same characters from before only in unnecessary snippits, and in the end we’re left with the same silly little fellowship from before only done with little people and a weak wizard that’s only good for lighting pine cones on fire. It feels like a parody of what it was supposed to be, to the point of almost making fun of the source material and insulting the expectations and hopes of true fans.

Prequels are a bad idea. That’s the message here.

We all go in expecting that the only reason the movie is being made is to get more money which makes the audience that much more keen to Mr. Scott’s aforementioned “mercenary” tactics, but worse than that they are never good stand alone films. You’re so busy trying to create the back story to the movies that were already made that you don’t actually make a good movie. Think about the people in ten or twenty years that have never seen these flicks and decide to start from the beginning. In both examples, Star Wars and LOTR, you’re going to be watching unnecessarily complex plots leading characters into even more unnecessary obstacles which are faced off with absurd slapstick action responded to with silly play on word punch lines. Then those movies will end and you’ll move into the serious, dark tones and foreboding of the movies that con-

clude the story and they won’t match up. Those future people will look at their elders and say, “Seriously? Were these even made by the same people?

How’d we go from that to this?”

I think the main issue is this: In the desire to make more money and have increased crowd appeal, the prequel is always designed to be accessible, entertaining, and good for everyone of all ages and backgrounds. However, the original work was designed by the visionary creator with a limited audience in mind, sometimes even just an audience of one – themselves. Prequels are designed with sales and marketing in mind, when originals tend to be designed for creativity and storytelling. For this reason they never blend well together and the prequels always disappoint.

In the end, I will concede to Mr. Scott who said it better than I ever could: “Overall, though, the shiny hyper-reality robs Middle-earth of some of its misty, archaic atmosphere, turning it into a gaudy high-definition tourist attraction.” pp ----Read the full article here: http://movies.nytimes.com/2012/12/14/movies/thehobbit-an-unexpected-journey-by-peter-jackson. html?pagewanted=all&_r=0 ----Tyler Fisk is an art student at PSU and an amateur juggler. He likes his dog and wishes he could carry on Gonzo Journalism but also knows it probably died with Thompson. He likes art but doesn’t like talking about it. He hasn’t done much as a writer yet, so this will be short.

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Thought Chip Record: Agent Emmett Anders #Q9SEPT1F :: 000was30911 PM

“Where’s your little friend, McBride? This will go a whole lot smoother if you’ll just cooperate. We’re not after you.”

Beardo is cuffed to a steel table in a white, windowless room. The man interrogating him is in the standard black fatigues of the new FEMA army, a rank insignia on his left breast pocket, ELECT patch with an embroidered gold lettering on his right.

Staring at his hands, his face oddly emotionless, Beardo says, “I don’t know where he is, all right? My guess – he grabbed a car and got as far away as he could.”

“It so happens, you simpering bastard, that’s exactly what he did. Where would he be headed, huh, McBride? Tell us and maybe we let you off easy.”

“I don’t care what happens to me,” Beardo says, “My father in heaven watches over me and if it is his will that I should be imprisoned for my choices then so be it.”

“But?” asks the soldier.

“But I want assurances. I help you find Joe, Lee Vagabond goes free, that’s the deal.”

“Joe Blake, alias Joe Vagrant, is our target. We have confirmed reports that he broke into a government facility and released dozens of known terrorist offenders. Lee Green is an afterthought, a glorified accomplice with little more against him than aiding and abetting. If you get us Joe we’ll give you what you want.”

“I don’t give a shit about Joe,” Beardo grunts, “He’s a fool, a drug addled moron with delusions of importance and conspiracy theories to boot. Lee’s only failing is his belief in Joe. He can’t see the truth through the rose-colored glasses of their past together. So maybe Joe was once a great man, or kid, or whatever, but he’s lost it and Lee can’t see that. I don’t think he should be punished for being loyal to the memory of his friend.”

“Neither do I,” says the soldier, “As a former Marine I might even say there’s honor in that, but what about this Vagrant character and the freaks he ran off with?”

“Portland. Joe Vagrant is obsessed with a girl there, Audrey Lamb. He only has eyes for her, I’ve watched him shoot down the advances of too many groupie chicks to count and I can tell you that Joe will make a bee line right to her.”

“What makes her so special?”

“Near as I can tell – nothing. But Joe has an almost compulsive drive to see her, like Forrest Gump and his Jenny.”

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The soldier grunts a laugh and says, “I get it. If this lead pans out we’ll talk deal.”

“That’s not what we agreed to,” Beardo protests, “You said if I give you Joe, Lee walks. I gave him to you.”

“You gave me a hint. That ain’t the same thing. Sit tight. Make yourself comfortable, this could take a while.”

I cut the feed and zoom in on a bit of road west of Lubbock. Exterior camera selection is pretty scant, but luckily the guard’s Prius has OnStar onboard. I can see their faces. I hear their conversation loud and clear.

Fifteen minutes to my meeting with Section Supervisor Wilkes. Gotta hurry.

“Joe, where are we going?” Rash asks.

On Screen, there’s Trip in the passenger seat and Joe in back by himself. But on the Thought Chip Monitor Joe sees Mr. Smiles grinning like an idiot beside him.

Mr. Smiles says, “Seems like a thousand years ago, but when you and Lee left Montana, when Audrey was leaving for good, you performed a ceremony.”

“The Blackfoot Ceremony of the Lodge, I remember,” Joe says.

“What?” Trip says, “How’s that?”

Mr. Smiles nods calmly and says, “Call me superstitious, but that vow shouldn’t be taken symbolically, you’re supposed to build a real lodge. Maybe that’s why you’ve had such shit luck since then. I thought I’d help, thought I’d make a difference in your endless vision quest. I decided to build the lodge.”

“On that spot?”

“Yes, son, right there. It took some doing, but I obtained the land and started building. When you get there you’ll find everything you need to start your fight for healing your homeland. You must arrive at precisely midnight, there will be a border guard named Samuel Horse, tell him the medicine has come back to the lodge. Do you understand?”

“Montana, Rash,” Joe sighs, “I’m going to Montana.”

“Don’t you mean ‘we’re’ going to Montana?”

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Thought Chip Record: Agent Emmett Anders Err0r *cannotread*:: 000here30956 PM

“They’re anticipating our moves faster and faster,” Cedric says, “It’s getting so that the frequency gets shut off before we’ve even finished a whole set.”

“What can we do about it?” Naomi asks, dropping a bulky pair of headphones on the radio equipment carelessly.

“We need to be more mobile, loading and unloading this stuff in different buildings every week… near every day now, is getting old. It’s slowing down our broadcasts for sure.”

“Hey, what about Leonard’s bus,” Audrey asks, “you know, the Green Machine?”

“Got it out of impound after claiming it was stolen during that whole Melinda Voice fiasco. Far as I know, it’s gathering moss on his farm.”

“Well?”

“I’ll speak to him. The idea has merit. We could load her up with a Jenny and be fully powered and mobile, no unloading or jacking in required. He’s a friend, I’m sure he’ll be willing to work with us.”

“Does that mean…?” Naomi starts to ask.

“Road trip?” Audrey says.

“Road trip,” Cedric says, smiling, “We can’t have this conversation safely over the phone regardless, but it wouldn’t matter, I’m pretty sure Leonard doesn’t have a phone. We’ll have to go to Bend.”

The television cuts in, breaking their conversation, “This just in, anarchists have attacked the Christian General Assembly Corporation Headquarters. Suspects apprehended in the case include alias Lee Vagabond, famous for his band The Johnny HighFives. Vagabond is suspected to have been involved in more than one anti-government incursion in the past few months ranging from the breakout of known terrorists from the protective camps in Montana and multiple financial hacks throughout the country. The leader of ELECT, the new FEMA initiative to weed out the unrighteous in our homeland, Colonel Saul Arnold, said this was a boon for the war on immorality and anarchy in America and, quote, ‘We’ve captured a key player in the plot against this fine nation. God Bless America.’ End quote.”

Cedric flips off the television and buries his face in his hands.

Naomi, moving closer and rubbing his back, says, “We’ll get him back, Daddy.

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Somehow, we’ll find a way.”

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Audrey sighs and lights a cigarette with a match, “They’re tightening the noose.”

“I didn’t know you smoked,” Cedric says through his fingers.

“I didn’t know God was a political construct designed for crowd control until just a few years ago. Things change. Let’s load up. We have to broadcast before the drive to Bend and our crowd’s a-waitin, there’s one spot left in town we haven’t tried.”

“The tower off the old KBOO building?” Cedric asks, “Has it really come to that? I mean, what with all it represented before they shut it down it’s kind of become a hot spot. The police are all over it.”

“Maybe, but it’s our only choice.”

I cut the feed.

On Screen 3 the security vehicle from the CGAC rides a dead highway somewhere in Utah. I watch it through a camera outside of an old gas station then, inside, through the OnStar network. Rash is driving. He’s talking, almost non-stop, saying, “I just can’t believe it, man. Leveled from orbit, man. We’re boned. We’re totally cooked. I mean, how can you fight something like that? I mean, if aliens are real then everything else must be real too, right? The conspiracy theories, Project Bluebook, Project Paperclip, Roswell, fucking Area 51, man…they’ve been at it for years. Hiding the truth behind top secret aircraft, stealth bombers and shit, JFK, black helicopters, Jesus Christ and the Tooth Fairy. Fuck, man, we’re totally screwed…we’re totally screwed.”

“It’s a little exciting though, isn’t it?” Trip asks, “I mean the universe just got a whole lot bigger, right? I mean, right? ‘The truth is out there,’ and all that, right?”

“Will you two shut up?” Joe says, “I’m trying to get into the Network and you’re making it really hard to get properly stoned.”

“Whaddaya see, Joe?” Trip asks.

“It’s hazy, but it’s like I’m falling from really high up. Over a city of some kind.

Maybe New Orleans, not sure...”

“So how does it work?” Rash asks, “I mean, you have complete control of it but what are you doing exactly?”

“The implant works as a conduit between my subconscious and my waking life, by bringing the back of my mind to the front I can see the hardware working on my nervous system as it is interpreted by my meditative self. It’s all very cerebral, like I have to know how to separate a pathway in the hardware from just dream junk. Oh, yeah… my God… there it is… the city is actually a giant microchip. But the grid of it, it’s so complex. It looks like city streets, with electrical impulses cruising every circuit like a street. On the ground now. This is the Lost Highway. Dad brought me… never 51

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got it before… it’s all circuitry, every road. It’s like if you could see America from high enough up it would look like the inside of a computer.”

Trip says, “Hey, so, did any of you guys happen to check the clocks after, well, you know… after it happened?”

“No, why?” Rash asks, suddenly paranoid.

“Maybe nothing, but I could’ve sworn the clock was at 7:19 when we got in the car and then, after the explosion, it was 7: 33. Doesn’t that seem weird to you guys?”

Joe says, “Could’ve been a short in the circuitry caused by the impact of the explosion.”

“No, man,” Rash says, “That shit ain’t it at all. It’s Lost Time, man. Abductees talk about it all the time. It means they took us. They had us in their vessel for all of, what? Fourteen minutes? No telling what they did to us in there, man. They coulda tagged us with tracking devices or even put their implants in our heads or something.

Mulder used to talk about it on The X-Files all the time, man.”

Joe says, “Yeah, or it could’ve been that thing Rash just said.”

Trip grunts, “Fuck. I was afraid you were gonna say that. You know, it’s just like this time when I was a kid. I remember I used to be really skinny, like sickly skinny, you know? Then one night I had this weird feeling, like I was floating upward out of my bed. Everything around me was black, but when I looked behind me I could see myself way down there, you know? I mean way down, with a weird light over my face and this like silvery cord coming out of my body like an umbilical cord almost.”

Rash says, “Yeah, so? Out of body experiences happen, so what?”

“No, but see, right after that I got really fat. Like I am now, I mean I got fat.

Those floating up feelings happened on and off all through grade school. Never knew why. I hadn’t really thought about it in years, but like, I mean, like what if it was ‘Them.’ What if they took me and pumped me full of something to make me easier to tractor beam up, you know?”

“You think the aliens filled you with magnetic gel?” Joe asks, “Christ! Why don’t you tell people these things? It’s probably because of your fat ass they tracked us to the CGAC to begin with. They’re probably tracking you right now! Christ Almighty!”

“It’s cool, man, it’s cool. Relax, Joe,” Rash says, “You got the brain mojo, you’ll know if they’re coming…”

“Shh, shh, shut up, shut up, will ya? I think I got something. Dark spots.”

“Dark spots?”

“Yeah, dark spots. All over Portland. They’re radio towers. They’re shutting down broadcast stations, pulling power from the grid. I think they’re, shit, I know – 52

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they’re trying to herd them. Audrey. They’re in trouble. They’re gonna make sure there’s only one place to…”

“Trap?” Rash asks.

“Yeah. I have to try to warn them. I’ll need complete silence.”

Thought Chip Record: Agent Emmett Anders mm/dd/30 :: 00030979 PM

“This is Howling Murphy, owwwooowwwowww. Wishing all you folks out there in Dystopia a fine evening. So listen up, you rabble, the word is out on our dear old friend, Lee Vagabond. Looks like he got himself pinched in Dallas and his trail’s already gone cold. So keep your ear to the ground on the ol boy’s whereabouts here in the American Prison System and we’ll see if we can’t get him his proper day in court.

Right, ladies and gentlemen? Am I right?”

Cedric flips a few buttons at the engineering station and says, “So, the world’s looking more desperate every day. Word on the wire: President McKinley’s connections with the CGAC just bought him a whole bunch of sympathy in Washington. He’s making a mint off the insurance of his destroyed building and it kind of makes you wonder, like, who stands to gain the most from the destruction of that particular chunk of real estate?”

“Not Lee Vagabond. Last I heard him and his boys were in there trying to dredge up some kind of dirt on the company, hoping to turn this whole dystopian nightmare around with some truth. What interest would he really have in leveling the place before he got it? I ask you. Seriously, Mr. McKinley, is this really the best you can do?”

Audrey gets an anonymous text, no number, no blocked caller, just words on her cell. A trick Joe must have picked up from his old man. The text simply states, “Danger. Trap. Abandon ship.”

She cuts the signal and just says, “We gotta go. Just got a warning. Maybe Joe. Maybe the White Whale. Can’t be sure. They say this is a trap. They’re tracking us.”

“Say no more, lady. Leave everything, just take the transmitter. I’ll get replacements from Leonard in Bend.”

Naomi looks ready to cry, but grabs the transmitter box dutifully and they make a break for the door. They sneak out the back, ducking between trash cans and empty lean-tos. The sound of sirens and squealing tires fills the air. Audrey swears under her breath.

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“In here,” Naomi says, “They’ll be watching the streets, but these buildings all have roof access.”

“That’s my girl,” Cedric says, grabbing the box from her, “Damn, it’s locked. Of course it’s locked, I’ll have to…”

Audrey throws all of her weight into the door, grunting from pain in her shoulder and saying, “Sorry, Pops, no time.”

I lose them when they go inside but pick them up again on the rooftops, running like three clichés out of a spy flick. They go a few blocks climbing roof to roof and finally make their way back down to the street level. I fast-forward through a lot of walking as they make their way to Tent City. When they get back Cedric has the foresight to tell them not to rush in, anyone could be waiting for them there. Instead, the place seems deserted.

Audrey lets out a muffled cry and says, “Oh, shit, no…”

I track her line of sight and find a camera on the Tent City square. A single fire burns in a steel drum. Everyone that isn’t in hiding is lined up in four rows semi-circled around the fire and three people in the center ring. It’s a man I haven’t seen before in the black fatigues of the new ELECT task force. The other two people are on their knees and RITA’s facial recognition software makes the connection before I do.

It’s Dale and Marcy Lamb.

Dale says, “We will tell you nothing.”

“She’s gone, okay, our baby girl skipped town when that rotten Lee Vagabond left with his entourage. We haven’t heard from her and if you Nazi…”

She doesn’t finish the sentence. There’s the sudden boom of a handgun at point blank range and Marcy’s limp body topples over onto her husband’s shoulder, smearing him with blood. His hands are tied behind his back and he can’t catch her, she slides slowly down the front of his shirt and slaps the pavement as her skull cracks on the ground, weakened by the bullet. It is immediately followed by the nearly inhuman cries of Dale Lamb, howling, swearing, and struggling in his restraints like an animal chewing at its own leg to escape a hunter’s trap.

The soldier in black tries to say, “That’s enough, Mr. Lamb…”

But he didn’t calculate the chance at raw fury in the rest of Tent City’s denizens.

The crowd rushes the ELECT men, shots are fired, some civilians collapse, others grab the soldiers, stepping over the bodies of their fallen neighbors. In the ensuing chaos the ringleader puts a bullet into Audrey’s father, and fires six more shots into the crowd before fleeing down a nearby alleyway.

On Screen 3, Audrey is in shambles, sobbing, almost vomiting on the concrete.

Her body is tensed to the point of breaking yet dangerously close to falling over at the 54

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same time, held up by Cedric who looks ready to fall over himself.

Naomi shouts, “C’mon, we gotta get outta here.”

Audrey keeps whimpering and sobbing and says, “Just leave me.”

“Bull shit, girl, we gotta go, we ain’t leaving you nowhere,” Naomi yells.

“I want to die.”

“If you don’t get off your ass right now I’ll kill you myself,” Naomi says, “Dad! Now!”

Cedric nods and scoops Audrey up like a bale of hay, tossing her over his shoulder as she screams and squirms and pounds his shoulders reaching for her parents, hysterical beyond words. They round a corner and are outside of Tent City. Naomi puts a rock through the window of a parked Toyota Celica and hot wires it like a professional.

Cedric straps Audrey into the back, slides back the passenger seat and shuts the door without a word. She’s silent now, in the quiet, exhausted melancholy that comes after a fit of tears. Staring at nothing in particular, blue lit by the moon and a nearby halogen floodlight, Audrey gazes out the front windshield and waits.

The car gets moving and Naomi says, “She’s in shock. Give her your coat.”

Cedric obeys without a word and they take a few quiet roads toward Gresham, Oregon, avoiding major highways, and opting to head east instead of straight south, hoping the dark of the roads might keep them safe.

Thought Chip Record: Agent Emmett Anders #113SEPTwhat1F :: 0003099 PM

Bill “Beardo” McBride, rides silently in the back of an unmarked black van, headed west on I-20. In the steel cold of the prison transport he is surrounded by five men in dark jumpsuits who ride stone-faced beside him. His questions go unanswered and he has fallen into deep thought, possibly even prayer.

The van pulls off on an abandoned hangar in the former DFW Airport and the runway is loud with the hum of a two prop jet ready to carry McBride away to parts unknown, possibly for the last complex, prison, or quarry he’ll ever know.

When he’s pushed out of the van by two of the larger men, he lands on his hands and knees in a rattle of chains and shackles. An upward glare and he locks eyes with the interrogator from the day of his arrest. The man says, “Bad news, McBride. Your 55

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tip didn’t pan out. The girl was nowhere to be found and neither was Joe Blake.”

“Well, it’s all I know,” McBride says, “Where’s Lee?”

“Lee has been remanded to the custody of the U.S. Government where he will remain at a facility designated for his sort of scum and which will remain anonymous so as to avoid any further complications.”

“And what are your plans for me?”

“We’re flying you to a special facility in Virginia where your interrogation will continue.”

“So torture then?”

“Mr. McBride, you misunderstand. We are not the villains in this story. You are.

We are God fearing men working to make this country safe and pure once more. You are the infectious disease growing in the lifeblood of America. It will not be torture, but you will tell us everything you know.”

Bill McBride is loaded up on the plane and the feed goes quiet from there. On Screen 2 I can see the boys spray painting their security vehicle with gray primer and ditching the license plates for a card stock counterfeit of a temporary license to transport from the Oklahoma Department of Transit. If they get stopped they just have to say they’re moving to Montana and will license the vehicle there. But they won’t get stopped. They’re driving the dead roads.

On Screen 3, Audrey and the gang have arrived at a farm outside of Bend, Oregon. They’ve just told this man, Leonard, the news about her parents and he has agreed to help them with their broadcasts. He loans them the bus, “The Green Machine,” on an ongoing basis but warns them that if they are captured or arrested he will claim ignorance. He says he’ll say the bus was parked at a storage facility and he never noticed it was missing. They load the vehicle up with all the necessary supplies: antenna, transmitter, 4,000 watt generator, two microphones, two headsets, extra fuel for the road in large gas cans, bottled water, canned soup, sleeping bags, pillows, and an old laptop rebuild.

They stay the night there to rest and get ready to leave the next morning. Audrey still hasn’t spoken a word. She walks where she’s told to walk, but she is still and silent in every other way possible.

On Screen 2 the boys have themselves convinced they are being followed. A few hours later they flee a diner, suspecting their waitress of being an alien in human form.

In Wyoming they pump gas and the cashier asks if they’re paying with a card. Joe freaks out on the woman and accuses her of trying to track his movements. He says he’s staying off the grid.

In a small cattle town Joe has taken his turn at the wheel. He points to a little red brick church called “God’s Hope,” and says, “God’s Hope. Leave it to us to think we 56

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can save the poor bastard. That’s America, right, Lee?”

He turns around to see Lee smiling but there’s just Rash shaking his head.

As their journey goes on they grow more and more paranoid and I watch, slightly amused, as Rash and Trip are sucked fully into Joe’s delusions. They see clouds shaped like flying saucers. They drudge up old memories about how they were really abducted as children and only just came to remember. They convince each other that this or that celebrity is an alien or an alien informant. Christ was a Martian. Buddha was an interdimensional being from space.

Finally, Rash says, “You know what we need, man, is Edison.”

“The inventor?” Joe asks, his eyes circling inside his skull, now tripping balls in the back seat, “I’ll see if I can get him, but I’m not sure why we need him for this gig.”

“No, Edison, Edison James, you ain’t heard of him? Alias Thundercat, alias Bazooka Joe, alias Gene Hackerman…”

“These are hacker aliases?” Joe asks.

“Christ, don’t you know anything? He’s basically the last true hacker, way outta our league. He also happens to be an abduction survivor, or so he says…until Dallas I always assumed he was nuts.”

“So where is he?” Joe says, “Let’s sign him up. We’ll need all hands on deck.”

“Last I saw of him he was living in a fortified bunker of a basement outside of Sioux Falls, South Dakota. It ain’t even too far out of our way, just gotta point a little more north.”

“Make it so, Number One,” Joe says from the back seat in his best Patrick Stewart accent.

“Hey, how come he gets to be Number One?” Trip whines.

“Shut up, that makes you Data, Trip. Don’t you want to be Data? I mean, you’re always spouting off random statistics and pointless trivia, you’re practically a computer.”

“Yeah, but he also forgets to put on underwear or doesn’t match his socks. He might be Lieutenant Barclay.”

“I’m not him! Shut up, just shut up.”

Rash laughs and says, “And the sheer amount of gaming and television watching…might pass for the modern day version of Barclay’s holodeck addiction.”

“All right, nerds,” Joe groans, “I’m sorry I even made the reference. Let’s play the Quiet Game, whaddaya say?”

“I’m gonna win,” Trip says.

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“Oh, I’m sooo gonna beat you,” Rash says, “You’re toast. I can be so quiet it’s gonna be like, ‘Where’s Rash, is he even here? Oh, yeah, he’s just super quiet, we forgot about him.’”

“Shut up! I’m trying to find my subconscious,” Joe yells.

“Holy shit, get a look at this, fellas? Ever seen anything like that?”

Through the front windshield their entire range of vision is a yellow-brown blur.

There is no horizon. It’s like a big smudge across the whole plain in front of them.

Joe’s Thought Chip sort of haphazardly dwells on an idea about how old filmmakers used to smudge Vaseline across the lens to distort or even obscure certain details.

You’d get this orange haze in the shot just like this, but this isn’t Vaseline and it isn’t a movie.

Joe says, “It’s a habub… a sandstorm. You sometimes see them in Arizona but not this time of year and never this high north. The world’s changing, been changing for years, but this…What? Yeah. I’ll tell ‘em. It’s like everything is coming to an end all at once, economy, honesty, law, politics, and now even the weather has turned on us.”

They plow into the wall of sand and it’s so thick it starts coming in through the AC vents. It howls and scrapes and slaps at the side of the vehicle like a swarm of insects.

Rash says, “But it’s all the same thing, isn’t it? Economy doesn’t just mean the poor get poorer, it’s also pollution, it’s climate change, it’s spiritual junk building up in the heart of the culture every bit as much as greenhouse gases flooding the atmosphere.

This sandstorm, the hole in the goddamn Ozone layer, might as well be a metaphor for everything we’re running from.”

“You said it,” Trip says, “But… do you think? Could it be Them? One of their weapons?”

“Oh, shit, Trip,” Joe groans, his head in his hands, rocking back and forth, “Don’t say that to me, not now, not while I’m still chasing. What if it ain’t a sandstorm at all?

What if they’re tiny microscopic robots designed to get into our bodies and control our minds? Quick, quick, take these, here, quick.”

He gives Trip a dirty tee shirt, Rash a surgical mask – God knows why he has one of those – and ties a bandana around his own nose and mouth like a bandit. Joe says, “Probably won’t help, but at least it’ll slow them down. What I wouldn’t give for a few sets of goggles right now. Just gotta hope they can’t go in through the eyes.”

Trip says, “I feel sure they’re probably inhalants, good thinking with the masks.”

Like a pack of escaped paranoid schizophrenics roaming the country side, the three of them drive silently through the storm, masks on, trying not to breathe or open their mouths as much as possible. Just staring ahead, driving into a doomsday storm 58

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that really does look like the end of the world.

On Screen 5, Audrey, Naomi, and Cedric, loaded up in “The Green Machine,� have stopped to broadcast somewhere near Madras, Oregon. Parked in the mud-brown sand dunes of central Oregon, Cedric howls his anarchist rant as Naomi mans the controls and simultaneously spoon feeds some soup to Audrey who sits blank-faced as a stroke victim.

After the show they hunker down for some rest. A storm erupts over the dunes, waking them dramatically, and a flash flood sinks the bus halfway into the sand. They pass the night half-buried at an odd angle and dig themselves out the following morning, driving the bus up on boards looking more tired than when they started.

To Be Continued in Dystopia Boy 1.3 >>

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