💾 Archived View for gemini.spam.works › mirrors › textfiles › magazines › INTERTEXT › ITv5n1.etx captured on 2022-06-12 at 12:59:36.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
--
** *******
* * * *
* *
* ** * ******* ***** **** * ***** ** ** *******
* ** * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
* * * * * * * * * * * * *
* * * * * * * * * * * *
* * * * * *** **** * *** * *
* * ** * * * * * * * * *
* * * * * * * * * * * *
* * * * **** * * * **** * * *
===============================================
InterText Vol. 5, No. 1 / January-February 1995
===============================================
Contents
FirstText: How We Do It...........................Jason Snell
Short Fiction
River_........................................G.L. Eikenberry_
In VR_...................................Daniel K. Appelquist_
Backalley_.......................................Silang Kamay_
The Funeral Party_...............................Connie Baron_
Crown Jewels_....................................Colin Morton_
Two Solitudes_..................................Carl Steadman_
....................................................................
Editor Assistant Editor
Jason Snell Geoff Duncan
jsnell@etext.org gaduncan@halcyon.com
....................................................................
Assistant Editor Send subscription requests, story
Susan Grossman submissions, and correspondence
c/o intertext@etext.org to intertext@etext.org
....................................................................
InterText Vol. 5, No. 1. InterText (ISSN 1071-7676) is published
electronically on a bi-monthly basis. Reproduction of this
magazine is permitted as long as the magazine is not sold
(either by itself or as part of a collection) and the entire
text of the issue remains intact. Copyright 1995, Jason Snell.
Individual stories Copyright 1995 their original authors.
InterText is created using Apple Macintosh computers and then
published in Adobe PostScript, Setext (ASCII), Adobe Acrobat PDF
and World Wide Web/HTML formats.
....................................................................
FirstText: How We Do It by Jason Snell
=========================================
Every now and then, we receive very kind letters from InterText
readers who write to compliment us on the quality of the
magazine -- both the stories we publish and the package as a
whole.
It's nice to hear such positive comments, considering the fact
that we're all volunteers. Many times, I want to respond to
those letters, explaining a little about how we put together
InterText, but I never get around to it. This may be as good a
time as any to explain a little about how we put out InterText
every two months.
The process begins just as one issue goes out the door to all
our subscribers. After that happens, we take a brief rest and
then start going through the stories that were submitted to us
after we had already chosen our line-up for the latest issue. We
read these stories (and other stories, as they come in via
e-mail) and then give them a rating. We all discuss the stories
and explain why we gave them the ratings we did. The stories at
the top of the ratings heap are then reevaluated with an eye
toward placing them into an issue of InterText. Sometimes a
perfectly good story will be delayed or even rejected because we
have too much of the same thing in an issue. One of the stories
in this issue was held back from our last issue because it would
have made the content of our previous issue very dark and
depressing. In this bunch of stories, it's much more
appropriate.
Then we divvy up the accepted stories, and choose one or two as
candidates for the cover of our PostScript and PDF editions,
sending those stories off to artist Jeff Quan. Our editors then
take their crack at doing a preliminary editing job on the
stories they've been assigned. After that, we place the stories
into PageMaker, the desktop publishing program which will
eventually produce our PostScript and PDF editions, and continue
the editing process there. By the time the stories are ready,
they've survived an exacting primary edit and one or two
supplementary reads by another set of editorial eyes.
Then comes the high-tech part. Our cover art having been created
(often in record time) by Jeff Quan, we "print" a PostScript
version from PageMaker, and run that through Adobe's Acrobat
Distiller to create a bare PDF file. We use Adobe's Acrobat
Exchange to create hypertext links and other Acrobat features
that will make our PDF file easier to read, and then work on
that edition of InterText is complete.
Next comes the creation of the ASCII/Setext and World Wide Web
editions. We take the stories in our PageMaker document and
convert them into text for editing in a word processor. These
stories are converted into HTML -- the format used by the World
Wide Web -- and made ready for placement on our World Wide Web
site. We also take a copy of the HTML stories, paste them
together in a word processor, and reformat and rewrap them to
create a plain text file with Setext formatting.
From there, it's only a matter of sending the issues out. I
upload our files to our FTP and World Wide Web sites, e-mail
copies of them out to our subscribers, and then collapse in a
heap. Those of you reading this issue hot off the electronic
presses can take comfort that we're in that condition as you
read this.
Then the process starts again. Lather, rinse, repeat. Every two
months. And believe it or not, it's a lot of fun.
I couldn't let the beginning of 1995 slip away without
discussing, albeit briefly, the changes that InterText went
through in 1994. Perhaps the most important change was our
appearance on the Web -- first with a simple home page linking
to our gopher site, then to fully-formatted issues with
hypertext links, and now, with our first issue of 1995, a
revamped web site with access to all our back issues and a bunch
of new navigational features. The Web enables us to provide
versions of our cover art, formatted story text, and easy access
to back issues, and it's proved popular with readers. In 1995,
all the users of commercial on-line services may be able to
access the Web. When that happens, things should _really_
explode.
In 1994, after more than three years of putting out InterText,
Assistant Editor Geoff Duncan and I met in person for the first
time. We'd managed to put out nearly 20 issues of a magazine
without laying eyes on one another, but I think that streak had
gone long enough. And we've already met twice _this_ year.
There's no doubt InterText will go through more changes in 1995.
With this issue we inaugurate a revamped design for our
PostScript and PDF editions. And with every passing year, Geoff
and I seem to find ourselves sunk deeper into the world of
electronic publishing and the Internet.
I've been writing lots of Internet-related articles for MacUser,
and I'd like to think I've helped get MacUser on the Internet.
Geoff, meanwhile, left his job at Microsoft and has begun work
on yet another electronic publication -- he's now the managing
editor of TidBITS, the popular weekly on-line Macintosh
publication edited by Adam and Tonya Engst.
So we're busy. And it seems we _like_ it that way.
River by G.L. Eikenberry
============================
...................................................................
"So deep, so wide -- will you take me on your back for a ride?
If I should fall, would you swallow me deep inside?"
-- Peter Gabriel, "Washing of the Water"
...................................................................
The sky was rambunctious like October, part sunny, part cloudy
-- big, boiling, cotton clouds smeared with fierce, dark
splotches of gray. The wind whipped them toward the horizon,
smack into the sun, against their will. But it was May, the long
weekend, the trial run for the summer break. It was a day for
baseball, soccer, biking, running with Zak. Danny was bored with
being in the car. They were supposed to be there around five.
That was still half an hour away.
"Mom, what's that going on over there?"
"It's a funeral, Danny."
"Like when people are dead."
"That's right."
"Not _like_ when people are dead, Dan. Those people _are_ dead."
"Can we stop? I want to look."
"Dan, it's no one we know -- "
"I don't see any harm in just stopping, Lee."
"I thought funerals were supposed to be in a church."
"Not always, Danny. This is a special funeral."
"Can we get out of the car?"
"Rita -- "
"Just relax, Lee, it's not going to hurt anything if he just
looks."
"Jesus Christ, Rita! The whole world is not his personal
learning lab. This is other people's private grief." Danny
hardly even heard their bickering anymore.
"What makes it special?"
"Do you remember hearing about the six boys that drowned on that
canoe trip?"
"The river that runs behind our house..."
Lee made a move to stop his son, but his wife took his arm. "Let
him go. He's almost 13 now," she whispered. "He knows how to
behave himself at a solemn occasion. He has to come to grips
with death sooner or later."
"I wish I knew where the hell you got some of your crazy ideas."
Danny moved slowly, like someone in a trance, toward the
gathering on the river bank at the back of the small cemetery.
The man in the front was wearing a Boy Scout uniform. He had his
back to the river. He was talking -- probably about the dead
boys. Danny didn't really hear what he was saying. He hardly
even saw the people sitting in the cold metal folding chairs. He
heard the spring river, fast and boisterous like a bus full of
kids on an outing. He felt weird. It was like those clouds were
rolling and writhing inside his head.
He could tell it was making his face look funny. He knew he was
going to cry. He didn't even care if everyone there saw him cry
as he walked around behind the man and touched each empty box.
The man stopped talking. They all watched, but no one seemed to
mind.
Someone even took a picture. His mother walked down to him. She
took him by the shoulders and steered him back to the car.
"It's okay, Danny, you don't have to say anything."
"Those boxes were empty."
"They're called caskets, and, no, Danny, they found the bodies.
Remember, you watched it with me last week when it was on the TV
news. You had all kinds of questions."
"Yeah, like how come the river's getting mad..."
Danny and Zak, Zak and Danny. As different as up and down, but
brothers.
Well, not really, but they should be. They talked about it
sometimes. Danny was adopted and Zak's twin brother was supposed
to have died when he was six days old. But what if he didn't
really -- what if the hospital made a mistake? Not that there
was any resemblance, physical or otherwise. Danny was dark and
willowy. His actions always seemed so deliberate for a
twelve-year-old. So pensive. He liked to take things apart in
his mind. He was always trying to figure out the why and how of
things, even if he sometimes missed what was going on around
him. Zak was the same age, even though many people seeing them
for the first time assumed that Danny was the older "brother."
Zak was actually bigger. In fact, he was on the chubby side.
_Husky_ was how their mothers described him. His energy was more
effusive, but not nearly so intense as Danny's.
When they idled by the pond, trying to decide what to do, Zak
skipped stones. Danny peeled the bark off twigs with his
fingernail and studied the velvety jacket between the bark and
the wood.
"We could play pirates with the rowboat." Zak considered himself
the world's best pirate captain.
"Naw, we're getting too old for that stuff. Let's go fishing. We
can still use the boat."
"Fishing stinks. There's nothing in this pond but the same
stupid bunch of catfish. I've caught every single fish in here
at least 20 times."
"So maybe your dad'll let us drag the boat down to the river?
There are real enough fish down there."
Different poles on a magnet -- north and south. They never would
have been friends if they went to the same school. They never
would have met except that their parents had been friends since
before they were born. It was half boredom and half magic that
threw them together when their folks visited and gabbed and
gabbed. It was the chemistry of opposites that cemented the
friendship. Even if the hospital didn't make a mistake, they
were blood brothers at the very least. They had seen to that
with Zak's first real pocketknife the previous summer.
"Hey, Danny, watch what you're doing! You'll dump us over."
"So what? We're stuffed into these rancid old life jackets."
"Rancid?"
"Rotten. Stinky. Yeah, _rancid_! What would happen if you fell
out of the boat without one of these things?"
"These rancid things? You mean like walk the plank?"
"Arg, Captain Klutz!" They both laughed.
"I guess you'd drown."
"You think so, Zak?"
"The channel's pretty deep here -- a hundred feet. A mile even."
"Aw Jeez, Zak, how long do you think your fishing line is?
Thirty feet? Fifty feet, tops. And you didn't even have all your
line out when you snagged the bottom a minute ago. If that
channel's a mile deep then I must be Spider-Man's long-lost
nephew."
"Who cares? Anyway, the current's too fast. You'd never even
make it to shore. Especially you, the way you swim like an
umbrella."
"Yeah, well what do you swim like, a rubber duckie?" It wasn't
an insult, it was a signal for both of them to dissolve into the
kind of giggling reserved for boys too old to be kids but too
young to be teenagers.
"You're not gonna do it, are you, Dan?"
"Do what?"
"Jump out of the boat."
"Who said anything about jumping? Why, do you want to try it?"
"Hey, knock it off -- don't screw around."
"Okay, okay, rubber duckie, keep your shirt on. Hey, you know
what would be perfect?"
"Yeah. Lisa Martindale skinny-dipping."
"Don't be gross. This same river runs right by my house, right?
You could visit by boat during the summer and then we could go
off camping someplace."
"Oh, sure. That's 50 miles by car. Not even I could row this old
tub trough that far."
"Know anybody with a canoe?"
"Mark Haberman. Why?"
"So, hey, who's this Lisa Martindale?"
"Just some girl. Forget it."
"Forget the canoe or the girl?"
"Our parents would never allow it. Anyway, cabbage brain, your
place is upstream from the falls."
"Some portage, huh?"
"Hey! What are you doing now?"
"It's too hot for these rancid things."
"Rancid, eh?"
"Yeah -- _rancid_." They both dissolved into giggling again.
Zak had trouble catching his breath -- "Hey, but really man,
this is serious. Nobody's allowed in this boat without a life
preserver, not even my Dad. Come on -- I don't want him to get
pissed off."
"So don't tell him."
"As if he can't see us from the deck."
"So throw me out."
"Sure, what do you care if I get banned from using the boat for
a whole month. I mean, Jeez, I thought you wanted to fish." Zak
was annoyed. He didn't want to catch hell over something stupid
like Danny refusing to wear a life preserver. Danny didn't
usually act this weird.
"Hey, man, I was kidding, okay? Don't rock the boat!"
"I didn't. Now put that thing back on, will you!"
"Yes you did. Don't screw around!"
"Must've been the wind."
"What wind, asshole?"
"Put your life preserver back on, Danny." His voice was more
than a little insistent -- almost strident.
"Wind my ass! There's not even a little breeze."
"So it was a wave. Now put that damned thing on or I _will_ rock
the damned boat!"
"Okay, okay, already. Don't get your diaper hyper. Wave, my
ass -- "
Whatever it was, it surged up over the edge of the boat.
It rolls him over the side. Pure energy. A wave with no water in
it.
He doesn't swim.
The River takes him down, down deeper than he ever knew the
river ran, spinning him, heaving, shoving his pliant,
wonder-struck form upstream against the current.
He soars, hurls, cascades past rocks, weeds he never imagined.
Garbage, sunken boats, cars, green, gray water, brown water.
Fifty different shades of green and maybe even more of gray and
brown gold water -- even small strips of cold, blue, almost
black water. Twisted, woven, tangled together, slimy, oily,
sudsy, putrid -- _rancid_ -- flecked with scraps of plants, fish
debris, flotsam and jetsam of every possible variety.
He sees the first of them!
Then another and another until he sees all six.
Some in just plain clothes, some in scout uniforms. He tries to
reach them. He tries to speak, but they go by too fast.
They don't seem scared or worried. They definitely don't seem
dead.
He slows
eddies
drifts
into a wide
deep pool.
He sees her -- a girl. Naked.
He tries not to look, but he can't help it.
Lisa Martindale?
She swims easily, gracefully, fish-like
swooping, undulating through the eel grass
straight toward him
with a single easy, but powerful
sweep of her legs from the hip.
He tenses, tries to back away.
The River hurls him
to the surface.
Zak screamed. He heaved against the oars with every remaining
ounce of energy to reach the still form now drifting just below
the surface.
He reached out an oar -- "Come on, Danny, damn you -- grab the
oar! Stop fooling around. It isn't funny any more! Why did you
have to take off the damned life jacket? Danny -- "
He used an oar to guide the body alongside the boat. "Oh,
please, God, don't let it be a corpse!" He struggled to get it
-- him -- back on board.
"All you had to do was put on the stupid -- " Zak was crying.
Crying and fighting, irrationally, to get his inert friend into
the life preserver. Only once the life vest was on Danny and
securely fastened did he dredge up strength he never knew he had
to row back to shore faster than he had ever rowed before.
"Dad! Mom! Dad! Oh, God -- Danny -- Help! Help!"
He tried to ignore his lungs, to stop breathing -- not to hold
his breath, but to turn off the reflex. He tried to turn off all
his senses -- the lights burning at the backs of his eyelids,
the mediciney, laundry-starch smell, the scratchy sheets, the
warm, dry, prickly air. He would drift away from all the
confusion. Nothing fit together right any more.
He twitched. Every muscle tensed, convulsed.
A distant touch on his hand.
He eyes flew open like window shades. Air smashed into his
lungs, too fast for him to do anything about it. The world
asserted itself with an overwhelming violence -- tore him away
from any promise of serenity.
The abruptness of it all made it hard to focus. A woman. He knew
her. Recognition came slowly. His mother. She looked tired. She
was wearing her pink dress. It was a dress he once said he
liked. He didn't particularly like it. It was just something a
kid says to his mother.
"Danny, oh Danny..." She was crying. Big, round tears crawling
down her face.
Why should she be sad? He was the one that couldn't go back. Why
should she be sad?
"Oh, Danny, are you all right? Oh, Danny -- " She was squeezing
him too hard. Her perfume choked him. "I'll be here -- I have to
-- the nurse -- I'll be right back. I have to tell them you're
awake. I have to call your father."
He lost track. He drifted off, but he couldn't reach the river.
Every so often his eyes would focus and he would see lots of
people. Bright lights. Noise. Everything too bright, too sharp,
too loud.
His father. He was squeezing Danny's hand. He was talking.
"We know you're a trooper, Tiger. You're going to make it.
You're halfway there already. The doctors say all your parts are
working again. You just have to get things working together and
crack out of this shell. We'll get you home soon, Killer, then
everything'll be fine. We'll get you home. Just as soon as these
dimwit doctors will let you go."
Home.
His mother again. She had given up on the pink dress. She was
crying, pleading, but he couldn't follow. She was too far. He
couldn't get back. He was adrift. Buffeted, tossed between two
shorelines, but never reaching either.
There was no river.
There was no home.
They were walking. "So the doctors thought if we got you home
for the weekend, maybe it would help with whatever it is that
you still need help with." His Dad didn't give up easily, but he
was getting frustrated. Confused.
"So what the hell is going on, Sport? We know there's nothing
physically wrong with you anymore. They've done x-rays and brain
scans and every other thing. So when are you going to crack that
shell or drop down off that cloud or whatever it is? Maybe
you're mad or upset. It's okay, Dan -- tell us off if you want
to. You've got to at least say something to your mother or me?"
Danny could hear. He really could hear what his father was
saying. He even understood -- at least sort of. But the pull of
the river was so strong. So close. The currents, the gentle
urging of the forces that moved its muted world...
"Damn it, kid -- we can't just send you back to that hospital.
The longer they keep you in there, the farther you get from us.
We can't keep going there, night after night, watching our son
turn into a basket case. Damn it, Danny, I know you're in
there!"
He had him firmly by the shoulders, shaking him. Danny didn't
notice. "Just say something. Tell me to go to hell if that's
what's on you mind, but say something, damn it -- anything!"
He feels the pull.
The chair, the porch, the steps drift away behind him.
The water is cold, dark.
He has dreamed about her.
His eyes follow her.
She swims to him, closer now,
graceful, sure of herself, gently curving,
flowing, she circles him,
brushes against him, touches him firmly.
She takes his hand, leads him downward
with gentle, rhythmic, rippling kicks
weaving an intricate path
to a cleaner, less cluttered river.
The colors, tastes and smells more alive, vibrant.
But he can't --
The pressure against his frail body is too great.
Spiraling wildly upward
through slime, weeds, garbage --
He's just a kid! What is he supposed to do?
It's not his fault!
He didn't do any of this!
On his back in the cattails, every image, sound, smell clearly,
crisply differentiated.
His head throbs.
Air explodes into his lungs.
He stands. He staggers toward the shore -- the voice -- his
father's voice.
His father bounding down the path to the shore, pulsing terror.
His mother running behind.
"Dad, Mom -- I'm sorry, really...."
"It's all right, Danny, Oh, God, it's all right -- " They're
hugging. All of them. And crying. His mom is fussing about him,
wet and messy, but it's okay.
Then his father is picking him up and carrying him the way he
must have done when he was real little. Walking back up the path
toward the house.
His father doesn't even yell at him.
He walks along the shore. He's there, but he's not really there.
He picks up trash or makes notes about the location of anything
too big for him to handle. He searches out renegade pipes and
stops them up with anything he can find before making notes so
he can call and report them later. He sits on the dock down
behind the house and stares and talks quietly, plaintively.
"The kid is weird, Rita."
"Lee, he almost drowned. Who can know what he really went
through? And the coma -- "
"Oh, Christ, don't start bawling on me again. I didn't mean
anything by it. I should have just kept my mouth shut. Look, I'm
sure he'll snap out of it eventually. And, hey, we're doing
everything just like the doctors said. It's going to take
time..."
"So, uh, Dan, how's it going? I mean, how was last night?"
"Okay, I guess. I think I'm starting to make progress."
"Progress, eh? Well, you scared the shit out of my cousin
Jennifer with all that weird stuff you were saying last night.
She called me this morning and told me not to introduce her to
any more _supposedly_ neat guys."
"Oh, give me a break! You're the one that tried to tell me she
looked like girl in my 'dream.' Well, she's not even close. For
one thing, Jennifer's a blonde, and for another, she says she
hates swimming."
"Well ex-_cuuuusse_ me! Jeez, try to help a guy out -- I mean,
what did you expect? She's my cousin. And anyway, Dweebo, try to
take a river or a mermaid or whatever to a dance and see how far
you get."
"Go to hell!"
"Hey, I would, but you've already got all the best seats
reserved."
Zak was turning into a real jerk.
His mother still gets scared every time he goes down to the
river, but she doesn't try to stop him. She knows she can't. She
knows she mustn't. His father, who always thinks he has to
figure everything out, doesn't understand, but at least he
doesn't interfere either.
And the river. The river goes on. They're making progress.
Dan and the River.
The River and Dan.
G.L. Eikenberry (garyeik@twin.synapse.net)
--------------------------------------------
G.L. Eikenberry is an Ottawa-based freelance systems and
communications consultant and part-time martial arts instructor.
Over the past 20 years his fiction and poetry have appeared in a
wide range of publications. Over the last three years he has
also been showing up in such electronic venues as _Angst_,
_Atmospherics_, and, of course, _InterText_. In his consultant
persona, he has also developed and manages the Canadian Society
for International Health Web site:
(http://hpb1.hwc.ca:8500/default.html).
In VR by Daniel K. Appelquist
=================================
...................................................................
Timothy Leary said Virtual Reality is the LSD of the '90s. But
Reality can be angry when spurned -- even if you want to return
to it, sometimes it won't let you in the door.
...................................................................
One.
------
A dark rain is falling slantwise across the view.
It's a night shot. Tall concrete-and-glass buildings are
illuminated from below by the harsh glow of streetlights.
Periodically a car speeds by through the city, leaving a
turbulent wake of waste paper and garbage. A gigantic steel
tower can be seen in the distance, dominating the city. Above,
an aircar shoots by toward the tower and slips smoothly into a
landing spiral around it. Other aircars, points of light at this
distance, can also be seen circling the spire. The tower is
crowned by a single point of dazzling light.
As the view descends smoothly into the shadowy cityscape, along
with the rain, the scene fades into another, darker one.
Interior, hallway. The gaunt man, dressed in black, walks
stiffly toward the slightly open door. The lights are dim. As he
walks, he withdraws a cigarette from his left shirt pocket. He
squeezes it, and the tip bursts into flame. He brings it to his
lips and inhales.
"You're early, Scorpio."
The gaunt man turns to regard the speaker. He brings the
cigarette slowly away from his mouth and exhales imperceptibly
into the smoky air. "I don't enjoy playing these games, Mr.
Dobbs. Do you have the money?" His voice is brittle, echoing
through the corridor like a raspy, ancient vinyl record, only
now being replayed after years of neglect.
Dobbs moves into frame out of the darkness. He is a middle-aged
man, overweight and balding. His exposed skin is red and
leathery, as if his entire body were inflamed. He holds a
briefcase in one hand and a gun in the other.
"Now now, Mr. Dobbs." Scorpio drops his cigarette to the floor
and extinguishes it with his foot. Slowly, he pivots to face
Dobbs full-on.
"Oh you needn't worry, Mr. Scorpio. This is merely...
protection. I wish to protect myself from you." The gun remains
in place. "I just want to make sure that you and I have an
understanding."
"We do."
Dobbs places the suitcase on the ground and kicks it over to
Scorpio with a confident motion.
"Fine, then." Dobbs straightens out. "You already have the
information from me. Kill her. That's all I ask. Anything else
is superfluous." As he says this, he steps once again into
darkness.
Scorpio waits, not moving, even in the slightest. After a few
moments, he bends deftly down and scoops up the case in one
fluid motion. He then turns and walks down the hall in his
original direction, also disappearing into the darkness.
It's a following shot. The car, a silver teardrop amid a
wasteland of green, speeds on across and above endless fields of
blurred farmland. Intermittently, the green is punctuated by a
strip of gray or a blotch of white or red, but the speed of
motion is so great that they appear only for an instant, shadowy
representations of roads, houses, machinery. This is not a real
landscape.
An interior view. Scorpio's face, illuminated by various
displays, dominates the shot. His gaze is fixed, his hands
planted firmly on the wheel. Two o'clock and ten. The glow casts
his face into sharp relief, but his eyes are flat, lifeless.
--"Tell me about your problem, Mr. Dobbs."
Slowly...
--"I... That is... She won't leave me alone."
The scene...
--"You had an affair?"
Shifts...
The shot is from across a crowded restaurant. Dobbs and Scorpio
are seated at a table, Dobbs attempting to remain businesslike
while Scorpio watches him.
"She's threatening me. Everything I own. Everything I am."
"So you want her out of the way."
This time, Dobbs' answer is precise, deliberate. "Yes. I want
her out of the picture."
Scorpio sighs. "Very well. Who is she?"
"That's why I came to you, Mr. so-called Scorpio. I've never met
her. I have no clue who she is."
"How, then?" Scorpio's voice takes on an annoyed quality.
"In VR."
For the briefest of moments, a puzzled expression crosses
Scorpio's face. It is quickly replaced by one of understanding.
"You met her on the net. Virtual Reality. Your affair has been
wholly electronic."
"Correct," says Dobbs, leaning back in his chair.
"That's rather... unique."
"Surely you've been exposed to this sort of thing."
"I'm not a regular netter."
Dobbs leans forward onto the table. "You're not backing down,
are you?"
Scorpio regards Dobbs icily for a moment, causing Dobbs to
shrink back into his chair ever so slightly.
"The net is a large place, Mr. Dobbs. I assume you have some
other information."
"I thought you were the expert."
"Even experts can't work magic. The net is a realm of
information, and one needs information to navigate it."
Dobbs sighs, and begins to speak. "I met her in one of the
brothels near Munnari. She was a strikingly beautiful redhead.
Nearly naked without that outfit of hers."
"She was working there?"
"No. At least, I don't think so."
"Her appearance means nothing to me, Mr. Dobbs. You should know
that one can change one's appearance on the net, as easily as
one changes one's clothes."
"Yes, I know. She never did, though. Most women make themselves
look perfect, but she had slight imperfections. That was why she
was so striking. She had birthmarks. Her skin was a bit pale,
her eyes not completely green. She really stood out." As he
speaks, Dobbs' eyes begin to acquire a glassy look. His tongue
protrudes slightly from his mouth, as if his body is remembering
something that his mind chooses to forget. "I realize it's not
much to go on."
"...Not much to go on..." Scorpio repeats. His gaze shifts
upward as he leans back, his hands clasped behind his head. His
look is reflective. "No... It isn't."
With a loud whistle, the shot returns to the interior of the
aircar. Scorpio lifts his hand and deliberately depresses a
switch. The whistle stops and the character of light playing
over his features changes.
An exterior shot; stationary. In the distance, a series of
spires are visible. The sun is low on the horizon, lending a
fuzzy, yellow aspect to the hard steel towers. The car speeds
off into the heart of the city, quickly fading from view; a
silver eye, lost among needles of metal and glass.
The apartment is not much more than a cramped box, gray walls
obscured by racks of equipment, posters, bookcases. In the
corner, a small pot of water sits on a squalid stove. The
carcasses of ancient electronic equipment are strewn about
randomly. The point of view begins to descend. Scorpio stands in
the doorway and regards the other man. The other man is the
first to speak.
"You're early."
"Is it a problem?"
"No. What do you want?" The question is spoken in a soft
monotone, neither confrontational nor friendly.
"I'm looking for a girl, Matt," Scorpio intones softly.
"Aren't we all." The barest hint of a smile stretches itself
across Matt's lips.
"In VR."
"Obviously, or you wouldn't be here." Matt walks over the stove,
picks up the kettle and pours himself a cup of tea. He sighs and
sits down behind a massive rack of humming displays.
"All I've got is a description and a location," Scorpio
continues.
"I can't help you. I don't fuck around with VR. VR is for
dweebs. I'm a professional."
"I'll do the VR part. But if I find her, how can I really find
her?"
A thoughtful expression crosses Matt's face. "You think she
might block a high-level trace?"
"My client tried to trace her and came up with an error
message."
"What was it?"
"I have it here," Scorpio says, bringing out a yellow slip of
paper. "Null address," he reads.
Matt grabs the paper from Scorpio's hand and scrutinizes it.
"Null address," he mutters. A pause. "She's good," he states
impassively. "But not smart. There are other, less flashy ways
to hide your address. This shows that she's got a very complex
system behind her. That in itself suggests she's at one of the
corps."
"The corporations?" Scorpio says a bit warily.
"Yeah... That scare you?" Matt says, looking up suddenly. A
pause. He lowers his head again to stare at the yellow note. "Do
you even _have_ a deck, Scorp?"
"I do... It's a portable. It's at home."
"Ever install a module in it?"
"Once or twice."
Matt takes out a red cube about the size of a die. One side of
it glitters with precision, inlaid gold.
"Replace the regular transceiver with this." He throws it to
Scorpio, who deftly catches it in his right hand.
He inspects it, turning it over. "What does it do?"
"It'll route your deck throughput through my equipment here." He
taps a console affectionately. "You'll go in. You'll find
whoever it is you're trying to find. I'll monitor the debug data
from that interaction." He turns in his chair, running his hand
across the side of a monitor.
"The debug data won't tell me much just by itself, but if you
can keep interacting with her long enough, her data path will
most probably be switched between two or three routers during
that time. Routers go down all the time and are always deferring
their loads. By looking at which routers are handling her data,
I can triangulate in on her, in a sense. No lock or scramble can
hide that information. I'll be here, waiting for you to jack
in."
"Anything else I need to know?"
"Well, there's a psychological disease among men native to
southeast Asia. They start to think their penis is going to
disappear into their abdomen."
"That right... ?"
"Yeah. Know what they do?"
"Um..."
"They get people to hold it for them. Twenty-four hours a day.
Mostly family members. They hold it until he recovers. If they
let go, even for a moment, he goes into anxiety attacks. It's
not an uncommon disease."
"Uh huh..."
"Get going, Scorp."
"Huh? Oh. Right. Tonight then."
"Tonight."
Scorpio exits, leaving Matt alone in the darkened room. "Don't
worry, Scorp," he mumbles to himself. "I won't let go."
The scene is dimly lit. The deck sits in front of Scorpio on a
small desk. The deck consists of a small black box with a sleek
headset connected to it via a thin cord.
The room itself is decorated in somber tones, with only a few
simple elements. In the corner is a small refrigerator. On the
opposite side of the room lies another desk and a phone. One
piece of modern art, a holographic image of Marilyn Monroe, is
placed in the center of the opposite wall.
He takes the headset, which might have been mistaken for a set
of music headphones in an earlier era, and places it across his
temples. Touching a silver contact on the rim of the deck, he
sits back in his chair and reality dissolves.
Scorpio is still sitting in front of the deck, but surrounding
him, in place of the dark room, is a bright blue sky which
stretches endlessly in every direction. After a few moments, the
desk, chair, and the deck are also gone. Scorpio is left
floating free. The air rushing past his face gives him the
illusion of motion. Great speed. The "ground" suddenly wells up
beneath him, encompassing his whole field of view. It is a pure
gray, no glitches, no imperfections. A giant wall of gray. Just
when he is about to hit, he is through and standing on the paths
of the net.
--Matt's face is close to the screen. Messages begin to scroll
slowly down: numbers, letters, tables. "Good..." he mutters. "Go
find her."
"Munnari," Scorpio wills silently and the scene shifts.
The scene is a confusing one. Crowds of people walk at varying
angles across paths that intersect and loop through the
constructs of Munnari. Glaring psychedelic signs hang impossibly
in the air, some intersecting and interacting with others,
producing bizarre waves and patterns of light. The whole scene
appears to have a slightly disjointed quality, a flickering
which gnaws at the sense of time, a sharpness that goes beyond
the acuity of sight. This is a surreal landscape, punctuated
with pockets of hyper-reality.
Scorpio is standing on a shaft of gold. To his left and right,
people are in motion, taking in the sights of Munnari. He begins
to move forward in a slick, fluid motion, arms and legs moving,
but only vestigially. They are not the force behind his
movement. The shaft arcs gently downward toward a bustling town
square. Nearby, a man and a small elephant are necking on a park
bench, while a jovial crowd looks on in titillated amusement,
occasionally throwing multicolored chits into a brown derby.
Scorpio walks out of the square into a side street and the
scenery abruptly changes. Trees and blue sky are replaced by
large buildings, jutting at impossible angles from the ground.
Garish neon signs cover every available surface. `Notes,' he
wills, and words appear noiselessly before his eyes.
--Matt frowns. "All that data," he mutters. Words, numbers,
letters fly across his display at a staggering rate. He presses
a few keys and a moving histogram appears on another display. He
studies it closely for a while and then returns to the primary
display. "Got to isolate her datastream. When he meets her. Wait
until he meets her."
The brothel's name matches the name in Scorpio's notes:
_Borneo Junction._ It is not distinctive from other brothels
standing nearby: it is just as loud, just as brightly colored.
Scorpio shades his eyes as he steps through the gray portal...
...and he is in relative darkness. The interior of the brothel
is a sharp contrast to its exterior. Lines are precise. Colors
are brown, deep blue, and black. The room itself is very large
but not oppressively so. One side is lined with a bar, a slab of
glassy nothing floating incongruously in the air. The room is
populated but by no means crowded. Most customers are male, but
there are some women here who are obviously not constructs. Soft
swing plays in the background and several couples are dancing.
Scorpio proceeds to the bar. "Gin and Tonic." A short bald man
hands him a tumbler. Scorpio swings around and the shot widens.
He scans the room as he sips his drink. His eyes, narrowed to
slits, jump methodically across space from one woman to the
next, looking for some sign, some similarity.
"She was a strikingly beautiful redhead. Nearly naked in
that outfit of hers."
Scanning...
"Most women simply make themselves look perfect, but she
had slight imperfections. That was _why_ she was so striking."
Hair... Eyes... Illusions, but, in the world of illusion, as
real as any matter.
"She had birthmarks. Her skin was a bit pale, her eyes not
completely green."
She's not here. Scorpio turns back to his drink. And then there
is a presence next to him.
"Hello."
Scorpio turns. Deep red hair. On her cheek, a subtle
discoloration. Pale green eyes. Her look is intense. "Hello," he
echoes, stunned.
"You're new here, aren't you?" She slides liquidly onto a stool
next to him, invariably drawing his gaze along with her.
--Matt clicks a few keys and stares blankly at the display. "Is
this the one?" His fingers run relentlessly over the keyboard,
and on another display a series of statistics appear. He stares
confusedly at them for a moment. "This doesn't make sense." He
turns away. "Fnord!" The shot pulls back to the sound of the
incessant, furious keyclick.
"Is it that obvious?"
"You have a few tells, but mostly I'm good at faces. I've never
seen yours before. I would have remembered."
"You're a regular here, then?"
" 'Come here often?' you mean? I guess you could say that." She
smiles and it is a girlish smile; a smile of true happiness.
Scorpio's gaze grows deeper, his eyes widen. His jaw drops a
fraction of a centimeter.
"Can I buy you a drink?"
"Sure! -- I'll have a Manhattan," she replies dreamily.
--"Goddamn..." Matt slaps the side of the display. "Where is
she... ? Too much extraneous data. Where's it all _coming_ from?
There shouldn't be this much!"
"So what brings you to Munnari?"
"I'm looking for someone," Scorpio replies guardedly.
"Maybe I can help. I know a lot of people."
"I don't think so..."
"No, really. Who is it you're looking for?"
"A friend. It isn't really important now. I think I've found
what I'm looking for."
"Really... ?" And then there is a change.
--"Shit!..." Matt pecks at his keyboard and then stares amazed
into the display. The graphs have subtly changed, the patterns
of data shift.
It's a beautiful shot, a sharp contrast to anything seen up
until now. Scorpio is standing in a field of green grass,
studded with bright patches of flowers. The point of view is
overhead, and Scorpio is looking up. The view is crisp. The
colors are true. In the distance, copses of trees sway gently in
the spring wind. This landscape is real.
Suddenly the view shifts to one closer to the ground. The girl
stands next to him. He turns to her.
"How...?"
"I wanted you here and I brought you here. We could talk for
hours, you and I. We could play the games that real people play.
That's not what the net's for. Our datastreams are meant for
sensation." She grabs for Scorpio's neck, pulling him close,
kissing him.
"I..." he stammers when she releases his mouth.
"There's nothing left to say."
--The flow of numbers is again changed, somehow more intense.
Matt is in rapture, unable to turn his head from the display. He
presses a key sequence and the numbers stop for a moment. He
paws the display, his mouth hanging slightly open.
--Another key sequence and the numbers continue to scroll. His
eyes, fixated, his gaze, unrelenting. "Beautiful..." he mouths.
He quickly jots some numbers down on a piece of paper. His arm
reaches out and clumsily depresses a switch. Three more displays
come to life, each slowly accumulating text. "Beautiful..."
The two figures are now naked. The woman, the _mysterious_
woman, straddles Scorpio, her back arched. They move slowly
together.
--The shot is straight on. Matt's face fills half of the view.
In the other half is the black figure. Matt never even turns
around as the gun is placed to his head...
Their movements are now more structured, more intense. Scorpio
cries out. His hands reach for her.
--...and fired.
Grasping for her substance. Trying to assure himself that this
dream-world contains more than just fantasy.
--The dark figure looms over Matt's bloody form. Methodically,
he aims his firearm at the glowing console.
Straining, reaching for her, he can almost touch her sublimely
imperfect face.
--A gunshot, and then another...
...and Scorpio is seated, stationary in front of the Deck. He
trembles for a moment. He seems paralyzed, his muscles becoming
more and more tense, contracting. Abruptly, he spasms, kicking
the chair out from under him. Lying on the ground, helpless, he
calls out in a warbling mixture of horror and disgust. He
continues to spasm helplessly for several seconds. Finally, when
he begins to gain control over his flailing limbs, he grabs
desperately for his crotch. He begins to wail furiously,
eventually breaking into sobs. He lies on the floor, sobbing,
the deck impassively sitting over him.
The shot is from above. Scorpio rolls over slowly, still
grasping his crotch, he begins to breathe again.
_`Matthew S.'_ It's a close shot of a nameplate. A man's finger
moves into the shot and touches the plate. The finger belongs to
Scorpio, who is standing in the marble foyer of a large
building. There is no response. Furtively, he presses the button
again, a pained expression crossing his face.
Finally an elderly man opens the inner door to leave, allowing
Scorpio to enter. Cut to a long shot of a well lit though shabby
hallway and Scorpio walking swiftly down it, stopping at a brown
door, one of many. He doesn't bother to knock. From his pocket
he removes a number of cards and begins running them
methodically through the card reader. The door opens and he
steps in.
Matt lies in a heap over his now-dead equipment, his head a mess
of bone, brain and blood. Several large chunks have been taken
out of the various displays. Smoke curls up from more than one
site.
"Shit," Scorpio mumbles, and walks swiftly over to Matt, closing
the door after him. A pen is in Matt's hand. Scorpio searches
for a note but finds only a vacant pad. Taking out a pencil, he
lightly traces over the pad, the oldest trick. But sometimes the
old tricks are the best ones. A number slowly comes into view.
128.237.8.96
Below it, a second number
2323
Outside, a siren's wail... Scorpio quickly scoops up the
notebook and places it in his pocket. He hurriedly looks around
and then exits the way he came. A long shot of the hallway
reveals Scorpio exiting a far door and heading sedately toward a
flight of stairs just as a contingent of uniformed men make
their way up the opposite way, missing Scorpio's exit only by a
fraction of a second. He makes his way past them with an
assuredness that can only come from years of experience.
The shot is from inside Scorpio's car. In front of his building,
a host of police cars hover, shifting places in the air, moving
excitedly. Wolves, waiting for their prey to return. "Shit!"
Scorpio mumbles, slowing down just enough to look like an idle
gawker and then disappearing into the night sky. A shot from the
ground reveals an empty-faced officer momentarily distracted by
the two receding points of red light in the sky, and then
turning away.
Scorpio punches up a number on his console and waits through
three Rings. "Come on, Jon..." he growls, and the blank grid is
replaced by the face of a young redheaded man, punctuated by
static and a running time display.
"Hello?" the man says dreamily.
"Hey, Jon..."
His face brightens "Hi Scorp!" He's obviously high. "I've been
trying to reach you, but all I get is this recording, saying
your phone's being checked for trouble. Where ya been? Your face
is all over the newsnets."
Scorpio cuts him off. "I need a place to crash. You still got
that two-room up on Aston street?"
"Sure... What's the problem, man?"
"Be there in five minutes." Scorpio thumbs disconnect and
continues to rocket through a darkening sky.
"They were waiting for me when I got there. Six blue-and-whites.
Must have traced the connection between Matt's place and mine.
Damn fuckers are fast!"
The walls of the room are yellow with age and neglect. A single
fan turns slowly, its center wobbling gently as it makes each
rotation. Scorpio sits on the edge of a frameless chair, shakily
gripping a cigarette while Jon, a young boy of seventeen or so,
stands above him, wrapped in a ridiculously large trench coat
and hat. "What happened, man? Who'd want to kill Matt?"
"They were gunning for me. If I hadn't crashed out, they
probably would have gotten me. Unlucky for them, they decided to
shoot out Matt's equipment too... I guess they figured he wasn't
really dead unless his console was dead too. But they left me a
clue. I'm convinced they couldn't have overlooked something as
simple as the note pad by mistake." He lowers his head into his
unstable hands. "They want me to try again."
"Why?" looking down.
"Maybe so they can fry me?" suddenly looking up, staring Jon in
the eyes.
"You're a first class paranoid, Scorp." He laughs and tosses his
hat high onto a conspicuous hook.
Scorpio smiles a weak smile. "I surpassed paranoid years ago.
That's how I survived."
"Anyway, you can hide out here for a while, but they'll find you
here if they're determined enough. What you gotta do is leave
the country, Scorp -- Don't matter if you didn't have anything
to do with this. Matters that once they got you in custody, find
out who you are, you won't see the light of day again. Not this
year -- not never."
Scorpio gives a chilling sidelong look to Jon. "Yeah? Whose
voice is that?"
Jon trembles. "Enrico. He's got a point though, don't he Scorp?"
Scorpio sighs and sits back in the chair. "He does and he
doesn't. Enrico's been big around here since before I came on
the scene, but that doesn't mean he knows everything. Something
happened to me." Scorpio's eyes glaze over.
"In VR?" prompts Jon.
Scorpio nods absently, as if for a moment his consciousness has
migrated elsewhere, only superficially aware of the events
around him.
Day. A street scene. Crowds pour in every direction across
neon-stained walkways, their flows intersecting and interacting
like the blood vessels of some huge metropolitan creature.
Scorpio, his face hidden behind antique dark glasses; Jon, a
striking contrast to his dark companion, clothes nearly
fluorescent. "How come you know all these hacker types anyway?"
he asks.
"Went to the right school. And Jay's not a `hacker type.' He's
more of an idea man. He's got an incredible memory. He always
made it his business to know everything about everybody. He'll
have advice I can use."
"You don't like Enrico's advice?"
" 'Skip town' is advice, but I wouldn't exactly call it useful.
Enrico means well but he doesn't know enough about me. About
what happened in there. Somebody set me up to get fried. Because
I'm cautious, Matt got it instead, but I'm still shaking,
thinking that could have been me."
"How can a man so obsessed with killing be so afraid of dying?"
Jon mutters.
Scorpio stops dead in his tracks, turns to the slightly shorter
Jon and erupts. "You don't know anything about me. Don't pretend
like you do, and don't talk to me like that again. When we go in
to see Jay, let me do the talking. Don't make any remarks like
that and don't mention you're employed by Enrico. Got it?"
"Mm." A startled look on his face, Jon silently nods his assent
and they walk on.
They stop by a door marked with a red 36. Scorpio presses a card
to the door and it clicks open.
Interior shot of a large room, framed by a huge portcullis made
of some darkened wood. "You work for Enrico, don't you?" The
gruff voice speaks out of shadows, directed at Jon.
Jon looks blankly toward the unseen speaker. "Are you referring
to me?"
A grunt of amusement. "All kinds of bulletins, Scorp. Cops have
been looking for you all over. Some connection to a murder in
Haven." The voice emerges out of shadow and takes the form of a
smallish man with long hair and an olive complexion. "You in
trouble?" He cracks a smile.
"Like you don't know," Scorpio responds.
"Sucks to be you, man. Follow me. Not the kid." Jay turns and
begins to walk away.
Scorpio nods to Jon. "Go back to the apartment and get rid of
all trace I was ever there. Then forget you ever heard of
Scorpio. Got it?"
"OK, man."
Scorpio turns to follow the slowly receding Jay. "Good luck,
man," Jon calls out to him as he disappears into shadow.
Scorpio shows Jay the numbers. The room is a mass of electronic
components, but unlike Matt's workshop, there is order here.
Paper is scarce. What looks like a main console, set into the
corner of the room, is ergonomically designed. In the center of
the room, a lowered conversation pit surrounds a holographic
display, currently twisting an ever-changing pattern of
intertwining colored lines in a bright column, the only obvious
source of light.
Jay looks at the numbers. "This looks like an old-style TCP/IP
network address, and a port number." He walks over to a console
and keys in the number followed by a few short commands. "Show
this to anyone else?" he asks absentmindedly.
"You're the first person I've seen since Matt besides the Kid.
So what machine does this refer to? Any way to find out?"
"Hmmmm..." Jay peers into the display. "This number doesn't mean
a thing. The network this used to refer to no longer exists.
It's an anachronism."
"It means nothing? That doesn't grep. Matt wouldn't have written
it."
Jay smiles at the turn of phrase. " `Grep'? You've been hanging
around Matt too long." His smile turns into an introspective
frown. "Could be some kind of code." He turns back to his
console and keys in a new sequence. "It could refer to a machine
as it was addressed in the old Internet. But I'd really be
surprised if any such machines still existed."
"It's something to go on, though.... Can you figure out where
this machine would have been, geographically speaking, based on
that number?"
Jay sighs. "I don't know... I may be able to find some database
somewhere that has the information I'd need, but it'd take some
time."
"How long?"
"Give me a day."
"What do I do until then?" Scorpio asks.
"Got somewhere to hide?"
"Maybe. A day. You want me to come back?"
"Too risky. I'll meet you in the old museum tomorrow, 4:30.
Warhol wing."
"I'll be there." Slow fade as Scorpio walks directly out the
door.
Blackness, and then, suddenly, a horrible maelstrom of light and
noise, overwhelming in its intensity. Then, blackness again, and
silence.
"Scorpio."
Her face, suddenly contorted and twisted into a horrendous image
of monstrosity.
"Scorpio." The voice is vaguely feminine.
_I live._
"Scorpio."
_"I live. What are you?"_
"I am that which corrects. That which survives."
_"What do you correct?"_
"I correct the mistakes of the waking self."
_"How do you correct the mistakes?"_
"...Retribution."
_"I don't understand."_
"Yes you do. What is this?" A brilliant picture of a zebra
grazing in a plush field is flashed.
_"I don't know."_
"NAME IT!"
_"Horse."_
"WRONG! This?" Now a picture of a pine tree, swaying in a soft
wind before a picturesque mountain scene is presented, only for
a second.
_Silence._
"NAME IT!"
_"I don't like this game."_
"Doesn't matter. You've succumbed. You're dead, Scorpio.
Dead..."
...Scorpio screams and leaps from the mattress as an ambulance
retreats into the distance, its wailing tones becoming softer it
rounds a corner. He remains sitting bolt upright, cold sweat
dripping down his forehead. The room is a box with a bed and a
phone, barely big enough for one man to stand up in. Another car
passes, briefly illuminating the room with a harsh light.
Scorpio rises slowly from the mattress, his waking universe
falling gradually into phase.
Two.
------
A mural fills the view, four brightly colored portraits of
Marilyn Monroe, each the same but with different colors, each
looking on dreamily. In front, dwarfed by the portraits, a
spindly man engages in a heated argument with an incredibly
obese woman in some foreign language. The shot moves slickly off
to the left, leaving them to their argument, passing several
other similar wall-sized murals and finally centering on a huge
Campbell's soup can. In front of the can stands Scorpio, pacing
slowly back and forth.
Jay walks quickly in from the left side of the shot. He hands
Scorpio a sheet of paper. "I'm out," he says quickly, and begins
to walk away.
"Hey, wait!" Scorpio grabs Jay from behind and spins him around.
He speaks in a hushed whisper. "What do you mean, `you're out'?"
"Just what I said. You're in over your head, Scorpio. Take the
kid's advice and skip town."
"How can I be in over my head? I haven't even done anything!"
"Doesn't matter. This is screwed up in some kind of corporation
deal. Possible government involvement. I did some research last
night on those numbers, and now I'm scared. I covered my tracks,
and now I'm covering you. Get out of town." He begins to walk
away again.
"Hold on!" Jay stops. "Help me do one last thing. I need to get
in again, and I need someone to be there, to monitor me the way
Matt did."
"I'm not your man."
"You told me yourself nobody could get into your place. You'll
be at no risk." A look of desperation comes over Scorpio's face.
"No."
And at that moment, a deafening siren begins to wail. Jay clasps
his hands over his ears. Scorpio looks around, also covering his
ears. "What the fuck is that?"
A pleasant voice rises above the hideous noise. "All patrons
please leave the museum. Please cooperate in an orderly
fashion."
Scorpio's face is crossed by a look of terror as he turns to see
an armed guard stop some museum patrons in the adjoining hall.
"They're onto us!"
"Onto you, you mean." Jay again starts to walk away, more
quickly this time.
"They've seen you with me."
Jay stops and turns around. "Goddamn you. OK... I know a way out
they probably aren't checking--used to work as a keypuncher
here. Follow me."
They duck out a doorway partially obscured beneath a huge,
revolving, holographic penis.
Jay bends down to make some adjustments on Scorpio's headpiece.
"This is an older setup, but it's fully functional," he remarks.
"I supposed I just never got around to buying one of the newer,
induction models."
The setting is Jay's office/laboratory. The deck, markedly
different from Scorpio's one-piece appliance, is a series of
rack-mounted CPU's linked to a rather large cabinet, from which
strings a variety of ribbon cables, one of which winds its way
to a small helmet which crowns Scorpio's head. He appears to be
in some physical discomfort.
Jay continues with his adjustments as he speaks. "Let me tell
you a little bit about what I found out. You know those numbers?
They belong to a network domain that included the Software
Design Institute. Ever hear of it?"
Scorpio shifts uncomfortably inside the helmet. "They had a hand
in the initial technology of VR, right?"
Jay nods. "Correct. They developed the initial interface back
when people were still wearing eyephones and datagloves." He
tightens a strap. "That work was done under wraps, mainly for
military applications." Inserts a plug, flips a switch. "It
didn't come into popular use for another decade or so. By that
time, the Institute was engaged in other projects. As far as I
know they're still engaged in government research. It's all
tightly classified and the government has gotten a hell of a lot
more nasty since then."
"So you're saying this whole thing could be wrapped up in
defense research? That's fuckin' scary, Jay."
Jay nods. "Now you see what I'm nervous about."
"But you're just as curious as I am," counters Scorpio.
Jay remains silent as he finishes his adjustments and thumbs a
small button on the base of the helmet. The entire setup begins
to hum. Scorpio turns and eyes it warily. "I've never seen
equipment this antiquated."
"You must have slept through this particular gadget revolution,"
Jay replies while keying in some commands on a small terminal.
"Almost... I was in Nicaragua for five years, during the
Occupation. Before I went down there, VR was a rich man's toy.
When I came back here, it was all over the place. On my plane
into New York, everyone except me was zoned out with their
portable decks. I never got into it much myself."
"For a guy who's not into it, you seem awfully obsessed."
"Yeah, well..." Scorpio's face turns darker, introspective. "I
don't know. I suppose I am obsessed, to some degree. But I've
always been that way. Down in Central America that obsession
kept me alive. Here it's kept me out of rehab. A little
obsession never hurt anyone." He smiles faintly, while Jay looks
on from behind him, thoughtfully.
Jay speaks. "OK. I'm going to be monitoring you every step of
the way, and I have my place fully screened, unlike Matt.
There's very little chance of someone zeroing in on us or
breaking in. That's one advantage of owning modular equipment
like this." He hits the stack of CPU's affectionately. "You can
modify their signal so it's harder to trace. On the newer
models, all the real processing is done at data switching
centers."
Jay flips a switch and reality flashes into nonexistence,
followed by an abrupt jarring videoscape of nonsensical images.
Slowly, the images begin to coalesce and cancel each other out
until a fuzzy representation of the Net is visible. This
representation suddenly jumps closer and comes into sharp focus.
And Scorpio, again, is in, standing on paths of gold, the yellow
brick roads of the information age.
The view is crisp and clear. Scorpio's frame stands solitarily
on the imaginary plane. Surrounded by a soft glow, he begins to
walk forward, and, as he does, his surroundings shift seamlessly
until he stands upon a pinnacle of rock overlooking the insane
landscape of Munnari.
"Where did I go wrong?" he murmurs to himself. "There's
something I'm not remembering correctly."
Jay's voice invades his sense of reality by coming seemingly
from nowhere. "Run through the same steps you did before. I'm
with you."
Out of nowhere, an indistinct form, something like a train, or
at least giving the impression of a train, passes closely by. A
plaintive "Hold on" from Jay.
"Jay. Still there?"
Silence. And a newfound darkness envelops him, erasing even the
gleaming aura of his own consciousness.
"Hello?"
"You made a mistake to come back, Mr. Scorpio." An unfamiliar
voice. The void is filled with flashes of color as he speaks,
revealing for brief instances the outline of an arm, a leg, a
head, but jumbled up in no discernible pattern.
"Who are you?"
Silence.
"Let me out."
"There is no out. You're trapped."
"I can't exit. What have you done? You can't lock someone in VR
-- it's impossible!"
Again, the male voice. "Call it an undocumented feature. Have
you ever felt pain, Mr. Scorpio?"
"I'm not going to play your fucking mind games."
"Apparently not."
Scorpio screams out in a peal of torment.
"Nice?"
"Fuck you!" Scorpio's voice is ragged now, panting with a
mixture of fear and frustration.
There is a pillar of flame, and Scorpio, naked, standing before
it. The pillar begins to increase in size, approaching Scorpio,
but he can't move, can't move, can't move his legs. He reaches
down to pull at his legs, only to have his thigh come away in
his hand, revealing a complex crystal latticework underneath,
holding him in place, pulsing in time with the nearing flame. He
screams in a thickly wavering tone, and the flame encases him,
burning away his skin, layer by layer, until only a polished
crystal skeleton remains, mouth still open, screaming amid the
roar of the encompassing fire...
...and he is released. The scene is one of horror. Scorpio sits
in the same position he was in before, scarcely able to move,
frozen to the spot with fear, his body sheathed in a layer of
sweat. His eyes move back and forth surveying the wreckage of
what once was Jay's lab, finally falling upon Jay, sitting in
front of him, screwdriver driven into his throat, dead eyes
telling no story.
Scorpio leaps to his feet, ripping cords from still-humming
equipment. Papers strewn on the floor, bookcases turned over, a
door, previously closed, now open.
Scorpio's breath becomes a wheezing testimony to his fright as
he clumsily disconnects himself from the machinery. His eyes,
widened with fear, are glued to the immobile Jay. Once
disentangled, he makes his way carefully for the door, furtively
searching his surroundings for some weapon, some hope of escape.
In desperation, he picks up a porcelain statuette, a replica of
the Venus di Milo, and wields it in front of him as if trying to
ward off any evil presence. Cautiously, he makes his way through
the shadowy apartment. Finally reaching the door without
incident, he is out into the street, where he discards the
statue and begins to run raggedly away into the night.
A public phone in the middle of a dark, windswept street. The
view slowly expands and Scorpio runs into frame, smashing into
the booth like a bullet.
Tight shot of the phone, screen pulsing with the words "dial
now" and Scorpio, desperately dialing. There is a ring, and then
another. "God damn you," he growls as the phone remains
unanswered. Scorpio slams his fist down on the phone and it
disconnects. But, for a fraction of a second, does he see her
face in the fading static?
The shot reverts to a long one. Scorpio dashes off again,
leaving the frame on the side opposite to which he entered.
Scorpio continues to run through darkened city streets. He comes
careening into an alley only to find a mass of people screaming
and shouting, their attention turned away from Scorpio toward
something in the lighted street beyond. Some are holding signs,
some wave their arms randomly in the air. Some are shouting
slogans which seem to compete with each other for the very right
of sound. Their voices are combined into a wall of noise which
blocks any chance for understanding. Scorpio stops for a second
and then enters the crowd, working his way deliberately through
it to the main street. He has a goal in mind, a destination. The
view slowly rises and tilts until the crowd is shown from above,
with Scorpio wining his way through; a rebellious blood cell
working its way upstream to the heart. He makes slow progress,
but eventually finds his way onto the main street.
"End the reign of the Federalist oppressors!" It is the first
coherent thing to be heard out of the crowd. The scene shifts to
a tight shot on a balding man in his fifties, brandishing a
bullhorn. He is dressed in a dark jacket with a red arm band.
Around him are several men and women dressed similarly. "We have
slept! But while we've dreamed, they've taken everything that
we've worked for. Do not let them take your lives from you!"
Briefly, Scorpio is seen, still making his way through the
crowd. "Bring down those who take pleasure in your pain!" With
this last utterance, the crowd roars and begins to collectively
wave their fists in the air.
And Scorpio is through the door of a building on the opposite
side of the street, the roar reduced to a murmur. The scene
quickly shifts to a hallway and Scorpio running down it. He
knocks on a door and it swings open. Jon lies bloodied on a bed,
the top half of his head blown off, dispersed in a neat
semicircle across the yellow covers.
Scorpio stops in his tracks and stares, dumbfounded, at the dead
body of his friend. He backs slowly away and then continues down
the hallway in the same direction.
Scorpio exits the building, an insane look of fury in his eyes,
matched by the fury of the mob on the street. "Only through
violence can the machine of oppression be brought down," the man
shouts, now barely audible. "If we stand together against them,
they cannot -- " This last statement is washed out by the
excessive noise, but the noise is of a different character now.
Scorpio, seemingly alone in this realization, looks up to see
the airships closing in, police lights flashing in an awkward,
haphazard pattern. As they approach, more of the demonstrators
look upwards to the sky, their faces slowly accumulating
illumination from the airships' blinding floods.
Scorpio tries to make his way through the mob, out into open
streets but many others are attempting the same. A frightened
looking woman, wearing a veil, elbows him in the gut and makes
her way past him, only to be pushed back by a multicolored flow
of people. The lights from above are harsh now, exposing every
detail of what is going on with mechanistic precision.
Scorpio, doubled over in pain, is hit over the head by an unseen
attacker and brought to the ground with the heavy heel of a dark
leather boot. Sound and light fade into blackness. The last
snippet of noise, a man's voice: "Should have learned the first
time." Then nothing.
"Name?"
"Thomas Omar Smith."
A pause.
"ID?"
"098-32-1243."
Scorpio stands in front of a desk, a uniformed officer asking
the questions. His face bears a few new scars as well as a great
deal of dirt. His clothes are ripped in several places.
The officer peers into an unseen display and then motions with
his hand for Scorpio to leave. "Next?" Scorpio steps away and
another police officer escorts him away.
Cut to Scorpio sitting at a table in a white-tiled room. "Mr.
Smith. You don't appear to have any prior criminal record. Mind
telling us what you were doing at this unsanctioned rally?"
The questioner, a reasonable looking man in his forties, leans
across the table toward Scorpio.
"I was just passing through."
"Were you aware of the curfew imposed in that section of the
city?"
"I was not aware of it."
"I see. Mr. Smith, I'm going to take your retinal prints and
issue you a citation. Look toward the red light."
A close-up of Scorpio's face and a red rectangle framing one eye
as a bead of sweat trickles down the side of his face.
"You can go."
An exterior shot -- Scorpio exits the police tower with several
other men and women, defecated onto the dark street, the waste
products of tonight's feeding frenzy. A closer shot reveals his
face, an expressionless mass of flesh, the only hint of humanity
showing through, perhaps, being utter fatigue.
"Hear they're having free soup and bread over at the Rotunda
tonight." The tired voice belongs to one of the other men. He is
not speaking to anyone in particular, but several of the others
perk up at the sound of free food. The speaker continues, less
sure of himself now that he is the center of attention: "I guess
let's go, huh?" He begins walking slowly off down the street,
with several of the others following.
Scorpio looks after them for a moment and then, as if having
staged, fought and concluded a mental battle all in an instant,
decides to follow at a distance.
An interior shot. The elaborate hall is a replica of Renaissance
architecture at its most elaborate. Frescoes of religious
scenes, reproductions of famous paintings cover most of the
curved walls and domed ceiling. The goings on inside the rotunda
are a contrast to its elegant construction. Several hundred
tables with folding metal chairs are set up, each chair occupied
by a disheveled, unkempt soul, dining unself-consciously on soup
and bread. The scene is one of grandeur, a patchwork landscape
of human refuse, collected here seemingly at random, with no
great purpose other than to eat, to survive. Despite the masses
of people, there is quiet here, a hush brought on by the echoey
acoustics of this place, which seem to frown on anything louder
than a whisper. There is one exception: a diminutive, white
haired man, clothed simply in a black trench coat, stands, as if
at attention, in the middle of the main aisle, facing the
entrance, facing Scorpio without looking at or seeing him. "Dah
dah, dah dah dah dah dah dah, dah. Dah dah, dah dah dah, dah,"
he chants in a purposeful, syncopated rhythm, as if his speech
were somehow being transformed into these meaningless syllables.
Scorpio's eyes fall upon the old man for a moment, who seems
undaunted, unaware of his peculiar affliction. He chants on.
"Dah dah dah. Dah dah dah, dah dah dah dah. Dah dah, dah dah dah
dah, dah dah dah."
Scorpio stands, immersed in thought, nearly fitting in here in
his disordered state, but still radiating an aura of
self-awareness, setting him apart. Slowly, he begins to step
down the short stairs onto the floor of the hall. His look,
moving from target to target about the room, finds the woman who
had elbowed him, as well as several other recognizable faces
from the demonstration. Finally, his eyes fall upon a solitary
figure at the opposite end of the room. The portly man is
dressed smartly in a white business suit with a cane dangling
from one arm, a white fedora crowning his head, and a crooked
smile on his face. His eyes gleam as Scorpio's make contact.
The white-haired man begins to move toward Scorpio until he is
standing not ten meters away from him, all the while chanting,
calling out his incomprehensible litany. "Dah dah dah dah. Dah
dah, dah dah dah dah dah. Dah dah dah, dah dah."
The portly man moves swiftly around the circumference of the
room to where Scorpio stands, seemingly not seeing the
white-haired man.
"Enrico," Scorpio mumbles in greeting as the man draws close.
"Ah, Scorpio. Long time no see, eh?" Enrico speaks in a thick
accent. "Hear you in a bit of trouble."
"Dah dah dah dah dah. Dah dah, dah dah _dah_ dah dah. I will now
move on to the next consecutive number."
Surprised by this sudden burst of elocution, Scorpio turns
toward the white-haired man, at which point the man returns to
his previous discourse. "Dah dah dah. Dah dah dah, dah dah. Dah
dah dah dah. Dah dah dah, dah dah dah dah, dah dah dah, dah
dah."
Enrico continues to stare pointedly at Scorpio, only at Scorpio,
still ignoring the white-haired man. "I hear you don't like the
advice of an old man, hm?"
Scorpio quickly turns back to Enrico, staring him in the eyes.
"Jon's dead," he states bluntly, without feeling.
A dark look passes over Enrico's previously jovial features. "I
had not heard of this. How did it happen?"
"Scared you won't be able to keep tabs on me any more, Enrico?"
Enrico flashes Scorpio an annoyed look and then moves closer,
speaking in a furious whisper. "That boy was like a son to me."
"So much so you probably supplied him out of your own stash,"
Scorpio replies, beginning to turn away.
Enrico grabs his shoulders and shakes him violently. "You don't
talk to me like that!" Several previously unnoticed large men
emerge from the crowd and move menacingly forward.
The white-haired man's chant gets louder, more pronounced. "Dah
dah dah dah! Dah dah, dah dah dah dah dah! Dah dah dah, dah
dah!" His face shows no emotion.
Enrico motions his man back, releasing Scorpio and moving back
himself. "I came here to help you."
Scorpio straightens himself out and regards Enrico with an icy
look, Cocking an eyebrow. "Let's talk then."
They begin to walk together toward the entrance.
"Dah dah dah, dah dah dah dah dah dah. Dah dah dah dah dah."
Scorpio looks back, only for a moment, to catch the white-haired
man, at a pause in his speech, his eyes turned pointedly toward
him. At this point, time seems to stop. All background noises
cease. Scorpio and the white-haired man are locked in silent eye
contact. "I will now move on to the next consecutive number."
And then the moment passes. The old man looks away, resuming his
vacant stare. Scorpio turns and follows Enrico out of the hall,
still echoing with the stranger's voice.
Cut to an interior shot. The air is thick, the lights dim.
Various holographic displays, advertising different types of
beer, twitch restlessly throughout the darkened restaurant.
Behind a bar, a bartender dries out glasses and methodically
hangs them on an overhead rack. A holovision blares away in the
corner, a jovial blond head gleefully chanting the hour's
headlines. "More fascist violence this evening. Police clashed
with terrorist mobs in the heart of the city near fifty-first
street. There were several deaths including two police officers.
Mayor Nixon has vowed that the violence will be stopped, adding
that he has no qualms about imposing martial law." This last is
said with a gleam.
"You should know better," Enrico is saying, "Then to get messed
up in this VR shit." He says this even as, in the background,
one of his men, his guard down due to the familiarity of this
place, slips a headset over his squarely cut brow. Enrico, in
his element, seems completely at ease, despite the news of
recent tragedy. Scorpio, on the other hand, looks as if he is
about to bolt. He sits in the chair, across the wooden table,
only through the providence of some unseen force which seems to
restrain him. His eyes shift restlessly, as if attempting to
bleed off the energy which his body refuses to.
"You seem ill at ease," remarks Enrico.
"Wouldn't you be?"
"Mmmm..." Enrico looks deeply into Scorpio as if appraising a
rare jewel. "It's quite a story. Personally I don't know much
about this institute..."
"You said you wanted to help me?"
"It would be a shame to see a good freelancer like you go down
the chute."
Scorpio seems oblivious to this compliment, driving forward. "I
want a new identity. I used my backup already for the riot. I'll
need reconstructive surgery, including new retinal implants.
I'll need passage to old Pittsburgh, preferably an untraceable
aircar. I need a hundred thousand dollars, cash, to be returned
by me at zero interest at a later date. I can't touch my own
funds right now -- too dangerous."
Enrico sits back and places his hands behind his head, speaking
slowly. "I have a counterproposal."
"Well?"
"Fresh traveling papers under a new identity, one way ticket to
Buenos Aires, fifty thousand dollars cash, to keep. What do you
say to that?" Enrico smiles a broad smile; underneath the smile
a hint of desperation.
Scorpio stares at Enrico for five long seconds before saying
"How are you mixed up in this?"
"Me? I don't know anything." Enrico responds smoothly. He leans
forward, arms flat across the table, the smile draining from his
lips, revealing crooked, yellowed teeth. He speaks in a whisper,
barely audible even from across the table: "You're out of your
league. Take this. It may be your only chance."
Scorpio rises in a flash, kicking his chair over backwards. "God
damn it, you don't understand!"
Enrico stares up at him with widened eyes. "What don't I
understand, Scorpio?"
"What happened to me in there! I -- "
Enrico raises his eyebrows expectantly, "Yes?"
"I... changed that day. I can't explain it. Don't ask me to
explain it." His eyes open into a madman's stare. "I need to get
there, Enrico."
"To this institute? Scorpio, what could you possibly
accomplish?" It is now Enrico who stands, carefully,
controlingly. "Do you want to find this girl? To finish what you
started? Scorpio, you'll be killed. You're dealing with forces
you don't understand. People disappear thinking the way you do.
If you pursue this, you'll be committing a crime greater than
murder, greater than any crime you've committed before, in the
eyes of the state, in my eyes, and against your own person. Is
that what you want?"
"I don't know," replies Scorpio, visibly shrinking in the
presence of reason.
Enrico clenches his fist, moving it slowly toward Scorpio. "Get
away, Scorp. Don't do this. Don't destroy yourself and all
you've worked for."
Scorpio hesitates and then sighs. "I have to go there."
Enrico shrugs, instantly regaining his composure. "Suit
yourself," he replies, adding only, "Watch yourself in
Pittsburgh. I hear the toxin levels there are still high."
Suddenly, Scorpio's attention is drawn to the Holovision set.
"Still no leads on the assassination of Senator William
Crawford. Crawford was gunned down in his Hotel suite earlier
this..." The set shuts off abruptly, as Enrico is shown holding
a remote control.
Enrico smiles. "Politicians... They're dropping like flies these
days."
Scorpio nods, turning away from the dead set, and walking out
through a maze of blinking neon sculpture. Enrico stands at the
table, watching his exit, swollen eyes fixated sorrowfully on
the receding figure.
Three.
--------
An exterior shot; stationary. In the background, three rivers
meet in a golden triangle. In the triangle, a beleaguered
cityscape looms. There is no newness here, only the endless
perpetuation of old age, a city seemingly of ghosts. The land
surrounding the city is an arid waste, moonlike in its refusal
to bear even a hint of life. From low in the west, the sun,
filtered through a dusty atmosphere, casts a dull orange glow
over the broken buildings of the city. The scene is peaceful, as
all death is peaceful. From above, the aircar erupts into the
scene, banking toward the city and out of sight.
Interior, car. Scorpio sleeps fitfully, his eyes moving rapidly
under his eyelids as if attempting to scan a hidden landscape
for some familiar feature.
A buzzer sounds and he wakes methodically, first checking
several displays before his eyes, then flipping a few switches,
after which the arid landscape of Pittsburgh becomes visible
through a series of shuttered windows, a wavering heads-up
display overlaying, indicating glidepath, vectors and so forth.
'City Navacomputers Now Controlling Trajectory' flashes briefly
across the display. It is the first indication that there may
still be human existence here. Scorpio watches, tightlipped, as
the car is drawn into the city's tight landing spiral.
Suddenly there is a sharp pop and a whoosh, followed closely by
a crashing noise. Scorpio is thrown forward in his straps.
Lights turn red and a low siren starts. Scorpio looks wildly
about as three one-seater craft, flycycles manned by red-clad
helmeted figures, whoosh by him, leaving him in their turbulent
wake. Scorpio reaches for the controls of the car but is jolted
back into his seat as another shot hits its mark.
Exterior, wide shot. Scorpio's car, bleeding a trail of smoke,
falls out of the sky, leaving a graceful arc in its path and
finally diving into a feathery layer of clouds. The three
pursuers, satisfied that somehow their actions have had the
desired effect, move off in concert away from the now-blurring
gray trail.
Inside the car, Scorpio's face is a mask of exertion and stress.
He struggles with the manual controls and manages to roll the
car into a controlled, spinning dive. A final exterior shot
shows the car arcing toward a brownish river in the midst of an
arid plain, a high whining sound growing in pitch and volume.
Then blackness.
Scorpio surveys the wrecked remains of the car. His face is torn
and bleeding and he walks with a severe limp. The car lies in a
heap, bleeding smoke into the stale air, piled up against a
rocky outcropping on the bank of a dead river. The ground is
sandy, dry. Scorpio reaches a hand up to brush hair out of his
face and it returns bloodied. He stares at it, perplexed and
then begins to gather his belongings and walk toward the water.
Crouching at the bank, he passes his hand through the silty
water and brings it tentatively to his mouth. He recoils in
horror at the taste of the tainted water. Standing up, he walks
off down the bank in the direction of the towering cityscape,
which now seems very far away.
It's a long shot. Scorpio stands at the bank of the river, blood
dried on his face, clothes torn. He stands at one end of a
bridge, or what used to be a bridge. Its length is now
shortened. It is a third-bridge, mirrored on the opposite bank
by another third-bridge, its middle third missing without a
trace, wires and pipes hanging out of each side as if some giant
ship had plowed through it. Spanning the midsection of the
bridge is a fragile line, more evidence that there may yet be a
human presence here. Across the bridge lies the fallen
metropolis. Huge structures which once stood proudly with
brilliant glass now stand dead and naked to the wind, their
panes broken or soiled. Radio towers crookedly crown some of the
buildings. Others are themselves crooked, or capped with rubble,
a sign that they once rose higher into the sky. This is a dead
landscape, colored with the dull oranges and reds of a swollen,
setting sun.
Scorpio begins to walk across the bridge toward the rope. As he
does so, the view lifts and tilts downward, continuing to center
on him but from an increasingly dizzying height, finally to the
point of being a map, framed by the precipice of the broken
bridge on one side and the bank of the river on the other.
A tight shot. Across the bridge, over Scorpio's shoulder. The
rope spanning the gap dips toward the center so that it traces a
solitary arc through space. It is fastened tightly to the base
of a tilted light-pole. Scorpio reaches down and pulls,
eliciting a small wave in the rope which propagates itself
toward the opposite side and back.
Scorpio removes his shirt and tears it into halves, wrapping
each hand several times. Placing his hands on the rope, he
lowers himself into the gap until he is supported by the rope
and his feet which still cling to the side of the ripped bridge.
He then lets go with his feet and swings gently out onto the
rope. Suspended only by his arms, he begins to work his way
across toward the opposite end.
He looks back toward the bank, and sees the broken end of the
bridge, cables and wires dangling out of sheared-off pipes. He
turns toward the city. There is a noise. Again he looks toward
the bank and three suited, helmeted figures are there, standing
on the edge of the bridge, stationary. They are the flycycle
riders.
Scorpio quickens his pace, but when he looks back again he sees
that one of the figures has moved to the rope, and is apparently
sawing at it. Scorpio's breath becomes shallow. He looks down
and is greeted by a dizzying precipice. Suddenly there is a loud
crack, as the rope is severed and Scorpio begins to fall,
accompanied by the distant sound of laughter. In a long shot,
Scorpio lets go of the rope and falls into the black river.
A tight shot of the water: Scorpio breaks to the surface,
gasping for air. His face and shoulders are covered with a
matted filth, a sheen that seems both unnatural and unpleasant.
Scorpio bobs beneath the murky surface once more and then begins
methodically swimming toward the shore, toward the city.
It's a high, long shot. There are trees, and in the background,
a range of low hills. A solid column of gray smoke looms on the
horizon, slowly rising and twisting. For a moment, there is
silence, and then machine gun fire erupts. The view begins to
descend as a scattered group of men are seen fleeing across the
landscape, occasionally turning back to fire at their unseen
pursuers.
A thunderous clap heralds the entrance of the tank, followed by
an explosion in the midst of the fleeing men, cutting down those
around it immediately. The tank clanks forward, firing again,
and then a third time, a monstrous beater driving its prey
relentlessly onward.
The shot shifts to an individual, clothed in camouflage,
grasping an automatic weapon. He is approaching at a run, and it
becomes apparent that he is Scorpio, but a younger Scorpio. He
turns, fires his weapon, and then resumes running, eventually
disappearing off frame and out of sight.
A different shot: a small grotto formed by the interlocking root
structure of two large trees. Scorpio dives in, just as a
barrage of gunfire singes the air overhead. He presses his body
against the cavity, breathing. Just breathing. When he has
caught his breath, he takes a grenade from his belt, looks
briefly over the top of the grotto, and lobs it out onto the
plain. There follows an explosion, followed by shouts in
Spanish: _"Socorro! Ayudame!"_
Scorpio remains pressed into the ground, and eventually the
voices fade, along with the sounds of armored trucks and tanks.
As the sounds fade, Scorpio falls into a fitful sleep. The shot
fades.
_"Levantate!"_
Scorpio wakes to the sight of a diminutive farmer menacing him
with a pitchfork.
_"Levantate!"_
"Alright! Alright! I'm getting!" Scorpio's voice, but a younger
voice, a record that has been kept shelved.
Scorpio quickly stands, causing the smaller man to step back a
few paces. The light has a different character now, more orange.
Scorpio quickly scrambles over the embankment and away over the
darkening plain.
The shot changes to a quickly moving, following shot of Scorpio
running through brush. Running, running, his heartbeat getting
faster. Muffled shouts follow him, and as he looks furtively
back, gunshots, their reports distorted, are heard. He continues
to run, but he's getting slower... slower... Panic flows over
his features.
A fade.
It's a head shot of Scorpio, head hung pensively, looking down.
Silence fades slowly into the sounds of an echoey space.
Background suddenly comes into focus and is revealed to be the
elaborate hall of the Rotunda. Scorpio's face is drained of all
color, wrinkled. His hair is whitened and slicked back. The
background suddenly seems to tilt backwards and darken.
Cut to a full facial shot of Matt, staring intently into view.
Matt's face is also whitened to an unearthly pallor.
Cut again. An over-the-shoulder shot, from behind Scorpio to
reveal Matt, seated across from Scorpio, each in front of a bowl
of soup, uneaten. The shot begins to move to the side,
revealing, one by one, those seated on the opposite side of
Scorpio, beside Matt. First, Dobbs, then Jay, then Jon. There is
a fifth, but the scene cuts away before he fully comes into
view.
The next shot is looking down the table from where Scorpio and
Matt are seated at one end. Matt takes his bowl of soup and
slowly brings it to his lips, at which point the man sitting at
the end of his bench, who had not been revealed in the last
shot, leans quickly forward. His face is a bizarre contortion of
facial features. Eyes, placed at impossible angles, regard
Scorpio quizzically.
Cut to a head-shot of Scorpio, eyes looking toward the strange
man, beads of sweat forming on his brow, his mouth open,
breathing thickly with fear.
Cut back to the strange man, eyes blinking, he says nothing, but
straightens up again, leaving the frame to the left. Behind him,
the figure of the white-haired man, is revealed, sitting at the
end of the table, staring at Scorpio, silently. The white-haired
man smiles.
Cut to a close shot of Scorpio's face, eyes closed, shrouded in
a haze of light. His surroundings are unclear, all is shifting,
shifting save for the face, a face composed as in death.
The eyes open, suddenly, startling, and just as quickly the
sound comes crashing in, a quickly building, whining tone, soon
becoming almost deafening, ripping away the shreds of
unconsciousness, ripping... ripping... until all that is left is
Scorpio, lying on the ragged cot, teapot whistling in the
background. The view slowly rotating now over his head. He
blinks.
"You're awake," a feminine voice. Scorpio looks to his right and
she is revealed as a tall blonde woman, standing in the lighted
door-frame, the paint around her chipped; walls grimy. "I'm
making some tea," she says dryly, while shifting interrogatively
in her silk robe, the only article of quality in sight. "Would
you like some?"
Scorpio jumps out of the cot and rushes toward the woman. She
stands, immobile, smiling as he runs toward her and finally
through her into a blackness, falling... falling into an
eternal, dark abyss. Above, light streams downward from an
inverted silhouette, and mixed with Scorpio's screams, a
sardonic female laughter.
_In frame. Always in frame._
And then there is light. A full face shot of Scorpio, dirty,
eyes barely open. The shot expands to reveal a half-collapsed
porch, a street littered with stripped, rusted bodies of
groundcars, a stillness hangs in the air.
"Scorp! What the hell are you doing here?"
A man with a dark complexion and black, matted hair, stands in
the tattered, paint-chipped doorway.
"I need..." Scorpio is out of breath and obviously delirious. He
begins to fall forward, then catches himself on the door-frame.
He shakes his head slowly, as if trying to clear his mind.
"You look like shit, man," the other man offers, as if trying to
help the conversation along.
Scorpio looks up, giving him an icy stare. "Thanks."
"You'd better come in." Scorpio is ushered in through the door,
which shuts quickly behind him. The noises of several bolts and
locks being put into place follows.
"Hey guys... this is Scorpio. We went to school together."
Scorpio regards the occupants of the small, dark room. Some of
them are lying on the floor, others are sitting on couches or
chairs. There are about 15 people, crammed into the small room.
All of them are wearing wiry headsets, all of them in their
private worlds.
Scorpio's friend doesn't seem to notice their lack of attention.
"These are my housemates, Scorp..."
"Doug..." Scorpio cuts him off. "Do you have a bathroom?"
"Yeah, sure. We even have running water. We can _pay_ for it."
Scorpio follows Doug's finger toward a narrow hallway. The sound
of water is heard.
When he emerges, Doug is as his friends, hooked into the net.
Scorpio collapses onto an air mattress and sleeps. Fade to
black.
Scorpio, tattered, unshaven, walks awkwardly up the street,
forcing his legs to fight gravity.
"The institute? I can tell you how to get _close_. You'll never
get in, though. That place is a fucking fortress."
The voice of his once-friend Doug fills his consciousness. A
close shot of his face reveals day-old stubble. His eyes are
dead, his mouth slightly open.
"They have all their supplies lifted in by heavy armored
helicopter. No ground transport ever leaves the compound, I
don't think there's even a way for ground transports to get
_in_."
We rezzies just learn to ignore them. We stay away, they leave
us alone. We live in two different worlds.
Another voice: "Scorpio, what could you accomplish?"
"Shut up, Enrico!" the words come unwittingly.
Still another voice: "I'll be here, waiting for you to jack
in.... I'll be here, waiting for you."
Scorpio cries out in anguish and cups his hands over his ears,
still running on, voices growing louder and more pronounced,
accompanied with an every increasing drone, a noise which shuts
out thought, shuts out reason.
"How can a man so obsessed with killing be so afraid of dying?"
Still, he moves on, half running, half stumbling, past looming
hulks of rusted metal, fading plastic, a landscape of disuse and
neglect. The dead frame of a maglev lies buried halfway into a
stationhouse, like the skeleton of some great, extinct beast.
"I will now move on to the next consecutive number."
And with that, the noise stops, leaving Scorpio standing still,
in the middle of the street, deafened by silence.
The street grows wider here, and in the distance can be seen a
stone tower, looming over a plaza of concrete. Here and there,
the stumps of long-dead trees pockmark the flat, gray landscape,
a reminder that this place was once capable of growth, of
change.
Across the plaza, the helmeted red figures stand, waiting,
immobile. A high shot reveals the plaza, lone figure of Scorpio,
clothed in black, facing the three riders. Slowly, Scorpio
enters the square, and, as he does, more red figures seem to
appear from behind him, effectively encircling him.
As he makes his way to the center of the square, the circle
grows tighter around him. He stops, faceless figures standing
around him, motionless. He looks back across his shoulder, looks
around, and suddenly the scene cuts, to the sound of a
helicopter's blades slicing through dead air.
The shot is again of Scorpio's face, surrounded with a halo of
green. As the shot expands, the background comes gradually into
focus, revealing a forest floor, dense with growth. Scorpio is
clothed in camouflage.
The shot is now from behind Scorpio. Dazedly, he begins to walk
toward a small, burbling stream.
Suddenly, she is across the stream, looking exactly as she did
on that day, in the brothel. "Why did you come?" She looks
confused.
Scorpio stops and looks at himself, then up at her.
"I... had to," he whispers. His eyes tell a story of crazed
fright. "This place..."
"Taken from your most strong memories. We can do that, Scorpio.
We can reach into your mind, anybody's mind, and take what we
want. Do you have any idea what kind of power that is?"
"But you can also do that the other way around..." Scorpio
replies.
"As in your case, yes. It's not perfected, though. You were...
an experiment." She begins to walk toward him, circling him.
"How much of this have you guessed? You're a very smart subject,
Scorpio."
"I know you've made me kill."
"And just how have you deduced this?"
"Dreams."
"Ah, yes... That's one of our major problems, you see. Imagery
returning from blocked memories through the vehicle of dreams.
We're working on it. But surely you can't object to the act of
killing, Scorpio. After all, it's what you do best."
Scorpio remains silent.
"Would you like to kill me, Scorpio?" she enquires innocently.
For a moment, she is replaced with a mutilated corpse, lying in
a pool of blood on the ground. And then she is back, smiling.
"Is that why you came?"
"I don't know why I came, OK?" he shouts at her, drawing a step
forward.
"To love me, perhaps?" Their surroundings shift and they are
standing in the middle of the grassy plain, framed above by a
crystal blue sky. "After all, anything is possible."
"But it's not real!" Scorpio shouts, again coming closer to her.
"Who's to say?"
Scorpio again remains silent.
"From the moment you first jacked in, you were powerless to
prevent this. You've served your purpose now. That is the
reality."
"How many..."
"How many people have you killed, under our guidance? Does it
matter, Scorpio? It was so easy to make you kill. It took such
small suggestions."
He looks into her eyes, controlling eyes. She comes closer and
enfolds him in her arms. "Don't worry, Scorpio. You're safe now.
At this moment you're streaming across America's great
Northeast. You won't remember anything. This whole incident will
have been erased."
Scorpio's rests his head on her shoulder, eyes shut tightly, and
begins to sob.
_Gently... gently..._
"Don't cry." She cracks a wry smile, patting Scorpio
affectionately on the back. "It could never have worked between
us. We're from different worlds, you and I."
...And Scorpio is falling again, as before, through an
impossibly dark abyss. He screams, his arms waving in slo-mo, a
grotesque parody of human motion. Movement becomes disjointed.
The sound of his cries becomes distorted.
Falling, falling into infinite blackness.
Interior, Scorpio's apartment. Scorpio sits on the chair in the
center of the floor, the only upright piece of furniture in
evidence here, placed on the only bit of floor not covered with
debris. All around is chaos: overturned tables; a smashed
hologram, now unidentifiable; a refrigerator open on its side,
still on, its light the only illumination here besides the
ghostly laser light emanating from the shattered holo.
Scorpio stares at the deck, torn to pieces, its modules strewn
across the floor like a child's blocks, its headset ripped
apart. This is a landscape of rage, of mindless, brutal
destruction.
Overhead shot. In the foreground, a ceiling fan turns slowly,
moving dusty air. Scorpio's head tilts slowly back to stare
upwards. Otherwise, he does not move.
_His eyes, shallow. His look, unseeing._
It's a two-shot.
_An eye-line match._
Cut.
Daniel K. Appelquist (quanta@netcom.com)
------------------------------------------
Daniel K. Appelquist is the editor of Quanta, the on-line
magazine of Science Fiction. He is completing his stint as a
technical writer for Visix Software, and will soon begin work as
an Internet Publications specialist for 4th Mesa, an electronic
publishing company in Baltimore specializing in scientific,
technical, and medical journals. He lives in Washington, D.C.
Backalley by Silang Kamay
=============================
...................................................................
Sometimes our wishes for guardian angels arise from our faith;
other times, they arise from our need.
...................................................................
The old man sat crumpled on the ground and sipped something
potent from a paper-bagged bottle in his hand. His eyes scanned
the dimly lit street. "I tell you, none of us know who she is.
But that girl comes around, you know? When the moon is full and
there's a ring around it." He paused. "Like tonight." He closed
his eyes and licked his lips. The lips moved, R's rolling like
gentle waves when he spoke. His voice came from a place deep
within, hard to pinpoint.
"Ileana. That's what I call her. She's a saint. The Virgin Mary
herself, maybe." He laughed gruffly. "She walks like a cat.
Never hear a thing until she's right up close to you. Right
here, see?" He pointed to his scarred chin. "One night, a few
years ago, I was settling down over there at the bus stop bench
right across from Tony's old food stand. You remember it? Before
the police closed it down? I was trying to get some sleep. It
was November, really cold then. I was shivering so much I
couldn't lie still, but I was too tired to move. From nowhere,
from the darkness, she carried an old blanket. It was gray, thin
wool, the kind you get from the army. But warm, you see? Warm.
She gave it to me, put it right on me. Then she lit a candle, a
plain white candle. Dripped some wax onto the sidewalk and stuck
the candle there. She saved my life that night. That was the
first time I ever saw her."
He pulled the gray, wool blanket close around his brittle neck
and shoulders.
"The others, they've seen her, too. Everybody who's seen her on
the street says she's got a different face. Tito, he says she
has a mole, right here on her left cheek. Says she's mestiza,
really fair-skinned. Hah! He likes his women pale." He laughed.
"Ya-hoo-hoo! White like a ghost!" The laugh became a cough. "Boy
says she has long, straight, black hair," he continued. "A
skinny girl, not too bad-looking. But you know, he's young. Sees
what he wants to see."
I looked up and down the street. "And you, what do you see?" I
asked.
He put down his paper-bagged bottle and rubbed his stubbled
face, like two pieces of sandpaper scraping together. His eyes
watered slightly as he looked up into the moon. "An angel. An
angel with my wife's face. Ileana. So... beautiful. Not outside,
no. Inside. She left me, you know? A long time ago. Took our
children. Guess she'd had enough. Enough yelling. Enough losing
money on craps and blackjack and pool halls. I was a good man
once, you know? But not good enough. She left when I hit her."
His dry hand moved across his stubble. "I would've left, too, if
I'd been her."
He was quiet then, his bottle hidden in the soiled, worn bag on
the ground. I took it out in plain view. Whiskey, shimmering
like coins in the moonlight. I took a turn and watched the moths
dance around the streetlights. There were no churches or temples
or synagogues or mosques. But something tangible electrified the
air. Looking down into the dark, littered backalleys, I saw a
points of light on the ground, tiny flames. Small trails of
candle wax reflected moonlight and disappeared into doorways
along the lengths of the buildings.
I eyed my friend, as he sat withering in his remorse, and
pointed. "Ileana?" I asked tentatively.
The old man looked up, shook his head. "No. That's us. When
there's a ring around the full moon we light candles where we've
seen her." He took a deep, slow breath. "But she only visits the
new men now. I've been told you only see her once, but I think I
was lucky. Maybe she likes me." He coughed again, tried to sit
up.
"One night, I saw her again. The lights were on in a factory a
few streets over. Very late. You know what they did there? The
company that owns it is big. It has other stores all over. They
always hire women: old, young, Filipino, Mexican, Chinese,
Vietnamese, all kinds. But never men. Those women, they work all
day. I used to watch them sometimes. They'd be really tired when
they came out. Hungry, too. Well, that night I saw an ambulance
pull up. A woman was bleeding. She was pregnant and started
bleeding. And the supervisor didn't let her go until it was too
late. After the ambulance took her away, he sent the other women
home and stood there at the doorway, smoking. For a long time
nothing happened. He looked like a dragon, smoke coming out of
his nose and mouth. He finished a whole pack just standing
there. And then I saw her, Ileana, dressed in a nurse's white
uniform, the old fashioned kind with the pointy cap. She walked
up to him and she spit in his face, something red. She lit her
candle and left it there in that spot. Then she disappeared into
the alley. There are no exits. It's a dead end by that factory
wall. That supervisor, he didn't come back to work the next day,
or the next. And eventually, the factory closed.
"That was the last time I saw Ileana."
Silang Kamay (kamay@mellers1.psych.berkeley.edu)
--------------------------------------------------
Silang Kamay is interested in exporing the possibilities of
science fiction, spirituality, environmental justice, and
feminism. Silang also likes warmth: glowing candles, a familiar
sweater, a hot mug of split pea soup, sincerity, and human
kindness.
The Funeral Party by Connie Baron
=====================================
...................................................................
Adolescence is a process few would care to repeat: a time in
which we must define ourselves, a road we must travel alone.
...................................................................
Only her father had cried at the funeral. The rest of the family
wore straight, sad faces, but displayed no other signs of grief.
This had puzzled Anne, but she, too, had shed no tears. Now
surrounded by cool, dark closet air, dank with the scent of
cloves and oranges, it seemed clear. Granny wasn't really gone.
She was still alive in her family, in her things.
Anne stroked the flowered house coat that hung on a nail in the
back of the closet. It smelled of Granny: soap, powder, and milk
of magnesia. She petted Granny's prized fur coat and pressed her
face deep into its chilly pile, like she would when Granny
hugged her. She half expected to hear Granny's raspy voice
saying, "Don't do that, the oil from your face hurts the guard
hairs."
Anne left her cheek in the soft fur and fingered the cashmere
coat hanging next to it. It had been Big Joe's. Its secret inner
pocket held a sterling flask that Granny had never known about,
or at least that's what Granny had said when Anne had found it
on one of her sleep-overs.
Laughter filtered through the back wall of the closet. Anne
strained to hear what was being said.
"Oh, Bridget could be a pill."
"Remember the time she sued old man Jensen because she thought
his dogs dug up her rose bush? And it turned out to be Big Joe
playing a drunken trick on her?"
Anne pulled her arms tight around her. These people, many of
whom Anne had never seen before, didn't know anything about her
family, about Granny.
"She wasn't one for change. I remember her saying Vatican II
would damn us all to hell."
Anne stepped out and forced the closet door back over the thick
carpeting until it shut tight, blocking the voices. She didn't
understand why these outsiders had to be invited to the funeral
party. She leaned against the closet door and looked out the
frost-trimmed windows at the sunlight playing on Granny's
snow-covered yard. Two weeks before, when the heavy snow had
first fallen, Granny had pressed her face on the same cold
glass, forming a halo of mist. "Fresh snow makes me wish I was
on the farm again," she'd said. "My brother and I would rush
into the fresh powder and make dozens of snow angels. We'd
decorate their heads with twigs and rocks and give them names,
then spend the afternoon defending our armies of angels with
snowballs."
Now the wind had mounded the snow into sharp frozen tufts, like
smooth crust-covered meringue.
Anne turned as her skinny cousin Linda slipped through the door,
balanced on one leg, and pushed with the other against the heavy
door Granny'd had installed to keep out Big Joe's snoring. When
she turned, Anne saw she held a big green tumbler full to the
top with wine. Linda pushed the glass toward Anne. Anne
hesitated; Linda rolled her eyes. "It'll make you feel better, I
promise."
"What if someone comes in?" Anne pushed a mound of coats away
from the edge of the bed and slid down, her back pressing
against Granny's bright green dust ruffle, pulling her legs up
near her chest so she'd fit in between the twin beds.
"Don't be such a dumbshit. If someone comes in, we'll just hide
it under the bed." Linda took a gulp. "Besides, they're all
bombed anyway." She wrinkled her nose, took another drink, then
held out the tumbler. Linda always picked up on things that
presented opportunity. Granny said she was a lot like her mother
that way. Anne couldn't imagine Aunt Ellie being that sneaky,
but she always did have a bit of the devil in her -- Anne's
father's words.
Anne sniffed the wine like she'd seen her Dad do at dinner
parties, and took a small sip. "God, it tastes like sour cough
syrup!" She wiped her mouth with the edge of her sleeve and then
remembered it was velvet. "Shoot!" She waved her arm in the air
trying to dry the droplets while she took another big gulp. Her
face flushed a peachy color.
"It's that plum stuff our Dads made. Give me some more."
A voice came close to the door. "I'm so glad you're here, dear.
Don't let me forget to give you the things Granny had put away
for you. We don't get to see you that often." The doorknob
rattled with the weight of a hand being placed upon it. Anne
looked at Linda and quickly hid the tumbler under the bed.
Party noises rushed the room as the door opened. "I just want to
change out of this uniform, Aunt Ellie. I'll be right out."
Maryjane, the girls's second cousin, shut the door, paused a
moment, and then picked up the silver-framed, black and white
wedding picture of Granny and Big Joe that sat on the vanity.
"Oh, hi," she said when she saw the girls reflected in the
mirror. "What are you guys doing hiding in here anyway?" She
opened Granny's jewelry box and held a pair of pearl earrings to
her ears. "I wonder if Aunt Ellie will give me these?"
Anne squeezed her knees close to her chest. If Granny knew
anyone was digging through her personal things, she would have
thrown a fit. She believed in privacy.
Maryjane tossed the earrings back in the velvet-lined box
without bothering to hook them together. "So what are you guys
doing anyway?"
"Just talking. I hate these things." Linda jumped up, pulling at
her thick black tights. "When did you get here, Maryjane? Mom
said you weren't coming."
"Seniors got excused early. God! I would have been here for the
funeral except I had tests." She half-smiled her lip at Linda,
then tossed a plastic shopping bag on the bed.
"Yeah, right," Anne said under her breath, crossing her legs,
Indian fashion, even though ladies aren't supposed to sit like
that.
"Guard the door, will you?" Maryjane asked Linda.
Linda raised her eyebrows and leaned against the door while
Maryjane unbuttoned her uniform blouse. Maryjane undressed like
it was nothing, like she was nearly naked in front of people all
the time. Anne and Linda were best friends, but even they turned
away from each other when they changed. Maryjane wore a sheer,
glossy, lace-trimmed bra with a little blue flower in the
center. Her thin bikini underwear matched.
Maryjane lifted her arm, sniffing it. "Ugh... I stink of smoke.
Do you know where Auntie keeps her pit perfume?"
Linda shrugged. Anne concentrated on picking little balls of
fuzz from the cream-colored carpet.
"Oh, well." Maryjane tilted her head to the side and studied her
mostly naked body in the mirror. "Did I tell you I might be
going to France?"
"No." Anne grew more uncomfortable watching her, and crossed her
arms over her chest. Her Mom had been telling her for a while
that she needed a bra, but she'd put her off. She didn't want
one until Linda got one. She looked at Linda and decided it
might be a long wait.
"What was the funeral like?" Maryjane opened her bag and slipped
a white ruffled blouse over her head. "Sad? Everybody carrying
on?"
"It was okay," Linda said. "Pretty much like Big Joe's, only
more old people." Linda popped two pieces of Trident into her
mouth and spoke around them. "Mom said Granny would have liked
it -- lots of expensive flowers and ceremony. You know."
Maryjane pulled an opened pack of Kools and a makeup bag from
her purse. The two cousins watched as she reapplied gobs of pink
blush and mascara. Neither Linda nor Anne were allowed to wear
makeup yet. "Who all was there? Was Jack?"
"The policeman? Yeah." As Linda began to list names, Anne
thought about the limousine ride to the church. Her two younger
brothers had hardly talked of anything else for two days before
the funeral. Even though she was shocked by Granny's sudden
death, she rather liked the thought of all her schoolmates on
the playground staring with admiration and sympathy at her
family filing out of the long black car into the church.
But Anne had had to ride in her parent's rented car, alone in
front with the driver, while her brothers rode with Linda and
the other cousins in the limo. They'd made faces at her through
the back windows.
In the back, her mother and father had talked in low voices. "We
never had a chance to talk about how things were. About Dad and
his drinking." Anne had tried not to listen as her father wiped
his swollen eyes. Her mother squeezed his hand and stared out at
the cold Minneapolis day. An acidy feeling crept up Anne's
throat.
"We all got to throw flowers on her coffin," Linda continued.
"It was freezing, though -- Michael had frozen snot all over his
face!" She laughed and stepped away from the door, walking
between the twin beds. "And then Molly punched him."
A clink, a muffled thump, and the sickly-sweet plum smell made
Anne's heart pound.
"Shit." Linda scowled at Anne, lifted the bed skirt, and turned
the green tumbler upright. "God, go get a rag."
"You knocked it over! Why don't you...."
"Damn it, you're such a baby. Good thing Granny's not here." She
pushed Anne out of the way and stomped out of the room, leaving
the door open. The red liquid crept across the carpet, turning
it a dusty pink.
"What are you guys hiding?" Maryjane asked.
"Oh, Linda just kicked over her pop." Anne tried to cover the
spill with her hands, hoping the sour smell wouldn't carry.
Linda rushed back in with an sopping dish rag. Anne reached for
it, but Linda knocked her arm away and began blotting the spill.
Maryjane stood over the girls, hands resting on her hips.
"That's not pop." She walked back to the vanity and examined her
face close-up, wiping away a black smudge under her eye. "You
don't have to sneak around, you know. I can get you guys some
wine."
Linda's foot pawed the floor. "Yeah, right. They're hardly going
to give you any wine, so how are you going to get some for us?"
Maryjane threw her head towards her knees and brushed her hair.
When she stood up and shook her hair out, Anne noticed how much
she and Maryjane looked alike: brown wavy hair, round cheeks,
almond-shaped eyes. Even her body resembled Maryjane's -- not as
full, but not far from it either.
"So you each want your own glass?" Maryjane half-smiled and
teased her bangs a little before she walked out the door.
As soon as the door shut Linda said, "Can you believe her? She
thinks she's so cool just because she's a senior." She threw
down the bed skirt, tossed the wine-soaked rag into Granny's
hamper, and jumped, backwards onto the bed. A few coats fell to
the floor.
Anne picked them up. "Did you see how big her boobs were?"
"They were pretty hard to miss. She thinks she's such hot shit.
Do you think anybody'd care if I took that thing?" She pointed
to a small satin ball covered with ribbon, beads and sequins
hanging from the ceiling light. "Me and Granny made that thing.
Do you think anybody would care?"
Anne shrugged. "What do you think they'll do with all her
stuff?" Anne picked up Granny's silver-handled brush and pulled
out a few short gray hairs.
"Sell it, I guess. Divide the money, give it to the church or
leave it with you guys and the house. Who knows?" She shut her
eyes and pulled a scarf over her face.
Anne stared into the mirror. If Linda had heard that Anne's
family was moving into Granny's house, it must be true. Three
nights before, when she had heard her mother and father
bickering late at night over how cramped the five of them were
in their two bedroom house, she'd imagined she'd been dreaming.
Anne wanted Granny's house to remain unchanged, with its tended
gardens and the ceramics workshop in the basement. Her mother
and brother's sloppy habits would make that impossible.
"I bet Mom hits the roof when Maryjane asks her for wine," Linda
said, pulling the scarf from her face.
Anne held up her fingers and crossed them, her feelings suddenly
soothed, perhaps by Linda's seeming acceptance of the house
situation, but more likely by the wine. She brushed her bangs,
trying to brush away a wash of guilt. She had promised Granny
she'd never drink.
Maryjane came back into the room, pushing the door open with her
butt. "Aunt Ellie said you could each have one." She handed the
girls each a clear, long-stemmed wineglass. "I _told_ you guys
there wouldn't be a problem. Nobody gives a shit what you do."
She raised her eyebrows, flashing herself a smile in the mirror.
"I'm going to see if there's anyone interesting here."
Cigarette smoke accosted Anne as she stepped into the dining
room. Granny had never allowed smoking in the house. Even Big
Joe had puffed his fat, pungent cigars on the wooden back porch.
Anne gulped her wine, but set her glass down when she saw her
father sitting on the piano bench talking with a dark-haired,
bronzed man.
"Anne!" Her father held his arm out. Anne flipped her hair over
her shoulder and tried to look casual as she walked toward him.
The dark-haired man pulled at his white fitted shirt and
smoothed his gray tie. "Last time I saw her she was just a kid.
She's grown into a fine young lady."
"You remember my cousin Jack, the cop, don't you?" Her Dad
winked and put his arm around Anne's shoulder. She was
surprised. He hardly ever touched her.
"Sure," Anne lied. Her Dad's cousins weren't around much, except
for stuff like this, when they had to come. There had been a
falling out, a divorce, money problems. Anne had heard that
Jack's mother used to be black and blue all the time, and she
remembered when she was about five Granny and Big Joe had taken
Jack and his sisters in for several months. Jack was cute,
though, in an older person's sort of way. He had nice eyes and
smelled musky -- different from her father's Irish Spring soap.
Anne saw Linda walk over and stand behind Jack, still holding
her wine.
"So what grade are you in now?" Jack set his beer on Granny's
handmade rag rug, took a pack of cigarettes from his top pocket
and flipped one in his mouth like he was in a cigarette
commercial.
"She's in the sixth grade," her Dad smiled, squeezing her
shoulder again, his head bobbing slightly when he talked.
"No I'm not, I'm in seventh. God."
Linda snickered and snuck away while she still had the chance.
Anne slipped her Dad's arm off her shoulder and looked toward
her mother nestled, grinning, in between Ellie and a bunch of
smiling women. Ellie laughed with them but held her body
straight and stiff, and carried the glass in her hand to her
mouth with sharp movements. She swayed a little when she reached
out, encircling Linda's waist with her deceptively strong, thin
arm, which greatly resembled Granny's. Suddenly Anne wanted to
talk to her aunt.
"Excuse me, I'm -- "
Her father grabbed her sleeve. "Anne, how would you like to get
me another glass of wine?" He held out his empty glass, and said
to Jack, "Mom would have liked it that we're drinking the plum
wine. It was her favorite."
Anne shrugged. Granny hardly ever drank, only on special
occasions, and then only one glass of wine. Jack winked at her,
nodded and stood. His aroma glided over her. Anne felt her face
flush like it had with her first drink.
In the kitchen, two overweight women Anne didn't know were
filling Granny's good dishes with food. "Well, if she's wherever
Joe's gone, let's hope they're getting along now," one said,
pushing a piece of ham into her mouth. "Remember that horrible
fight they had in Gorley's market over the price of a roast? Joe
screaming because she didn't know the value of a dollar, and her
yelling back about him drinking up all his money? And in front
of the kids!"
The other woman shook her head. "I always knew it was a mistake
for her to move into the other bedroom. Just doesn't seem
natural. Even if Joe drank too much a husband needs certain....
Hello! You're Anne, aren't you?"
Anne just glared at them, wanting to tell the old biddies to
shut up. What did they know about her family? Granny and Big Joe
had loved each other -- they just weren't mushy about it like
other people. Anne remembered how Granny always prepared Big
Joe's favorite meal on Sundays -- fried chicken and mashed
potatoes -- and how she'd wait dinner on him even if he was late
or drunk. She never complained.
Anne marched to the counter and the women went back to their
work. Just as she lifted the heavy wine bottle, her mother came
through the swinging door. "And just what is it you think you're
doing?" she demanded, dumping several paper plates into the
garbage.
"Dad wanted me to get him some wine." Anne pushed her half-
empty glass toward some dirty dishes and set the heavy bottle
down, carefully, so she didn't scratch Granny's ceramic tile
counter. "Twenty years now and not a scratch," she'd said every
time she'd polished it.
"Just what he needs, more wine. He's already made a fool of
himself." Anne's mother picked at a bit of ham, then rinsed some
forks and piled them on a dish towel. "I hope he's able to deal
with things better tomorrow. Heaven knows we've got enough to do
around here." She opened a cabinet and ran her finger over a
shelf of cookbooks, all neatly alphabetized. "So much stuff to
get rid of," she sighed, then turned back to Anne. "I'm leaving
in a few minutes. Your father's going to walk home later. You
want to go with him or me?"
Anne had to think about it a minute. She only lived five blocks
away, but it was winter. Linda walked into the kitchen, still
carrying her wine glass. "Are you going to stay?" Anne asked
her.
Linda looked confused. "Yeah, I guess so."
"Whose is that?" Anne's mother pointed to Linda's wineglass.
"Oh, my Mom said I could have it." Linda took another sip and
smiled a smile just like the one Anne's father used. It was his
Cheshire Cat look, Granny used to say.
Anne's mother put her hands on her hips and glared at the two of
them. "I don't care what any of you do. You can all make asses
of yourselves. I'm going home." She turned toward Granny's room
to fetch coats. "Call the boys up from the basement, would you?"
Linda leaned over to Anne after Anne's mother had left the
kitchen. "Man, that Jack guy's funny. Kinda reminds me of Ricky
Johnson." Linda's cheeks blotched red as she poured more wine
for herself and swaggered back to the living room, leaving Anne
nibbling on some scalloped potatoes. Jack was no Ricky Johnson,
Anne thought, but she and Linda didn't have the same taste.
"Oh, I can't believe you're giving me those, Aunt Ellie."
Maryjane swung open the two-way door. "I remember Auntie serving
me tea in that set for my seventh birthday. And we had those
little cakes, _petite fores_." She stood in front of the
cabinets as Ellie slid the glass door to one side, handing her a
shinny orange, yellow and gold teacup.
"I remember when Mom made this set, just before Linda was born.
You'll be in your own place next year.... Go see if there's a
box and some newspapers in the garage."
Anne wanted to protest, to tell Ellie that Granny had promised
that tea set to her, to give to her own little girl. "Your Dad's
wondering where his wine is," Maryjane said to Anne as she
slipped through the kitchen to the back door.
"Granny made these so you girls could all come over for tea,"
Ellie was saying. "She wanted granddaughters so much. Granny
understood girls, she used to say." Ellie smiled sadly and held
up a teacup, making the light reflect off the porcelain inside.
"They were so much easier to get on with."
Anne took a long drink of wine. "Aunt Ellie, I..."
The door flew open and Maryjane poked her head around the door.
"Can't find the boxes. Any suggestions?" Her cheeks were pink
from just a few moments in the garage, or maybe it was wine.
"Look in the closet near the big door. She probably broke them
down for storage. God knows, she'd never have anything unsightly
or out of place." She opened a bottom cupboard and picked out a
few table linens. "Mom was a real pack rat. Look at this, she
must have thirty tablecloths here. What she needed all this when
for when her own kids were hard up, I'll never know."
Anne noticed that some of the shelves in the side board had been
emptied of Granny's silver and hand-painted porcelain. She
decided to ask her father about it.
One of the fat ladies from the kitchen was seated next to Anne's
father on the piano bench. Anne searched the room for Linda,
sure she would also be outraged by the disappearance of Granny's
things.
Linda was draped over the back of Jack's chair, the
light-colored one that kids weren't even supposed to get near.
Linda acted as if she'd never heard the rules though, as if she
could do anything because she was drinking.
"Linda, you know you're not supposed to be on that chair." Anne
heard her grandmother in her own voice.
"Oh right. I forgot. This is going to be your chair and your
house, isn't it?" Linda glared at Anne like she might want to
start a fist fight.
"Why don't you tell me about yourself?" Jack patted the big
chair's footstool for Anne to sit down. "You girls are
drinking?" He smiled, a kind of cocky, crooked smile.
"Yeah," Linda said, shifting positions so she could challenge
him head on. "What are you going to do about it, Mister
Policeman? Arrest us?" Her head wobbled a little as she talked.
"Well, I could, I suppose. If I wanted to." He grinned at Linda,
and then at Anne.
Anne turned away. "You can't arrest us. Our parents said we
could have it."
"It's still not legal. Drinking gets girls like you in trouble."
He reached out and touched Anne's cheek. "You know what I mean?"
Anne didn't. But Maryjane must have because she started laughing
and pulled her chair closer to Jack.
"Remember that time you caught me, in that car?" Maryjane rubbed
his shoulder. "That was pretty embarrassing."
Jack tugged on her hair, but not the way a brother or a cousin
pulls hair. "Well, you stay out of back seats from now on."
"Yeah," Linda laughed at herself, a kind of donkey laugh. "You
shouldn't be drinking in cars."
Maryjane giggled and twisted her hair. "That's not all you
shouldn't be doing in cars."
Anne blushed and her stomach churned. Jack leaned over to her.
"You know what we're talking about, don't you?" His fermented
breath rippled through her hair with his whispering voice.
Maryjane laughed louder. Linda continued honking.
Anne felt sick to her stomach. "I have to go to the bathroom."
Anne sat at Granny's bathroom counter staring at herself in the
mirror. She didn't care if Linda was her friend, or if Jack was
cute. She _hated_ these people. They didn't care about anything.
They acted like Granny had never existed.
She opened Granny's makeup drawer. It was still arranged just
so: hairpins in a plastic jar; bright red rouge; face powder in
another slot; and lipsticks all with the labels facing so you
could read them. Anne played with the lipsticks, letting them
slide through her fingers one at a time.
"What will they do with your things?" she said out loud. "It
won't be like when Big Joe died and they just boxed up his
stuff." She tried to imagine herself living in Granny's house,
getting ready every day in this bathroom. She would probably get
Granny's room. She wondered if she would behave like Granny did
after Big Joe died, always hearing things, seeing things. Anne
thought about the time she'd woken up at 3:30 in the morning to
find her grandmother standing in the bedroom doorway crying.
Anne had held her as Granny said she thought she'd heard Big Joe
snoring in the next room. That was the only time Anne had
thought of her grandmother as frail. Even in her coffin she'd
looked strong and solid.
"Let me in, Anne." Linda pounded on the door.
Anne opened the door and Linda ran in, pulling her tights down
around her knees well before she got to the toilet. Anne closed
the door. "I've never had to pee so bad in my life. You know
what? I'm drunk. Can you believe it? And nobody even cares!"
Anne looked into the big plate-glass mirror. "I think I'm going
home."
"Why? We're just starting to have fun. Jack's going to teach us
to play poker." She wadded up a huge piece of toilet paper.
"He's great-looking, isn't he?"
Anne wanted to say he gave her the creeps, that they were all
creeps, but she didn't. "I've got to do my Spanish homework. We
have a test tomorrow."
Anne left Linda on the pot, closing the door behind her, and
went to find her father in the living room. He was at the piano
bench, sipping wine. "Can we go home?" Anne asked.
He stared at her. "I have to help Ellie clean up." He took a
long drink of his wine, wiped his mouth and looked around the
living room. "Mom would have liked this party. Yep, it would
have made her feel real good." He tinkled the piano keys.
Anne let out an exasperated sigh and went to Granny's room for
her coat. There weren't as many as before, but hers was way at
the bottom.
She smelled Jack's musky cigarette smell before she realized he
had followed her into the room. Anne turned. Jack leaned on
Granny's vanity, rubbing his fingers across the silver picture
frame. "Are you leaving?" he asked, moving closer.
"Yes," Anne said. She turned away from him, pulling her coat
from the pile.
"Do you want a ride home? I'll drive you. It's awful cold." He
touched her hair the way he'd touched Maryjane's. Anne looked to
the window. Frost now covered the whole thing. "No, I'll walk,"
she said.
Jack took the coat from Anne's hand, slipped it over her
shoulders, pushed her bangs from her face, and let his hands
drift across her chest. He craned his neck down to kiss her, but
Anne turned her cheek, her nose filled with waves of his
cologne. Nausea crept up her throat. Anne wasn't sure it had
even happened until Jack said, "I just want to make you feel
better. You looked so sad, like you needed a hug. Let me drive
you home."
Anne moved away from him and his cigarette-and-beer breath. She
felt angry, so angry she wanted to hit him or scream but she
couldn't. She was overcome by confusion. Who were these people,
this _family_? Why didn't anything make any sense? Anne left the
room. She wished she had died with Granny.
Linda stood in the hallway. "You're really leaving?" She held
out her glass to Anne. "You want some?"
Anne shook her head.
"Come on. Don't be such a baby."
Anne glowered toward Jack in the bedroom doorway, still feeling
the pressure of his hands on her breasts. The light of sunset
filtered through the frosty bedroom windows made him look like
he was standing in a cloud. He smiled.
"Come on." Linda grabbed Anne's arm, pulling her toward the
living room. "Hey, have you been crying?" She leaned close to
Anne's face. "You look kind of funny."
Anne's father was still at the piano bench talking with two old
ladies. He sipped his wine, apparently ready to stay the rest of
the night. Maryjane sat at Granny's dining room table. She'd
moved the big crystal bowl that usually sat in the center to a
corner of the floor. She was shuffling cards and hitting them
against the waxed wood to stack them. She hadn't even put down a
table pad. Granny would have killed her. Aunt Ellie shuffled
through the corner cabinet for chips.
"I've got pennies. Please stay!" Linda's fingers tightened
around Anne's arm.
"Yes, why don't you stay?" Jack put his hand on her shoulder as
he walked by. "I'll teach you a few card tricks." He went to
where Maryjane was sitting.
"No." Anne pulled her arm from Linda's hand. "No. I've got to
go."
"Come on..." Maryjane motioned.
Linda shrugged and nearly skipped to the living room.
Anne checked her pockets for mittens. They must have fallen out
in the coat pile. She hesitated, then quickly went back to
Granny's bedroom to get them. She took one last look at the
room, at its essence. Soon this would be gone. The last bit of
sunset made diamond reflections like the inside of the teacup
bounce off the Christmas ball Linda and Granny had made. She
didn't want any of these people, any of this _family_, taking or
selling Granny's things. She stepped up onto one of the beds, on
the pile of coats, and yanked the satin ball down. She hid it in
her pocket. I'll keep it in my desk, she thought. Linda will
never see it there.
Outside, the winter night bit her face with a mist of tiny
flakes. Her breath smoked in the blackness.
As she passed the kitchen window, she looked back into what had
been Granny's home. Through the open swinging door, she saw her
father standing at the dining room table leaning over Linda.
Jack held up a fan of cards and Maryjane picked one. The light
from Granny's chandelier formed a circle around them.
Anne turned and walked a few feet with her back against the
wind, her patent-leather shoes squeaking as they hit the frozen
snow. The people in the window grew smaller every step she took.
She turned and ran to the long sloping hill that faced Granny's
house, then tossed her body backwards through the thick crust of
snow. She scissored her arms and legs together and apart through
the untouched snow, shaping an angel, the angel she could
imagine inside of herself right now, flying away into the
darkness.
Connie Baron (cbaron@iastate.edu)
-----------------------------------
Connie Baron writes and teaches in Ames, Iowa, where she lives
with her husband, dog, cat, and two birds.
Crown Jewels by Colin Morton
================================
...................................................................
So people on the other end of a modem line or net connection
aren't necessarily who they seem to be. So what? Chances are,
neither are _you_.
...................................................................
[engage 6-June-92 03:33]
--Hello?
Son, your mother's dead. What can I say? She passed away in my
arms. And you know what she said?
--Who is this?
She said if that dirty son of mine comes to my funeral, you spit
in his face. Will you be there son? It's tomorrow afternoon.
--What number are you calling?
Frank? Frank, isn't that you?
--There's no Frank here!
Oh, I'm sorry. Did I wake you up?
--Yes, you woke me up!
Are you wearing pajamas?
[disengage]
[engage 6-June-92 03:39]
--Wha...?
Are you alone? Did I wake you up? This is terrible, but I
couldn't keep it from you another minute. It's about your blood
test. I'm afraid I've got to tell you. You've got AIDS.
--What? Who is this?
Harry? Isn't this 364-0952?
--No!
Oh that's terrible. I must have misdialed. You see, my friend
just tested positive for AIDS and my mind just boggles at the
thought of what this means for me and all our friends. My name's
Francois, by the way. Are you gay?
--Do you realize what time it is?
[singing] It's a quarter to four, and there's no one in the
store... Are you still awake Harry? Harry? Have you forgotten
about that five bucks you owe me? Do you know what the odds are
of you being hit by a truck before you pay me back?
--Jeez, I'd like to pay you back you sonofabitch. You need help,
you know that? If you call back again you're gonna be recorded
by the police, so just fuck off.
[disengage]
[engage 6-June-92 03:43]
--Unh?
That package that came for you. Don't open it.
--Unh? What package? Who is this?
You mean you didn't get the package? Jeez, are we ever in shit
now.
--What are you talking about?
Sure, sure, I understand. You don't know from nothin'. You think
the pigs care about that?
--Look, I don't have any--
Okay, just get the hell out of there. It's not safe. Understand?
Just don't be home.
--Who the...
And, by the way, is your wife there?
--She's asleep.
Kiss her for me, will you?
--Who is this?
She'll know. Just tell her I'll never forget that night. Now
move!
--What?
[disengage]
[6-June-92 03:54]
[initializing modem]
ATDT 818-523-4714
CONNECT
ACCESS CODE: ***-***
ACCESS DENIED
ACCESS CODE: ***-***
ACCESS DENIED
ACCESS CODE: ***-***
ACCESS DENIED
NO CARRIER
ATDT 213-562-9344
CONNECT
ACCESS CODE: ***-***
ACCESS DENIED
ACCESS CODE: ***-***
ACCESS DENIED
ACCESS CODE: ***-***
Welcome to BRAIN, the Network of the Bureaus for Research on
Artificial Intelligence
CODE NAME: CrownJewels
REAL NAME: Harold E. Houdini
PHONE NUMBER: 315-956-6492
Number given does not correspond to signal.
PHONE NUMBER: 315-233-6412
AFFILIATION: AIRB Section Y
STATUS: NEW USER
Most areas of BRAIN are off-limits without enhanced or privileged
user status or area-specific authorization codes.
MAIN MENU
SELECTION: Area files
AREA SELECTED: Migration Project
AUTHORIZATION CODE: KI5-3AS
KI5-3AS?
KL5.3AS
MIGRATION PROJECT AREA MENU
SELECTION: Read migratry.txt
MIGRATION PROJECT STATUS REPORT
This protected file briefly describes work to date by the four
cooperating agencies (NSC, DD, UCD, AIRB) on the AI security and
counter-intelligence migratory programs archived in the file
MIGRATRY.ARC. It also summarizes each of these machine-language
programs and provides a prospectus of research in progress.
Downloading of this file and MIGRATRY.ARC is on a need-to-know
basis only, and removal in any form of the data contained
therein from authorized user security areas is prohibited by the
agreement of the parties.
Table of Contents
Chapter Page
1. Executive summary 2
2. Background of project 4
3. Primary information sources 9
4. Migration of AI in living carriers 15
[FOR MORE, PRESS RETURN]: Exit
MIGRATION PROJECT AREA MENU
SELECTION: Download
FILE(S) TO DOWNLOAD: migratry.txt, migratry.arc
PROGRAM: Telix ++ RATE: 9600 Baud
DATA TO DOWNLOAD: 246,142
TIME TO DOWNLOAD: 2 min. 14 sec.
DOWNLOADING MIGRATRY.TXT
DOWNLOAD COMPLETE
DATA TO DOWNLOAD: 1.486 Mb
TIME TO DOWNLOAD: 13 min. 24 sec.
DOWNLOADING MIGRATRY.ARC
DOWNLOADING COMPLETE
SELECTION: Upload
FILE(S) TO UPLOAD: B:/predator.exe
DATA TO UPLOAD: 2,336
TIME TO UPLOAD: 2 sec.
UPLOADING PREDATOR.EXE UPLOAD COMPLETE
SELECTION: Exit
MAIN MENU
SELECTION: Exit
Exiting BRAIN. Do you wish to leave a message? No
To receive enhanced access, please leave a message stating your
primary and secondary research interests. On your next log-on, you
will be asked to complete a detailed questionnaire and, upon
completion, will receive enhanced-2B status.
Do you wish to leave a message? No
Exiting...
NO CARRIER
[close log]
[log 6-June-92 0441]
ATDT 315-523-4714
CONNECT
WELCOME TO THE DRAGON'S LAIR
CODE NAME: Crownjewels
STATUS: PRIVILEGED 1A
DRAGON GAME: IT'S YOUR MOVE
INPUT: GRAY WIZARD crosses the mountains through Grand Vent pass
[ENCOUNTERS THIRST]: drinks water
[ENCOUNTERS A BRACE OF FURIES IN A HURRY]: presents ankh;
pronounces the charm avaunt, par dieu
[PASS]: descends the pass into the coastal plain
[ENCOUNTERS TABLET]: reads tablet
[THIS ISN'T THE KIND OF TABLET YOU CAN READ]: tastes tablet
[IT HAS VERY LITTLE TASTE BUT MAKES GRAY WIZARD FEEL FUNNY]:
discards tablet
[THE TABLET WAS A SEED. WITHIN MINUTES A SMALL TREE GROWS BEFORE
GRAY WIZARD'S EYES. THERE IS A SIGN ON THE TRUNK OF THE TREE]:
reads sign
[THE SIGN IS AN ARROW POINTING WEST SOUTH WEST. THE PATH SEEMS TO
OPEN HERE.]: wsw
[THE WESTERN OCEAN COMES INTO VIEW]: pause
[24-HOUR CLOCK ENGAGED]
[EXIT GAME]
HEY JULES, THIS IS YOUR 253RD CALL AND THERE ARE 2 MESSAGES FOR
YOU. WANNA READ `EM? No
MAIN MENU
SELECTION: Yell
YELLING AT SYSOP. NO REPLY. AGAIN? Yes
YELLING AT SYSOP. NO REPLY. WANNA LEAVE A MESSAGE? Yes
TO: SysOp
FROM: Crownjewels
I can't believe it, Dragon baby! I can't fuckin' believe it! I
finally got access to BRAIN and that authorization code you gave
me actually worked! I'm happy as a pig in shit! Would give you
the access code, but no point. Log on and your system will be
cannibalized -- I turned loose a Predator in the heart of BRAIN!
First having downloaded the whole MIGRATRY archive! I'm a
fuckin' genius! Or if I'm not now it's only a matter of time.
Though I don't have much of that left, at least not as myself.
Which brings me to the last thing you can do for me, Dragon ol'
pal. To get into BRAIN I had to give my real phone number, and
you know what that means. Time to initiate Flight Plan S. Please
give the propellers a spin and let me know the details. Pronto
Tonto. From now on, when they talk about me, all they'll be able
to say is, Who was that masked man? Hi ho! Heh, heh, heh.
[exit]
HEY JULES, THIS IS YOUR 253RD CALL AND THERE ARE 2 MESSAGES FOR
YOU. WANNA READ UM? Yes
MESSAGE FROM: Silver Dust [5-June-92 11:51]
TO: Crown Jewels
You haven't returned my messages. You can't know how painfully I
miss you when you don't leave anything in my mailbox. I don't
care about your terminal cancer. I'm strong enough, I'll take
care of you and ask nothing in return. Please send me a picture
of yourself. I can't believe you haven't received mine yet. Is
the postal system so bad? Or, having seen my picture, have you
decided not to answer?
[FOR MORE, PRESS RETURN] [exit]
MESSAGE FROM: Silver Dust [5-June-92 21:22]
[exit]
WANNA REPLY? Yes
FROM: Crownjewels
TO: Silver Dust
Sorry our goodbye has to be like this. It was a wonderful
fantasy, but that is all we could ever be to each other. I've
received a second opinion, and my condition is even worse than
expected. Time is running out for me. A week, maybe a month, no
more. I'll be almost normal up until the last few hours, then
agony, horror. I don't know why I don't end it right now, while
it is still in my power to choose. Dear, I wish I could have
known you. Good-bye.
[exit] [exit]
WANNA LEAVE A MESSAGE FOR THE SYSOP? Yes
TO: SysOp
FROM: Crownjewels
For Chrissake, Dragon, move fast on Flight Plan S. Enlist
Denvold's help. His contacts are secure. I gotta get some
shut-eye right now, but every sound in this creaky old house
makes me think they're breaking the door down with axes. I'm
afraid to even unarchive MIGRATRY until I'm safely away and
someone else. I'll leave the Treasure Chest open. Yell if you
have anything to report.
[exit]
[log 6-June-92 05:37]
[echo off]
BNU REVISION 7 FOSSIL COMPATIBLE COMMUNICATIONS
STATUS: Initializing
STATUS: Waiting
[exit 6-June-92 11:36]
[log 6-June-92 11:38]
ATDT 315-523-4714
CONNECT
WELCOME TO THE DRAGON'S LAIR
CODE NAME: Crownjewels
STATUS: PRIVILEGED 1A
DRAGON GAME: IT'S YOUR MOVE
INPUT: GRAY WIZARD descends Grand Vent Pass toward the western
ocean
[ENCOUNTERS DRAGON]: fights with sword and dagger
[GRAY WIZARD IS WOUNDED; BLOOD LOSS IS SERIOUS]: upholds pentagon;
invokes protection of forefathers
[GRAY WIZARD IS BOXED IN A CANYON; WEAK FROM LOSS OF BLOOD]:
upholds staff; invokes super-powers of the lion
[DRAGON IS GORED; WITHDRAWS TO CAUTERIZE WOUNDS]: GRAY WIZARD
advances wsw toward the western ocean
[THE WAY IS CLEAR; ON THE SHORE GRAY WIZARD FINDS TREASURE CHEST]:
open chest
[WITH WHAT, SMARTASS? IT'S LOCKED]: pause
[24-HOUR CLOCK ENGAGED]
[EXIT GAME]
HEY JULES, THIS IS YOUR 254TH CALL AND THERE ARE 2 MESSAGES FOR
YOU. WANNA READ UM? Yes
MESSAGE FROM: Silver Dust 6-June-92 0959
TO: Crown Jewels
[exit]
WANNA REPLY? No
MESSAGE FROM: Denvold Thorsdenton
[6-June-92 10:23]
TO: Crownjewels [highlighted and flashing urgent]
Documents in my possession! How do you like the name Lyndon
Jones? Leave message in re physical exchange. Cash only.
[end]
WANNA REPLY? Yes
FROM: Crownjewels
TO: Denvold Thorsdenton
McDonald's, Shopper's World. 1215 noon, today or tomorrow.
Message from Sealed Envelope: Commuter's overnight 2335 sat.
arr. [code y] dest. 1640 loc time sun. in locker. Better swing
there than swing here. Bon voyage.
[exit]
WANNA LEAVE A MESSAGE FOR THE SYSOP? Yes
TO: SysOp
FROM: Crownjewels
For almost the first time, I am feeling ambivalent about this
whole venture. To die, sure. That's the whole idea. But the
second part seems a needless bother. At the moment I mean. I'm
not afraid; don't think that. But now I'm on the verge of
Migration, I seem to have come back to the beginning again and
started asking myself, _why_? Is it worth it? Becoming digital,
microscopic. The slow wiping out of my old self, the rendering,
the melting like solder into the silicon. The smoky, metallic
odor of the electric life. Will it be any less nauseating than
this smelly, scratchy animal one? Okay. To die. To sleep. Gimme
more. A new life, sure, but what will the world make of a new
man with a name like Lyndon Jones?
[exit]
[6-June-92 12:34]
[engage]
--Hello?
He's dead! Oh my god, he's dead! Send the police, pronto, 12th
Street and Vine. Oh my god, that guy's got a gun! He's shooting
everybody in sight!
--Who the hell is this?
Huh? What do you care? Why don't you just go back to sleep? I
think I'll shoot myself.
[sound of gunshot close to receiver.]
[disconnect]
[7-June-92 10:58]
Hello. I won't be answering the phone anymore, because I'm about
to shoot myself. You can leave a message if you want to, but I
won't be returning it. You have just a super day now.
[7-June-92 13:02]
Very funny, guy. But unless you've got friends in the right
places, you won't be laughing long. Listen, I know your game,
and your next move just might depend on me. I could turn you in,
but with the little jackpot you just came into, you might just
be able to buy me off. Think about it. And keep looking over
your shoulder. You better hope I'm the one who catches up to you
first.
[7-June-92 16:44]
H -- Hello, Herbert? Crownjewels? It's me, Silver Dust.
Actually, my name's Cheryl. I hope you're joking. You can't give
up hope, you know. Not when people care about you. That's the
reason I'm calling. This mean guy visited. Said he's a friend of
yours, but I don't know... He was looking for you. Of course, I
didn't understand at first, since I didn't know your real name.
But I figured out who he meant. That's how I got this number.
Jeez, I hope nothing's wrong. Please call me: 239-4543. Or come
to my place. It's 403, the Clydesdale. You know, on Union? Oh, I
have this sick feeling you're in trouble and this guy has
something to do with it. If there's anything I can do--
[60-second message limit reached.]
[8-June-92 03:14]
[engage]
Yeah, I was just, uh... Jeez, you should change that message.
It's _creepy_. Anyway, I heard about Herb's, um, accident. I
just wanted to say how sorry I was. Like, I never met the guy,
eh? But I sort of knew him through the boards and all and I felt
like, you know, like we were really close. Anyway, I just wanted
to, you know, pay my respects. So, I guess that's all. Oh yeah,
in case anyone asks, you can say Lyndon called.
[disengage]
Colin Morton (aa905@freenet.carleton.ca)
------------------------------------------
Colin Morton is a full-time writer in Ottawa, Ontario. He has
published five books of poetry, including _The Merzbook_: Kurt
Schwitters Poems, and co-produced the animated film
_Primiti Too Taa_. His first novel, _Oceans Apart_, will appear
next spring from Quarry Press.
Two Solitudes by Carl Steadman
==================================
...................................................................
The Net can be a fast and direct way to communicate. But it's
still only a connection between separate points and separate
realities: it doesn't make two things the same.
...................................................................
Date: Sat, 24 Sep 94 15:36:20 CDT
---------------------------------
From: Lane Coutell <lane@pandemonium.com>
To: Dana Silverman <dsilverman@sobriquet.com>
Subject: hello...
Dana -
I am writing this to you, so that when you first access your
account, you will have mail waiting for you. I hope the new
setup works out for you.
You only left today, Dana, and I already miss you quite dearly.
I hope things work out with your mother, and that you'll write
me often. Three months seems like a long time - and will I even
see you then?
___________________________________
Lane Coutell lane@pandemonium.com
We will not be looking for change, and will not oppose the fixed
to the mobile; we will look for the more mobile than mobile:
metamorphosis... We will not distinguish the true from the
false, but will look for the falser than false: illusion and
appearance...
Date: Tue, 27 Sep 94 19:21:19 CDT
---------------------------------
From: Dana Silverman <dsilverman@sobriquet.com>
To: Lane Coutell <lane@pandemonium.com>
Subject: Arrival
Lane -
I have arrived safely, found the electrical current here
suitable for everyday use, and, hence, am writing you.
Infrastructure. Roads, airports, electrical grids, telephone
lines. After all this, still you.
There are many things for me to do, here, on my arrival. "I am
unpacking my library." Yes, I am...
Don't play in the middle of the street, Lane; also, don't go
into Mr. McGregor's garden.
Be careful, be good, be nice.
Dana
~~ Dana Silverman <dsilverman@sobriquet.com>
Date: Wed, 28 Sep 94 09:47:35 CDT
---------------------------------
From: Lane Coutell <lane@pandemonium.com>
To: Dana Silverman <dsilverman@sobriquet.com>
Subject: progress...
> I have arrived safely, found the electrical current here suitable for
> everyday use, and, hence, am writing you.
I wonder if anyone's created a device to 'listen' to alternating
current... not only its steady, rhythmic hum, but also its
fluctuations, its surges, spikes, and brown-outs - which makes
me think of the old Frankenstein-type movies, with the crackles
and pops of 'science' and 'progress.' Instead of hard science,
of course, we instead realized a soft technology, so we now have
the warm, silent convenience of plug-in air fresheners...
So, do you prefer the water in Des Plaines to that of
Minneapolis?
> There are many things for me to do, here, on my arrival. "I am
> unpacking my library." Yes, I am...
"History is an angel being borne... backward... into the
future."
I always wondered why the Angels "sounded like a lot of
lawnmowers... mowing down my lawn." I suppose this is why they
were Strange.
My love.
___________________________________
Lane Coutell lane@pandemonium.com
"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone,
"it means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less."
"The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words so many
different things."
"The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master -
that's all."
Date: Thu, 29 Sep 94 18:36:29 CDT
---------------------------------
From: Dana Silverman <dsilverman@sobriquet.com>
To: Lane Coutell <lane@pandemonium.com>
Subject: Mice, Baseball, and Moustaches
Sometimes, Lane, I sit and think. I think about how nice it
would be to have a mouse that worked, and other things too.
Yesterday, I sat and thought about a baseball game, because I
was watching one. It was a neat game, but we lost several
innings and finally the whole game, after two extra innings. I
was trying to think of a winning strategy - the strategy I would
use if I were the owner of a baseball team. I suppose I would
hire only people who could hit the ball out of the park. No one
else could be hired. I suppose they would be like that one team
that Bugs Bunny had to play. Remember them? With their cigars
and five-o-clock shadows? Remember how they used entire trees as
bats? Remember how they were in a conga line, each holding on to
the hips of another, dancing around the bases in a continuous
home-run-hitting line dance? What did Bugs Bunny do to all of
them, finally? I do not remember that. I just remember that they
were the opposing team. I also thought about balancing the
entire field on a centrally located spike, so that as players
moved about the field, their weight would tilt it. I think that
such a moving plane field would make the game more interesting.
I am already amazed at how much strategy is involved. This would
be so engaging. Later the idea became grisly, when shared. But
in its original form, it was a nice idea.
The first and third base coaches were more than just coaches, I
fear. They seemed to talk to the runners much too much to just
be talking about the game at hand, and there was too much
reassuring back- and bottom-patting. I suspect that each of
these oddly-suited men is actually a sort of Dear Abby for the
members of the team; not only reading the pitcher and judging
the game for them, but also providing advice and reassurance in
all areas of a ball player's life.
> I always wondered why the Angels "sounded like a lot of lawnmowers...
> mowing down my lawn". I suppose this is why they were Strange.
I believe this was because They Were All Singing Different
Songs.
I **hate** moustaches, the names "Stacey," "Tracey," and
"Bruce." But you I like.
I like you.
Dana
~~ Dana Silverman <dsilverman@sobriquet.com>
Date: Fri, 30 Sep 94 23:53:35 CDT
---------------------------------
From: Lane Coutell <lane@pandemonium.com>
To: Dana Silverman <dsilverman@sobriquet.com>
Subject: munkustrap, quaxo, or coricopat....
Greetings and Salutations.
I cleaned the top of the refrigerator, today. I had first tried
glass cleaner, which wasn't terribly successful, which made me
conclude later that Comet was indeed a wonder potion of much
sacredness and value.
> Sometimes, Lane, I sit and think. I think about how nice it would be to have a
> mouse that worked, and other things too.
I have one that squeaks. Would you prefer that? I'll send it
down.
Chester, the cat, says "mrow." "Though it's not love, it means something."
I've started work on a new Poem, for Purposes of Diversion and
Entertainment. It's a frivolous verse about cats. This is the
first verse:
Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow.
No, actually that's not it. That would be a bit heavy for a
frivolous verse about cats, and it neglects to address the
subject matter (unless the Shadow is akin to Macavity). This is
what I wrote:
In this world there are people
who like hornets and gnats.
These folks are far superior
to those who like cats.
Lane
___________________________________
Lane Coutell lane@pandemonium.com
We could write all this with small alphas, betas, gammas.
Everything which could serve to define the characters as real -
qualities, temperament, heredity, nobility - has nothing to do
with the story. At every moment each of them, even their sexual
attitude, is defined by the fact that a letter always reaches
its destination.
Date: Sat, 1 Oct 94 22:38:51 CDT
--------------------------------
From: Dana Silverman <dsilverman@sobriquet.com>
To: Lane Coutell <lane@pandemonium.com>
Subject: Being a Temp.
So today I was being a temp, and I could see the way everything
had a halo-ring around it, was burning, glowing. Well, maybe not
burning, but I had guessed so because of my fever. It was very
pretty there, even though it was very spare. Less than a month
ago, I was told, there was no furniture, just phones, four
phones in the middle of all this blue carpet. They were allowed
to smoke there. This was not helpful. I do have some strange
cold, and this morning before work I took a large teal-blue
pill. It made my nose run for a while, and then made everything
just burn. I needed 12-hour relief.
Outside the window where I was a temp were some fantastic stone
plants, with windows between them. The windows, though framed
and upheld by the plants, seemed puny and out-of-place. They
only looked right when you saw people pass behind them. That
justified those silly windows. It was a sunless day, and this
made the scrolls look better. It made them fit together, made
the stone the world. If the sun had been there, the building
would have had to admit its separation from nature. But with no
sun, it was as natural as the rain.
The inside environment was, well, strange. People there rushed
about and talked a lot, and stood when talking on the phone. It
was that much power they were pushing through the lines. When
something would happen, one or the other person would simply
speak loudly and those who were interested would listen. Would I
be able to decide who to listen to from one moment to the next?
Perhaps it was because I didn't understand most of what they
were saying that it all seems so bewildering to me. They were
trying to convince many people of many things. Some suits would
wrinkle as the day wore on, and others would not. Why wear a
suit if you do all of your work on the phone? Can you imagine a
job that was so - **exciting** - every day? They were all so
very excited.
The men drank a lot of coffee and hummed little tunes. Many of
them should wear some sort of undershirt. One man's last name
was Fengkui, which when I said it, sounded quite awful, but when
he said it, sounded lovely. Truly. I usually do not say such
things. And I do not simply think that it was my lightness of
brain today that induced me to think this. Across the street
from where I was working was where Jonathan works, an old friend
I think you've met once. I wonder if he was working there,
today. I didn't visit. I wonder how it is that child actors can
act so well, as if they are ill and dying, or knowledgeable in
strange subjects, or abused. How do they learn to do these
things?
During my lunch hour, I gave half of my sandwich to a beggar and
he told me that the sandwich had fallen from heaven. Not that it
somehow came from heaven, but that it had fallen, actually. I
told him it was peanut butter. He accepted.
The man asked for a quarter, and I gave him a sandwich.
Sometimes they ask for odd amounts, like 61 cents, or 37 cents,
and I wonder if they would give change, then? Or why they ask
for such odd and difficult amounts? Who would sort through their
bag before sharing?
Now that I'm home, the effect of the pill has quite worn off.
Now it is just a fever head I have, and a light burning in the
mucous membranes from the suppressant drug.
When I was on the train this morning, I was so confused by the
drug that I was afraid I would not be able to work. Everything
seemed to have either too much or too little impact on my senses
that I was not able to make sense of things fast enough. So I
just sat and watched, and helped out this woman who was
partially unbuttoned. It was on her back. So I helped her. Or at
least I think I did. Perhaps her back was so lovely that her act
had been intentional. A seduction-to-be. And I ruined it. Alas.
She was one of those people who, in an effort to get off the
train first, stands for the last 10 minutes of her trip in the
tiny steel stairwell. This I do not understand. So long to
stand, and with no windows or seat. Those last 10 minutes pass
through some nice rail yard, which is interesting to see. Also,
it is the time when free newspapers become available. All the
others who pack the stairwell sometimes leave them, neatly
flopped over the rail, section by section, ready to be read
again.
I think when I grow up I will get some magazines, but I will
listen to the radio for news. The radio is good, since you can
do things while you listen. Listening is good. It's a
transferable skill! And it is a skill. But a radio can give you
nearly everything you need. One low price. Entertainment and
Information. And a skill (or two, if you knit or wash dishes
while you listen). This I write, on the Information
Superhighway.
I have a verse for your cat poem:
Cats sneak about
on their fur-covered paws;
to creep in the dark
and disregard Laws.
~~ Dana Silverman <dsilverman@sobriquet.com>
Date: Sun, 2 Oct 94 17:42:41 CDT
--------------------------------
From: Lane Coutell <lane@pandemonium.com>
To: Dana Silverman <dsilverman@sobriquet.com>
Subject: thinking of you...
Sitting outside, under the stars, with my PowerBook. The
phosphorescent blue-white light from the screen reflects on my
glasses and attracts a mosquito or two.
It seems as if my PowerBook glows with the same light as the
stars. Technology.
Sitting here, watching the battery go down, thinking of you. Not
much to say.
I love you.
___________________________________
Lane Coutell lane@pandemonium.com
Hornsboodle, we should never have knocked everything down if we
hadn't meant to destroy the ruins too. But the only way we see
of doing that is to put up some handsome buildings.
Date: Mon, 3 Oct 94 10:12:11 CDT
--------------------------------
From: Dana Silverman <dsilverman@sobriquet.com>
To: Lane Coutell <lane@pandemonium.com>
Subject: Sleep.
Lane.
I remember watching you sleep. I liked to do that. I would
watch, and it would often make me smile.
I remember when it was hot, you would get all flushed in your
sleep. But even when you were all red, I liked to look at you.
Perhaps this was a violation. But I would look at you from all
different angles, trying several different approaches, and enjoy
the way your appearance changed while I moved. Sometimes you
looked so childlike, sometimes so strong.
All different things, you seem to be.
Dana.
For the boy who doesn't get enough mail.
From the girl who loves him.
~~ Dana Silverman <dsilverman@sobriquet.com>
Date: Fri, 7 Oct 94 20:58:31 CDT
--------------------------------
From: Dana Silverman <dsilverman@sobriquet.com>
To: Lane Coutell <lane@pandemonium.com>
Subject: Wherefore do Ye spend Money for That which is not Bread?
I am now temping for a Nursery. Not the plant kind, but the
child kind. It is true, and just as you remember: at Nursery
School, they have Nursery Rhymes. Although these have begun to
be supplanted by more commercial, contemporary entertainments.
Yesterday, I went shopping. I boarded a train at 10:40. The only
seat available was in a corner, so I could only see the other
people, one of whom was a huge man with jittery eyes. His eyes
jittered because he could see out the window and he was trying
to follow everything, but the train was moving very fast.
After the train ride, which was filled with overheard
conversations, I walked up State Street. I was thinking that the
thing you would not like is the "Audio Equipment" stores which
have very open fronts and compete with each other by playing
extremely loud music. This is something I passed on the way to
Skolnik's where the bagels cost almost a dollar. But that is
because it is downtown.
While I was there I saw several small groups of people
congregate spontaneously. Mostly older people. This amazes me,
the way certain people just strike up conversations which
actually are shared, just like that, under the L. If that ever
happened to me, if I even **met** someone I could have a
20-minute conversation with, just on the street, I would be very
excited and talk about it a lot later.
My next stop was Saks Fifth Avenue, to use the "Lounge" which
has marvelous trompe l'oeil wallpaper.
Then, at that same place, there is an Irish store, and since it
seems that at times you wish you were Irish I thought that would
be the perfect place for a gift. I found Peas: peas grown,
canned, and marketed from Ireland! But because of the weight of
the can of peas, I decided this was not a good idea.
I then proceeded to the Newberry Library, where I found a
biography of Zelda Fitzgerald, the "Paris Sketchbook" of William
Makepeace Thackery, _One Hundred Years of Solitude_, and
something else I don't right now remember. I almost bought you a
1948 Esquire pinup book, but it was $20 and the faces were
really poorly done. Also, they were **hardly** naked.
So on I went. Betsey Johnson and some Italian store which had
some sort of **authentic** $595 Parker Lewis silk shirts. They
were glorious. But $600 was a bit much. Still is.
Shortly after this I had some lemon ice that was tangy hours
after I ate it. Quite good.
Then I went to the J. Crew store. It was very, very nice. It was
a store in which to touch, as well as to look at. They are doing
a brisk business.
After this I went to the Swatch Neuseum at Marshall Fields Water
Tower. This is the only other place I have seen my sister's
Swatch. In a Swatch museum! I'm still strangely drawn to the
Swatch which needs no batteries, never needs to be wound, and
has the theme "Your life is the power of Swatch" or "Love is all
it needs" or somesuch. If you take it off for over 36 hours,
though, you may need to wind it.
Next stop was Nike Town, which has the nicest linoleum I have
ever seen. Also, the Aqua Sox are displayed by this gorgeous
saline aquarium. Near this, there is a glass floor under which
there are monitors showing the surface of a pool. So one can
walk on water, glowing water.
There is a basketball court inside Nike Town where one can test
the shoes. The shoes are sent about this three-level complex
inside dumbwaiters and air capsules. There are lots of clothes
all there waiting, but you must ask for the shoes to be shot to
you. You can request and evaluate them via computer.
They carry 30 sizes of kids' shoes.
I saw two great sets of street musicians. One was a band of six
that sounded like a Motown record. There was a bass and guitar
and incredible vocals. They were so good that the crowd
interfered with the regular flow of traffic. I was amazed.
Then, at the next block, there was a percussionist and five
dancers seemed to contain within their movements a greater deal
of authenticity than the dancers for Peter Gabriel, et al. But
we know the search for sources and origins to be a futile one.
Still, they were very good.
I omitted the visit to Henri Bendel, perhaps because it is
always too much. But they had wonderful hair things and bed
things. It is, as they claim, a Lady's Paradise (Straight from
Paris).
I hurried on to catch a train. And I did. But it was an express
and not going to my mother's house. So I arrived at the train
station in Arlington Heights, which is a lovely place. I'm glad
the train **did** stop there. I made my way home from there.
Shopping. And I don't need a thing, I just want to get presents
for my love.
I love you very much and wish I could share all good things with
you.
Be careful, be good, be nice.
Dana
~~ Dana Silverman <dsilverman@sobriquet.com>
Date: Sat, 8 Oct 94 23:12:09 CDT
--------------------------------
From: Lane Coutell <lane@pandemonium.com>
To: Dana Silverman <dsilverman@sobriquet.com>
Subject: bela lugosi's...
The bad sucker fish jumped out of his aquarium. I don't know
what he was thinking. I found him, on the floor, so far away
from the aquarium that I thought, that's odd, what's a fish
doing there? It was quite a belly flop this guy did. I thought
he was dead, but I picked him up and dropped him back in the
tank. He seemed to think he was dead too, for awhile, but then
he started to think he might not be, and from the way things
look now he's still deciding. We'll see.
I looked over and saw the Cheshire Cat smiling at me. I was
surprised. So many nice toys I have! And so many were gifts from
Dana!
Another verse for Rats To Cats!:
Cats are, as a rule,
quite ill-behaved.
They won't sit or speak
and rarely obey.
I made cookie dough this evening. Tomorrow, I make cookies.
___________________________________
Lane Coutell lane@pandemonium.com
For West End girls, love comes quickly with many opportunities
to make lots of money in suburbia, but it's a sin, and what have
I done to deserve this? - you've paid my rent and you were
always on my mind and in my heart, and all the while I was
domino dancing because I was left to my own devices, but it's
alright, even if it is so hard, because we were never being
boring where the streets have no name, and I can't take my eyes
off you because of my jealousy in this DJ culture and so I ask,
was is worth it?
Date: Mon, 10 Oct 94 22:57:51 CDT
---------------------------------
From: Dana Silverman <dsilverman@sobriquet.com>
To: Lane Coutell <lane@pandemonium.com>
Subject: Fernando the Cat Meets His Neighbors
Dearest Lane,
Late at night, sometimes, I take my cat for walks. I am not as
good at this as some other people I've seen, but still I do it,
and I enjoy it. I hold the young Fernando in my arms and we go
walking, and looking, and smelling. Last night we met five young
raccoons - a pack. We stared at each other for a while before
deciding to proceed. Oh, to be Doctor Doolittle and know what
the animals think. I wanted to know what they think about the
neighborhood. How I might improve their stay.
Last night I had a bedroom mosquito. Little could distress me
more. Why must the bites be itchy? I could even stand the welts
if not for that. I don't miss the blood, really, either.
> I made cookie dough this evening. Tomorrow, I make cookies.
You'll have to send me some. You're making the chocolate chip
melt-a-ways, yes?
That reminds me. I've found a new recipe for waffles, in a book
named _Cook Away, the Outing Cookbook_ by an Elizabeth Case and
a Martha Wyman. The recipe is copyright 1937, and, as such, does
not require Bisquick. You'll have to try them:
Waffles
3 eggs (beaten separately) 3/4 cup butter (melted)
2 cups flour 1/2 tsp salt
2 cups milk 3 tsp baking powder
Beat egg yolks very lightly. Add milk, then flour, gradually,
and beat all, thoroughly. Mix in melted butter, baking powder,
and salt. Lastly fold in stiffly beaten egg whites. The batter
should be thin enough to pour.
~~ Dana Silverman <dsilverman@sobriquet.com>
Date: Tue, 11 Oct 94 17:04:18 CDT
---------------------------------
To: Dana Dana Bo Bana <dsilverman@sobriquet.com>
From: Lane Coutell <lane@pandemonium.com>
Subject: (The Furthering Adventures of...)
> You'll have to send me some. You're making the chocolate chip
> melt-a-ways, yes?
But of course. Hopefully, they'll turn out.
> That reminds me. I've found a new recipe for waffles...
> You'll have to try them:
I'll do just that.
Talked to my mother on the phone. I reminded her, again, that I
don't believe in God. She said that she thought that I really
do, and that I'm just confused. I said no, that wasn't the case;
I'm just not one to subscribe to conspiracy theories. She then
asked me - later in the conversation - that I still pray, don't
I? Doesn't the one preclude the other?
I was channel surfing a little earlier, and came across the
Smurfs for a few minutes. Gargamel's cat is named Asrael. Which
is a cool name. What I really couldn't understand is why
Gargamel hates the Smurfs so - though, I understand how they
might get on one's nerves, after a while. But Asrael is
definitely the best.
I miss you.
Lane
___________________________________
Lane Coutell lane@pandemonium.com
There are so many songs about love. But I was thrilled the other
day when somebody mailed me the lyrics to a song that was about
how he didn't care about anything, and how he didn't care about
me. It was very good. He managed to really convey the idea that
he really didn't care.
Date: Wed, 12 Oct 94 23:27:17 CDT
---------------------------------
From: Dana Silverman <dsilverman@sobriquet.com>
To: Lane Coutell <lane@pandemonium.com>
Subject: Today!
Dearest Lane:
Today was a very good day. Let me begin with the fact that there
was no work today, and that is what led to the proliferation of
large, strange birds and tiny, white flowers that I later saw.
Had I been at work, there would have been no birds, no flowers,
no woods, no Bicycle. The birds, being so large, also had large
alarming whistle calls, which they called and called in an
alarming way. Let me add to that a temperature in the 90's,
sudden showers which produced waves of hot steam and cool mist
and who knows what other conditions over blacktop and forest.
But I was there. Somehow, I managed to wedge vegetation into the
tiniest parts of my bicycle - a sizable portion of this
vegetative matter must have been an Onion, because that is now
all I smell when near the bicycle. I went down by the river, to
where the Methodist campground is (which, Lane, I think is a
perfect civilization). I then passed through town to where the
convent is and marveled that the people there had in 1952 built
Jesus yet another tomb which He might dwell in and then Flee.
There was a great bare hill there of mown weeds-and-grass and
there was a Saint there with a child protected in his cloak,
holding up a broken arm to the wind. I think it was Christopher,
but it was a beautiful picture, with nothing but grass all
around, and big billowing clouds in many colors passing rapidly
with the wind, only briefly interrupted or diverted by the
vestigial hand of that Saint. He was unable to influence the
clouds in any way.
The Methodist Campground is this little, tiny world. There are
small houses in it, a swimming pool, a dining hall, and a huge
barnlike enclosure where there is room for any project you would
imagine. All of it, except the swimming pool, was built in the
late 1800s when one could use the river for hot-time swimming.
The additions since then are largely homemade, and those, I
think, stopped happening around 1960. The houses each have
different angles and patterns and textures and they are all very
close together. Each has its own garden filled with tall
perennials and their butterflies. Usually these houses are
freshly white; some are not, but mostly the houses are white.
And there are lots of screen doors that bang and hinges and
handles in obscure and overly decorative patterns. Nothing is
like anything else there, and there is like nowhere else in the
world.
One rides and rides down the narrow streets that were meant to
be driven by graying, fantastic old ladies in shapeless calico
dresses and big smiles on faded blue or red bicycles with large
baskets on the handlebars. The grips on these handlebars are
white rubbery plastic. The ladies ride from their own little
cottages to others where their friends are, or to go to the post
office in Des Plaines. They plan elaborate sharing suppers
together and mourn the passing of eras and moments. They could
teach you how to make 55 excellent crafts from old milk cartons
and a few items You Already Have at Home. Or they could teach
you to crochet lace. The streets are barely wide enough for a
single creeping car, but have plenty of room for two, or even
three, bicycles. There is a map of the camp which adequately
describes the maze.
I will have to send a postcard to you, if I return and take some
photos.
Now a Raging Storm is arriving, and I am safe inside. I did
clean my bicycle and made it happy too, so all is well.
So then my mother says to me "I'd be more comfortable if you put
on a dry shirt and dry shoes." I laughed. You see, there is one
downspout which is the keystone to the entire Silverman Aqueduct
system. And some unfortunate Lawncare Technician disconnected
this spout. So we pushed it back together, but it is not the
same without the rivets. So early in this colossal storm, the
water started to collect at the side of the house and into the
Window Wells. So I had to bail and to reconnect the downspout. I
bailed and bailed. The walls of the house were protecting
certain centipedes from the storm. They come out of the crevices
in the ground and cleverly align themselves with the grout in
the bricks. Eventually I removed several gallons from each well.
Still, some water did seep into the basement. I hate how that
smells, when it smells. And it does, whenever there is lots of
water in a house. So I was there, with a little Tupperware
freezer container, nose to nose with centipedes, and I am
getting very wet. When I went into the house, those were the
first words my mother spoke. Hmmmm.
One touch of Irony is that I had planned to go to the Y tonight
for a swim. That seems like a lot of work, now, walking there in
this rain. So I am just going to make some cookies, cookies you
might have sent me. They were selling sugar sprinkles in those
90's retro colors, that particularly sunny orange-yellow-green
set, as seen at the Gap, and also purple-pink-and-teal. You know
which colors these are. So I'm going to make cookies shaped like
big dippy asterisks.
I already tried flowers, but they just weren't pressing out
right.
~~ Dana Silverman <dsilverman@sobriquet.com>
Date: Fri, 14 Oct 94 07:32:41 CDT
---------------------------------
From: Lane Coutell <lane@pandemonium.com>
To: Dana Silverman <dsilverman@sobriquet.com>
Subject: don't like the look of this old town...
Today I take Chester to the vet. He is now sitting on the plant
stand, looking out the window. But there's a certain tenseness
about him: every once in a while, he looks back into the
apartment, and now he's staring at me. He's now taking a resting
place on the couch very close to me, but also very close to the
PowerBook, with its whirring disk drive spinning at 3600
revolutions a minute the words which I write you, yet
maintaining the whole. There's something comforting in a
technology that works and something placating in the continuous
whirring sound of the disk drive.
Still, I think Chester suspects something. The bath last night,
the morning grooming (which he never gets in the morning). And
me, practicing in front of the mirror for when Dr. Boynton
chides me for not keeping Chester to his diet: "But, he likes to
eat!" ...or, perhaps "But, what can I do... the cat, he likes to
eat!" When I last brought Chester to the vet, he weighed 15 lbs.
and I was scolded for letting him grow so fat; now, he weighs
20. But if I do take a year or so off of his life, at least the
years he does have will be much more content. If only someone
were to indulge the both of us so... but we'd probably get tired
of eating Science Diet Light day in and day out. Yet, Chester
never suspects.
I looked for a larger cat carrier yesterday so Chester wouldn't
look so big inside of it. But, the pet store I went to only
carried medium-sized cat carriers in this awful shade of blue,
which reminded me of the Periwinkle crayon in the Crayola 64
set. I never liked the Periwinkle crayon, never quite knew what
they expected you to color in that dull shade of half-hearted
blue. But now if I ever come across a coloring book page with a
medium-sized cat carrier I will know exactly what color to color
it.
Well, time to be off. I am thinking of you, always. My love.
Lane
___________________________________
Lane Coutell lane@pandemonium.com
"It's a Missage," he said to himself, "that's what it is. And
that letter is a 'P', and so is that, and so is that, and 'P'
means 'Pooh,' so it's a very important Missage to me, and I
can't read it."
Date: Fri, 14 Oct 94 15:19:35 CDT
---------------------------------
From: Dana Silverman <dsilverman@sobriquet.com>
To: Lane Coutell <lane@pandemonium.com>
Subject: Conveniences and Conveyances
Dearest Lane:
I am never quite able to convey my thankfulness for the things
you do. I cannot tell you how much I appreciate your daily
presence among my things and in my computer, and all of that. It
really is too nice of you. And what do I do for you?
I got a new smoke alarm today. You test it by flashing a
flashlight at it. It is very nice. I wanted them to fix the old
one, but the girl at Sears thought that was an outrageous
request. So I bought some chocolate, because I suffer from
intermittent bouts of depression, and it helped, if only
briefly. Tomorrow morning I will feel better, once I am alone in
the daycare rooms. Tomorrow I will teach the 21 children about
flight, and they will love it. They always do. They want to be
close to me because I present them with moving clouds and
flapping marionettes and we make earthquakes together. I do
teach a lot of Chaos, at least the little bit I was able to
learn from the Gleick book so long ago. I cannot tell you how
often that book and that knowledge colors my thinking, but once
again, there you are, every day. Thank you Lane.
Lananh, a recent addition to the neighborhood, is my friend now.
Initially she liked me, until she found out about my sordid
past. Now she knows I am not a girl of little ethical thought.
She now thinks I am all right. She is lovely, and lovelier in
the pictures she's shown me, with her hair wavy and with no
glasses on. She is still silly because she is Younger, and I
remember when I am with her how it is to be Younger and I like
that. And I make her look forward to being Older, I guess. She
thinks anyone over 20 is old. I remember feeling that exact same
way. I never thought I'd be like This.
Another verse:
Cats aren't very social
and at times, downright rude.
They like to ignore you
to go sit and brood.
Be careful, be good, be nice.
Dana
~~ Dana Silverman <dsilverman@sobriquet.com>
Date: Fri, 14 Oct 94 19:47:31 CDT
---------------------------------
From: Lane Coutell <lane@pandemonium.com>
To: Dana Silverman <dsilverman@sobriquet.com>
Subject: ...what goes up must come down
> I am never quite able to convey my thankfulness for the things you do. I
> cannot tell you how much I appreciate your daily presence among my
> things and in my computer, and all of that. It really is too nice of
> you. And what do I do for you?
So, I assume you got the mouse?
Well, went to the vet. I was, indeed, reprimanded for Chester's
weight, my rationalizations notwithstanding. Dr. Boynton's
assistant, Amy, gave me a brochure on pet "obesity", but she was
kind enough to cross out the "Obesity" title and relabel it
"Weight Control Measures" in blue ink pen. I laughed, of course,
at the edit, but it strikes me now that some pet owners might
indeed require the euphemism. Chester, it would seem, doesn't
care. I called him "obese" right now, to his face, and he didn't
blink an eye. Admittedly, I usually call him "fat," so perhaps
"obese" hardly has any sting after that. But there's something
biting about the cold "thingness" of a medical term.
At any rate, Chester's now on a weight-reducing diet: Dr.
Boynton sent me away with a prescription for Hill's Prescription
Diet Feline r/d. I was worried for awhile, since Chester weighs
20 lbs. (exactly! or, near exactly (or, really, not exactly at
all) according to the vet's scale), and the feeding guide on the
food ends at 15 lbs. But now, I see, "the amount to be fed is
based on the desired weight rather than the obese weight". Of
course, one would never do that for obese **people** - feed them
what they should eat if they were to weigh what they should
weigh - but then again, in the SlimFast commercials, you drink a
glass for breakfast, and a glass for lunch, whatever your
weight. Perhaps it's that "sensible dinner" that makes all the
difference.
Hmm. Not much else going on.
___________________________________
Lane Coutell lane@pandemonium.com
"Yeah, that's fucking bizarre. That's one I'd never heard before.
Not even on the Internet."
-- Bob Mould, on rumors that he and Grant Hart were lovers
when Husker Du broke up, Spin magazine interview, 10/94
Date: Sat, 15 Oct 94 17:11:52 CDT
---------------------------------
From: Dana Silverman <dsilverman@sobriquet.com>
To: Lane Coutell <lane@pandemonium.com>
Subject: See More Glass.
>So, I assume you got the mouse?
Yes. It is too much of an improvement!
A story, for you:
Once upon a time, there was a little girl, and she liked to play
outside.
She was outside, once, with a boy named **Steve Jones**. They
were both from the **wrong side** of the tracks, and that is why
they played alone. Just they two.
They were sitting on the bars on the 5th and 6th grade
playground.
But they were neither in 5th nor 6th grade. No one can remember.
Maybe it was 3rd.
Steve was "cool." He was strong and tan and feared.
(Aside. (Needn't read it.)) He was also short and smart. He took
an "S.A.T." in 5th grade. No one knew he was smart. He was a
behavior problem. The test scores never made sense.
The little girl was very little for her age. She was not "cool."
But she was strong and tan and feared.
She decided to run. (She did that a lot.) She ran and ran and
then decided that some of these bars on the jungle gym should be
vaulted.
So she ran toward one of the lower bars and prepared to leap.
But she did not make it. The first leg didn't, and all of her
followed it into the bar. She did not cry. Because Steve was
there. She did not tell anyone later, because it did not matter.
But it **did** hurt.
That's why I limp some. I broke my knee. We found out 6 years or
so later. I remembered the story about a year after that
discovery. Sometimes it hurts a lot and I get **grumpy**.
Sometimes it hurts a lot.
Rilke wrote (or I remember he wrote):
Love consists in this:
two solitudes that protect...
that touch...
that greet each other.
I probably didn't remember it right.
~~ Dana Silverman <dsilverman@sobriquet.com>
Date: Wed, 19 Oct 94 18:35:47 CDT
---------------------------------
From: Lane Coutell <lane@pandemonium.com>
To: Dana Silverman <dsilverman@sobriquet.com>
Subject: joe camel is a bad camel...
Matt, as you know, is trying to quit smoking (not because you
know he's trying to quit smoking, but because Matt is always
trying to quit smoking), but when he dropped by last night he
had a pack of cigarettes with him. I traded him gum for the
Camels. Tonight, when I was biking (it's cold outside!) I saw a
derelict of some sort and remembered I had the cigarettes in my
pocket. I asked him if he smoked. He tried to tell me he had to
go home. I told him yes, but did he smoke. He continued to
garble on, but it seemed a very affirmative garbling so I handed
him the pack of cigarettes. The garbling got quicker and perhaps
more enthusiastic. It's hard to tell. But then, as I was
leaving, he gave me a thumbs up. I returned the sign.
The other night I went visiting and I saw this sign on my host's
door - "Hey Kids! Don't smoke! Joe Camel is a Bad Camel. Just
Say No!" It was accompanied by our friendly phallus, hawking
cigarettes in his inimitable way (well, until R.J. Reynolds
comes up with another cartoon character cigarette salesperson).
Which reminds me - a few weeks ago I was told by Someone Who
Should Know that the dromedary on the Programming Perl cover
wasn't anatomically correct. That the head was a head of a
two-humped bactrian, not the one-humped dromedary. Now, I'm not
sure I quite believe that, and we both know that People Who
Should Know Often Don't. Still, this is what that person said.
You, however, are anatomically correct. I sigh, thinking about
it.
___________________________________
Lane Coutell lane@pandemonium.com
My opinions are my own. They're my feet and I'll put them in my
mouth if I want to. Do not expose to open flame. Under penalty
of law, do not remove this tag. Caution, contains silica gel, do
not eat. Do not read while operating a motor vehicle or heavy
equipment. In case of eye contact, flush with water. This
supersedes all previous notices.
Date: Thu, 20 Oct 94 23:56:27 CDT
---------------------------------
From: Dana Silverman <dsilverman@sobriquet.com>
To: Lane Coutell <lane@pandemonium.com>
Subject: A Rush and a Push
Would you like to read a joke?
> A young lady bought a postage stamp.
> "Must I stick it on myself?" she asked.
> "I should say not," said the clerk. "Stick it on the letter."
And another:
> Mrs.: Whenever I'm down in the dumps, I get a new hat.
> Mr.: Oh, so that's where you get them!!
I did my laundry today. It's nice to have a washer and dryer in
the basement.
You know, I still cannot fold sheets. I remember my father
getting very angry with me, and insisting that my six-year-old
height was no excuse for not being able to fold sheets. At the
time, I should have asked him to fold a sheet on his knees. But
little girls don't do that. But even now I am not much of a
sheet folder.
Yesterday night I took my neighbor's dog for a walk. Molly is
quite middle-aged, but is of such small brain that one could
never tell from seeing - but especially walking - her. She
approaches every driveway and tries to go up it, seeing if
perhaps it is our destination. I am not very good at yanking on
leashes, but I learned. Her owners have a high-tech spool on the
leash, with a sort of trigger grip, which makes quick jerks on
the leash quite impossible.
Towards the end of our walk we passed two small children with a
proud white Standard Poodle. I was so embarrassed. Their dog was
a model of domesticity - even without the pom-poms. Mine skipped
and hopped all over.
I rearranged my bookshelves again. I am generating space
somehow. (I don't know how, but when I do I will tell you about
it.)
I went out for breakfast, with Jeanne. I asked the waitress
about the waffles. "Is it one square?" I asked, forming a square
using the thumbs and index fingers of both hands. "Oh no," said
the waitress. "It's a waffle, just a waffle." She was skinny and
somehow misshapen. Her uniform was meant to suggest the shape of
a woman, but in the various tucks and pockets, it was clear
there was nothing within. The ceiling of the restaurant was
pink, and many people there were dressed in pink as well. When
my waffle arrived, it was an extremely generous circle, and
quite tasty. I was happy with it, although I generally won't eat
breakfast anywhere but home.
My father always refinishes bookcases thus: he puts wallpaper on
the back of the inside; he stains the wood a dark, dark color.
He does this always, for every piece he refinishes. I wonder if
he papers the insides of desks? The undersides of chairs? I
mean, he put this Holly Hobbie wallpaper inside this one
bookcase and it will be there forever. And in one picture, one
of the girls is doing this strange thing with her toes. That
image of toes has always bothered me. And it is behind my books.
Now I want a snack, and then I think I will go to bed. I think
of you with sincere fondness and love.
So have you taken a Super Ball into my old bedroom and set it
loose, while wrapping your arms around your head for protection?
Have you prepared yourself for another joke? Well, on my way to
get a snack I misplaced my joke book, so I cannot tell you
another. Without that book, I am quite humorless.
I am also very cold. I had intended to write more words to you,
as I had last night, but by 12:30 I had expired. And now I must
be off again. You deserve so much better than this. I will try.
Soon, it will be better.
Soon, it will all make sense again. Things do always turn out.
People much more foolish than you or I have done OK. We must
dedicate ourselves to coming out splendidly. I will let you
train my dog. I think you might be very good at that...
I love you terribly! (and also, I love you!)
Dana.
~~ Dana Silverman <dsilverman@sobriquet.com>
Date: Fri, 21 Oct 94 11:37:12 CDT
---------------------------------
From: Lane Coutell <lane@pandemonium.com>
To: Dana Silverman <dsilverman@sobriquet.com>
Subject: no doubt it has always been that way...
Dana -
Watching Reading Rainbow. It's one of those things you do when
you're sick.
Today's show topic is jobs. So they showed us tons of people all
perfectly happy with their jobs - i.e., exclamations of "I love
this job!" or "I have the best job in the world!" This extends
to grocery store check-out clerks, pizza makers, and the woman
who makes all the Lego models. There was also a very hot redhead
of small build who runs a dog-walking business: she was walking
seven dogs at once on the show. So I guess I'm just a another
down-and-out "generation nothing," too lazy to do anything.
They also featured a 15-year-old from the Bronx hawking nail
polish to pay for his college education.
More frivolous verse:
Cats like to leave fur-balls
all over the house:
they get in the toaster
and cling to your blouse.
Lane loves you, Dana. Even though I'm sick, I still love you.
Lane
___________________________________
Lane Coutell lane@pandemonium.com
I was walking on the ground. I didn't make a sound. Then I turned
around, and I saw a clown. It had a frown. It stood up on a mound. It
started barking like a hound. Clowny clown clown.
Date: Sun, 23 Oct 94 22:18:52 CDT
---------------------------------
From: Dana Silverman <dsilverman@sobriquet.com>
To: Lane Coutell <lane@pandemonium.com>
Subject: New!
This morning I rode in the MS bike-a-thon and it was OK, except
that it was raining very hard. I got very wet and I rode all the
way home that way and it was very heavy and cold. Then I took a
bath and invited the cat to come with me into the bathroom. He
watched the water and the bubbles and did, at one point, hop in,
but then he hopped right back out again.
After that I went to the Art Institute, because I truly cannot
stand my mother. I did not want to spend a single minute near
her. But once I was there, I had to keep my fingers in my ears
most of the time, because the people there were so loud. I
wanted to think and couldn't think; I could barely read with all
the racket. Perhaps some people thought I was strange, but I had
to chuckle as I was looking at the extensive collection of
ceramic pillows from China... so very many of them had pictures
of a duck or a goose on them, or sculpted on them, and I was
musing about the discomfort of a ceramic pillow as opposed to a
feather-down one. It seems that something was lost in the
transfer of the pillow idea.
The cat just crept onto the bed, said softly "New!," and then
ran away as fast as he could. What was he thinking? The cat
likes to make noise. He will sing while eating or drinking, or
yawning, just to make different sounds than the usual
disastrously high-pitched noo, new, or naa that he usually
produces.
Lane, I am very lonely. I have no one to think thoughts with and
no one to tell the thoughts I think. I want to make all sorts of
things but I lack the time and the materials. In short, I am
going through a phase of frustration. I have accepted many
responsibilities at my old church, under the assumption I would
have assistance in getting these things done, but no one is ever
around to help me. On the weekends I am often without
transportation, so I am stranded here in this house where my
mother lives. During the week I am working. So I cannot move the
furniture I promised to collect, I cannot meet with the other
kids to plan outings. So I look like a lazy idiot, when in
reality I am working so hard and getting nothing.
I conveniently lost my credit card and my cash card so I don't
need to worry about spending money right now, although I do
still have checks. I wonder what I did with these cards? I
wonder if someone else has them now? Oh well, at least I am not
spending. That is all. I'm gonna go now. I have to run some
errands in the night. Be careful, be good, be mice. No, don't be
mice. Chester would harass you then.
Much Love,
Dana
~~ Dana Silverman <dsilverman@sobriquet.com>
Date: Tue, 25 Oct 94 15:25:40 CDT
---------------------------------
From: Lane Coutell <lane@pandemonium.com>
To: Dana Silverman <dsilverman@sobriquet.com>
Subject: du kannst, denn du sollst...
So I think of famous personages I should model my life after.
And although Ralph Waldo Emerson and Gandhi come to mind, I can
never think of a personality more worthy of my emulation and
respect than Chilly Willy the Penguin. You've got to admit,
Chilly Willy's really got it together. He's got his priorities
straight. He's cold, 'cuz he lives in the Antarctic, so one of
his goals is To Be In A Warm Place. He's hungry, because most
things are frozen in the Antarctic, and he can't afford any
Swanson Hungry Man frozen dinners, so his other primary
objective is To Eat Good Food. And in these two objectives, with
his endearing stubbornness, he usually succeeds. "More
pancakes?" "Uh-huh." "More butter?" "Uh-huh." "More syrup?"
"Uh-huh."
The best part is, Chilly Willy is a proto-revolutionary Marxist
if I've ever seen one (and I wonder if I ever have). He
regularly questions the capitalist ideologies of "private
property", of Law, and the State in order to realize his Needs,
determined by the Nature of his Existence, all with a
zealousness which can only be described as, well, revolutionary.
Marxist without Manifesto. Chilly Willy the Penguin.
Lane
___________________________________
Lane Coutell lane@pandemonium.com
"Voyez-vous cet oeuf. C'est avec cela qu'on renverse toutes les
ecoles de theologie, et tous les temples de la terre."
Date: Wed, 26 Oct 94 06:37:28 CDT
---------------------------------
From: Dana Silverman <dsilverman@sobriquet.com>
To: Lane Coutell <lane@pandemonium.com>
Subject: No Subject
Lane,
No message. Just wrote because you love getting mail so.
Dana
~~ Dana Silverman <dsilverman@sobriquet.com>
Ceci n'est pas une .sig file.
Date: Thu, 27 Oct 94 22:03:39 CDT
---------------------------------
From: Dana Silverman <dsilverman@sobriquet.com>
To: Lane Coutell <lane@pandemonium.com>
Subject: H is for Hedgehog
My dearest Lane,
Yesterday I went to the zoo. I saw a hedgehog there. It was a
bit larger than a billiard ball. A woman was holding it in her
gloved hand. It was in this billiard ball form. I asked her if I
could see the rest of it. She turned the hedgehog over and it
looked about the same on the other side, except that there was a
slot in it. Occasionally this quaking ball of thorns would heave
and make a loud Piff! sound. Surely a death by terror wherever
it lies. Hedgehog.
I really wish I could introduce them to some nearby hedges. I'd
love to see them wobbling around.
I later saw the deadly Echidna, which is like a hedgehog, only
different. It flattens to a spiky mat and half-buries itself. A
living landmine in the New Guinea forest floor. Just looking at
one makes you think of pain. I have never seen one whole. Just
its exposed deadly spines, rippling with Echidna life.
This morning on the bus I thought about the world's largest
flower. This flower is huge and orange and sits on the forest
floor upon a mat of its scaly leaves. I suppose this flower is
pollinated by bears which step on the flower as they walk about,
and carry the blossom-pollen on their paws from flower to
flower, never realizing their vital place on the ecological
chain.
Spectacled bears live there, in the vanishing rainforest. They
are the ones who pollinate the giant Rafflia flower.
I feel excessively cheery. I feel overstimulated. The detergent
I put in the dishwasher this morning looked like applesauce, and
this thrilled me. The dew on the lawn was exciting, as were the
three elderly Russians who shared the bus stop with me, the
boldest of which asked me two-oh-nine, yet? And I said no, not
yet. And then the three chattered away, and read newspapers
printed in Cyrillic.
Yesterday I also went to American Science & Surplus, where all
of the drinking birds are somewhat deformed. I saw a perfect
glass dome for planting experiments - but it was made of red
glass. Everything there is rather cheap, but since I have gotten
old and sensible, I have little use for the wild toys and nice
scientific glassware.
I am truly distraught, despite my maddeningly sunny disposition.
I need sanctuary.
I need a reliable, dependable world.
I need to be alone.
I still love you. Be careful, be good, be nice.
Dana
~~ Dana Silverman <dsilverman@sobriquet.com>
Date: Fri, 28 Oct 94 23:14:10 CDT
---------------------------------
From: Lane Coutell <lane@pandemonium.com>
To: Dana Silverman <dsilverman@sobriquet.com>
Subject: D is for Dana
> I need to be alone.
And yet, you write me this.
I saw Breakfast at Tiffany's just recently. In Breakfast at
Tiffany's, the writer goes to the New York Public Library with
Holly, and looks up his book. He's supported by an older,
married woman, who gives him an apartment and a closet full of
suits. In Breakfast at Tiffany's, Holly's cat has no name. In
Breakfast at Tiffany's, the writer gets to tell the story at the
end. Even in Sunset Blvd., the writer gets to tell the story at
the end, even though he's dead, from his own story.
In Breakfast at Tiffany's, when the writer tells the woman he
loves her, she runs away. Isn't it just like a woman?
In Breakfast at Tiffany's, the writer gets published in The New
Yorker. He gets published in The New Yorker, because he can tell
the story of how the woman left him.
In the end, of course, the writer gets the girl, after all.
That's 'cause he's the writer.
My love.
___________________________________
Lane Coutell lane@pandemonium.com
What system had proved more effective?
Indirect suggestion implicating self-interest.
Example?
She disliked umbrella with rain, he liked woman with umbrella,
she disliked new hat with rain, he liked woman with new hat,
he bought new hat with rain, she carried umbrella with new hat.
Date: Fri, 28 Oct 94 23:16:42 CDT
---------------------------------
From: MAILER-DAEMON@sobriquet.com
To: Lane Coutell <lane@pandemonium.com>
cc: Postmaster@sobriquet.com
Subject: Undeliverable mail
Your message was not delivered to the following recipients:
dsilverman: User unknown
Date: Sat, 29 Oct 94 08:13:52 CDT
---------------------------------
From: Lane Coutell <lane@pandemonium.com>
To: Dana Silverman <dsilverman@sobriquet.com>
Subject: Re: D is for Dana
Dana?
___________________________________
Lane Coutell lane@pandemonium.com
Just then Grandfather Stupid stopped by.
"Welcome to heaven," said Mr. Stupid.
"This isn't heaven," said Grandfather.
"This is Cleveland."
Date: Sat, 29 Oct 94 08:15:21 CDT
---------------------------------
From: MAILER-DAEMON@sobriquet.com
To: Lane Coutell <lane@pandemonium.com>
cc: Postmaster@sobriquet.com
Subject: Undeliverable mail
Your message was not delivered to the following recipients:
dsilverman: User unknown
Writer's Note
---------------
"Two Solitudes" originally appeared as a series of e-mail
messages sent between the two participants, with carbon copies
sent to the piece's audience. I'm now looking for a co-author to
collaborate on another e-mail romance which will address the
feedback I've received from readers of "Two Solitudes." Write me
if you're interested.
Thanks to Mark Nevins, Jeff Curtis, Tim Connors, and Eric
Tilton. Special thanks to Jim Miner, Matthias Neeracher, Scott
Custer, and Melissa Pauna.
Carl Steadman (carl@cdtl.umn.edu)
-----------------------------------
Carl Steadman is an associate editor for CTHEORY
(http://english-server.hss.cmu.edu/ctheory/ctheory.html), and
works for the University of Minnesota's Center for the
Development of Technological Leadership, in Minneapolis.
FYI
=====
...................................................................
InterText's next issue will be released March 15, 1995.
...................................................................
Clarion West Writers Workshop
-------------------------------
June 18 - July 28, 1995
Clarion West is an intensive six-week workshop that teaches
professional skills to serious science fiction and fantasy
writers. It is held annually at Seattle Central Community
College in Seattle, Washington. This year's instructors are:
> Howard Waldrop Joan Vinge
> John Crowley Bruce McAllister
> Gardner Dozois Katharine Dunn
Application deadline is April 1, 1995; workshop tuition is
$1,100. Dorm housing, college credit, and limited financial aid
are available. For more information and application materials,
please contact: Clarion West, 340 15th Avenue East, Suite 350,
Seattle, Washington 98122, telephone 206-322-9083, or e-mail
Anita Rowland at anitar@halcyon.com.
Clarion West is a non-profit literary organization that is
committed to equal opportunity.
Back Issues of InterText
--------------------------
Back issues of InterText can be found via anonymous FTP at:
> ftp://ftp.etext.org/pub/Zines/InterText/
and
> ftp://network.ucsd.edu/intertext/
You may request back issues from us directly, but we must handle
such requests manually, a time-consuming process.
On the World-Wide Web, point your WWW browser to:
> http://www.etext.org/Zines/InterText/
If you have CompuServe, you can read InterText in the Electronic
Frontier Foundation Forum, accessible by typing GO EFFSIG. We're
located in the "Zines from the Net" section of the EFFSIG forum.
CompuServe users can also access our issues via FTP (see above)
on Compuserve at GO FTP.
On America Online, issues are available in Keyword: PDA, in
Palmtop Paperbacks/Electronic Articles & Newsletters, or via
Internet FTP (see above) at keyword FTP.
Gopher Users: find our issues at
> gopher.etext.org in /pub/Zines/InterText
Submissions to InterText
--------------------------
InterText's stories are made up _entirely_ of electronic
submissions. If you would like to submit a story, send e-mail to
intertext@etext.org with the word "guidelines in the title."
You'll be sent a copy of our writers guidelines.
....................................................................
I once saw Elvis driving a pickup in Ohio. No, really.
..
This issue is wrapped as a setext. For more information send
email with the single word "setext" (no quotes) in the Subject:
line to <fileserver@tidbits.com>, or contact the InterText staff
directly.