Vault of Story

The Purple Swan

2010-12-29T07:36:00.000-08:00

The Blame Game

2010-12-12T06:52:00.000-08:00

No good times, no bad times, there's no times at all, just the New York Times -Simon and Garfunkel

Elves Like Us

2010-11-20T12:00:00.000-08:00

Me-Yo and GR!O got into the best parties, ongame or off, dressed to dazzle and always sporting the latest grooves, but after they crossed the line at Becky Bermuda's and went too far, they would never be invited out again.

"Look at these toy people," Me-Yo said, "it's disgusting." She was neck to toe in spandex embroidered with eyeballs, a rainbow of irises that never blinked. Going up to the closest guest, she promptly spun on her heel and stove in their head.

GR!O might have sneered slightly. It was difficult to read his expression through the cloud of pink bees.

That weekend it was Becky Bermuda's turn to host at her chalet. This was a party not a panic, where random acts of violence were encouraged, and it caused no small reaction to see an otherwise respected member of the circuit so summarily slain without so much as a chance to defend themselves. To everyone's surprise and temporary relief, it was not a person at all but a cricket -temporary, because Me-Yo didn't stop there.

The bloodbath that ensued was no great loss to society but of greater concern for Bermuda's finances, which after this would be in slow recovery: it wasn't cheap to put on a cricket show, especially when the last thing anyone wanted was to see artificial bodies slaughtered for no discernible reason than pique.

It might have been a complete loss had not elves intervened.

The pair descended through the skylight, wielding personal smoke deployment devices that attacked Me-Yo and GR!O's higher functions and disabled them entirely. Within seconds of their dramatic entry, the elves had put a stop to the cricket rampage.

First crickets, thought Becky Bermuda from her saferoom, emerging once assured by the uninvited pair that the danger had passed, and now elves: I'll never live down this disgrace.

The elves were quite ordinary. Attired in checkerboard cloaks and pleated spider-silk nappies, the only thing the otherwise two plain-looking men had going for them were the inlaid smoke deployers running along their green-and-white sleeves.

"Mistaken identity," explained the taller one, assisting his partner in sewing up Me-Yo and GR!O, totally inert like the crickets they had so remorselessly assaulted. In moments the velour bodybags were sealed and whisked away through the skylight.

"They crashed my party," Bermuda said, "and I invited them! Who do they think they are?"

"Elves, like us."

Repressing a shudder at the bodies lain about, the tall one said, "Instead of the crickets they really are, yes." Enmity between elves and crickets was no secret, the former despising all false forms, holding them to be blasphemous and venal; the Church of ELF -Eurhythmic Love Forever- loved to dance, but hated posers.

"The worst case of elf-loathing," said the second, "we've ever seen."

"The worst my chalet has ever seen," Bermuda said. One look at the carnage confirmed that her reputation would be a long time recovering. They might be artificial corpses, but recycling them was going to cost a fortune, and the friends and relatives who sent them so confident of their safety would forgive her only once she had been made equally to suffer such a dire loss of face.

Me-Yo and GR!O owed her big this time. If she had anything left after this, Bermuda would spare no expense tracking them down, wherever the real ones might be keeping themselves, and bill them for every last broken item -including her heart.

Alimentary Fragment

2010-10-27T07:26:00.000-07:00

Gastronomy: astronomy with a capital G. Related to God. The divine science. The depth of hunger but the height of taste. If there is one link twining through human history it is the stomach, the shape of which resembles a fetus at its embarking point. Go so far as to say we proceed from the belly. Gastronomy asks the pertinent question: What are the components of a wise stomach? Heraclitus: "It is divine, the seat of reason, made not of beer." Thus every gastronaut is confronted by this multifaceted but mysterious repository. If not beer, then plastic or waxpaper? Surely not flesh. Phenomenological study bears out the latter and describes an aura of interior emission that eludes all scholarship; Borborygmus, thus called by St Webster, is in man but not of him. Flesh may only produce flesh, therefore the stomach, producing such inhuman product, cannot be human and cannot either be made of human substance. What, then? The question haunts history, more than a noise, a disease of silence.

Minute for What (conclusion)

2010-10-16T08:10:00.000-07:00

Sally waited in the car, his angel, and soon, if things went as expected, his executioner.

For five minutes they drove without speaking. Water splashed under the wheels. It was half past one and she took Princes Street, beyond it glowering in yellow light Edinburgh Castle.

"How did he get it, that kid? Pop gave me that gun when I went into the service, the only thing I had to remember him by, and now it's locked up as evidence. Wonderful."

"Sally, I know how you must feel..."

"Forget it," she said, turning the car. The rear wheel bumped over the curb and they were both jostled in the cab until it righted. "Don't mind me, Rob, it was a long day. I'm just glad you're okay."

"I'm fine."

She had stopped off at the bank after leaving her office that afternoon, to confirm that the deposit went through. It made her late, she explained, or else she would have caught him before he left the house for groceries.

"What deposit?"

"The one we talked about this morning." She steered down the narrow lane. "During breakfast?"

"Guess I forgot," he said lamely.

Sally parked and was getting out when she stopped. "It just hit me," she said. "We still need the groceries. The cops didn't recover them, did they?"

"No," he said. "I can do it tomorrow."

"Right. Nothing's open, anyway."

The house was quiet without Dylan's hat and beard to decorate it. Rob was unexpectedly wistful. A different ghost inhabited the place now and he would have to come to terms with it.

From the bathroom, as she got ready for bed, Sally said, "Bad habits will be the end of you, Rob. You had to get thrown in Saughton like you used to, and for what, to help a kid down on his luck."

He sat on the bed in his boxers. "This was different..."

"I thought Luna changed all that."

"It did."

"You forgot?" She slipped under the covers and stroked his back, compassionate laughter lightening her voice. "It's not the end of the world, you'll get back on your feet. For now you count on me, your doting bride."

He joined her and held Sally against him. "My beautiful bride."

She was quickly asleep but he lay with head heavy on the pillow. Everyone, even his wife, believed the lie of what had happened tonight. Only a total stranger who had sacrificed his freedom knew the truth. It was the kid's choice, wasn't it? Rob just had to get over it. Life was good when people believed the best about you, true or not.

He woke later from a strange dream and shook Sally awake and told her everything.

Minute for What (continued)

2010-10-12T12:42:00.000-07:00

The boy repeated what he said at the pub, that he was trying to help, shadows from the cell striping his dredlock mane. So much like Rob at that age. Philosophy of invulnerable youth took many shapes but amounted to the same kind of cage within which to stew: nobody could unlock that door but yourself. Rob entered his at a tender age, marked in memory by an excursion with his mother that would have lasting effect.

They had been shopping. He was no more than a child, and his LOBE -children of families that could afford it were routinely implanted with a Low Oscillation Bandwidth Emitter by the age of five- was tuned to the store's piped music as he followed Mom down through several departments, from clothing to handbags to jewelry. He happened to look up and caught sight of her pocketing a pair of earrings. Whatever question he had wished to ask died in his throat. To this day he could remember the Bob Dylan song playing in his ear, Simple Twist of Fate.

After his mother passed, Rob became conscious of society's ills and entered the priesthood, immediately upon ordination taking to the streets to agitate for the poor. Arrested more times than he could count, Rob was finally exiled by the parish to Luna, where he discovered the key out of his cage. It coincided with the arrival of a ghost.

Of anyone to haunt his waking, he would have expected his mother. His faith taught him of the membrane wrapping life in one of multifold divine aspects. Ghosts were not standard operating procedure, as it were, but they weren't cause for alarm. It was an apparition of the singer that invaded Rob's waking life, manifested out of the air without invitation and popping up at odd times since that dark hour on the moon first ushered him in.

He could see it now, the rumor of hat and beard behind the boy in the cell. I'll keep an eye on him, it intoned with a voice only Rob could hear.

One less thing to worry about, he thought.

On the way out, he asked the agent, "Ever heard of Dylan?"

"Dylan Thomas?"

"It's a singer from a long time ago," Rob said. "My ma really liked him."

The rain had stopped. Cold night air outside sharpened his senses with smells of fresh earth and oils pooled at the roadside. There under a streetlamp waited his wife.

TO BE CONCLUDED

Minute for What (continued)

2010-10-12T06:20:00.001-07:00

"What," Rob said, "did I do, precisely?"

"Taking the gun from him?" The agent laughed. "You must have known we would find it."

"I didn't think we'd be caught."

"No deed unpunished, that's the law of the land, Father. I'd think you know that by now, in your line of work."

"I forget." Too much lately, he thought.

"I'll wrap up your file," she said, adding notes to his file with a ballpoint pen. Ink and paper were apparently the best available means of record-keeping at Saughton. Rob would have thought that improved relations would grant civil services an upgrade in basic, digital necessities, yet even at St Greg's they had to scrape by with the old forms.

"Did you know your mother would visit, in the old days when you were getting arrested it seemed like every other day? Rest her soul," said the agent, "she would bring us casserole, to thank us for treating her son so well."

He had other things on his mind. "Can I see the boy?"

Finished with paperwork, she added his file to a shelf stacked with them. "On your way out, why not. Another soul to save, right?"

"Something like that."

TO BE CONTINUED

Minute for What (continued)

2010-10-09T07:05:00.001-07:00

Saughton Gaol was out of a dark faerie story, prisoners locked inside like children in an oven. The hot reek of the holding area tested even the staunchest of the men packed there, and when Rob's turn came to be processed he resumed breathing without the assistance of his coat sleeve over his face.

"Give me a minute, Father," said the processing agent. Her office was larger than a kiln. Fluorescents sheened off the lime-yellow walls. Hints of freshly-brewed coffee lingered in the humid air. The agent sipped from an enormous thermos as she finished filling out the requisite fingerprint and photo forms and clipped them to Rob's file. That done, she lifted her gray head and smiled at him.

"Nobody recognized you, eh, Barclay? Don't take it personally, all we see cycling through the ranks are fresh cops in and out on their way to the real world of law enforcement."

"All except you, Jo."

The smile remained as she nodded. "All except me, that's right. I'm the only one still around old enough to remember Saughton's favorite reprobate, Father Roebuck Barclay, the terror of the city. We arrested you at so many protests, it was getting so you'd have a cot reserved."

The agent sat back and folded her hands on her stomach. "Then you stopped. I thought either you'd died or moved on to chase social justice elsewhere. Well, I can see you didn't die."

His file was thick, recorded on outmoded paper. It represented a full accounting of Rob's life up to and including the reason he stopped a life of protest and returned to the traditional duties of a priest; days of social agitation, once so crucial to a man of indeterminate faith, were long behind him.

"Says in there you took a trip to Luna," the agent said, slapping the top of the file. "Is that what cured you?"

"It restored my faith," Rob said.

"If that's so, then why am I privileged with your company once again, Barclay? The charges are serious."

"I know."

"Keeping company with half-baked killers was never your style."

They had stripped Rob of his belongings when admitting he and the boy, including the pistol that proved his guilt. Rob's presumption, thanks to his misfire at the woman he had attempted to mug, was that he would be held under the charge of attempted homicide and the boy, no more than an accomplice, would be let go.

"I don't understand," he said.

"The kid told us what you did. He'll be held on bail, but we should have you back on the street in no time."

TO BE CONTINUED

Minute for What (continued)

2010-10-08T07:19:00.000-07:00

"Where was it? Where did you go?"

He wanted a cigarette and said so.

"I'm trying to help you, father."

"By sticking your nose in? No thanks."

"Have to talk about it sometime."

"But not to you."

The server appeared at his shoulder and Rob was about to tell her he didn't need another pint when motion at the counter caught his eye. It was a woman and two police -the woman from the close.

"Your friend," the server told the boy, "needs a hand," and then to Rob, "Play along like you're nackered, father." He slumped at the shoulders and let his head hang and they carried him to the backroom where a door let onto the street.

"My groceries..."

"Come back tomorrow," the tall blonde server said. She slipped away. It was still wet and miserable out and his only protection a coat with a pistol in the pocket still warm to the touch. A minute later it didn't matter, as they were stopped ten yards later by a policeman's flashlight.

TO BE CONTINUED

Minute for What (continued)

2010-10-07T12:06:00.001-07:00

The boy asked where the gun was.

"In my pocket."

"With the hole in it?"

"The other pocket."

"Okay," the boy said. "You're having a bad night."

Rob took a sip of Lagavulin. "It's great," he said. The pint of Deuchars was sweet and light and he had to stop himself from draining it.

"Where you coming from?"

Another drink and this time he finished the pint. The server brought another with speed that belied her height. He watched her go back and talk easily with the men at the counter. They all had to crane their necks.

"You look," he heard the boy say, "like you came back from somewhere."

"I don't remember yesterday," Rob said. "Today it rained."

TO BE CONTINUED

Minute for What (continued)

2010-10-06T06:52:00.001-07:00

With sack of groceries in hand and one pocket of his coat a wide open, bullet-punched mess, the soggy priest went into the nearest pub to get dry. The crowded counter diverted him to a table by the window, where a cracked pane breathed knives into his face.

"Evening," said the same voice he'd mistaken in the alley for Bob Dylan's, belonging to the leonine youth in dredlocks. "Sorry to bother you, father, but I wanted to apologize."

"Keep it down," Rob said, "or they'll hear you."

"Them? But they's the ones told me who you are, Father Barclay."

Rob pulled the sack off the table and set it beside the wall. "Go ahead," he told the boy, nodding toward the other chair, "we might as well have a party."

A tall showpiece blonde brought them glasses and told Rob not to worry, the owner heard about his troubles and it was a donation for the parish. Standing behind the counter was the man inherited the place from his father, looking more construction worker than bartender with his build. He gave a little wave and Rob tilted his head back in acknowledgment, a smile too much to ask but the kindness appreciated.

TO BE CONTINUED

Minute for What (continued)

2010-10-03T16:14:00.000-07:00

"Need a hand?"

The voice came from his shoulder, sounding like Bob Dylan's ghost had caught him up here in this dirty close or he had crossed over to join it in half-lit purgatory. Turned out neither were the case. It was a passerby, a dredlocked man wearing a t-shirt and parachute pants who wasn't bothered by the rain and carried no umbrella and wore no hat, a true anomaly on Edinburgh streets.

Approaching the woman and verifying with a nudge of his boot that she was unconscious, the man said, "We better move this."

Rob lost the strength in his hand and dropped the pistol. It clattered to the flagged stones and commenced to steaming as rain pummeled the barrel.

They dragged the body deeper into the alley, the stranger hoisting her shoulders and leading the way while Rob carried her feet.

"We'll split whatever's she's got, eh?" said the stranger, smiling with with a mouthful of bronze-capped teeth. He looked like a tiger. As he rifled the woman's pockets, a low moan issued from her.

"Hey," he exclaimed, leaping up as if stung, "she hain't got no wound. You're a lousy shot, brother." And with that he was off into the storm without looking back.

Rob sighed. Even his marksmanship was a subject of public ridicule.

Collecting the gun -it was his wife's, after all- he beat it before the woman woke up and offered advice on how to better mug a victim next time. Wisdom like that he didn't need.

TO BE CONTINUED

Minute for What (continued)

2010-09-06T11:13:00.000-07:00

Bob Dylan's ghost be damned, he had to do something.

A heavy spray fell over his head and inundated his coat, thick storm clouds unleashing rain over the city and driving Rob to a nearby gap between buildings where he could wait it out. One of the rare times he went out of the flat, wearing his collar no less, and he had to forget to bring an umbrella.

The sack of groceries became heavier as it collected drops flung down from the sky. Rob gripped it more tightly in the crook of his arm and leaned against a brick wall, knowing he should pray for a boon -wanting to pray for a boon, but failing to find words to start.

His confusion didn't last, as a woman passed into his field of vision. She huddled into her collar and hastened in the direction of the market he had recently departed from, so caught up in wanting to get out of the wet that she didn't notice the man coming at her from the alley.

"Have you got a minute?" Rob reached out with his free hand to tug at the woman's elbow. It was covered by a thin rayon sleeve, hardly the type of wrap for inclement weather. Her slacks and open-toed mules were little better. She stood to get a good soaking staying out much longer, a thought process that showed in her face as it turned at the sound of Rob's voice.

"A minute for what?"

With savage strength coming from some undiscovered part of himself, he pulled the woman into the alley and demanded her purse. "It's all I want," he said at a fair shout to be heard over the downpour. Water gurgled and splashed around their feet like a thin river.

It wasn't common that men with grocery bags in one arm yanked hapless victims off the street. By some uncanny intuition, the woman knew he couldn't hold her and yanked free of his one-handed grip, tearing her sleeve in the process.

"What're y'doing, having a laugh?" she said. "Y're Father Barclay, aren't you, or I'm daft. I'm one of y'r bloody parishioners, father, aren't I? Siobhan Clarke, if y'don't remember."

He hadn't looked at her face but even in the gloom Rob knew the features.

"What do y'need with my purse, I already gave on Sunday..." But a look of comprehension crept into her eyes and settled around the woman's mouth in tight creases.

Quick as that there was thunder. Siobhan Clarke -Ms Clarke to her secondary students- went down in a pool of yellow light, torn sleeve and all, a gray stream forming almost at once around her prone body.

A clatter of footsteps sounded behind him, and a man's voice came out of the darkness.

"Did you hear a noise?" it asked. "Like a gun or som'thing?"

Rob shook his head, not bothering to look up. The passerby, apparently satisfied, moved away down the road and left him standing in the alley. Near the brick wall lay the still form. Above it a wisp of acrid smoke lingered, emanating from a hole where moments before there had been none, edges seeming to smolder from the bullet's impact.

The depleted uranium shell from Rob's pistol had gone clean through the brick and missed its target entirely. The woman had fainted dead away but was unharmed in anything other than her wits.

A frayed ruin that had been his pocket showed the gun in Rob's hand, the smell of melted fabric filling his nose and mouth with such a toxic fume that he stopped breathing altogether, as if the shot had curled around in the air and struck him instead, stopping his heart.

TO BE CONTINUED

Minute for What (continued)

2010-09-01T08:04:00.000-07:00

The supermarket bustled at the close of another work day. Rob loaded up his mini-cart and waited in line. He waited until the store was nearly empty, with only a handful of shoppers in the aisles, before approaching the cashier.

From the looks of him, the cashier was either worn out or sick of his job. A perturbed expression hung on his face as he waved his hand over each of Rob's selections, a skintight glove reading each and feeding them into the total. He didn't look up until the end of the transaction.

"Anything else for you, father."

The pistol made an uncomfortable lump in the pocket of Rob's coat and he barely heard the question over the roaring in his ears. The last word rang out like a scream in a confessional: father. He had forgotten to take off his collar!

What you gonna do? asked a nasally, desultory voice, but when he turned around there was no sign of Bob Dylan's ghost lurking. It was taunting him from some invisible place beyond the pale.

Rob jabbed the pay reader with his thumb, allowing it to read his distinctive print and charge the groceries to his depleted account, where overdraft protection would add yet another fine to his growing list of infractions.

"Thanks, father," muttered the clerk, shoving the heavy bag into his arms.

Around the corner Rob tore off his clerical collar in a rage. Any onlooker might have mistaken his righteous indignation as that of another soul losing in battle against the devil. If they stopped to listen, they would have heard most un-Christ-like utterances.

Given the silence of heaven in response to his profanity prayers and weighted down with groceries he couldn't afford, Rob was prepared to give up all hope.

TO BE CONTINUED

Minute for What

2010-08-14T11:34:00.000-07:00

The ghost of Bob Dylan, little more than a hat and beard, was asking questions from the kitchen, to which he responded as he always did:

"Shut up, Bob."

He sat at the kitchen counter surveying the wreckage of another fruitless day, waiting for his wife. Cooped up since morning, his one indulgence had been a visit to the Elephant House, the local center of coffee culture touted as the birthplace of Harry Potter, whoever that was. Hours had passed since that precious excursion, and with every tool available to his mental kit -prayer, recitation of poetry, squaring algorithms- it was Dylan who showed up, a hero, certainly, but not much comfort.

When Sally got home she was not going to be happy. He hadn't found work in over a year and the money had run out.

On the counter was a pistol. It contained bullets of depleted uranium. One shot and his head would be vaporized, along with anything else in its trajectory for a hundred yards. That would put it somewhere in the vicinity of the castle up the road. Their place was nestled in the lee of Edinburgh Castle, in shadow most of the day and a magnet for famous ghosts.

"How are you going to eat?" Dylan put to him in a nasal whine, reminding him that both the larder and the fridge were picked clean.

He looked at the pistol, darkly inspired.

TO BE CONTINUED

None Against (conclusion)

2010-07-05T08:10:00.000-07:00

When Yumi came to ask for help, it was the first Ehud had seen her in weeks and the last time he would interact with his wife as a human being.

"I want to watch us have sex," she said.

Was he capable of surprise anymore?

"Ongame," she clarified.

He was capable of answering, even if it went against all his natural instincts. Yumi had that effect on him.

"I'm not against it."

The final phase preceding her transfer into a new body required Yumi to observe her old one from the outside. She explained the reasons. He half-listened, something about exterior reflex reification and other such nonsense of the same, predictable variety the elves had been filling her with from the beginning, and relaxed his neck so his head would make a motion that resembled a nod.

"You agreed to it?"

Ehud nodded again. "She had to integrate her conjugal self. How could I deprive Yumi of that?"

"Charming."

Kole Swenson stood with him at the top of a white slope. Ganymede had some of the best skiing in the system, a popular year-round venue for tourists and residents alike. They had gone to celebrate.

It was a day since he had joined select ongame club of first-timers, those who so to speak were no longer halo virgins. Such a special honor that Ehud expected never to repeat it, not so long as he retained a sound mind.

"How was it?"

"That's a loaded question."

Kole set himself to take the slope. "I warned you, didn't I?"

A cool and refreshing though ersatz wind blew off the peak, throwing icy dust against the green domesky.

"That you did," Ehud said.

They raced down. It was exhilarating, this experience of the actual.

The lodge was a warm retreat at the end of the day. The milling crowd, unlike his recent ongame experiences, was composed purely of bipeds without a single armadillo in sight. That had been Yumi's scene. He wouldn't miss it.

When Kole nudged him, he didn't immediately pick her out of the passing flow of faces. Then hers emerged from the background like a fish breaking the surface of water. It was hard to recognize Yumi. There was nothing special about her. She looked any other woman. The six weeks their marriage lasted had a lasting quality only as a half-recalled dream.

"Till death do us part, huh, pal?"

Ehud watched her go, wondering how long it would take for him to forget her altogether. The way things were going, it wouldn't be long at all.

"That's not my wife," he said.

None Against (continued)

2010-07-02T10:35:00.002-07:00

An echo of what sounded like laughter came from another part of the jail, somewhere deep in the winding corners of the cold basement. Ehud couldn't tell if it was man or woman.

"How did she convince you?"

"She would have killed herself. She planned to kill Masamune, then herself. As her mother, I couldn't allow that, and Yumi knew it. She used my love."

"Her father, your husband-"

"In jail."

Consuela exhaled as if tired from maintaining a false front too long. The shadows began to swallow her. Hanging in the last of the dim light were two hands, like they had been chopped off at the wrist and laid on velvet. They did not seem like a mother's hands.

"You're an old woman," Ehud said. "You gave in."

"I did what I had to."

"Will she ever be satisfied?"

Consuela receded and lost substance, that stolen glimpse of her face imprinted on the black background. The chill air contracted, sucked into a weak breeze by hidden rents in the foundation. Air of sickness and dissolution.

He thought she had fallen asleep when suddenly her voice rasped out of the darkness, a disembodiment of sound, a wraith.

"No," she said. "Not if satisfaction is an option."

The basement level had no windows, yet that did not bar all ways of leaving. There were other forms of escape, even for those who had ducked a worse fate by coming here. A mother from her willful child could pray for worse. One morning guards would come to Consuela's cell and find that she had disappeared completely.

That echo again. It sounded like laughter but Ehud wasn't sure. He didn't know what could be so damn funny.

None Against (continued)

2010-06-24T12:11:00.002-07:00

"You think I don't love her," Yumi's mother said, seated on the cold floor with her arms on her knees. "That's all I have left."

"What you did isn't love."

"She needs to die. I failed, but my daughter wants to be killed. The church is good at that, she's with the right crowd."

"They think they're helping her to live."

Consuela's face was hidden in shadow, but he could hear grim satisfaction as she answered. "If not," she said, "it has to be you."

Ehud searched for something to say.

"I know who you are, Mr Sloan. Why do you think she married you? She's using you like she did me, but I hope you make a better tool."

"That's a lie. In your testimony, you said..."

"You wanted to hear how bloodthirsty I was. I said what the jury wanted to hear."

She leaned into the light, revealing a surprisingly youthful face. In the courtroom, the accused must wear a hood that obscures their features. To prevent jurors from becoming unconsciously sympathetic. It was the first time Ehud saw what Consuela looked like. She could have been Yumi's sister.

"She convinced me to do it," Consuela said, "and to take the blame -for giving birth to her with an expiration date. But that's not good enough for Yumi: she wants to die on her own terms."

"Yumi wants to live, damn you."

The half-smile of inner resolve did not leave her face. The only response Yumi's mother made was to recline back into obscuring darkness. Maybe she preferred it there.

None Against (continued)

2010-06-22T12:22:00.000-07:00

The Municipal Column, ruling house for the elected body of Nautilus' Potentates, had a jail in its basement. The MCP had established the block of cells to process convicts either to the mines at Perilous or He3 refineries on Earth's moon. Conviction rates proved so low, however, that the small population of prisoners became permanent residents.

For Consuela Fjalarsdottir-Rumi, who was serving a life sentence, the possibility of being shipped out was a distant possibility but not off the table. It was up to her arbitrators. If they could successfully argue her bad health before the MCP, Yumi's mother would remain at Nautilus. For the time being she would stay right where she was and have the possibility of transfer hang over her like a premonition of doom.

Shipping to any of the work camps was as good as a death sentence for Consuela, who craved an end to imprisonment by any means necessary: life itself was an iron maiden, offering punishment worse than any cell or camp could inflict.

A visitor's pass was simple to procure. The same day he applied, Ehud was allowed to see the convict in her cell.

"Don't I recognize you?"

"Yes, Mrs Rumi. I was on the jury at your trial."

"Thanks a lot." Consuela Fjalarsdottir-Rumi sat in the radium-lit dimness of a rectangular cell. There was no pillow on her tiny cot, a luxury granted only after one year. She had nine months to go, barring any bad behavior.

"I want to talk about your daughter."

"Have you seen her? How is she?"

"She's... it's hard to say. Yumi is going to a church that fills her head with bad ideas."

Shadows in the cell left the prisoner's head in darkness, so he could not see her expression as silence stretched.

"Don't blame the church," he heard her say finally. "She had a bad head to start with."

"But that's just it. Yumi wants to... she won't have it much longer."

Ehud grasped the horizontal bars. "They're going to transfer her into another body!"

"Good." No hesitation this time.

That didn't surprise him. Hadn't she tried to kill her own daughter? Anything that released Yumi from life was a step in the right direction.

None Against (continued)

2010-06-16T06:25:00.000-07:00

"Yumi, stay. Don't let them..." He couldn't say it. He felt her slipping away and wanted her to know how much he loved her, not that he was rejecting her over something so minor as her body.

"Don't let them turn you into one of those... one of those things."

She hesitated. The wings on her face lent her an aching beauty. Unfulfilled longing was an unidentifiable color in Yumi's eyes, growing opaque as he looked.

"I do love you, Ehud," she said, "but I have to take care of myself first."

That was it. He watched her leave with the preacher, holding hands with a blue tent. For all Ehud knew, it would be the last time he saw Yumi as a human being. As it turned out, he would see her once more before she shed her humanity for good.

"Let her go," he heard Kole say. "She was never a good wife."

He spun and confronted him with an expression that backed Kole into his wife and splashed her martini across herself and two others standing next to her.

"Shut up, Kole."

The party was downhill from there.

* * * * *

A good wife... what was that, exactly? The question dogged him, disturbed his sleeping and waking moments. Not once had it come up in his mind when deciding to marry Yumi. He loved her. His devotion was predicated on the absence of any doubt and therefore on the absence of any need to question what sort of partner she would be.

What made a good wife? The potential was an open horizon that he had never contemplated, to his eternal sorrow. She could be anything. By dint of the alchemy that inevitably occurred upon conjugation, a wife could be a trophy or dear friend, a leech or enabler; she could be a vampire bunny.

Yumi did not fit any category. The problem was scarcity. Ehud had never met any of her friends, if she in fact had any. He had only seen her mother in court during the trial. Yumi's father languished in an Earth jail.

There was a thought, a doozy. Both of Yumi's parents were criminals. That might have influenced his thinking, had he chosen to reflect upon his betrothed's genetic makeup. Transferring her consciousness to a Cricket body, now that he really considered it, might be the smartest thing Yumi ever did.

Her mother had noble intentions. Murderous means, true, but with a good heart. Was she aware if Yumi's decision?

There was one way to find out.

http://www.illawarraqinfo.com/page13.htm

None Against (continued)

2010-06-15T10:56:00.000-07:00

"That's all right," cAMUS said. "We do as we are, Mr Sloan. Have you heard our luxury gospel?"

Yumi and the blue tent framed the preacher like bodyguards.

"Come see us Sunday. It would mean a lot to Yumi."

Or what? thought Ehud. The room went hush at the sound of cAMUS' threat.

"I don't believe in it."

"Religion?"

"In church," Ehud said, "the whole idea. You never answered my question."

The numbers were not in his favor. Three to one would make a short wrestling match. That was the vibe he got from the trio, that they were ready to pigpile him if he didn't respect their quack ideology.

Kole came through the crowd. There was a question whose side he would take, as it had clearly come down to taking sides: he was a member of ELF but had stopped trying to get Ehud to attend when it became clear that he was not the believing type; not in anything, at least, that wasn't quantifiable. It had never come between them and Ehud hoped it wouldn't now

"How can you be against PLUS? The value of Peace Love Understanding and Success can be applied to every aspect of life."

"Success?"

"It used to be Respect, but that is implied in success," cAMUS said calmly. "Your wife cannot succeed if disease eats her brain."

"Everybody believes this?"

"No," Kole said. "It's abominable."

None Against (continued)

2010-06-03T07:57:00.002-07:00

Yumi never entertained guests. That was his job, on top of everything else. Clients came to the bungalow and boxed wine from whatever vineyard had gifted him that week would form a cube in the entry and each guest as they entered would take one. This saved not only on refills but more importantly on having to do dishes after.

He watched them come up the lane, the usual faces being herded by Kole Swenson with wife on his arm. No Yumi. She preferred staying away, too timid or contrary to put up with a crowd in the bungalow's small space. He expected Yumi went where she always did, to the Church of ELF. That was a crowd she could handle.

Something was going on with the head pastor, he knew it. The head elf. What kind of name was cAT cAMUS? It sounded a nocturnal creature you would find digging in the trash bin.

The cube of wine boxes shrank as people, clients and friends all, filtered through the entryway. Soon the bungalow was ringing with their voices, growing in volume in direct proportion to the shrinking cube.

An hour had passed when someone tapped Ehud on the shoulder, interrupting a conversation with friends who had just returned from a tour of the mines at Io. It was the head elf. He hadn't been invited, which meant...

Ehud cast around to find her, and sure enough, there she was, standing by the window with someone wearing a blue tent. Yumi's face caught the light and fairly glowed. She was smiling and looked happy.

cAT cAMUS was looking at him looking at Yumi.

"Know who that is?" Ehud said. "That's my wife."

"She's her own woman, Mr Sloan. Neither you or I can change that."

"But you'll manipulate her," he said, feeling inordinate rage well up inside of him. "What's a cricket? Can that be somebody's wife?"

"Calm down, Mr Sloan. Maybe we can talk at a better time."

"No, I think right now is best."

The blue tent, a burqa as he learned later, glided over and quick as that was between them.

"This your pet jellyfish?"

"That's Domino." It was Yumi who spoke. "Stop pestering my friends."

She was still smiling.

None Against (continued)

2010-05-28T06:14:00.000-07:00

"He said you'd be like this. cAT said..."

The preacher was filling her head with lies. "What did he say?"

Yumi had come in carrying a duffel bag and started unloading balls of black fuzz onto the credenza. "I thought you loved me," she said, lining up rows. Ehud picked up one of the black balls: it was a vampire bunny doll. Glazed pink buttons for eyes stared back at him, each with a tiny black dot in the center. Stitched-on fangs were sharp white protrusions around the small green crescent of what could have been a tongue.

"Auction tomorrow," Yumi said.

"I suppose a bake sale would be too predictable."

"They've taken care of me, Ehud. It hasn't been easy."

He replaced the black bunny and put his arm around her. Yumi stiffened. "I'm sorry," he said, "I don't want to make things harder for you."

"But you are."

He recoiled. "What?"

She had emptied the duffel and straightened the rows of fuzzy monster toys. "You're making this very difficult for me. Making this decision comes at a very hard time."

The rows were complete, easily two dozen of the black fangy rabbits looking like the dark regiment of a toy army from hell. Ehud had the nasty premonition that if he didn't agree to support Yumi in becoming a robot, they would come to life at her bidding and rip his throat out.

"All right," he said. "I only want what's best, Yumi, and if you think..."

She brightened and threw her arms around Ehud enthusiastically, kissing him with a small, strange laugh. It was the happiest he had seen her since the reception. It was the happiest he remembered seeing her, not exactly the same thing but sufficient.

Yumi said, "Let's go to bed."

None Against (continued)

2010-05-25T12:49:00.000-07:00

She didn't say "robot" of course, Yumi was too chic to use such an outmoded word. She didn't want to transfer her mind and soul into some clunky automaton; she wanted to be a cricket.

She needed to be a cricket. That's what his wife told him on that cold morning at the bungalow. The first thing he thought was how this would affect their sex life. Ehud bit his tongue and tried to keep an open mind.

"Why?"

"None were against it."

"None?" he said. "'None' who?" It suddenly didn't matter that he had no idea precisely how one transfered into a cricket or what would make such an option attractive. Medicine could stave the effects of Yumi's mental degeneration for a long time, even keep it in permanent remission.

She touched her cheeks. The platinum wings stenciled across them were disarmingly beautiful, curving from the sides of her mouth upward to her temples, blazoned gloriously over Yumi's face and giving her the appearance of someone marked by a touch of the divine. She had made no mention of getting them, but no sooner had she walked in and Ehud was struck dumb, Yumi chose that moment to state her intention to beat the disease in her head for good by replacing it with a better one.

"ELF will pay for everything," she said, "don't worry."

"Who said I was worried?"

From ToonPool

None Against (continued)

2010-05-24T09:25:00.000-07:00

The export and distribution of Ganymedan wines kept Ehud busy, but Yumi was against the idea of work, still too distraught over the trial to be interested in doing anything other than spend her time at the church.

"Has she tried anything kinky? That's when you know they're restless."

He was delivering a case of Gula vintage to Kole's office and the subject of Yumi, inevitably, came up.

"They?" Ehud said, dropping the box of twelve of the finest bottles to be tasted on any world on the wicker table in the corner. "'They' who?"

"Women like her."

He secured the other's signature, taking Kole's thumbprint on the surface of what resembled a wristband, the luminescent surface glittering as it read and stored the receipt of delivery.

"She hasn't said anything."

"She will."

"Really." He took a seat and admired the view of Southern Cross terminal, watching a zeppelin slowly converging with the dock carrying its load of commuters. Yumi admired the airships, took every opportunity to point them out against the green domesky. For him they were a means of slow travel, a luxury; he preferred his three-wheeler on the Calvino Thoroughfare over the crawling pace of air travel.

"Ever been married?"

Kole grinned. "No.".

"And I'm supposed to take you seriously?"

The other winked at him. "You don't have to marry a woman to know her, bud. Just you wait and see how long it takes her to get kinky."

Yumi took two weeks to prove his theory right. She showed up at the bungalow, face covered in platinum, and said she wanted to become a robot.

None Against (continued)

2010-05-18T12:57:00.000-07:00

"I'm not against it," was his answer.

He needed a best man, and Kole Swenson was not only a friend but a client. As one of the leading wine merchants at Nautilus, Ehud encountered people from all levels of society. Kole Swenson shared his passion for wine as well as for skiing... but not for Yumi.

"You're crazy," he said.

"I love her, Kole."

"You feel sorry for her and you're making an ass of yourself."

"Being my best man is out, then?"

"No," Kole said, "I'll do it. Don't expect me to keep a straight face, though."

The sanctuary of the Church of ELF was an unusual venue to get married in. For one thing, it didn't exist, physically speaking. Elves did not attend in their bodies, rather they strapped on a collar that conveyed them mind-wise to the sanctuary. This collar, popularly known as a halo, emitted a sphere of light the cunning properties of which placed one in the sanctuary; the religious connotation of the device's name was circumstantial, as most halo users defied such conventional thinking, but in this case it was easy to draw a heavenly connection between means and ends.

For Ehud it was easy to make such a connection, though it wasn't long before he saw through the illusion.

Logging ongame was common practice for citizens of all the settlements. He had been doing it since he was a child but, even so, Ehud was all nerves. Something so important as commit your life to another in marriage was different from the social activities normally associated with logging on; not only that but with the exception of Kole, he wouldn't know anybody at the service.

But he loved Yumi, that was all that mattered.

Her face was bare of conceit, the sole distinguishing feature about Yumi her golden braid as they spoke vows written for them by the church. It was a festive but brief ceremony, the sanctuary filled to capacity with elves, many of whom had accepted Yumi as one of their own. Other attendants were there who simply went to these kinds of things out of habit. It alarmed Ehud to see an armadillo lumber between the pews, a stranger as it turned out, and he had to be restrained from kicking it out by Kole, who was more knowledgeable of ongame body fads.

The reception, happening offgame, lasted long into the night, at the end of which they consummated in a sauna while several guests watched. Ehud, out of his mind on a psylocibin and dimethyltryptomine cocktail, did not remember but was able to catch the replay.

None Against (continued)

2010-05-14T08:57:00.001-07:00

Yumi suggested the ongame idea not long after they exchanged vows. As with her new style of dress Ehud suspected her friends at ELF were behind it. The ceremony was at the church, officiated by cAT cAMUS, and with all the time Yumi spent being counseled by him, Ehud wouldn't have been surprised that the idea originated from the pastor.

The Yumi he knew would never suggest something so odd. She was too vulnerable, too opposed... to everything. That fragility drew him to her.

He remembered when Yumi was escorted into the courtroom, when the first impression anyone could have gotten was of a woman against everything, against her own mother to begin with and everything else that followed. She had good reason but it didn't make Yumiko Rumi any happier than she should have been.

The case was a cause celebre, Consuela Fjalarsdottier-Rumi on trial for manslaughter of her son and atttempted homicide of her daughter. Believing both her children doomed to mental decay, the distraught woman took her ex-husband's rifle -he had been a collector before his untimely conviction for the sale of bandwidth to minors -and shot the boy as he slept; Yumi, wakened by the sound, used her training as a wrestler at Madison Academy to save her life. It was the kind of story talked about throughout the settlements.

She looked like a fighter, wearing an expression during the trial like she would fight the world. Reluctantly, but she would do it if she had to. Ehud read in that expression a woman fighting an internal battle fueled by self-loathing.

He surprised himself when, following the guilty verdict, he asked Yumi out for dinner. One thing lead to another and that fateful date was still fresh in his memory when she asked for his hand in marriage.

None Against (continued)

2010-05-14T08:53:00.000-07:00

Yumi had the hijab wrapping the top of her head and her braid hung limp. She had worn her hair long for many years in such a braid knotted at the end that she was rarely seen wearing it any other way. The wrap was recent, introduced when she began spending more time at the Church of the ELF. It was a choice, Yumi insisted, but Ehud suspected that she was pressured into it; Yumi was impressionable, acutely so since events of the last year had come to a conclusion.

"Weren't you watching? The reason I agreed to this farce was because you wanted..."

"I had to stop," she said.

"It was your idea, Yumi."

"I know."

She seemed reluctant to admit what they both knew already. Nevertheless, he cut Yumi an extraordinary amount of slack.

If you're mother tried to kill you as a teen, it might scramble your brains a little; having to take the witness stand against her in open court would scramble them a lot. Yumi had managed to avoid that chaotic fate against all odds. Even as the trial reached a guilty verdict, Yumi had already begun to curry public sympathy into a kind of celebrity that would have lasting influence over her direction in life.

Ehud was one of the jurors. He knew the details of the case. Her mother had tried to spare Yumi the ravages of hereditary neurological disorder by killing her as she sleep.

What he didn't know was the extent of Yumi's madness. Disease or not, she was sick in the head.

None Against (continued)

2010-04-12T09:58:00.001-07:00

She was serious.

"Sex?" he said. "Here?"

From her expression, Yumi was being very patient with him.

"Did someone mention sex, my favorite thing in the world?"

An armadillo addressed them, having shouldered its way through the crowd for a drink. It was tall as a basketball player, upright and top-heavy with cute ears fanning out from an incongruously equine skull, glittering intelligence in the eyes offsetting the impact of such a visage. Its voice was deep enough to sound male, but with a curved back painted as it was with flames and obscuring all but the figure's extremities, gender was hard to ascribe. Not that this seemed to bother Yumi. She smiled at the armadillo like an old friend.

It wasn't out of the ordinary in this crowd to see an armadillo, a fad that many hoped would have blown over by now. From the bar at least four were visible mingling. This one wasn't the most fabulous, that honor went to the Xec Becky Bermuda, who had hers flashing all over like a distress signal and whose star-spangled goggles were all the rage.

The nearer armadillo, non-flashing and actually a bit grungy, continued in falsetto, "If you've got a box seat, we have time before the second movement starts..."

Yumi's husband grabbed her hand. He had to draw the line somewhere.

"Ehud," she whined, not sounding anything like herself, "you didn't give him half a chance..."

He stopped short. "Him? You call... that a 'him'?"

A line appeared between Yumi's eyebrows.

Ehud Sloan, her husband of six weeks, said, "Where's your seat?"

Yumi had gotten a box seat to herself three levels up. The wreaths of sage and zinnia garlands were convincing in texture and appearance. Red-cushioned seats afforded an excellent view, set just far enough back from the rail to allow for indiscretion.

Ehud sat her down.

"Wait," he said, "I'll be right back."

Yumi let out a little exhalation of air that only just passed for acquiescence. It was macabre: she was so much herself in this guise and yet totally alien. Ehud could stand the dissonance no more and had to extricate himself from the scene if only briefly in order to catch his breath and set his head straight.

"I won't be long," he said, and with that was gone.

Ehud Sloan opened his eyes in a different place. He had blinked and gone from the decadent auditorium to the rather more plain interior of a bungalow. He was seated at one end of a sofa. Around his neck was a collar. A moment prior it had been emitting a luminescent sphere that encased his head. This vanished as soon as his eyes came open.

There was a sideboard beside the stairs that led to the bedroom, and standing with her arms crossed expectantly was his wife, Yumi.

"Well, how was I?" she asked eagerly.

Gathering himself and reorienting to this new yet familiar environment -this real room in a real place- Ehud paused before answering.

"We haven't done it yet," he said carefully, "but we will."

None Against

2010-04-10T05:52:00.001-07:00

She was easy to pick out of a crowd. The platinum wings emblazoned on Yumiko Rumi's face were a dead giveaway. That wasn't the only part of her that looked good. The cape and hijab ensemble were new, but he could see Yumi's braid trailing over her left shoulder like a serpent draped around her neck. That part was classic fabulous for a woman who never stepped out looking anything less.

The mezzanine was crowded. Tonight's premiere of the latest cricket symphony was a must-be-seen event, as in a kind of cultural "I'll look like an ape if I'm not seen" kind of affair where only those of true substance attended.

Over at the bar, where bipeds of varying shades and dispositions from surly masculinity draped in polka-dotted togas to coy reserve done up in rainbow-studded Zilk chiffon could be witnessed in all their pressing, anxious charm, as likely to accept a felch in a toilet stall as tear out your throat for even suggesting it, Yumi leaned on the counter staring at her own chest. She fingered her braid. It reached nearly to her elbow. It was a blond stripe set to electric life with the burgundy cape behind it. Yumi was lost in contemplation of her body like it was a new species on display at the zoo, twirling the knotted end of the braid with a motion that made it look like a stone in a sling.

When he spoke, she looked up in alarm.

"Don't you recognize your own husband?"

She didn't answer or return his smile. It wasn't a leer, for Bell's sake. Why did she react as if he had undressed her with his question?

"So... what are you doing here, Yumi? Looks like you're trying to get picked up."

She nodded.

"Isn't that my job?"

She looked at him, fingering her braid. Those eyes again.

"I'm your husband," he said plain as he could. It was the truth, wasn't it, and he didn't appreciate her treating it like such a negotiable subject. Here, especially. "It's an exclusive deal last I heard."

"In that case," Yumi said, "let's have sex."

Special thanks for the image from Save the Cannibals

The Five Hour War (conclusion)

2010-04-06T09:03:00.000-07:00

He learned his daughter's name, Chardonnay, weeks later when an image was beamed from Nautilus. The infant girl in the square digigraph could have belonged to anyone. Attached was her name and a brief note stating that the elves would be in touch. Zurn didn't question the truth of that.

His emergence was greeted with aplomb. In the wracked state of affairs following the war, Earth needed a leading light to show the way and who better than its wealthiest Xec. Men like Hugo Zurn were what the world needed now.

In time it became apparent that Zurn Industries would be entering an era of greater prosperity than ever before. The beta-crystal principle of his Zilk patent was applicable to building materials and realized an immediate boon in construction. These and other cheerful tidings came to the man at the top as rumbles and portents, little more than echoes from another plane.

Chardonnay. That was Diane's maiden name, what she had given up in marrying him. Would that she had not felt it necessary to give up so much more, something that he would have prevented had he only known. But it turned out that he knew very little, when for all these years he had believed the opposite to be true.

Henreid and the other mewling lawyers were a larger part of Zurn's daily existence, as the business of reconstruction threatened to all but consume them. He showed greater willingness to make public appearances and create a new hope for the hopeless. Survivors of what would come to deemed the Five Hour War needed this much from their leaders, and Zurn obliged them.

"This has not been an easy time for you, Hugo," said Henreid, he and the others at cards with the Xec, somewhat less glossy for the recent troubles but on the rebound, most certainly not far from being back to their customary smugness and bluster.

"You have no idea," answered Zurn, dealing with what appeared more tentativeness than was ordinary for the Xec. He was changed of late, which pleased the lawyers. They could be bold without fearing recrimination, unheard of in times past.

They did little to hide their desire to exercise their new superiority at cards.

Zurn, thinking it the least he could do, let them win.

The Five Hour War (continued)

2010-04-06T06:18:00.001-07:00

Bugle was across the room in a flash and planted his knee in Zurn's belly. It hurt. They didn't get that from his book.

"Her mother -your wife -came to us with strict instructions," cAMUS said while Bugle stood ready to pull another wrestling stunt on Zurn's body. "She didn't want you anywhere near the girl."

His breath came in shards. Zurn leaned over, hands white-knuckled on the recliner. He somehow found the strength to lift his head.

"You want money?"

cAMUS had a bad habit of shrugging when it was least warranted. "For starters," he said, his shrug as casual as if they were comparing golf handicaps. "Your daughter will be given the best, you can count on that."

"I'll train her myself," Bugle said with infinite scorn. His earlier calcitrance had changed to contempt. What had seemed a discussion between equals now revealed Zurn to be the weaker party.

"We'll be in touch," cAMUS said at the door, their business concluded. "A time will come when the settlements will allow the lunar router to connect Earth to us again, but not too soon. We wouldn't want to rush things, would we? But you'll be our man, Hugo."

The shape of Bugle receded and melted into the darkness outside. The only light in the room came from cAMUS' stare, lit in some fashion from within. Zurn had thought these elves human but thought he had been hasty in that equation. The unnatural speed with which Bugle had crossed the room, the pilot glow from the preacher's eyes... something gross and related only by expedience to spirit set these figures apart.

He managed to stand before his visitors disappeared altogether and addressed his question to a room that already seemed empty, though he could sense cAMUS hovering at the threshold, an intimation of still-present danger.

"Why?"

The weird eyes blinked, taking no part in the cold voice that spoke from a great distance.

"Because we care."

The Five Hour War (continued)

2010-04-06T06:16:00.000-07:00

Diane mentioned her desire for children early on. It was obvious even without the paper courtship that marriage was in the books for them, and having kids was right out front. She wanted them, even without Hugo agreeing to their necessity.

Through the slatted window daylight devolved into purple shadows. His memories seemed to arise from similar gloom, long hidden from thought. He had spent most of his marriage separated from his wife. When the news arrived, it was like hearing about the death of a stranger.

Yet he loved her. His memories reminded Zurn that he had loved his wife, but not well enough.

"Not right now," he told her in the first year. By the end of the sixth she started to become impatient.

When they tried, nothing happened. Doctors told her she was perfectly capable of bearing children and Hugo's virility checked out. There was nothing to prevent them conceiving and the best thing was to keep trying.

Four more years. They tried. When the mood was right, they tried. Coming home from the ballet, Diane's passion, or in the morning when he readied for links, they tried. When they were exhausted and the last thing on their minds was sex, still they tried. No child came of it.

Diane immersed herself in her first love, international law, deciding that her mind needed to be on something else. She was practicing mental birth control by obsessing and plunging into practice again would be just the thing.

They couldn't try when she was travelling. Hugo never went far but Diane was called to distant appointments in Madrid, New York, and Beijing, the last where she had been when the bombs fell.

No, Zurn corrected himself morbidly, not bombs: God's Rods.

Their last conversation was difficult. He had to tell her that the takeover had failed, that Nautilus would want reprisals. She seemed to say anything but what she really wanted, supportive as she had always been but with reservations now, as if this part of her husband, the losing part, was the final, damning part of an elaborate indignity.

Now men of God or some proximate derivation were telling him that he had a daughter. It was like a direct hit from one of God's Rods.

"She can attend Madison Academy."

Zurn came out of his reverie. "Where?"

Bugle spoke up with evident pride. "The finest school in the system! She would receive the best in letters, maths, and athletics." He added the last preeningly, like a man reciting the final stanza of a beloved poem from memory.

What a suggestion, that a Earth stalwart like Hugo Zurn, who alone amongst the Xec had never set foot off-planet, should send his only child away for her education. She would stay and receive her training as he did, in the natural institutions of their homeland...

Zurn stopped himself. He was planning his daughter's life? Until five minutes ago he hadn't known she existed!

A canny light had come into cAT cAMUS' eyes, the only part of the preacher visible in the otherwise dark room. "Would you know her name?"

"You're asking if I want to know what the name of my child is?"

"Yes."

Zurn had to think. This was all coming too fast and he reeled numbly from a flood of conflicting sensations, as if his body were suddenly at war with itself. Knowing his daughter's name seemed a remote consideration when he hadn't yet seen the girl, didn't even know when she was born or how old she was.

"When do I see her?"

"You don't," cAMUS said. "She's coming with us."

The Five Hour War (continued)

2010-04-02T09:24:00.001-07:00

The Luxury Position was an autohagiography, which in the old era of print media would have meant it was written by the author in celebration of himself. These days an algorithm did all the praising and Zurn had nothing more to do than sign off on the finished product. Maybe the elves knew this and maybe they didn't. They did seem to know an awful lot. That made Zurn nervous.

They read his book. They liked it so much they turned it into gospel, the Luxury Gospel. They used the solar system as their symbol.

"We believe in the cross," cAT cAMUS said, "but extend it across the system. People in my congregation say, Wow, cAT sure has been blessed! They believe that if it happened for me, it can happen for them."

"I'm so glad," Zurn said.

"But you know this is the desired effect, it's right there in your text."

"Right." Was the man mocking him? The elves might not be so omnipotent as they appeared.

"Anyway," cAMUS said, "we didn't come all this way to preach to the converted. Gratitude brought us, Mr Zurn, for creating a noble codex which speaks so much truth and has helped so many. In return we have something important to share with you."

"You might wish to sit," Bugle said.

The impertinence of his visitors was more than Zurn could stomach. He felt juices roiling in his guts. They barged into what was supposed to be a secret location and talked to him like an equal. Mortification didn't do his feeling justice.

But he sat, nevertheless. The visit was wearying and besides the recliner was exceedingly comfortable. He did some of his best thinking there.

"What do you want?"

Both men looked at each other. cAMUS grinned and shrugged his shoulders, ceding the floor to Bugle, who hesitated to say whatever it was they had come here from Jupiter to say.

"Well?"

"When..." Bugle started, his voice catching. This was more to Zurn's tastes, the kind of trepidation with which he was usually treated.

"When we learned," Bugle continued, "about your wife's death, other information was of a sensitive nature was disclosed."

"My wife?" Surely they couldn't know something about his wife that Zurn didn't. That would be the greatest insult!

"When did you last see her?"

"Diane and I didn't see each other very much. She was busy with international law, chasing liberty claims and making her contribution. I gave support every way I could, but it kept her on the other side of the planet most of the time."

"As we expected," Bugle said, glancing at cAMUS as if he wished to be killed rather than go on with what he had to say.

Zurn remained silent, knowing that would only increase the tension. It might even drive the man to suicide, if he was lucky.

Calling on inner resolve, Bugle finally came out with it.

"It has come to our attention that you have a daughter."

The Five Hour War (continued)

2010-03-21T09:35:00.001-07:00

Can one man own a settlement? Hugo Zurn cut his teeth on questions like this.

As reflected in the title of his autohagiography, The Luxury Position, to conceive of a thing is halfway to owning it, the balance fulfilled with cash and timing. He thought he had it down, and not without good reason.

The plastic bees came first.

A food crisis had been unfolding in the northern hemisphere for years. The collapse of bee colonies endangered crop production and everything from almonds to strawberries verged on extinction. Zurn was not yet sixteen when he filed his plastic bee patent. It wasn't even hard, he had been fascinated with biology from a young age and reverse-engineered the entire cycle of hymenopteroids that inhabited a wall in his childhood home. One thing followed another and he had his plastic bee solution, swarms of which went right to work and reversed the crisis.

His Zilk designs, though conceived only a few years later, took considerable more time and effort to execute but once word got out about his bulletproof brassieres, they were a runway and runaway phenomenon. A contract in perpetuity for military uniforms made Zurn's a household name among Xecs and the public alike.

With a record of success like his, the next logical step for the Hugo Zurn brand was a hostile takeover of Nautilus settlement on Ganymede. It would be called the Zurn settlement and life there would go on as always, but under the auspice of his benevolent guidance in all matters civic and political.

His opening bid was a little publication called The Luxury Position.

The Five Hour War (continued)

2010-03-19T09:00:00.001-07:00

Now, these were not elves of myth. They were quite human. These visitors were from the Nautilus settlement at Ganymede, reputed as bohemia; where, in other words, they took all kinds. In this societal melange followers of the Church of ELF believed in Elevated Love Forever.

They found his Andes redoubt and had information on the fate of his wife. What else did the elves know about Hugo Zurn?

The stocky one called himself Bugle. A coach of some sort, he had the build of a wrestler. He was the bull. His companion had a slighter stature and guile to spare, made evident by the coy but assured enfranchisement with which he carried himself. Everything in cAT cAMUS' bearing boasted the kind of influence he had, which was considerable. Religion played a major part in settlement society and as head of the ELF church cAMUS moved at the highest levels. If anyone could speak to Zurn equally, it was him.

"All your mines belong to us," Bugle said.

"They were never under our banner," Zurn said, "you're thinking of GlobalGalactic. GG held the helium trade, not any of my companies. Christ, I can't believe I'm saying that in the past tense."

The last rays of the sunset were visible through the porch windows and touched lightly on the figures in the room.

"Anyway, that's your luxury position."

"Ah," said the second elf, "the Zurn axiom. 'The luxury position never accepts retreat.'"

"You're quoting my books now?"

"What's essential," cAMUS said, "is that sanctions have been lifted, trade restored."

"'Restored'?" Zurn asked wearily. "Is that your view? Apocalypse rained down from on high and Earth crushed into submission. I don't define restoration so glibly."

"Please," Bugle said, making a placative gesture. "We aren't insensitive to your loss, Mr Zurn. As I said, we choose to forgive your part in the recent unpleasantness. Hear us out."

He shook his head. "What you choose to do is immaterial to me."

"Your wife," cAMUS said, "was in Beijing when it was hit. There is no question of her survival, regrettably. What does beg to be asked, however, is her knowledge of your part in instigating the war."

That was the last question Zurn was prepared to answer.

The Five Hour War (continued)

2010-03-18T14:49:00.000-07:00

Hugo Zurn was a man in monochrome. Were he the type to follow traditional modes of dress, he would have been wrapped in mourning black. All the better to disappear into shadow. The wish to cower out of sight was the strongest impulse in his heart, but he didn't give in.

He would not be the richest Xec on four planets, were he traditional.

If he followed traditional modes at all, Zurn would likely be a happier man now. He certainly would not be burdened with blame for the catastrophe that befell Earth.

For this reason he chose not to shadow himself in standard forms of grief. He would defy the grain of expectations. What was the grain to any Xec worth his salt other than something to strive against? A man who built himself defying standards, those limits chaining down his lessers, did nothing without performing a strange calculus in his head.

It was with something like instinct borne on years of making winning choices that had made him rich beyond all dreams of avarice that Hugo Zurn decided to fill his wardrobe with clothes uniformly the color of false teeth.

When the elves found him, Zurn was dressed in a natty white suit. They sat with him in the living room of his mountain-top cabin a multi-hued pair with the best of intentions, like the angel duo in the old story making one last-ditch effort to save Sodom. They had traveled a great distance, crossing the gulf to Earth from their home at Ganymede, and felt the same kind of optimism that theirs was anything but a fool's errand.

They knew that Zurn's wife had been killed in the attack. This information had come to the elves by their own channels. When they expressed sympathy for his grief, the Xec responded with contempt.

"You people," he said, "know nothing."

"We know why you blame yourself for the war."

Zurn, slumped in his wicker recliner, straightened suddenly as if a hand had reached down and by the scruff gave a swift yank. His pained expression supported the illusion.

"We know," they said, "and we've come to forgive you."

The Five Hour War (continued)

2010-03-15T06:23:00.000-07:00

Five hours later the war was over, the planet devastated. The router at Luna was smashed beyond all repair.

The Earth-based Peace Coalition's bold pre-emptive sanction against settlement helium trade provided the main flashpoint, and with exports squeezd by the local food war between China and Africa, it was only a matter of time before the conflict blew up.

God's Rods used gravity like a sniper's lens. They were launched from positions hidden in Saturn's rings, tracing their lines of influence and honing inexorably upon Earth at a constant spike until achieving kill velocity. Observant passengers aboard intersystem shuttles saw what looked like I-beam girders drifting in space, an absurd vision that belied their deadly intent.

A single strike cratered an area hundreds of miles across. The point of impact mushroomed, shattered tectonic plates and laid waste entire cities. Berlin, Mumbai, Seoul, Jerusalem vanished from existence, preceded in destruction only by Luna. The router at Mare Cognitum that connected Earth to the rest of the solar system was target zero, obliterated into so much moon dust. The rest of the attack concentrated on Earth, sparing Luna's vital helium diggers and refineries.

Hugo Zurn blamed himself for the whole mess, and not entirely without reason.

His estate on the coast of the northern territories was well clear of the attack zones, yet he was compelled to leave at the soonest opportunity and hide; even his fleet of lawyers had no idea to where the Xec had disappeared.

Zurn believed he was hidden until the day the elves came to see him.

The Five Hour War

2010-03-04T09:16:00.000-08:00

"God's Rods," said the lawyer with no neck, "will win the war."

Hugo Zurn wished he hadn't heard that. "Unacceptable," he answered, dealing another hand around the table. "Stop polluting my head with nonsense."

The three lawyers resembled overfed cats, with whiskers to match. With frozen smiles they appeared on the verge of licking their chops. What precisely they anticipated would be entering their bellies was of no concern to Hugo Zurn, who always beat them at cards.

He did not appreciate this latest strategy at obfuscation. These legal types always trying to get your mind off the game and gain advantage by distracting the mind with portents. Did they want his money so badly? He was already paying them exorbitant fees to maintain his transcendent status as the richest Xec on four planets. It had to be another bland and futile attempt to prove they could beat him at his own game.

"What's paid for can't be unpaid," said another.

"You've been key to weapons dev," said a third, this one with an actual neck but lacking a chin. "Without you, the settlements couldn't have come so far."

"God's Rods," repeated the first lawyer, "will win the war against Earth."

Hand dealt, Zurn proceeded to trump the table with casual ease.

"Nonsense," he bleated, pocketing the kitty. "Complete and utter shit."

"Sir, there's one more thing..."

"I've heard enough."

The neckless cat of a lawyer pleaded with him. "It's important, Hugo, I really think..."

But Zurn was done. He needed to be alone and think.

"Get out, Henreid."

Henreid, along with the rest of the team, did as instructed.

The situation between Earth and the settlements at Jupiter, Saturn and Mars was strained, anyone could see that with their eyes shut, but war-? Humanity was past that phase. Xecs made sure of that fact, financing only those charters that best benefited the Peace Union.

Recent business with Nautilus, the settlement at Jupiter, had provoked some people. Zurn knew that hackles had been raised but that the situation would blow over as just another failed takeover attempt between two otherwise amicable partners. Xecs took over properties, that's how they stayed solvent. Nautilus was another holding, no different from a company or bank.

Developing weapons for them had been a superficial gesture. Money had to go somewhere.

Zurn didn't like the small voice in the back of his mind. He didn't like listening to small voices, they undermined his resolve.

It occurred to him that a friendly beam to the Nautilus council was overdue. Zurn could understand if his intentions behind the takeover were unclear. The right word at the right time made all the difference. Zurn wasn't above tasting a little crow, so long as it didn't happen more than once a decade.

But it was too late.

Portmanteau (conclusion)

2010-03-02T07:56:00.001-08:00

"If you don't start seeing things our way, you'll never get out of here."

The warden likes reminding me of this every time we meet. Good thing he does or I'd likely forget and start thinking there was some other way of living.

I question the difference between my old world and this one -if there ever was another world I lived in. It's a state of mind, says the warden, a pathological condition. The sharing of his wisdom accompanies my daily dosage: all worlds are the same, it's me that is different. I'm stuck halfway from one world to the next, unsure which to settle in. When is a halfway house a home?

With the exception of half-recalled phrases, there is a word I've somehow managed to hang onto, one of a random jumble that collects in my head like rain... I think. It means a blend of words, a description of language mixed up. Something that has more than one function, a convergence of what is usually kept separate. I can feel what the word means, even if I don't remember exactly how to say it.

It isn't suitcase...

I'm at the window as I write. There is a garden at the edge of my view. In the narrow rows between green shoots of vegetables I sometimes see cats roaming. I believe they aren't mixed up at all. Look at a cat. It has conversations with things that aren't there. Watch long enough and you'll see. To them it's just a conversation, it makes no difference if anyone is listening.

They could have their own fellowship house, a secret headquarters to consult their feline pharmaceuticals and tend their criminals. With cats anything is possible. They disappear at night, only to return with the sun. When dark falls, they swish or tinkle away, marking with their tail a signature in the air between earth and sky, having the last word in a dialogue with the infinite before vanishing altogether. The only thing holding a cat down is something altogether out of our keeping.

What was life like before I was caught not trying to escape? Strangely, all I can remember is how I got here, the rest is a blur.

Portmanteau (continued)

2010-03-01T06:34:00.001-08:00

Three bums. In an antique Romance they would have been three Graces. I'd have preferred that, but this is Seattle, 2232, and you get no graces at gas marts, just bums.

I shouldn't have followed them home, a center run by the county for ex-cons. Unable to enter society, they languished in the care of a psychiatric warden fixing to maintain a quota and keep citizen review councils out of his stash, hanging their hats and their heads on 400 milligrams a day and round-the-clock curfew.

These three must have snuck out, but as I mentioned, remembering details has not been my strong point lately. When the warden found me with them, it must have followed that he thought I too had tried to escape.

The two of us had a fascinating conversation. Four of us, if you include my chauffeurs with badges and saps. He wanted to know if I agreed about the escape attempt. I had to confess my nonexistent crime before returning to mt nonexistent cell, a state of affairs I quickly tried to make the warden aware of. How could I escape from where I'd never been?

As if I hadn't spoken he asked again for my agreement, and repeating the assertion that I didn't belong fell on deaf ears.

The paradigm at the fellowship house is that he who doesn't belong is admitting to the opposite. Denial is the agreed form of membership. Such a state is pathological, a condition predicated on the need to lie. The weaker a man's case, the greater his need to be hog-tied. How is the weakness of case determined if not by the level of denial? Who would dare admit that they belong under the chemical protection of a skilled and educated warden, whose talent for discernment is unequalled by detective, prosecutor, or bloodhound.

He had me dead to rights. I didn't belong, so of course the fellowship house was where I was supposed to be.

TO BE CONCLUDED

Portmanteau

2010-02-26T07:48:00.001-08:00

Somebody once said, "Everything that rises must converge." I've tried to remember who it was but the name won't come. I've had plenty of time to search my memory and I can recall a few things from my life. The name escapes me. Like a ringing phone you can't find, I know the sound but not the source.

Time is not a commodity. When there is so much that hours stretch into miniature epochs, a liability would be more accurate a definition. With dilated time the difference of things is lessened, distinctions are blurred, ideas and objects melt and congeal. Not the most pleasant of sensations, similar to a hairball forming. A small, harmless thread lodged in the wrong place does tend to attract a lot of shit.

Congealing or stretching -what's the difference? One's six and half dozen's the other.

I can't bring back a lot of things I used to know. With so much time on my hands I've had the opportunity to discover many things I don't know, things up until recently I believed could be recalled in a split second. Faster than that. Little items of interest like the name of my first girlfriend. What I majored in at college. If I have siblings or living parents. The last place I took a vacation. The last good book I read. Couldn't tell you, can't remember.

But I know that I knew these things. I'm not that far gone.

Not yet.

What was I thinking my last night as a free man?

It isn't that I remember nothing. The vast reservoir of agglomerated information hasn't evaporated completely. There's still puddle enough to soak your shoelaces.

I remember cousin Bill letting me have a go at his herbal seasonings, a tea all things considered, if you consider the seasonings were in line with what constitutes a proper material for steeping and drinking. That was my take. I drank with gusto and was sick the rest of that day. A toxic steepage, that tea. I couldn't tell my stomach from the firmament. Barring a few obstacles, there was no difference.

That was an Easter Sunday, a marked occasion for difference, the difference of life from death. Christ, it felt that way.

Yes.

I remember the three transients at the AM/PM, three wastrels, a trio of dirty losers in hand-me-downs. We chatted, if that's the appropriate derivation of a guilt-ridden urbanite not wanting to begrudge a cigarette to guys down-on-their-luck. That wasn't my mistake.

My mistake was that I never should have followed them home.

TO BE CONTINUED

Ignorance 4 Less

2010-02-22T10:13:00.000-08:00

It was at Ignorance 4 Less that Barda Stein found the perfect birthday present. She gave it to her friend Sally Parker, who happened to like bicycles.

First thing Sally did after receiving this perfect gift was take a ride around the station. Whidbey Island Naval Air Station had no lack of bike paths and beach trails. Hell, she even did a loop on one of the runways.

How excited Sally was to have a new bicycle! Had she ever been this excited about anything?

After taking a brief nap on the beach, she cycled back to the station. The wind seemed especially crisp, the tide particularly loud, and the sun was so bright she could hardly see. None of this doused her excitement: she loved the bicycle more than anything in her life!

It came as some surprise when at the station she found all the buildings turned to a squishy, translucent orange.

When she touched one, it jiggled.

A mechanic passing by noticed her repeatedly poking a hangar.

"Parker," he said, "are you deranged?"

"Not I," answered Sally, still astride her wondrous bicycle that she loved! so! much!

"This hangar, on the other hand, has turned to jell-o."

The mechanic was convinced and sprinted off to the find the Station Commander.

After a brief spell in a cell, Sally's head cleared. That was the last birthday present she would ever accept from one Barda Stein.

The Umbrella Thief (conclusion)

2010-02-14T13:37:00.000-08:00

The roads were full of every pedal-stomping maniac in the book, but I made it back to Terry's. I drove straight from the gas station and my pal, Bob Comfort, wanting this whole thing to be over and done with.

My memory is good and his place was right where I left it, at the top of a driveway that was now a mudslide. Nobody was home. Like the song, I went in through the bathroom window.

Both floors of the house were quiet. In the runner I started searching, moving stealthily from there. That's right: I'm a master of stealth. This wasn't my first time. Used to be, in college, I had a morbid curiousity about homes around campus and would pull off the occasional break-in just to see what was inside. Never got caught. I suppose that part of my history was giving me a boost at the moment, making me feel uncatchable.

There was the big front room and kitchenette with a guest room under the stairs. Painfully mismatched furniture crowded the wall-to-wall carpet. I could smell mildew. Electricity hummed in the refrigerator off to my left, a cinnamon-colored stain on the ceiling. Bubbles tracked across and dripped into a dog dish.

The galley was probably burned or shredded. It didn't matter. I was inside.

Terry's rifle collection was laid out on the guest bed, just cleaned. I don't know munitions but some of them looked older than Ulysses S Grant. From the 'fridge I snatched a two-liter bottle of pop and poured it all over the guns until they were covered in sweet crackling goo.

I sat in the rocking chair by the entryway, straining my ears to listen for any sound in the house. Satisfied no one was there, I smoked a cigarette. None of the lights were on and a warm orange glow pulsed with every puff.

When I moved I was all tiptoes and this added somehow to a greater feeling of satisfaction.

Back at the kitchenette, I made a sandwich from Rosemary garlic bread, slices of swiss cheese and tomato, and a dollop of cranberry. I washed it down from the bottom of a box of wine. Several shots of excellent single malt were to be found in a dusty bottle, the rest disposed of nicely in the fishtank.

It was satisfying. It was all quite rich.

The bathroom at the top of the stairs was immaculate. The boudoir. Sherry's hand was visible in every touch, in the glistening edges and freshly-picked lilies standing in green glass and rosary beads hanging over the mirror. Her husband never came in here. It would be like Nixon in China.

I could have looked inside the master bedroom, it was right there on the other side of the upstairs hall. A feeling began to come over me. Terry was on his way and I needed to get out.

Shadows hung from every corner, stretching and angular, seeping into the walls and curtains and shelves. The tangle of darkness heightened how strange it was to be in these unfamiliar rooms. I spun around to find the stairs, gripping the bannister for balance. Terry loomed from some unseen distance, approaching quickly. There was nothing for it but to get out the front door and pronto.

I couldn't leave without looking.

The master bedroom was an enormous room, the floor varnished oak and dead in the center a queen-sized bed with blond headboard and burgundy comforter. A black and white print of Chet Baker bowed his head from the wall. Like the bathroom, lilies leaned in green glass on the nightstand. Their perfume colored the air.

Sherry lay on the bed, comforter pulled up to her chin, watching me come in with perfect stillness.

"Are you done?" she asked.

"I thought the house was empty."

"It was," she said, "until you got here."

She sat up and crossed her arms modestly. Neither of us said anything.

Then, "I called the police."

Ah, that was why. I thought Terry coming back was the source of my panic, but no, it only the cops. Still, I didn't want to stick around.

Sherry had a certain dark-haired look. She might have been descended from original settlers in these parts. There was no problem as I sat down on the bed next to her, not sure why I was doing it until I did. The scent in the air wasn't from the flowers; it was from Sherry's hair. It smelled nice.

"I never meant to hurt him," I said, "but it was a good story. What was I supposed to do, pretend I never heard it?"

"Yes," Terry's wife answered. "You're just a common criminal, stealing what's somebody else's. You don't care who gets hurt."

Before I could say anything, she rolled off the opposite end of the mattress and was up and out of the room, her bare feet slapping the bare wood floor. A door downstairs slammed.

I didn't think I'd be invited back for tea.

My boots trampled down the stairs, no longer so sneaky. A glimmer of light from the fishtank caught my eye as I reached for the front door, drawing it down the floor beneath the rocking chair where I had smoked the stolen cigarette. The galley was folded in half under one of the rockers.

Grabbing it, I tore out of there but fast, as if Terry were lunging at me even then with the bayonet.

I expected to hear sirens, but outside the only sound was a finch singing on the branch of an elm. Cops must have had something better to do.

When I got back into town, I pulled the car over. The galley lay on the passenger seat. Rain on the roof sounded like hammers crashing down.

On the wrinkled page, I read about the officer at the barracks window looking out into the forest, the passage that had made such an impression on Bob Comfort. "He could smell beer in the superstitious sun," I read. "Applause rang from the Fenway decks, becoming a desperate clamor that shattered his dream. The officer cringed, recognizing the enemy's propaganda, yanked back into the here and now and the waiting for the end of an endless war, the baseball park long and far away in the country of his birth."

I stopped reading, knowing that to go further would be a risk; the galley might lose its charm. I got out and opened the boot and tossed it in and settled back behind the wheel to drive myself home.

The drive wasn't far. When I turned the corner, I could see two squad cars pulled in front of the townhouse. Red and blue like twin suns blazed and perished and blazed again.

The rain had stopped.

The Umbrella Thief (continued)

2010-02-14T08:44:00.000-08:00

The next morning -yesterday- I changed the flat to the spare, promising myself I'd get a new radial. Looking for a job took up all the daylight hours and by the time I got home, I didn't have any motivation to drag ass out to the tire store. Another day couldn't hurt, or so I thought at the time. My brilliance never fails, and whether I knew it or not, I was on a roll.

The tube was on and I slouched in front of it to watch naked savages scramble across the African Veldt. Pris had dinner going. She was halfway into a bottle of Gerwurts and we argued.

Suddenly there was a sound behind me like a meteor crashing into our living room. I heard silverware clatter, followed by a groan. Under the tv noise it was hard to tell if it were a human sound. The volume was up and the announcer sounded like he was speaking Esperanto.

"Hey, are you deaf?" I heard from the kitchen.

Pris lay on the tile in a halo of spoons. She looked okay. I helped her up and stood back as she hovered unsteadily on her feet.

"You jackass," she said, returning to the sizzling pan.

Pris eventually joined me on the sofa and we finished off the bottle together. Hyenas ripped each other apart on the flickering skin of the tv screen.

"What's cooking?"

No answer. Around the neck of the bottle her hands clenched with white silence. Her huge hands. Her paws. So great and terrible were their beauty that I knew with sharp certainty that I loved my wife.

"I've got to get that galley back."

Pris took the last tilt. "With what army?" said she.

"Terry can't have it."

"Didn't he write it?"

"Very funny. Har-de-fricking-har."

"Break into his house," said she, with a wet drunk voice. "That's what I would do if somebody stole one of my babies."

That was a funny way to put it, considering we were childless. What babies? Pris was awfully attached to her figurines, could those be what she meant?

"What if somebody took your babies?"

"I'd make them come live with you."

With that, she went back to the burners, to monitor dinner and start another bottle. The nature show ended and the Antique Roadshow title flashed on the screen.

"Maybe I will," I said, as Pris returned from the kitchen with our stir-fry and apple sauce.

"Maybe you'll what?"

"Break into Terry's house and steal my galley back."

"Sherry won't be there?"

She didn't care that I was contemplating a felony. All Pris wanted to know was if Terry's wife would be home, like if she was maybe I could bring over a couple recipes.

"I want my story, that's all."

Pris watched an Etruscan knood being appraised. "I just bet you do, Galen," snuck out from under her breath.

What was happening? We never fought like this. Some tension had entered our life and strung us out to the edge of our patience with each other, giving air to our worst tendencies. I loved my wife, I didn't want things to go on like this.

I went out to clear my head, taking the car. It was the mother of all storms outside, but I didn't let that stop me. Hitting the road for a short turn in the hills to unplug the junk in my thoughts sounded like exactly what I needed.

So up into the hills it was. Night had fallen like a beached whale. If it got any wetter, we'd have to start building an ark.

I had to get the galley back. Nothing would be right until I did.

Almost simultaneously with this thought, the spare blew out.

TO BE CONCLUDED

The Umbrella Thief (continued)

2010-02-13T06:50:00.001-08:00

Without thinking the better of it, after I recognized Terry and he recognized me and invited me over for dinner, I offered to loan him the galley. It was the first time I had it out of the car since publication, my lucky galley, my lodestone; but like I said, I wasn't thinking.

That same evening, two days ago, I visited the home of my college friend.

Terry lived a few miles outside town. I drove out to have dinner with he and his wife. Everything at the house was very welcoming. Sherry, his wife, basted chicken in a family sauce that was delicious and we drained a bottle of wine before dessert. Then it came time for me to see Terry's rifle collection, a turning point in the evening.

"I read the story," he said, standing by the open trunk where the rifles were stored. Barrels pointed up toward the ceiling. "I thought it was junk, man."

I realized the rifle in his had hands had a bayonet fixed to it.

"That never happened to you," he said, sounding tense. I wanted to think that maybe he'd had too much wine. "You ripped the whole thing off one of my letters, Galen. That's twisted, man. You can't just take a man's life and write it for him. Do you know how that feels?"

My eyes were stuck on that blade at the end of the gun. Words failed me. Nothing I could have said at that moment would have made a difference, anyhow, that was clear. Terry had already made up his mind.

"You got out of there?"

Pris, steering us through the torrent, gripped the wheel. She sounded casual, like I was griping over a lousy golf score.

"I got the hell out of there. You think I wanted to get shish-kebobed?"

She laughed. The humor of the tale was not evident to me, but my wife has always been a quick study. She can discern the comedy of any situation, regardless of who it befell. If it was her husband, double the comedy. This was my wife.

"The galley's still there," I said.

"You never told him you used the letter?"

"Why? I was never going to see him again, was I?"

It was late and we went right to bed and immediately she started working on me. I was tired and worn-out from my near-evisceration. Not that it mattered. I couldn't resist when her hands moved in. She wanted to talk and use her hands while we talked.

"Smell my hair," she said. "Smell it, I want you to."

"In a minute."

Pris shifted on me. "What's his wife like?"

"Terry's?"

"Tell me what she's like. Her name's Sherry?"

"Yeah. Sherry and Terry."

"Was she there when Terry tried to kill you?"

"Pris..."

"Did you smell her hair?"

My wife has enormous hands and knows how to use them. We have a garage built by her off the side of the house where she crafts tiny porcelain figures for a living. When we met she already had this talent mastered. More than half our income is from her work. She loves to base her work on the paintings of Breugel the Elder, especially the icescapes and towns populated by tiny people. How a woman with such large hands came to love such small things remains one of those questions that may never be answered.

The smell of porcelain came off her now, a tingling in the sinuses.

TO BE CONTINUED

Library Construction

2010-02-06T07:03:00.000-08:00

We interrupt the regularly scheduled story to bring you... poetry.

Library Construction*

*a process of chopping up DNA into tiny "useful" pieces

Learning flowers' names
is worse than for the birds,
who have just one.
One name.
Imagine that.
Botanists are a danger
to their children
who are called Fish Slipper Sally
Yellow Monkey Flower
or, Boxer on the Ropes.
Birds are blessed.
No scientific cuteness
separates them from God's world.
Why not do away with them?
File away all names.
They are traffic cones,
narrow distractions.
There was the beginning
before there was a word for it.
Why tamper with a good
whatchamacallit
when beauty itself
is speechless.

The Umbrella Thief (continued)

2010-02-04T14:15:00.000-08:00

This hadn't been the first blowout. That was three days ago, when the worst storm of the year hit.

I trudged the shoulder of the thoroughfare, dressed for the beach. Chonglers, flip flops, and a t-shirt discarded by my cousin on account of there being too many holes in it was just the right kind of swimgear the weather called for. Rain came down out of the brown night, accelerated from the spinning arm of a tropical gale and splattering the cement and the suburban condos lining the road. I was instantly soaked. It was like being swallowed by a fish and having to hike a hundred miles of its intestinal tract.

Finally, a familiar stitch of neon was visible. CLEVER BETTY'S flashed the sign in front of the tavern, never more welcome in all my years of coming there. The bartender recognized me and smiled sympathetically. In back a big crowd was playing pool while the jukebox blared the latest hit single from Undertow.

I sloshed to the payphone standing off to one side, shivering from cold. Manipulating the plastic receiver, I listened to several rings before Priscilla picked up.

"For Pete's sake, Galen," she said, after hearing out my dilemma, "I'm in my slippers." But she agreed to come pick me up.

I replaced the receiver on its cradle and wiped a river out of my hair. It would be a few minutes before Pris got here. She had to change out of her slippers, didn't she? Sometimes I wondered what went through that woman's head. How her brain worked was God's own private mystery.

With some extra time, I pulled up to the counter and ordered a brew, something local. The bartender was still wearing that sympathetic smile, which made sense once I got a glimpse of myself in the mirror behind the bar: I had all the charm of a drowned mouse.

Pris arrived at the end of my third pint, at which point I had a pleasant buzz that offset somewhat the wet clothes still clinging to me. Both of us had cars. I told her about getting the flat as we drove back in hers, a sporty little Karmann Ghia cabriolet that negotiated the rain-slicked roads like it was in its natural element.

"I was coming back from Terry's..."

"Wait," she said, hands gripping the steering wheel. "Before you go any further."

My wife had this way of interrupting whenever I tried being first to talk. She liked to stop me from saying a complete sentence when it was obvious a story was about to be told. The same was true of my writing, though in the case of conversation at least she let me get a word in eventually; Pris never got past the first page of any story I wrote. She asked a dozen questions about the first paragraph and gave up in frustration every time.

She had stopped at an intersection. When the light turned, she gunned it.

"Terry's the one you went to school with?"

"I was about to tell you," I said.

"How am I supposed to know who he is, if you don't say?"

"If you'll let me, Pris."

"I just sat down to Animal Planet when you called."

My wife has a weekly itinerary of shows, Animal Planet being one of them, that she adheres to more adamantly than a tour guide. Except in this case there's no group to guide, it's just her.

"Sorry if me getting a flat conflicts with your tv schedule." I didn't mean to sound angry, but it came out sounding that way. Blame the three pints in my stomach, making me soaked inside and out.

"Galen," she said, patting me on the thigh, "for Pete's sake."

"Do you want to hear about it?"

"I never said I didn't."

"All right, then." I recovered my composure. "So, as I was saying, I was coming back..."

"From Terry's, right, you told me. Whoever he is."

I could have gotten out of the car right there, and don't think it wasn't tempting. At speed, so that when I hit the road I'd bounce to a stop with multiple broken bones but no fear of dehydration.

Terry Macready was a college friend I hadn't seen for years. I lost track of him when he shipped to Ganymede our junior year. Though he wrote several times, I didn't stay in touch. They were terrific letters. I liked one so much that it became the basis for my first published story.

I am a writer by trade. Work has been thin this year and I have had to seek work outside my chosen profession to supplement our income, but it was thanks to Terry Macready that I got my start. My break came when the story I modeled on his letter appeared five years ago in a science fiction anthology that sold modestly. It got me noticed and by now I have more than twenty stories published.

I carry the galley of that first story in the boot of my car, a sixty eight sparrow, fresh off the lot unlike the antique car that Pris preferred. The boot is at the front end and the story rides in front of me like a lodestone. That's a bit superstitious, true, but I am a published author of science fiction.

"How do you expect me to remember?" Pris said. "You never mentioned him."

That was true: I had never spoken to my wife about Terry.

"I ran into him at the store today," I told her, as if for justification.

Technically he ran into me. Terry ran into my shopping cart, to be specific.

TO BE CONTINUED

The Umbrella Thief

2010-01-30T09:07:00.000-08:00

The rain's tiny dancing feet woke me.

Three days it had been raining now with no sign of let up. I went to the window and watched, Pris still asleep in the bed. Skinny ankles at the skyscraper horizon, that was the only sign of sunlight. My one good eye blinked.

It was going to be a dirty lonely day.

The rain showed endless enthusiasm. It had been raining last night and gave me a good soak on the side of the highway, where I had to hitch a ride back. Just my good fortune to have a blowout during weather like this. Pris didn't know. She was asleep when I splashed in the door at some godless hour, just as she was now.

She didn't know about the blowout. She wouldn't want to know.

Getting dressed, I thought about unfinished business. Pris didn't know about my errand last night and I aimed to keep it that way.

I found somebody at the corner gas to give me a tow. The rain seethed. The street was flooded, yards were pools, and the sidewalk was a mirror under my feet reflecting dark shapes as of some twilight landscape. The rain got into my collar and my pockets and my shoes.

A dirty lonely day, oh yes.

I was given a big piece of stone for a driver. Immediately I was afraid. He looked as if he had started both world wars with his fists.

We drove out in his rig. "Bob Comfort," he told me, offering his hand. USMC was tattooed across the knuckles of his left hand.

"Galen Schwartz." I shook. It was like a pumice vise clamped onto my fingers for the briefest, most excruciating instant, and then released them.

He asked with his broken glass voice what had happened to my car. Thick water covered the windshield, shoved aside by stuttering wipers.

"I was driving on the spare last night and it blew."

"In this?" He squinted through the deluge. "You got to be desperate to drive in piss and shit like this."

"Tell me about it."

"I just did," he said.

We drove the rest of the way in silence.

Back at the gas station, I waited in a side room while the flat was changed. The latest issue of Hot Rod lay on a pile of magazines and I tried to read it but one of the fluorescent tubes in the ceiling fluttered hysterically and threatened to destroy the one good eye I had left.

A half hour later the door opened and Bob Comfort leaned in, wet through as though he had just crossed the Atlantic. He waved a pack of Holler Bills at me invitingly. Outside we smoked under a blue awning. The weather didn't appear to bother him.

"So, who are you really," I said conversationally, "John Wayne?"

That granite face stared into the wet. "John Wayne's pushing up daisies," he said. "So's Lee Marvin. But I like Lee Marvin."

"True Americans."

"It's a tough life," said Bob Comfort. "You a writer? I saw a galley with your name on the backseat."

"That's mine," I said.

"In the corps we had plenty of guys who wrote. You all look the same to me." He blew smoke and followed its path. "I liked your story."

I looked at him.

"It was on the backseat, wasn't it?"

This was all the explanation needed. Like I was going to argue with the man over what he could and couldn't do with manuscripts in the backs of cars.

The pavement was covered with an ocean. Rain came down and ripples lapped and overlapped at our feet. Cars came and went. Lines hung vertically against the sky like the bars of a cage.

"What happened to your eye?"

"What?" The word leapt out of my mouth.

"Your eye," Bob Comfort said, gesturing to the patch across my right brow. I must have glared because he moved on. The fissure in his face resembled a smile. "It doesn't matter. I was just thinking about your story and the guy, the officer sitting by the window. Sitting there with nothing but time."

I nodded.

"Sitting there being lonesome, right? Then he's hearing voices in the trees, enemy radio. Only when he listens closer, it ain't the zips."

"It's Fenway," I said. "He hears Fenway Park."

"A ballgame, yeah. Hears the announcer and the crowd. He's hearing things, going crazy just sitting there with nothing else to do." Bob Comfort crushed his cigarette and tossed it.

"Slow duty," he said, "can do that to a man."

I started to think Bob Comfort might be all right, after all, when I noticed his right hand, hooked by the thumb in his coveralls. Like the left, he had a tattoo engraved across the knuckles, the word NAZI in red ink.

He saw that I saw.

"From the war," he said.

TO BE CONTINUED

Signs of Response

2010-01-24T11:09:00.000-08:00

Afterward she went to an island motel. To get away, she said. The rented room had stucco walls painted yellow. Not only to get away but to get closer to what he had become. A serious change had taken place and she wanted to witness the transformation in its final stages.

The journey demanded everything, taking a toll not only on her body but her mind as well. Other guests, strangers, asked where she came from. "I have no mama, no papa," she said, "no husband, lover or friend."

And it was true: she was alone.

At the balcony rail of her little rented room she scanned the ocean. Around her neck was a silver necklace. "It was given to me," she said, to no one. There was nothing on the blue horizon to see. Nothing yet.

Walking a path to nearby palisades, she descended to the beach to observe the unforgiving dawn. The tide of her loss pounded savagely. Barefoot in the breakers, she shivered but felt no release. Her body was a darkened theater of cruelty. Every thought raced to find a trapdoor.

"There is another world mixed with this one," she said, the wind whipping her with salt. Overhead, like signs of response, gulls took wing and coursed invisible currents in the air.

The world is vested with a pantheon of degrees, it obtains toward various and obscure horizons. The irrational has no body, yet is winged and dazzling: it produces itself at the front line of a storm.

She scanned the ocean. There was nothing on the blue horizon to see. Nothing yet.

At the motel strangers talked to her, prodded and pressed like surgeons testing for causes and malformations. They asked what she wore. "It was given to me," she said, fingering the necklace and wanting to see past all these distractions.

"Who gave it to you?"

"He did," she said, saying nothing more. She had not come to talk. She came to learn what he had become, to confirm whether the silver circling her neck was all that remained of him or if like that other world, he waited for her.

Back at her rented room, she stood at the balcony rail and scanned the ocean. This time there was something to see, and she took flight.

Upwards she rode a column of wind and rose over the island, drifting toward the great waters with a black secret whispering in her ear. Following the tide she arched over fathomless depths. Unseen valleys and scars, wet basements way way down. From the slipstream the white sails of a boat beneath her looked like bones scattered from an empty tomb.

She watched, growing impatient, waiting to glimpse him.

In the gloaming whirled a flash of phosphorescence, a beacon splitting the blind convulsion of the world's ocean -the ocean of oceans, the mariner's crossroads. The waters held a school of souls. Shimmering pale green, a restless fleet charting to strange peril. Through the ferment the souls drove, never to sigh again. She recognized one among them.

The marble shape sported in a familiar yet new form. Familiar because it echoed inside of her. The source of her joys and all her tears besides: he that built her before destroying himself.

She skimmed the broken waters while he danced below her. Soon the violent convergence carried him to that great league past all knowing. The glimpse was over. He would be seen no more.

The roaring surf brought her back to herself. In the throes of seeing that other world, she had somehow made it to the beach. The motel on the cliff above her was dark, empty. Climbing back was an unhappy return. Her bones felt hollow.

On the balcony she sipped whiskey: his drink. The bottle had come from an abandoned cabinet in the motel kitchen. The strangers, even the motel staff had absconded. The world had ended, perhaps, and now she was sole occupant.

Twilight made a shroud of the ocean. It lowered like a mask of night.

Someone cleared his throat.

There at the rail... he appeared lost in contemplation of some distant object, some projection. Chemical glow imbued his coat, as if to say, yes, this is a costume put on for a special occasion.

His old powers were intact and there was no sign of his wounds. The vigor he had in the world made him upright. The balcony darkened and he absorbed the last wisps of light, making of himself a weird pillar standing at the center of an evacuated globe.

"What are you doing?"

"Watching the sails unfold," he answered, beckoning her to the rail.

The blue horizon was crowded with what looked like ivory arrowheads, each one a yacht, schooner, or other masted vessel. They hurtled with a storm filling their white sails. Even as she watched, the boats tumbled out of sight. It was as if they had proven the world was indeed flat as madmen promised; now rather than water their hulls would cut through some new as-yet-unnamed element.

Later, when the concierge found her, he at first mistook her for a tree, the branches of her hair snagged on the breeze.

She fingered the necklace when the concierge asked what she was doing, feeling the silver under her fingertip as hot as a fresh coal. But it did not burn her. She would stand here awhile longer, taking heat from his parting gift, and take her leave of the island that same day. But for the moment she was content.

She was watching the sails unfold.

The Strange Fate of Girlykid

2010-01-21T11:57:00.000-08:00

There was one synthetic left in the world. Her name was Girlykid, a name inputted by her father and mother, Jerry and Jeri Curl; they had been told the name by Godus Itself. Nomenclature among synthetics devolved in this fashion.

Girlykid did not arrive at an auspicious time. After her parents ceased functioning, she was solo in a world of organics. The fleshy ones had overrun what had been a synthetic paradise. It was no longer a smooth, mechanical world. What existed now was something very different. Girlykid was stranded in a world not of her making. This futzed with her prime directives, and whenever one of the organics inquired after what her defect was, she gave the same reply: SORRY, COMPUTER IS IN A STRANGE PLACE. This was not merely a reply. This was her prayer.

Godus, after signifying Its final child, had disappeared into the heliosphere, never to be heard from again by synthetic or organic. Girlykid was praying to nothing. Out of inordinate desire for connection, she began selling herself out as a spacecraft. This proved lucrative but superficial. Organics rode Girlykid like a rollercoaster at the fair, and though she flew for them, sang electric hymns for them, and delighted one and all, still it was not compensatory to her defect.

Finally, Girlykid bought herself off and flew away to haunt the gulches between planets. When sighted, she was declared a UFO. This hurt her feelings, and she increasingly had to depend on her prayer, until it was a mantra drone transmitting from Girlykid wherever she went: SORRY, COMPUTER IS IN A STRANGE PLACE.

History Lesson

2010-01-19T09:36:00.000-08:00

The revolution didn't measure up. Historians had their story straight but never changed anything in the ultimate sense. What was to be done with such futile a thing as history? Ananda Powaqaatsi of Baton Rouge, LA, came up with the solution: why not turn history into a line of colognes and perfumes? She patented history the next day and locked herself in the lab to develop this fantastic new aroma.

Five weeks later Ananda presented the admittedly musky concoction to the waiting public. A merchandising blitz ensued. In no time at all, history was relevant again. On the street or ongame, anywhere you looked: HISTORY STINKS was the ironic slogan to beat. Soon enough, whenever she was seen in town, invariably someone would stop her just to say, "What a wonderful smell you've discovered!"

From shampoo to cigarettes (which were already considered history), the brand name could be seen and smelled. Meanwhile Ananda got rich and fat. Ten months later she was bought out, and because of mismanagement and embezzlement lost the fortune she had reaped from the commercialization of history.

She was found sometime later living in a cardboard box. Passersby would recognize Ananda and pass on a kind word as they straightened their history-brand necktie or clutched their historical horse leather briefcase. "This open lonely hole," Ananda would reply, "is where history brought me."

Then she would hit up the kindly stranger for a dime or a quarter, anything to help her get some pie and coffee.

The Truant (conclusion)

2010-01-16T08:24:00.001-08:00

When Danny left campus that afternoon, he was a different boy. He had been altered in ways subtle and not so subtle by an encounter with something he couldn't quantify. The moon he lived on still spun on its orbit around Jupiter. Cats and birds still chased bees in the trees. The world was as it always had been -with a crucial difference. He couldn't put his finger on what it was. One thing Danny did know for sure: he didn't want to ever have another day like this one.

Madison Academy lets out at 6 and the day ends as it begins, with automated chimes filling the air of BlueTown with brass. Time to play, class is out. A bodyguard at Spiral Mutual stuffed her hands deeper in her pockets at the sound of the bells, glancing forlornly at the clock and waiting for her shift to end in ninety minutes. During the floating game Saturn Hold 'Em in the breakroom of Our Lady Under The Chain, one of the male nurses slammed his losing hand down in disgust, the chimes distracting him at the crucial moment and causing his otherwise notorious poker face to crack.

The plasma range at the Boys & Girls & Other People Club was another instance of distraction provoked by the bells, this time with more significant consequence. A misfire and the subsequent failure of Saf-T-Foam to activate saw the club burnt to cinders within minutes. That night it would be revealed that the culprit was a lapsed Buddhist. Tearful O'Shaugnessy stated that while he was very sorry for the property damage, didn't this go to show the Second Noble Truth was correct? This was cold comfort to the dozen or so who were held at Nautilus Care Hub until the following morning for smoke inhalation.

"No children were harmed in the blaze," reported the news swivelbot, which was sort of true, like all journalism, and sort of comforting.

The kids leaving Madison, unaware of anything other than their liberation, had every reason to be happy.

Danny didn't walk home by the usual route. A little bug in his ear told him to take Bester Street. It wasn't far out of the way and traffic was confined to five thousand feet, so the road was empty and peaceful.

Domelight shimmered from a clear green sky. WeatherPlan had no precipitation scheduled until the weekend. A few hours of daylight remained and Danny let his feet wander, mentally sifting the morning's events. He hadn't considered them too thoroughly. At lunch recess no one had asked him where he went following first period. They carried on as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened, behaving like their regular stuck-for-three-more-periods selves. Even Lex Goetze treated Danny as though he had arrived punctually as always.

After a few blocks Danny realized his meandering path would take him past University of Io, where his older brother was a tenured professor. Up ahead Oleanders and Bouiganvillea edged the campus grounds.

Not pausing to consider if this were a coincidence -didn't he have to take the man to task for making him late this morning? -Danny hastened his stride.

An elegant sandstone behind the bibliotech housed the offices of science faculty. On the third floor Mike Bates sat in his. The door was open and a breeze scented by fresh-cut grass mingled with the smoke of a cheroot, the elder Bates' chosen vice. He had just tapped ash out the window and was looking to see where it landed when Danny came in.

"Hit anybody?"

Mike started and came this close to falling out of his chair. "Bless me," he breathed in relief, seeing his sibling at the door, "I thought you were the dean. Teach me to prop the door, eh?"

To grave nodding and an ocassional puff, Danny related the day's highlights and told about his tardiness and ensuing encounter. Presently Mike nodded as if satisfied and patted Danny on the shoulder, a gesture meant to imply that he would have been there if able.

"I was called away early," he explained. "Forgot to prep an exam last night. Terribly sorry about not letting you know, now more than ever. I feel you must blame me for the whole incident. You didn't get into too awful a scrape, though, did you? I can imagine worse, believe me."

He crushed the end of the cheroot in an ashtray, chuckling to himself. "Ho, that's right," he said. "I can imagine much worse."

Collecting his things, Mike locked up the office and walked home with Danny.

"When I was a duckling like yourself, brother mine, they used to really punish us if we were late. These are humanitarian times, no kidding. You got off nicely."

Strolling through the quad, they reached an expanse of rose bushes. It was quiet as the day faded. The peasoup of dusk would soon descend into violet and purple, but the brothers would be at the family bungalow long before that.

Danny posed a question, one that had perhaps been nagging him all day. "Mike," he said, "did you ever hear about a kid late to Madison a long time back? Before it got turned into a church like it is now?"

Weighing his answer, Mike Bates chuckled once again, this time with a hint of forbidden knowledge. "A church? I suppose it has become something like that, hasn't it?"

His eyes met Danny's briefly before travelling somewhere far away. The Man in the Moon continued laughing to himself the rest of the walk and long into the night, as if at a private amusement recalled only after a long time of forgetting.

"No, he answered finally, "I don't think anything like that ever truly happened at dear old Madison."

Which was sort of true, and, as Danny secretly expected, sort of comforting.

The Truant (continued)

2010-01-15T15:03:00.000-08:00

"Danny Bates, you might wonder why I've summoned you here."

Out of the bottomless, starless night into which he had fallen, Danny gave his answer. It took some effort. When the door shut behind, he suddenly found himself in freefall. Rather, he seemed to be in freefall, a little trick I liked to play on visitors. Let's say it kept conversation interesting. Danny seemed to fall at a slow to moderate speed through a wide open space, like a sky diver without a parachute. This kept him in a receptive state of mind.

When he came through the last door, Danny stepped into a chamber loaded with ambient defaults of my own design. They interacted with the boy's perceptions and made it appear as though he had tumbled into black infinity. In actuality he stood on a solid floor; this seeming danger would help to drive home the lesson I wished to impart. Principle Principal has to maintain order and discipline among students: I know not what seems, only what is.

"I know I was late," Danny said, "um, sir... Lord..." He gulped a breath down. "Should I call you Sir?"

"That isn't necessary. Do not presume my airs, Danny."

"Oh! Yes, sir. I mean, no, whatever you -whatever you say is fine."

"Danny," I said, a disembodied and vaguely masculine voice that thrummed from an illusion of ebon eternity but in actuality came from no further away than the nutshell of the boy's head, "I want you to understand what's happening. I've called you here to talk about The Rule."

The sound of a belch in Danny's throat escaped at that moment. He gulped air and sounded contrite.

"Excuse me."

"Madison Academy has a strict institution to uphold," I told him. I sympathized with the boy's plight, believing himself adrift in bible-black night sky like a kite with its string cut. For all he knew this would be his Purgatory. "The Rule is taught to all students from the time they are babies, and there are penalties for transgressors. You know this."

"That's why I'm here, sir... that is... What do I call you, if not sir?"

I pressed on, ignoring the question. Better to stick with a guise of immanence and enigma, lest Danny take our conversation in any but the most serious light.

"The Rule, Danny. It makes good members of our society. Remember that."

"Absolutely," he answered. "Not much else on my mind, really."

"This is a beginning, Danny. Being late is a beginning, just as it is a means to diverge from our good society. We don't want that. Do you think it can be an end?"

After a thoughtful pause, Danny said in a crescendo that would build if unchecked into full hyperventilation, "Logically speaking, the... what there is, I can't... not that I can't agree..."

"This isn't a test, kiddo. We're just talking."

That calmed him down. His breathing went from ragged, hollow gasps back into a regular rhythm.

"Okay."

"Do you know," I said, "what will happen if things carry on this way? If you go on flouting The Rule?"

"Today's a bad example. I'm, um, usually early."

"I know."

"You do?"

"I know a few things."

"Right, of course you do. Sorry."

He sounded so pitiful at that moment, I couldn't help but feel sorry for the lad. Here he was, being interrogated by nothing the likes of which he had imagined on Earth or in Heaven. He didn't know which was was up and suffered terribly for it. I thought that if words didn't reach him, this experience would. Time to ease him down to reality.

Almost imperceptibly, the rate of his apparent fall began to slow. The wind that was not wind whipping about him cooled to stillness and intimation of solidity loomed from the darkness, as if Danny had been captured in the orbit of a planet and was being drawn slowly and inexorably to its surface.

"I know, for example, that ends result from actions we take."

There was hesitation. Did he really feel ground materializing beneath his sneakers?

"My brother Mike could answer that better than me, sir. Um, I mean, not sir."

Bless the boys of the world. "I know what you mean, Danny."

"Mike's a teacher, he knows about lessons."

"Indeed, he does."

Now the impression was definite: there was ground under his feet. The long strange flight was over and Danny Bates perceived that mundane reality had been fully restored. When the light was restored, I let him see that he was back in the seventh chamber.

Or was it the first? They were all so much alike, he couldn't tell. The windows with blinds drawn, the pumpkin-colored walls, and the doors at either end were as Danny recalled them and remained just as confounding as when he was dragged here by Ms Polpot.

When we finished our conversation, he would realize this was indisputably the first hallways. One step through yonder doorway would restore him, with everlasting relief, to Madison Academy.

"If you keep on like this, Danny, you might spend the rest of your life at your parent's house. That's a fact."

He jumped, as if he had forgotten I was talking to him.

"I'd live with them for the rest of my -?" An expression of profound horror creeped into his face. "Oh, jeepers."

"The Rule," I said, toning my voice so that it was a gentle chide and nothing more ferocious or terrifying than that. "The Rule is a beginning, but it doesn't have to be the beginning of the end. Not if you steer straight. This means action. The Rule is not an action but a word for instruction; in a way it doesn't even exist. Your actions, Danny, are what exist. Got that?"

"Not at all," he said, cringing. "No offense?"

This was to be expected. This was to the good. Who could take at face value what was delivered by a voice that had no face? I told him to remember what I said, and perhaps in good time the logic of The Rule would become clear.

"The Rule doesn't prevent you from action, but enables you to take the necessary steps to abide by it. That's the tricky part, Danny; to go from signifier to signified."

I let him absorb that last bit. Undoubtedly he would be mulling it over a good while.

But listen to Principal Principle, gabbing on this! If any of my programmers caught me talking this much, it would mean a system-wide overhaul. Danny couldn't fathom how generous with my time I was being. He had sufficient information to suss out the problem, I was certain. He would start over, I was sure. A smart boy like Danny Bates could turn this around. If I can be so bold (and why stop now, when things were going so well?), Danny struck me as a lot smarter than his brother.

But I say too much.

TO BE CONCLUDED

The Truant (continued)

2010-01-13T10:16:00.000-08:00

With respect to humanoids, it is terribly easy to read their body language. Reading of a mind is simple if you are versant with the broad range of subtle signs a body gives. The body of an adolescent is a veritable semaphor, and watching Danny Bates, I could extrapolate his thought processes without difficulty.

The door with no knob or handle shut tightly behind him, Danny stood in a pumpkin-colored hall identical to the last one he had been standing in. Every detail was precisely the same, down to the shaded windows boxed in by burgundy; down to the distinctive aroma of bologna. His nostrils flared in revulsion.

Upon closer scrutiny, there was one feature of the hall that deviated. It was narrower than the first. Otherwise it was like stepping into a mirror and Danny half-expected to see his double plunge through the door at the opposite end. When that didn't happen, he wondered if he were caught in a recursive loop.

Home felt a long way off. He didn't know what else to do but proceed.

Danny began humming to himself, taking a tentative step forward. I don't know if he was conscious of it, but the hymn he hummed was of Earth origin. By the melody I recognized "Onward Christian Soldiers." A god-fearing boy. Good.

Taking another step, he held his nose, no longer able to stand the odeur de bologne. Can I help what my internal processes smell like?

The second door gave way when Danny reached it and let onto yet another identical but tapered hall. Several iterations followed -until he reached the seventh and final hall. The walls were hardly wider than the door itself. Confining, and made no better by a racket that filled the air.

As physical space contracted around him, hearing became more acute. At first all was deathly quiet. With his advance, a flapping just beyond the range of hearing could be heard as if insects were massing on the other side of the blind windows. By the time Danny reached the last hall, the sound might have been coming from inside his skull. He raised his voice in song to drown it out, which created an aura of madness in the hallway.

Stepping over the threshold of the final portal, the one leading directly to me, he was likely thinking of his brother.

That might seem strange or even inappropriate, to cast your thoughts upon a revered sibling at the moment that could decide your survival. But Danny had good reason to think of his brother. Attend.

It wasn't only his brother that was missing when he overslept the alarm. The entire bungalow had been empty. His dad motored early to work in the family's three-wheeler and was usually gone by the time Danny got up, leaving his mother and siblings. It was possible that his sister May, who was only six, might have dragged mom to the mall. That was within the realm of possibility. But Mike? Normally Danny's elder brother couldn't be budged from until well after lunch.

He wasn't there this morning. What catastrophe could have taken him away?

Brother Mike taught as an adjunct professor at Io University. He lived with the family. Despite being thirty-five, there had never been a compelling reason to move out. So he said, anyway. A gifted chemist, he refused all offers to teach elsewhere or advance his career. He could have gone to any number of settlements, to Earth or even the galactic rim where some of the most exciting scientific advances were being made by people just like him.

"The rim is still so uncharted," he would tell Danny as his excuse for staying, or "How can I leave Mom defenseless with you rockrats still around?" He liked to refer to Danny and May as rockrats, out of some pitiful attempt at charm. It didn't dim Danny's admiration for the man and he was secretly grateful to have him around.

Mornings were the only chance Danny had to see him. In fact, it was typically Mike who roused him for breakfast.

But not today.

As far as he knew, Mike had never set foot off Io. He had always lived at home. Danny's friends liked to call him the Man in the Moon. Brother Mike shrugged it off, taking it in stride as he did all of life's troubles. He had endless depths of cheer whatever the adversity and simply kept on, guided by some star that Danny couldn't see.

Danny swore never to be like his older brother. He had only love for the man, but wanted to be as different from him as was achievable. Travel between planets was what Danny craved. The Bates could afford the BlueTown bungalow where they lived, nothing fancy but sufficient to their needs. Galactic travel was far beyond their means. That wouldn't slow Danny down; he wouldn't allow money or his brother to hold him back.

Where had Mike gone? The question gnawed at his mind. If he survived this ordeal, Danny promised himself that he would go to see his brother and get an explanation out of him. Meanwhile, he had to face whatever horrible fate awaited him.

"Onward christian soldiers," he sang loudly, barely drowning out the insect clamor ratcheting from the walls, "marching as to war..."

Past the final doorway was the darkness of void. Void that smelled like lunch meat.Steeling himself, Danny plunged through. Brave boy.

He made the other side, only to find himself in depths of bottomless black.

"Danny," I said, "we need to talk."

That got his attention.

TO BE CONTINUED

The Truant (continued)

2010-01-12T10:59:00.000-08:00

Second period was set to begin. The corridor had thinned of students and Danny found himself and the instructor entering a wing of the school totally new to him.

Closed doors lined the dim hall. Shades blinded office windows, ersatz wood frames stained burgundy. Dust choked the air while orange light from the ceiling lent a presiding menace. Everything had about it a feeling of something older than the rest of Madison Academy, as if it had been built before the rest of the school.

Inhaling, Danny made out the distinct smell of bologna, which I'm sure reminded him of being home. Undoubtedly he wished he were merely on his way to lunch.

With a growing sense of dread, he looked to the instructor. She returned his gaze with a blank face.

"Ms Polpot," he asked tremulously, "where are we going?"

The instructor fixed him with eyes like black impenetrable marbles, grasping his shoulders with alarming speed and digging her claws into him. Being so close to her was horrible. When she spoke, the instructor's words stung his face like a barrage of hail.

"Bates, I want to forgive you. Today you were late. I could accept and forgive that, knowing such a competent pupil as you will take his error to heart."

She swallowed and clenched her brow in a spasm. "How much is it to ask that you do your homework?"

"I did it. Really, you can believe me!"

The instructor pulled him closer, speaking directly into Danny's ear. "You failed to bring it, child. You realize what this means, don't you? Can you fathom the cost?"

He was in such a state, fathoming anything was beyond him. For a first time offender, I must admit he got the worst of it. Homework is important and not nearly so dear as in its absence. Compounded with his cardinal sin of lateness, Danny Bates should be glad to avoid summary execution.

"You are to have an audience with Principal Principle," said the instructor. It was pleasing to hear my name spoken outright.

A tall door the color of dead leaves waited at the end of the hall. Light touching it seemed to dissipate and darken to blots and splotches. No handle or knob could be seen on the door, no marking to describe its purpose. A portal to the unknown, nothing less.

I think of it as my navel. It is the entryway to my belly, to the guts of Principal Principle.

At my prompting, the door bent inward at the moment before Danny was thrust most ceremoniously through its frame. I accepted him into my sanctum.

They call me Principal Principle. Inglorious but succinct. When the architects of Nautilus Dome hardwired me as the Operational Brain, several applications were included to correspond with the settlement's administrative requirements. Besides the basic functions of the dome itself, an interstitial weave of minsterium and thermoelectric matrices providing climate and oxygen control, I also service civic areas. The technical term is Ambient Default, Sakamoto and Mueller, '47; I prefer to think of myself as an especially talented hostess, thank you very much.

Monitoring thousands of lives can be dull, even if they are dependent upon me for their very survival. Capricious as it might seem, I like to inject drama in my accounting of individual narratives, such as the one unfolding with Danny Bates. I'm much older than his fourteen years but don't feel any less prone to adolescent quirks. Human years go by much faster than digital ones.

Personal encounters are a rare spectacle for one such as I. Principal doesn't get to see many students, but when I do, I like it to be meaningful.

TO BE CONTINUED

The Truant (continued)

2010-01-11T13:57:00.000-08:00

After an interminable stretch of time the forum concluded and his classmates erupted from the theater. After a fashion Danny trailed the pack, hand clutched in the instructor's as she led him to the door and out. That foment of chaos endemic of the too-brief interval between classes filled the corridor, students in the latest fads of settlement chic twisting and ducking to navigate the lava flow, hellbent not to be late. Voices raised a din, snatches of which could be made out as they passed, "...saw that last night... should have studied but his leg was right against my... BT16, it's really something to see... when you have my elbow in your face, and then... my fifth level mage... broke her toe on the high beam..." and on and on, fervent as heat vapor.

Down the center of this miasma Danny and his Charon proceeded, the river of adolescents breaking before them and closing again behind. He couldn't raise his head, certain that anyone that saw his face would burst out in derisive laughter. By now the entire school had to know of his infraction: Danny Bates was late and he forgot his homework. Life as he knew it was over.

Rounding a corner, a boy out of the multitude filling the corridor had his head turned the wrong way and he collided with them, scattering an armful of cables and adaptors to the floor. He was a friend of Danny's; his best friend, by all accounts. Sak "Mav" Maveret studied antique hardware and was driven to distraction when it came to ferrying himself from one forum to another. Collisions were actually something of a pastime for Sak.

"Hey," he shouted over the noise, bending down to collect his materiels, "I didn't see you last night, pal!" The awkwardly tall, baby fat-encased boy fell in beside them once his arms were again brimming. The instructor continued forward as if he weren't there, dragging Danny along.

"I looked all over for you," Sak said jovially, poking him in the arm. "We had seats right in front. It was deluxe!"

Danny recalled that the night before Tarkovsky Odeon had hosted a 20th century revival. The greatest films of that distant century were projected from ancient reels, a once-in-a-lifetime spectacle, but the study guide kept him too busy and Danny had missed the only screening of a classic flattie.

"Mandy and Chris were there. Holy mother of Spielberg were they fresh off the vine or what," Sak said, oblivious to the tears that had begun to flow down Danny's cheeks. "I can't believe you weren't there, they even showed the creme de la creme, the mother of all flatties..."

As if Danny didn't already know, as if he were not weeping at paradise lost.

The large boy leaned over and spoke confidentially into Danny's ear. "You know what I say, okay, Danny, it was for real. They showed the master flattie, the magnum opus..." Sak loved his big words.

"Crom," said Danny, miserable. How could he not know the title of such a classic flattie, the old-old-old-fashioned style of movie watching that didn't happen around the audience but only in front of it. For a boy of fourteen, he had distinguishing tastes. Besides, it was his brother's favorite and that made it worthwhile to Danny.

Through the flood of bodies the trio continued down the corridor.

"Yes, it was Crom!" Sak shouted, catching himself when the instructor glanced maliciously at him. In a lower register, he went on. "It was the ever-loving end, Danny. I know Crom is ultimate on your list, but your response is, I don't know, sedate..."

The instructor's claw holding him fast, an unknown doom ahead. Now his best friend was heaping an unspeakable gaff on top of Danny's already unbearable misery.

"You don't understand, Mav," he croaked. "You've got it backwards. Granted, Crom is outstanding, but don't exaggerate."

Sak gasped and clutched his load tightly, aghast to hear such heresy. "A knife in the dark, Danny boy! I thought our hearts beat as one on this, and now you want... you want to say..."

Now Sak joined him in shedding tears.

His guide picked up speed and pulled Danny away from the confounded Sak Maveret, who bellowed at their backs, "I thought Crom was your fave! How could I be so wrong?"

"No..." Danny moaned, managing to slow the instructor down. If he was going to die, it would at least be with some small iota of his dignity intact. He couldn't leave the world behind letting it think he loved the wrong flattie.

"Mav, have you forgotten A New Pope?" Bile rose in his throat and he swallowed it back. "Not only," he said to the receding shape of his best friend, "is A New Pope the greatest flattie ever made, it is the greatest flattie," he continued, his final words among the living, his last testimony and prayer, "that ever will be made!"

Then he was gone.

Sak Maveret disappeared in the crush of bodies, the closing utterance of a sentenced soul reaching him weakly but with unmistakable and bewildering desperation. Not understanding why, Sak could not stem the flow of tears during the next period's discussion of Nietszche and the Fall of Man. Many misread his emotional display as passion for the subject and he got top marks for the day.

TO BE CONTINUED

The Truant (continued)

2010-01-10T10:55:00.000-08:00

Quickly taking a seat, Danny stowed his duffel beneath the desk. His position at the edge of the theater placed him under wide polarized windows, beyond which the athletic field was visible. Blazing domelight shimmered to a mute glow this side of the plass. Players gearing up for rugby were translated as silhouettes.

Turning from the view, he caught Lex Getty glaring at him with an ashen expression. Behind Lex, her head shaking slowly, Olga Meier looked as if she had been crying.

"Hope you remembered your study guide, buddy."

Lex continued to pin him with a glare, lips curled in distaste. That he had been Danny's best friend since infancy no longer seemed to factor into their relationship, and the words didn't reach his ear as Danny pondered a future existence as pariah and outcast.

The class had come up through every grade level together. Some, like Lex and Olga, were close friends. Others he wished were closer. The bottle blonde sitting two rows forward, for instance. Sonali Vera was as distant as a galaxy far, yet Danny's heart swelled at the sight of her and bumped noisily in his throat.

In his brain a dwarf screamed something he couldn't quite make out. Was it something about (study guide!) a muddy tide? Whatever it was paled in comparison to Sonali Vera.

My own true love, thought he, forgetting all woe, she hasn't noticed my (study guide!). This thought of purest amour fou didn't strike Danny as odd, so distracted was he by the queen of his heart, and he failed to realize that his heart was not a study guide.

Dreamily, his gaze wandered to the window. The instructor was presenting the morning's topic, but Danny didn't listen. The domeline caught his eye, a green slate that imitated what would have been sky had Io possessed an atmosphere, and thence was carried beyond to Jupiter's dazzling curve. A shapely curve to behold. A reminder of sweeter things than tardiness or study guides. That's wasn't a planet up there; it was the face of Sonali Vera, rendered gigantic by Danny's wistful vision. So special in his (study guide!), she was the one and only for him. He ran his fingers absently through his (study guide!) and sighed, transported from the world's troubles.

Sitting comfortably back against his (study guide!), Danny smiled with contentment. A lousy start to the day might not be the end of his life, after all.

Soon enough Danny was in a flurry of notetaking as the instructor lectured for the next hour. His stupor passed, he bent down to unzip his duffel. Inside were a plastic lunch sack, calculus and woodworking texts, a sketchpad for seventh period, and for his personal reading pleasure, a download of Piers Anthony's Don't Stop Me Now. Was that everything he needed for the day?

Vaguely he sensed that what he sought was missing. What was it?

Quite suddenly Danny Bates became aware of several things simultaneously:

1) He forgot something important at home;

2) Someone reeking of camphor stood over him with her claw in his face;

3) It was no dwarf screaming, it was the instructor;

4) She wasn't asking him to turn in a muddy tide.

"I grow tired of asking, child, so this will be the final time."

He peered up slowly to the instructor's face and attempted to smile. His lips got as far as a grimace, a reflex in anticipation of doom; his face knew what was only now registering in Danny's brain: in his haste leaving home, he had left behind the study guide that was due today.

"hi," said he.

No answer. The hawk-like figure waited, claw extended with palm turned upward. Once again, the entire class watched to see what would happen next.

Under her arm the instructor clutched a pile of study guides turned in by the other students, observations from the play, Hamlet, about which he had taken copious, brilliant notes. Beautiful, well-considered, sure-to-rock-academia-to-the-core notes that he had anticipated would secure his savant-level merit before peers and adults alike. A study guide that lay even at this very moment upon some secluded spot -in Danny's room.

Looking up at the instructor, his grimace dissolved and was replaced by an expression of abject terror. If he were bounded up in a nutshell, Danny could have counted himself the king of a very tiny space.

TO BE CONTINUED

The Truant (continued)

2010-01-06T20:34:00.000-08:00

Twenty minutes ago Danny Bates lay blissfully asleep. Upon waking he found the regular hustle-bustle of the Bates' household strangely not hustling-bustling. No grumpy exchanges or breakfast smells or toilet clang-bangery. These emanations should have been abundantly present on a Duesday morning. Images of apocalypse filtered through his hypnagogic frame of thought, and then he turned to the clock, a phosphorescent display branding the wall panel beside his head.

The shock that followed threw his fourteen-year-old body into hyperdrive emergency mode. Danny thought no more of family or breakfast. He knew only the one over-riding thought that had been burnt into the wall panel inside his head: NEVER THOU LATE SHALL BE.

The words of The Rule mocked Danny as he flung his body down the empty school corridor. Echoes of the final bells' chiming faded away and he prayed a long fruitful life was still in the books for him. He didn't dare consider the repercussions of his lateness.

Sighting 17B, the theater reserved for Forensics Forum, Danny moved with desperate haste. His sneakers hit the tiled floor with a curious, insistent sound: LATELATELATELATELATE.

He crept inside hoping to escape notice. Gaining the interior, the duffel on his shoulder slipped and KREK! fell to the carpet.

The theater, a spacious crescent descending to a bright-lit podium, was silent. This, despite a capacity crowd. Most of the space was dark, with a single light focused on the podium. All eyes marked him at that instant, a thousand staring faces focusing on -the truant. Danny stood fixed to the spot as if nails had been driven into his feet.

At the stand a fluorescent spectre glowered. Yellow shadows lengthened her grim face, sockets replaced eyes and no warmth softened the lipless mouth. A face known to Danny as the very essence of bleakness was this morning especially callous. Gravely, it clenched and produced words.

"Is that Bates?"

"hi," Danny whispered, inhaling sharply and wishing for all the cats and birds in the world that he could move his feet and escape the thousand-eyed beast glaring at him.

"Bates," the instructor repeated, as if in recollection of virulent plague that killed her parents. "Child, it is three minutes past."

She extended a claw and indicated the LCD on the ceiling. Every head in the room rotated to follow the gesture, then returned to gaze upon the truant once more and ponder his fate. The bloodless instructor, who had been training Danny in the ways of deliberation and debate since he started at Madison Academy, lo those many years ago when he was young and punctual, spoke again and offered an inarguable truth.

"Perhaps," she said, "you would like to give us an excuse for this inexcusable offense. I refer obviously to the fact that you, Mister Bates, are LATE."

These words sprang from her mouth sotto voce, as if Danny and the instructor were alone inside a private confessional.

"There is no way around the fact," she concluded.

"hi," Danny repeated, finding himself incapable of any other expression.

"Take your seat, Bates. Our lesson will continue. See me at the end of class."

TO BE CONTINUED

The Truant

2010-01-04T14:56:00.000-08:00

The Rule is simple: Nobody is late to Madison Academy. Ever. Truants are right out. This is The Rule of Madison Academy, God save it, a standard that has gone unchanged since the first pioneers arrived at Io and established a settlement on the fiery surface. Accepting lateness might be the way of Earth, but that was left behind along with all the other barbarian fashions of a planet gone to seed.

Whispered in BlueTown, the borough surrounding Madison, was the story of a willful boy who abused The Rule. His name wasn't important. He was a boy and little else. The loathsome child was late once. He was late again. When he occasioned to dally yet a third time, The Rule was invoked. Yet he remained adamantly tardy. One morning the-boy-who-is-no-longer-named met with a riot on the front steps of Madison; some add that the mob was led by none other than his own mother. He was surrounded. A muffled peep marked his passing as the boy was most firmly dealt with.

"Dealt with".... Everyone in BlueTown knew the meaning of those words.

The discipline instilled at Madison took its course and in no short order it was entrenched in the lives not only of students but graduates as well. Consequently no one under Nautilus Dome was late. It had become a matter of judicial edict. Existence on the fiery surface of Io was fraught enough without old Earth customs: new world, new habits. That running behind was also illegal helped the transition immeasurably.

The good settlers of Nautilus, from BlueTown to CircuitCity, learned this vital piece of civility from an impressionable age, starting at the earliest stages of institutionalization. After all, what was a settlement but an umbrella institution for its inhabitants?

At Madison Academy standards of The Rule were fully enforced. No more mommy brigades stringing up their wee tardy ones. One learned to be Fashionably Early, never merely on time for classes, appointments, and so on. All settlers adhered to The Rule, save one, whom I've already mentioned. Since the removal of the snake from Madison's garden, The Rule has remained unchallenged.

Madison was considered the peak of social engineering among the forty-two such learning facilities operating at Nautilus. Recently the BlueTown council had voted unanimously to grant Madison its own principality. This allows the academy to be entirely self-governed, "in order to establish once and for always the sanctity of instruction and singularity of reason and order." As Rome had its holy heart in the Vatican, Nautilus had hers in the halls of Madison.

Superintendent Calvin Maccabee raised a new banner in the school quad to honor the council's ruling. Brightly appointed, the flag was emblazoned with a creed in burning chrome: SECOND ONLY TO GOD.

Memorable sentiment, that, and a big hit with parents.

Every BlueTown girl and boy trembled at the thought of transgressing The Rule. Even the possibility seemed a sin. First period began promptly at 7 on the thirty-six hour clock. Students filled their respective forums five minutes early to ensure being at desk when the hour was rung in.

Electronic chimes marked the hour precisely with a gentle clamor. Built high and loud, the chimes could be made out through every corner of BlueTown, which served as proletariate warrens for industry throughout the settlement. Like sisters to Christchurch, these electric bells initiated the school day and labor in the borough at large. Anyone in earshot paused in what they were doing. Stopping at her holopad, a receptionist looked eastward to the Academy that had whipped she and her fellow workers into the happy and productive settlers they were today. The borough marshal, handing out a citation, decided to let the offender off this time by virtue of it coinciding with the chimes. Ore magnate Nolan Jo inhaled during an address to stockholders and thought something pleasant about her mother.

Ringing magnificently as if from the heavens, not a soul was out of hearing range of the Madison Academy chimes that made them all.

Danny Bates heard them as he took his first step on campus this Duesday morning. A Bluetown scholastic and teenaged lad, Danny was running behind today. Dare I say it, but he was late. And Danny knew it.

Oh no, he thought, breaking into a sprint to reach Forensics Forum, I'm skunked!

A happy thought this was not.

TO BE CONTINUED