You're not welcome here. You don't belong here. Be uncomfortable.
xxx-00-2007: x
Jan-09-2008: Raptor attack! I told them. I told them all. Don't tease the raptors. Just because the neighbor calls them pets doesn't make them pets. Plus, I don't trust his fencing. And sure enough, they bust the fence down and now the damn things are loose. And they're all over, attacking and eating people. So, c'mon everybody, we need to get inside now. No, these aren't just like chickens, you idiot, they're-- oh, well, now you know, at least for the last few seconds of your life. C'mon, everybody else. Get inside! No, no, leave the cooler out there. We can always pick it up-- aw, man. Well, the beer was that important to him, I guess. Everybody else -- get in the damn house now! No, they don't know how to turn doorknobs, but I'm not taking any chances, I'm locking it anyway.
Jan-08-2008: I walk through a hall in a darkened house. It's night and everyone else is in bed, in their respective rooms. There is something a little wrong with me being up. Not a lot, just that I ought to be in my room. It's quiet, but my skin starts crawling and I sense something moving toward me from the other end of the long hall. A distortion of air, a "crackling" coming toward me. That's why we should be in our rooms -- there's a Demon about. Not a Western style Demon, but an Asian style Demon, a supernatural creature of some specific nature. This one feels dangerous, potentially very dangerous, but I also know they have certain rules about doors. Desperately, I cast about, looking for a door, but the only one I can reach is a set of double folding doors, like a linen closet. I squeeze in and close the doors behind me, but the doors have no latch. The Demon would be stopped by a latch, but not necessarily by these doors. I brace my feet, legs, and hands against the doors, just as the Demon presses against, pushing inward. It' a huge effort, but I can withstand the force. Then, the Demon senses my mind and tries sliding into me. This Demon is peculiar in that it enters your mind through a feminine channel. If you think of someone female, particularly some you love or are very close to, it slides in on those thoughts like a razor and can take you over. I desperately focus on my memories, my own masculine thoughts. The Demon's sweet voice keeps at me. Isn't there someone I love? It whispers. Someone I wish were here to help? I can't help but think of my wife, and it whispers in my mind that it can be her, to let her in. I push that thought from my head just as I feel the Demon oozing into my mind. It shoves against the doors again and I struggle with that. Don't I love my mother? It tries again, sliding in on my feelings. I push it out again, and keep bracing the door. My strength and one of my touchstones is my love for my wife, and it seems impossible to have to completely reject that and still struggle against this Demon, but I have to. It will not go away until dawn. I have to fight, alone, until dawn.
Even when I wake up, I feel it battering at my mind, pushing at the door. I go back to sleep, and I'm back in that battle.
Until dawn.
Jan-06-2008: It's a park for employees who can't or won't stand on the long lunch lines. People who are a bit misfitty. I walk past a gal who sits morosely and tries to tell me about the lovelife of Ellen Degeneres. I tell her I don't care. She hangs her head and begs "Shame me, then." I search the planter box behind her and pull out three orange stones and rattle them in my hand like dice and cast them on the ground in front of her. "Three orange," I quietly say. "Shame yourself." and I walk on. A moment later, I see a man two-handed carrying a large stone, shouting that he'll take care of that damn dog. This is about fifty or sixty feet away. He reaches a big white dog, and hurls the stone at the dog's head. The dog avoids the stone and lunges at the man, snarling. He dodges and the dog bolts. As the dog runs by me, it snarls and snaps, and continues. A girl runs by after the dog, but hurriedly tells me to watch out -- the dog will probably come back for me. I watch the dog bound out into the parking lot, followed by people. It turns around and heads right toward me, no longer white, but black. I fend it off with my backpack, but it's snapping and snarling. I manage to hook its collar and I'm trying to get someone to call 911, but everyone is just crowding around staring and ignoring my pleas. "C'mon, someone has a cell phone," I say. "I can't use mine, my hands are full!" and the dog snaps at my free hand. I'm starting to lose my one-handed grip on the collar.
Jan-05-2008: I go to class. Sit down. Relax. The test is passed out. No problem, some sort of advanced math. I know this. I reach for my pencil, but I don't have one. What? I look for my bag, but I don't have one. No books, either. I look back at the test -- don't you dare... The test is incomprehensible to me. Shit. And I was so not wanting to disappoint my instructor. I liked her!
Oct-20-2007: We're fighting vampires in a warehouse and the battle is fierce. However, we are losing and it's really honking me off. Finally, I realize that I'm the only one left on my side. No one to worry about hurting, so I start heating up. A few vampires get close and I just flick them away. I'm getting hotter and hotter and rising to the ceiling. Hotter and hotter until I can feel the fires inside, screaming to get out. Then, almost as a form of relief, I release the heat. Everything in the warehouse is incinerated instantly. The warehouse is destroyed. I rise above the city, still heating up. I see small globs of color I recognize as vampires wandering around the city. Almost without thinking, I snuff them. I rise higher, snuffing vampires as I notice the blobs of light, higher and higher until I'm high enough to see the curvature of the earth, the planet rolling below me. All of them. I snuff all of them.
Oct-07-2007: Katrina's written some sort of brilliant technical article. It's so popular that practically everyone reprints it and it seems as if everyone has read it and loves it. Total strangers approach her everywhere, thanking her for writing it, and telling her how it blew them away and changed their lives and so on.
I'm pitching my centralized software idea to a group of investors. They aren't quite getting the idea. They don't think people will pay for software unless they can get a box.
Oct-04-2007: The whirlpool engulfs me. Above is featureless black -- eternal night. No stars, no nothing, just Dark. I am not in water, but instead, a substance-less fluidity, a separation of the Universe. Below is Matter, above is Nothing. In Matter, I feel myself spinning and tilting, dropping into the Abyss, wherein all Matter disappears. I'm only a mote in this silent, emotionless maelstrom, only a mote with a brief flicker of consciousness. I tilt more, spinning, and I fall in, and the vortex dissipates me effortlessly, and with a tiny wonderment that I have no thoughts or feelings on this, I too vanish away, too dissolved to remain an entity. There is nothing afterwards. Nothing at all.
Sep-12-2007: I'm out in a flood area, helping recovery efforts. The place I was originally staying has flooded, so I've been moved to a private residence. They're some strange people with strange habits, but we get on well, I suppose. One day, I'm sorting my laundry and my shirts are covered with lots of little tiny holes, like they were sprayed with a chemical acid before they were washed. "Oh, all our shirts are like that," they tell me.
Sep-08-2007: I've snuck my way to the top of the skyscraper, where she is being kept prisoner. Grateful to see me, she seduces me (no! this is a mistake!) and I'm glad and gratified to discover that this has all been a huge misunderstanding (no it hasn't!).
Afterwards, I review with her the different ways we could escape. There are three, each with some difficulty attached, but each do-able. She enumerates one-by-one the reasons why none of these methods will work for her, but her reasons seem nonsensical, made up on the spot. (yes! this is normal for her! get away! )
I'm torn because I thought she wanted to escape (an easy mistake to make, but don't compound it!), but she's not actually doing so.
Aug-11-2007: I'm reviewing a new set of microphones. One in particular is a small mic, about three inches in diameter, but with a wide diaphram. I am amazed to see that it has a little compartment and in that compartment is a tiny little pop filter and attachment frame.
I'm a student and a flmmaker, in a country where there is a bit of trouble. In particular, there is some sort of major firefight nearby, like something out of a ridiculous action movie. I try to stay crouched down, but the "hero" shoots me. Pissed off about this, I demand a reason. He claims that I looked like, or acted like a combatant. I point out that I was crouched in a corner, just trying to avoid all of this. He seems apologetic and we try it again, but he still shoots me. No matter how I try to hide or seem harmless, I end up getting shot.
Aug-06-2007: A film festival in Europe -- maybe France -- has awarded our first movie their top prize.
Jul-27-2007: He bursts into the cockpit, just as the pilot is reporting a 'firecracker' on board. "This is no fucking firecracker, my friend. This is a big-ass fucking bomb!"
Jul-16-2007: I'm going through trunks of old relatives. Personal effects, memorabilia, etc. Everything that was left behind when they died. I try to understand the significance of each one, but it's not always possible. This makes sense, though -- I'd pity the person who tried making sense of my personal effects. One trunk is particularly interesting in that it has some drug gear, a little pipe, a lighter, and even a small bundle of what I suspect is pot.
Jul-14-2007: I've been turned into a vampire and boy am I pissed off about it! Confused me at first, because I wasn't sure what was happpening, but now that I know, I'm angry. I decide to start killing other vampires. This is not out of some sort of vigilante cleansing of evil -- this is just because I am so mad that I am going to kill them all. Fortunately, killing vampires is surprisingly easy if you're one, too. They let you get close and their heads pop right off.
Jul-04-2007: We stop in at a tavern or something, just to get out of the heat. While we're there, the bartender notices me looking thirsty and pours me a glass of wine. Before I realize it, I've drunk half the glass. It is absolutely delicious! If I had any idea wine could taste THIS good...! Suddenly, I realize what I've done. I tell him I can't have any more (however delicious it is), because I'm riding tonight. He's regretful, but he understands. It was delicious, tasting a little fruity, a little woody.
The system has finally realized that my friend is not the official user. It makes a few disappointing noises and folds up consoles so he can't use the real high powered tech in it -- the nuclear stuff. We fret for a bit until I think of the novel idea of creating a new user. This is surprisingly easy.
Jul-03-2007: Someone has taken about half my quarter collection. This is very silly -- in order to open the tube holding the collection, they had to first go through a big box of other coins, including many quarters that aren't part of the collection. This makes no sense. Why would someone take my special quarters?
Jun-28-2007: I hear her in the other room. She's laughing at me, and not in that fun way. She talks with someone on the phone about how she has me wrapped around her little finger. I think about all the help and patience I've offered and I become angry and hurt. What am I getting out of this? Do I really want someone in my life who could act this way?
Jun-27-2007: I'm trying to get the thing to come out of the mirror. I hover near it, concentrating and at the same time not-concentrating. I can tell the whole thing is getting closer, but just then someone shouts out that I'm hovering and it breaks my train of thought. I can't recapture the moment. The thing recedes further back in the mirror.
Jun-26-2007: I'm trying to explain to a friend that I have recently discovered that David Banner's violent transformations are NOT a result of exposure to gamma radiation, but in fact the result of intensive training by a very clever monk.
A co-worker and I are trying to get to work, but part of the road we normally take is blocked off so flat, ultrafast cars can race. This is a little annoying as this is the only road to work.
I catch a small child (about five years old) as he is about to cut my Achille's tendon with a pair of scissors. He is working with a similarly aged partner. Evidently, they have attacked several people, just for fun. I disarm them both and plan to take them to the police. The longer I have them, though, the smaller they get. Eventually, they become mice, then pennies. I realize that an evil spirit of some sort has been at work here, and eventually planning on becoming human. I bind each penny with a rock, a stick, and a piece of grass to ward off the demon, hoping it will be enough.
Jun-25-2007: I know I've decided to go back to school, back to college. Taking good technical classes, including math classes, rich advanced stuff. But how did I get so far behind? I'm weeks behind! I have no idea how or even if I can catch back up. The amount of work ahead of me is absolutely staggering.
I own a toy shop in the mall. Just moments ago, a flood of kids practically destroyed it. Toys strewn everywhere, things knocked over, a complete shambles. I tried to control them, but their parents seemed completely out to lunch. Soon, the wave of destruction passed and I started forlornly picking up the pieces. Then, a group of teenage boys start picking through things. I apologize for the mess. I tell them that although it's all terribly disorganized, I would be happy to help them find what they're looking to buy. They correct me -- they are not here to buy, but to steal. I, trapped by a mound of toys on the floor and totally exhausted, can only watch helplessly as they take what they want.
Jan-09-2007: She tells me she wants to talk -- just talk -- and can she pick me up. For someone who wants to "just talk", she's sure dressed for action. Her skirt is really short, and the whole dress is black and curve-hugging. She's a knockout, no doubt about it. I remind myself that our affair has been over for a long time and that it turned very unhealthy for her. I have to remind myself of this a few times, because she's very intoxicating in that small car. She drives me around the waterfront area, talking in strange circles. I can't quit figure out where she's going with this, I can't quite track the thread of conversation. The heat is relaxing me, and her skirt keeps hiking up higher and higher. She's looking at me in a particular way that I recognize, too. Maybe she thought she only wanted to talk, but every other sign indicates something else. She reaches over me for something and I notice, with less surprise than I expected, that there's nothing underneath that little black skirt but her. The whole afternoon floods back into my memory, the feels the smells, the tastes. I reach for her and she backs away, just a little, just out of my reach again. She gives me a strange stern look, as if I ought not to have done that. The car rides over more difficult bumps and we focus on the ride. She teases me some more, less overtly, but I'm not keen on it as much anymore. We spent five years avoiding scruplulously each other, despite our attraction, and when we finally came together, she flew away as abruptly as she entered my life. I don't want to do that big old orbit action again. But she's right there, she's teasing me, and she's obviously interested. I suddenly realize that I just want out of the car. As nice a ride as it is, I'd rather walk.
Dec-24-2006: I've been told I'm the winner of a writing award and at the announcement dinner, a few photographers and reporters are following me around. In the auditorium is a bit of a floor show -- a man is telling fortunes. Specifically, he tells your future by touching and cradling your head, and then whispering it to you. Everyone's joking about it, but as each one walks away, they seem kind of haunted. Eventually, there's just he and I in there. Now, I've just won an award, so I feel pretty good, and I'm moderately successful as a writer, so god news won't make me feel much better, but bad news would fuck me up. He tells me it's not scary -- he won't tell me anything I don't want to know. He starts, and then we have to shoo away the photographers, because they're touching me and that interferes with the reading. After they leave, he tries again, then smiles and stops. "It won't work if someone is touching you," he tells me. "But," I tell him, "no one is here but you and I." He laughs gently and says "Not here -- in the other world."
Dec-18-2006: It's not Godzilla like in the movies, but everyone's calling it Godzilla. It came out of the sea in a fury and attacked and ate many people, and destroyed many buildings, but would go back into the water for protection. It was a giant lizard, with a fast and furious hunger. My friends and I were stunned that it seemed to be "following" us, attacking places where we hung out, except one old warehouse. We looked around and found its eggs. It had been attacking places where it had smelled people who had been near its eggs! So, I decided to give it a reason to stay out of the water long enough to really get nailed. I instructed my friends to get out of there and I smshed all the eggs. My scent was EVERYWHERE. Then I ran. I ran through complicated neighborhoods and through mazes of warehouses. I just ran. Eventually, I ended up at a local college, and talked a student into driving me out east. But while we were waiting to go, news reports came in that the creature had inexplicably gone inland and seemed to be very agitated and was approaching the school. I insisted we leave immediately and he, freaked out and trying to save the school, handed me his keys. I drove through town, and managed to cross my older path. My hope was that this would cause it to skip the school and track the newer scent. This worked, but I was driving like crazy and this big bastard was only a half mile behind, and making good time. I knew once I made it to the freeway, I could outrun him, but people kept blocking the entrances. I wondered what I would do when I ran low on gas...
Dec-11-2006: I have been diagnosed with cancer, that has oddly enough spread from my knees. I have about a week or two left to live. There are many people I want to visit, but I can't get to them all. I have to decide who I want to see, knowing that all my choices bear consequences.
Dec-05-2006: Zombies are taking over, and the infestation grows. We lived in the suburbs, in a house that we were expanding, when the whole zombie thing started. We explored the house already, and found anything and everything that could possibly be a weapon. One of the things we realize is that with all these doors, we'd better make sure everything's well-locked. We find a few doors unlocked, and while we're locking up, we hear a voice hailing us from outside. A man and his wife stumble over. We're wary because they are obviously turning into zombies, but they manage to croak out a greeting. Turns out they knew the people who lived here before and they try to advise us about various safety features, as well as other things. But they're too far gone and as they're talking, they start lurching towards us and towards Katrina in particular.
Dec-01-2006: My friend is in the car as it rolls over. The gal driving it, however has a chimpanzee in the back. I'm not very strong, but I know that chimp is, so I thump on the back door and he pushes his way out. I struggle to remember my chimp sign language and I get clouted on the head a few times, but eventually, he flips the car back over and pulls out his mistress. I can now help my friend out the same way.
Dec-01-2006: I and my two brothers all have to pass the same final exam in electronics, using only the items in the box to build an AM Receiver. There are, however, certain items missing and because they got the kit first, I end up shorted. I take a walk to clear my head and when I return, they've finished building their Receivers, but now I can't find the box at all!
Nov-12-2006: Aliens have landed. Actually this is a small group of them, maybe half a dozen. They are being greeted and "sniffed out" by a group of human beings, chosen for their ability to perceive and for their influence. The two groups are staying in a small secluded building, a house of sorts, a social quarantine area. I'm one of the people. As time passes I find myself more able to see into the future, to follow the thick heavy lines of probability, even when they thin out to vanishingly uncertain. In this case, however, there is one strong fat line of probability -- that these aliens are lying to us. The fattest line of probability is that they will enslave and eventually destroy us. No spunky humans, no insurrection, just a quick and methodical extermination. I can see this, and it astonishes me that no one else can. Or maybe they can, but they think that because these aliens are acting so darn nice they couldn't possibly be of evil intent. But they are and I know it.
The sad part is, I also know that killing them won't stop it. Killing them makes the probability line get fatter. I try so many different solutions and each time the line gets fatter, the stakes higher, humanity's death more certain. Except for one action. Every time I contemplate this one action, the probability drops to the tiniest almost invisible thread. Every time I consider that action, I see humanity being constantly coy with these creatures, and thus saving their own bacon. But the catalyst event, the thing that must happen to save humanity, is that one of the humans in this group must die. Tonight. It is her influence that overrides everyone else, it is her kindness the aliens steal to mimic, it is her soul that is robbed so that ours can be sufficiently categorized to annihilate. She must die.
But -- she is one of the kindest, friendliest people I know. I genuinely adore her, as do the rest of us. Hurting her is unthinkable and the idea of shutting off her light for all time is too hard to imagine. I can't. I just can't. And I must.
I creep through the darkened room with the closest thing I have to a weapon -- a wooden club I tore from an office chair. Everyone sleeps. I find her. I stand over her. I can't do this! I must do this! It's wrong -- so very, very wrong. I swing the club, and it bounces off her head. The sound sickens me. She wakes up, in a physical way, but not a mental way. She's confused and the pain hasn't registered as pain yet. I hit her again. Hard. I was hoping the first one would be enough. The second one leaves her alive still, but she thrashes, and moans a guttural polysyllabic. A third time, this time as hard as I possibly can, and she is silent, but now, of course, other people are getting up, lights are flicking to life, there is shouting and screaming.
I throw my mind into the future as I feel hands around me, bodies bearing me to the ground. I see two things, two things that come even close to being worth taking this woman's life. I see humanity always nervous around the aliens, always a little worried that maybe their influence made me some sort of mad killer. I see doubt and hesitancy and a wariness. But I also see another thing. I see the aliens, confused and alarmed by my seemingly unmotivated violence, the fact that this murder occurred with such brutality, deciding that however soft the people of Earth might seem, they are hard and dangerous and unpredictable. The aliens decide for themselves to leave and when they do, humanity breathes a sigh of relief.
Then I see a third thing, a thing I expected to see, but am still shaken by. I see my own death. I understand it must happen, but still, I mourn for myself and I mourn for my friend, who had to also give up her life. I wish I could have explained, could have known that she accepted this, but no, it couldn't have happened that way. This was the only solution.
Nov-09-2006: In our house at the coast, we watch the waves with apprehension. We have been told that a tsunami is expected in. We figure we're safe enough in our house. We watch the waters recede, knowing this is the precursor. Then the first wave comes in. It's a gentle buildup of water, but relentless, rising, rising toward us. It reaches the bottom of the house and keeps rising. Reaches the windowsill, then slows, and starts dropping again. We start to breathe a sigh of relief, but it catches in our throats as we see the second wave coming. We grab hold of major support parts of the house, and I suddenly remember the newscaster telling us that the first wave would be gradual and slow, but that the second would be hard and violent. It hits and the house whips and bucks beneath our feet. Tearing, rending sounds. The back half of the house is torn from the anchored front half, and, floating, we spin inland on the rushing water. Fortunately, this half of the house floats, so even though we are cruising along very quickly, we are relatively safe. We slide down streets. The water is shallower now, but we are moving very quickly. Just as we start to bottom out, we crash directly into a glass-fronted building. Glass shatters and is thrown everywhere, but we realize that if it weren't for the glass cushioning us, we would have experienced serious injuries. We watch the waters as they continue receding.
Oct-18-2006: She has been a prisoner her whole life, in a small cell with hardly a blanket. Her single possession is an old book, worn out. She can't read, but she loves the book and looks at every page all the time. It is powerfully symbolic. She cannot speak -- she has never been taught, plus her tongue has long been removed. One day, for no reason other than their own twists, her captors remove the book while she is asleep or away. Grief hollows her oyt and for a period, she is despopndent beyond ken. Her life has lost meaning and she drifts. Then, some timeless time later, she finds the book, obviously placed back in her blanket. Although there should be joy filling her heart, and there is SOME joy, this is the first time in her entire life she realizes what sort of captive she is. She collapses in grief at realizing her deep loss, her empty mouth opening and an inarticulate choking wail filling her small cell.
Oct-11-2006: Stephanie and I are trying to leave Germany. The wait at the train station is long and we wander the local vendors looking for a bite to eat. I panic momentarily because I don't know where my backpack is, but Stephanie reminds me that it's in a nearby locker. Now why would I put my backpack in a locker?
Oct-11-2006: Some sort of weird contract has been taken out on our life. This doesn't make any sense to me as all we're trying to do is good. It involves a "curse" and some kind of animal, probably a tiger or something. I am warned by a local native that no one survives the curse, but I tell him there is no curse - but that there probably is someone who is pushing the idea of a curse, so they can push their own agenda through fear. While I am talking, I notice someone crouching in the bushes with a blowgun and darts. He's a shitty shot, missing my friend. He gets me, but the stuff is all mixed wrong and it only makes me dizzy for a few minutes.
Oct-11-2006: Katrina and I are driving home, down a desert road. Oddly, someone has installed a railroad crossing guard at the tracks. "But I've never seen a train down here," I say. She says "It's new to me, too." It's a strange type of crossing guard, not very long, but wide-bladed. We get home and she lets the cat out while I take off my shoes. "Since when have we let the cat out?" I asked. "Especially at night in the desert?" She shrugs. "I dunno'" she says. This is all seeming very suspicious to me...
Oct-10-2006: I'm walking by a man who is talking on his cell phone. He becomes unnaturally silent and then, to my surprise, he collapses. I try to shake him a bit, but he's quite out. Katrina comes by and helps, telling me how to check him, how to position him, etc. I start CPR under her direction while she gets on the phone and calls 911. Eventually, we are rewarded by a great shuddering sigh and he starts breathing on his own again.
Sep-26-2006: We arrive for diving lessons, but the line is horrendously long and the pool is full, so the lessons are going to be on the boat and they have to take us out to international waters.
Sep-26-2006: I'm trying to get ahold of Dad. The messages I leave, though, all sound very strange and desperate. So I try to leave additional messages making myself sound less desperate and weird, but it just exacerbates the problem.
Sep-26-2006: New people hired and sitting down right behind me. Strange and very uncomfortable. They can see everything on my screen. I have the sense they were hired to watch me.
Sep-25-2006: She and I are both fighter pilots, peers. I've been attracted to her for a long time, but too busy to do anything about it. In a briefing, we are informed that a new Commander is going to be chosen. Most of us -- myself included -- think it will probably be me. "I won't get to fly with you," she tells me. "I'm going to miss that." My heart skips a beat. "I'm going to miss flying with you, too," I tell her. We look at each other and I realize the affection has been mutual for a long time. "You better do something about that now," she tells me, "before you can't fraternize with the hoi polloi anymore."
Sep-25-2006: I'm far in the past, trying to save history as we know it. I confer with medieval armies and their leaders. I realize that the incoming army is travelling up a valley. This is perfect! We can gas them in this valley and save lots of time. I try to explain my idea, but all I receive is a lank stare. "Gas," I say. "Don't you know about gas?" Evidently, they don't. I try explaining gas to them, how we have gasses that are so deadly a few drops on the floor can kill a roomful of men. They all stop walking and just stare at me. They are disgusted -- what a horrible way to make war! They can't believe how cowardly that is! Is everyone from the future this cowardly?
Sep-25-2006: The instructor is showing off the new Holographic Learning Systems. These are sort of virtual floating 3D wikis that hover in the room. Each student's thoughts help form them and they help focus the teacher's lesson in such a way that it helps the brain understand it better. The more people n the room who "get it" the more the images shift to something that better helps the learning process. Brilliant concept, actually, but you do have to train a bit to be able to take advantage of it.
Sep-24-2006: We are remembering the time one of our party was really drunk and tried to drive his own carriage home. The local constabulatory was onto him in a matter of seconds, leaping into the carriage windows like a couple of monkeys. Although he protested he was on the King's business, it was obvious he was just drunk.
Sep-24-2006: I am showing off the new pipe systems for where we live. This is a waste disposal pipe about six feet in diameter. I'm showing how thick the concrete is, talking about how secure the whole system is and how it's so good that I'm joking we'll have to be careful to not get sucked in. I think this is strong enough to protect us in case of an attack. Plus, if worse comes to worse, we can escape through the pipe, which won't be a wonderful crawl, but will protect us as we get away.
Sep-22-2006: It's some kind of school, maybe even high school, but not my own. Most of us there are still adults, or maybe a little younger. That evening, there is some kind of phenomenon going on, astrological or something like that. A friend of mine asks if he can help me with filming it and I tell him sure. He's good. I acquire tickets for him and me. Then Sheri approaches me, upset that I didn't choose her. "I didn't know you were interested," I tell her. She's upset that no one picks her because she's a girl. I try to tell her that this has nothing to do with it, but she won't listen. Back inside, I run across Tracey and I ask her how design work on the logo is going. She looks sheepish and tells me she hasn't had the time to even start. I'm okay with this and she's relieved. I try to hop in the service elevator to go up a level but before I get in, one of the janitors comes by. Momentarily, I think I am in trouble, but he assures me instead that he is sorry to have kept ME waiting. He helps me into the elevator and closes the door.
Sep-20-2006: I'm with a woman who is doting on her sickly boy, who is not really sick at all. She keeps going on about how delicate he is, about how careful she has to be and all I can see is a boy who is gradually being convinced that he is an invalid.
Sep-18-2006: Damn recruiters. Now they're going door-to-door to recruit people. We fall to a bit of an argument, and we're going to resolve it via fisticuffs in the backyard. Before we begin, I remind the soldier that I outrank him.
Sep-17-2006: This isn't my phone. This is someone else's phone. Who are all these people in the contacts list? Someone must have grabbed my phone by mistake.
Aug-22-2006: I remember this sculpture. We found this sculpture on our first adventure together, over a volcano. and through a jungle. I feel sad to have forgotten it.
Aug-16-2006: It's a huge scab and I'm amazed I was able to peel the thing off in one big patch. Kinda scary, when I think about it.
Aug-13-2006: They're using an active volcano as a very fancy water feature. I step close to the edge and watch the orange glowing lava. "Soon," I tell myself. "Soon this will spill over and they'll realize how stupid an idea this was."
Aug-12-2006: I've just flown in. It's night and I'm not sure where she is, but I'll wait. I play with her dog for a while. A large car shows up, a limo. She and three other people get out. They all seem surprised to see me (but I was planning this!) two of them I know from down here -- one a friend and the other my Mom. The other fella I don't know. He seems puzzled by my presense. The vibe I'm getting is that he's her date for the evening. That seems odd -- this was the first evening we have together for months! I try to introduce myself but he dodges conversation and they all duck back into the limo except her. She pulls me aside, takes a breath and tells me she's not seeing me anymore. What!?
She says she could tell from my letters and from our chats and calls that I was no longer in love with her and that she just wanted to formalize that. What?! I tell her no, no, no, this isn't truth at all! I'm crazy about her! I love her! She listens and nods and seems sad, but insists she is doing the right thing. I'm heartbroken. How can this be happening? how can I love someone this much and in this way and have her so completely miss it that she thinks it's the opposite?! Can we talk about this? Are words meaningless here? She says we'll talk about it after she gets back from her date, but I have a feeling it's an aleady-done deal in her mind.
I feel like complete shit and an idiot as I watch the limo pull away. It makes no sense. Nothing does anymore. Why am I bothering? I feel hollowed out again, although there's not much grown back in yet. So, the process -- the hollowing out -- was easy, sadly. I have been disposed of when I became too real.
Aug-10-2006: We're all piling into the truck. It's a huge truck, so everyone's afraid of it. Basically a mobile home kind of thing. Also, it's a manual transmission, so most everybody else can't drive it. Katrina and I can, but she's not feeling brave about it right now. So, as awkward as it is, the job of driving this bastard is mine.
It's a bumpy ride, though. The clutch responds erratically and I jerk it around a few times trying to get it into gear. People are gonna think I'm incompetent at this driving thing, and it's not as if I can convince them it's a dodgy clutch.
Finally, we make it to the freeway, and I think it's going quite well.
I see police lights up ahead in the dark. They are flagging people over to drive on the shoulder. Some kind of wreck ahead. A big one.
I slow down a lot and start driving the route on the shoulder. That's when I notice the first animal body. Then I notice another. Then another and another, some large, some small. I recognize that these are all circus animals.
Then it makes sense -- there's been an accident of some sort with a traveling circus.
It hurts to think of all these dead animals. The bodies are now so thick that it's actually tricky to weave around them. They look magnificent, but also stilled forever. Tears start down my face and as I pas each one, I whisper to it, how sorry I am this happened.
Eventually, the animals are so thick that I have to drive over them. It's horrible.
Aug-08-2006: Soccer? I'm really awful at this, although it's fun to watch. I try my best despite the fact that we're actually playing in a house and there's furniture and stuff all over. I get one good block in and one good shot at a goal. I do okay -- nothing to write home about.
Aug-06-2006: I must choose of of the scenarios whirling around me, each playing out on a flying TV screen. All of them are terrible.
Aug-06-2006: I stood on a cliff overlooking a huge ruined city. Long devastated, but still nothing growing there. I vaguely recognized it as New York. Nearby was a bookshelf. There was one book on the bookshelf, a quickly-assembled collection of B&W photographs. I paged through, seeing New York while it was still up. Then I saw it from the point of view of an airplane. Then the airplane was dropping bombs and flying away. I followed the bombs in pictures as they came closer and closer to earth, and then there were only more pictures of devastation.
Aug-05-2006: I noticed with surprise how many trucks seemed to have driven off the road and into the ocean. We stopped and I realized that the ocean was lapping up against the land in huge swells, but not going away. The land was sinking (or the ocean rising)! Before we could get back up the road, swells overcame our car. Fortunately, we're both good swimmers and were able to get out of the car and float to the top. We rode swells in to land and scrambled to safety, watching from a distance as the water continued to rise. Cars and houses and factories all were swallowed up by the water as it rose, each one marked by streams of bubble beneath the surface. I knew that eventually, all that water would be horribly contaminated.
We kept running inland, heading for some ships. A large cruise ship has been drifting in and we manage to get onboard. I realize we have no clothes, so I'm going to run quickly back to the hotel, throw some clothes in a bag, and come back to the ship.
At the hotel, as I'm throwing clothes into a bag, my sister and her son arrive. She wants to know what to do. I deliberate a few seconds. He is strong, young, sprightly, creative, tough, and open-minded. I tell her he'll come with me and she needs to go south to grab a ship coming in.
He and I head north, toward the ship, while she heads south, where I know the water is rushing in. I am sad about this, and a part of me things I've done a bad thing, but I think it settles something in the Universe a bit.
When we arrive, the ship has cast off. We decide to swim for it. I hear boat horns from everywhere. All boats are blowing their horns, and it is the sound of mourning.
Jul-03-2006: It's a horrible argument and a group of us seem to be really at each other's throats out there in the field. A man approaches, and we know he's some kind of peacekeeper. We keep squabbling until the last minute, though. He has a ball and he kicks it high in the air. We keep squabbling. When the ball hits the ground, it doesn't bounce. Instead, it sends a sort of whomp through the ground. We all stop. Once you feel this whomp you cannot continue fighting. It's part of the law we all agree to.
Sep-06-2005: She calls me. "I have to tell you something," she says. Her voice is different than I've ever heard it. I've heard many different voices from her, but I've never heard her scared. "I have lumps," she says. "Tumors." I feel dizzy. "Maybe," I try, "Maybe they're benign? Maybe they can be removed?" Her sigh across the phone is worse than if it were in real life. "They're not," she tells me. "They're the tip of the iceberg." I suddenly stand in front of an enormous bookshelf, stretching at least fifteen feet high and very, very wide, thirty, forty feet or more. These are all the books I've read, all the learning I've done in my whole life. My eyes flicker over every spine, flash the contents back into my head. I've read all of these books, I've learned all of these things and none of it will help her. "It's... well, it's okay, hon," she tells me. "No one lives forever." I'm still too shocked and desperate to speak out loud, but she knows what I'm thinking. "Don't be that way," she chides me. "Don't. You've grown and you have a life and a family of your own. That is a good thing. All of this is supposed to happen." Nothing in the books helps me.
Sep-06-2005: The floodwaters are waist-high. The town is silent, dead. Debris floats in the dark water, bumping softly away from me as I plow through. I don't want to speak aloud, to call out, because the silence is oppressive. Even the animals are silent. No birds. No crickets. No frogs. Nothing. The sun hangs low and the clouds reflect blood-red against the water. I keep looking. I'm sure she made it. She's resourceful, brilliant. Then I see her. She floats, most of her body underwater, but I recognize her, even from this far away. I stumble and fall and I can't stand. I can't stand as I approach her, floating, her cold eyes upward and blind. I'm at her side. I can't believe it. No, this is so wrong! Her lips don't move, but I hear her voice, as if she was sitting next to me, almost conversational. "It's okay," she says. "I'm okay, baby. Really."
Sep-04-2005: The house is filled with traps and tricks. Some are deadly and people have died. By the end, only three have survived: a man who is not very smart but appears clever, his son who is quite clever but hides it, and a woman who might be his girlfriend. There is a fourth man, a Jester, who judges them as they pass traps, and has set the entire house up the way it is. The Jester takes notes carefully in a little book. The Jester tells them that they must come back when he calls them. They must keep testing the house. If they do not come back, the Jester will choose one at random and kill them.
Sep-04-2005: We climb slowly up the trail to the observation decks for Mount St. Helens. As we ascend, there are places where we would expect to see the mountain, but brick walls and other visual blockers have been hastily erected, so that we never actually see the thing until we reach the top of the observation area. What is all this machinery? It seems as if a group of enterprising engineers has devised a way to harmlessly raise the lava dome by pumping air down it. I'm hesitant about this method, but fascinated at the machinery of it.
Sep-03-2005: The wheel is huge, more like a cylinder. It rotates over an open pit in which glow embers of a fire. A man is tied to the cylinder. He is yelling indignantly, about his treatment, being tied to this thing. It's clear from what he's yelling, though, that he's not of the opinion there's any real danger, just that he's really inconvenienced and uncomfortable. He is yelling a bit to me and a bit to the other man, a Controller who stands near the axle of the cylinder. A great crank is there and this man rocks the crank back and forth, which rocks the drum. I call him a man, but it is as if I am seeing two creatures at the same time. One is a large, muscular man in a black suit. The other I only see glimpses of, but it has a huge head, a ring of horns, a tail and teeth. Impossible teeth in a wide grinning froglike mouth. He turns to me, as if he had been waiting. "It's fun once they realize it's all real," this man tells me. He cranks the drum and the loud, complaining man spins around and then is facing downward into the pit. He's still complaining, only more loudly and shrilly. The Controller pulls a lever and the flames leap up, lightly but completely covering the man tied to the cylinder. There is a sudden silence. Then the shrieks begin. The Controller spins the man back up a bit. His clothes are burned mostly away and he struggles against the bonds, screaming. "After this, it's usually boring and noisy," says the Controller. He jerks hard against the crank and the drum bounces. The man is crunched between the heavy wheel and the ground. A bit of blood and gore remains stuck to the floor. The Controller spins the drum, putting the unconscious man back into the flames. "You get tired of the screaming," it explains. I smell the meat roasting.
Jul-25-2005: I'm with a friend, who has taken me to "Canada's best ever hobby shop," according to him. He's thrilled to be here and we both spend hours wandering around, looking at all the bits and pieces. As I notice the prices, though, I realize that when translated to US dollars, it's all comparable or maybe even a little higher than the prices for the same things in the US. It's a fun place, but I see no reason why I should be buying stuff here instead of in the States, where it's cheaper and I won't have to bring it on the airplane.
Jun-14-2005: She demands her brother's body. I tell her that I have already sent it and she calls me a liar. I tell her he was cremated and I sent his ashes in a simple urn. She is about to call me a liar again, and then her faces freezes. She obviously remembers something, and by the look on her face, it isn't a good thing. "You did receive them, didn't you?" I ask and I know the answer is affirmative. The look of spreading horror on her face tells me more. "You threw them away, didn't you?" I ask. "You didn't even bother to read the letter, did you? You just got the box, saw it was from me, and threw it away. And now your brother is long gone." I feel a tiny bit sorry for her, but only a tiny bit. It was her hatred that did it, and now she has to face that forever.
Jun-14-2005: We are emancipated from the ape overlords. We are overjoyed, exhilarated, and, admittedly, a bit confused. We've spent generations under the yoke and many of us don't know what it's like to be free. We don't know anything else. I've heard stories from my parents and their parents, though, so the first thing I decide to do is get the hell away from the city -- there's no telling when the tide will turn and we'll become property again. The sun is high and the day is hot and even though I travel by foot inland and away from the coast, I believe I will find fresh water and a new life. I am accompanied by a group of people, and we trade stories of how life used to be, based on the stories we heard. We are trying to reconstruct a three-generations-ago lifestyle. "Commerce" is the current topic. Why would someone engage in "commerce" when "trade" seems more reasonable. We speculate on what "money" meant. Much later, we find an ancient library. It's not huge, basically a portable type building, but it contains some books that are still useable. Curious, I look over an atlas. I can read, so now it's time to try and figure out where we are. I eventually decide that we are on the coast of a continent that used to be called Antarctica (near a city that used to be called "Juneau"). According to what I can tell, Antarctica is supposed to be one of the coldest places on the planet. I'm suddenly not sure it's a good idea to keep heading inland, and I wonder what the rest of the planet is like now. The sun is still high in the sky, baking us in that tiny, dust-filled building.
Jun-07-2005: She comes into the room, graceful and comfortable to the point of physical power. I've always been a little intimidated in her presence, but I've never admitted it. She's talking about a project she's working on next and I comment about how it's got to be less nasty than my projects. A bit of self-deprecation. She stops me immediately and tells me "Edward, the scripts you've written are some of the most disturbing and freakish scripts I've ever read -- and the best. So, knock it off." She has me scoot over and sits next to me on the couch. Leaning against each other, we continue watching TV.
Jun-05-2005: They feel sorry for me. I can tell. They have acquired for me an attractive female escort. I realize that this is just such a hokey solution, a cheap-ass patch job for my heart, and they acknowledge it as well. "Just try her!" they tell me. I love them, but I think this is a hare-brained idea. The date goes well and she is pleasant and intelligent. Although there is no passion, she turns out to be skilled and functional in bed and I find myself warming to her without falling goofy, because I know that she has her limits. I wonder if this is what they were trying to teach me.
Apr-24-2005: We've just rescued these people from a building in which they were trapped. I go over the crowd quickly, making sure there aren't any stragglers, that we've completely emptied the building. The flesh-eaters are overrunning the building and they will very soon discover that it is empty. Then they'll be frustrated as well as hungry. This is a large crowd, though, and now we're out in the open, so the scent will draw them from all over. I look back along our path, and I listen carefully. I hear hunting cries and I know that we have to start hauling ass or we're going to be caught out. I start yelling at people to move out, to start running, to follow me, but they just look stupidly at each other, as if getting out of the building was all they were good for. The group of us run through the crowd, yelling "Run, run, goddamit! Follow us!" and it is as if we just aren't seen. Nothing mysterious, they just simply ignore us, trying to find out from each other what's "really" going on. A few start moving along with us, but once they realize that the crowd-in-general isn't moving, they slow back down and rejoin the group. This is suicide! We, of course, keep running, because we're not stupid. The cries are getting louder and we yell at the crowd "Follow us or you'll die!" and we turn and run, not waiting to see if anyone bothers following us. As we leave a section of the woods in which we were hiding, the part of my brain that's always watching for danger tells me this is about the time when the flesh-eaters will discover the crowd. Sure enough, I hear screaming from far back. I risk a glance. No one has followed us. No one at all. I'm a bit sad that they're all going to die, and I'm a bit annoyed that we spent the effort to rescue them to no effect. On the other hand, that's a lot of food and a lot of scent and we'll make a clean getaway in the frenzy. I guess I ought to feel sorry for them, but I don't. I can't. there's just no sympathy in my heart for them at all. I can't even believe they're the same species as me. I keep running.
Apr-23-2005: He is a boy, only ten years old or so. He's easy to please and likes to show off, like all boys his age. His eyes blink and he starts reciting data that's on my cell phone. It's amazing. Then he tells me that he's not supposed to do that, that they think it's too dangerous that he can do that. I ask who he's speaking of and he nods at the wall "The men behind the wall," he says. I realize looking at him that he is, in fact, secured via five points to an angled bed. He can't move, although he doesn't appear to be in immediate discomfort. I leave the room and find out that there actually are men behind the wall. Research scientists monitor him constantly. He is a threat to national security, as well as a major threat to any sort of data security. Normally whenever he does this, they flip a switch and then a machine sends out an electromagnetic pulse that scrambles his thinking for a while, so he can't implant the memories. They show me and the boy -- who I can see through the now-evidently-fake wall -- writhes in pain. It is unfortunate, but the pain is necessary when scrambling up his mind for a while. They just want to make sure he can't read things.
Apr-23-2005: The fellow in the hotel room next to mine calls me over. He’s a bit nervous, and has a problem. Ordinarily, he wouldn't ask anyone for any help, but he knows that I can be matter-of-fact about certain things, so he feels confident asking for my help. We go to his room. It seems he and his girlfriend are doing the tie-'em-up game and she's all tied up in a complicated series of knots and blindfolded as well. This is a good thing because it turns out she is an ex-girlfriend of mine. He explains that he wants to move her to another room, but she can't walk, he can't move her alone, and the knots are too complicated to untie and then retie once she gets there. He keeps explaining things and I keep nodding. I don't want to speak because I know she would recognize my voice. Finally, he asks me why I'm not talking. "Because," I answer him, "I have inadvertently placed myself in a very awkward position." She is startled to hear my voice, but recovers quickly. "If you think it's awkward for you," she says, "At least you're not immobilized." After she assures me she is, in fact, okay, I gently carry her to the other room.
Mar-22-2005: I'm teaching my friends how to snorkel. I seem to have lost my mask and fins and snorkel, and the set I'm borrowing are complete shit. They're just awful. But I'm willing to do my best. The bay in which we're snorkeling is a sort of "recovery bay", where rescued sea creatures are taken to recover. The first fish I see looks peculiar and I try to get closer. Turns out it's not a fish -- it's a turtle. Someone had removed its shell and then removed its back legs. So, it was just this naked turtle with little front flippers. It didn't look happy.
Jul-26-2004: I just feel like playing my music and being left alone. Why is that so difficult for people to understand? I said it plainly and they all think I'm joking or bullshitting or somehow doing that retarded ask-for-the-opposite-of-what-you-want thing that by now they ought to know I detest. So, I take my violin and harp and head for my room. In the hallway, I pass a group of people practicing dance, and their instruments set up a sympathetic vibration in my harp strings, which then screws up their timing. I apologize and try to keep my fingers on the strings as I pass. Finally, in my room, I decide not to play either instrument, but instead play with a curious little tin thing. It looks a lot like an ashtray, but has short, tight strings across it. It comes with an ornate little bow. I draw it carefully, to get a sense of the notes and discover that applying pressure via the grip on the tin cup changes the notes a lot. This little handheld thing is really quite versatile! I play a few pieces, and then improv something cheery. Oh, I like this instrument!
Jul-26-2004: It's Christmas and even though this is a really big house, it looks like basically, there's just going to be a small number of us. That's okay, because the problem with big Christmases is that I feel obligated to get everybody a gift and I really am not very comfortable with gift exchanges (at least as most people symbolize them). Suddenly, the rest of the relatives arrive and the place is flooded with kids, all clearly related. Okay, I definitely don't want to be some kind of grinch not giving gifts to kids, but I can hardly tell them apart, much less come up with -- at the last moment -- a customized gift for each one. Then, I realize I can solve a lot of problems all at once by giving each kid a box of those every-flavor jellybeans, the ones that have such flavors as dirt, booger, and vomit. This way, they would be less inclined to receive gifts from me, but I could fulfill the onerous obligation of gift giving. Now if only I could find an IHOP open on Christmas Eve...
Jul-26-2004: A pair of cobras have moved into a burrow under the mailbox island. Naturally, this is a problem for getting mail. Although it is my intent to kill them, what with them being poisonous and deadly and close to our mailboxes and all, I realize as I approach that I'm not exactly sure how to do that, what with them being poisonous and deadly and all. As I approach, they both pour out of holes and start chasing me. Darn snakes. I run and then turn back to see my progress. Although I can run faster than they can slither, they are still right behind me. Oh damn, no one told me that snakes are tenacious and all. Rats -- I thought that was just bushmasters!
Jul-20-2004: We've got this cool waterbag for our video camera now. Strap the camera in and you can shoot underwater. I'm trying to get some footage out here in the ocean, but people are all over, churning up sand and muck and making the visibility pretty suck. They're all these hugely grotesque fat people, with their legs all dangly beneath their bodies while they paddle around underwater.
Jul-20-2004: I'm trying to upgrade our camera with some sort of 3-Gig upgrade cartridge, but the directions just don't make a lick of sense. They have me trying to flip transistor legs every which way, and bend stuff into the plastic case. What the hell? The woman I'm visiting says she'll get her electronics toolkit out of the garage -- maybe that'll help.
Jul-20-2004: We arrive at Burning Man and my daughter wants to camp with her friends nearer the Esplanade. It's annoying that she just mentions this now, but it's only really a minor inconvenience, so I figure I can leave her bike and she can come get the rest of her gear once we unload the trailer at our camp out in the outer rings. But her bike doesn't seem to be in the trailer. I really hope it's in the other car, but I doubt it, as bikes really ought to have been packed in the trailer.
Well, at least I can get her shoes out of the car. Aw, man, it looks like I forgot to pack our shoes, too. We only have our "driving" shoes, basically loose sandals. This is gonna be awkward.
Jul-18-2004: In the coffee shop, it's a very boring morning. For fun, I set a jar at one end of the room, go to the other end of the room with a handful of pennies and teach myself how to sink pennies into a jar from thirty feet away.
Jul-15-2004: This is so frustrating. We've been flirting with each other for years and now we finally decide it's time to do the serious nasty. We've been heavy petting and pawing all over each other. We're in a state of serious clothing disarray. Sweet scented oil has been used. But we're in her shop in the mall and there's no part of the shop where we can go where we won't be seen from outside in the mall or an adjacent shop. Ack! Finally, we find a tiny little spot, in a corner. Just as we're about to start, the wall moves and there's a ringing sound. We're right next to her own door and some customers have come in. Oh, this isn't gonna work at all!
Jul-01-2004: Okay, we don't own a fancy car or a fancy radio, so why the hell would someone break our window to steal the radio? There's got to be lots of better radios in this lot.
Jun-30-2004: Although the rest of everybody wants me to join them in the upstairs part of this odd little mall, I am fascinated by what appears to be the "garage sale" level. At one table, I find a guitar and a banjo for sale, both in pretty good condition. I play them and they sound nice.
Jun-15-2004: I am on a research vessel doing some mapping work in the deep sea. We are coming into a lagoon to do a special job. Seems this region was a common location for mines during the war. One of our shipmates believes we ought to keep a very watchful eye out for mines. Although we're sure our sonar will pick up any mines, he proves we're wrong by finding a mine that our sonar couldn't see.
Even worse, this is a pyramid of mines, which has been designed to do successive explosions as the mines detonated downward. A really deadly stack! He examines the top one, but while doing so, he drops it. It bounces along the edge of the pyramid, all the way to the bottom, without exploding.
So, we're not sure if all the mines are dead, or if it was just that one.
Jun-04-2004: My sister struggles with the dishwasher. It seems the gasket is all screwed up and cracked and water's spilling out onto the floor, along with suds.
Jun-02-2004: I have a black '66 Cougar and I can't figure out how to park it such that the shower curtain is in front of it. No matter where I park it, hanging the shower curtain seems to be a real pain in the ass.
Jun-01-2004: I'm in Germany and these guys are trying to sell me bad art or a bad passport or drivers license. It's obviously a scam.
Jun-01-2004: I and my crew are infiltrating the Catholic Extermination Camp, where people are killed by the thousands in a methodical fashion. We've managed to hook ourselves a complete diagram and operating plan for the place. My companion throws it to me up on the roof, just before he's killed. I run, but really, there's no place to go -- it's a tall building and the roof is flat and without door. I reach the edge and look over and see a high fence and a pond beyond. A man's in the pond, shouting to me. He shouts that the pond is technically in Norway and if I can just get enough speed, I can run and make it over the fence and into the pond. Catholics are swarming up onto the roof, so I'm out of time. I run as fast as I can, trying to keep my grip on the briefcase of documents. Midair, I realize I'm going to land near the base of the fence. But, I can at least throw the books over the fence. Maybe the Norwegians can stop this craziness by the Catholics!
Jun-01-2004: It's a brand new car and people keep dinging into it. None of this is my fault, but wife eyes me reproachfully.
May-30-2004: My friend is having a birthday party. It's huge, on its own piece of property. Hundreds of people are there. Lots of activities, including races, farm games, running around, and all sorts of foolishness. I try to talk to her, but she maintains a social distance. Very far and aloof. She seems to be laughing at things and having a good time, but it feels very false -- she definitely has a cloud over her head. Another guest comes by and tells her that someone's here and looking for her. A specific someone -- I don't catch the name -- and it sounds as if he's pissed. Her face drops and she rushes out of her protective cloud of people. I follow. It's a guy, someone I've never met before, and he is very clearly a little storm-cloud kinda guy. The sort of fellow who appears pissed off no matter what anyone says or does and is in all likelihood really pissed off. She is apologizing profusely to him, in just extravagant and flowery self-debasing language. As she rips into herself for this guy (who I've already decided is basically a human turd), I can tell that he's lapping it up, and expressing just enough pleasure to reward her without spoiling her. It's a fucked up cycle of apology-capitulation-pleasure. I shake my head. It's too bad she's in that cycle again, but she runs her own life.
May-30-2004: A bunch of us are sitting watching movies and someone mentions a particular horror movie. "Oh sure," says my wife, "I'm pretty sure Edward has a copy of that -- if you can find it in the tapes. They're such a mess!" I want to protest that my tapes are all neatly filed, but I don't.
May-30-2004: We've been hunting for a long time out here in the desert. Finally, we come across an antique cabinet. Behind a false wall, we discover a manuscript that is the diary of the last man who hunted it. The diary tells how he came across a bunch of baby creatures, who were just trying out their hunting skills. His descriptions included watching them almost fade into their backgrounds. The light seems to curl around them, according to him, like waves of air on a hot day. My companion and I look at each other. If these things can be invisible, then we seriously have to reconsider a different way of hunting them.
Later, we are tracking one via helicopter and an infrared scanner. It's huge! The size of a large horse or larger, very agile, and vicious. The hard part is the helicopter pilot explaining what he's seeing to the people on the ground who are acting as bait. They run it into a cage, but the force of its impact and the angle of its entry has pinned me against the cage wall between the wall and the cage door. It can't get at me, but its bulk is squeezing me. I reach out and smack at what seems to be empty air, but I feel my hand slap flesh and slide around a mouth and teeth. I keep pulling my hand back and slapping again, hoping to infuriate it enough so it backs off long enough for me to get out. As I'm doing this, I'm also making a mental map of its face. It's a human face!
May-30-2004: Her birthday party's over and although I find myself with a piece of brightly colored, cheerful birthday cake, I know it's nasty shit on the inside and I dare not eat it.
May-09-2004: I am the swim companion of a woman who is trying for a long distance swimming record in the ocean. It's twilight out, nearly dark, and I'm just a little bit behind her. Over the past several hours, I've been hallucinating, thinking that there's a third person swimming behind me, when of course, I know the water is empty, except for fish. Then I hear an obvious splash. Ah! I turn my head quickly and see a ripple. Hey, perhaps there's a dolphin or something playing along behind us. That would be so cool!
I slow down and inhale to float quietly in place. A few seconds later, I sense the fish go by, but just under the water. Hey, there's still enough light to see by, maybe I can catch a glimpse. I duck my head under water.
It's not a dolphin. Whatever it is, it is long dead and corrupt of the flesh. It kicks and slithers its way through the water, flailing only somewhat effectively. It is obviously trying to follow us, but doing a poor job of it, because its limbs are primarily bone, with only the thinnest tatters of flesh hanging from them in sinewy threads. It flounders past me and from it I receive an emotional wave of fury, pain, fear, and hunger. Above all, hunger, hunger, relentless hunger.
May-09-2004: She wakes me up, angry. "What?" I ask. She's mad that I've been popping bubble wrap all night, and that kept her up. She waves an all-popped-out wrap sheet at me. "Where did you get that? I have no idea what you're talking about!" She glares at me, and then suggests "Okay, maybe you were breaking up chocolate, then. Still..."
May-03-2004: It's a big square house, with many stories and rooms. It probably would have been an ideal place for all of us to live. As it happens, it's now an ideal place where all of us can defend ourselves against the zombies. The brick and rock walls out there generally keep unwelcome visitors from dropping by, and the angle of the hill keeps us invisible to neighboring areas. I'm especially glad because after our last jaunt into town, I was cut off from the rest and had to fight my way past a bunch of zombies to make it back. So, being somewhat zombie-free is a good thing.
While I was in town, I made good use of my new weapon-of-choice against zombies. It's a baseball bat, with a two-foot cord tied to the end of the handle. The other end of the cord is looped around my hand. In tight quarters, I can use the bat, but out in the open, I can swing it pretty deadly.
One night, we're just hanging out, trying to find radio broadcasts, and someone starts banging on the door. What the hell? Turns out there's a group of people who had been living in the city and they fought their way up here once they saw our lights from a high building.
We really don't have enough resources for a whole new group and it's obvious they're crappy planners. Even worse, they made for slow progress and ended up leading a bunch of zombies up the hill. Damn!
We arm quickly and head out, determined to stop the infestation as quickly as possible. Zombie-killing sometimes calls more zombies. We don't know why this is, but often, if you wipe 'em all out quickly, you won't be bothered again for a long while.
Geez, there's a lot of them. I wonder if next time we see remnants of civilization, we won't just shoot 'em ourselves.
Apr-19-2004: I wake up. She's still asleep. I want to wake her up, and I don't want to wake her up. I close my eyes. I should be able to get back to sleep again, right? Right?
Apr-19-2004: I'm washing my hair and I get soapy water in my ears, but I can't get it out. I try shaking my head and it's not coming out. I can't hear anything, except the subsonic drumming of the water against me.
Apr-16-2004: Light sabers seem to have three settings. The first one is just-light. So, it doesn't cut. The second one is solid bars, but not sharp enough to cut. The third one is the one that has light and cuts and feels very, very dangerous. We decide to play with the second setting for a while, 'cause we're really not enemies that much.
Apr-07-2004: It's hot and I've been hiking through this desert for days. The mountains have crawled closer, but only imperceptibly. Day by day, closer.
Today's the day. The cliffs and ravines tower above me. I'm only a dozen yards from the base. This is how close I have to be to see it. I watch the cliff carefully from the corner of my eye as I shift position, turn my head, squint my eyes just so. They were very clever in hiding the entrance. It can't be seen directly unless you already see it, but it can't be accidentally seen, either. You have to be looking for it, but looking sideways.
There it is! I spot the pattern and carefully turn my head so that I can see it clearly. In just this way, the jumbled, tumbled rocks open up and show me a darkened, narrow path. Keeping my eyes on it, I walk in. I know that after traveling five feet, I am as invisible to the outside world as this path.
The walk is cooler, with rocks shading above me all but the direct sun. As the rocks eventually close, I'm in a dark tunnel that opens into a massive room, filled with ancient artifacts of an advanced race long gone. They built this and many other installations, hiding it from casual eyes using a most peculiar technology.
One of the devices is a sort of screen or display, conical shaped, like an old Movieola. I press my eyes to it and it starts automatically. The first images are simple symbols, collections of dots being moved around to help the machine "sync" with my brain. This calibration passes and I start learning more about the builders of this stuff. They were here millions of years ago, before human beings walked the earth, and are long gone. Their stuff maintains itself, so even throughout ice ages and floods, the installations (there are many) continue to hum along. I wonder how many there are, and it tells me, offering me locations all over the globe.
They have changed the planet itself. They have honeycombed the entire sphere, inside and out, with their technology. The planet is honeycombed with a huge network of tunnels and passages and transport routes, all underground, all in unbreakable, pressure- and heat-resistant casings. There are so many, the planet looks more like a sponge than a bal of rock!
I press my face against the viewer, learning as much as I can.
Someone pulls me away and I feel a brief second of tremendous annoyance. My sister is pulling me away. She and some adventurey-looking guy are there, and they've pulled me away from this machine. My head is filled with all the things I've learned, but I suddenly realize I'm ravenously hungry and wobbly on my legs.
She explains that I've been hooked up to this thing for at least a week, based on what she read in my logs. She says I need to do this in small doses or it's simply going to kill me.
Apr-03-2004: Katrina's found a really neat colony of Bull Ants. They wander around, waving their huge mandibles in the air, but are fairly calm at the moment. I want to take some good pictures of them, but whenever I take out the camera, the other people with whom we're traveling jump in front of it. "Ooooh, ooooh, take a picture of me!" they declare. They're not even seeing these ants and squashing 'em all over. This is, of course, making the colony agitated and I'm not particularly fond of being around a colony of agitated Bull Ants.
Apr-02-2004: He's decided to allow his daughter to be in one of our movies. We're happy about this, of course, and she's just crazy bubbling over with joy. She runs out of the room to go tell her friends. He stands, cooking over the stove. The steam in his face doesn't quite obscure the tears coming from his eyes. He believes this is a form of saying goodbye to her. I don't know why he thinks this -- he's going to be around for the shoot and it's not as if she's doing anything untoward.
Apr-01-2004: I've called in sick to work because I need a little bit of time to unwind from something stressful the day before, but also because I want to spend time with my wife. Eventually, she and I head out to the park for some fresh air, but it turns out my employer is having some sort of "work outside day" at the park, and I end up stuck in the tiny hot stinky restroom for the entire day because if I step outside, someone will surely see me and know I was playing hooky.
Mar-29-2004: We have a competition. I set targets in areas that are a challenge to this aircraft and he figures out how to shoot them while flying it. I'm lucky because I discover a "blind spot" in the aircraft's radar, a place where he can't see as he's doing a bomb run. Furthermore, I discover that there's a particular flight path that is especially difficult to fly -- basically impossible. Combining these two can result in a target that appears to be destroyed but is in fact, not. It's like a game of chess. I see it laid out in my head exactly that way.
I set the targets and we fly. He whirls through the various canyons -- he and I both know that although these and the targets within are challenges, there's definitely something up my sleeve -- something I'm waiting to spring on my pilot. He's good and he plugs every target, and then we come around a tight bend and his screen lights up -- a target!
He banks hard -- as preparatory as he was, he still never expected a target to suddenly appear here. The aircraft shudders and he shoves it into a place where it's unaccustomed to being. It eventually obeys and he fires off a missile. He pulls out of the tight spot and grins at me.
"You didn't hit it," I tell him. He, of course, refuses to believe me. We check the rear scans and everything indicates that the target (an RV and some "campers") is destroyed. But I remember the chess board and I tell him "You could not have made the move you think you made. You have not destroyed the target." Our arguing actually approaches bitter as we land and then decide to take a Jeep out to the site, where he insists he'll show me the smoking crater. As were about to mount a Jeep, another comes back. The soldier in there salutes us, but grins. He tells us the rest of the fellas are hoping to have a nice pleasant day in the sun, like that family out by the RV.
My pilot looks at me. "Target's okay, then?" he asks. The other fella nods and mentions that they seem to have started a barbecue pit, but it was a very safe distance from camp, so they shouldn't be in any danger (this, of course, refers to my pilot's missile landing far away from them). My pilot is beside himself and i tell him, "Look, we need to know these things, man. We need to know what we can't do -- what's impossible to do." But he won't hear it.
Oct-21-2003: At this primordial shore, there is no sand, but there are huge slabs of black coal. The hard chippy stuff. The water beats gray and sullen against the coal and I know that most people would see this as desolate and without promise.
I reach down and pick up a hand-sized piece of coal. I press it tightly between my hands. I feel the heat of transformation, and the shifting of shape as it becomes smaller. Sparking pieces fall and skitter to the ground, hissing where they hit water. I keep pressing.
When I open my hands, there is a much smaller, glassy lump, about the size of a dime. I pick up more pieces, pushing each one successively into the mass, making a larger and larger diamond.
If I move my hand in such a way, I can carve out slices and slabs of the diamond. I do so, carving and slicing away pieces. Chips fall to the ground and I briefly think "No glass sharper than this".
When I am done, I have sculpted a swan. The swan is just landing and the water splashes up and about it as its wings are open. All in diamond. The entire sculpture stands about two feet tall.
I'm not sure what to do now. If I make a big deal of this, then I know people will hurt each other over it. I want to give it as a gift.
I leave it there and walk away.
Sep-03-2003: It is my job to calm Jack Nicholson down. My tool is a canister of liquid nitrous oxide on my back, attached to a wiggly sprayer. I have to spray it at him, close enough such that the gas makes him goofy, but not so close he doesn't get "burned" by the cold.
I do an okay job, but then he gets one of these setups too, and angrily comes after me.
We end up both very cold and wet from condensation due to the cold nitrous oxide. We're also each annoyed at each other, so the nitrous didn't really do what it was supposed to do.
Jun-23-2003: We arrive at the George Carlin concert and it's more like a tent revival. A crappy, flappy blue tent hangs over a nearly random assemblage of picnic tables. The sun beats on it and we roast under it. He performs, but the sound system sucks mightily and the volume dances up and down like a ferret on amphetamines. His timing is crap and the jokes are awful. No one laughs and I find myself performing the same setups, but with different punchlines, in my head.
I'm thinkin' this was a total rip. It's sad, too, because I have a crapload of respect for this wacky guy.
Jun-23-2003: Crap is it snowing! I'm certainly not going to try biking in this near white-out and I really don't feel like asking Katrina if she'll drive me in it. Besides, there will be thousands of yahoos out there playing bumper car and I'm still enjoying the "new car feel" of our car.
I guess I have to walk to work.
This oughta' be fun...
May-10-2003: I've managed to snag tickets to the sneak preview of the movie adaptation of the comic book "The Hulk". I confess I have doubts about whether or not this will be much better than a video game, based on the few clips I've seen, but the social situation was such that it was probably worth the seven bucks.
The movie is dumb, but I expected that. What I didn't expect was that most of the scenes were just rotoscoped sequences from the Bill Bixby series. I've been seriously cheated!
After the show, people are talking about how it was so cool and how it reminded them of the old series so much and how they now missed it.
I wanted my money back. I wanted my two hours back.
May-07-2003: We're in the house, trapped. Outside, things are snatching us. We cannot see them, do not know where they are, what they are.
A stick. That is my weapon of choice. A sharpened stick. It feels like a broomstick, perhaps, hastily sharpened with kitchen knives. It'll do. I don't truck with fancy weapons.
She opens the door and I step cautiously out. The sky is dark and heavy with clouds. Thunder rumbles in the distance. I feel danger, but can't tell the source -- not yet.
I'm ten feet from the house. My eyes and ears strain for any sign. No animals move around in the thick brush nearby. There is no sound but the thunder in the mountains and the rustle of wind. The air is thick with a growing menace, however, an oppressive heaviness.
I'm twenty feet from the house. They must be watching me now. I instructed them to close and bolt the door behind me and watch from a window. Even if it costs me they must watch and know what's taking us.
I turn to see if they're looking and my knees wobble in shock. The house isn't a house anymore. It is covered in layer upon layer of black patches of emptiness, like moths or bats, but tremendous. It's literally a house-shaped external-nest of them.
My fear is a pulse in the heavy air and I sense it rush against this solid chunk of living nothing and break like a wave against basalt. The nest ripples. One of the pieces slides away and launches itself into the air. I think it flaps like wings, or is it pulsing or is it blinking in and out of existence? I can't tell. But I know it's coming for me, I know that I am its prey, as are we all.
Just a stick? I remember I have my stick, my sharpened broomstick. It's just a stick, just a piece of wood, but it feels differently in my hands. The thing comes closer now, loping lazily through the air. It is nearly indifferent to my presence because it is so completely confident that I am helpless. And I nearly am! My eyes fall into the darkness of it, slide away into this window through the Universe. My eyes are drawn in, hungry for wonder.
I hear it, and can feel its passage in the air. I can hear its heartbeat and mine, syncing up. My eyes are deceiving me! I feel the rough wood in my hands and I remember the stick. I cannot use the stick and my eyes at the same time.
I close my eyes and suddenly I am the stick. The thing is a bloated floating hungry thing before me, confident and exposed. It expects me to cower or run. I dive into it, instead, pushing between its heartbeats.
Apr-11-2003: At one time it was a large shopping mall. Now it's more of a private center, like a casino. There are still shops, but at this time of night, few are open. They're hunting for me. They know I'm in here, and they know that there are only a few exits, so they're waiting for me to leave. I'll have to, of course, but there's no way I want to get caught by these jerks.
Strangely, one of the guards (or perhaps the guards are using her) is a friend of mine. I can hear her coordinating with the black-booted guards.
The only way out of here is to fly -- they'll never look up. Trouble is, flying is difficult for me because it basically involves "swimming" through the air. But I do it anyway -- it feels like it has to be done right. My usual height limit is about fifteen feet, but I get that high and realize I can go higher. And the strokes are easier.
I still hear the voices of the people below, plotting to capture me, but they're not looking up. It's dark and I'm about twenty feet in the air, so it'll probably be easy-peasy to avoid trouble.
And the thing is, as I look skyward and see the stars, the effort required to stay aloft drops even more. There is an effort, a sort of "willing" myself to move, but just that. I feel the air slide by me.
The voices below shift and become just a sort of hum or buzz. The language has changed, or at least my perception of it. I look back up at the stars, all of different colors, the night sky filled with wonderments. The threats below, the people, the voices, the danger are all shifted to a place where they don't matter to me. It would be as if I suddenly realized that I wasn't actually an ant and the politics and environments of the ant colony meant nothing, as I stood on my two feet again.
The night sky is endless and I spiral into it.
Apr-11-2003: We search for a new house. There's half a dozen of us, most of whom are probably in on the sale when it occurs. We look at one house which bears an uncanny resemblance to one of the houses from my childhood. One of the houses we look at is a house that used to belong to us. The current owners have installed an ugly network nest in the otherwise clean kitchen. The house that takes our breath away is on the coast and extends outward into the ocean. The lower floor sports a thick glass wall, through which we can see sea-filtered sunlight at a depth of ten or twenty feet. Dolphins play nearby and further away, we see the dim shadows of whales and hear the pinging of their songs. Katrina really likes this house!
Apr-11-2003: I'm on the phone. Her voice is shrill and insistent and I really want to hang up, but I'm too polite to do so just at the moment, although I think she's already overstayed her welcome in my ear. Katrina and Elizabeth want to rent a movie and are waiting for me to get off the phone so I can join them. I wave at them, trying to convey go-ahead-and-pick-what-you-like, but they don't understand and grow more annoyed. I'm nearing the point where I will interrupt the person on the phone. I loathe being driven to this, but life is slipping by me.
2-18-2003: My in-laws have hidden the nail clippers. How annoying!
2-18-2003: I leave my Aunt's shop. She sells strange knick-knacks and bric-a-brac from an old Victorian. Outside, there is a pad, like a mattress. I sit on it and feel the Universe shift under my feet. I see the sun arc across the sky in a yellow bow. I feel a wind on my face.
I step off and it is ten years later. The place is empty, but still standing. Most everything is the same, but different in a little way.
Many people around there remember me, only they're annoyed that I just disappeared for a decade. My slightly-youthful appearance doesn't seem to surprise them much -- after all, it's only been ten years.
Jan-29-2003: She looks in horror at my lips and points, mutely.
Jan-29-2003: It's very important for me to acquire as many Harry Potter costume accessories as possible. This warehouse is like a Costco for costumes and this entire section is just hats. I'm trying to find one of those peaked wizard hats, but they seem to be all sold out. Then I spy a Sherlock Holmes deerstalker cap and I really like it. I'm drawn to it. I decide to buy it on the theory that Harry Potter solves mysteries, so it's more symbolic. Besides, Harry Potter doesn't wear a pointed hat anyway.
As I'm about to walk away with my prize, I spot a wizard's hat under a pile of other hats. It's more like a Gandalf hat, all floppy and with a wide brim. It's made entirely out of fur and feels wonderful and soft and warm and just perfect on my head. How come no one's bought this yet? It's $79, though, and that seems rather steep...
Jan-29-2003: There's a black, sooty dirt under my fingernails. I can't seem to get it out. Even when I scrape with other nails, it gets blacker and grimier.
Jan-03-2003: They're burning my feet again. You would think by now they would understand that it doesn't get them what they want, but they do it anyway. I can feel the flesh bubbling and the grating of the propane torch against the bones in my heel where they burned through the flesh. The smell...
I awake in the hospital, the doctor and nurse looking at me. They are not aware that I am awake.
"It's the thing with the foot again," says the doctor. The nurse nods, pursing her lips. "We still don't know what happened to him," he adds. "But the foot thing is consistent."
I am angry at them, their ignorance and blindness and the fact that they treat me like senseless meat. I am quite definitely, angrily alive.
Dec-26-2002: It'll never stop raining, will it? I'm cold.
Dec-22-2002: I had a lot of stuff in her car, including my boombox in the trunk (which contained a tape I wanted to play for her) and Something Important in the glovebox.
But the trunk gasps wide open and the floor and ground are littered with the valueless things that used to associate with the rest of the car's contents. We have been robbed and in broad daylight on a street in downtown Portland.
She holds a hand against her face and repeats "I am so embarrassed."
Dec-19-2002: I'm in superhero school, but the budget's been slashed, so we share a castle with the supervillain school. In the cold stone eating hall, we sit at opposite ends of the room. I can feel the malevolence of the junior supervillains. I wanna' call 'em out right now, head out into the courtyard and just rip into 'em. Yeah, I'm that kinda' superhero!
Oct-22-2002: It's like a science-fiction fantasy convention, except that it's only a dealer's room and they only have one kind of dealer -- people who make "magic pouches". It's magic from all kinds of religions, but I'm drawn to the rawhide medicine bags. I pick one up. I cannot see inside it, but inside, there feels to be something very delicate. I try to be careful.
Oct-22-2002: Driving to work, there's a slight slowdown up head. I watch the ground crack open and a couple of cars just drive in and down.
I wonder if I should call the police or something?
The pit yawns ahead of me and no cars are obviously going to get past, so people just stop. I manage to pull over to the side of the road. Frankly, I want to climb up that hill and get a better view into the crevasse.
I get up there and I see it's pretty deep. Those poor suckers in the cars that went over never had a chance.
Back on the road, I am dismayed to see that water has come. All the cars are very nearly submerged, frantic drivers paddling around the swirling water and clambering on tops of cars.
My car, a little higher up, has only the front end and the engine compartment under water.
"Shit," I tell myself. "And we just got the engine tuned and all those new parts added. Goddamn piece of shit car."
The water continues to rise, coming up from the ground as if we have somehow ended up at the bottom of a vast lake that until just recently forgot it was supposed to be there.
My hill will protect me for only a little while longer before it starts getting really, really wet. I don't look forward to being swept into that big-ass crevasse, either.
Oct-22-2002: It wasn't my movie, but uncannily like it in format. I watch, dismayed, as people file from the theater, shaking their heads. They just didn't get it. It seemed pretty dumb to them.
I know my movie shows next and I'm not looking forward to the response.
Oct-11-2002: I have no idea why, but she seems fascinated by how my alarm clock works. I'm explaining it, but frankly, it's pretty boring.
She, however, is mesmerized.
So, I punch up the explanations with a bit of showy language, such as making up words to describe both states of push buttons (in and out) and how only the best clock radios push their buttons back out after you release them, and so on.
Oct-11-2002: The house in which I live now is filled with people, a tribe numbering more than two dozen souls.
As I'm setting my alarm clock for the next morning, some people come by. "You're going to turn that down, right?" they ask.
"No," I tell them, laughing. "If I do that, it won't wake me up."
They complain that it's too loud. I turn on the music to show them that it is really very quiet.
But...
Once you leave the room, the music does get louder. In fact, as I move through the house, I hear the music louder and louder, until it's annoying the heck out of me.
Oct-11-2002: An old girlfriend has come to visit. She keeps talking obliquely about how she wants a kid. She becomes more direct, but never quite pinning me to it. She does keep asking me about how I feel about kids and if I think I'd be a good father.
I'm pretty sure I know where she's going, but it seems important for her to say it directly, rather than beating around the bush.
She looks me in the eye then and says "I know, for example, that I'm really, really fertile. Right now!"
Oct-11-2002: My Dad's moved in with us and one of the first things he does is start inviting people over to watch that darn MTV video.
He leans out the window and shouts down at me where I am working on the garden "Hey, have you kids ever been on anything else on TV?"
"No!" I shout back, embarrassed, and angry. "Just the ones you keep going on about!"
Oct-11-2002: The elevator tower of this building is a beautiful thing to watch. The Architect designed it with a rotating shell, so as the elevators go up and down, the skin of the building rotates. The effect is just awesome, because they put all this iridescent and reflective material in the building skin.
Oct-11-2002: This old lady was trying to convince us she was famous because she had been on an old TV show called "Charlie's Angels", but we knew she was lying because there had never been such a show (nor would there ever be one -- it sounded really stupid to us).
Oct-11-2002: Down the street from me, the guy who used to live there moved out, but he left all his stuff in a big neat pile in the living room. Over the front of his house, he hung a sign: "Moved away, but I will be back for my things -- this is not a Thriftymart!"
I'm pretty much the only person left in town -- everyone else has moved out, too, leaving similar signs.
Oct-11-2002: He is only seven years old, but he watches and sees everything with his neverclosing eyes. When his mother leaves the room, he comes over and sits near me.
"Why does Mom hate her father so much?" he asks.
I'm surprised at the question. My first instinct is to deny it, but aside from my personal belief not to lie, I am also faced with this remarkable child. And the fact is, I believe he has correctly assessed the situation.
I look at him carefully and he watches me. I realize that his question was only partly for information, but also a big piece of it is that he's testing me. What will I do? How will I answer? Will I lie to him as others have?
But if I acknowledge what I think is true, what if I'm misinterpreting him? What if he's just testing a theory and my confirmation will make it unnecessarily a reality? Who am I to piss on whatever parade she's constructed for her son?
"I don't know what's in her mind," I tell him. "And she doesn't tell me how she feels. So, I can't tell you how she feels or why she feels that way. I'm sorry, but that's all I can tell you."
He nods thoughtfully.
Seven years old!
Oct-11-2002: I'm at Norwescon, which is my favorite convention, but this year, they're very poorly organized, (in stark contrast to the usual) even more so than the local conventions. In fact, the whole convention is being held in a high school gym. A small high school gym. The tables are falling apart. Vendors are on the worst tables and the best they can do to cover the tables is butcher paper or bedsheets they bring from home. Most everybody's either really drunk, or really stoned.
Oct-11-2002: I'm walking down a road. I'm on my way somewhere, but I stop because on the side of the road are a variety of tiny plants. I look more closely and I see that they are all carnivorous plants. Venus flytraps and honeydews, mostly, but a pitcher plant here and there.
One of my friends comes over, wanting to know why I stopped and I show him the plants. I want to show him how they feed, so I start looking for bugs to drop in it. The bugs I manage to find are actually pretty big. They're giant hairy spiders and such.
Jeez, I hardly wanna pick 'em up, much less try and cram 'em into a tiny Venus flytrap!
But I'm game and sure enough, the flytrap expands to cover the spider, who stops struggling after only a moment.
Holy crap! These are dangerous!
I keep watching, fascinated.
Oct-01-2002: It wasn't exactly an argument, but there had been some words. Afterward, I was a little shaken and went to wash my face. I was surprised to see that dried spittle had encrusted my mouth and beard.
That must have really made an impression!
Oct-01-2002: I'm visiting her. Last year, I was over for dinner and it was cool to see her. I hadn't seen her before for more than a decade. She's since had two more kids and they look great and she does, too.
But there's still this thing between us. This thing that was between us when we were a lot younger. This thing that we didn't know how to address because we were kids.
And now, as I'm visiting, I realize that all the kids are away for the day and we're alone.
She invites me for a swim (everybody has a pool). A fraction of a second after I tell her I have no bathing suit, I realize this was her intent with asking the question.
The water feels nice, but the pool is too small for me. And this is starting to feel wrong. It's moving too quickly for my slow brain to handle.
She suggests we go into the sauna.
This feels more wrong, but more compelling.
Sep-30-2002: As I drive by the dome, I hear the singing. I must pull over and see what it is.
It's beautiful and unearthly.
A former circus manager has captured a merman in the ocean by placing an extraordinarily beautiful sonnet in a huge rock-and-concrete sphere. When he swam in to read the poetry, he was sealed in there. Now, the showman makes people pay money to hear the merman sing.
But something is different.
A mermaid has come and she is beautiful and terrible and not restrained by rock and concrete. Within this trap lies her brother. She hurls herself against the rock wall, her fingers clutching at the obstruction. She hopes to peel it away by force, but all it does is tear her fingers.
It is wrong for her blood to be spilt, it is wrong for us to see such beauty in such pain.
She holds tightly to the rock, her hands and arm and face streaming with cuts and abrasions.
She starts to sing.
If she cannot free her brother, then she will make those who restrain him feel an enormous pain of the soul. From within the rock, he joins her voice and they weave something that is monumental, that is tragedy and tearing and terrible to behold in its loveliness.
Around me, people have fallen to the ground, their hearts shattering in despair. I barely feel the asphalt dig into my knees as I fall. I just seek release from this song, but I know it'll never come even in departure from this world, that this song will never stop, that it's a song to go past the bounds of life and stay forever in our wretched, wretched hearts.
Sep-30-2002: I put the movies down and think about this.
Why is she here? This was just supposed to be us. Because I had explicitly said so at the start, the presence of any guest would have peeved me, but she is particularly unsuited at this time.
"Hey," I say, "She broke up with me. It is not appropriate you invite anyone else over when I said I didn't want any guests, but it is in especially bad taste to invite her."
They shrug and they can't see what the problem is.
"Aren't you guys still friends?"
"Yes," I answer, exasperated, "But that takes time! And time won't be for a little while yet, okay?"
I'm furious about this whole situation, I'm confused by what appears to be a monumental lack of tact, and I'm weak at the knees because I was not ready for such a powerful thing to hit me -- I was planning a very safe evening where I could be a little raw and wounded and have it be okay.
I don't want to do this. I feel like vomiting. There is no ground beneath me.
Sep-30-2002: I'm at the Post Office collecting boxes for a shipping project, but they've all been refolded in a very peculiar way. I don't know if I can use these boxes...
Sep-30-2002: Katrina and I are in a strange gray train, an angular locomotive with no moving parts, pushing a string of similarly unmarked and curiously featureless cars.
We can tell that this alien train is accelerating, and this alarms us because no matter how big your planet, increasing acceleration on the surface is just going to lead to trouble.
We wander up and down the whole train looking for some kind of controls, but find none. Eventually, I locate a spot that looks as if it wants to be "pinched". I happen to spot nearby a tool that resembles a chain cutter, but with softer teeth.
I pinch the spot with the tool and the train separates, the engine behind us.
I see the engine, which has come to a complete halt on the tracks, drift away and I can feel that the cars are coasting to a stop.
We just had to cut this one piece.
Sep-30-2002: Jason finishes installing a hot tub in our hillside condo in San Francisco. The view from it is really spectacular.
It's night and we flick on the internal lights and start it up. At first, it looks good, but then a thick black scrumm starts spouting from one of the vents. He hands me a capped tube and tells me that I have to hold the tube over it to keep the water clean.
Here I am holding this frickin' tube and suddenly, all our neighbors, who normally don't like us, are coming over, acting like they're our friends, just so they can have a soak.
I tie the tube down (I don't care if it comes loose -- it was a shitty tub to require something that dumb) and get out of the water. I just don't care anymore.
Sep-30-2002: It would be nice to use the shower, but it seems as if someone has defecated all over the otherwise transparent shower curtain. Looks like I gotta pull it down, knock off the big chunks, rinse and wash it, and then put it back up before I can even begin.
Oh bother!
Sep-30-2002: On a hot Scottsdale day, we've just delivered furniture to a house that is waaaaay too air-conditioned.
That's just obscene, I think.
We drive off, the road shimmering with heat, the air thick with greasewood smell.
"What's the next direction?" I ask my partner.
He thumbs through the map.
"North," he says.
I nod and continue.
After a minute, he repeats "I said North."
"We are going North!" I say.
He shakes his head. "We are going South."
"We are?"
"Yes."
"Well. Well. Well, fuck." I spin the truck around in a wide 180-degree turn.
Sep-30-2002: The earthquake has knocked out all the power, and I'm trying to get the garbage disposal to run so I can do dishes. Spinning the blade by hand is just not gonna do it.
The recipe books are now stacked in what seems to be a very unstable condition.
Ah, I remember reading that when Carl Sagan lost electricity, he did all his typing on a manual typewriter.
That's it!
Sep-30-2002: In the yard behind the ranch we've occupied for years, we discover that the back fence isn't actually the back of the property, but about ten feet from it. Between the high fence and the back of the line, there is an old dirt trail, overgrown long ago with desert weeds and sagebrush and junk that's blown in.
We explore down it and discover a skeleton. It feels as if it' more than a hundred years old. Even the clothing on it is tattered and all but blown away. There's no metal on it anywhere, no fasteners or anything.
It looks, as we examine the skull carefully, as if this person was bludgeoned to death. Then, sometime between his death and now, his head was removed and set next to his body. It's possible that over time, it just fell off, but we're just slightly creeped out by the suspicion that it was something that happened while he was still pretty much alive.
Sep-25-2002: We're just staying here the night on our way somewhere else.
The house has a big mudbath in the back that's supposed to be healing and all, but it's just ucky, sticky mud.
I manage to get out, but she's kinda' stuck between the mudbath and the fence. Just then, the lights -- which had been nonfunctional (part of the problem) snapped on and she was caught in the beams -- buck naked.
She has a shiny butt. Weird -- I've never seen her butt.
Sep-18-2002: It's been a very unpleasant week, culminating in a tremendously unpleasant day. I feel weary and heavy and unable/unwilling to move.
She's visiting briefly while she travels to another place. I've never met her before, only corresponded via e-mail.
I'm glad she's here. She is a member of another multiple partner group -- one I consider somewhat successful. I want to tell her how glad I am she's here and how glad I am I finally met her, but I'm afraid to tell her why because I get the sense that she thinks of me as being fairly stable and at the moment, I feel about as unstable as I ever have.
"I'm really glad you're here," I tell her, hoping I don't sound as desperate as I feel.
Sep-17-2002: As if she is revealing a heretofore unknown child, she holds the cat out to me. It's young, just past cute-kitten stage, and remarkably ugly. "Brown" is the kindest description for what passes as color on this little beast, and its hair is tufted out in a variety of uncatlike directions. Its eyes are stupid and vacant, lolling about the room as if distracted by only the brightest of colors or motions.
She waggles the cat at me again. The lower half of the cat appears to be independently suspended from the upper half. I expect it to slosh.
"I said," she says with some significance. "It's yours. This is your cat. You're responsible for her."
But I don't want a cat!
Sep-16-2002: She and I are running up the Mukilteo Speedway from downtown Mukilteo. It's not a panic-ridden run, nor are we in an especial hurry to get anywhere. We're just running.
Then I realize that this is the Mukilteo Speedway. We should be driving!
Sep-12-2002: In a mall, I discover that the various people working in the various stores are all people from my past. Some are old girlfriends, some are just people I knew. It's as if instead of Philip Jose Farmer's "Riverworld", everyone's ended up being in Edward Martin III's "Mallworld".
I wander from one shop to the other, catching up and revisiting people.
But there's something wrong, some kind of buzzing craziness that's increasing in intensity. I know there's something wrong, but I don't know what or how to figure it out.
Everybody thinks I should open up a shop in the mall, too.
Sep-09-2002: I work in a factory, the sort of concrete block structure that's three stories high and all one big room. At the vending machines, I run into two people who don't know each other, but who I know from various aspects of my past.
We enjoy getting re-acquainted and they enjoy meeting each other.
Michelle, who was a gymnast, shows off her latest move, which appears to be able to fold herself such that she is entirely covered by her own shin and foot.
Eric says he's been studying an interesting activity -- climbing. He removes his shoes and starts doing this amazing friction-climb up the corner of the building. I expect him to go maybe ten feet up, but he actually wiggles all the way up to the ceiling. Surely someone must be noticing this guy wedged up in the corner of the building! But no one does.
He tries to come down, but slips and ends up dropping pretty much free-fall to the floor. He limps over. Seems that instead of chalk, he actually put cinnamon on his feet, which didn't provide nearly the gripping action he needed. He winces as he walks.
Aug-30-2002: It is a library now, but the building has been many things for the centuries since it has been built. Not all of our group has come back -- one person is missing. I remember seeing him scurry up a ladder into a dark place and then I realize that the rumors and feelings are true. The building is populated by hidden creatures, things that prey on people.
It is rumored that they hide well and carefully in the nooks and crannies that are between floors and in awkward, invisible places of this ancient building. They pick off loners and people staying late or coming in early, and they do so with an uncannily selective instinct.
I drag our group leader over and show her what appear to be bloodstains, but turn out to be ketchup. Disgusted, she leaves and as I turn, I spot a grate under a bench seat. The grate is ancient iron and spotted with a thick red substance that is definitely not ketchup. But they've left and no one will believe me.
I can feel the eyes. Expressionless, hungry eyes are just beneath the light level, watching me from behind that grate. I know that when I turn my back, the blood will be licked clean from the grate and then I will have no evidence whatsoever.
I decide I must hire on at the library, learn all I can of these things, and work to eradicate them myself. I am afraid, however, that there might be thousands in the building by now (it is quite large).
But I have power tools.
Aug-29-2002: I haven't seen her in about sixteen years. Definitely, she looks older, but still pretty much as marvelous as when we last were together. (I don't forget she has a mean temper, though -- darn Leos!)
We talk, but we're nervous. After twenty years, no matter how intimate you were, you're pretty much strangers. We wander awkwardly a bit and then start talking about movies we've seen. We end up catching up comfortably by talking about movies and then, after a while, we're relaxing.
Only in the middle of reciting the umpteenth favorite lines from movies am I comfortable enough to tell her how much she occupies my thoughts.
Aug-28-2002: It's a test.
A bunch of new people are sent out in random directions in the deep woods and it's my job to find 'em all by nightfall. It's really a toughie, but I have some pretty sophisticated equipment to help me out. I don't have to go out there, just make sure that someone is dispatched to nab the person once I locate them, although for the last one, I go out myself. We arrive back at dusk to congratulatory cheers.
A friend of mine who I did not expect there introduces me to the "secret" judge. It turns out that not only did I retrieve all the people and get them all back safely, but that I was the ONLY candidate to do so AND to make personally sure that each one arrived back.
I get the impression she's about to offer me some kind of interesting job...
Aug-16-2002: I see you again. You're silent, as you've been the last few times I've seen you. You're smiling and you seem glad to see me, but you're not moving, not stepping closer, not moving away.
"Still not time?" I ask.
You shrug. Noncommittal.
"It's okay," I tell you. "I plan on a pretty long scale."
You seem relieved.
Aug-16-2002: We arrive home after a trip. The houseboat is still in good condition, but we have a crapload of laundry to do. It's done, but all wet still. Normally, we hang dry everything on the lines, but there's just so much of it!
I've covered every line with laundry, to such a degree that walking the deck is like adventuring in a tent maze. And still, there's more. It's not like it's coming out of nowhere, it's just that there were several wheelbarrows of wet clothes to hang up and there's just a limited amount of line.
Aug-15-2002: As I get into my car, a fellow parked next to me gets my attention. He's waving a copy of Significa, a book I've recently purchased after years of searching.
How the heck can he have found another copy?
"Hey," he says. "You left this on my roof."
Ah, I put it there to dig out my keys and simply forgot.
He hands it to me and I thank him, but he hasn't let go of the book. "So tell me," he asks. "Do you really think all this stuff is true?"
I think about the things I've read so far, about beards and midgets, about Harry Truman being in the KKK to get votes, about how we actually nailed the first casualty in Pearl Harbor by sinking an advance submarine...
Slowly, I nod. "The authors are journalists," I say. "And they seem to be a little sensationalistic at times, but also they've admitted things they didn't know, which is an indicator to me that they're more certain of the things they do know."
He thanks me.
Aug-15-2002: I have been contracted to remodel a house and the surrounding grounds while the owners are away on a long trip. It was my intent to build something with lots of cool swoopy angles -- very futuristic.
This comes to me very quickly because I had completely forgotten my task while living there and was only reminded of it by the owners calling me from the airport, saying they'll be in later that evening.
Naturally, I'm all in a tizzy. I seem to have spent the entire time in one of their smaller rooms, watching videos. My living-trash is all over the room and the room reeks of ozone from all the TV use. I try to find my original plans, but can only locate what seems to be a semi-literate cocktail napkin with a few curves drawn on it.
I can certainly not find my blueprints, or even the better drawings.
The next door neighbor has a really nice house and I hatch a scheme -- I'll get a copy of his blueprints and then try to convince the owners that I've been planning on doing their house to compliment their neighbors.
But the neighbor doesn't have any such documents -- only one aerial photo taken twenty years ago of the property before the house was built. I shrug my head and grab my notebook.
Aug-14-2002: With the sun going nova, our only hope is to send kids away in rocket ships to populate distant planets we hope can support life.
One man tried to get on the ship and I shot him. I had to -- as the last adults these kids ever saw, I had to make sure they believed that we all believed this was the best thing for them. (I'm glad none of the kids saw it, of course)
One little boy, as he's loading up, asks me "What should we do when we get there?" There are tears in my eyes and I tell him "You should love every moment as if it is your last. You should live and love as much as you can." We seal the door.
Aug-14-2002: We are soldiers, Roman-esque. We have taken a castle, but it is an incredibly ancient castle. The desert sands have nearly buried this monument to an ancient civilization. In the courtyard, a huge stature of a sort of winged cat thing towers as high as the buildings.
When our whole troop is in the courtyard, the statue comes to life and starts grabbing and eating soldiers. Its roar is a mighty bellow and blows men around like chaff. The same roar, however, blows sand from the sides of the building, revealing cubby holes in which we can hide. We all dash for various cubbies and jump in.
Mine is a series of stairs. Others appear to be slide tunnels, but I hear screams coming from those after men go down, so I decide the stairs are safer. Deep beneath the surface, the palace is still ancient. Cobwebs hang everywhere and the floor is thick with dust and rock rubble. Then I notice the soldiers.
Mummified, somewhat clumsy soldiers are hunting us through the halls of this ancient castle. We can fight back, of course, but it's not as if they stay dead.
While running, I stumble into a room just as one of my men who jumped down a slide is dropped in the middle. The mummy soldiers there fall upon him immediately, and tear him to pieces. Then, they continue fighting.
I realize now that we are incidental -- these creatures have been fighting and repairing themselves and fighting for centuries here under the desert sand.
Aug-14-2002: My friend Barbara takes me on a boat trip with some other friends of hers. I'm rarely in Florida, so this is something I'll do easily, despite the fact that it takes time. I get the impression that we're going somewhere and because it's a stinky harbor, I prefer staying below decks.
Many of us are down there and during our journey, Barbara or someone else comes down and pulls a person up to do something or see something. I figure if there's something Barbara wants me to see, she'll either come and get me or send for me. Besides, I'll go above decks once we get where we're going.
Eventually, the boat stops, which is good because I think I'm the only guy who wasn't called on deck. When I emerge, I find us back at the same harbor. "Where did we go?!" I asked. "I thought we were going somewhere."
"We did," answers Barbara. "We went out for a ride and now we're back. What's the problem?" I sit down and shake my head. "I guess the problem was that I didn't realize the journey would be more important than the destination."
Aug-14-2002: I examine large caliber bullet holes in a wall, noticing where the sheetrock has been shattered and where the underlying studs have been pulverized. I try to imagine the force necessary to do this and I shudder.
Aug-14-2002: I've just come home from a boat trip and I've left something aboard, a camera, I think. The boat is already pulling away from the wharf, so I race across the wood and dive into the cool blue water after it.
I move with unnatural swiftness in the water.
Aug-14-2002: From a small sandy island, six of us set out, each in his or her own unique little rubber boat. The island is small, only about fifty feet in diameter. I think it's a shame none of us are going in the same direction, because traveling together would be pretty handy.
Aug-14-2002: In this Swedish music shop, I am purchasing a CD of my favorite Swedish band. No one has ever heard of them, but I have it on good authority that this place has lots of their CDs.
I shop through bulletproof glass by asking the proprietor to grab what I want from his stock in the back. I ask for the CD and he reaches behind him to a stack of them and hands me one. My eyes grow wide at the stack. I want to buy many copies to give to my friends back in the US, because this band is really good.
But the fella says I can only buy one or there won't be enough for everybody. "But I can afford to buy more!" I protest, and I show him money. "I want to take copies back home to America and share them with my friends. He politely refuses. I'm frustrated because I've come all the way to Sweden and I can only buy one CD.
Obviously, he feels a little sorry because he gives me back more change than I'm due, with an apologetic "I'm sorry, my friend." I refuse to let him buy my forgiveness (after all, he wouldn't let me buy a CD, which is worth less than forgiveness!) and I insist on sliding the full amount under the glass.
Aug-14-2002: We're making a movie -- a dramatic recreation of a crime for one of those pseudo-reality TV shows. Everything we need, really, is in the evidence room, according to the mother-daughter team that scripted the thing. We set up our gear and do our best to get it all working. Then we discover that there never was a real crime -- this whole thing is a scam by the mother-daughter team to steal police surveillance equipment.
Aug-14-2002: I wake up in a completely strange place. Who am I? Where am I? I don't know and my mind is racing. I have no memory per se, but things are familiar. I can, for example, use a telephone. But I don't have any numbers in my head, nor can I think of anyone to call.
I search the room for a clue to my identity.
Aug-14-2002: I'm buying a fish at a pet store, but to do so, I have to reach my head through a little square hole. The fish is a goldfish, but kinda' large. While I'm pulling the fish out, I knock my head against the edge of the hole and I think I go unconscious.
I can hear everything and I can sorta see through the slits of my eyelids. I hear Katrina ringing up the purchase and she and the cashier talking about how tired I must be.
I'm not tired -- I'm unconscious!
I try to move -- at least I think I do -- and I can't. They keep chatting and I wonder if I'm dead. I hope I wake up soon.
Aug-14-2002: I'm in a talent show. Our first meeting is in a nearby high school, one of the classrooms. The program director, an inoffensive PC kinda' reformed hippie-chick type, welcomes us and smiles and beams at us. Obviously, she's done this a lot and she's got the patter all down. She's just going to ask a few questions and then we'll demonstrate what we'll do for the talent show.
She starts a role call and asks little boring questions "How old are you, where are you from, how did you hear about us, etc.
When she gets to me, she asks if I'm currently on any medication. "Uh, no," I answer. I wasn't expecting this tack. Am I currently using any drugs or chemicals. Again, I answer in the negative. She repeats the question, phrased slightly different. Again, no. Now I'm a little confused. Then she asks if I've ever used illegal drugs before. Again I answer no. "Ever?!" she persists. "Are you sure? Are you absolutely sure? You're going to sit right there and tell me you've never done drugs in your whole entire life, ever?!"
By now, of course, I'm annoyed. "Don't you think if I had that I would tell you, just so you could get on with asking important questions?" She's trying to stare me down, so I decide to screw with her. "Does heroin count?" I meekly ask. Her eyes light up. "Yes!" but as she's about to make a triumphant tick on her paper, I say "Then no." She and I are so flustered by this tangent that I completely forget what the hell my damn talent was supposed to be.
Crap.
Maybe I'll tell her I'm an amateur gymnast and I'll just do a couple of somersaults right here to get her off my back.
Aug-14-2002: A fat man wants to throw his fortune in with us (figuratively -- he's not wealthy). He's very angry because we're not interested.
First, he's offering to pay, which is obnoxious. Second, he's angry about the rejection, which is understandable, but also obnoxious. Finally, he yells that we're discriminating against him because he's fat.
The fact is, he's not fat, but incredibly, hugely, grossly overweight. And his smell is nasty. So, basically, we just want to get away.
He's waving flaps of skin at us and saying that we're prejudiced (spittle flies from his lips). He says he desperately needs to get laid and he has a right.
Finally, I snap and yell at him: "Look! This is not a get-laid kind of fat, you idiot. This is the eats-a-lot-of-butter kind of fat!"
Aug-14-2002: I'm trying to talk Stephanie into doing all the chores instead of paying rent. We've got plenty of money, but the place slowly runs down 'cause we're so busy.
Aug-14-2002: What's buried under the pool? Do we drain it and dig under it, or just not worry and swim?
Aug-14-2002: We're out at night on a road, black asphalt stretches in all directions because the fog's so thick. We think we hear a car coming, but we can't see anything.
Aug-07-2002: We are attempting to board a plane, but security concerns are just ridiculous. Now, you can't even get in the airport without being searched.
They search my daughter's bags and find a Monopoly game and decide that the metal pieces can be used as weapons if thrown very, very hard toward exposed eyes. They could also be used as weapons if left where bare feet could find them.
We feel this is preposterous and say so, but I'm also annoyed that anyone bothers bringing anything with them when they fly anymore -- I'm surprised people are allowed to bring their teeth!
Jul-19-2002: I've decided to study Discrete Mathematics more. I enjoyed it in college and I wanted to go further.
They use the same book I had (although it's revision A.AAAA instead of revision A).
As is customary, I've removed my pants upon sitting at my desk, but it seems this classroom has different customs. They're all still wearing their pants.
How weird!
Well, perhaps my shorts will pass enough for pants to be socially acceptable, but I'm not particularly fond of trying to learn while wearing pants.
We open our books and the topic is "m-pega-n-pega" equations. I've never heard of those, but I figure I'll either remember it eventually, or learn it fast.
Jul-19-2002: It's the night before I graduate from college.
A group of us are carousing and wandering from dorm to dorm. How fun!
Most of my friends are a little drunk, but I'm, of course, cold sober. Besides, it feels too much like the dawning of a new era for me to go and waste it screwing up my perceptions.
I follow one friend out to the edge of the bay. He lies down on the railroad tracks. 'It's all over for me," he declares (sounding more sober than I suspected). I ask why and just then, his girlfriend comes along. She picks him up (now he's acting very drunk again, but I see it's a sham). She tells me she can't wait -- they're getting married as soon as they graduate! They sorta start dancing, but every once in a while, he swings close to the edge of a short cliff that leads down into the bay. He closes his eyes tightly and -- where she can't see -- his lips are a thin line.
I head over to another party and at first, they all seem to be having a good time, too. They ask me what I've got planned. I tell them 'Well, I'm the first person from my family to graduate from college. I don't have any road maps, so I'm just going to do the best I can. It's a new life, man, and there are no more rules!"
They laugh these short, bitter forced laughs. Then I note what they're really doing. They're making hangman nooses and trying them on.
I wander outside, a cup of beer in my hand that had been pressed there at the last party by someone desperate to have me as oblivious as the rest of his guests. The beer smells horrible, like urine. I throw the cup away and close my eyes. The air is fresh and cool and crisp and, I can no longer pretend that the distant sounds of revelry are pleasant at all. Everything I hear has a not-so-secret minor key and they're all marching toward their doom and they know it.
Jul-19-2002: I'm shopping for walls.
The factory showroom is basically a large green field and the walls are suspended like giant book pages. There are several books, all of which I'm "paging" through.
There are tin walls, corrugated metal walls, lath and plaster walls, sheetrock walls, etc. Walls of all sorts. I just can't decide.
My wife stands nearby, not entirely distinct, behind my left side. I know she wants to head on to other plans and things she's got scheduled, but she's willing to wait while I pick out the walls I like.
Jul-19-2002: My former supervisor, who apparently has a horrible reputation as being a completely irrational hardass, collaborates with me to make a clone of Robin Williams.
We make many errors, including a Robin Williams head with three eyes. We set those aside for practical jokes later.
The rest of the lab staff is amazed that she and I work so well together.
When we succeed and make a fully functional Robin Williams, during the big celebration, I suddenly get the feeling she's been "gunning" for me all this time, just waiting to finish the cloning experiment before making her intentions clear.
Jul-19-2002: We live in a new place, a place so large that there are several buildings. I hear that the others are coming home and I rush out to the garage to meet them. I've just bought a weird new truck and I want to show it off. It's a funny little green thing. The woman I bought it from bought it to help her landscaping business, but it was too small and her clients would tease her.
I think it's adorable.
Most of the people coming home think I'm nuts for buying it, but are patient with my nutsiness.
Jul-19-2002: George Carlin perfoms on stage and he's talking about girls. This is a little odd because he doesn't normally use gender humor.
Why is it, he ponders, that young boys want older women and older men want young girls? He doesn't know for sure, but adds "I'm gonna go down to the subway and get me one of them!"
I don't understand the subway reference, but a lot of people seem to find it hilarious. Are they stoned? Is this an old Carlin routine that worked best on the stoned audiences of the Seventies?
Jul-19-2002: How annoying -- we seem to be leaving our luggage and various things all over the airport. If we don't get our shit together and keep it close, we're going to miss our plane.
Jul-19-2002: The eruption isn't nearly as far away as we had hoped it would be. It seems as if the entire mountain is collapsing into a sea of just-beneath-the-surface lava. We run along a Jeep trail. Our running is entirely a matter of luck -- vast chunks of ground collapse around us into the lava -- how did it get so close to the surface?!
If the chunk upon which we're running collapses, no one will even know we've existed. If not, then we survive.
Jul-16-2002: Oh no, it's a bad Raiders of the Lost Ark ripoff! I would love to be carrying the Ark of the Covenant, but I seem to be carrying a wireframe basket filled with nuts and bolts.
No guns, we just karate chop people in that fakey Star Trek way, or whack 'em on the heads with sticks.
The accents are horrible.
We must not have been able to afford any kind of set, as instead of Tunisia and exotic locations, this all takes place in an abandoned apartment complex.
Jul-16-2002: It's in the bed. I thought it was maybe an electric blanket getting too hot, or some other weird factor, but it's not. I'm wide awake and I realize that I'm not feeling heat -- I'm feeling hate. Pure malevolence. And it's coming from the bed itself. I can feel it growling, shrieking at my nerves in ever-increasing waves of black, black malevolence.
The walls around me rise and prevent my escape.
Jul-09-2002: I'm signing up for classes in high school. Hm, I wonder, maybe I should change my course here, seein' as how I'll be spending so much time out of work twenty years later.
I decide to stick with the courses I've already chosen.
Jul-09-2002: I'm playing music with them and we're none of us very good, but it's a lot of fun and vaguely rhythmic.
I play the shaker.
Jul-08-2002: Yoda heads, rotating back and forth like some kind of cheap-ass South Park parody, fly at me.
Jul-05-2002: I'm teaching her chess.
I never realized she didn't know how to play. This is a surprise to me. She's really quite brilliant and it seemed to me that brilliant people tended to have chess sets as a part of their toolkit.
But she's never played and I'm in the brief period where I'm smarter than her at something.
Except that I keep knocking over the pieces as I show her how to do stuff. I hate looking this clumsy and it just seems that Fate wants me to look dorky today.
Jul-05-2002: I've lent my cloak and scarf to my friend L. I like this cloak and scarf, because both were gifts from a former girlfriend who I still have feelings for (although she doesn't seem to share the same feelings). So, these items are dear to me.
When I next see L at this convention, he's no longer wearing the cloak and scarf. I ask him about it and he says he gave it to another fella.
I had no idea he would do this and I'm momentarily furious.
I find the guy wearing the cloak and scarf and follow him around. Eventually, he puts the scarf down and I sneak by and grab it. He doesn't notice (which makes me angry again). Eventually, he puts the cloak down and I grab it, too.
Jul-05-2002: In the arena, I'm hoping to avoid the Tyrannosaur by hiding out of sight and remaining still whenever he comes 'round.
But someone's let some other critter in here, something that's bigger than the Rex.
I hope it will go after the Rex and I can slip out, but just as I move, I'm pinned to the ground by the thing's huge feet. It leans close and in a heavy voice with breath reeking of rotted meat, it tells me that under no circumstances am I to think it will stupidly let me escape.
Jul-05-2002: I am an undercover agent, posing as a priest. The island is extremely rugged, but the tall vertical hills are hollowed out, housing the brotherhood. The peaks are connected by long, looping, and quite beautiful rope ladders.
Jul-05-2002: I, being the last person in the car, must take the hatch. It's not so bad -- I've traveled in the hatch before and it gives me a chance to nap peacefully during a drive.
Unfortunately, everyone in the car is angry at my taking so long at the house.
I was trying to get my friend's father to draw me a map, but he refused. Instead, he drew it on my hand, or perhaps simply announced that it was on my hand and I looked and there was now writing on my hand. But the writing didn't make sense, inexplicable columns of numbers and symbols. "Do I have to do everything for you?" he asks, grinning.
In the car, I am reading a printed transcription of the conversation during the last road trip. "Did someone really say this?" I ask and repeat a particularly stupid-sounding thing.
Jul-05-2002: She and I dated in high school and I haven't really seen her since the day she walked out. She lies next to me, awake. On her other side lies her mother, who I figure is asleep. On my side are members of my immediate family, all presumably asleep.
I reach over and I feel her hand. We hold hands under the covers and it feels good. It's a tentative renewal of contact.
Suddenly, her mother sits up, flicks the lights on and starts yelling about how I can't be trusted with her daughter
Jun-30-2002: The auction begins in just a few minutes. It's a large crowd gathered and I know many of them. A clump of people at the other end of the room catches my eye. They are acquaintances from a time farther back, about a decade or more.
A woman hides within the crowd. I can't quite see who she is. I recognize everyone else. Then, just briefly, I catch her face as she pokes her head up. She sees me -- and more importantly, knows that I see her -- and ducks back, deliberately hiding from me amidst these people.
I'm tempted to go over and ask how she's doing. I do like her, but our parting wasn't a bucket of fun and she has resisted my attempts at renewing our friendship.
A brief surge of annoyance rises in me. She knew I was going to be here, and she knew I would notice the crowd and she knew I would be curious. She also knows of my interest in our friendship. I conclude she has done this intentionally, come to this place and hidden in plain sight in a deliberate act, to manipulate me into doing exactly what I was about to do, which was to confront her.
At this exact moment, the annoyance disappears and is replaced by a profound pity. In order to maintain this level of anger at me, she must be exerting a huge amount of energy and I cannot imagine how she can keep alive such stuff.
I leave the auction, shaking my head. I've reached out, but I will not play games. her choice to expend energy is her choice and fortunately, it is not my problem.
A man approaches me with a box. "Hey," he asks "If you're heading to the restroom, do you mind adding this to the stock cabinet?" It's supplies for the bathroom.
"Sure," I tell him. "No problem!" It feels good to help.
Jun-30-2002: He kneels at the crypt. He tries to not exhibit his sorrow for the two new bodies within, the loss that grips him. I knew one of them, but the other was a stranger to me. I see the tears under his eyes, and how he holds his back straight and stiff, every effort at concealing his pain. I reach forward and rest my hand on his shoulder. He acknowledges me, but doesn't turn. Beneath my hand, I feel a tremendous amount of chaos and confusion and desperation.
Jun-26-2002: Katrina tells me it's time for my medicine, but she's cutting a piece out of an eggplant. Wait, I tell her, my medicine is liquid.
She nods, hearing me, but not acting as if anything's out of the ordinary.
"But you can't give me eggplant," I tell her. "It burns."
She twists out long threads of eggplant onto a fork.
Jun-26-2002: I'm dropped off at work, but there's a problem. We're all having vision problems. We have to squint to see things and when we don't squint, what we see fuzzes up like a digital blur, like fine pixelation.
Once we start conferring, we realize it's a systemic thing and we start trying to figure it out. Eventually, we realize that some of our experimental spiders are loose and this is an effect they have to disorient their prey. It annoys me particularly because I'm rather not fond of spiders as a class and now they're all over the building. And all kinds of different species, too, so it's really hard to hunt, as the hallucinations change whenever we get near a different nest.
Jun-26-2002: In the middle of the intersection, a gopher digs up through the asphalt. I lean down and he speaks to me.
"The answer is on your back. It's about time you knew who your real friends are."
Then he disappears down the hole.
I think about his words. I decide that he must mean finding my answer depends on lying on my back. I lie down and look up.
Jun-26-2002: It was a shoulder-mounted gun called the "Cyclops Gun", although I can't imagine why it would be called that. All guns have one eye.
He was about to shoot it at the Moon, but I knock the gun out of his hands. It clatters to the ground, breaking.
"Knock it off!" I chide him. "We need that Moon."
Jun-26-2002: It's a lecture on the troubles of government and particularly this government. A lot of people there are there to heckle and endanger the speaker, but I really want to hear him speak.
As the heckling grows louder and the crowd more dangerous, I tell someone next to me "You know, it's a darn shame 'Smash the State' speeches aren't as popular as they used to be."
They look shocked at me.
Jun-26-2002: Driving in Mexico, as darkness falls, we approach the US border. Jason turns off-road when we see -- about a mile away -- lots of lights on the road.
"Isn't that the border?" I ask. I'm afraid that in order to shave a few minutes from our time, he's going to try and cross the border illegally and I've already grown weary of being mistaken for a Mexican (seeing as how I can't speak Spanish worth a damn and was born in Michigan). At least I don't sound like Cheech Marin.
"Trust me -- I know exactly what I'm doing," he tells me.
We ramble through trackless Mexican wastes as my fears mount and eventually bounce out onto blacktop, the commotion in the road far behind. I notice ahead that the border crossing is well lit and there are cars at it.
"If this is the border," I ask, "then what was the commotion back there?"
Jason tells me that every once in a while, the Mexican authorities set up a fake border to get people to stop. Worse, bandits sometimes set up a fake border to rob tourists. He remembered this from when he was in the Navy.
Jun-26-2002: This book is a gift, but someone else has opened it. The book, when opened the first time, sends the reader to a happy place that is filled with a bright, warm light.
So now he has his book, but someone else has gone to his place.
We have to cast spells to reopen a hole manually and get that person to come back. Until they come back here, he can't use his book to go away.
Jun-26-2002: In this secret Evil Laboratory, I begin to suspect that my host knows I am not a cohort, but in fact, a good guy in disguise. He leaves me alone in a room and a giant bug attacks me. It's one of his genetically enhanced bugs, but it's still in an early stage, so it's about 18 inches long.
Still deadly, of course.
I grab the only thing I have that's even remotely like a weapon and fire. But, it's not a gun exactly. It's a climbing aid and it shoots two thin wires out. They anchor in the far wall after passing through the bug.
The bug is relatively unharmed and continues flying at me, legs and mandibles clacking. The only thing I can do is grab the two lines at my end and hold them apart. Because they neatly thread the bug's carapace, it can't get closer while I'm holding the lines apart.
Unfortunately, it's a very strong flyer and it's a strain to hold my arms out at tension against the determined bug.
It's only a foot away from my face, now.
Jun-20-2002: What am I doing here? I quit this job years ago!
Jun-19-2002: Wow, Sluggy Freelance is now in our Sunday paper. I wonder how such a conservative paper could publish a comic strip that can be at times quite racy.
Jun-17-2002: In the muddy, earthquake-wracked graveyard, I find handmade rubber stamps. They were made by many generations for the grave of the great-great matriarch. But the most recent earthquake has knocked them all over.
While we are able to pick up many and restore them to their former location, a few are picked up by some other fellow, who decides to sell them for money.
He manages to get a lot of money for them and, in an effort to prevent him from further robbing the grave of this woman, I engage in a pitched sea battle. The ships are armed with some kind of energy weapon that requires twenty seconds to charge. So, on one hand, I'm trying to keep the main batteries aimed at one of his ships (because I'm never sure when the weapon will discharge), but on the other hand, I'm desperately trying to maneuver out of the way of his other ships.
My weapon fires first and one of his ships is destroyed. I manage to slide out of the way of another one and catch the third with the crossfire. This leaves me and one other vessel. I've been recharging for a few seconds and he's just discharged, so the outcome is almost certain.
I hold the crosshairs on the last vessel, waiting for the bolt.
Jun-17-2002: At the wedding, the two brides ask guests to come forward and contribute advice in the form of a game called "I Never". They cycle through the guests, each one stepping up and saying "I never... lie to my partners." Each thing has to start with "I never" and they're writing each one down in a big book.
After the third cycle, I stop and say "I can't play it this way. We're just giving you a big list of things not to do and that's no good. We should be giving you a list of things to do."
Jun-17-2002: It's slightly smaller than a basketball and bounces on the landing below this level of stairs. Because of its peculiar method of locomotion, it has huge affect on its trajectory, but only for that fraction of a second it's in contact with the ground. Its teeth are huge, rotating and serrated. My only hope is to catch it in mid-air, when it cannot move (it is, of course, subject to the same effects of gravity and momentum as the rest of us while it is in midair).
Just as it leaves the ground, I jump down and kick out at it.
Although my foot connects solidly with it, I feel its attempts to grip my shoe. Damn -- I forgot that any contact allows its cilia to maneuver it! Fortunately, I'm kicking fast enough that it just doesn't have the contact necessary to cling and it flies off into the water below.
I hurry by, knowing that it can move around on water almost as well as land (a surface is a surface).
Jun-15-2002: We're supposed to become more comfortable with these pistols, but they fit weirdly in my hand. And I don't like that we're also supposed to be targets -- I don't care if the bullets only sting.
Jun-10-2002: I employ hundreds of androids in my factory. It hasn't been a huge concern until very lately, when someone started installing "Free Will" upgrades surreptitiously. So now, all my androids think I'm some kind of bad guy who should be killed. I can get away for a while because I'm creative about getting around via chain hoists and such, but eventually, they catch me out on open flat area, and they can run faster than me.
Jun-10-2002: They were cooking thick pork steaks for everybody. The steaks were underdone and everyone complained, except for me. I loved 'em!
Jun-06-2002: She stands at the side of the bed, watching me. My first impulse is to get up and be solicitous, to offer her something to drink or eat. My built-in Host Mode.
But then I remembered -- when I returned last night, I reeked of smoke, so I took a shower and crashed immediately to bed -- no pajamas.
So I watch her.
She asks how I'm doin', sorta' innocent, but not quite.
"Why are you here?" I ask. "I haven't seen you in over a year."
She shrugs. She says she's missed me.
"I never told you you couldn't visit, that we couldn't socialize, just that I couldn't lie. Just that I couldn't mentor you when I want you as a peer."
She starts to protest and then stops. I think she realizes what I meant and besides, I'm not feeling like offering her any help at the moment. She has to figure it out on her own.
Then she's gone again.
Jun-05-2002: I'm taking high school math again -- mostly because I've fallen so far behind in my knowledge.
She's taking the class with me, too.
The girls in the back are chattering and giggling and the teacher chides them. He demands to know what they're talking about. They tell him and he turns to her.
"I don't know how they do it where you come from, miss, but in my class, we all wear underwear!"
Jun-05-2002: She's chasing me and I'm flying away -- on broomstick. Her roaring is like a million ton pressure cooker and I know that everyone expects me to cage her, to trap her, but something about this doesn't seem right. I stop running and she catches up to me.
She's huge, but I can't call her a dragon because she constantly transforms. Each shape is strange and horrible, but each one also exudes a certain femininity.
Calmly, I wait, while each form tries to scare me.
Then I ask, in a soft voice, if I may speak with her.
She is now an old woman with long white hair, almost frightened-looking.
I smile at her and she smiles back, shy.
I ask her to dance and she nods.
Hovering high in the air, we dance carefully to music no one can hear.
Jun-05-2002: I don't know these two women, so I watch them. They pull up in our driveway in a big green car, a Laguna or something. The neighbor comes over and they quietly talk.
Who are they? I watch them very quietly and as still as possible through the slits of the window shade.
They keep talking...
Jun-05-2002: It's 2pm already?! Oh crap did I ever oversleep!
Jun-02-2002: This dumb-ass lightsaber can't even cut rope!
May-31-2002: How do I get the damn web-cam to work. They're all depending on me and I'm a complete idiot!
May-24-2002: The hot sun's burning the tops of my feet. Other than that, I'm having a good time. What the heck happened to me such that now I'm susceptible to sunburn?
May-24-2002: The wedding's about to start and I'm the only groomsman who has shown up. I have my tux and it fits perfectly (I like wearing tuxedoes!). Finally, the groom drags his sorry ass in, as well the other groomsmen. They're all dressed in street clothes and the groom decides, in a gravelly voice, that street clothes are good enough.
I remember that the bride is in a beautiful white dress and I tell him most sternly that her family would be insulted if he didn't look his best for the wedding. I tell him that taking a little bit more time to shuck their crap clothes and put on tuxedoes is worth the result.
They're covered in cat hair.
May-24-2002: He points to a small movie projected on a wall. I'm younger in the movie and bragging to a friend that "I'd sell my soul" for something.
"Do you remember that?" he intones.
I don't and I tell him so.
He's angry I can't remember.
May-22-2002: A TV show is on about the pyramids on Mars. S watches it, snorting in derision occasionally. E watches it too, but she's mostly having fun and liking the computer-generated scenery.
E says "Hey Edward, have you told S about the TV show you're writing?"
"No, I totally forgot!"
S looks at me expectantly. "So tell me," she says.
"It's a reality show," I explain. "It's like Survivor, but it's on Mars."
She looks incredulous. "So, each episode is, um, twenty seconds long, then? You can't 'survive' on Mars."
I'm nodding and E pipes up: "Well yeah, but you haven't heard the best part." She turns to me. "Tell her about the air dogs."
"Air dogs?" asks S.
"Well, we've put these dogs on Mars -- little round dogs -- and you can breathe if you hold 'em up to your mouth."
"That is the single most ridiculous thing I have ever heard!" announces S. "I can't believe how much time I waste listening to this crap. I've got to call clients, do my laundry, I'm pregnant, work on the garden--"
"Waitasec," I interject. "What did you say?"
She feigns indifference. "Work on the garden?"
"No, the two words before that."
"Oh, it's no big deal. I thought I'd give it a try. Something new"
"But... but..." I stutter. I try doing the math, but I can't remember the last time we were together. I've wanted kids and I'm torn because it's great that a partner wants to as well, but it's disturbing because I somehow didn't make the cut.
May-231-2002: It's a vast field covered in flesh. Bodies are everywhere, swollen with bloating and bacterial growth. The smell is staggering and the buzzing of flies and scavenger insects almost as overpowering. The most appalling part is that this wasteland of corpses is still alive. Each is undead, moving through some force previously unknown. I've encountered zombies before, traditional shambling hulks that are fairly easy to kill, but these are different. These are acres of undead, sometimes stacked waist high, for as far as the eye can see.
And I'm among them. I'm covered in a cloak, pretending to be one of the "newly" dead. My goal was to find the source of power, the beating heart -- so to speak -- of the undead. It's here and it terrifies me. It's not a single source, not an easy thing to encapsulate and destroy. It's this vast living field, this unimaginably huge Existence. There is a center, but it's only a description of the density, not any sort of uber-existence.
I feel it around me, a horizon-to-horizon hungriness, a simple and implacable desire to consume. I'm in a creature, a creature that is huge and many!
I cannot strike at the heart of such a thing, for it has no heart. The best I can do is leave and keep hacking at the fringes.
I turn to go, but am stopped by the flow of incoming bodies, newcomers that want to be closer to the intelligence -- making them a part of it as well.
I can't get out by just shoving.
Regretfully, I draw a handheld cutting laser. This is faster than axes when dealing with zombies, severing their heads in a few eyeblinks. I will need a fast tool to escape, because once I act belligerently, they'll come after me and there's really no where I can run, except through whatever swath I can cut with this thing.
A large aggressive one pushes me toward the center. I almost laugh, because he looks a little like Jay (of Jay and Silent Bob). I sever his head and it rolls off. I turn and start cutting a path.
Just then, I'm grabbed from behind.
"Jay"'s hand clutches at me. What?! A zombie can't function without its head. I look up and see its other hand shoving the head back onto the stump. I watch transparent strings of tissue curl up through the neck stump and re-securing the head.
This is not good. This totally fucks with my strategy. I'm going to have to throw the heads away instead of just dropping 'em. I struggle and blast his arm from mine. I run.
I see already that the cuts I made are healing up, sewn together by busy, otherworldly bits of translucent flesh.
My laser is getting very hot. This escalation of capability is going to really be a problem
May-07-2002: I know it's a bar, but there seems to be an awful lot of baby strollers there. Ah, I see -- during the day it's a swap meet!
May-01-2002: I visit my grandmother, who is glad to get me away from my Dad. It's not that she dislikes my Dad (her son), but it's more a case of her wanting a chance to get to know me outside of his influence.
She takes me out to this new place she just loves. It seems to be a Denny's, but the waitstaff are just outrageously attentive. As soon as we sit down, three waiters gather up to attend us. They are extremely friendly and helpful and not a trace of saccharine to it -- they really do want us to enjoy our meal.
She orders something for her, some kind of fancy chicken salad, then eyes me speculatively. "My grandson," she says "will have the fish and chips" (which I was thinking of!). As appetizers, they bring us these huge salads.
Someone else is getting the fish and chips, so I check out the tray as it passes our table. Good lord -- it's huge! It's one slab of fish that fills up an entire plate. A thick slab -- several inches at least.
I tell my grandmother I don't think I can really make a dent in this thing and she just laughs, as if I'm missing something very obvious.
Apr-22-2002: It's a very small town in a war-torn country. It's extremely isolated, not only geographically, but because of a Potemkin like peculiarity of the residents. They have the typical poor-facade apparent, but behind that, they are a thriving and very intelligent people. They treat everyone equally, and send all their kids to college and explore the sciences and philosophy.
The U.S. Army is rolling through, however, and because this town is in an "enemy" country, it will be destroyed as well.
Everyone is trying to evacuate in as orderly a fashion as possible. Some people are flying off in their personal flying machines, others are trying to burrow into their underground labs, hoping to escape detection. A few are time-traveling away with hopes for a literal "better tomorrow".
Apr-22-2002: I am cooking bright red shrimp and they look beautiful on the little cornmeal hills with green parsley leaves.
Apr-22-2002: She has become Muslim. I don't understand this and she's not willing to explain it. She prays six times a day, wherever she happens to be. She unrolls that little carpet, snarls at me to be friggin' quiet, and starts praying.
I try telling her that any religion expecting quiet prayer six times a day is probably incompatible with my immediate vicinity.
Apr-18-2002: I'm about 13 or so. I've just killed another kid. I managed to arrange his body such that he looks like he's sleeping, but now I have to get out of the house and his parents and older brother just came home.
I try to tell them he's sick and wants to be left alone and nap for a while (I figure I can get away in that time), but they want to watch a movie and the VCR's down in the rec room -- where his body is.
So, miserable, I watch the movie with them, hoping for a chance to escape.
Apr-16-2002: A series of small rafts, about 12 x 12 were connected by thin bridges. At the far end of the sequence was the land and a building were the priests were busily excommunicating and/or trying a heretic. I am at the other end, preparing an altar of some sort.
It is night, the water swells slowly and I sit and eye the altar. I tell myself softly, "This doesn't seem right."
A voice, equally soft, answers back: "Well, right and wrong aren't exactly well-defined, but you're correct -- it's probably not right."
"How come I can hear you?" I ask.
"Because you're listening. Anyone who listens can hear me."
I have a suspicion who I'm talking to you. "Can you hear them," I asked. "Or do you only hear prayers?"
The voice laughs. "Every sound you make," it says. "Every movement and motion, every word uttered is a prayer. It's actually very foolish to formalize only a small part of that. Besides, prayers rarely reflect the truth about life, the truth about wants. Your existence reflects your desires."
"Is that why we exist?" I ask.
I cannot hear it, but the voice grins. "You exist," it says, "because existing is the only possible way for you to feel joy."
"Just joy?"
"Just?! There is no other reason for existence, for life, for living, than joy. Sometimes, it seems difficult to understand that, but joy is always somewhere, in some part of what you're experiencing."
I chew on this a moment and am reminded of the priests at the other end of the string of rafts. "So all that religion...?" I ask.
"Do you think I need it?" the voice asks kindly. "Do you think I need heretics? It's something you do for yourself. Not for me. For you."
There is a shift and the next thing I realize, I and a group of friends are on the final raft. Our weight is so much that if anyone else comes on, it would sink. We are playing instruments and happily preventing the priests from advancing with their person. The music feels right and good and like it is the perfect thing to be doing right now
Apr-16-2002: He was praying for the health of his friend. It wasn't a life-and-death situation, just something ordinary. He insisted prayer helped and I told him there was absolutely no proof of this and he could just as well do shaman stuff or tap dancing. If he prayed, it was for his own benefit.
He was very angry with me.
Apr-16-2002: I received a piece of e-mail from one of the film festivals I sent my movies to. At first, I thought it was spam, it was so obscurely written and oblique. Eventually, I realized that they were telling me they wanted to show one of my movies.
That was cool!
Apr-14-2002: In Spy School, getting to the new classroom is half the curriculum. It is behind a series of locked doors and hallways, forming a three-dimensional maze. Some locks require a key-card, inserted to a different specific length for each door. Other doors require a lengthy numeric code. I've a crib sheet of the code in my pocket. Each number is really long, like twenty digits or so.
I'm about twelve doors through. Maybe halfway, I don't know. I've been very meticulous and careful and I started early in the morning to give myself plenty of time. Suddenly, the door behind me opens and a flood of students come through. They all started late and are rushing through.
They urge me to hurry up (you can't open the doors out of nested sequence, which means that although they can catch up with me, they can't pass me. I tell them that if they wanted to go ahead of me, they should have started earlier and we'll move at my speed now, thank you very much
Apr-13-2002: I'm at a high school. Not my own, but I'm a student. I'm in Group 12. Where the hell are we supposed to be meeting this period? Not at the softball diamond, not at the tennis courts. I check the schedule. Ah, we're all supposed to be in the auditorium for some kind of talk.
It's an emergency meeting, called because a student recently died and the staff and faculty want us to get together and discuss ways of finding out if were at risk, too.
But the student who died did so doing a poorly thought-out protest on a highway edge, fell into traffic and was splattered around like a wet tennis ball.
Deeply Concerned Officials are suggesting ways of identifying traits in other students. They offer such clues as "feels left out", "is teased a lot", or "is a loner" and each time, I find myself replying "plays in traffic", "thinks cars can't hurt him", "does very stupid things".
People around me are staring at me as if I'm some kind of sick evil fuck and I stare right back at 'em. "What?!" I protest. "He fucking played in traffic! Not only is it right and fair that he died, but his parents should be whacked for not teaching him that Playing In Traffic is Bad!"
I remember my parents teaching me this and telling me that I would get killed dead shit if I ever played in traffic (by the cars or by them if I somehow escaped the cars -- and by golly I believed 'em!) and I look at the sea of faces and I'm astonished how cowlike they are. How shocked they are that I would suggest such a thing!
"This is stupid," I mutter and start to leave the auditorium.
Apr-07-2002: We wade in a river. A broad, green river. It's hot out and we're sweating, but it isn't intolerable.
Apr-03-2002: I wonder where my wife might be. I'm heading to the pier to check the houseboat, thinking she might have gone there for a little solitude. I'm not worried or anything, just curious.
Before I get to the boat, a man approaches me. He says "I know it'll seem tough, but don't worry. She'll be back. She will be back."
He walks around a corner, transforms into a shining figure with wings, and flies away.
I notice the houseboat missing.
A storm's coming in fast.
A year later, my sons and I are at her funeral. Everyone figures she went off in the houseboat, got caught in the storm, and was swallowed up by the ocean, but I keep remembering the shining man's voice and I find a place of inner calm. I note that a few people look at me suspiciously because I don't seem to be grieving as much as others, but I tell them that she's not gone, and that she'll be back. A few are offended that I would artificially raise the kids' hope this way.
Seven years later, I start looking for her. I admit I'm getting a bit impatient. I know she's mentioned going to a certain small island to vacation, so I head there and hang out.
On the beach, I'm talking to a fella about her. There's maybe half a dozen other people on the beach doing various things. Then, at the mouth of the cove, I see the houseboat. I get very excited for many five seconds before someone clonks me and I'm out.
I wake up on the floor of a big van. Everyone who was at the beach surrounds me, discussing what to do with me. It seems I've stumbled onto an island of modern pirates. They're leaning toward killing me because I know too much.
I tell them the only thing I care about is the possibility that they can add more data to my knowledge of my wife's whereabouts. Everything else is not my concern. They're getting aggressive because they don't believe me and they want to kill me to keep me silent. I'm attempting to explain to them how very important it is that I find her and how very, very, very unimportant anything else is. I ask them if they've ever been in love. I ask them if they understand faith.
Apr-03-2002: The contest is huge. All species from all planets are invited. The goal is to collect six balls. They are scattered throughout the Universe. It has never been done, so since the ancient past, most of the game has been a matter of stealing the balls that have been found from other teams.
But this creature standing in front of me is holding out what looks like the last remaining ball, the one no one has ever found. He's handing it to me, saying that he's tired of hiding it and our team seemed the most reasonable.
Apr-01-2002: I'm packing the car in a hurry. I'm freaking out because it's almost noon and if we're not empty and checked out, they'll charge us for an extra day.
Everyone else is just sitting there watching movies on cable.
Dammit!
Katrina comes out to the car and asks what's wrong, as I seem stressed. I try to explain to her that I don't want to get charged and no one seems to be helping and it's very frustrating.
Just then, I notice the car moving -- I'd left the brake off and now our heavily-laden car is coasting down a grade with only me trying desperately to stop it.
Apr-01-2002: I was a hologram waiter working in a restaurant and deeply, passionately in love with the waitress, who is also a hologram. We can touch nothing (obviously, we only take orders and pass on messages), being holograms, including each other, but we share the same passion.
One morning, I am activated and everything looks different. I am told by one of the human waiters that all our old systems had been upgraded so we could be better waiters.
I bump into a table.
We can touch things? I ask.
Oh yes, it's so you can be a better waiter, I am told.
Fine, I say. I'll be a better waiter when I'm done.
I rush across the restaurant to where my love is still acclimating after her new activation. I can finally touch her. I touch her cheek, I feel her flesh beneath my hand. I wrap myself around her, lost in passion
Mar-27-2002: We were frantic to find a place to have sex. It was getting ridiculous! We found one place, a sort of bunker where my brother lived. I was able to roust him and his roommates away, but just as we're alone, I realize she's my sister. But -- I tell her -- I only have one sister and you are nowhere near her! She smiles and just keeps nodding. "Well, I'm not going to make it too obvious!" she says.
Mar-27-2002: It was supposed to be just an omelet, but there's, like, two dozen eggs in the bowl! Who do they think I am?!
Mar-25-2002: She's attacking me and I can't remember any of the techniques I used to know to defend myself. The only thing I can remember is forward kicks. So, I forward kick as fast as I can, hoping to intimidate her enough so I can get away. I feel like I'm in a jump-punch-kick video game controlled by an idiot.
Mar-23-2002: I'm trying to figure out this complicated origami fold and the paper ain't workin'. Hm, maybe it's too big.
Mar-22-2002: We've burst into a room, guns drawn. Our unit has found a group of the enemy stashed in this little cottage. Two of us stay behind to hold the three people prisoner while the rest continue securing the house.
They don't understand English and they seem to be having trouble even with gestures, but I can't tell if it's deliberate or not. Their hands keep sliding out of sight and we have to prod them back out.
I don't want to shoot them, and I've been ordered not to shoot unless absolutely provoked, but obviously I can't tell them that.
"C'mon," I keep saying, whenever they put their hands down. "Please don't make me shoot you!"
One says she just wants to stretch out on the bed. It seems like a seduction, but I'm really not interested. However, I see movement and I realize that there's another person under the bed who's been hiding.
I prod her out and she comes up with a gun.
Now there's trouble.
I and my companion bring our weapons to bear. We definitely have the drop on them, but they keep moving closer, eyes on us. I really don't want to shoot, but I point the gun directly at her chest. I shout "Stop!" in as many languages as I know. Finally, it's too much. They're starting to point their guns at us.
Forgive me.
I brace. I squeeze the trigger.
<click> Nothing happens.
She grins.
I squeeze the trigger again, several times. <click> <click> <click>. Still nothing.
I hear my companion's gun next to me also clicking empty.
These women continue grinning, amused at our surprise, as if they expected this from the beginning and were just playing with us.
They raise their rifles.
Mar-22-2002: I'm doing my first real voice-over for a movie. It's a small part. I seem to have an old rev of the script. The recording isn't happening in a studio, but a large hotel room. The Director and Producer start arguing over my part. I try to ask if there's a difference in my small part between the two scripts. The writer is there, a fellow who seems disorganized and smells bad. He explains that they had to cut the script pages up by line and holds out a stack of tiny sheets. The stack is nearly three feet thick. Now the tiny pages are falling apart and I'm unable to keep stuff from sliding all around (whose stupid idea was to cut the script up anyway?!)
The Director is telling me to just record the version I have -- he's getting annoyed at me.
I reach out for my copy of the script (which he grabbed when he realized it was the wrong one), but he's lost it. "Well," he says huffily, "I'm sure you brought an extra. Professionals always have an extra!" and of course I don't, so I have to sort through all these strips to find my lines and the Director's getting all dramatic about how I'm holding everything up.
On one hand, I'm pretty pissed that they were so disorganized, but I'm also wrestling with my own concerns that had I been professional, none of this would have happened.
Mar-18-2002: A new person was visiting us and she let the cat out of his room. I didn't know until I saw him sliding around in the corner.
"Oh, he really likes that corner," she says.
"That's the corner he marks all the time," I tell her. "That's why we keep him in one of the rooms." Confused, she leaves. I check and sure enough, he's marked all kinds of things in that corner -- most of which are mine anyway.
I'm furious -- at her for leaving the doors open and at him for marking things and at me for not getting rid of him as soon as he started spraying stuff.
Mar-18-2002: My friend Glenn is showing me this new kind of tape he's marketing. "It's sticky on both sides!" he says "And it's not adhesive -- it's part of the polymer structure -- so it won't ever rub off."
"That's great," I say, rubbing the sticky tape with my thumb. "But doesn't that mean it'll attract every chunk of dust and grunge it comes into contact with? Have you seen what it'll look like in five years?" I was imagining rectangles of fuzz in all my photo albums.
Mar-18-2002: We're pretty much wrapping up the new movie. The computer generated characters are really great -- it's almost like working with real actors. I joke with the others -- remember how we did that first movie -- just manipulating images from a comic book?
I came back into the house. We live on a rocky coast with vigorous waves. Like a NE coastline, except it's actually a lot warmer.
Tired from the day's shoot, I decide to take a nap. I doze, but drift awake when I hear the rest of everybody coming home.
Vaguely, I know that there's about six or seven people living in this huge house. We all keep things humming at home, but because there's so many of us, we have plenty of activities and fun things we do. I remember once someone asking "So, that's all you did all weekend -- play?!" and my replying "Uh, yeah."
I hear a couple of voices asking after me and Jason replying "Oh, he went to take a nap."
"Then let's go get him!" they cry out and head in to wake me up.
Mar-14-2002: I'm trying to yell "Stop that!" to those people in such a way that they obey me instantly. Trying to tap into some kind of authority cue in their brains, but it just isn't coming out right...
Mar-09-2002: Katrina and I are vacationing in a foreign and old place. Ruins dot the grassy coast. In one place, there's actually ruins up to the side of a mountain -- great stones and walkways and walls. Perhaps a lesser-visited site in Greece or Italy.
I hear the wolves coming. During the day, they are harmless and exist in a form that prevents them from interacting or even seeing objects in this existence, but at night, they gather and hunt and it is not safe. As the sun goes down, they are more able to see things in this sphere of existence. They will gradually become solid enough to kill.
As we're leaving, Katrina realizes she left something -- a small trinket or scarf -- behind, up by the cave entrance. Yes, where the ruins touch the side of the cliff, an ornate mouth prefaces a cave that has not been recently explored. There's not enough time to go back and get her thing, but I project my Self there.
My Self is an entity not strongly connected to Space or Time, thus I can project it anywhere or anywhen. It's not physical, so I can only observe during these periods.
At the mouth of the cave, I see her thing -- it is a small necklace. I push my Self backwards in Time and see her taking the necklace off. Forward in time and I see her hopping off the pedestal and walking with me back toward the car, the necklace forgotten.
Will it be okay if we leave it here overnight, I wonder.
Forward in time, after dark. Strange small creatures creep from the cave and collect the necklace. I slow to real time passage (just displaced a few hours) and follow them into the cave. They maneuver around many things and it seems inexplicable until I zoom quickly through Past and Future and realize that they are walking around trigger stones for traps. During one pass through recent Future, I see myself being snared in one of them.
"Well screw that," I say. "Good thing I know where the triggers are."
No one normally hears my Self, but as I murmur to myself in this form, the creatures stop. Their heads twist and turn and they're looking for the source of something. I don't know if they've heard me or otherwise sensed me, but now they're looking for me.
I'm not scared, but I am fascinated that they can sense me at all.
2-18-2002: She's my old girlfriend from high school. I didn't expect to see her here at all and there she is. There's a paleness and vacancy about her face that I do not recall. Her greeting is friendly, but mechanical, perfunctory.
Her husband Chris is in a meeting, but arrives shortly, breaking what was seeming to be an increasingly uncomfortable conversation. She really does feel as if there's no flashing lights in her anymore. Chris is all flashing lights and energy and pumps my hand and looks earnestly into my eyes. "I've heard so much about you!" he booms, and I wonder what he could have heard, as she and I haven't seen hide nor hair of each other in more than 15 years. "I just want you to know there's no hard feelings," he adds. "You're just like a part of the family!"
My eyes flicker toward her and she is expressionless, facing us, but watching nothing.
Chris leans in conspiratorially "And I really want to thank you for the slogan and stuff for the new ad campaign."
"Slogan?" I ask.
Chris grins. "She didn't tell you?"
"Tell me what?"
He grins at his wife. She's not exactly zombie-like, not a Stepford wife, but she's distant. My heart remembers her and suddenly, I feel a huge, crystal-clear ping as the memory breaks to the surface. Now, when I look at her, remembering the brilliant mind, the dancing eyes, the impish giggling, the joyful dancing in place when she was excited.
"Your little comedy bit," says Chris, ignoring her and, I suspect, ignoring me as well. "She showed it to me and we adapted it into our biggest ad campaign yet!"
I stumble over my words. I don't know if he hears the keening, searching voice in me as I reach across that space for her. Where is that dancing, happy, marvelous girl?!
"I... I've written a lot. Maybe you could tell me..."
He slaps my knee, chortling with disbelief and starts relating a story.
She can't be gone?!
2-18-2002: If you flicked a lit match into their faces and they didn't flinch, they were zombies and you could kill them. I tried explaining this to people, but they just weren't getting it.
2-18-2002: My glasses were falling apart in my hand. The joints in the frames were dissolving into rust and the lenses were fragmenting into glass chips. I was going to be blind after this, I knew it.
2-06-2002: The beachhouse was right on the beach.
She and I were out in the water, which was warm and tropical. Although we were within a yard or two of each other at all times, we never actually seemed to connect. The waves were high, but gentle, like rolling hills of water.
We eventually came in and entered our beachhouse. The helper people had built a fire in the fireplace, which I thought was quite strange -- why would someone want a fire in a warm tropical location. What was particularly problematic was that the fireplace was more of a fire tray. The fire was not enclosed, was quite large, and the woodpile next to the fireplace had also caught. So, it was a bit distressing.
2-06-2002: I was at a beach with several friends. One of us, Ray, had to leave. I was staying and I didn't want him to leave, so I challenged him to one more little surfing competition.
Jan-27-2002: The hurricane had killed thousands of people as it swept across the ocean, because there was no warning. It looked like a puffy cloudbank, didn't show up on radar, and had a strictly defined edge.
My submarine was at dock and the men were milling about. I saw just a wisp of clouds start rolling over the nearby hill and thought how nice it would be to have a bit of a cooling cloud cover in this tropical location. A voice blasted in my skull, a voice from me. In the future, I was caught completely by surprise and half my crew was killed by the flash storm. Shaken, I rang the emergency bell and everyone, though puzzled, loaded back on and we submerged, just as the hurricane slammed into the docks.
None of my men had died and I felt the future-thanks dissolve in paradox, like an infinitely dividing spaghetti strand.
Jan-27-2002: Just hired at a previous job. They've changed everything. Because I worked there fifteen years ago, they expect me to be aware of all the various changes the instruments have gone through. Everything's on moving platforms and sliding wires.
Jan-25-2002: It was lying on the sand on the beach. I had only a stick. I tried dividing it into two lumps, but the stick was an imprecise tool and I kept getting sand in the membranes. Eventually, I dragged it apart.
Then I divided it further into fours, but by now, it was covered in sand and probably quite dead -- if it had ever been alive.
Jan-22-2002: We split up and entered the house from many different points, hoping to catch it somewhere inside. Unfortunately, my companion was a mindless beast, a zombie-like man of very little intellect, which we had decided to preserve in hopes that later examination would reveal more about our enemy.
The house had been completely restructured on the inside, forming a loose spiral, with many pockets of rooms and debris from various killings throughout. Blood often spattered the walls. Much of it, we realized, was from previous expeditions to capture it.
While examining a particularly gruesome remnant, I noticed with dismay that I had lost my "companion". I knew he could not walk very quickly, so I didn't call anyone else on the radio to report the anomaly.
Around the corner, I heard a gentle bumping. I walked around and sure enough, the creature that had been accompanying me was facing a corner, trying to walk and gently bumping into the walls.
As I reached to turn him around, I noticed the think fleshy tubes rising from his head and neck to a high shelf in that darkened corner. On that shelf was a mass of movement, a putrescent, horrifying living thing that was simultaneously trying to control this former man and extracting nutrition from his still animated corpse.
The dead man began to grunt. I realized I was hearing the sound of the last vestige of life remaining, attempting to scream, to fight, to try and stop this horrible thing defiling its body.
Waves of revulsion swept through me. I reached for my radio, and heard it clatter and slide away into the dark, oozing through the blood- and gore-moistened floor.
As the empty face turned to me, the white, sightless eyes vibrating in their sockets from the fluctuating pressures of the body, I felt the pressing of... things against my head and neck.
I didn't have time to scream.
Jan-16-2002: We had to check out of the hotel, but were interrupted by a crowd of amateur filmmakers who were chronicling this room of the hotel. It seems Popeye had stayed there years ago when the place first opened up and hammered his one-dollar tip into the wall.
Then I realized I had to tip the hotel people by nailing the cash to the walls -- it was what everybody did!
Jan-09-2002: She had called telling me she was sick and I drove all the way to Seattle to help her. Her house was quiet, but I went 'round to the side door. It was open. I heard voices. She was there, sounding strange, lilting. Her boyfriend and another woman were there. They asked me for help with her. She threw herself at me, slobberingly affectionate. This is behavior I would expect from a person who was drunk, but she didn't smell drunk. She passed out, still standing. She looked pretty grungy, so I suggested we get her cleaned up and lie her down for a while. She leaned against me as we staggered into the bathroom, but once we got there, I realized that there was urine everywhere. Great pools of it on the floor, splashed on the wall, all over myself by now. The air was thick with the smell. She drifted briefly back to consciousness, held a hand to her face, ashamed, and said "I'm having some problems. I'm sorry."
Jan-09-2002: My back was against a thick oak door, well-armed hooligans on the front porch. Some no-account friend of mine had made a bad bet and now they were coming to collect. He and Katrina had already gone into an inner room of the house and as soon as these kids stopped pounding on the door, I'd bolt for there, too.
Then the bullet holes started. These were armor-piercing and they were blowing inch-wide holes through the wall and the oak door. I lay as flat as I could, hoping none of them was aimed at me and knowing that if they were, I might feel something.
I was cursing my friend for getting mixed up with bad folk and deciding that this was the last time there would be any interaction between us.
I was also wishing I had the foresight to have built a rabbithole in this house.
Jan-05-2002: I have gritted my teeth for what seemed like hours and the taste burns in my mouth. The short man in the dark suit solemnly salutes and tells me he'll be back later to do more.
Dec-13-2001: I've missed the train northwards, and although fault can somewhat be drawn to me for not arriving hours early and checking schedules, it is a fact that the train left about a half hour earlier than the posted schedule. I am annoyed because now I have to drive for many hours straight, which is quite dangerous for me. I try to find out if there's going to be another train, but the attendants at the station are surly and unwilling to do more than stupidly chide me for missing the train.
Nov-10-2001: I was transported from my spaceship back to Earth by an experimental long-range transporter kind of thingy, right when I was being attacked by an alien dog-critter (alas, a media dream using an element of Aliens 3). The process renders me unconscious for several weeks and when I awake, they inform me that the alien has been domesticated and today is the public showing.
I am aghast at this, expecting the alien to pretty much munch everybody in sight.
They walk me out to an indoor square. A technician has the alien by a short leash. I do not trust this creature, nor do I trust the technician to actually hold on to the leash in the event of An Event.
Suddenly, the alien lunges and attack's a woman's black pumps. "No!" cries the technician, trying to pull it away. "You have your own pumps at home. No!"
The woman is down, but relatively unharmed, and the alien is trying to drag her pumps from her feet. Finally, the technician asks her if we can reimburse her and take her pumps. Stunned, she slips them off. The alien puts them on its own feet and stands. "He's just so much more comfortable," says the technician, "when he's wearing pumps. He thinks it makes him walk less funny."
Sure enough, because of the odd shape of the alien's feet, the pumps do improve its posture.
Nov-10-2001: I am painting a wall in a cathedral-ceiling room. Three other people are there. The first is a ditzy woman who owns the house. She has called us there to help. The other two are a couple who are in the middle of a divorce. Every word they say to each other has nasty edges around it.
I'm not painting with a brush, but a strip of metal louver from a set of horizontal blinds. Terribly inefficient!
We have started painting over a layer of embossed rose-covered wallpaper. Although the light-pink paint covers the color, the embossed roses are still visible. The ditzy woman isn't sure if she wants us to just paint over it anyway, or if she wants us to remove the wallpaper first. The guy starts fussing about her indecision and then his ex-wife starts bitching him out. In a matter of seconds, everybody's crabbing at everybody except me, just ladling paint with my "spatula". I ask "If you guys are going to keep talking, can I borrow a paintbrush, please?"
Nov-10-2001: I have an old cut on my leg. It has almost completely healed, but there is a flap of dried skin hanging. I gingerly pull the flap off. Blood wells up in the cut and starts dripping off my leg, puddling on the floor. What did I do? What did I do?!
Nov-10-2001: I'm trying to install a new home theater speaker system in this house, but I cannot find the owner's subwoofer (which is a rather key component). I ask another person living there (his wife?) and she points me to it. He has mounted it outside, on a complicated rebar pedestal, mounted about four feet off the ground, pointing at the house.
"He wanted," she explains, "the vibration to reach the whole house."
Nov-05-2001: I'm trying to play this new role-playing game, but the rules are very confusing. It's some kind of fantasy RPG, and it uses figurines, but the figurines are electronic and can communicate with each other.
While I'm trying to carry my character away from a market, a bunch of beggar figures start crowding around (because the figurines are little robots).
Jason and Katrina inform me that I must hire a non-player character, and pay him money to keep the beggars away from me. I do so (by pointing my figure's arm at him and pressing my head) and then that figure starts beating up all the beggar figures.
I liked it better when the games were just on screens or better yet, when it was all imagination.
Oct-25-2001: I was small, about eight or ten inches tall, and trying to swim down the stream, distracting the bigger people so the rest of my small people could escape.
I hit some kind of wooden structure, a waterwheel or something, and in an attempt to scurry through that as quickly as possible, I tripped and fell. I tried wriggling to jump over it and into the water at the other end, but one of the big people had grabbed my legs and was tugging and pulling most cruelly.
I knew then that I was caught and that the rest of my people would be caught as easily. Dammit, we just didn't know how dangerous these people were!
Oct-24-2001: Sitting in my Jeep, I watch them in the dark. I cannot move, I'm tied down, restrained. The bonfire is a good forty feet away, but I can see them dancing around it, screaming and drunken. They burn whatever they've found around the village, furniture, whatever.
I saw them lift the painting high and the flames illuminated it. I can't see what's on the canvas, but I know the painting is me. They can't be burning that! I pull at my bonds, but I cannot free myself. They raise the painting high above the hungry fire.
I scream as they throw it in, before I actually feel the heat myself, before the fire realizes what a rich feast it has in the oil-covered canvas.
Oct-18-2001: I've just graduated from Secret Agent Academy. I'm in a big black SUV with a bunch of other new Agents (our budget can't afford a helicopter drop) heading toward our first assignment.
The SUV drops us off in the driveway of a somewhat ritzy house on a lake. We mill around, because our budget, it seems, couldn't actually cover a mission briefing, either. We're, like, really low budget.
After a while, the owner of the house (are we supposed to be protecting him, killing him, what?) comes out and asks if we would at least like to come inside for some lemonade. It's getting very hot and we're all dressed in black wool suits, you see.
Oct-08-2001: Katrina drives and we're finishing up a series of car-errands. "Hey," she says, "Let's go visit so-and-so's house! They're just about half a mile from here!"
We drive through some strange back roads until we reach a snowy parking area. We, well, park here, get out and start walking to our friend's house.
We arrive through the back way and are careful not to trip the alarms -- they're a paranoid batch of folks. As we get closer, we see lights on in the house and we're glad someone's home. The snow, you see, is getting high and it's quite cold.
They are, evidently, having a large party. We approach closer and suddenly, I stop. I'm alone in the snow, staring in through the windows and windowed doors. Many, many of the guests are people I know, including my friend Andy, whom I've known for more than a decade. Andy sits in a small chair in the kitchen, looking out into the dark. I don't know how he could see me out here, but he seems to. He stares at me.
I drop a wedge of snow that I was munching on, my appetite -- even for snow -- gone.
Andy shakes his head slowly at me. I'm not invited.
Oct-08-2001: We've arrived at Disneyland, a carful of us. Unfortunately, the door prices are $100/person or $15/family. We try to convince them we're a family, but they refuse to accept it. So we invade the welcoming kiosk, where little snacks (crackers, jams, cheese) are served to guests who are briefly resting. We make it a point to stay there, eating all the crackers and cheese and jam that they bring out. We're showing them!
Sep-30-2001: Katrina lies next to me. I'm sorta' petting her and I want to do more, but I'm hoping for some kind of encouraging action, a smile or a wink or something. I hear her voice in my head, impossibly soft, saying "I wish I could understand what you're thinking when you do that." I smile and say "Yeah, that would be nice. She looks puzzled in that I-didn't-say-anything-so-why-are-you-responding face. "I'm sorry," I tell her. "I've got some wires crossed. Where am I again?"
Sep-30-2001: While letting a new dog out -- some big black dog, like a husky -- the cats manage to escape, like oildrops through the door. I try to bring them in, but each time I open the door to bring one in, another slips by. Finally, I think I've done it, but even then, they are not responding to my calls and I worry that I might have left one or more out in the woodpile.
I realize that I'm not certain if I am dreaming or waking, so I decide to lie down. When I wake, I reason, I'll be able to count cats and see if the 'left one outside' possibility was simply in dreamstate.
Sep-25-2001: I'm in line to see X-Men at a theater, a private showing for a friend from Russia. I'm early, so I could get a perfect seat, but I have to use the restroom.
But there are no stall walls or partitions or anything. In fact, I simply cannot understand the strange macaroni-like plumbing. I can't even figure out how the other guys are using it, as whenever I look at someone, they're just standing in line or just leaving.
Confused, I wander back into the theater, but the only seats left are in the front row, off to the side. Shit.
Sep-25-2001: In a house being constructed by my stepfather, I have to use the bathroom. But the bathroom isn't really finished -- there are no walls around the toilet. Furthermore, the toilet was incorrectly installed and water rises to the brim, so I must do my business while poised above the toilet. The room is full of friends and construction workers and I bark at them to leave. They complain, but I say that, because they haven't finished the walls yet, the entire section is the bathroom and they're just going to have to vacate (as I'm shy).
As they leave, I realize the house is in the middle of a park and so now I'm yelling at the people over there playing softball that they're going to have to leave the park a few minutes until I'm done.
Sep-25-2001: At breakfast one morning, I notice a woman at the table looking at me in a familiar way. I'm not sure why. Suddenly, I wonder if I had sex with her the night before. I don't remember having sex with her, but there's a pretty big gap in my memory after I got drunk. I hope not, because I find her extremely unattractive, bordering on repulsive. I decide that if I did, then I'm sure I meant it in earnest.
But what did I say to her?!
Sep-09-2001: I arrive at the Ace of Hearts with my friend, L. The owner is there and comments about my membership. he doesn't actually say anything, so we continue processing L's application, but when we're ready to go in, the owner informs me that my membership has been cancelled.
He says there were complaints.
"But," I protest. "I've only been here twice before and was extremely civil to everyone I met. Most of the time, I socialized with the friends who came with me. What kind of complaints?"
He won't say, but introduces me to another fellow, who has been equally banned, for the same reason (whatever that reason might be).
This other guy makes some Hitchhiker's Guide type reference, something like "Yeah, very unhoopy of them, huh?" and we start talking about the books.
The AoH owner then ducks over, points to us both and says "See, that's why you're banned!"
Sep-09-2001: Katrina was showing me a new video game. It was a sort of a third-person shooter game. She would run a screen, then I would run a screen. On the next screen, the thing just filled up with bad guys. I wasn't even sure if it would be possible to get through this -- the gun didn't fire very fast.
"Now you do this one," she said, as I sat down.
I felt her hands on my shoulders as I started lining up the shots and prepping the gun. Just as the screen became active, I felt her fingers tighten and elongate, wrapping around my throat like thick, ropy tentacles and squeezing, tighter and tighter.
Sep-09-2001: I was only eight years old or so. I had hung around in an old warehouse and discovered that the military was keeping a crate full of little spheres (about six inches in diameter). These spheres were gifts from aliens. Each one, I discovered, contained a fluid that would "fix" anything broken.
The general in charge of the thing assured me that he was holding on to the spheres until he could find a good humanitarian use for them.
Afterward, as I was walking close to his house, a winged shark lunged at me from some shrubbery, stopped only by the chain link fence between us. I knew then that he wasn't planning on using the alien spheres to help people, but just to make weapons.
I and the other kids had to stop them. We couldn't ask the grownups for help, because grownups would get taken away and killed by the government, so we were on our own.
Sep-04-2001: I have dropped Stephanie off at the airport and dashed to where Katrina's taking off on her separate trip. After both planes leave, I am alone and head for my mother's house, where I know my sister is preparing for a trip of her own as well.
Both my mother and sister greet me with accusations at the door, saying that I had promised to be there hours before. I explain that it really doesn't sound like something I would have said, as I had to take Stephanie and Katrina to the airport -- a trip I had known was coming up, well, a year or so in advance. They kept insisting that I had lied to them and disappointed them bitterly and wouldn't let me in the door without explaining how I could have done such a thing.
I couldn't remember why it was important for me to come help her pack. I knew they were speaking English words, but it just sounded like nasty high-pitched yammering. Trying to follow it was a faulty path to endless confusion. I knew the key was to not pay attention to the words, but I wasn't sure what to do next.
I considered simply leaving, but hadn't actually decided to yet.
Aug-29-2001: I was explaining to my brother the movies I was trying to make, but he kept finding reasons why they weren't that cool.
Aug-20-2001: I must go through high school again, but it is a different high school. While driving down a minor road, we are waylaid by a young man who attempts to rob us at gunpoint. Out of fury, I chew off both his hands and run away. He turns out to be a Troubled Kid at school.
This causes me some problems blending in socially.
My classes are at distant points, I cannot find my schedule and I appear to have lost my shoes. They are my nice dress shoes -- I was married in these shoes -- and it bothers me. I search through tables and tables of shoes at the lost-and-found, but cannot find my shoes.
Aug-19-2001: It's a small hospital in a former Soviet country. My friend and I are in line, each with someone else's ticket. He misses his call (different name), but I make mine. Although I try to point out that he was ahead of me, I'm still kinda' bum-rushed into an examination room. In the room, I realize that I've been asleep for a long time and that I have to clear the crap from my lungs. I regret doing this because it alarms people who think I am vomiting because I am sick, but this is a hospital, so they're probably fine with it. I begin the special abdominal convulsions that I know will eventually clear my throat and lungs...
Aug-07-2001: Dinosaurs, a research facility and here I am, an industrial spy from another company. Now, I figured breaking all the fence locks and such would be fine and that I could sneak around after most of the real staff had been killed, but there was one animal I had misjudged. He was a fast bastard and like a rattlesnake could see in infrared a bit.
I watched two people stash a case of embryos (score!) and then almost immediately get munched. I was kinda' safe, being stashed above an acoustic ceiling, which afforded some protection from both visual and heat emissions.
I thought the room was clear, so I dropped back down. Of course this same frickin' animal bursts right through the door. I tried hopping into a closet, but maybe half a second later, he breaks through and I'm thinking as I feel my body being twisted and yanked out of there, as my brain just stops functioning, that I was stupid to think he wouldn't hear me or didn't smell me and that in reality, we're pretty much doomed. There isn't going to be some "secret weapon" we can use against a predator such as this.
Aug-06-2001: My grandfather, a doctor, said that things seemed just fine, but I needed to rest. As I left his office, I realized that I could wear one of those badges that said "I [heart] my MD" and it would be cool and true. I felt good knowing I could ask him about stuff now.
Aug-01-2001: The cat kept pushing on my bladder which was annoying because I didn't want to get up, plus it was between me and a poster I wanted to read on the wall. I tried lifting him up and away from me, but he started rolling around and seeming to grow extra legs and get bonus wiggly. Gads, what a pain!
Jul-30-2001: It was an underground laboratory, where some kind of cool and intense research happened during the day, but that's not why I was down there with this really cute gal. The flirting had been quite heavy topside and now there were three of us, she and I and another fella. The other fella and I eyed each other, wondering who would leave and then she said, in a very encouraging way, that she had enough time to spend with each of us in turn. He happened to volunteer first, so I figured I'd give them some privacy and wander back up to ground level.
The stairs were complicated, but I was careful to memorize all the twists and turns.
I wandered the campus grounds, marveling at the college lifestyle and missing very much being in school and actively learning. I decided I had to figure out a way to go back.
After a while, I went back down to the lab. The path there was twisty and there were signs referring to the laboratory as the "Disorientation Lab", but because I had memorized the steps and turns, I made it back to the enclosed glass room. They were each getting dressed and he headed out, but then I noticed something on one of the computer monitors. "Oh," I said, "this was only supposed to download a data file -- it wasn't supposed to start processing yet. Hold on a sec." and I started going through the sequence of command events. The computer had downloaded a file, but then had inexplicably started a process.
She cleared her throat and I looked up. She really was quite beautiful and everything about her was inviting, from her position to her expression to her not-fully-clothed aspect. But then I realized that there was something inside her, something that just wanted screwing, not that was interested in WHO. It had molded her into the best tool possible to get screwed, made her act in the best possible way to get screwed, but it had made some critical error and I spotted it hiding behind her skin. I felt a brief moment of sadness for her, spent a tiny fraction regretting the fact that I spotted it, then turned back to my work.
Jul-25-2001: It was a coastal town and a storm was just arriving. A man had gone to his friend's house. She was blind and he, being her friend, was worried about her. He tried describing things to her as the storm grew stronger and stronger. The gray water rising and bucking, the trees, the bushes, the objects being blown around. The wind grew worse and the rain heavier, making speech more difficult. Her hair clung to her face.
Then, the house blew up and away with a particularly strong gust. They were somewhat safe in an indentation of the foundation, protected on one side by the remains of a brick fireplace.
She screamed as the wind and rain buffeted her body and he was concerned until he saw that she was smiling. She held out her arms and the storm winds shook her, the rain slapped against her. She was soaked and blown and eventually dropped back next to the man.
"Are you okay?" he asked her. She laughed. "It's beautiful," she gasped. "Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful!"
They curled up next to each other, feeling the storm above them.
Jul-25-2001: I was slogging through the muddy aftermath of a storm, seeing houses blown down and destroyed, hearing water everywhere. I was in a hurry, you see.
High on a hill was a special prison and I had to prevent the release of certain prisoners from that place. Eventually, I made it up there and staggered through clean, futuristic halls of stark lighting.
I arrived at the special cell, which was suspended out on its own platform, accessible only via a narrow bridge. All the architecture was smooth, futuristic. The prison cell was a transparent cube, twenty or thirty feet on a side. Inside was a single couch. On that couch were four unassuming people. They looked moderately attractive and were dressed nicely. It might have been a cocktail party. They all expectedly watched the entrance.
At the entrance was a young man, who was going to open the door.
I protested. He said "It doesn't matter -- you can't keep them there forever. Besides, they look harmless, don't they?"
"Of course they do!" I argued. "That's because they want out, so they're on their best behavior. They're uncontrollable and psychotic. They'll do terrible, terrible things!"
"Not my problem," said the young man. I heard footsteps coming along the bridge. "Ah," he said. "Here's the committee to approve the door opening."
I snuck a glance into the cube. One of the men on the couch, a sorta' Dennis Leary-looking guy, smiled slightly at me.
They wanted out real, real bad.
Jul-24-2001: Katrina was trying to explain something that was very wrong with my face, but she couldn't bring herself to actually describing the problem. She winced a lot.
Jul-23-2001: Everyone else was ready to go in the rental car and it was outside running. I realized that I hadn't packed for leaving Hawaii, so I hastily threw only the most important things into a bag. It was a small bag, so I was making some really tough choices about what was okay and what I had to leave behind. I decided to leave my sandals behind, even though I really liked those sandals, because they weren't useful in Oregon.
Jul-23-2001: I was dating a Japanese student. She was extremely chatty, even more so than her classmates. Yak, yak, yak, yak, etc. However, I liked this, as it was very comfortable to just listen to her voice. I was the only fellow who didn't push her away, so we made a good couple. Especially nice was that she never really cared what I did for a living.
I was an industrial assassin and had recently finished a job in that town and had to move on. The job required me to live in a fancy high-rise apartment. I was about three floors below my target. A week earlier, I had rappelled down the side of the building and come through his window, killing him neatly, but since then, I had occasionally slipped into his apartment to use his facilities, or eat from his fridge. He was well-to-do and had excellent taste in music and decor. He was well-known as a weird recluse, so no one was going to be bothering him and I had the run of his place, as well as my own modest apartment three floors down. (I still had to rappel through the window, though -- going through the door would set off alarms).
So, my new assignment was taking me away from this nice girl and a fancy pad. I was a bit disappointed in this.
Jul-22-2001: I was selling books, being a bit short on cash as I was. I discovered that I had many duplicate books, so this part was easy. I was puzzled that I had lots of books that, frankly, I had never heard of. Trilogies and one-shots by people who had otherwise written nothing. "The Swordfish Trilogy" by 'Jerry Kertan' and other un-notables. In those cases, I saw no reason for keeping any of the books.
I ran across my encyclopedia set, which was four shelves long, but old books, from about the mid-60's. I thought I had tried selling those years ago, I wondered. But now that I remember, Powell's wasn't interested in old encyclopedias, so I had recycled them as paper. Then why are they still hanging around?
Most of the paperbacks I was turning in were still brand new -- never been opened. Others had my name in childish scrawl across the inside front cover.
Jul-20-2001: I'm the captain of an odd little pirate ship, the "Bucket of Shit". We're a rough and tough crew, but fiercely loyal among ourselves. I'm really more of an administrator (willingly) than a dictator. We hold regular elections and operate at a high efficiency. We often invest our booty to yield higher and well-laundered returns. We've arranged for book learning for all of us, as well as more obscure things. A ship, you know, is only as strong as its weakest member.
But we're still pirates and having a great time at it.
One day, a fella comes aboard. We've been a bit long in this port and it's probably time to head out, but we haven't left yet. This fella, a skinny Adam's apple dorky looking kid, wants to join. He's brought down to my office by two crewmen.
"Who recommends ye?" I ask. I don't like him. He smells traitorous.
"No one," says one of his 'escorts'. "He just came aboard on his own. Wantin' to join up."
"Did he?" I ask and then focus back on the youth. "Where you from?" I ask. Then I'm examining everything about his response, very carefully. His pupils, his breathing, the flush of blood on his cheeks.
Before he even speaks, I know he's lying.
He stutters something about being from some weird district in England. Waterford Lancashire on the Hedgerow or some crap like that. But I can tell it's a lie. His whole body is lying.
I lean toward him and gesture. He leans closer. "Let me tell you something," I whisper. He leans closer. "On this ship, we don't give a good goddamn WHERE you're from or WHAT you've done before here or WHO you are in the world. But here's your first lesson. The one rule we have is that you never, never, NEVER lie to your Captain!"
By the time I finish this, I'm roaring at the little bastard.
"Throw him off the ship!" I cry and we all hustle him up on deck and throw him overboard.
He lands on the grass and tumbles away from the ship crying.
Grass?! "We're on dry land!" I called out. "No wonder we're gettin' boarded!" I call out for everyone to get the ship ready -- we're sailing out.
"Let's get this bucket of shit back on the water where it belongs and have at it!"
The rest of the crew holler assent and we hoist sail and start poling away from the land...
Jul-18-2001: I'm showering and, while washing my legs, realize that I must have really slathered the backs of my knees with antiperspirant, 'cause they're all slimy-sticky. I'm annoyed that I did that, as it doesn't really matter to me whether or not the backs of my knees perspire.
Jul-17-2001: I was performing in a local version of Whose Line is it Anyway? at a science fiction convention. As per my request, the show had been moved to a smaller venue, but it had been moved to a boardroom, which was really too small. The room was packed with people and smelled nasty.
Instead of a ref, one of the audience members was instructed to let each skit run exactly seven minutes, no more, no less, then cut it for the next skit.
After about two minutes, the skits started breaking down and by the seventh minute, we were just dead.
It got worse and less comfortable after that.
Jul-16-2001: This man owned a large house and vast grounds around it. Our family was visiting his family, but then word came of an attack, so we sent everyone away but the two of us. We estimated the approaching army to be about a thousand men. Trouble.
They approached the gates and we sent out a request -- could they send four men in through the gates to parley? As the four men came in, we snuck around them and killed them both. This in particular, was the first time I had killed a man and my friend had instructed me carefully in how to push the knife between two cervical vertebra and then twist to sever the spinal column. Very neat.
Four down, 996 to go.
At one point during the battle, I realized that I could grow sufficiently large to reach down and pick up the army's catapult. I twisted the cup off, rendering it pretty unuseable. Then, I started picking up soldiers and squeezing their heads off.
Suddenly, I realized I could stomp them much faster than popping them one at a time. plus, I could cover more ground!
Jul-15-2001: Jason, Katrina and I were staying at the house of a friend. I was sorting through razor blades when two girls, about 8 years old, sat down about fifteen feet away. These were daughters of the couple hosting us. They were talking just below my hearing, but I could tell they were talking about us.
I was annoyed because I couldn't find a clean razor blade with which to shave. Seems Jason had used them all and these aren't cheap blades, but rather pricey. I was becoming annoyed at him.
One of the girls started asking me "So Jason, can we ask -- " but I interrupted them.
"I'm not Jason. I'm Edward!"
I must have barked a bit, as they jumped.
"We're sorry," they said. "We just saw the long hair and figured --"
"Jason has red hair." I said, waving razor blades at them. "I don't."
They seemed upset at my response.
Jul-10-2001: Jason and I were driving out to a graveyard. "It's been a while since I talked to my grandparents," he said. I nodded, thinking of people who talked to headstones with a certain deference. "Which reminds me," he added. "They said your grandfather misses you."
"What? Granpa?" I asked.
"Yeah," said Jason. "You should talk with him. No one else does and you still can."
It was very difficult driving through the graveyard, the ground was rough and uneven, the stones old. Some were falling down. The last time we were here, we were chased off by a nearby gas station owner, who was crazy.
As we passed the back of the gas station, one of the people working there noticed us and waved. Seeing as how we worked at the gas station now, I guess we were probably safe from them, anyway.
Jul-10-2001: The man had adopted my son and moved to Arizona. The baby was a crier, however, and no one could figure out why. They often took him out in the back yard and left him there to cry in the open air.
The first time I visited, I went out to see him, crying under the greasewood bush. "He just cries," said the husband of the couple who adopted him. "No," I said, "he just needs me."
I picked him up. He was still very small. He immediately stopped crying and fell asleep and I could feel something intangible flowing back and forth between us as if I had completed a circuit.
The greasewood smell was strong and sweet in the early night air but this was the first time I wasn't grossed out by it.
Jul-10-2001: I finally got work in a gas station. The owner was a ruddy, brash man who was doing something illegal, but I couldn't figure out what. He was trying to make 'working at a gas station' something that would take years of learning. It was arcane.
My friend Paul was going to pick me up at 5:30 to see a movie, but the gas station owner felt it was more important to go into the back room and watch training videos.
While we were back there, a car full of kids came up, wanting to use the restroom. No problem, I figured, I could show them and wait until they were done, but the owner jumped ahead, telling me that I haven't even learned THAT yet, nor will I unless I start watching more training videos.
Instead, I went out and pushed my Datsun B210 around.
Jul-09-2001: No one had seen the missing scientist for weeks. We finally broke into his house and discovered his journal. He had been experimenting with a new kind of energy, something produced from the human mind. He was trying to achieve a next-step in human evolution, something that was a transcendent step. His last log entry explained that he was going to try something different tonight, something really simple that he was amazed he hadn't thought of before.
The chair from where he performed his experiments had an odd feel about it, a certain kind of dangerously illuminating potential.
We stumbled through the house, which was devoid of human life, and found a secret switch under a carpet that revealed an underground vault.
In this vault were crates and crates of riches and comic books, all guarded by Superman (the abstract cartoon Superman), who claimed it was important to preserve these riches in case the scientist returned.
Jul-03-2001: We were surprised to discover ruins in a hidden cavern on the moon. Part of it was open to the sky and the harsh sun beat down on a low stone cenotaph we found there. In front of the cenotaph had been poured a cement-like platform, which had an unknown language and handprints pressed into the goo before it had set.
My companion exclaimed that the handprints were remarkable, not human. I recognized his voice and looked over. Even through my suit glass and his, I recognized William Shatner. "Why in the world would I travel with William Shatner?" I wondered.
He tried to fit his gloved hand into the imprint. He had one too many fingers and they were too fat in the gloves to fit anyway.
Jul-01-2001: It was an old building and very large and complicated, a cathedral or a library. I grew up there, or at least spent many years there when I was a kid, so I felt comfortable walking around.
When I was a kid, however, I knew of lots of little cubbyholes and hideaways, secret panels and sections and whatnot. I hid there when I wanted to be away from people. Now, although I was looking for them, I couldn't find any. None. Wherever I checked, they had been covered up or nailed shut or replaced with dense wiring. There was no more places to go. I had to be out in the open with all the rest of the people in the building.
Jun-29-2001: I was trying to select a parking space in an underground garage, but the color patches above the spaces had to match the way I died. I wasn't sure how to match colors to the way I died, so I was having real trouble parking.
Jun-28-2001: I became material for the sole and rather mischievous purpose of trying to get a store to exchange a bag of ice for one that I claimed was "defective". In my immaterial state, clothing wasn't necessary, so the part that made this fun was that I stayed without clothing while material, as a confounding factor to my task. I approached the store manager with a broken bag containing a few ice cubes. I claimed that they had thawed uncharacteristically fast and I felt they must be defective. Could I have a replacement bag, please? He was trying very hard to not notice that I wore nothing and carried only this forlorn plastic bag. Flustered, he asked me if I had my receipt. I told him I really didn't have anything left over from the ice mishap except for this bag. I wouldn't mind simply purchasing another bag (as they were quite inexpensive), but as he could see, I had no money, either. He hemmed and hawed. He really, really didn't want to deal with a naked guy and the claim of "defective ice" was just so ridiculous, but I was doing my best to exude sincerity and innocence and he couldn't just ignore me. Finally, he suggested I go upstairs and talk to the gals there. Upstairs (a spiral escalator, which felt quite cool on my feet), three women were shoveling ice into bags. They laughed at the idea of "defective ice", too, but eventually decided I was just too nice a guy to hurt by turning away.
Jun-27-2001: I was explaining to the ship's doctor that if he could hypnotize me, he could set up a copy of my psyche. Then, when the Borg nabbed me, they would be assimilating only that surface personality. After a few hours, when the weapon was fully charged that would pretty much destroy all the Borg, my copied-personality would dissolve, and dissolve the bonds as well. This would leave me with my full faculties.
He was doubtful, but we were running out of time.
Jun-25-2001: I and a couple of other people were hiking through a grueling and treacherous snowy mountain trail. Eventually, we arrived at a tower, rode an elevator up and discovered a swing club up top. The door was guarded by a woman in a peek-a-boo bra, who informed us that we had to have more females than males in our group or we couldn't come in -- no matter how far we had traveled. Dejected, we left and as we were hiking back, instead of climbing down a tall dam, I decided to jump all the way down into the cold blue water, but I could get no one to hold my glasses or shoes. Very annoying!
Jun-25-2001: I was loading some of Katrina's boxes into our car from a second story apartment. I was tired of carrying one box at a time down the tedious stairs, so, with no warning at all, I decided to just fly them directly down. Previous to this dream, most of my dreams of flying involve a swimming action in the air, rather than a soaring or gliding that is often reported. I could never stay up for very long without eventually drifting back to Earth. But something in my mind said, almost without my control, "this is a dream and I can do anything I want". Reflexively, I pushed off from the balcony and glided down to the car through the air. My first thought of "Wow, I'm flying!" almost caused me to lose my balance and crash to the ground. I landed safely, however and then realized that if I was going to fly, then I have to just do it and not think about how I'm doing it. From then on, the flying went along quite well.
After loading the car, I was tired of moving and glumly considered the long road trip ahead. I then wondered if changing place was as easy as flying was, in other words, to move from one place to another without physically travelling merely involved a form of self-convincing. As an experiment, I "pushed" myself into another place, picked randomly. This "push" was the strangest sensation, because it woke me up. When I drifted back to sleep, I was in the place I had "pushed" myself to. Pleased that it worked, I tried again, "pushing" myself to a place I used to work. Again, the effort woke me up, but when I fell back asleep, I was in the place I aimed for.
Jun-24-2001: I was surprised to see Katrina running around on the walls, but not nearly as surprised as she was.
Jun-22-2001: Due to a strange convergence of planets or stars or something I could be sent to some way far off planet. I had a little box that I had to activate at a certain time about a week later and then I could be sucked back to Earth along the same path.
This place had humans as pets and large insect-like creatures as the intelligent race. Humans were intelligent, too, but these big bugs had all the weapons and thousands of years of benevolent master experience.
Although I tried to fit in and even moved in with a nice human family in their blockhouses out of town, I was pretty different in attitude and most humans could tell. Little by little, I instilled in them a sense of equality, a sense that they, as creatures of will, need not subjugate themselves willingly. It wasn't a slave-type situation, but it was very much more like a caste or pet thing -- except the bugs had a little more power.
About four hours before I was going to leave, I was trying to tell my story to the human family who adopted me. There was a knock at the door and another human poked his head in, asking if I was here. When I rose, the door opened further and there were two policebugs out there. Now, when a policebug comes for a human being, here's how it works: you're never seen again. They sting you to death and that's that. They take you away from the house first, so as not not excessively traumatize your family. I knew the gig was up and handed my return button to the grampa human, trying to explain how to use it at the right time, but he had no way of telling time and I obviously was going to be gone when the time came.
The policebugs were friendly, but very matter-of-fact and even a little bit sympathetic. At least they seemed that way, it was hard to tell. The human who led them to me, however, was going to collect a substantial reward.
Jun-21-2001: I'm swimming off the western coast of Mexico, with cliffs rising out of the water and no one to be seen. The water's about chest-deep. To the north, I see flashing dolphins jumping from the water. They're heading away from me and I'm a little disappointed. Why are they swimming away. The surface of the water looks pretty smooth, but I wonder what lurks beneath. I know the land is more rough and untamed down there than anywhere else.
I head toward shore.
Beneath my feet it's sandy and I get nervous about sharks. Dolphins might want to get away from a particularly big shark, or maybe a pack of sharks that were smart.
No matter how I swim, I realize, I'll sound to a shark like a fish in trouble. If I kick up sand and make the water murky, I wonder if I'll have a chance to make it in, but I realize that's stupid -- there's lots of murky water in the world and yet the sharks somehow always stay fed.
Jun-20-2001: I drive on a desert road in the middle of a hot day, no houses or other constructions on either side for as far as I can see. Cars ahead and behind me on a straight streak of asphalt. I see brake lights ahead, cars slowing down. I slow down, curious. Cars are pulling over. An ambulance, I wonder? Hesitantly, I pull over, too, and I wait a few seconds. Ahead, people are getting out of their cars. What the hell? I look through the rear-view mirror and see the same. They're getting out of their cars and milling around. I get out, too, intending to find out what's going on. The shadows around me grow starker and the day becomes brighter. The people out milling around look up, expressions of surprise, fear, wonder on their faces. I look up as well, expecting to see the sun and instead, the sky is impossibly brilliant, beyond white and beyond light.
Jun-19-2001: John Travolta was taking me on a trip to his private island, a sort of tour. We traveled in his used amphibious Hummer. When we hit the water, it started leaking in. He apologized and inflated the pneumatic seals. Then he started a pump that forced the water out. "Sorry about your pants," he said. It felt like a cheap come on, so I just told him it was no problem. The ride was uncomfortable after that.
