 
### Boxtown

Fisher Thompson

This book is work of fiction. Any reference to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author's imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Cover design by Dartos Polemius

Copyright © 2018 by Fisher Thompson

Published by M.H. Dartos at Smashwords

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All rights reserved.

*****

I drifted off into a fitful sleep and continued a terrifying and vivid dream, a night terror that seemed to appear more and more frequently:

A sense of untold horror pervaded. An evil older than time itself had taken hold long ago. Had seized control. Children circled in the dark trash strewn street. Now they were coming for me. Gathering around me. Sealing all exits. By the glimmering light I saw them all of them. Creatures barely human. Still I recognized them. In the fading light they moved and shuffled about, tilting add odd angles, all heading in one direction, destination unseen yet infinitely knowing. A young boy came toward me. Blood dripping from his eyes, down his face. He falls backward and is fully transformed. Crawls toward me like a crab on the ground, arms bent back at impossible angles.

A windmill in the foreground spun its creaking blades. I ran away from it. From them. Determined to escape. At any cost. But each exit. Each road. Each path. Returned me to the place I had begun. In their midst. In their grasp. Trapped in their terror. Religion doesn't know how to convey the anatomy of horror. It seeks discipline through fear. They don't understand the true nature of creation. No one's ever believed it enough to make it real. Always looking for the con. Even now I'm trying to rationalize. This work makes you mad. When people begin to lose the difference between fantasy and reality, the door to the other side swings wide open. Making it easier for them to come through. They have always been here. Always watching. Always lurking, that creeping, slouching, hideous monster that invades our childhood dreams. But these are no dreams. Not in the way science terms them. That which those self appointed rational thinkers call fantasy. They are not dreams but glimpses of a steadily simmering future. The thin veil rips. Grows wider.

The creatures of the other side start to come over. Exploding into our so called real world shriek by shriek. Slice by slice. Black as the deepest pits of hell. Flashing lights and booming sound signal their entry. This is reality. Reality is just what we tell each other it is. But it's a flip flop. A turnaround. When all that you've known as sanity is shown to be insanity, you find yourself alone in the belief that it is otherwise. I know what I am. I know what is real. This is no fiction. My world lies beyond that passage. They can't be held back any longer. The end draws terrifyingly near. Staring into the illimitable world of the unknown. The stygian blood pit, an enormous carrion white pit. Churned with the unhallowed bones of centuries. Hanging onto the frail edge of reality. Clutching the crumbling edge of sanity. Madness has come to claim me.

The city is almost completely deserted now. More and more people are becoming infected. People are distorting. Mutating. Their bodies turning into hideous creatures.

Cannibalism runs amok. Mass violence and killings everywhere. Senseless, unprovoked violence. A rampant swarm of unfocused rage sweeping through every town. Every city. Expressing itself through mass mutilations and dismembering. The streets run red with blood.

*****

It was a time of terror as a creeping Black Death surged through the land. It was then I had to depart Sung Wu and follow a different path. This would remain so.

"Have sex on the plain or die," she says, giggling in her girlish way.

I smile.

This was among the many things she would often say, things that had far greater and far different meaning than I would at first assume. I was to learn the error of my ways in this regard.

Assume nothing at all.

Nothing at all with Sung Wu.

In a world of misery there is the moon; the moon and Sung Wu. Between these poles do we gyrate, awaiting our calling. That distant insistent calling that draws us home. It is this calling that courses through my veins strangling my bones. The sweet intoxication of Sung Wu.

More siren than swan. The alpha and the omega.

I point out that this is a Judeo-Christian trope. She mocks me and giggles in her girlish fashion.

"In shallow holes moles make fools of dragons," she says.

It is only the truth she speaks, her words, not mine. Learn it, live it, or die.

When she entered my world the sky went from dull yellow to brilliant azure hues. Thus she lifted me from the sludge of entrenched gloom. A necessary antidote, she says. Prescribed and applied on command. On whose command she would not disclose. Her mystery exceeds her reach.

A mysterious compound interaction. Surprise her defining property.

The stone. The stone. That crazy stone. It is this alone that fixates her attentions to distraction. In the north quarter, she said. The north quarter. On the way home she came across it. Found it. As if plopped from the sky for her alone. Her polymer pet. Her moonstone. And oh she is mesmerized. Hypnotized by its bicolor persuasion. Crystal blue persuasion. Gold flecked and delightful. She looks within its opaque depths and sees her future. Clear as barium fluoride . So she says.

It makes her feel electrified. Her words not mine.

I do my best to avoid all things electrifying. Remain still and silent. Silent and still.

New Khotan is the place where all past beginnings begin again. A place where the Khotanese people can reach ascendancy as is their destiny. According to legend, the foundation of Khotan occurred when Kushtana, said to be a son of the Indian Buddhist emperor Ashoka, settled there in the early 3rd century BCE.

The kingdom became one of the major centers of Buddhism, and is primarily associated with the Mahayana branch.

An early account of the city states it had fourteen large and many small Buddhist monasteries. Many foreign languages, including Chinese, Sanskrit, Prakrit and Tibetan, were used in cultural exchange.

Khotan was the first place outside of China to begin cultivating silk. The story is that a Chinese princess brought silkworm eggs in her hairdo when she was sent to marry the Khotanese king, probably taking place in the first half of the 1st century CE.

It came under Muslim control in the first decade of the 11th century. The 11th century Turkish scholar Mahmud al-Kashgari, included a verse describing the Muslim conquest of Khotan:

Like river torrents

We flooded their cities

We destroyed their monasteries

And shat on the statues of the Buddha.

Ancient Khotan failed to reach its destiny. The latest, greatest version in the cultural hierarchy, New Khotan, means to reset the clock and begin again, putting all past mistakes right.

Within the cultural structures of New Khotan, the citizens are issued modest apartments called "tiles." Today I venture from my tile to the inner city. The place of employment. The place of my duty. A place much the same as others. We, the people of this once great land are born to a place. A place which We must possess. A place taken with pride or humility. The choice is open. But clearly weighted toward the side of humility. Without which one cannot long survive.

Reading _The History of a Free People_ , it is recounted how we were once, eons before the catastrophic End of Oil wars, a free and benevolent people. But the wars brought a vicious change in the status quo. A tragic erasure of half the world population. Mother Earth curing her indigestion by projectile vomiting. Though the more pernicious festered and grew. Like a biophage. And today, in the year 2113, we have fallen off the edge into a perilous new world. Life has taken a cold, hard, left.

The best times are always in the past.

The toil of each day is monotonous and endurable. The kind of rudimentary toil that allows one to linger on the imponderables. Imponderable only when life is racing past. Imponderable only by involvement in meaningless tasks. Yet caution must be taken as thought can lead one astray.

The Black Guards, men with black armbands, lead the way. Draw the line. We are constantly assured our purpose is good. Our purpose is grand. Our purpose fulfills a role preordained. With this divine purpose firmly inculcated our day begins. As each one does. Up before dawn. To the mill. To the factory. To our place within this megalopolis. This megalopolis known as Boxtown. The name taken up by the people of this great land as one of simplicity. One of simplicity spoken simply. Though not the official name. That name which you would find on a map or tourist brochure is a name far more complex than a simple people could get their minds and mouth work around; Chunbokstun Xuansiung.

When I was thirteen my father sent me off to school with the warning not to join any Chinese student organizations and to keep my opinions to myself. Black Guard student-spies sometimes infiltrated these organizations. I grew up with the understanding that political discussions and open speech were dangerous activities. I also learned that pain obliterates the comforts of faith and hope.

At one time China's Communist Party had considered science-fiction to be subversive, but in New Khotan it is now everywhere.

The official name of this megalopolis is we are told drawn from sacred texts. Sacred texts brought forward into our time at great expense. Great loss of life. Brought through ancient lineage for which we should bow and quiver in supplication. It is said he was greater than all who preceded. The blood of ancient emperors did course through his veins. So it has been said. And so we have been told. But the people could not, would not the rulers declared, repeat this sacred name for which we should shiver with pride. In their presence we bow sputter and choke as we intone the long and glorious name of our great city-state. Chunbokstun Xuansiung. Amongst ourselves we show our pride. Bowing and smiling. Intoning the name Boxtown. This we do in barely audible whispers. We who decline to give a name for fear of reprisals. Fear our prime motivation.

"Li Chu Yang. Report to Master Phun, 109," thunders the monotone words through the imperial com system. No amount of blending into the machinery makes one a machine. Though hope springs eternal on all sides. To hear one's name blasting through the soundscape bodes of ill portent. Perhaps my whispers have been more than less.

I shuffle off to my despair.

"The high leaders have exhorted paramilitary troops to be especially vigilant. The command runs through the ranks. Imperative is the message. As section lead it is yours to assure order and production. We have noticed a slackening in your section. This is unacceptable. Insects do not nest in a busy door-hinge. This month's work must be done especially well. This is crucial. Is this clear?" Master Phun drills imperial eyes into mine.

To the rhetorical question one heeds the instruction. Bowing and nodding are the only answer. I heed my instruction and am sent back to the machines. The droning insistent machines. Cold comfort. Cruel reckoning.

100 Fallen in Qingbang town

By the crush of morning another sweeping. Another trickling blackness. The slow drip of steady decline. A culling. So it comes again to a row of tiles in Qingbang town. From a distance one sees first a glimmer, then a blotch, then a slow and steady horizontal spreading as the tar black races through the tile structure. A monolithic tile structure of dominoes. The Great Wall in miniature. Clear glass dominoes now gone coal tar black with the creeping death.

So I am told.

It is always this way.

Through rice paper walls I hear the screams and wails and prophetic gnashing of teeth as I wake from fitful slumber. Perhaps one day I may witness the catastrophe in action as others have. For the time peace is mine. For the time it is the pervasive though slanted media that brings me the news. That and the trammeling terrified howls of huddled masses. Why? Why? shriek a thousand voices in shock and awe. For a query such as this no sufficient answer exists. The Party Daily arrives as ordered, our daily measure of governmental bread.

The cruel compression of headlines chill sufficiently peaceful bones:

65 Run Black in Ganzii

Body Count Rises in Xiungshan Prefecture

The whole city is stable and troops are in normal state as usual. The troops protect us. This we are told. This we must believe. Trudge and tread our sure certainty. Shuffle and sway our steady mantra.

Two little dogs sat by the fire

Over a fender of coal dust;

Said one little dog to the other little dog,

"If you don't talk, why, I must." —

It is our way to be the first one of two little dogs. Fitting in both manner and stature a silent poem such as this speaks volumes. Master calls these words to live by. Better silent and still than noisy and killed. Sung Wu says the master is none to her but bombastic buffoon.

"Be the silent little dog," she says. "In your silence and in your stead I will rage explosive!"

These words rattle through my bones and shake my soul to the root. So much passion. So much anger. So much resolve. Words of a romantic revolutionary. I shudder as she speaks.

"Fear not. Fear not. The pale yellow morning brings drizzling salvation."

Her words icy puzzle pieces, jagged, ragged, and treacherous, slice my fingers as I stumble through assembly. This indeed is deadly poetry. Lifted straight from tragic poets historical. Perhaps imperial blood courses through their veins.

"Seek frantic escape from the burden of silence."

I smile, knowing full well she has adopted the style of mutual kidding for comedic effect. She is very funny without a doubt. Funny as an acid rainstorm. I tell her this and she giggles in her girlish fashion. The trilling sound of her voice soothes, thrills, and chills me in a trilogy of sweet pain.

Oftentimes her innocent giggles hold something ominous in reserve. It is a secret we hold close and dear. A secret oath. A secret handshake. A privilege granted only to the chosen anointed. Even a pea-like private club offers a modicum of warm solidarity, much needed in this time of glacial drift.

Beware the veiled benediction.

The Yellow Guards, groups of youths who band themselves together, encourage all the youth in Boxtown to criticize those who Chairman Tsing deems untrustworthy with regards to the direction he wants New Khotan to take. No one is safe from criticism: writers, economists, and anyone associated with Chairman Tsing, are considered his main rivals. Anyone who is deemed to have developed a superior attitude is considered an enemy of the party and people.

It is these selfsame Yellow Guards that are the scourge of all society, especially those in the peasant communes. The idiot, the retard, the developmentally disabled. We have them all by a different name: the fortunate. Where one designation repels, the other compels. The underpinnings of society are contained within its language. As always, within its structure does society find security.

We are one.

We are legion.

We rise like stalks from poison ground.

*****

Shuffle back to one month ago.

I meet Sung Wu at a family affair. A place where community is replaced by who are you to me. Except we are no longer with family, she and I. We are deep in the forest on family grounds. Grounds rented at exorbitant rates from the landowner. We are a family of farmers, swineherds, peasants all.

When the ever present small talk grates on our senses, Sung Wu and I adjourn. To a ramshackle shed used for tool storage. The light is dim, the smell damp and ancient. A feeling of illicit behavior tinges our skin. There is the tingle of magic in the air.

It is now our private place. The place where she explains to me the shadow play of Journey to the West and the recurring roles of Xuánzàng, Pig, Monkey, and Sha Wujing. Explains how centuries later their iconic presence can be seen everywhere.

"You are the embodiment of Pig," she says. "Banished to the mortal realm for flirting with the Princess of the Moon. Along the journey there are impassably wide rivers, flaming mountains, a kingdom ruled by women, a lair of seductive spider-spirits, and many others."

She tells me this while lovingly caressing a loaded revolver in her hands. Murmurs Happiness is a Warm Gun. A wistful smile crosses her lips. Cocking the hammer she giggles in her girlish fashion. Mischief in her eyes, she pushes the gun against my groin.

Sweat trickles down my forehead.

Terror ripples through me. An electric current seeking ground.

She studies my eyes. Her hand. My groin. My groin which has sprouted a gun barrel and growing erection. We have played this game before. She and I. Each time ending with her, Princess of the Moon, releasing me, Pig, back to the mortal realm.

Now she bites her lower lip and quivers. Cute and vulnerable. This is new. For her. Typically steady as Gibraltar.

"You will not die, you know. You are a martyr. Immortal. Castrated in martyrdom as you were in life. Poetic and fitting, yes?"

This is the crossover point we have talked about. Thought about. She knows it. I know it. We are of one mind. Thought for me swirls ad infinitum. For her thought turns to immediate action. I am a procrastibator. Procrastinating masturbator. Her words not mine. She is danger girl. My words, not hers.

Here at the crossover point anything can happen at the speed of light. Split second decisions. Long term results.

A speed-of-light decision on her part could bring about a speed-of-sound 35 caliber explosion.

I would die slowly. But beautifully. Achieve immortality.

"Does this excite you?" she says, nodding toward my groin.

My head says no. My eyes say yes. Dangerous ground.

"With five seconds to live, what would you do?"

My thoughts swirl and hit a jam in the mental roadway.

"I would kill the chicken to frighten the monkey. Now we count," she says, with smiling eyes and wicked grin.

Five

Four

Three

Two...

*****

In the world there are three kinds of people; the quick, the dead, the undead. In Boxtown we are of the undead variety. Cursed to live our death in crippling rigor mortis. Unable to act upon the horrors we are forced to witness.

Shock and awe immobilize us.

With wide-eyed knowing and eyes-closed terror we enter each day. Our modus is clear: we do not know what nobody could deny. If we dare know what nobody could deny, the Master takes us to a private room with not quite thick enough walls. There he administers his specialty; the precise pain in the precise place, in the precise amount. The screams and pleas accompany the machinery sounds in cruel harmony.

All plans are to a purpose. Even planned misery.

Today, this first day of spring, we of the Factory 54 rank and file, are herded into a small room, harsh lit by a single hanging bulb, for re-acquaintance with our standard operating procedure. Master Chingdang steps to the mic, his arms spread wide as if to embrace his beloved children.

"Sometimes we talk simply for the sake of hearing ourselves talk. The prevention of silence appears in itself an important function of speech. We all know the type. Blatherers. Yammerers. Ramblers. Spinning word upon word for no apparent reason other than the prevention of silence. More true to the point, pummeling silence into submission. To talk much and arrive nowhere is the same as climbing a tree to catch a fish. I am informed by those whose names need no repeating, that the reigning process at Factory 54, subintelligitur, something that is not stated but understood, is apparently misunderstood. The question being, that perhaps we have made ourselves unclear. For the sake of clarity, I will reiterate: If one needs to ask, then one does not know. If one does not know, one will be summarily educated. Our commands and instructions, orders, are approved and provided by our esteemed leaders. In this regard it is as if the orders are given from their mouths to your ears. It is therefore imperative that these orders are carried out precisely and expeditiously without question. To question our leaders is unacceptable and will be dealt with in swift fashion."

This is an extreme prejudice application. Not knowing the implications of a fancy word used in odious context is lethal.

"Now, I hope we are all clear. Our actions alone bespeak our intent. The greater good is not served by failure to communicate. Any questions?"

As usual there are no questions. A question is the kiss of death. He keeps his arms spread wide. An equally wide crescent smile gracing his overfed, porcine face. Finally he nods and we are dismissed. No wiser or more secure. Perhaps only a bit more wary of the tightening constraints. Shuffling back to our stations, a palpable tightening of the throat as strangulation takes hold.

On we go. Shuffling one foot before the other. Breathing in. Breathing out. Another day, no other way. Whether we come, lay, stay, or pray, is irrelevant. Like novice monks we maintain a vow of silence. Like nervous monks we bow and pray.

Like the sun shining over the four seas

Shall be the reputation of our King;

His deeds, matched only in Heaven, shall repair

The wrongs endured by every tribe of men,

Northward to Yu and southward to Annam

To the Sheep's Gut Mountain and the Eastern Seas.

O Soul come back to where the wise are sought!

For Sung Wu, a mountain dweller:

Of late, the weather has been calm and clear, and I might easily have crossed the mountain. But I did not dare disturb you. So I roamed about the mountainside, rested at the Quan-p`ei Temple, dined with the mountain priests, and, after dinner came home again. Going northwards, I crossed the Kuuan-pa, over whose waters the unclouded moon shone with dazzling rim. When night was far advanced, I mounted Hua-tzuu's Hill and saw the moonlight tossed up and thrown down by the jostling waves of N'ang River. On the wintry mountain distant lights twinkled and vanished; in some deep lane beyond the forest a dog barked at the cold, with a cry as fierce as a wolf's. The sound of villagers grinding their corn at night filled the gaps between the slow chiming of a distant bell.

Now I am sitting alone. I think much of old days: how hand in hand, composing poems as we went, we walked down twisting paths to the banks of clear streams. Time has arrived and departed. With great expectation have we waited and spring has finally come: now the grasses sprout and the trees bloom. Wandering together in the spring hills we shall see the trout leap lightly from the stream, the white gulls stretch their wings, the dew fall on the green moss. And in the morning we shall hear the cry of curlews in the barley-fields.

I am foolish. This I know. Of this have you reminded me more than once. But this is as it is. I am a self proclaimed fool. A fool for love. A fallen fool in love with you. Forgive me Sung Wu if my passion overpowers. In the dawn of spring the light is brighter the colors richer. All of life's wonder regales in whisper and hush. Before the passing of the light, of these words must I divest myself. With a song and a sigh do I go.

*****

220 Feared Dead in Latest Assault

Again blackness descends and sweeps with a steel broom as another cluster of citizens fall to the pestilence. Predicting the behavior of living organisms is an enormous challenge given their vast complexity. Officials claim Yersinia pestis. But this is not the Bubonic Plague. This we know. In the distant past it gained attention as a possible biological warfare agent. Yet time changes all:

The selective pressures induced by the plague might have changed how the pathogen makes itself manifest in humans, selecting against the individuals or populations which were the most susceptible.

The Bubonic Plague allowed the afflicted a 4-7 day period of survival without treatment. The Black Death sweeping through our land kills immediately, absolutely, gruesomely. One minute you sit at your breakfast table in benign reflection. The next minute blackness sweeps through and you disintegrate in a rolling black lava wave. A human smelting. If this is the pathogen of old, it has evolved into a violently aggressive strain. The mother of all pathogens.

A judgment has been levied against us. This world of abandoned paradise. This world of dystopian doom.

Sung Wu knows it. I know it. We are of one mind.

We are being herded. Moved. Relocated. From the affected apartment structures to those unaffected. Barely suppressed panic reigns as people shuffle like zombies into an unknown future. Leaving behind all that has defined them. Their homes. Their mementos. Their lives. Like building blocks scattered and reassembled. Much easier to move objects than people.

The leaders are well practiced.

The apartment complex in which we were housed, was affected in grand form in the northwest quadrant. The spread had been a slow trickle. At first. Then things changed. The trickle was increasing to a passionate pouring. We were given helpful tips by the government. Lock all windows. Board all doors. Stay off floors. This sounds plausible and logical. Helpful even. Until one is struck by the queer logic.

"If I board the door, how will I get out?"

"How will I get in?"

"If I stay off the floor, how do I get about inside?"

"Am I to stay on a chair?"

"The couch?"

"The bed?"

"Do I then navigate about with oars?"

Utopian idealist directives in another form. Were we in fact building blocks, carrying out these orders would be a snap. In an ideal universe. Not a one would dare say what they perceive to be the obvious holes in these plausibly logical recommendations.

Die by the plague, die by the sword. All roads lead to decease.

Initially there was talk of instructing the populace to board all doors and all gaps therein to halt the black wave. But this was quickly abandoned as unrealistic and resource irresponsible. People getting smelted is taken as a loss. But irresponsible resource usage is a monumental tragedy.

In the effort of self preservation, I would rather move to the tool shed on the family farm. But this is no longer possible. All land and property has been seized by the government. The days of the infrequent and casual family soiree have passed into legend. Dissolved as if a dream. The door slammed shut the day we were each one seized by the arm, leg, neck, collar, ear, and dragged into our future like dead bodies. Assignments and orders were swiftly given. All citizens were to exist in massive multilevel structures a mile wide, arranged in circular formation around their associated factory. The factory which serves as both brain and heart in this dysfunctional and foul tempered mutational cyborg known as the modern city state. In this arrangement hiding is impossible.

Being that these multilevel abominations are constructed of Plexiglas 135. Clear. Impermeable. Highly durable. If one wishes to see what neighbor across the way is up to, one needs merely slide open the ubiquitous drapes, standard issue burlap fabrications. One could do this, would do this, if one wished to receive a blast of gunfire to the face.

Standing at ground level and looking up from the factory point of view, one sees a vast dirty tan wall surrounding them on all sides. The feeling of security immense. High security. And in the evenings? The evenings? Benevolence from above. A panoramic expanse of red orange gold splays across this dirty tan reflective walls as Brother Sun lies down to sleep. The sunset symphony is a marvel. A marvel that no matter how much power and omnipotence the government believes itself possessed of cannot be co-opted under their rule.

Imagine if you will what this imposing architectural structure looks like when the creeping black strikes. A cockamamie black and tan checker board unfairly weighted toward the black squares.

But this is behind us now as we move to the newly designated quarters. A sprawling tribal commune of oddly shaped twig and thatch huts. Entirely primitive. Most communes contain about 5,000 families The Great Leap Backward. The government does all that it can to flog up enthusiasm for the communes. Propaganda is everywhere---including in the fields where we listen to political speeches as we work. As the communes provide public address systems, remaining perpetually propagandized is a snap.

The population in a commune is sub-divided. Six families form a work team. Twelve work terms form a brigade. Each sub-division is given specific work to do. Party members oversee the work of a commune to ensure that decisions follow the correct party line.

Everybody in the commune is urged not only to meet set targets but to beat them. The same arrangement as in the factories. Some days we are assigned to the factory, some days to the fields. Material production is primary. Food production secondary. Factory production targets take many workers away from the fields.

In parts of Boxtown, starvation occurs.

Ironically, one of the key factors in food production is the weather which in 2113 has particularly good weather for growing food. Chairman Tsing, proclaims it is possible to accomplish any task whatsoever. Apparently, placing food production before material production is not one of these tasks.

We live to serve the party.

There is an accidental modicum of privacy provided by the hut structures. Though patrolling guards will decrease this, it is far better than the death cubes.

It seems the government has taken the creeping Black Death to be a message from a malevolent god. A condemnation of the Plexiglas 135 structures. Why a god would trifle with a matter so insignificant is not considered. Gods are mysterious and vengeful beings.

The government is highly superstitious.

Perhaps the gods will be appeased, the thinking goes, if the populace returns to the ramshackle and unstable huts of their peasant past. Surely this atonement will stop the Black Death. Surely. Unless of course this has only been a benevolent preview of benevolent vengeance to come.

Again, none ask such things.

None consider it.

None dare.

Mallet strikes chisel; chisel splits wood.

"It appears the Black Death is backing down. Dribbling to a halt. When the mountain is devoid of tigers, the monkey is king. This monkey is played out. Death cubes are a thing of the past. This war is won."

Guards. For all their infamy and menace, they are nothing more than grunts of the administration. Albeit armed with deadly force. Grunts that walk the walk and talk the talk and toe the party line. Officially. But unofficially, they are truculent chatterboxes. Better than the newspapers. The rules admonishing the filling of silence with speech simply to hear oneself talk, do not apply to them. We are all equal. Some are more equal than others.

So the government congratulates itself for putting its worthy opponent on the run. Retreat, the ugliest word .Their is no doubt much drinking, back slapping, and self congratulatory merriment going on in the officer's estates tonight. Lots of partaking of drink we of the party should not drink, food we should not eat, speech we should not utter. All is allowed tonight. This is left to the wild imagination of any who wish to invest themselves of such opportunity. The mind is stymied with the possibilities. The glorious drunken orgies undertaken at our expense. The abundance. Sheer wasteful abundance.

So we are told as the guards babble unrestrained. So we can only imagine.

We the people are banished to our quarters at night.

Yet a stinging uneasiness pervades. What if the leaders are premature in their assumption of victory? What if they are dead wrong...?

*****

The channel whistle shrieks through the factory. The tinny voice of Jiu Li Wang, General Manager and senior official, rings through the com system.

Arrogance knows no bounds.

"People. Good people. Chairman Tsing proclaims the gods have smiled upon us now that we have abandoned our high rise buildings, removed the trappings of indulgent accommodations, and gone back to a rural housing arrangement. In their wisdom we must acquiesce. One dog barks at something, the rest bark at him. Let us look forward knowing that the Black Death has run its course, has met its demise. Let us blaze ahead at double duty with our labors. The Party endures in solidarity."

How this state of affairs came to be is and enduring mystery to all. All of those disenfranchised and discounted by the apparent foreign occupation. There was political turmoil. Talk of revolution. High spirited discourse of idealist ideologies and agendas. Hopes flying high like birds of a new, miraculous order that would unleash prosperity in equal measure for all. Discussions happened. Shouting happened. Turmoil happened. Marching, fighting, and killing happened. And finally, after what seemed years, accord was reached. Control was taken. Power seized. Government posts handed out like candy to children.

Waking as if from a troubled sleep. Like Daruma, father of Chan Buddhism, emerging into a strange new world. The historical Bodhidharma was an Indian sage who lived sometime in the fifth or sixth century AD. He is the undisputed founder of Chan Buddhism and credited with Chan's introduction to China during his travels to the Middle Kingdom. Centuries later, it bloomed in Japan where it is called Zen. There are countless legends, some conflicting, about this sage. The best-known legends say he attained enlightenment after meditating in a cave for seven years without blinking or moving his eyes. In most legends, this occurred while Bodhidharma was facing a cave wall at the Shorinji Temple on Mt Song in China. During those years of meditation, his arms and legs atrophied, shriveled up, and fell off. Legend also credits Bodhidharma with cutting off his eyelids. Apparently he dozed off during meditation, and in anger, he cut off his eyelids, which fell to the ground and sprouted into China's first green tea plants.

Most of our knowledge about Bodhidharma comes from a 1053 AD Chinese document named Chuanfa Zhengzongji. This is translated into English as Record of the Transmission of the Law and Correct Teaching.

Perhaps like Bodhidharma, some part of our brains atrophied during the great war. On the day where euphoric celebration should have been the operative word, shock rolled over us like a poison tide. We had been under the impression that we had won whatever war we were fighting, and our side, New Khotan, had won. But it seemed that who won was unclear. It seemed that the other side had won even though we knew this was not true. Yet one thing was abundantly clear. The "unleashing of prosperity in equal measure" had indeed come like the resplendent bird of paradise, had landed its limping self smack dab in the center of our country and crawled away to nurse its wounds in the courtyard of the Politburo. Nursing it to health was step one. Convincing the populace that unleashing of prosperity was limited to the leaders alone, became easy with a combination of persuasion, brutality, and deadly force. The populace was viewed as a blank slate awaiting only the inscription of clear directives. Clear directives that painted the leaders as strict though caring parents. Doing all and everything to help us, their unruly children, join the new social order.

Frequent touchy feely speeches with wide spread arms declaring the virtues of our people, our Party, were an essential part in creating this anesthetizing illusion. With eyes agape we the children had front row seats as we watched the masterful magicians at work. Cloaking us all in a blanketing blandness. Thus it transpired, in testament to their tactics that very few of us if any at all knew whether or not we had won anything and who these people were proclaiming we were on the same side. Together. United in a preordained and noble cause.

It sure felt like we were prisoners. But then again, we were confused unruly children.

So we are told.

Sung Wu says the leaders are paper tigers and speak with serpent tongues. Says that truth is self proclaimed on sight.

"Your thoughts are subversive, you know. Do not repeat them anywhere. Trust no one. Active mind with silent tongue is a worthy skill. Failure is not an option."

I tell her I know. I tell her I am not stupid. She says she has her doubts. Says it is the woman who must lead the way. I notice she has become quite the freedom fighter lately. A dramatic change. One that came about gradually. Ever since she started sprouting more growth in the top and bottom sectors of body central, her womanly shape now openly asserts itself. I tell her this and she giggles in her girlish fashion.

"It must be the influence of my precious moonstone," she says.

I raise my eyebrows in shock. "What?"

"It is magical, you know. The legends of its magical powers are...WOW!"

"Whatever you say, Sung Wu."

"As it should be. Let's go out tonight."

Tonight is the new moon. This means that out here, in the desolate country landscape, there will be an enveloping blackness. A black so dense it can render a person almost invisible. Without light this works well. But the guards carry flashlights with them. And sometimes killer dogs. Though the dogs have not been deployed lately so no worries on that count. This matters because Sung Wu wants to go out tonight. No question. What Sung Wu wants, Sung Wu gets. I do not have to join her if I do not want to. She says I should anyway. When I tell her I am afraid she says she knows. Says, when are you not afraid. I refuse to answer. She says she already knows. Always, she says, always. She can go alone she says. She does not mind. I tell her go right ahead. Fine with me. Her eyes smile at me. I sulk away.

That is the last I see of her till the next day.

Black Death Strikes Imperial Palace

The benevolent gods have sounded the clarion call of approval again. So vast is their approval they chose to visit the leaders directly. No middle man. Up front and center hallelujah!

We receive a hastily prepared appeasement speech to calm our unruly concerns. My only concern was breakfast.

"All is well. Do not be alarmed. Do not cease production. Do not slow the process regardless. Do not discontinue delivery of The Party Daily."

With the overemphasis of "do not" it seems the operative word is "do" to all the above directives. Of course we cannot, must not discontinue delivery of The Party Daily. Without it we would be out of touch, beyond communication, left in the cold of ignorance as all our collective thought is contained within its pages.

Battalion grey is our state issued uniform. Conformity its prime objective. Look the same, think the same, be the same. We sometimes hear of other nations where freedom of thought and expression are not only allowed but encouraged. Given our present circumstances where everything is decided for us, this concept of self directed action sounds forbidding. Too much thinking. Too many decisions. Deciding what to scrape up for breakfast is thinking enough. Sung Wu says the government keeps us mentally deficient so we are easy to control. Little rabbits, she says. Because we are rabbits, there is no concern when those who leak in news of an outside world of freedom soon disappear. Some have already forgotten their names. Many have already forgotten their own names. Maybe this is best. Chairman Tsing always does what is best. This we are told. This we believe. If anything appears out of sorts, it is simply our mental deficiencies misleading us. We are deluded rabbits.

"As long as there are class differences between oppressed and oppressing, there can be no real peace or love in our world. While we may at times hear of nations where people are seeking love, people here are betraying their neighbors, their friends, even their parents and spouses. There are many classes of enemies, including landlords, rightists, traitors, and counterrevolutionaries. The intellectuals are ranked ninth among these enemies. Being an intellectual you are politically mistrusted. Put up and shut up is your best defense."

Sung Wu is very smart. She tells me these things because she knows these things. I know what she says is true. She deals only in truth. She knows it. I know it. We are of one mind.

"So where did you go last night?"

"I'm not sure."

"You are not sure where you went?"

"That's right. I'm not sure where I went."

When she acts this way she makes me crazy. She knows it. The mysterious feminine. She clams she does not know where she went which tells me she is up to something. What she is up to I will not know until it is too late. This I can do nothing about. She is self impelled. Maybe she listens to the stories of free nations a bit too closely.

It serves me best to remain silent.

It serves her best to remain still.

I do my best to keep up my part of the implicit bargain. I am not sure she even tries to keep up her part. Although, I cannot be sure. Mystery is her name. Mystery is her game.

*****

A crumpled old man with a hoe over one shoulder and one hand in his back pocket passes me as we trudge off to our morning shift. He saunters away as if entirely carefree. Another wrinkled man with a face like a fist shouts me down with his eyes and scurries away. The sky has gone murky and vomit colored. A hovering spittle cloud is already creating a sparkling mist. It weaves in front of me. Around me. And finally right on top of me. The shimmering drops lend a magical aura to the land. Soon we will have a magical downpour keep us busy with shovels, and buckets, and rebuilding.

Living in a thatch hut allows one to achieve oneness with nature. Being one with nature is fine. So closely connected to it that you are flooded out and washed away is something else. Speculation serves no purpose. The thatch huts may endure. If they do not we are conscripted into the construction brigade.

As units we think. As units we thrive. As units we rely upon each member to fulfill their duty. Everything is a process. All is to a purpose. The unit achieves its purpose when its duties are fulfilled. In this way the satisfaction of achievement is realized. Like grain to chickens we gobble it up with abandon. The smallest of life's pleasures are its richest rewards.

Yesterday's production reached record output. This we read about in today's paper. A warm gush of pride surged through me as I felt the bonds of connection to the unit express itself fully. This is surely as good as it gets. At moments like this, I wonder what is so troubling about my life here. Then I remember the words of Chairman Tsing: A life devoid of achievement is a life abundant with grief. Perhaps it is true then. Perhaps I am a deluded rabbit. If this is true, is there no escape? No chance of breaking the loop of recurring misery? While it is true that achievement brings with it a concomitant warm satisfaction, trickling memories linger of a time when life was not all about units, and community, and heavy handed government. I remember these things then wonder if this is the way of a deluded rabbit. Mercilessly driving itself to recurrent misery, wallowing over a past that may be nothing more than myth. Confucius says, things that are done, it is needless to speak about. Things that are past, it is needless to blame. Sung Wu says that to forget what you know to be true, to forget who you are, is to willingly shackle oneself in the bonds of tyranny. One should never sacrifice one's internal integrity. Sung Wu never sacrificed her internal integrity. This makes her a nail-head that attracts the notice of the Party hammer. She says we should remain ever vigilant lest we be blinded by cynicism and pinned down under the monotony of time.

"Life is a battlefield, Chuli. Stay alert at all times."

When she uses her pet name for me, Chuli, it makes me think she really cares for me as more than just someone to play student to her perpetual revolutionary teachings. Confucius says there must be a teacher in every three people you run into. Running into her has surely bore this truth. Yet I believe Confucius had a more benign type of teacher in mind. Revolution was not his thing. Peace, wisdom, and philosophy were. But then that was Confucius. The Socrates of his time. Often quoted, often misunderstood. Clearly I have much to learn. I am sure my worthy teacher will reeducate me thoroughly.

"Remember the words of Confucius: Learning without thought is labor lost; thought without learning is perilous."

The daily slogan is written in big characters on the company blackboard: THE INDIVIDUAL IS SUBORDINATE TO THE ORGANIZATION.

Propaganda does not tend to give information freely and explain the situation as it is; the propagators use the misleading information, hide something, and create the desired picture through confusion and misinformation. Propaganda has to be continuous and needs to have impact only on the people who do not support the propagated idea, but also has to consolidate those who already support the idea, but have doubts, and eliminate these doubts.

As applied in totalitarianism, propaganda is revered as holy writ.

Where words in any form fail, there are many ways to elicit support.

The idle, well-fed, unfeeling people who command us are ever inventive in their creation and application of misery in forms of which the imagination repulses. Midnight raids, arrests, interrogations, torture, are but a few of the methods frequently employed at will. Yet even among these atrocities is the one preeminent infliction none are ever prepared for: being arrested for no reason and interrogated about nothing. This perhaps is the most mind boggling and sanity nullifying of their tactics. One to which every single one of us, the rabbits, could be subjected, anytime, anywhere.

Today in the dead of night, a mass extraction took place at the housing compound. Doors burst open. People seized. Many dragged away amid howls and pleas. There is no need to wonder at what may have spurred this dramatic invasion. On any given day there are numerous clusters of rabbits burbling, mumbling, and bemoaning our fate. This is unwise of course. The ears of our leaders are huge and acute of hearing. Just a hint, a mere hint of suspicion is all that is needed. The goon squad is ever ready to dive into assault mode.

I have learned the advantages of the silent tongue. The flapping tongue is a deadly liability. Never before has the maxim "silence is golden" taken such a potent meaning. We are powerless, faceless, and spineless. There is no other way for survival.

*****

Shuffle back 10 years.

"Why do you keep it locked in that box?"

"Easier to make it do what I want."

I found this easy cruelty disturbing while at the same time understanding this is the status quo in the world of children. Like animals they are swift and sure to assert their dominance. Without thought. Without application of the one defining aspect that separates humans and animals: reason. No reason is applied. No discussion is had. It is simply an immediate reaction that arrives as easy as breath.

Nonetheless, my small cousin Chee is master of his animal domain. His mother tells him if he brings home one more animal, tiny, odorless, or otherwise, she will eject them all back into the wild. He tells me she was okay about his collection until he turned his attentions to the insect kingdom. Little creepy crawlies were the tipping point. So he is contented with mice, birds, frogs, and fish. Quite a menagerie he has already assembled.

I could never keep animals. Did not wish to. It seemed unnatural to remove a free creature from its self-deterministic environment. I was content with watching them in the wild, happy only to be an observer.

Solitary observation suited me like a shell suits a clam.

My friend Xiu would tell me I talked too much. Like a chattering sparrow. An endless stream of sound connected and traveling free as the wind encapsulating anything it happened upon.

"You talk like you are the international foreign correspondent," he would say. "So much in the world to see and know but no need do anything but listen to Chu Li. He will tell you all you need to know."

Recalling this now seems so odd and removed from reality. It is difficult to imagine myself as someone for whom talking incessantly was less habit than affliction. I was unstoppable. The express word train. A thousand blips a minute. From the perspective of my present "silent" reality, this feels foreign indeed. Yet, I do remember this time. Vaguely. As if it is a time I had wished to forget, stuffed it back into the forgotten chambers of my soul never to be seen again. Maybe a type of psychological armor.

Having a strong armor is essential to survival in these inhospitable barbaric times. To each person their only security is in the form of their job, their housing, their daily rations. It is a Spartan lifestyle. To know nothing is expected. To say nothing is demanded. When the rustle and screams of a young woman being dragged from her shack tear through the night sky, we are trained to remain silent and invisible. When some of these selfsame women turn up pregnant with illegitimate children, husbands turn a blind eye; tongue wagging neighbors are curiously missing. If however a tongue wagger does appear, that tongue wagger is soon curiously missing as well. The rules are harsh and simple: Put up and shut up.

When the sun is low in the evening sky, the sky pink and subtle, the air warm and heavy with the grassland flowers blossoming everywhere, it is easy to imagine being in a simpler, long past time. A time when peasants laid about the fields drinking wine from hollow ox horns. The plaintive sound of the erhu, an instrument well suited both for deep tragedy and for the momentum of an avalanche filters in. Its deep tones and smooth glissandos floating through and swirling in the breezes. Giving voice to the untarnished countryside of bucolic people, a people unfamiliar with the practiced brutalities we are bludgeoned with today. Music is an elixir that stirs the soul.

Nostalgic imaginings are a dangerous toxin. Though one not toxic enough.

On this evening Sung Wu comes to me, excited and flushed with sexually potent color. Her eyes blaze and sparkle. Her words spill from her lips as if breaking the bonds of enslavement. What has her so excited I am curious to know. But from the disconnected sentence fragments she spews like a rushing river, a jumbled puzzle is all I receive until she has exhausted herself and can formulate coherent sentences.

"They were dragged away, Chu. Dragged away. Like animals. Jailed, interrogated, tortured, some women raped. Did you know about this? Huh?"

Word leaks out despite the best efforts of our esteemed leaders. Sun Wu vents her anger. I swallow mine.

I cannot believe she did not hear the commotion that happened in the late night hours. The bewitching time. She must sleep the sleep of the drugged.

"Of course I know," I tell her. "Of course. Nothing new happening here. You were better served by not hearing this abomination in action. I was shocked awake the entire time."

She nods and considers. Finally she shrugs as if to say, what does it matter anyway.

"Aside from the fact that this treachery happens at all, I would be foolish if were not concerned for my safety. Women raped? That could have been ME, Chu."

"Yes. Could have, would have, but was not. As I pointed out, you were fortunate to have missed the stellar event."

"This is true. Of course, with my girlish charms, how could those wolves resist me?" she says, smiling and giving a flirtatious wink.

Now that she has achieved a comfort level, a sadly resigned comfort level, she is again the coquette I know and love. Without her ability to put a humorous and sarcastic spin on the horrors we must witness in mute observation, this existence would be unbearable. I am incredibly thankful for her presence.

She knows it. I know it. We are of one mind.

My body involved, my mind runs free: My hand moves numb and hesitant. Slowly. Up the sharp incline of stubbled terrain. To the apex of smooth round curves. Reaching the silky smooth path barely traveled. It is here I believe myself in the presence of Sung Wu. The insistent one. Yet again I fumble with my foolishness. Sung Wu is not so easily snared. So I am told.

A boot clad foot slams across my thighs as I wait inert. My eyes dare not speak.

A command or rebuke I am unsure. To move in haste is to invite the unspeakable.

If I in fact have audience with her of my darkest deepest calling, then the universe has unfolded to my desire. For this reason alone I am suspect.

It really is amazing how much power a woman has over a man, if she uses it right.

*****

The superior man is satisfied and composed; the mean man is always full of distress.

In Chinese mythology, the K'un-lun Mountains are designated as the abode of the gods. Nü Kua, one of the creators of human beings, and Nü and Kua, the first two human beings, are placed in the K'un-lun Mountains. K'un-lun is the central mountain of the world, and 3000 miles in height. There is the fountain of immortality, and thence flow the four great rivers of the world.

Arise Khotan

In the year 151 CE, the Chief Clerk Zhao Ping was en route from the outlying kingdom of Shashan, when he stopped in Khotan and died from a carbuncle. Zhao Ping's son left to mourn for him. On his way, he passed through Jumi Keriya. Now, Chengguo, the king of Jumi Keriya, had had disagreements for some time with Jian, the king of Khotan. He said to Zhao Ping's son: "The king of Khotan ordered a Western doctor to put a poisonous drug in the wound, which caused your father's death." Zhao Ping's son believed this story. When he returned to the frontier region, he informed Ma Da, the Administrator of Dunhuang.

The following year 152 CE, Wang Jing was named Chief Clerk in place of the late Zhao Ping. Ma Da ordered Wang Jing to make a thorough secret investigation into the affair. Wang Jing first passed through Jumi. Chengguo again said: "The people of Khotan want to have me as king. Now, you should kill Jian because of the crime he is guilty of. Khotan will certainly agree."

Wang Jing was eager to acquire merit and glory for himself and, besides, he believed what Chengguo had said to him. Before reaching Khotan, he prepared everything to receive Jian, and then invited him. Meanwhile he developed a sinister plan. Someone had warned Jian of Wang Jing's plot. He didn't believe it and said: "I am innocent. Why would the Chief Clerk Wang Jing want to kill me?" The following morning Jian, with an escort of numerous officials, came to pay a visit to Wang Jing. When they were seated, Jian got up to serve the wine. Wang Jing then ordered his retinue to seize him but, as none of the officers and soldiers wanted to kill Jian, all the officials suddenly fled.

At this point, Qin Mu, Chengguo's Secretary, following Wang Jing, drew his sword and said, "The main issue has already been decided. Why are we still hesitating?" He immediately advanced and beheaded Jian. Then the Khotanese Marquis-General, Shupo, and some others, joined up again with the soldiers and attacked Wang Jing who took Jian's head, climbed a tower, and proclaimed: "The Son of Heaven ordered us to punish Jian."

The Khotanese Marquis-General, Shupo, then set the camp buildings on fire killing the officials and soldiers. He climbed the tower and beheaded Wang Jing and hung his head in the marketplace. Shupo wanted to make himself king, but the people of the country killed him, and put Anguo, the son of Jian, on the throne.

From endlessly turbulent beginnings is our present day reality wrought. Emotionally the ancient Khotanese were sober, industrious, of remarkable endurance, grateful, courteous, and ceremonious, with a high sense of mercantile honor. But in equal balance, they were also timorous, cruel, unsympathetic, mendacious, and libidinous.

Intellectually they were non-progressive, in bondage to uniformity and mechanism in culture, imitative, unimaginative, torpid, indirect, suspicious, and superstitious.

The New Khotanese of today is not markedly different.

Things that are done, it is needless to speak about ... things that are past, it is needless to blame.

*****

The people may be made to follow a path of action, but they may not be made to understand it.

Confucius meddled neither with physics nor metaphysics. There might be something on the other side of life, for he admitted the existence of spiritual beings. They had an influence on the living, because they caused them to clothe themselves in ceremonious dress and attend to the sacrificial ceremonies. But we should not trouble ourselves about them, any more than about supernatural things, or physical prowess, or monstrosities. How can we serve spiritual beings while we do not know how to serve men? We feel the existence of something invisible and mysterious, but its nature and meaning are too deep for the human understanding to grasp. The safest, indeed the only reasonable, course is that of the agnostic-to leave alone the unknowable, while acknowledging its existence and its mystery, and to try to understand knowable phenomena and guide our actions accordingly.

*****

"I'm losing myself."

Sung Wu sits with her legs crossed most alluringly, looking at me from her sitting place, a chair too small for her. A faint clinking clanking sound seeps in from outside. With the darkened sky, and strong smell of decomposition, the stage is set for a spooky campfire ghost story. A grasshopper falls from the ceiling and lands at her feet.

Did her eyes speak? Or was it my voice?

"As all erodes, returning to chaos, a new order is formed that yields to erosion. Life is cyclical. A circular reality. If you get lost in linear analytics you miss the true nature of time."

Every life is lived through private eyes. Viewing has replaced doing. We drown in a sea of dead ideologies. What value is an inspired word when the stomach growls from hunger? This life has become a glass cage, allowing one close enough to view paradise, but never close enough to hold it. Subsistence is no life at all.

Life is a machine; humans the grease.

Thought comes to mind of the perpetually out of step man. His ship finally came in and ran aground. A million dollars did just drop in his lap. After recovering from surgery necessary to repair his broken limbs, he had enough money for cab fare home, and a thirty-nine cent egg roll. That was a good day.

"The zoo is open from 8 to 5," she said. "But they let the animals loose at 4. So basically you have about 30 minutes to escape"

When she speaks all my senses are lit. Within her words an enormous wealth of meaning. A monologue in Confucian form. Minerals. Valuable minerals. A diamond is merely time compressed coal.

"Danger awaits us, but it is danger that excites us."

I shuffle in place, look at her and smile. She knows me all too well. Still, she terrifies me.

It takes me back to the fist day I met Sung Wu. On that day she was wearing a medium length skirt, very unusual for a girl who favors trousers. Being a slight windy day, I suppose it could be called blustery, the winds were swirling and every now and again picking up the front of her skit. She was entirely oblivious to this affording me a wonderful view of the tight little V of her pure white panties. It seems it has always been that girls in white panties are called "good girls." From that day forward I retain the lingering image of her as a good girl, though I have every reason to know she is anything but. She even makes fun of the good girls.

"Those goody two shits," she says. "They don't know what they're missing."

She does not elaborate on exactly what it might be that they are missing.

The passageways a narrow alley, dwellings ramshackle and ailing, leaning into each other for support. The inhabitants' dreary, depressed, dusty rumpled figures, spill from slanted doorways into the littered yards.

The guards are scarce this evening. Something happening in the Forbidden City. A brief respite comes to all. Like raccoons we creep outside and sniff around. I could feel the weight of the guards' invisible eyes upon me like blind, crawling ants.

"People are changing," said Old Toad. "Turning into strange creatures from a distant universe."

No one knew what he was talking about.

"Really. You don't believe me but if you've seen what I have you would be scared shitless as I am."

"What have you seen?"

"Last night I snuck out. Just had to get out, you understand. Stifling heat in these wretched shacks. This government they stick us in these stinking shacks and tell us this is good. They sit in their fancy palaces and throw scraps from their overfull plates to us and we are supposed to be exploding with gratitude. Bah! Anyway, as I passed that shack there on the end," pointing to it like a child informant, "I saw something unrecognizable as human. Saw it change into something so horrible and more like something that lives in the deep sea. I feared for my life. I immediately raced back to my shack. Better steamed and safe than cool and I don't know what."

Old Toad had never been one to make up stories. And he is dangerously opinionated. Pettier than an insect, and more obstinate than a mule, he had also the superior, sleek humility of a "chosen one. He shivered and shook as he spoke, the picture of genuine terror. Talk went through the crowd as each one attempted to offer a logical explanation.

"There was a quarter moon, you know."

"Yes, and swarms of flies."

"Oh the flies. Spawn of hell."

"And heat? Steamy like Qi-Lao hot springs."

"Maybe all of these things conspired to create illusions?"

"The eyes are easily deceived."

"What else could it be, right? Monsters in the compound?"

"More than the guards you mean?"

Everyone was quick to put their minds at ease with logical answers. The night had seemed predestined for ghost stories. This was as good a one as we would get.

Walking away waving his hand as if to dismiss the crowd of unbelievers, he shuffled off to his shack. No more talk would pas his lips of "unrecognizable as human" creatures in residence in our humble commune.

*****

I drifted off into a fitful sleep and continued a terrifying and vivid dream, a night terror that seemed to appear more and more frequently:

A sense of untold horror pervaded. An evil older than time itself had taken hold long ago. Had seized control. Children circled in the dark trash strewn street. Now they were coming for me. Gathering around me. Sealing all exits. By the glimmering light I saw them all of them. Creatures barely human. Still I recognized them. In the fading light they moved and shuffled about, tilting add odd angles, all heading in one direction, destination unseen yet infinitely knowing. A young boy came toward me. Blood dripping from his eyes, down his face. He falls backward and is fully transformed. Crawls toward me like a crab on the ground, arms bent back at impossible angles.

A windmill in the foreground spun its creaking blades. I ran away from it. From them. Determined to escape. At any cost. But each exit. Each road. Each path. Returned me to the place I had begun. In their midst. In their grasp. Trapped in their terror. Religion doesn't know how to convey the anatomy of horror. It seeks discipline through fear. They don't understand the true nature of creation. No one's ever believed it enough to make it real. Always looking for the con. Even now I'm trying to rationalize. This work makes you mad. When people begin to lose the difference between fantasy and reality, the door to the other side swings wide open. Making it easier for them to come through. They have always been here. Always watching. Always lurking, that creeping, slouching, hideous monster that invades our childhood dreams. But these are no dreams. Not in the way science terms them. That which those self appointed rational thinkers call fantasy. They are not dreams but glimpses of a steadily simmering future. The thin veil rips. Grows wider.

The creatures of the other side start to come over. Exploding into our so called real world shriek by shriek. Slice by slice. Black as the deepest pits of hell. Flashing lights and booming sound signal their entry. This is reality. Reality is just what we tell each other it is. But it's a flip flop. A turnaround. When all that you've known as sanity is shown to be insanity, you find yourself alone in the belief that it is otherwise. I know what I am. I know what is real. This is no fiction. My world lies beyond that passage. They can't be held back any longer. The end draws terrifyingly near. Staring into the illimitable world of the unknown. The stygian blood pit, an enormous carrion white pit. Churned with the unhallowed bones of centuries. Hanging onto the frail edge of reality. Clutching the crumbling edge of sanity. Madness has come to claim me.

The city is almost completely deserted now. More and more people are becoming infected. People are distorting. Mutating. Their bodies turning into hideous creatures.

Cannibalism runs amok. Mass violence and killings everywhere. Senseless, unprovoked violence. A rampant swarm of unfocused rage sweeping through every town. Every city. Expressing itself through mass mutilations and dismembering. The streets run red with blood.

I woke in stunned relief, screaming, crying, clutching the sheets so hard my fingers were seized up in arthritic catatonia. If anyone in the commune was privy to my episode of horror, none would soon be inquiring.

I went outside committed to changing the arc of this day and was immediately sorry. It was suddenly clear that my dream may have been more premonition than passing torment. A swarming darkness pervaded although it was morning. Each step uncovered a new discovery. Body parts, blood, black tar-like substance running in rivulets. The appearance was one of gruesome war aftermath!

I wandered through the post apocalyptic gloom in a somber slump. Something had gone deadly wrong in the universe. A judgment was passed down from on high. Shacks, huts, sheds, skeletons now of their former selves. To wander inside any one of them was treacherous. But as Sung Wu said, danger awaits us, but it is danger that excites us.

The stench was overpowering and when it finally overtook me, I leaned against a hut and voided my stomach.

Confusion reigned so strong I was going dizzy and near blackout. I resolved to remain strong and not allow the blackness to consume me. The sights were so unbelievable I found myself wondering if I in fact were still in dreamland, so unreal were the images before me. I was moving about in a fugue state as if impelled by an unseen force yet knew not where I was going. The next turn brought clarity.

I found a book wedged in a torn door jamb. A dusty, ragged, dog eared book scribbled in and fountain pen blotched with the mark of an unsteady hand. The name ZEA etched into the cover:

_Ever since I was a young man_ \---the record began--- _I devoted all my leisure and a good deal of time that ought to have been given to other studies to the investigation of curious and obscure branches of knowledge. What are commonly called the pleasures of life had never any attractions for me, and I lived alone in Boxtown, avoiding my fellow-students, and in my turn avoided by them as a man self-absorbed and unsympathetic. So long as I could gratify my desire of knowledge of a peculiar kind, knowledge of which the very existence is a profound secret to most men, I was intensely happy, and I have often spent whole nights sitting in the darkness of my laboratory, and thinking of the strange world on the brink of which I trod._

Metagenomics --- the genomic analysis of communities of organisms --- is reshaping the landscape of microbiology and can potentially lead to major advances in medicine, agriculture, energy production and bioremediation. Transcending individual genes and genomes, metagenomics offers access to all of the genomes in a community to reveal the secrets of the "uncultured world" --- the enormous number of microbial species that cannot currently be isolated into pure culture.

We are accustomed to perceiving complex life is larger than simple life. As organisms become more intelligent, they grow larger, passing from the single-celled stage to multicellular creatures, and then to larger animals with differentiated cells working in groups called organs. But this is now understood to be a fatally biased and not entirely correct view. Entire cultures, vast civilizations, exist in the microbial universe. Just as technology has evolved to make things smaller, highly advanced evolutionary pressures may in fact lead to smaller life forms. It is an eye opening and revelatory moment when man realizes that he may in fact be host to numerous alien species presently, and at that moment he feels a rush of electric charged air like a blast of wind through the cranium.

I had been engaged in this field of study for some time, amazed at the transmutability of organism communities and the flexibility of interspecies and cross species combinatory possibilities. In layman's terms, the microbial universe is deadly powerful. I would not be surprised if the next in the generation of deadly pathogens originates from the microbial community. Think of the possibilities, the power accessible to whosever can gain access? We may be on the edge of a perilous new universe.

One night in the lab I had the kind of strange experience that causes wonder, the type of wonder that causes one to realize the immense powers within one's command. The light within the room had turned to blackness, not the darkness of night, in which objects are seen dimly, for I could see clearly and without difficulty. But it was the negation of light; objects were presented to my eyes without any medium, in such a manner that if there had been a prism in the room I should have seen no colors represented in it.

I watched, and at last I saw nothing but a substance as jelly. Then for one instant I saw a form shaped in dimness before me. But the symbol of this form may be seen in ancient sculptures and paintings, too foul to be spoken of ... as a horrible and unspeakable shape, neither man nor beast, changed into human form, then finally death. But this time I saw something entirely different, as the form passed from neither man nor beast, changed into human form, and transcended death, returning to the jelly state, dropping to the to ground and crawling away like a massive black eel. Yet this was no eel at all. At least not one contained within our limited knowledge. This was a black viscous organism that moved as if intelligent, emitting an angry hiss like steam escaping, heavy yellow smoke wreathing itself in snake-like coils, scorching the floorboards while making for the outside as if preordained.

I was so terrified I froze in place. Afraid to move, afraid to bring myself into its awareness. If silence would be my salvation then I adopted the silence of the dead, ironically enough as it was death I sought to avoid. And then it shimmied and slithered off into the night, bound for destinations unknown.

I soon after poked my head out the door in an attempt to ascertain its objective. But alas I saw only the swaying grass lazily pitching to and fro, surrendering nothing but the howling emptiness. There are moments in life where a nameless horror so completely possesses one that a cold numbness is the only sensation. This was one such moment. The cold numbness lingers still. Something dreadful was about to happen and all I could do was crumble in impotent defeat. When dealing with forces beyond one's ken, life offers few remedies.

The writing style seemed very old. From another long past century. Another long past culture. Yet the details contained within seemed startling similar. People changing into hideous creatures, melting and dissolving into something black, becoming something not human. It read like a script of what I had seen just this morning. But to be entirely even about this, what I found could be nothing more than the imaginatively macabre scribblings of a madman. It may in fact be nothing more than a failed attempt at compelling fiction. Melodramatic fiction at that.

Each of these points of speculative departure has its own aspects of merit. Yet the fact remains that this is a high order probability swing of coincidence that is too easily tossed away as irrelevant. Could it be no less than the smoking gun?

I took the book of ZEA and tucked it under my straw mat.

TERRESTRIAL FATE: If released to soil, Pesticene will be expected to adsorb very strongly to the soil and, therefore, will not be expected to leach through soil. It will not hydrolyze. It will be subject to biodegradation with reported range of half-lives of 466-765 days for biodegradation in soils, with one half-life of 333.3 days also reported. Evaporation from soil surfaces and other surfaces may be important. Adsorption to soil will be expected to retard both evaporation and biodegradation processes.

AQUATIC FATE: If released to water, Pesticene will be expected to adsorb very strongly to sediments and particulate matter. It will not hydrolyze but may bioconcentrate in aquatic organisms which lack microsomal oxidase (this enzyme enables the rapid metabolism of polyaromatic hydrocarbons). It will be subject to direct photolysis near the surface of natural waters and may be subject to significant biodegradation based on laboratory tests. It may be subject to significant evaporation with an estimated range of half-lives of 10-15.9 years for evaporation from a model river 1 m deep, flowing at 1 m/sec with a wind velocity of 3 m/sec. Adsorption of Pesticene on suspended solids or sediments may retard photolysis, biodegradation, and evaporation processes.

ATMOSPHERIC FATE: Pesticene released to the atmosphere should be partially associated with particulate matter and may be subject to long distance transport, depending on the particle size distribution and climactic conditions which will determine the rates of wet and dry deposition. It may be subject to considerable direct photolysis and the estimated vapor phase half-life in the atmosphere is 5.67 years as a result of reaction with photochemically produced hydroxyl radicals. Adsorption of Pesticene to particulates may considerably retard direct photolysis and reaction with vapor phase species. The fate and transport of Pesticene in surface waters will depend on the nature of the water. In most waters, the loss of Pesticene is mainly due to photolysis and biodegradation, however, in every shallow fast flowing clear water, volatilization and photolysis will play dominant roles in determining the fate of Pesticene. In air, Pesticene is expected to be present both in the vapor and the particle sorbed state. Over 78% of atmospheric Pesticene may be present in the vapor state. Both chemical processes including ozone and hydroxide radical and photochemical reaction will degrade atmospheric Pesticene. The degradation of vapor phase atmospheric Pesticene is expected to be faster than particle sorbed Pesticene. The atmospheric half-life of Pesticene may vary from days to years. The long range transport of Pesticene indicates that particle sorbed Pesticene may have a half-life of the order of years.

*****

Shuffle back two years.

Feng Xiaoguang, a name which means light of dawn, was the only son of a Chinese farmer, who lived nine miles outside of Shangong, beyond the hills that surround that city to the north.

When a revolution in China broke out young Xiaoguang joined the insurgents, leaving his father and mother and two sisters at the farm. He was taken, in December, 2111 by a force of the Chinese army, and defended himself when they tried to capture him, wounding three of them with his machete.

He was tried by a military court for bearing arms against the government, and sentenced to be shot by a fusillade some morning before sunrise. Previous to execution he was confined in the military prison of Shanghai with thirty other insurgents, all of whom were sentenced to be shot, one after the other, on mornings following the execution of Xiaoguang .

His execution took place the morning of the 19th of January 2112 at a place a half-mile distant from the city, on the great plain that stretches from the forts out to the hills, beyond which Xiaoguang had lived for nineteen years. At the time of his death he was twenty years old.

I witnessed his execution, as did Sung Wu---the sweet, the fair, the fragile---and what follows is an account of the way he went to his death. The young man's friends could not be present, for it was impossible for them to show themselves in that crowd and that place with silence or without distress, and I like to think that, although Xiaoguang could not know it, there was one person present when he died who felt strongly for him, and who was a sympathetic though unwilling spectator. That one person would be me. I believe Sung Wu could be counted on the side of sympathetic spectator, at least at the outset. Yet as things progressed, something changed dramatically in her as a result of coming face to face with this barbaric brutality and she was never the same afterward.

There had been a full moon the night preceding the execution, and when the squad of soldiers marched from town it was still shining brightly through the mists. It lighted a plain two miles in extent, broken by ridges and gullies and covered with thick, high grass, and with bunches of cactus and palmetto. In the hollow of the ridges the mist lay like broad lakes of water, and on one side of the plain stood the walls of the old town. On the other rose hills covered with royal palms that showed white in the moonlight, like hundreds of marble columns. A line of tiny campfires that the sentries had built during the night stretched between the forts at regular intervals and burned clearly.

But as the light grew stronger and the moonlight faded these were stamped out, and when the soldiers came in force the moon was a white ball in the sky, without radiance, the fires had sunk to ashes, and the sun had not yet risen. So even when the men were formed into three sides of a hollow square, they were scarcely able to distinguish one another in the uncertain light of the morning.

There were about three hundred soldiers in the formation. They belonged to the volunteers, and they deployed upon the plain with their band in front playing a jaunty quickstep, while their officers galloped from one side to the other through the grass, seeking a suitable place for the execution. Outside the line the band still played merrily.

A few men and boys, who had been dragged out of their beds by the music, moved about the ridges behind the soldiers, half-clothed, unshaven, sleepy-eyed, yawning, stretching themselves nervously and shivering in the cool, damp air of the morning.

Either owing to discipline or on account of the nature of their errand, or because the men were still but half awake, there was no talking in the ranks, and the soldiers stood motionless, leaning on their rifles, with their backs turned to the town, looking out across the plain to the hills.

The men in the crowd behind them were also grimly silent. They knew that whatever they might say would be twisted into a word of sympathy for the condemned man or a protest against the government. Thus began the rise of mandatory silent and still behavior. No one spoke; even the officers gave their orders in gruff whispers, and the men in the crowd did not mix together, but looked suspiciously at one another and kept apart.

As the light increased a mass of people came hurrying from the town with two black figures leading them, and the soldiers drew up at attention, and part of the double line fell back and left an opening in the square.

The Chinese made the prisoner walk for over a half-mile across the broken surface of the fields. I expected to find Xiaoguang, no matter what his strength at other times might be, stumbling and faltering on this cruel journey; but as he came nearer I saw that he led all the others, that the guards on either side of him were taking two steps to his one, and that they were tripping and stumbling over the hollows in their efforts to keep pace with him as he walked, erect and soldierly, at a quick step in advance of them.

He had a handsome, gentle face of the peasant type, a light, unshaven beard, great wistful eyes, and a mass of black hair. He was shockingly young for such a sacrifice, and looked more like a monastic Nepalese than a Chinese. Sandwiched between China and India, Nepal traditionally has been characterized as "a yam caught between two rocks." You could imagine him sitting on the Kamali shores lolling in the sun and showing his white teeth when he laughed. Around his neck, hanging outside his linen blouse, he wore a new Mantra Pendant.

It seems a petty thing to have been pleased with at such a time, but I confess to have felt a thrill of satisfaction when I saw, as the Chinese passed me, that he held a cigarette between his lips, not arrogantly nor with bravado, but with the nonchalance of a man who meets his punishment fearlessly, and who will let his enemies see that they can kill but cannot frighten him.

It was very quickly finished, but for one frightful blunder, with merciful swiftness. The crowd fell back when it came to the square, and the condemned man, the guards, and the firing squad of six young volunteers passed in and the line closed behind them.

The officer who had held the cord that bound the Xiaoguang's arms behind him and passed across his breast, let it fall on the grass and drew his sword, and Xiaoguang dropped his cigarette from his lips and bent and kissed the ground. He then walked to where the officer directed him to stand, and turning his back on the square, faced the hills and the road across them, which led to his father's farm.

As the officer gave the first command he straightened himself as far as the cords would allow, and held up his head and fixed his eyes immovably on the morning light, which had just begun to show above the hills.

He made a picture of such pathetic helplessness, but of such courage and dignity, that he reminded me on the instant of the statue of General Wen Tianxiang which stands in Chinese Garden, Singapore. The Chinese's arms were bound and he stood firmly, with his weight resting on his heels like a soldier on parade, and with his face held up fearlessly. But there was this difference, that Xiaoguang, while probably as willing to give six lives for his country as Wen Tianxiang, being only a peasant, did not think to say so, and he will not, in consequence, live in bronze during the lives of many men, but will be remembered only as one of thirty Chinese, one of whom was shot at Shanghai on each succeeding day at sunrise.

The officer had given the order, the men had raised their rifles, and the condemned man had heard the clicks of the triggers as they were pulled back, and he had not moved. And then happened one of the most cruelly refined, though unintentional, acts of torture that one can very well imagine. As the officer slowly raised his sword, preparatory to giving the signal, one of the mounted officers rode up to him and pointed out silently that, as I had already observed with some satisfaction, the firing squad were so placed that when they fired they would shoot several of the soldiers stationed on the extreme end of the square.

Their captain motioned his men to lower their rifles, and then walked across the grass and laid his hand on the shoulder of the waiting prisoner.

It is not pleasant to think what that shock must have been. The man had steeled himself to receive a volley of bullets. He believed that in the next instant he would be in another world; he had heard the command given, had heard the click of the Mausers as the locks caught---and then, at that supreme moment, a human hand had been laid upon his shoulder and a voice spoke in his ear.

You would expect that any man, snatched back to life in such a fashion would start and tremble at the reprieve, or would break down altogether, but this boy turned his head steadily, and followed with his eyes the direction of the officer's sword, then nodded gravely, and, with his shoulders squared, took up the new position, straightened his back, and once more held himself erect.

As an exhibition of self-control this should surely rank above feats of heroism performed in battle, where there are thousands of comrades to give inspiration. This man was alone, in sight of the hills he knew, with only enemies about him, with no source to draw on for strength but that which lay within himself.

The officer of the firing squad, mortified by his blunder, hastily whipped up his sword, the men once more leveled their rifles, the sword rose, dropped, and the men fired. At the report Xiaoguang's head snapped back almost between his shoulders, but his body fell slowly, as though some one had pushed him gently forward from behind and he had stumbled.

He sank on his side in the wet grass without a struggle or sound, and did not move again. It was difficult to believe that he meant to lie there, that it could be ended without a word, that the man in the linen suit would not rise to his feet and continue to walk on over the hills, as he apparently had started to do, to his home; that there was not a mistake somewhere, or that at least some one would be sorry or say something or run to pick him up.

The figure still lay on the grass untouched, and no one seemed to remember that it had walked there of itself, or noticed that the cigarette still burned, a tiny ring of living fire, at the place where the figure had first stood.

The figure was a thing of the past, and the squad shook itself like a great snake, and then broke into little pieces and started off jauntily, stumbling in the high grass and striving to keep step to the music.

The officers led it past the figure in the linen suit, and so close to it that the file closers had to part with the column to avoid treading on it. Each soldier as he passed turned and looked down on it, some craning their necks curiously, others giving a careless glance, and some without any interest at all, as they would have looked at a house by the roadside, or a hole in the road.

One young soldier caught his foot in a trailing vine, just opposite to it, and fell. He grew very red when his comrades giggled at him for his awkwardness. The crowd of sleepy spectators fell in on either side of the band. They, too, had forgotten it, and the guards wrapped their heavy cloaks about them and hurried off after the others.

Every one seemed to have forgotten it except two men, who came slowly towards it from the town, driving a bullock-cart that bore an un-planed coffin, each with a cigarette between his lips, and with his throat wrapped in a shawl to keep out the morning mists. At that moment the sun, which had shown some promise of coming in the glow above the hills, shot up suddenly from behind them in all the splendor of the region, a fierce, red disk of heat, and filled the air with warmth and light. The bayonets of the retreating column flashed in it, and at the sight a rooster in a farmyard near by crowed vigorously, and the little world of Shanghai seemed to stretch itself and to wake to welcome the day just begun.

But as I fell in at the rear of the procession and looked back, the figure of the Xiaoguang, who was no longer a part of the world of Shanghai, was asleep in the wet grass, with his motionless arms still tightly bound behind him, with the Mantra pendant twisted awry across his face, and the blood from his breast sinking into the soil he had tried to free.

Sung Wu sidled up next to me, her face as drawn and hollow as if she herself had received the killing bullets. I put my arm around her shoulders in empathy of her clear suffering, an act she graciously accepted, while at the same time giving no more acknowledgement beyond this acceptance. More than once I tried to catch her eyes which in each case she refused, resolving instead to stare into the distance as if the remedy to whatever internal maelstrom she felt was contained in the simmering skies. I loved her more then than I perhaps had ever before or since. And like her I was deeply distressed, discomfited, and confused. But of this one thing I am certain: the girl who came with me to this execution died there on that cold field of shame as surely as Xiaoguang.

*****

I awoke from a dream of an ancient wood, and of a clear well rising into grey film and vapor beneath a misty, glimmering heat. As my eyes opened I saw the sunlight bright in the room, sparkling on the varnish of the new table. With some confusion and wonder of the dream still lingering in my mind, I rose also, and began hurriedly dressing, for I had overslept a little. Moments from now the chart horn will blast through the commune, sending everyone racing around resembling no less than a frantically mobilizing swarm of ants. Bearing in mind that ants are an extremely efficient and commanding force of nature, they are worthy of admiration. There is much to learn from them.

Ants evolved from the ancient family of wasps. The longevity of ants is directly related to their extremely diverse dietary intake. Not until some ants adapted to the new world of flowering plants and diversified their diets, did they achieve ecological dominance. Ants rule because of the many different ways in which they have adapted to work and eat. Because there are trillions of them, over a million ants can live in a colony. A family of ants employs queens, gardeners and bandits that have developed specialized tools and skills to get their respective jobs done. Within each species, division of labor varies depending on an individual's age and sex.

Frenetic the operative word, I raced around like a man possessed and slammed my foot into my glorious new table. I clomped around like a surly bear, cussing and groaning and being of general distemper. Sitting down on my straw mat, I reflected on the benefits of night terrors past compared to the post dream fugue state stumbling. The little annoyances that interfere cloud the mind, causing inability to attend to the present urgencies. The commune had been pummeled and no amount of sweet dreaming would change that.

A warm, scented gale came to me from beyond the walls. I longed to ask Sung Wu to stay out with me all day beneath the tree, that we might whisper to one another, that the scent of her hair might inebriate me, that I might feel her brushing against me. But I could not find the words, and it was absurd. We had discussed many things, she and I, but when it came to the topic of SEX I was flummoxed. Yet she was so gentle she would do whatever I asked just because I asked her. But I was more beast than human.

I was not worthy to kiss her lips.

Sung Wu sat on a short wall wearing low riding black trousers. Today she had her hair gathered up in a high-set pony tail, the hair cascading down like a waterfall. It brought to mind visions of gamboling nymphs and enchanted paradise. She wore a tight t-shirt riding up high and exposing her flat belly. From my vantage point I received the gift of her exposed lower back as preview. Her trousers dipped down offering a view of panties with pink trim and pink hearts design. I had never seen her dress so provocative. There she sat looking like every school boy's dream. She certainly no longer looked like a "good girl."

I had no idea what she was up to as she spun around to face me.

"Hey Chuli, whatcha doin? Ya look weird."

The view from the front hijacked my breath.

"Uh...I..."

"Ya. me too."

I was thinking of my sore toe, mass destruction. What she was thinking I had no idea.

"You too what?"

"Well like your shack," she cooed, giggling and rubbing her legs. "Like is it still standing?"

Was she completely unaware of the tragedy that has visited us? Maybe she was in a state of shock, or severe denial. Sometimes I had no idea who she was.

She smiled and caught me with her shining eyes, "Nobody home, right?"

"No. Of course not. But---"

"Yes! Let's go there and see what's up."

She had adopted a schoolgirl vernacular that while unusual for her was nonetheless oddly alluring. When she adopted a persona she commanded it entirely.

Practice not doing, the universe unfolds as it should. Philosophy is my armor.

She grabbed my hand and led me away...

*****

I am not at liberty to disclose the details of what passed between us this day. Suffice to say she showed me things that dreams and imagination failed to consider and that no mortal man deserves. It is said that impure Khotanese women often have bad luck. If I was evidence of her bad luck, I am deeply contrite. In a self satisfied way.

Some people are terrified and stricken numb when trauma strikes. Others carry on as if ignorant. Still others like Sung Wu find the intense traumatic event eminently liberating and energizing. Like a potent orgasmic crescendo.

There is much written about the connection between sex and death. It is clearly evident that this assumed connection is a valid one. Sex is about physicality and physicality is inseparable from the fact of death.

In French, the term for orgasm (la petite mort) means "the little death." In Sanskrit, nirvana means annihilation, to be "blown away."

What is orgasm other than to be swallowed up in blackness so deep that distinction, thought, and separate physical consciousness dissolve? While I lumbered about numb as a jellyfish attack victim, Sung Wu was fully charged as if plugged into a central power line. All experiences of ecstasy, but most especially sexual orgasm, are experiences of being swept away. They are about losing --- if only for an instant --- whatever awareness binds us to time and space. I was no less blissfully swept away if only for an instant though the lingering effects went far beyond. My deepest gratitude to her who saw so clearly through the muck of despair, going headlong into the orgasmic vortex.

It is safe to say that today I was reborn.

Given the temporary luxury of duty free thought, I reflected on the mystery that is Sung Wu. And with this chance reflection the discovery that I could not see her clearly, could not feel her soul, her personality. Despite our recent bestial encounter. Her face, her small piercing eyes, her dress and body and walk, all these stood before me like a photograph; but her Self evaded me. She seemed not there, lifeless, empty, a shadow---nothing. The picture was disturbing, and I pushed it aside. Instantly she melted, as though light had conjured up a phantom that had no real existence. And at that very moment, my eye caught sight of her moving past, going silently along the dirt path. I watched her, a sudden new sensation gripping me. "There goes a prisoner," my thought instantly ran, "one who wishes to escape, but cannot."

Like a bolt from I ching it came to me; I wonder if she receives the same sensation upon looking at me.

She sensed me looking at her, stopped on cue and walked over to me. She reached out and cupped my face in her warm silky hands.

"What's wrong pensive boy?" she said, running her fingers through my hair. "Little Chu still hungry?"

She blind sides me with these what-the-heck-do-you-mean questions and I stumble.

"No, I---"

"Oh, it's okay. Sweets are addictive! But we must ration ourselves."

And in a flash sting Sung Wu reverts back to the serene consoling woman. Gone is the coquettish teenager. Gone the posture of seduction. When she adopted a persona she commanded it entirely. Until it succumbed to the law of diminishing returns.

Her girlish persona had achieved its objective. Now it was back to business as usual.

Now I again knew who I was speaking to.

"So, I was just wondering. What is your take on this massive decimation our commune has just suffered?"

She put her hand to her face and cupped her chin, rubbing it like a true academic.

"Well, it seems the Buddha has answered our pleas. More space, more commodities, more food for all. This seems a rather brutal but effective culling strategy."

"But lots of people died horribly. Did you see the scattered body parts? Some of these people exist in ten different subdivisions now! What in that could be seen as divine benevolence?"

"We are but mortals, Chu. It is not ours to understand the ways of deities. Ours is but to serve!"

"That is so ludicrous, Sung Wu. You sound like the propaganda machine of the imperial leaders."

She shook her head sadly as if I were a troublesome child.

"Now, Chu. Really. Do you believe that? You know me better than that."

"Right now I am not so sure."

"You're upset. I can understand that. But do not make the mistake of projecting your anger at me when it is the random cataclysmic destruction that ails you. We are in this together. Don't forget that."

As always, when Sung Wu the consoler takes the stage, she reduces me to a meek child, embarrassed and apologetic.

I stuffed my fists in my pockets and shrugged my defeat. Her eyes lit fully loving and washed over me as a warm smile caressed her lips. The same conclusion every time. She smacks me down, puts me in my place, and I slump away bruised but content. If I could bottle and sell her power I would be a capitalist legend!

*****

_Something happening here. What it is ain't exactly clear_. These words from an ancient rock 'n roll song are surprisingly fitting in the 22nd century. There is no shortage of men with guns over there telling me I better beware. But woe be it to anyone who dares say, hey children what's that sound, everybody look what's going down. This series of words is enough to bring the battalion down on you bashing your head to pulp.

Understanding this very real reality causes me to wonder about the events that transpired while I was sleeping. Knowing what the leaders and their mindless military arm are capable of, keeps me in a state of steady fear with my senses on high alert. Did I really sleep through the equivalent of a tactical assault? Or is this just an extended fantasy sequence from which I will soon awake? This causes me to realize that I have been operating in a state of sleep for so long the differences between fantasy and reality have become unclear.

Still, whatever happened here is sure to get attention. Where then are the booming alert horns? The propagandized messages? The gathering of the herd to serenity? Silence in this forum is a killing frost. With no consensus opinion provided, we are forced to construct our own. Anarchy is surely in our future. Our very near future. Already I hear talk going around of revolution, counterstrikes, freedom, escape. As of yet no clear leaders have stepped forward. If rational minds prevail, this transition will be glitch free. If not, we could have Cultural Revolution II on our hands.

Suddenly talk went to who found what piece of who as the grisly events were recalled out in slow motion replay. These were simple peasants. Not much in life to do except partake of their favorite pastimes: drinking, beating their wives, and gossiping. Graphic details about human dismemberment were no more disturbing to them than talk of gutting a pig. A simple people with simple tastes.

"Old Toad was torn to pieces. I found his hand over by the other side of Peel section."

"His hand? How could you know it was HIS?"

"Remember that big cheap ring he was so proud of? The one he kept telling everyone was a major award he won? Well, that said it all."

"Maybe it was those mutating creatures he saw that did it."

Even in death Old Toad could not escape the ever scornful tongue of peasant opinion. Once convicted, forever afflicted. The peasants were also deeply superstitious. Some had talked in hushed tones about the battle of the gods of ancient times that was startling similar to the slaughter they had just witnessed.

During the wars which preceded the accession of the Chou dynasty in 1122 B.C., a multitude of demigods, Buddhas, Immortals, etc., took part on one side or the other, some fighting for the old, some for the new dynasty. They were wonderful creatures, gifted with marvelous powers. They could at will change their form, multiply their heads and limbs, become invisible, and create, by merely uttering a word, terrible monsters that bit and destroyed, or sent forth poison gases, or emitted flames from their nostrils. In these battles there was much lightning, thunder, flight of fire-dragons, dark clouds which vomit burning hails of murderous weapons; swords, spears, and arrows falling from the sky onto the heads of the combatants; the earth trembles, the pillars of Heaven shake.

One of these gifted warriors was Chun T'i, a Taoist of the Western Paradise, who appeared on the scene when the armies of the rival dynasties were facing each other. K'ung Hsüan was gallantly holding the pass of the Chin-chi Ling; Chiang Tzu-ya was trying to take it by assault---so far without success.

Chun T'i's mission was to take K'ung Hsüan to the abode of the blessed, his wisdom and general progress having now reached the required degree of perfection. This was a means of breaking down the invincible resistance of this powerful enemy and at the same time of rewarding his brilliant talents.

But K'ung Hsüan did not approve of this plan, and a fight took place between the two champions. At one moment Chun T'i was seized by a luminous bow and carried into the air, but while enveloped in a cloud of fire he appeared with eighteen arms and twenty-four heads, holding in each hand a powerful talisman.

He put a silk cord round K'ung Hsüan's neck, touched him with his wand, and forced him to reassume his original form of a red one-eyed peacock. Chun T'i seated himself on the peacock's back, and it flew across the sky, bearing its saviour and master to the Western Paradise. Brilliantly variegated clouds marked its track through space.

On the disappearance of its defender the defile of Chin-chi Ling was captured, and the village of Chieh-p'ai Kuan, the bulwark of the enemy's forces, reached. This place was defended by a host of genii and Immortals, the most distinguished among them being the Taoist T'ung-t'ien Chiao-chu, whose specially effective charms had so far kept the fort secure against every attempt upon it.

Lao Tzu himself had deigned to descend from dwelling in happiness, together with Yüan-shih T'ien-tsun and Chieh-yin Tao-jên, to take part in the siege. But the town had four gates, and these heavenly rulers were only three in number. So Chun T'i was recalled, and each member of the quartette was entrusted with the task of capturing one of the gates.

Chun T'i's duty was to take the Chüeh-hsien Mên, defended by T'ung-t'ien Chiao-chu. The warriors who had tried to enter the town by this gate had one and all paid for their temerity with their lives. The moment each had crossed the threshold a clap of thunder had resounded, and a mysterious sword, moving with lightning rapidity, had slain him.

This ancient tale recounts a series of events that to the peasants, explain the recent events with amazing accuracy. The gods are once again battling for dominion of their chosen dynasty. But this time, it is the Chen dynasty in command of which no gods are in favor. That is why we are being caught in the crossfire, they all agreed. We are caught between the gods and the Forbidden City.

*****

According to The Party Daily, a tremendous flood washed through our town killing but a few. It was a great success for the people. This report after it was clear to all that this was no flood but something far more sinister.

Someone once remarked that the Watergate investigation that ended with President Richard Nixon's resignation never would have happened in New Khotan because we expect our leaders to perform disgracefully. We are not surprised or particularly offended when they do. We simply remind ourselves that "this is politics" and congratulate ourselves for being less naïve than those idealistic foreigners who believe political reform is possible.

The first thought that comes to mind is that they are hiding something. Running some kind of chemical weapons test using the peasants as test dummies. If this was a weapons test then it is properly termed a failure. A few dead does no benefit to an invading army. A blanket coverage, massive death and destruction are the objective. Of course any loss of life is termed collateral damage, a common factor in the war games department. This ersatz test was a low collateral damage mission.

But it is unclear if the government was involved at all.

If they were going for a limited strike area, then this was achieved. Despite the cataclysmic event and the view when wandering through the wreckage, as reports come in from around the compound it seems that only the northwestern quadrant was hit. The side closest to the mountains. Anything running steady like a stream would have a good chance to cover a lot of ground if it originated from the mountain peak. Yet very little in the way of water was found in the aftermath. What we found was residual thick, black, tar-like goo that ran like molasses and had the corrosive power of an acid bath. I found this out myself when I kicked a dead rat into it and watched it disintegrate before my eyes. I stood in horrified awe as a chill raced up my spine while I listened to the sizzling sound of this black creature swallowing its prey. It became suddenly clear why we were able to find only a few scattered body parts. The other parts were smelted in the acid bath.

So the black river runs through, knocks you down, rolls over you, and whatever part it misses is left alone. What a ghastly end! But unless you were caught in your sleep, somebody somewhere must have shouted, screamed, or cried for help, yes? Yet nobody has mentioned hearing any screams. I slept like a corpse and nearly became one. The black river was raging abundant just a few yards from my shack. Like it missed me purposely. I am thinking like the peasant stock I come from now. Superstitious. Afraid of ghosts and things that go bump in the night. So these are silly thoughts. Still, the odds of it missing me after sweeping through and ravaging everything directly aside me seems a great leap into the mystical realm of probability.

It has always been decreed, that in justice there must be both a Heaven and a Hell. The Devil vowed to disrupt, dismantle and defeat anyone who dares interfere with his plans.

"My plans and wishes are my own. I change them for no one."

Cynics believe there is no truth, that all things are relative and that there is no firm ground on which to stand. The cynic has little to offer. His only refuge is his narcissism --- the gratification received from self---admiration and delight in sneers and sarcasm. Cynics confuse scorn with sophistication and derision with knowledge. They believe that the gibe or contemptuous remark demonstrates their genius.

Chairman Tsing should limit his horizons, lower expectations and be ever mindful that his country is a declining power. Ruling a country is so immensely difficult anything short of failure deserves to be called a success.

The bar is set so low a retarded llama could do the job.

*****

Wild dogs come in for the kill, but they are driven off by lions, their age-old rivals. When the lions are off the mountain, the monkey is king. Many stories are told concerning a lion's privileged place in nature. Their undisputable place at the top of the food chain. The peasants in Boxtown are viewed as either wild dogs or monkeys. Mostly we are viewed as monkeys for the leaders see themselves as lions do not consider us threats. Though they appear more like paper lions. Yet they are best advised to not turn away too soon. There is always the chance for something to bubble up from the ground or race down the hillsides.

Sung Wu has been broaching dangerous topics again. Moving from her place of steady silence into one of raging storm. She has jumped up on a crate to proclaim how we the people should band together and confront the government.

"What good have they done for us anyway? We work, and work, and work, and they move us from the death cubes to a commune which is far worse and easier assailed by the Black Death. They tell us in their beloved paper, that it was a flood came down the hillside that is to blame for the ravaging deaths we have just witnessed. Let us not be fools. This was not water, this was the Black Death. We have not escaped the scourge of any god who may be out to destroy us. Yet we the peasants are the easy target. The Black Death is not heading toward the Forbidden City so it strikes our commune. Do you see anybody from the government coming around here to see if we are okay? No you don't. Do you know why? Because they don't care. They operate from a standpoint of I've got mine, you don't matter. We don't matter, people. Not even a rice grain. Yet we remain silent and do as we are told. Apathy is the greatest killer. The government is right beside it."

"You are crazy, child. This is a battle that will not be one by sacrificing our lives to some silly cause. Yes, we work, we grieve, we suffer. Life IS suffering. So be it."

"What you say is true, Iron Bowl. But why should we remain silent? I have already buried two children. My youngest, Toa, is frail and weak from starvation. He may be next. Something must be done."

"I never liked the government anyway."

"Me neither..."

"Seems like we all have reasons for and against making a change."

"My grandfather always said you should try to start from where you know you'll end up.

A brief pause of uncomfortable consideration took hold. People shuffled about, mumbled, grumbled, some brushed their hands through the air in dismissal and stomped away. But Sung Wu, like a consummate rabble rouser, seized the moment to start anew.

"I say we form command units and prepare a plan of attack," began Sung Wu, "and congregate in Tiananmen Square during the commemoration of Li Quaping, demanding equal representation, living wages, equal distribution, and take back what is rightly ours, demand compensation for the misery we have been forced to endure, even at the cost of our lives. Carry banners emblazoned with slogans such as Law, Not Authoritarianism and Long Live Democracy. Old Toad was taken before he could speak another word of dissatisfaction about the government. And you all know he had no kind words for them. And suddenly, he is gone. Coincidence? I think not. Just as the death of Hu Yaobang proved to be the catalyst that brought about the massive demonstrations in Tiananmen Square so long ago, so will the death of Old Toad be our battle cry. This has gone on far too long and we must act before the water rages down the mountain again to kill us in silence once more. When we descend upon them en masse we have a lack of fear of retribution. They will try to crack down and send in the PLA but they cannot pull us all in. We are too many. We shall bow no longer and not go down without a fight!"

Fisted arms shot into the air.

"We bow no longer!"

"The days of bowing are past."

"Remember Old Toad!!"

Everyone began chanting, We bow no longer, We bow no longer, until a massive wave of power surged through. The rallying cry had been first spoken by Silent Spring, great granddaughter of 20th century martyr Hu Yaobang, who would flow silent no longer and soon join the ranks of commanders. This crowd had congealed into a force. In one short concise speech, Sung Wu had rallied a crowd of otherwise peaceful complacent ignorant people and turned them into a seething horde of blood eyed warriors. The nights of drinking and wife beating were no more and were replaced by lively discussions of strategy and technique and methods from the Art of War. A commune working as a true collective, as it was always intended.

And so began what would be known as The Great Peasant Revolt. I had no idea how we, simple peasants, could muster the resources and power to stage an attack of any size. Maybe an attack on the swarms of locusts we could manage. But Sung Wu as always had other plans. Other ways of seeing things. To her we were "vast reservoirs of untapped potential." A bonafide lighting storm in a jar on the tail of a massive tsunami. She would nurture that vengeance jar and unleash it on the enemy with a vicious giddiness. These were indeed dangerous times upon us. But in her very words the ruling mantra was clear, one that may have formed in the womb: Danger awaits us, but it is danger that excites us.

We live to serve, hail Buddha.

There can be no doubt that the authorities will crack down, and crack down hard, if stability seems to be being called into question.

Government's martial law order.

Stir up trouble to embarrass the authorities.
Soon blistering reports emerged in The Party Daily, expressing sympathy with the peasants but making it clear that "the limits of official toleration were being approached."

After the memorial meeting, an extremely small number of people with ulterior purposes continued to take advantage of the peasants' feelings of grief for Comrade Old Toad. This is a planned conspiracy and a disturbance. Its essence is to once and for all negate the leadership of the KPC [Khotanese Communist Party] and the socialist system. All comrades in the party and the people throughout the country must soberly recognize the fact that our country will have no peaceful days if this disturbance is not checked resolutely.

*****

Thunderheads on the horizon, blood on the winds. The axe, the blade, the pitchfork, the plow, conscripted into service as articles of war. Manning these articles of war a motley horde of the most unlikely warriors. From this point forward to be known simply as hooligans. The kiss of cultural death in New Khotan. Corded old men, wrinkled old women, with knotted licorice legs, bendy ropey legs, string bean arms, toothless mouths, children, toddlers, teens, red eyed killers all.

Who makes the best assassin? Anybody.

This crew of crawdads assembled with one single minded objective in mind: Bring down the government and let justice reign.

Nothing like this had even before been seen in our time. Nothing like this ever anticipated. Whatever the outcome a solitary thing was certain, we would go into the history books. Whether as Winners or Loser was yet to be decided.

*****

It will be remembered as New Khotan's Dark Day.

The first signs that something was amiss were the smoky air and a red sun at morning and evening. Around noon this day, an early darkness fell: Birds sang their evening songs, farm animals returned to their roosts and barns, and humans were bewildered.

Some went to temple, many sought the solace of the tavern, and more than a few nearer the edges of the darkened area commented on the strange beauty of the preternatural half-light. One person noted that clean silver had the color of brass.

It was darkest in northeastern Chéng Yang, and southern Li?o Yi, but it got dusky through most of New Khotan. In the darkest area, people had to take their midday meals by candlelight. In some places, the darkness was so great that persons could not see to read common print in the open air. A sheet of white paper held within a few inches of the eyes was equally invisible with the blackest velvet.

The day of judgment was either approaching, or it was not. If it was not, there was no cause of an adjournment; if it was, some chose to be found doing their duty.

When it was time for night to fall, the full moon failed to bring light. Even areas that had seen a pale sun in the day could see no moon at all. No moon, no stars: It was the darkest night anyone had seen. Some people could not sleep and waited through the long hours to see if the sun would ever rise again. They witnessed its return the morning of May 20.

A town farther north had reported "a black scum like ashes" on rainwater collected in tubs. The rain fell thick and dark and sooty and tasted and smelled like the black ash of burnt leaves.

The scene would have gladdened a painter's heart. An old churchyard. The church low and square, towered, with long mullioned windows, the yellow-grey stone roughened by age and tender-hued with lichens. Round it clustered many tombstones tilted in all directions. Behind the church a line of gnarled and twisted yews.

The churchyard was full of fine trees. On one side a magnificent cedar; on the other a great copper beech. Here and there among the tombs and headstones many beautiful blossoming trees rose from the long green grass. The laburnum glowed in the June afternoon sunlight; the lilac, the hawthorn and the clustering meadowsweet which fringed the edge of the lazy stream mingled their heavy sweetness in sleepy fragrance. The yellow-grey crumbling walls were green in places with wrinkled Harts-Tongues, and were topped with Sweet-Williams and spreading House-Leek and Stone-Crop and wildflowers whose delicious sweetness made for the drowsy repose of perfect summer.

Were we gathered for romantic interlude, the setting was picture perfect. But today was not one of frivolity. Today we assembled the troops for a gather round to discuss grave matters before us. It seemed that time had been foreshortened since Sung Wu jumped upon the crate and delivered her speech. Her manifesto. Now, the work lay before us, lay before us all. The task was no small undertaking.

It was imperative that everyone was on the same page. No misstep would be tolerated. Failure was not an option. Standard practice. SOP. The raging bloodlust in the eyes of our troops led one to believe that bloodshed could happen at the slightest provocation. But this was not a war we were entering into, not literarily, only figuratively. Yes we were going forth with powerful demands of which we would sacrifice no detail. Of which we would settle for nothing less than absolute receipt. But the difference between gaining attention and bludgeoning into submission was a wide gulf. Still, some among us felt the demon of retribution gnawing at their shoulders.

"My children died because of those bastards. Give me one. Just one. I will take his head between my hands and squash it like a muskmelon!"

Our mission was one of notice, a profile heightener. We the people of this once great land are as good as invisible. Mere automatons to carry out the wishes of those in charge. Those pushing the buttons of this great machine. For the longest time, so long none could remember a time before this present abomination, it had been this way. Every day up at the crack of dawn, to work, work, work, home to drink, beat the wives, cuss and moan, sleep, wake up and do it again. Of course there were more activities than this. Always something to round things out. Some of the peasants found time to screw like bunnies in their bunks; this was easily discerned as the walls were no walls at all. So everyone had a fairly good idea of who was doing what to whom and how often. The lingering smiles were the lingering red flag.

Primary in our minds was the picture of Old Toad. Old crusty, crotchety, crabby, generally foul tempered Old Toad. In his honor would we march. Our symbol of solidarity. This not much of man at his passing was our banner of purposeful union. Funny how death smooths out the edges, turning what was in life near intolerable to near beneficent in death.

It was just a matter of time before the beatitudes spilled out in a widening fount as if handed down directly from the mind of the creator into our capable hands. Death is the great equalizer. It is also the great ennobler.

The stories were recounted of Tiananmen Square, of the glorious events, of the great achievement of this one particular brilliant and tragic day near the end of the 20th century. Not a coup as there was no change of government. But a cultural coup nonetheless. After the passage of more than one century the details are fuzzy. All that was once a minor detail is with the magnification of time raised to legendary proportion. So too will our escapades in the current time be remembered in the future, a perhaps not too distant future. Uprisings in Tiananmen Square have long ago become the barometer for culturally significant events. If a cultural event happens and is not ennobled by happening at Tiananmen Square, then it is a minor event indeed. We aim to please and aim to leave no stone unturned in our quest for greatness. Therefore we are staging our demonstration at Tiananmen.

Settling this detail was easily epitomized. Sung Wu said that is where we would be and no one disagreed. Difficulties are significantly reduced when one and only ONE is in charge. There was no doubt in anyone's mind who was in charge. From the first time Sung Wu opened her mouth to speak the heresy of dissatisfaction, the die had been cast and set in stone. Only Old Toad could claim to have similarly passionate views openly expressed. But truth be told, it is clear as day on a bare behind that his form of grumbling appeared mysteriously subsequent to that of Sung Wu. These are the cold hard facts. But none among us would forward this newly erected heresy. Do not speak ill of the dead. Superstition runs amok. The honorific master's badge of grumbling is henceforth granted to Old Toad. To do otherwise would be to dilute our resolve, the unforgivable sin.

We began our day by fashioning banners for our march. Big ones, small ones, some loud with diatribe, some quiet with strong suggestions. Straight from the minds of revolutionaries into the living rooms of a family's wood-frame, thatch-roofed house.

This was an equal opportunity motley mob operation.

If success is our ally, we will overpower through surprise and raise a shining flag of renewed solidarity. A solidarity at once dictatorially free, opportunity pregnant. A place scary and void of form, speaking of potentialities unknown.

To our credit our vastly superior leader. Her eyes are full; her hair, of raven blackness, thick and curly. The thick black hair, tells of vast physical strength and endurance. But the most remarkable characteristic is the eyes. Black, piercing, almost unendurable, they seem to contain in themselves a remarkable willpower which there is no denying. It is a power that is partly racial and partly individual: a power impregnated with some mysterious quality, partly hypnotic, partly mesmeric, which seems to take away from eyes that meet them all power of resistance, all power of wishing to resist. With eyes like those, set in that all-commanding face, one would need to be strong indeed to think of resisting the inflexible will that lay behind. A creature with such strange compelling qualities, it is no wonder that there circulates an idea that within her there is some demoniac possession, with a more definite belief that certain individuals in her lineage have in the past sold themselves to the Devil. Better the devil you know than the one you do not. Having her on our side is a winning stroke.

Man is the one who desires, woman the one who is desired. This is woman's entire but decisive advantage. Through his passion nature has given man into woman's hands, and the woman who does not know how to make him her subject, her slave, her toy, and how to betray him with a smile in the end is not wise.

Recalling this passage I had hastily written in my journal brought to mind one of the many things at stake with my current situation. True, Sung Wu was the most perfectly suited to lead us, a political powerhouse much as the once great Jiang Qing in the days of Mao Zedong. But unlike Jiang Qing there was a compelling and disturbing disconnect between the perceived intent and glaring eventuality of Sung Wu's undertakings. Always at play was the powerful understanding that the men in her presence would not only do her bidding, but would without hesitation willingly become her slave, toy, or body shield. To give oneself to a cause is grand. To give one's life to a cause is legendary. It was this precise type of devotion which held Sung Wu like a moth to a flame. There was within it a salacious energy that caused her to quiver and giggle with delight. The precise dangerous conditions necessary to produce a dangerously fatal result. But not for her; for her slave(s).

Terror is ever present. Danger awaits us, but it is danger that excites us. Pure Sung Wu. Ours would be a long march similar to many that had preceded it but in name only. My skin tingled with expectation. My mind reeled in horror. My feet froze to the soil, unmovable pylons. The fear coursing through me was as I imagined countless others felt when an unknown farmer's son rose to lead a Communist rebellion that toppled Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist party placing him squarely at the forefront as undisputed leader of the "new" China. Imagine the collective wail when he immediately settled himself into a mansion near the Forbidden City amidst red pillars, white marble steps, and gold tiles brushed by gnarled plane trees. The fact that this was once the habitat of emperors of the Ming and Qing dynasties did not go unnoticed, just unavenged. Viewing this ancient historical event and gazing at the path we were now embarking upon, seemed eerily familiar in an oddly disturbing way, as if we had simply adopted the past, retrofit it to a distant future, and were now attempting a recreation with Sung Wu playing the pivotal role of the vilified Mao Zedong. Or perhaps she would attempt to resurrect and validate the failed overthrow attempt of Jiang Qing, aka Madame Mao.

Having full knowledge of the well preserved history does little to give one comfort as those close to Mao were routinely killed as power gave way to absolute authoritarianism gave way to paranoia. As with Jiang Qing and her Gang of Four, fate was viciously unkind. We were with toothless farmers, children, and pitchforks attempting to overthrow a deeply entrenched government with its own active military arm. This was quickly developing into a situation where absolute invisibility was paramount.

Our march began with the clamorous noise and grumblings of which such endeavors are made. Banners and pitchforks were carried by some. Others took turns on the tractor, an assignment that was as much desired as it was coveted. Give the people a point upon which class distinctions can be made and you have within your grasp a recipe for destruction. Bickering ensued. Yet such bickering would soon reach the boundaries of tolerance as Sung Wu, who did not easily suffer fools, was not to be trifled with.

*****

By the following day we had crossed the mountains, and were walking along the level upland that leads to the plain of Kautung. Cedars, held sacred, with shrines in the shelter of their branches, dot the plain; peach trees and pear trees were now in full bloom; the harvest was ripening in the fields. There were black-faced sheep in abundance, red cattle with short horns, and the ubiquitous water buffalo. Over the level roads primitive carts, drawn by red oxen, were rumbling in the dust. There were mud villages, poor and falling into ruins; everywhere were signs of poverty and famine. Children ran about naked, or in rags.

We passed the Láo s?o barrier, known by its white flag. By now word had spread of our Freedom March and we were often greeted by crowds of curious peasants. The Khotanese grapevine is second to none. At a crowded teahouse, a few miles from the city, we waited for the stragglers, while many wayfarers gathered in to see me.

At Kautung we had entered upon a district that had been devastated by recurring seasons of plague and famine. Last year more than 5,000 people are believed to have died from starvation in the town and its immediate neighborhood. The numbers are appalling, but doubt must always be thrown upon statistics derived from Khotanese sources. The Khotanese disregard of accuracy is characteristic. Beggars were so numerous, and became such a menace to the community, that their suppression was called for; they were driven from the streets, and confined within the walls of the temple and grounds beyond the south gate, and fed by common charity. Huddled together in rags and misery, they took famine fever and perished by hundreds. Seventy dead were carried from the temple in one day. Of 5,000 poor wretches who crossed the temple threshold, the Khotanese say that 2,000 never came out alive. Yet here, in this godforsaken outland setting, the Black Death had not visited.

For four years past the harvests had been very bad, but there was now hope of a better time coming. Opportune rains had fallen, and the opium crop was good. More than anything else the district depends for its prosperity upon the opium crop---if the crop is good, money is plentiful. Maize---cobs last harvest were four times the size of those of the previous harvest, when they were no larger than one's finger. Wheat and beans were forward; the coming rice crop gave every hope of being a good one.

The selling of its female children into slavery is the chief sorrow of this famine-stricken district. During last year it is estimated by the Khotanese, that no less than three thousand children from this neighborhood, chiefly female children and a few boys, were sold to dealers and carried like poultry in baskets to the capital. At ordinary times the price for girls is one tael (30¢) for every year of their age, thus a girl of five costs fifteen tael ($1.50), of ten, thirty tael ($3.00), but in time of famine children become a drug in the market. Female children were now offering at from one tael (30¢) to two tael (60¢) each. You could buy as many as you cared to. You might even obtain them for nothing if you would enter into an agreement with the father---which he had no means of enforcing---to take care of his child, and clothe and feed her and rear her kindly. Starving mothers would come to the mission beseeching the foreign teachers to take their babies and save them from the fate that was otherwise inevitable.

Girls are bought in Kautung up to the age of twenty, and there is always a ready market for those above the age of puberty; prices then vary according to the measure of the girl's beauty, an important feature being the smallness of her feet. They are sold in the capital for wives and servants; they are rarely sold into prostitution. Two important factors in the demand for them are the large preponderance in the number of males at the capital, and the prevalence there of goitre or thick neck, a deformity which is absent from the district of Kautung. Infanticide in a starving city like this is dreadfully common. For the parents, seeing their children must be doomed to poverty, think it better to let the soul escape in search of a more happy asylum than to linger in one condemned to want and wretchedness. The infanticide is, however, exclusively confined to the destruction of female children, the sons being permitted to live in order to continue the ancestral sacrifices.

One mother, who was employed by the mission, told the missionary in ordinary conversation that she had suffocated in turn three of her female children within a few days of birth; and, when a fourth was born, so enraged was her husband to discover that it was also a girl that he seized it by the legs and struck it against the wall and killed it.

Dead children, and often living infants, are thrown out on the common among the grave mounds, and may be seen there any morning being gnawed by dogs. Wang bu of the distillery, leaving by the south gate early one morning, disturbed a dog eating a still living child that had been thrown over the wall during the night. Its little arm was crunched and stripped of flesh, and it was whining inarticulately---it died almost immediately. A man came to see us, who for a long time used to heap up merit for himself in heaven by acting as a city scavenger. Early every morning he went round the city picking up dead dogs and dead cats in order to bury them decently---who could tell, perhaps the soul of his grandfather had been reincarnated as a cat. While he was doing this pious work, never a morning passed that he did not find a dead child, and usually three or four. The dead of the poor people are roughly buried near the surface and eaten by dogs.

As we went out of the west gate, we were shown the spot where a few days before a young woman, taken in adultery, was put to death in a cage amid a crowd of spectators, who witnessed her agony for three days. She had to stand on tiptoe in the cage, her head projecting through a hole in the roof, and here she had to remain until death by exhaustion or strangulation ensued, or till some kind friend, passed into her mouth sufficient opium to poison her, and so end her struggles.

On the gate itself a man not so long ago was nailed with red-hot nails hammered through his wrists above the hands. In this way he was exposed in turn at each of the four gates of the city, so that every man, woman, and child could see his torture. He survived four days, having unsuccessfully attempted to shorten his pain by beating his head against the woodwork, an attempt which was frustrated by padding the woodwork. This man had murdered and robbed two travelers on the high road. As things are in New Khotan, his punishment was not too severe.

*****

We march and sleep, sleep and march, march while sleeping, sleep while marching. The daily drudgery of the past has been swiftly and summarily replaced by the new drudgery. Whereas before we marched to the relentless drum of industry, now we march to the relentless drum of dreams.

To believe in one's dreams is to spend all of one's life asleep.

It is understood, subintelligitur, that blood, sweat, and tears are necessary for achievement. Without these component parts assembled in the proper quantities there can be no progress. If another method had been found absolutely correct and universally applicable, every human being would be compelled to pass through its machine-like maw, every personality to be crushed under its Jagannath wheels. Sacrifice is of the very essence of social life. We function under our ideology, our mantra. It is expedient that ONE man should die for the people; each man should be ready and WILLING to die in that cause, when the occasion and need arises. The end result of all this noble sacrifice is subject to multifarious interpretations and is essentially nothing more than projections of the human mind. Yet there is no shadow without a fire; the very existence of a shadow argues a light somewhere as well as the existence of a solid form which intercepts that light. The solid form is our own ignorance which blocks all that contradicts our own vainglorious mental projections. Thus we go forth, each one sure of his vast importance, his absolute worth, while unaware that he shambles toward a whirlpool of despair.

Distance lends enchantment to the view.

With a wink and a shuffle we plow ahead. I for one was surprised that Sung Wu finessed the people with grand and melodious words of insurrection and strong demands, no more than a spirited demonstration, when in fact she had been all along planning government overthrow. "If you don't scale the mountain, you can't view the plain," she says.

Even more it appeared that most of the people still believed we were headed to the capital to "have our voices heard." Clearly she was well versed in the art of timeworn proverb application and misdirection. The best shopkeeper does not hang all his fine goods outside the window but keeps them stored behind the counter. The eastern way of smoke and mirrors was in full effect.

She had come into the world through war and insurrection, and the older she got, the more atavism would guide her response to provocation. Some revert to feral behavior quite readily. Apparently she was among them.

"If you want an audience, start a fight. This we must remember. There is no glory for one who snivels in corners. We must persevere and go forward. Fight to the end. If your legs fail you, fight on your knees. This is OUR time, people. The time when people rise up and take what is rightly theirs. Do not despair our conditions. They will get better, they will get worse. Just remember, if you get up one more time than you fall you will make it through. To get through the hardest journey we need take only one step at a time, but we must keep on stepping."

Sung Wu had sensed that already in these early stages some of our troops were flagging. Some grumbled so much that others were moving from tongue lashings to shoves and slaps. Unacceptable. If there is a strong general, there will be no weak soldiers. One again she grabbed the reigns and reeled in the strays.

The next morning we stopped in Xiabang town to pick up The Party Daily to catch up on what was happening in Boxtown. Of course there was an overlong article about,"... the weakness of workers who would walk out on their jobs and let the people down. These workers are not fit to associate with true party members. These workers will be shunned."

I took this with a grain of salt knowing that these words, while harsh, were just the tip of the iceberg. I was sure that the PLA was on the move trying to find us and bring us in. And not bring us in for tongue lashings, but for head smashings. This was an undeclared war. That came as no surprise. But tucked back on page three was the surprise:

523 Dead in Ch'angshen District, Black Death on the Move

Ch'angshen district was very close to our present location. Too close. We had been lucky in not getting hit by it. But we were not lucky in that this meant the officials were far too close for us to take lightly. The PLA could be right over that near ridge for all we knew. Sung Wu had chosen a propitious time to pep talk the troops. For the first time on our journey, what seemed more like a fun prankish jaunt had in one bold stroke become a flight from annihilation. If the Black Death did not smelt us in our sleep, the PLA would pummel us with gunfire. My heart was palpitating like a scared rabbit. The reality of what we were involved in was taking hold. He who hurries cannot walk with dignity, goes the proverb. But the proverb that slapped me like a cold wind, "He who rides a tiger is afraid to dismount," held more import. Fear and terror were the operative words here. We were riding a rampaging tiger of discord.

*****

Deng Dong had said that New Khotan with its bicycles and western countries with their automobiles would never see things from similar angles. While this is philosophically and politically true, with the current world order it is a moot point. Of the remaining people and nations of this withering planet, concerns are focused on food, shelter, and clothing primarily. Millennia of advancement have led only to catastrophic global wars reducing humanity to its roots. As long as there are people there will be disagreements. In the present post apocalyptic order, it hardly seems worth the effort to delineate cultures by assessing material wealth. If one is alive today one has succeeded.

Let him who does not know what war is go to war.

New Khotan is like a suitcase that has been quickly opened, and its contents that had previously seemed a tightly bound unity falling out in a tumble on the ground. From the outside we may indeed appear a beguiling mystery. Other nations have for centuries appeared no less beguiling to us. Each nation is cursed with knowledge. Each knows the daily mundanities that constitute its day to day life, each can only speculate the realities existing elsewhere. These sociopolitical truisms aside, we as a group of fleeing revolutionaries branded counterrevolutionaries by the government, are concerned only in attaining knowledge of the government's whereabouts and its attack plans. It is this particular knowledge that holds the most sway. Of all the thirty-six alternatives, running away is the best.

We look into the unyielding dark and see cloaked warriors. We huddle in our beds and fear instant liquefaction. It is safe to say that fear rules us. Politics makes strange bedfellows. Rivers and mountains may change; human nature, never.

"I'm lucky to be alive, you know. If fate had not spared me I'd be unborn or worse.

New Khotan has 69 million more males than females. I am part of a minority. If you've got highly sexed young men, it is highly possible that with high levels of testosterone they'll go out and commit crimes. I don't have to tell you what form these crimes will take."

Sung Wu is on about a topic that cannot be denied. Why now of all times to be reflecting on birthrates and pending crimes is a mystery. This is just another in the many twisting paths that lead to and from Sung Wu. But these were not passing thoughts. This was a topic she was intimately familiar with. Her words commingled and gestated sprouting wings.

"Long ago was passed a decree of one child per family."

"This is not news."

"This was interpreted to mean one "male" child. With sonograms parents have been allowed learn the gender of their fetus about 20 weeks into pregnancy, leading to a rise in abortions based on sex. If they were too late to abort the female fetus, infanticide of baby girls became a problem. Killed in the womb, bashed against a rock, or left to die in the wilderness were the only options. I was spared."

"So you were spared. Should we organize a parade to celebrate?"

"Don't make me hurt you, Chuli. My point is simple: were I not born, had I not escaped ravaging at the hands of the wandering gonads, we would not now be embarked upon the path of liberation."

"Liberation? In case you failed to notice, our troops are suffering. There are at least three who look ready to keel over."

"Destiny makes no bargains. Often one finds one's destiny just where one hides to avoid it. Hiding and denying have not improved our circumstances. Direct confrontation is the superior approach. No mill, no meal."

"No wisdom like silence."

Sung Wu's eyes flew wide open, eyebrows threatening to pull down a cloud. It seemed I had crossed the un-crossable line. A dreamy smile crept across her face.

"Oh, Chuli. If you can't change your fate, change your attitude. This will be remembered as your greatest time!"

She cuddled her adoptive baby moonstone to her breast. At times it seemed this stone served as the baby she did not have. Her surrogate baby, Ji-le Shi jie, Supremely Happy World. Why she chose this name one can only guess.

Assume nothing with Sung Wu.

New Khotan cannot afford to allow the kind of democracy practiced in the West. An authoritarian government cannot and will not allow it. With the bulk of the population backward, there can be no genuine democracy for all. Only for the few; the rulers. We are told the West and its lazy democratic tendencies is faltering and slipping off the world map. The moon is not rounder abroad. This must be taken verbatim. Though we the people are aware the stupidities and deceptions of the government, we are like birds in a cage, able to fly but there are limits on all sides.

One cannot personally insult the leaders who are fond of their kouhao (slogans). Even if they have forgotten a key slogan: Wei renmin fuwu (Serve the people).

Wei Baizheng, a comrade, says the Party believes in atheism and also runs wild in defying the Tao and assaulting heavenly principles. Confucianism values family, but the Communist Manifesto clearly promulgates abolition of the family. Traditional culture differentiates the Chinese from the foreign, but the Communist Manifesto advocates the end of nationality. Confucian culture promotes kindness to others, but the Party encourages class struggle. Confucians encourage loyalty to the monarch and love for the nation. The Communist Manifesto promotes the elimination of nations. To his way of seeing, it is no wonder we the Khotanese people are so confused.

The Party has systematically dismantled and destroyed a culture that drew on 5,000 years of cultural history. The Party first had to plant its immoral thoughts on Khotanese soil. They claim, that if they want to overthrow an authority they must first make propaganda, and do work in the area of ideology. The Party realized that their violent political theory, which is sustained with arms, is the rebuff of Western thoughts and could not stand up to Khotan's profound 5,000-year cultural history. The KCP then completely destroyed traditional Khotanese culture, so that their manifesto could take Khotan's political stage.

"We have lost our bearings," says Wei "forever in search of the Three Kingdoms which are no more. Our Journey to the West has become a journey of despair. When premier Hong accidentally set free 108 demons, they were unleashed upon our doorsteps as The Party. In this way WE the people have become Outlaws of the Marsh, lost at the baseless cliff of the great waste mountain."

Happening upon Wei Baizheng was not a karmic accident. He is a hero to the people, one who escaped wenzi yu, the execution of dissident authors. He was placed in controlled exile to see how he behaves. Sung Wu plotted her path specifically to cross through the colony to which he has been exiled. Individually he and she display sparks of brilliance. Together they burst into flames.

Sung Wu tells me that her interest in Wei is nothing more than intellectual. His brilliance amazes and inspires her all the more. Her love of his intellect is easy for anyone to understand. When the dusky evening becomes dark and sultry, her moans of pleasures physical, not intellectual, echo through the canyons telling a different tale.

I know first hand that Sung Wu is a lusty creature who takes her pleasures as they come. When we were back in the commune, it was only me she collected and spooned with. But here in the wild, the scented breeze becomes an elixir whispering of unrealized dreams. And tonight, her moaning, writhing body, bucking beneath her "dream," torments me and sometimes kicks me with a straying foot.

Should I follow a slogan that has been burned into my brain, "Dare to think, dare to act," and like a true revolutionary invade their dreamscape? Perhaps it would be wiser to ignore the fact that outside my soul is noisy, but inside is empty; a dull aching emptiness that compounds minute by minute. I remind myself to be strong. Restraint in all things is good discipline. Quiet and still, Chu Yang. Quiet and still.

*****

Look at a cosmic eating machine: a spinning black hole that devours the mass equivalent of two Earths per hour, verging on the limit of its feeding ability. The gravity of a black hole is so powerful it traps even light, making black holes invisible. As matter swirls in toward a black hole, gravity makes it travel at significant fractions of light-speed. That generates X-rays and other radiation that can give astronomers information about the spin of the black hole and its size, among other details.

In a similar sense our entire campaign has seemingly run afoul of a massive black hole. Progress is glacial and success with a new campaign is often measured in weeks or even days. The strategy and tactics of guerrilla warfare tend to focus around the use of a small, mobile force competing against a large, immobile one. Guerilla focuses on organizing small units that are dependent on the support of the peasantry. The tactic is to attack the enemy in small numbers but with repetitive attacks, forcing an over-eager response from the enemy which will anger their followers and create sympathy for the guerilla forcing the withdrawal of the enemy.

In a war of revolutionary character, guerrilla operations are a necessary part. This is particularly true in war waged for the emancipation of a people who inhabit a vast nation. Guerrilla warfare is the unconventional warfare and combat with which a small group of combatants use mobile tactics (ambushes, raids, etc.) to combat a larger and less mobile formal army. The guerrilla army uses ambush (stealth and surprise) and mobility (draw enemy forces to terrain unsuited to them) in attacking vulnerable targets in enemy territory.

When guerrillas obey the laws of conventional warfare they are if captured, treated as prisoners of war. However, they are often executed by their captors. The tactics of guerrilla warfare stress deception and ambush, as opposed to mass confrontation. They succeed best in an irregular, peevish land and with a people whom guerrillas often seek to win by propaganda, reform, and terrorism.

Not realizing the nature of our activities I was pulled aside by Sung Wu and summarily reeducated, "We are guerillas Chu Li. Learn it, Live it, Love it." She strongly suggested that I educate myself on the history and necessity of guerilla operations so as to remain alert and attentive to our needs.

Human wave attacks have been used to great success before. Our guerilla forces would overrun a small position with manpower and persevere with the same for larger objectives, despite suffering enormous casualties. For example, in an attack against a Company of PLA, our guerillas left 2,000 dead around the PLA position defended by 200!

Using the Human wave tactic can be an advantage when you have a lot of followers, but it will also inflict a lot of casualties from your side as it lacks the firepower.

The foco theory of revolution by way of guerrilla warfare is also known as focalism. Its central principle is that vanguardism by cadres of small, fast-moving paramilitary groups can provide a focus for popular discontent against a sitting regime, and thereby lead a general insurrection. Although the original approach was to mobilize and launch attacks from rural areas, many foco ideas have been adapted into urban guerrilla warfare movements.

Guerrilla warfare has qualities and objectives of the extraordinary. It is a weapon that a country with inferior weapons and military equipment may use against a more powerful aggressor nation. When the invader pierces deep in the heart of the weaker country and occupies her territory in a cruel and tyrannical manner, it is no doubt that conditions of terrain, climate, and society in general offer obstacles to his progress and may be used to advantage by those who oppose him. In guerrilla warfare we turn these advantages to the purpose of resisting and defeating the enemy.

Being a guerilla means having a life of danger and always being on the run from the authorities and special teams created to remove them. But they have this sense of freedom to fight for what they believe.

The enemy advances, we retreat. The enemy camps, we garble. The enemy tires, we attack. The enemy retreats, we pursue. "Draw back your fist before you strike," the tactic of baiting the enemy, "drawing a fist," before "striking," the critical moment where they are overstretched and vulnerable.

"We will follow the three-stage model advocated by Mao. In the first stage, the Separatists eliminate or absorb rival nationalistic movements and begin to build a base among the poor Chinese population. This will initially occur in remote areas far from Communist control and eventually will expand into the urban centers where Communist control is complete. During the course of the struggle, the Separatist's politicking among the population will be unceasing. In the second phase, small bands execute hit-and-run guerrilla tactics, including urban terrorism. These tactics are designed to win additional followers, provoke an overreaction from Communist forces, and to materially damage the prestige and structure of Communist governmental institutions---particularly local government and police. In the final stage, the military arm of the Separatists, will seek to control territory and defeat Communist units in conventional battle."

*****

There was no avoiding it; the train was set in motion long ago. The close knit group of two has become a frayed group of three, the brilliant effusive lovers, and the scrappy sullen dog. The lovers appear contently immersed in the powerful rhetoric and passionate joys they have kindled. All that can be said of the dog is he is there. To the side. In the background. With but not of the group. Replaced by the fickle, fleeting celebrity world. Our three act play of revolution has in act two become tiptoe through the tulips.

There is a reason warriors walk alone. To be entwined is to be impaired. Sung Wu knows this. I know this. We are of one mind.

"Any port in a storm, Chu Yang. Any port in a storm. Running this company keeps me very stressed, overworked, and anxious. I needed to break from the storm and seek relief. A temporary respite is not a home base"

"I was once your port of choice, Sung Wu," I say, choking out the words.

"Chuli," she says with a song in her voice. "I think of you as someone above the pettiness of control and ownership. We are born alone and we die alone. Neither you nor I own each other. We are free from the cages that bind."

"That sounds so...benign...and correct. But this is not the way we have been together. At least from my perspective."

She smiles.

"I realize that men fall harder than women. This is human nature. Still, I do not consider you replaceable in my life. Consider yourself not replaced but _supplemented_."

Supplemented. Evidently I was not enough. Yes it is true perhaps that men fall harder. I know I did. Was it not I who unleashed a flurry of poetry her way? Yet not one came back to me by her hand. I am a fool for love, this I know. This only makes the break in our bond harder still.

"I do not know, Sung Wu."

"So I flutter in a direction that does not suit you. All I can do is offer my apologies.

Words bring cold comfort to one bashed and bruised. She attempts to comfort me but actions speak louder. To see them together one gets the picture of domestic tranquility, a copasetic tranquility with intermittent flashes of randomness. Peace and tranquility are a thousand gold pieces. Yet she is confused. People ask me daily about Wei Baizheng. They are curious. You know him best, they tell me, sometimes giving me a wink. There seems to be an outbreak of confusion in camp. While Sung Wu may indeed provide details if she wishes---she will not---that is her affair. Even out in the rural expanse of Zhangdong, away from the cities, people will not discard their gossiping ways. Anything to spice up the rice and grasshopper sit downs. One dog barks at something, the rest bark at him.

Rice is plentiful here as it has been a stellar year for crops. Occasionally someone captures a squirrel or a snake, and we have a bit of variety with our rice bowls. Typically though, Zhangdong is resplendent with beetles and grasshoppers and all manner of creatures from the insect kingdom. So at any given meal the fare is rice and insect of the moment.

It is highly possible that a moderate case of starvation induced hallucinations have taken hold. The people want spicy details about Wei Baizheng so they inquire of me. As if I would know. Back at the commune Sung Wu and I were like a fist in a glove. Out here I have become a discarded finger. No fist. No glove. If Sung Wu were not glued to Wei's every move, the people might have occasion to ask her directly. Right from the dragon's mouth as it is said. For myself, I would greatly approve if Sung Wu's surrogate baby moonstone Ji le Shi jie (Supremely Happy World), had the power to bring me once again to a supremely happy world.

*****

Noise noise noise. Buckets and buckets of noise. The kind of incessant noise that teeters on the verge of explosion. Despite our recent head to head, I am still awakened by moaning sounds and kicking feet. Last night was the worst bout of collective dream making that I have yet experienced. One should be just as careful in choosing one's pleasures as in avoiding calamities. But today. Today. It is harvest day. The farmers are out. The tools are out. The tractors are rolling. The children are shouting. It is a day of joyous celebration. A great day to be alive. Let everyone else rush out to be alive. Enjoy the moment. Me, I would settle for a sleep un-rocked by animal passions and kicking feet.

One monk shoulders water by himself; two can still share the labor among them. When it comes to three, they have to go thirsty. When speaking of "loyalty," Khotanese people naturally think of Yue Fei, a Song Dynasty general who served his country with unreserved integrity and loyalty, and Zhuge Liang prime minister of the Shu State during the Three Kingdoms period, who gave his all until his heart stopped beating.

In Zhangdong district loyalty is equated with willingness and ability to work the crops. At present one could say the fields are littered with loyalists. As well we have stayed too long here. Not exactly wore out our welcome so to speak, but wore out our reason for staying. With a goal of reaching the capital in as short a time as possible, extensive layovers can only extend the eventual arrival date. Before I even push her foot out of my way, Sung Wu is one step ahead of me. Rounding up the troops. Shouting commands. This is moving day and at least one among us could not be happier of the fact. Today we leave the domain that is the exile ground of Wei Baizheng as we depart, or "flee," to parts unknown.

It was not so important where we go as how we get there. At present, our travels seemed an amalgamation of animal instinct and distemper. As the sun rose and set our plans were hatched in granular form. Sung Wu had her eye on a distant prize, one visible to her eyes and heart alone, yet credibly conveyed in rich emulsifying tones. How she decided on her path of travel was in large part dictated by where she wished to be by a certain time of the season. As we had started in late spring, her plan was to have us northwest in Xianping by mid-summer. But being that Xianping was over 750 miles away coupled with the fact that we were on foot, demanded we travel between 15 and 20 miles daily. This appeared a highly optimistic goal. Yet this is our plan. At my suggestion that we reduce our expectations, she responded that to do such a thing was tantamount to defeat.

"We are on a quest of the impossible. This demands the utmost conviction and resolve. Without high goals, our spirit is insufficiently challenged. Victory has a hundred fathers and defeat is an orphan."

With the fall and winter seasons having become increasingly harsh of late, the prospect for troop fallout to injury, illness, or death was real. Yet we prepare for the worst and expect the best. In so many respects this seemed a far reaching objective, the work of one whose reach was longer than her grasp. More on the order of a dream. To believe in one's dreams is to spend all of one's life asleep. If this were in fact the product of a dream, it was one that could likely become a tragic nightmare.

Visiting the rural outlands is a feat of the imagination. A place where the imagination must substitute for grim realities. To the rural folk, the Black Death is something that happens far away. In another world. Another place so far away it is nothing more than an imaginary leap. It is difficult to believe that no one out this far from the cities has heard anything of the Black Death raging though our land. When the subject comes up, usually because one of the counterrevolutionaries has broached the topic, the response is something along the lines of, "Oh yeah. Heard about it some." As if it was nothing but a pesky but controllable crop insect.

Being disconnected from the cities is a good thing, only if one wishes to stay unaware of the forces in motion that may soon come to have maximum impact upon him. Yet it is more than a simple task to get one's hands on The Party Daily out here. No chance of keeping abreast of movements from the capital. While this periodical or "rag" is mandatory reading it is by and large nothing more than an epistle of self aggrandizement of which the party leaders take with the utmost seriousness. If one does not wish to ponder the passing thoughts of leader A, or leader B, or leader C, one can avoid reading this daily medicinal. But one does so at considerable risk. The Party is quite fond of springing the impromptu interrogation upon the unsuspecting, twisting them into pretzel shapes faster than you can say Fu Manchu. I for one do not miss this mandated newsprint. Though given our current situation and counterrevolutionary movements it serves best to care considerably as government thought and potential PLA motion are of dire consequence. It was not too long ago that the Black Death broke through the bounds of the cities and struck a short way down the road. Maybe five miles or less. This is as near next door as you get in the rural quarters. Yet to the peasant horde in these parts, the event may well have happened on Mars for all they care. Just something that affects the bourgeoisie city people and counterrevolutionaries, whom peasants call hanjian (Khotanese traitors). We are no concern of the peasantry, as we are people to whom they give wide berth. I believe they have heard the word from on high proclaiming the tenets of revolutionary theory whereby the true revolutionaries are the urban dwellers. Peasants are just the necessary annoying evil. The revolution waits for none least of all the backward ignorant peasants. Upon hearing these choice words, an invective if ever there was one, it is easy to understand why they consider something as unimportant as a silent vicious killer a problem for the "true revolutionaries" alone. In the view of the peasants the sooner the urbanites are snuffed out the better. Never were any use anyhow. In fact in the rural quarters the urbanites are known as the useless. So useless they do not know whether to plant, piss, or go blind. It is a clear alliance of disdain we share. For myself, I have nothing against the peasants. In a very real way, I am one of them. But as there are few opportunities to mingle in the day to day, it is just as easy to cross them off as "useless" as it is for them to do the same in regard. Truth be told, I rather admire them. The abilities they have due to necessity go a long way toward making one self sufficient. The old give a man a fish you feed him for a day, teach a man to fish you feed him for life. Anyway, this is our situation at present. Until recently my daily life was conjoined with the others in our group as we suffered the daily trials and tribulations of work, food, and politics, a pursuit that so colored our worlds we went numb from overload. At least I did. Some days I felt that if the load on my narrow shoulders got any heavier I would split down the middle and collapse in a heap. That never happened, but sometimes I wondered if it did happen how I would know. Sung Wu says I over think things. That I should just let things go and let life take control. I told her that was all well and good for a radical devil-may-care person like her, would that I could be. But I need a bit more assurance in my world, a careful balance I seek to keep in check. A matter of staying centered. The off-balance-out-of-kilter-world-spinning-into-a-titanic-vortex feeling does little to clear my vision. Maybe I over think things. Maybe. But that, like all things, is a matter of perspective. Purely subjective. I repeat this train of thought to Sung Wu and she tells me if I wish to talk trains she will train her foot toward my tender parts and race that train into Mount Hurts-Like-Hell. She is very visual and passionate, this has already been established. When I mention---since she brings up the topic---the recent encounters I have had with her nighttime feet in my face, she shrugs, looks away, smiles, and tells me I'm just jealous. If I don't look around me and see the fine young farmer's daughters that are out tilling and harvesting I should have my eyes examined by the Vision Ministry, she said. There was one, name of Jiang Shu jin, who in her humble opinion was as fine a thing as any man had a right to see. Too bad I was walking about with my head in the sand. Or up my ass. She thought I might have a chance with miss Jiang Shu jin. I listen to her hard edged spare no bitter details critique and ask her if maybe next time she saw this angelic creature she would point her out to me.

"Maybe, Chuli. If you're nice. Keep your stray-nighttime-feet-in-my-face comments to yourself."

"Just curious. Why do you think I of all people would have a chance with her? I may not see her as so wonderful. Maybe she is not my type."

Sung Wu shakes her head at me like I am just a silly little boy.

"Of course she's your type. Single, soft, cute and ripe. Seems a bit loose around the edges if you catch my meaning. Hold out your arms and she'll fall right in!"

Jiang Shu jin, With lips so red and luscious a lover's kiss would be fatally sweet, teeth white and shimmering as she smiled. Dark brown hair in no great abundance, always slipping out of its confinement and straggling, now on her forehead, and now on her shoulders, like wandering vines. The softest of brown eyes under long eyelashes; eyes that seemed to see everything in its gentlest aspect, eyes that could see no harm anywhere. A ready smile on the face and a smile in the form. Her shape yielded so easily at each movement that it seemed to smile as she walked. Her nose was a Royal Ann cherry, delicate enough to fit with the complexion, and distinctly upturned, in pixie fashion. The laughing lips, the laughing shape, and the eyes that melted so near to tears, the torn dress, the straggling hair, the tattered shoes, the un-mended stocking, the split straw hat, the mingled poverty and dreaminess, disappeared once you had the full untroubled gaze of those beautiful eyes. She was like water yielding to let a reed sway; like a singing flame rising and falling to a word, and even to an altered tone of voice. A word pushed her this way; a word pushed her that. Always yielding, sweet, and gentle, the most seductive of all characteristics in women.

She pinned her torn dress with a thorn torn from the bushes through which she had scrambled to the hayfield. Her rake caught in an ash-spray, and in releasing it she tore the bosom of her print dress. She dropped her rake on the hay, searched for a long, nail-like thorn, and thrust it through. Then, taking a May rose which pricked her finger, she put the flower by the tear, and went to join the rest of the haymakers. A red dot of blood stained her soft white cheek, for, in brushing back her hair with her hand, she forgot the wounded finger. With red blood on her face, a thorn and a rose in her bosom, and a hurt on her hand, she reached the chorus of rakers.

The farmer and the sun are the leading actors, and the haymakers are the chorus, who bear the burden of the play. At the hedge she took her place, the last in the row. There were five men and eight women; all noted her. The men teased her for being late again at work; she said it was so far to come. The women jeered at her for tearing her dress---she couldn't get through a thorn hedge right. There was only one thing she could do, and that was to make a fool of some fellow. Jiang Shu jin did not take much notice, except that her nervous temperament showed slight excitement in the manner she used her rake, turning the hay quickly, missing altogether, then catching the teeth of the rake in the creeping Alligator Weed. The women did not fail to tell her how awkward she was. In no time at all Jiang Shu jin bounced forward and with a flush on her cheek took the place next to the men. They teased her too, without malice. They laughed loudly, joked, but welcomed her; they chatted with her, compelled her to sip from their ale as they paused by the hedge. By noon there was a high color on her cheeks; the sun, the exercise, the repartee had brought it up.

Having been briefed by Sung Wu of the dazzling peasant beauty, I had to see for myself the truth of her words. Make no mistake. The girl/woman was stunning. Mesmerizing. A gaze so intoxicating one would gladly fall in never to return. Yet her beauty was of a soft, earthy nature, not the type of beauty that sends men running in fear. Hers was a very approachable mien. An aspect and demeanor that said "hello how are you" without saying a word. A veritable symphony of pleasant badinage. In a few short moments of covertly keeping my distance while maintaining a steady view, I had come to the same conclusion as Sung Wu. Yes she seemed soft and cute, not sure about _ripe_ , a bit loose around the edges, and maybe, just maybe, if I held my arms out she would fall in. But this conclusion discounts one critical factor: we are leaving today. So this seems a case of too little too late. As much as I would like to pursue Miss Jiang Shu jin, while I have the means and inclination, I just do not have the time. Literally. Not now. Not later. Our time, hers and mine, if we ever had one, is over before it started.

Anyway, this is not a romance, not a love story. It is a tale of disenfranchised people seeking to reclaim what they have lost in the most radical, ridiculous, quest for the capital. As if any amount of demonstration or attempted coup will work on an entrenched dictatorship. And let us not forget, there is the trifling matter of a torrentially deadly Black Death which by current accounting appears to be stalking us like a pack of rabid wolves. Speaking of which, I believe I read something about it being on the move toward the rural communities. Again. Something like, Black Death Takes Country Holiday. Amazing how wicked the tongues of our leaders when they speak not of their own fate. When it is time to water down and propaganda coat the news, their brush paints a wide swath of pomposity, disdain, condemnation, and mock sentimentality. The times, and rare they are indeed, when they paint their commentary with a mile wide swath of hilarity are confined to those dire events whose short fingers pose no threat to the anointed. So the rurals have been visited by pestilence again. On page two of our daily bread, is an informative article on the many pestilent strains of mammals, birds, fish, crustaceans, mollusks, fungi, wildlife diseases, and plants that have invaded our shores since the Foreign Devil landed here and infested our pristine Eastern lands in person and through replication of multifarious insidious strains of life from microscopic to mythical. They do not die they multiply. Today's topic is one near and dear to author Niupeng Liu's heart: Nematodes. Fostering a love/hate symbiosis for this particular vexation causes words to froth and bubble from his pen in pestilential zeal:

The North American Pinewood Nematode (Bursaphelenchus xylophilus) originated in North America and was firs found in Nanjing, Jiangsu Province in early 1980s. It is spread by longhorn beetles, whose larvae bore into pine wood. The nematodes can kill a pine tree within six months. During the 1980s, this pest nearly eliminated the extensive plantations of Horsetail Pine, a tree native to the Hong Kong region. It established many disease centers in Jiangsu, Anhui, Guangdong and Zhejiang, and spread to surrounding areas from these centers. Yet this particular desecration is nothing new. This vile undercover spy planted by the Foreign Devil continues to procreates in its filthy Western fashion. After ravaging our lands from the '80s through the '90s in the twentieth century, it continues to propagate at gargantuan pace threatening to strip our land and communities of its life force. While it would appear that after a span of over one century its pace may have slackened, to take this view is as shortsighted and polyannic as a Loba or Gaoshan and ignorant fandong .

We have been abundantly warned of the evils filtering into our chunjie lands. Reject the foreigner. Do not place faith in Foreign Devils. I, your humble servant, will persevere and continue to fight the battle. SERVE THE PEOPLE!

By his own account, his voice was declared to be the finest musical instrument ever heard. His eloquence was in turn majestic, fierce, playful, insinuating; his gesticulation natural, vivid, large, powerful. Self congratulatory zeal was near fanatic.

"If any one desires to know the leading and paramount object of my public life, the preservation of the Party will furnish him the key," he has said on many occasions.

He pronounced himself as above reproach since his Communist Party pedigree papers had been stored in a hermetically-sealed mayonnaise jar on Funk & Wagnall's porch. Many turned a blind eye to this claim while at the same time wondering out loud if he himself had been stored in a hermetically-sealed mayonnaise jar. Those who voiced such thoughts will be greatly missed.

Appointed Director of the Propaganda Department of the Communist Party of New Khotan Central Committee, he considers it his divine duty to bring us, the people, all the news we are deemed worthy of hearing. For communication he demands absolute clarity of language. This demand is ignored at grave peril. Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass, he echoes in mimicry of Chekhov. When he knows not what to say , what to lambaste, what to rage and scream about, he says anything that comes to mind, viewing this exhortation as the most irenic and pure unadulterated communication form as can be found. Directly from the synaptic jungles of his cerebral cesspool into our ready ears rendering us perpetually vomitous. It is not that anyone has anything bad to say in his regard. It is not that anyone has anything good to say in his regard. The less said in his regard the better for one's health. "Don't mess with the Director of the Propaganda Department or face exile to the frozen hinterlands!" he has repeated on many auspicious occasions. Immediately subsequent to this reiteration one or more citizens were never heard from again. We are told exile is the punishment. The facts convey a vastly different tale.

*****

My mind is addled by quim. If the day had not landed on me like a sumo wrestler I might feel more cheery. But today is opening day at the Sumo matches so they fell out of the sky on my head. This was beginning just like the day last year when I woke up on the wrong side of the bed in another city. Another city and someone else's bed.

Today we are to look to the moon for council and coordinate our moves with the sun. An ecologically deterministic day. Voices circle around me like a tightening noose. The words unintelligible and foreign. The rabbits are all for scattering with the winds and heading for the hills. The beaver inclined to move to the waterways. I have no preference or opinion as the moon and sun are silent. Yet the worms are making for deep earth in shimmering battalions. If the organizational capabilities of the worm were ours to command, we could perhaps reach consensus. Instead we confer and hover.

"Revolutionaries don't sit on the sidelines, they take action, they become the creative engine driving social change."

That sounded so right, so true, so full of the special blend of bravery and stupidity of which we were supposed to be possessed Yet lately all I see around me are scared bunnies diving for cover of deep hedge. Tonight we are lying low as we concocted our new strategy. More true to the point, we all awaited Sung Wu to tell us our new strategy. The glimmer of evening had begun its slow mesmerizing descent on our troubled horizon. Among the slow wavelength spectrum of light were a few scattered high wavelength colorations weaving through in knit-purl-stitch fashion, knitting in the round.

Culling is the process of removing individuals from a group based on specific criteria. For livestock and wildlife, culling usually implies the killing of animals with undesirable characteristics. Sung Wu informs us in her own special way that the Black Death is a culling of the human race. Only those with undesirable characteristics are killed. In effect, whoever was touched by the BD, as we now call it, deserved it. Easy as lemon arsenic pie. An opinion of this kind spoken with such clear authority alters her status. She is now a "person of interest".

Sung Wu does not shy away from attention. In fact it is on the wings of attention that she thrives.

"Our initial plan is to stay out of the elephants' way. Let them rage and thunder across the tundra. Ignore their bellowing horn blasts and gale force gusts. They are in control out here so we need to step aside. Our lives depend on it."

Since the epic wars, much has happened in the far reaching hinterlands of our once great nation. As people disappeared, areas were depopulated, animals moved in reclaiming their once exclusive domain. In this sense we are quite alike. Yet until today no one in our present company realized the extent of this animal invasion. Reports have filtered in through the Party Daily, always downplayed as insignificant events as if they were happening elsewhere, in a distant land. At the same time, we know there is very little in the way of "distant lands" as the combination of deadly wars and deadly sweeping viruses claimed the lives of most people in nations far and near. In one respect the remnant of our nation may be the last people on the planet. These postulations have crossed our paths in the past. But they were given no more mind, treated as noting more than the lunatic ramblings of insanity. Though looking around us today it appears a misapplication of the term lunatic has occurred. Clearly he who ignored advance warnings that our environment had undergone a drastic change is the quintessential lunatic. The entire planet, every grain, stone, belly crawling beetle part of it had gone straight from transcend to descend, had undergone a change of ownership. An alien domination no less severe than any that preceded it. Yet these "aliens" are none other than the selfsame animals we have long ago banished to subservient existence as display creatures. Existing solely for the viewing pleasure of whosoever wished. Tourists, citizens, mercenaries, flooded in from everywhere bringing with them a fresh array of the same questions and curiosities. These events were so ordinary as to be treated as a droning noise. Easy to ignore, easy to smear like so much salve into the surroundings. But today, given our present circumstance of toppled cityscapes, ravaged farmlands, obliterated histories, destruction of iconic structures and buildings, scorched earth in abundance, it is all to clear our vision was blurred by illusion. In the blink of a gnat's eye the time of man had been erased, wafting away like so much chalk dust. Yet even now, standing in the face of irrefutable truth belief hobbles in on crippled legs. One must crawl to walk. One does not walk to walk, no more thane one files to fly. So it follows that the legs of crawling youth fold and cause a face first fall into the searing sands, rewarding his efforts with flaming kiss from mother earth. The child may not soon try again.

Massive lumbering beasts out for a literal pachyderm pied-à-terre. The cantaloupe sized eyes piercing the murky skies stripping away chunks of sky in corrosive agent efficiency. These were not ordinary beasts of burden nor beasts of bestiary Benzedrine, but beasts whose mission was akin to a Thorazine shuffle through Lilliputian lands. Guided by a force unseen and of sinister intent. The landscape bent to the will of the shimmering light mutating into life forms unrecognizable outside of chemical lobotomy experimentations. Vegetable and mineral coalesced, assumed strange bent backed shapes more at home in mad scientist laboratories than open range expressionism. The world sputtered and sighed in shock and awe at what its horribly disfigured hands had wrought. The few remaining people watched in open mouthed terror as the pages of a fast eclipsing future tangled and snarled in predatory distemper as its apathy sharpened incisors sliced through the flesh of man, the weaker species. This was beyond anyone's remotest imaginings, chemical inspired or otherwise. The sky came tumbling down and Chicken Little was locked in a round room frantically seeking shelter of a secure corner. Geometry holds no hand in the new universal order. All was amorphous and chillingly animalistic. The cruel realities of incarnate Darwinism opened its mouth of rage curdling the blood of any in its path. When the curtains of sunset crash into the flame kissed horizon, the unholy union forged in the pits of Hell will bring forth the antigenic angel, its accumulation of random mutations significantly more powerful than any conceivable cure. The red blaze of man gives way in numb surrender to the blinding dawn of a master more cruel and intractable than the sea. Survival of the fittest was never displayed so clearly and efficiently as it was today when we beheld the future unfolding before us in ungainly fashion, unconcerned with its rude intrusion, unsympathetic to its quivering prey. With each thick gray and brown streaked hide, wrinkled but impenetrable, comes a monster as steady and resolute as it is vicious and unstoppable. When the rumbling earth jars loose our brains igniting synapses into a delirious dervish, it is not the heaving earth we feel but a lumbering leviathan beyond any that Ahab could ever hope to subdue. _To the last I grapple with thee; from hell's heart I stab at thee; for hate's sake I spit my last breath at thee._ His fire worshipping dark shadow Fedallah, long on prophecy but short on speculation, declines comment on this latest abomination.

Perched atop a low elevation sand hill, I watched in safety as the animal kingdom unleashed its fury on the placid landscape. Vegetation once invasive and omnipresent was smashed and mangled under pummeling peds. Even from a distance, thick and opaque billows of dust enveloped me, choking me in its fury, the granular remnants of past sins and omissions swirling into my face, conveying the palpable taste of deadly poison, the lingering reminders of atrocities from the first centuries of the Monarchical Period to the present. My heart sunk lower than low as I reflected upon the mess we had made of things, how the immutable laws of karma were applying their circular revenge, how even now with the stampeding elephant herds thundering through our midst it was made abundantly clear, through silent confirmation, that this was only the prelude to something unspeakable.

A man driving what looked like a bastardized conglomeration of mismatched junkyard parts rolled through the elephantine drag dust with a bright yellow banner proclaiming FLEE TO FREEDOM trailing behind him. Among the surreal and terrifying setting this fossil fuel injection of sardonic humor, if it was in fact an attempt, contrasted as sharp as a guillotine sweep. Like a Kabuki theater, each actor playing his part in an intricately choreographed ballet, the scene developed straight through three acts, hammering the point home with a grandly satisfying finish. This was life with a breath of honeyed sunshine. A day of infamy that would live into posterity. Ajouelle be damned.

Overhead, the sun blazing wastefully and thanklessly through a rarefied atmosphere; underfoot the hot, black clay, thirsting for spring rain, bare except for coarse tussocks, and the woody stubble of close-eaten salt-bush; an austere synonymy between sky and earth.

Mile after mile of scorched earth, till the dark boundary of the scrub country disappeared northward in the glassy haze, and in front, southward, the level black-soil plains mark a straight skyline, broken here and there by a monumental clump or pine-ridge. And away beyond the horizon, southward still, the geodesic curve carries that monotony across the zone of salt-bush, scrub, and swamp box; across into infinity. From my perspective it appeared the rampaging herd was racing like lemmings to certain death over promontories invisible and intractable. Having finally settled into an uneasy peace with the unexpected wildlife invasion, I was utterly unprepared for the halting wails, screams, sound of crunching bone that accompanied the most rampant display of genocide I had ever seen. From the north a wide black tide swept over the landscape making for the herd as one by one it overcame the charging beasts rendering them immobile as a vaporizing disintegration took hold. The stalwart and powerful beasts at first tried to resist, storming ahead as if only clear sky and ground lay ahead. But the empathetic and mothering actions of these immense and noble beasts was no match for the Black Death, a predator to end all predators, a sight so horrid and terrifying as to induce catatonia, an overwhelming numbness that rendered all limbs and mobility impossible. Evidently the plague had made it to the farthest reaches of the continent, at least as much of the continent as I was aware of. Like a slow motion replay I watched in shock and awe as the herd fell. If even the leviathan elephant was no match for this deadly strain, what chance did man have except illusory. The elephant has one of the most closely knit societies of any living species. Only death or capture can separate Elephant families. Elephants as well are the only other species other than humans and Neanderthals known to have a ritual around death. They show a keen interest in the bones of their own, even bones of those many years long before their time. They are often seen gingerly investigating the bones with their trunks and feet, the agility and dexterity of a surgeon, remaining very quiet in a touching state of elegant reverence. The present state of mass elephantine death I had just witnessed precluded the possibility of any future bone collection investigations. All that remained were a few massive black pools and the nauseating memory of their passing. Having now witnessed with my own eyes the sheer power of this virulent pathogenic strain, I shivered from hair follicle to toe tips with a certain knowledge that not only was the BD following us, it had within its destructive force the power and ability to render our pathetic plans of building a new world not worth the brain power it consumed.

I mourned as if the loss was my own. Yet my solitudinous grieving was not to remain unmolested. In the misty haze of distance, I saw a figure ambling along as if on walkabout, lackadaisically making its way through the liquefied remains, pausing and stopping, studying the scene with keen intent. Of all the oddities this day had brought me in touch with this latest was perhaps the sin qua non. It was strange. It was unconscionable.

It was Sung Wu out for a stroll.

Seeing her waltzing through the slaughter grounds brought me a sense of overpowering shame, an arctic slap that caused my stomach to roil. Maybe it was the stark contrast of joyful life among miserable death that struck so strong a chord. Or maybe it was the simple way she meandered along like a gamboling pixie in an enchanted garden. But most likely it was the simple realization that Sung Wu was twice the man I would ever be, a true leader, a rock as strong as granite. A person who could look death in the eye and sneer with a smile. The scene, the sights, the sounds, the smells, had sickened me to the quick. Yet here she was as if unaffected, happy to be out on a mild spring day. There was of course the possibility that she had no clue what had just transpired. I had the luxury or misfortune of front row seats. She may have been out picking flowers for all I knew, may be blissfully ignorant on the subject of the recent genocide. And at that moment I wished for her the escape of not knowing. Some things are too horrible to see. Some things cannot be un-seen. What I had just witnessed would haunt me long into the dizzying future. It was a particular something I did not wish to recount at any time for any reason.

"Did you see that? It was awesome," Sung Wu yelled from across the divide, her hand waving wildly as if flagging me down.

"What? The buzzards?"

"No silly. The herd. The massive larger than twelve kingdoms herd. They went down like ice on a hot wok."

"I was trying to forget. Thanks for reminding me."

"Oh, come on. You're not upset about this, are you?"

"Death tends to affect me like that."

"Not me. It excites me. Really excites me."

Some people are terrified and stricken numb when trauma strikes. Others carry on as if ignorant. Still others like Sung Wu find the intense traumatic event eminently liberating and energizing. Like a potent orgasmic crescendo.

"I'm sorry for you, Sung Wu."

"No need for sorrow. Death is a time to celebrate life." Her voice was pitched higher today for some reason, a difference on the order of modulating up from a C to a C#, eyes aglow with inner fire, cheeks rosy ripe as cherries, she was the picture of fecundity.

"I propose we honor the recent dead by going behind that outcropping and making like bunnies. A few joyful sighs will certainly chase away the gloom goblins."

Now one would think that such a proposition would be met with whoops of joy and disbelief followed by a quick retreat to the place of her choosing. One would think such a thing with good reason. Except when the context is so out of synch with present circumstances it strikes the ear with a dull thud, churns the stomach in a sea of bile. We had always had an odd alliance her and me, an alliance that was outwardly defined by asynchronous unity. And truth be told the incumbent oddities comprising all things Sung Wu were typically easy to digest, easy to understand, often easily dismissed. But after what had just transpired the furthest thoughts from my mind were those of sexual intertwining. Yet from her perspective it was as right as rain. A natural progression. A fitting conclusion. She stood with arms akimbo pressuring me with her powerful allure and flaming eyes.

"Egg in the oven waitin for lovin, Chuli."

"I do not think---"

"Don't think. Just act."

"This is not right. This is not---

"Take my hand little boy. The future beckons," she cooed, taking my hand and leading me away. And at her touch as if drugged, her magic overpowered my senses, granting me a glorious glimpse through her eyes where the world made perfect sense, like a long unfinished puzzle that had suddenly received its missing piece. Life moves in circular fashion and the revolving riddle of disconnected actions was shown to be intimately connected in ways inconceivable but entirely plausible. We are on the move, elephants are on the rampage, they die, we go on. Totally Darwinian, viciously animal but no more than the natural order. Even at the karmic level it made sense. An entirely parallel juxtaposition where one particular probability jumped the rail canceling the other. A larger force was at work while we were merely pawns in the universal match. Perhaps the elephants had to die for no other reason than to save us from dying. With the Black Death in close proximity any living creature was fair game.

My mind was immediately clearer than it perhaps had ever been. While at the same time a fear simmered within me that by putting myself in Sung Wu's command I was heading into worlds more terrifying and taboo annihilating than I had ever known. Sung Wu; my angel of ascension my devil of desecration.

Danger awaits us but it is danger that excites us.

SEX SCENE INTERLUDE...

*****

The most peaceful times in this journey of raging discontent were the evenings, moist, still, still and moist, twitterings, creakings, occasional chirpings, a full array of nature's symphonic performers. Lying back eyeing the stars was a precursor to deep breathing and vibrant lucid dreaming. Yet this particular evening had been earmarked as one of deep reflection potential redirection where concerned all matters Sung Wu.

With her tidal shifts bringing all around her to the brink of suicide the effect on me was enormously outside the typical. If she came down hard on you, crawl away and lick your wounds only to return for an encore performance. This in and of itself was difficult enough. Balancing this was the ever present possibility of scintillating overtures of which she was abundantly blessed. Her charismatic powers were unequaled. But it seemed that a special assignment had been given me quite against my knowledge and certainly beyond my will.

I was beginning to feel left out, lost, not present for administration of this thing called my life. She waved her little finger, pressed on my hands, and led me away into choreographed debauchery entirely on command. This was definitely not a strategy in the Art of War.

I wanted only to experience some portion of this madness as my own, not by accident or bad luck or whim of Sung Wu but as choice, freely made; I wanted a purge, a flushing out of the corners, primitive sacrament if necessary, so that when I returned the apartment would be merely an apartment again, neutral objects arranged between four neutral walls, everything solid as pond ice in January, no cracks, no holes, no temporal doom, and maybe, just maybe, a simple unprogrammed muscle of my soul wanted simply to exercise itself and do those things in the flesh that one was doing anyway abstractedly and on paper because one guy went crazy and some nights the people cried until dawn and maybe Sung Wu was a fool and I kept dreaming of fire in the mountains and friends and now elephants got killed and what else was there to do anyway?

You're helping me keep my equilibrium, Chuli, helping me keep my equilibrium. This was her way of explaining her treatment of me as a man whore. And while this may seem objectively like an unbelievable stroke of luck, subjectively it spun me into tormented self condemnations I never new existed. This evening I was invoking the power of the ancients to steer the Black Death in my direction thus putting me out of my misery. It should have been me. Should have been me. No matter what illusory clarity I may have had on the subject yesterday, I know as sure as I am sitting here that the black tide was making for me but was interrupted by the elephant herd. Then Sung Wu appeared out of nowhere and deconstructed my world once more leading me into defilement galore. The things she demanded I do to her I would never do to any person, less yet a woman, yet as if a zombie to her will I carried out her orders unfailingly. The things she introduced me to I had long ago read about and these publications are now banned. The devil of my desecration indeed. One who has done these things does not deserve to live. Yet I remain a testament to all that is wrong and corruptible. After last night's debaucheries it became clear to me that Sung Wu is the most demented and tormented soul I know. To be caught in her vortex swirl is to descend into the pits of a Hell beyond the wildest imagining. Why she singled me out for this mission of equilibrium retention is beyond me. There are certainly more able and willing, even among our revolutionary ranks, who would welcome her feminine attentions under any circumstances, more so on command. My feelings for her are deep and long preexisting, this is true, but of late I am not sure I ever knew who the real Sung Wu was. I have always had unflinching faith in her abilities. But suddenly I see a side of her abilities that paint legendary sexual deviants in a new and kinder light. Step aside, amateurs, the true master has arrived.

Ah spring, gentle breeze. The sun kisses its children and pats them on their bottoms. The day ebbs slowly along. A film in slow motion. A picture befitting benediction. The croaking frog. The chirping tanager. The burrowing beaver. All engaged in the business of bucolic living. The lights shift, changing as a rumble of clouds passes overhead. A snort, a grunt, a bellowing cry. Then black. Overwhelming black. A silence so complete it deafens. A creeping. A crawling. An exploding blast. The increasing volume of a rushing tide. And suddenly wails and crunching limbs as elephants fall one by one, an entire herd rendered as livestock carcasses, smelted by a roaring black death.

Waking with a start my freedom from this night terror is complete. For the time. After this I needed to smoke a joint so I took out my pipe and smoked a few bowls. I am certain that this nightmare will return in instant horrific replay, jolting me to attention, reminding me that death is the great equalizer, even elephants cry, that this visitation is symbiotically bonded to me as a steady companion. Until eclipsed by the next one, if I am so anointed.

O, death where is thy sting.

Events may overrun man leaving him a panting, helpless, anachronism. I remembered reading this in an old quotations collection, bringing to mind current circumstances. Some days felt a productive leap forward. Others a distressing plunge backwards. It may be that events overran us long ago. It may very well be that the contemptible future we strove in fear to avoid had arrived and overtaken us entirely without advance knowledge. Recently all had seemed a living embodiment of the cautionary "Better the devil you know than the one you do not."

But I digress.

There are bigger matters at hand, larger landscapes with which to contend. Ours had indeed become a struggle against insurmountable forces, a three headed gorgon of mythic proportions. The trek conceived in a fevered rush had now in a matter of easily squandered time taken us from the southernmost reaches of our country to somewhere northwest precise location unknown. The eyes of enthusiasm were swiftly giving way to tears of unbelief, thoughts of retreat, soul rending battles of will, leaving hollowed out shells where before were comrades, like the empty aphid shells caused by the Parasitic wasp.

The parasitic wasp deposits an egg inside the body of the aphid. The egg hatches into a larva that consumes the aphid, leaving only an empty shell. With this army of the soulless we were nothing more than empty shell zombies, wandering aimlessly in search of some vague unseen thing.

Ants can be devastating to a garden. They protect detrimental insects, primarily the aphid and mealy bug. Ants love the honeydew excreted by these insects and will attack any other insect that threatens this supply. At one time Sung Wu played ant queen to our aphid troops. Now our numbers were infested with parasitic wasps, rendering the once unified front a besieged fortress. Wherefrom the wasp invasion emanated none could be sure. Yet the seeds of doubt so long ago sown may have produced an early harvest of bitter fruit.

"So which way are we commanded to go now?"

"We follow the sun. The orders are simple therefore easily understood."

"But shouldn't we be told something like, "Forward to Tangiers, Make for the hills," a clear image that we can grasp."

"Orders are not democratic. They are commands that must be carried out."

"I'm not saying we all should have a say, I'm just saying it gets harder and harder to follow commands when it is unclear whether our CO is of sound mind."

"Those kind of words can get you killed, Xiadong.

This type of conversation, the general slant and cadence, was becoming more and more frequent. If Sung Wu were in ear shot, the troops would go mum, still and silent, silent and still. Everyone was afraid of her. Why this would be was difficult to discern. She had never done anything outright threatening, as far as I know, but when she was around everyone walked on rice paper. Maybe there were some private sinister meetings I was unaware of. Or maybe she had dragged a few of them off as she had me and they now see her in a new terrifying light. "What kind of woman DOES those things?" the thought would go. To assume she did not satisfy her equilibrium balancing from multiple sources would be a dangerous assumption to make. I for one had been down this road before, been told in not so many words, "I take what I want when I want." Assume nothing with Sung Wu. It is the safest bet.

So as dissension set in our progress was reduced to a constipated snail's pace. Some of the troops had even voiced a desire the leave the group entirely and strike out on their own. But these are only words. No action to that effect had at this point happened. Although, on second thought, it seems a few of the elderly crowd were conspicuously absent. Under the present circumstances a silent slip away was the best course of action. A true Art of War approach. A case of Xiaorendezhi: Small people finally grab their chance, the triumph of the little man. We have become so institutionalized sneaky behavior is the only way. If our troops were indeed thinning, only a roll call would bear it out. Though activities such as roll call were considered too authoritarian for our revolutionary ethic. An entire contradiction.

From the dawn of time, China's history is a story of an immense land with several diverse tribes. It is also one of migrations and conflict, and separation and fusion of cultures. The product of the intermingling of many tribes, the Han people were among the first to settle down and develop an agrarian society. As their culture flourished, the more contempt they felt for the migrant hunter-gatherers that lay just beyond the horizon. We may be experiencing nothing more than an undetected belching of the tribes, a separatist tug creating a wide breach. The Xioaxiang people, a close descendant to the Han, were represented in at least a small fraction of our group. Old habits die hard. Ancient rooted distrust lingers in the present. We press forward in denial of dissension.

To hold a man a woman has to appeal to the worst in him. Under the glass portcullis of a crumbling theatre I stood, watching the first great drops of rain splatter down and flatten to dark stains on the sidewalk. The air became gray and opalescent; a solitary light suddenly outlined a window over the way; then another light; then a hundred more danced and glimmered into vision. Under my feet a thick, iron-studded skylight turned yellow; in the street of some distant city the lamps of taxi-cabs were sending out glistening sheens along the already black pavement. The unwelcome rain had perversely stolen the day's last hour and pawned it with that ancient fence, the night.

The rain brings with it somber reflection, a thin chill of nightfall. The last light fades and drifts across the land-the low, long land, the sunny land of spires; the ghosts of evening tune again their lyres and wander singing in a plaintive band down the long corridors of trees; pale fires echo the night from tower top to tower: Oh, sleep that dreams, and dream that never tires, press from the petals of the lotus flower something of this to keep, the essence of an hour.

No more to wait the twilight of the moon in this sequestered vale of star and spire, for one eternal morning of desire passes to time and earthy afternoon. Here, Heraclitus, did you find in fire and shifting things the prophecy you hurled down the dead years; this midnight my desire will see, shadowed among the embers, furled in flame, the splendor and the sadness of the world.

Today we mainly did nothing. Did nothing under the guise of attempting to do something, a something that never did materialize until we realized night was crushing down on us, chill was racing through our brittle bones, eyes were tired of the vicious landscape. Sitting in silent ruminations, I feel the wear of hardship heavy years bear down on my battered brow, lending a certain palpable poignancy to the mundane. Ducks scatter about in search of food but come up empty so float in ponds of starvation. Even the birds at once abundant and enriching of days have vanished into another sphere where dreams hold sway instead of crawling into cold corners where they submit and die. The world is bleak as decease. Decimation its ruling force. I had thought our path was the way to go. The only way. That within our revolutionary dreams we would find salvation, not just for our country, but for the world. We have fervently followed these dreams through unending hardships and even long imprisonments. But ultimately these dreams have led us astray. Now we await certain annihilation by an unknown and unseen agent.

Meanwhile, our CO is rapidly losing touch with her contingency, carrying on as if no other vision but her own holds redemption within its granite hands. And at one time, we believed this too, we all did. But over time as progression gave way to digression, regression, suppression, obsession, the smooth veneer of divination has flaked off in jagged chunks of tooth-white yellow, leaving behind a creature devoid of humanity. A creature so fully transfigured as to be unrecognizably human.

This is Sung Wu.

All hail Sung Wu.

Upon her swaying shoulders our future depends.

Large posters have been the way of our troops as we amble along our ad hoc pathways. At key points along the way we leave behind huge posters telling of our progress and laying out our programs for social reform. Each one is stamped with the names of our two top leaders: Sung Wu. Stories have spread from village to village of the arrival of two very powerful leaders, Sung and Wu, so to the minds of people all over New Khotan these two had blended into one superhero. Yet all along it had only been one, Sung Wu. The cult of personality had long ago sunk its fickle teeth into our tiger hides, making a hero larger than life. The narrow shoulders of Sung Wu appeared to be holding the weight. For the most part. Other times, the truth was bore out of the appellation our troop was branded with long ago: tiger skins. Events not at all related to us were appointed to us by default.

Walking through town, I saw a procession of men shuffling along with their ankles roped together.

"Who are they," I asked a young boy playing shuttlecock in the doorway of his mud house.

"New soldiers," he said. He told me the revolutionaries swept down on nearby villages and grabbed whomever they wanted and carried them away.

"But the revolutionaries are nowhere to be seen and there are dozens of these country boys," I pointed out. "Why do they not just escape?"

He shrugged. "Revolutionaries wear tiger skins," he said, meaning best not to fool with them.

So we are the tiger skin squad, alternately heroes and devils depending on the winds. Crimes would be committed, even serious ones, and there were often no hearings, no trials, no punishment. There was no law---only power. Soon after we arrived there were stories told of revolutionaries sweeping through the villages, taking all the women they wanted. For small change they would even buy and trade virgins. No one dared resist. The revolutionaries wear tiger skins. This was a phrase I would hear repeated again and again. To these people, and in no small way to all village people, we were lascivious devils roaming the land in search of women to rape. A very distressing state of affairs. But Sung Wu was unflustered at these disclosures.

"Use your brain, Chuli. We do not do these things. Never have, never will. It is only too clear that the PLA is sweeping through disguised as revolutionaries to drag our name down. These villagers don't know how to tell the difference. You are what you say you are. But things are not as they appear to those of the tiger skin squad."

"So the matter of raping their women goes along with boys being captured and forced into military service, right?"

Sung Wu ran her hands through her voluminous hair and nodded.

"Yes. The government is scared and have already been here looking for us. But to these villagers, they feel that they must have displeased us on our last visit so they are terrified. Did you notice all the skinny half-starved young girls being pushed out of sight into their houses? These people are petrified we will go on a lust rampage again. But this is not all bad," she said, smirking, "We can use this fear to our advantage; use it to acquire more weapons, provisions, and personnel. If we encounter resistance, we will threaten them with lao hu deng"

Lao hu deng, the tiger bench, is like a medieval torture chamber rack used to stretch or break a body. We had seen it along with other similar torture devices strewn about the main square. They seemed in good repair meaning they are still in use. No doubt another gift or reminder left by the PLA during their visit posing as us. Her method is to use threat of this device to get what we want from them. I did not know if she realized that resorting to methods so barbaric made us no better than the government we opposed. She would probably say we had no intention of using the tiger bench as anything more than a threat. Which sounded plausible until you stopped to realize that since the villagers were already scared of us, why double up on the terror quotient? To the multidimensional perspective of Sung Wu the end justified the means. I would not bother to point out that this tack was also Machiavellian, a name not associated with compassion.

"Only to be employed in extreme cases with the lao bai xing, the common people of the village. It is my hope we do not need to use it..."

"But?"

"We will if needed."

I felt sick. The means we are choosing to achieve our utopian end bear the seeds of destruction from the start. The original sin of our program is its premise that repression would be necessary against "a tiny handful of class enemies" to create a perfect society. With this bright promise we lull otherwise good people into cooperating with this repression. In a very real way we were becoming the enemy we sought to rout.

Onward, noble revolutionary, the future is bright, gold and sausages will rain from the sky. Prosperity awaits us all.

*****

Months have passed. Despite the many stops along our circuitous route, it seems we are making great progress in our quest. Each day we draw closer to our destination. Each night we drink and dance and share ourselves with each other in celebration of our victory. A victory we accept as a day to day reality. The power is all in our minds. Control is entirely ours.

"To envision ourselves as victors is to become victors in reality," Sung Wu reminds us. "Manifest destiny."

The spoils of this war we are engaged in are taken bit by bit as grains of rice. Not waiting for a full bowl we greedily lap up each solitary grain, surviving on this meager sustenance. Using our newly acknowledged fear factor we have made great gains in artillery, provisions, and personnel. In so many ways it appears the battle is over. But in truth it never ends. As the intoxicating headiness fills our emptiness, we are brought to a view where all possibilities are certain probabilities. We operate from a standpoint of no law, only power. And with our power we take what we want. Maybe we have run afoul of our best interests. Maybe. As drunken debauchery rules no one asks this question.

No one dares.

To consolidate their hold on power, the government is determined to destroy us, drive us further and further into the remote provinces of the north. As we flee from their pursuit, we leave behind huge posters telling of our progress and laying out our programs for social reform. This makes us an ever present spear in their sides. Villagers along the way are inspired by our movement and join us with greater and greater frequency. The size of our troops has easily tripled. Accommodating this many becomes a constant source of concern. But our problems are easily solved as our perception as "the good guys" permeates the country. Villages accept us with heroes' welcomes when we arrive. They offer us food, shelter, women. The food and shelter we accept unquestioned. The women we accept case by case. Children parade around in mock revolutionary garb, toting rifles across their shoulders and screaming threats to the enemy. Watching them at play is wonderfully soothing and instructive theater. This is how they see us. The Robin Hoods of the people. It is no wonder they accept us with open arms.

Yet it is a precarious balance we must keep between what we say and what we do. To falter on the side of questionable tactics could just as quickly turn the sugar tide into a poison tsunami. We are judged through acute eyes where nothing escapes notice. In a very real way we earn the trust of the people moment by moment.

An article in this morning's edition of The Party Daily, epitomizes the general tenor of the people. Chian Qinghai, a man heavily in debt, had been contemplating suicide on a bridge in southern Khotan for hours when a passerby came up, shook his hand---and pushed him off the ledge. Chian fell 26 feet (8 meters) onto a partially inflated emergency air cushion laid out by authorities and survived, suffering spine and elbow injuries.

The passerby, 62-year-old Lai Ginseng, had been fed up with what he called Chian 's "selfish activity." Traffic around the Xaizhu Bridge in the city of Yuangzhou had been backed up for five hours and police had cordoned off the area.

"I pushed him off because jumpers like Chian are very selfish. Their action violates a lot of public interest," Lai was quoted as saying. "They do not really dare to kill themselves. Instead, they just want to raise the relevant government authorities' attention to their appeals."

Lai volunteered to talk Chian down but was turned away by police. Lai then broke through the cordon, climbed to where Chian sat, greeted him with a handshake, then pushed.

Photos showed Lai, shoeless and in a T-shirt, saluting after Chian fell.

At any given moment, we could metaphorically be the unfortunate Chian. The people could likewise turn on us and be the brash and crotchety old Lai Ginseng, heroes today, losers pushed off a bridge tomorrow. Fame is fleeting and cruel.

As we move north we will pass through many areas, some more and more inhospitable by degrees. At each our objective and obstacles are the same. Our next stop is a place that when our land went by the name China, was described in most unwelcoming terms:

Qinghai Province is a cold, inhospitable region of poverty, barren plateaus and deserts. Located in the far northwest of China, this huge area, around 720,000 square kilometers, is about one hundred times the size of the Municipality of Shanghai, with only one third of its population. The province is notable for the prison and labor camps that hold some of China's most hardened criminals and political prisoners.

Not a place one would venture to willingly. Yet ironies be damned, we will do just that. Even the journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step, says the ancient proverb. The proverb does not elaborate to address what may happen when the first step is the last step into destruction. When revolutionary types, essentially enemies of the ruling government plot their path, they are best to avoid traveling by or near barren plateaus, deserts, and within close proximity to prisons and labor camps. Each of these is deleterious in its own peculiar way. Of course the governmental forces who are hot on our tail would love us to save them the trouble of carting us into the incarceration facilities by dancing around the fire as it were and going there of our own volition. Like the mouse scurrying in front of the cat. We have no intention of making things easier for them. But I have a bad feeling about being so close to areas we wholeheartedly wish to remain outside of by maintaining a visitor only status. I think these thoughts, I puzzle over these thoughts, I suffer physical ills over these thoughts, but it is to no avail. I will never speak these thoughts.

"I was just thinking, you know, not really planning just thinking, that maybe we would do best to alter our route and give a wide berth to the area known as Rock Hammer Province. Veer east maybe."

Sung Wu squinted hard at me, looking me up and down in appraisal.

"No telling what goes through that little brain of yours, Chu. I'm the CO here, the one in charge. Yet here you are giving me advice as to what we should be doing as if your opinion matters. If I want your opinion I will give it to you. All the calculations have been made, plans hatched, everything in motion. The strategic advantages of this plan I do not have the desire to elaborate upon with you. Why? Because I am the CO, you are simply a friend, confidante, command performance lover. Now, these roles are important. No doubt. But they should never, NEVER, be confused with being an officer. Were it my choice alone, Chuli, I would perhaps have appointed you as an officer. But I have concluded that the roles you fulfill, WHEN you fulfill them, are far more crucial to our overall success than any an officer alone can provide. That being said---"

She nuzzled up close to me, looked me straight in the eyes, and grasped my wrist.

"Momma has needs. Needs must be addressed. Like a barking dog must be quelled."

Once again I was falling into her eyes, under her spell, as if she was a lady vampire and I was her prey. Why is appointing me as officer not your choice alone I wanted to ask. Why not yours alone. Yet these thoughts were slowly drifting into the background as a tsunami wave of passion overpowered them.

"Our talk has put my kettle on the boil, Chuli. It's tea time!"

*****

Important news, Society, Olympic Games, Economy, Recreation, Sports, Negotiable Securities, Automobiles, Education, Real Estate, Marriage Seekers. Today the numbing effect of the party headlines seem a necessary antidote to the night's activities. The quandary and perplexity of life continues to mount.

And still, the mystery that is Sung Wu multiplies exponentially. Still she calls me away to tend to her needs, no discernible thought given as to whether or not they are in accord with my own. Mine is to produce on command without question. I am at once paramour and abused spouse though I am neither. Between these poles does my world revolve. I see, said the blind man. It was only today I discovered that our group, dubbed The Separatists by The Party Daily, has its own newspaper in circulation, Sweeping Daily, stealthily kept by newsboys at the bottom of their bags. This paper kept directly underneath its competition, Mopping Up Daily, a reference to the PLA's campaign against us, The Separatists. Evidently we are having an ongoing war of words. When Sung Wu admonished me telling me I was not an officer so clam up, she was also telling me in the subtext that much is happening of which I know nothing of. It causes me to wonder how many in our ranks already know about this. At least a few on the production team. Is this not a topic of note, one to rally the troops? She has been a busy little beaver, no pun intended. I on the other hand have been a complacent mushroom, kept in the dark and fed shit. There is no amount of aggression or self pity to remedy this. Having been in a sense "incarcerated" for so long, I am well institutionalized and will do as I am told. Better by any measure than being with the PLA, easily recognizable by their large eyes, flat noses and tattooed bodies. At the same time I am too old to make the ranks of newsboy. They travel in packs and are easily recognizable; dirty, barefoot, pint-sized guttersnipes. Still, these potentialities aside my lot is not so tragic.

At least I am noticed...occasionally.

This brings up another topic. We have never discussed our secret allegiance, our night tangos, leaving everything as if up to fate. Therefore, nothing as mundane as "contraception" has been discussed. Maybe part of her plan? If I submit to her enough, she will get pregnant. If she gets pregnant she will become moody. As she progressively gets moodier the moon swallows the sun, the sky falls down and the world goes bonkers. Nobody needs her any moodier than she already is. Especially yours truly. And let us not forget baby. A baby?

How this could assist our plans makes no sense.

Of course, babies in her case may be impossibility. Would explain in part why she is so reckless as regards prevention. It seems that for officers dread of sullied reputations do not influence sexual behavior. Especially when that behavior is extreme. Although this behavior is something she takes care to conceal. Out of sight out of mind? Creating another entanglement. Our little secret, our Tuoyi wu. If I were to broach the subject, she would probably romanticize her description as is her wont and say that our relationship is more along the lines of yuanfen. From my perspective it is more along the lines of "cavewoman dragging caveman by the hair back to their cave to have her way with him."

Needing to clear my mind, I decided to take a walk around camp. The sun was just beginning its gradual melt, creeping over the unending horizon. In this light anything seemed possible. The tangerine hued light bathing all with brilliance. It may be that only a new perspective was needed. I hoped this post traumatic stroll would provide it.

"There he is," bellowed a disembodied voice. "Hey, Li. Come over here. We'd like to talk with you."

I was caught off guard as no one ever calls me Li, but I could see by the riveting eyes, five pair of riveting eyes, and the hands waving me over that the disembodied voice was speaking to me.

The guy who called me over, I believe his name is Chingdong, is a large, menacing looking character, more Sumo than anything. Which typically was of little interest. Except at this moment. As soon as I was within reach, he grabbed me by the shoulders and dragged me behind some large monstrous boulders where four other equally large guys waited.

"Uhm, I do not---"

"Understand, shit head? You don't understand?" Chingdong shaking his head.,

I nodded.

"He does not understand, men."

The others began laughing.

"No, I really do not." Their collective tone and crazy eyed looks were scaring me.

"Well, it's like this. Engaging our CO in distractions is against Article 1.2 in the Revolutionary Rule book. Engaging our CO in distractions of a sexual nature is not only against Article 1.2 but also Article 1.3, which states 'to do so imperils the mission.'"

"But I---"

"Listen up, shit head. Now, distracting the CO is a minor offense. But distracting our CO sexually makes our CO's head all fuzzy with impure and unproductive thoughts. Impure and unproductive thoughts that THREATEN OUR MISSION!"

This talk had digressed into interrogation. One where for whatever reason I was being assailed by men I cannot recall ever seeing before. And with the fever pitch at which emotion was escalating I feared for my life. I had to throw myself at their mercy and appeal to them, grovel.

"Okay. I admit that the...CO and I...have been together in the way you describe. But this was not my idea, it was hers. All hers. And anyways---"

My words were cut off as the laughter now came louder, fiercer, more loaded with ill portent than the preceding. It was a laughter that told me it was time to run. I crab walked to the side and tried to flee, but the next thing I knew I was trying to dodge Chingdong's fist as he made for my face. His fist connected and knocked me to cold rubble filled ground. My knees jammed into sharp stones. My mouth tasted of iron. The punch had drawn blood.

But this was just the warm up act.

Two of the men pulled me to my feet and pinned my arms behind my back. Chingdong paced in front of me.

He came to a stop in front of me and stared me down with eyes of simmering rage.

"On top of everything else you attempt to impugn the CO. You pathetic slime!"

His fist plowed into my solar plexus taking my breath.

"For your crimes against the CO, and by extension this revolution, you are sentenced to citizens' castration."

"What?" I squeaked.

"Citizens! Drop his trousers!"

My knees began shaking uncontrollably as two pair of massive hands tore at my belt, my trousers, nearly shredding them off me. I was shaking so violently they kept yelling at me "Hold still, you're not making this any better." But this only increased my fear as they moved methodically along, going about their business with a grim efficiency that lent a steady terror to the proceedings. Their objective was achieved. My trousers pooled around my ankles.

They must be kidding, I thought. They're just trying to scare me for some reason.

"Men, unsheathe your knives!!!"

A buzzing began in my ears as truth struck hard. My shoulders tensed up. Cold steel touched my balls! I thrashed in futile effort once more as hands gripped me harder. I have to get away! I have to get away! This thought repeated in pulsating echo. Sweat poured off my forehead burning my eyes. My sight went black. My legs crumbled.

I went blind.

I went limp.

I went deaf...

*****

Floating away. Clouds giving way to sky. Sky giving way to stars. Stars giving way to the universe. Planets spiraled by. Shooting stars sizzled across the black expanse. I was disembodied and at blissful peace. Death is not so bad. Death is a friend.

Snap!

Silence gave way to powerful sunlight shooting through my eyes jolting me awake. I shook my head and looked around me. Trying to recall how I got here. I recalled only darkness. Pain. Vicious laughter. Then it hit me like a meteor.

My balls!

I frantically reached down and felt around down there. Everything seemed to be in order. It could not be a dream. It all felt so real.

Then a familiar giggle spun my head around.

"Everything okay Chuli? Or maybe you're just touching yourself for pleasure. Not very polite with a LADY present."

Now it made sense. She had done this. She had sicked those animals on me.

"What is wrong with you, Sung Wu?! You sent those missing link men to me! You terrified me on purpose I don't know why! You...you..." I squeaked, my words choked off, rage and emotion pouring through me.

"Oh Chuli," she said, barely suppressed giggles trickling from her mouth. "I was just testing you. Lately you seemed, I don't know, uncommitted and sexually unresponsive. Maybe you need a little more danger, I thought. The proof is in the pudding they say. And your _pudding_ is looking a bit---"

She glanced at me focusing her eyes directly between my legs.

"Hmm," she said, the most lascivious smile I had ever seen gracing her face. "That's the most interest I've seen from you in a LONG time! Pudding Boy makes bread sticks, yum yum."

I looked down and was shocked to see she was right. The conniving witch!

"So let me get this straight," I said, trying hard to suppress my disappointed rage. "You felt that lately I've not been all I could be for you, so you decide to, I don't know, SEND SOME ANIMALS TO CASTRATE ME??!!"

"Correct. So far you are growing in places that until recently were near dead and your speaking style has loosened up to include contractions. I think you should be thanking me. Really. Danger awaits us but it is danger that excites us. You are clear evidence of this truth."

"Sung Wu you...you... are...are...you..." I sounded like a total idiot.

"Oh I know. You're a bit upset now. But you'll get over it and we'll go back to business as usual. Just maintain your present heightened state of interest and all will go well."

I stared at her with what I thought were hate conveying piercing eyes, stewing inside so loud I thought I would explode. So I was just her man whore, an object to use as she pleased, doling out punishment when and how she deemed necessary. This was deeply disturbing yet at the same time made perfect sense. As if a natural order was being satisfied. If natural selection was at play, then clearly her dominance counterpoises my submission. A balance that demands attention. Thinking this hard about matters so outside the typical spectrum of cognizance was a highly toxic brain drain. I grew weary and befuddled in tandem. And right on cue, she carried on as if nothing at all had happened.

"There's an assumption about lovers," she explained, "a Man and Woman/Birds and Bees theory---that they have to exist. But for women it's more a matter of the _cute pet theory_. We want them around, just not in the same way." She described everything as being part of the long tail. "Men used to be passengers on the woman's train, but now it's become clear we have to be more active. We're not here to tell lovers what to do, because when we ask they work their asses off. Instead the question is what lovers MUST do."

In a whirl of contrary objectives she had once again upended the topic into one Sung Wu centric, spinning me round to face myself in a mirror to greet a perplexed puppy.

"Anyway. No harm done. No fault no foul. You and our little friend rest up now. We have a big day ahead of us. And I mean BIG day!"

She bowed, smiled, and slipped out of the room. In like a succubus, out like an angel.

*****

Khaki green and revolutionary brown. These are the colors that paint my world. No Mao Zedong, no Che Guevara, but a revolutionary nonetheless. The Separatists have expanded since their inception. Recognized everywhere we go, this is both advantage and curse. After my near miss at terminal castration, I have been charged with skulking through each village and making contact with the splinter groups of which there are multitude, according to our intelligence reports.

Walking down Bubbling Creek Road was an exercise in abject destitution. I could see in the massive old colonial stone buildings the skeleton of the financial trading center that had once dominated Asia with its great wealth. The crumbling signs swaying at either side of the central area bore reminders of their distant past; Big Orange department store, Wing High French bakery, once elegant restaurants reduced to apocalyptic pools of offal and detritus. Foreigners spending hard currency were now the stuff of legend. Each door opening or wall remnant typically contained at least one corpse, sometimes sprawled across the rubble, sometimes curled in a bundle with a mat spread over it. Villagers of all denominations scurried by, ignoring the dead. This was a common practice, an easily understood pragmatism. If anyone touches a corpse he may be required by police to take responsibility for burying it.

When people have great difficulty keeping the living alive, no one wants to take care of a dead stranger.

A little rail thin girl scooted by with a cluster of balloons in hand, gaily swinging her arms wide and causing the balloons to strain at their strings. Superimposed on the surrounding wasteland this picture of oblivious joy was a sweet curative for the soul. Yet the contrast between her unashamed joy and the unremitting misery around her scalded me with sharp invective.

Hard times had long ago settled into Wulang Village. There were girls along both sides of Junmon Road. Throngs of girls. Multitudes of hungry, ragged girls who insistently obstructed my way grabbing at my clothes. "Quickie, Sir?" "Quickie Sir?" some of them begged. They looked hideous, skin pitted and ashen, eyes glassy from starvation. "Touchy touchy massage?" They rushed at me in waves. "Yes, Yes, very good, very good."

They wore coat fragments and shredded strips, barely covering the essentials, modesty be damned. In your face to my place. They were not seductive, they were not appealing. They were wretched and at the end of their tether, their numbers were awesome.

I continued deeper into the Village, ignoring the piteous girls as much as possible. Finally I found respite at a local tavern, Merry Time Here. Maybe this would offer the much needed visual rest I needed. Walking through the door I discovered why this establishment had chosen its name. Perhaps less frantic and desperate than on the streets, girls slightly less wretched were everywhere, at every table, on every male arm, from the nearest to farthest expanse one sought to cast one's eyes. This village had been so pummeled by misfortune it was evident the oldest profession in the world had become for some the only means of survival. Tired and bedraggled from my rather depressing day's adventures, I relented and made for a lonely table which was holding its own in a darkened corner. I hid my eyes as I shuffled to the table. Looked at the floor if necessary as if checking my footing. By the time my hand reached the chair, however, two of the establishment's arm candy had already taken residence at what I had intended to be my solitary table.

"Cindy and Kai," they said in unison. "Two for one, good deal. Good, good."

Was there no escape from this privation? They insisted I sit between them at which point there faces nuzzled my neck, their bodies shimmied against me, and their hands reached for my trousers seeking to free my penal complex from its imposing fabric walls. I had ditzed around a few times with some of the girls who hung around the various villages. But I could not bring myself to do more than preliminaries with these lost souls who would sell their bodies for a few crumbs of food or a blanket. The more I saw of this the less willing I was to take advantage of the abomination of their lives.

Some places were dance halls where you paid admission and danced as much as you liked. Not my favorite activity. The girls made their money by lassoing a guy and taking him home, even if that home was the dirty back room or the corpse filled alley. Business is business. I had no home, and did not wish to conduct business in back room or alley. So I put my hands on theirs, pulled them away from my penal colony, squeezed them and said, "I am GAY! Real gay! Big big gay!"

They fled like drunks from a prohibition raid.

Every now and again, it is useful to play the Gay card. After what this day had so sarcastically granted me in benevolence, Sir Irascible was my name. I too was at the end of my tether.

Word quickly spread that "The guy at the corner table is gay," with accompanying hand signals to make clear what language alone could not. This allowed me some much needed time for reflection. And opportunists being ever astute made use of my sudden elimination as customer to snare girls heading in my direction, linking them arm in arm, shuttling these willing lambs off toward a waiting back room, men taking the role of drooling butcher in the abattoir. Every part of my being screamed to jump into the fray and rescue these soiled swans from the greasy clutches of drunken debauchery, but to do so was to make myself the target of violent assault. I could only close my eyes and bite my tongue to bleeding.

Taking the puzzle pieces of my life and extricating a pattern from their jumbled mess was a task for a word puzzle enthusiast. Somewhere within their fractured silence was a cleverly concealed message. A message that once in my possession would unlock the bolted doors of my despair. So many possibilities, faceless horrors, willing combatants, the field was rife with probability; any one alone could topple my universe. Yet in tandem their snaky squiggles were invisible.

I close my eyes to cleanse my weary mind with formlessness, and soon the swirling black drizzles away to flashing light, rumbling sound, faces of torment by the thousands, voices shrill and screeching, buzzing interminable, the benign then cruel then mocking voice of Sung Wu, the eye of the storm. I watch as puzzle pieces sail through the void seeking partners in the maelstrom of thought. Seeking, always seeking. And one by one they mingle, select, and connect, the mosaic of their union a transcendent work of art. Then reaching maximum density, they spin in Mandala formation, a vortex of energy emanating from its center. A pulsating charge tickling the air currents.

The Mandala describes both material and non-material realities, appears in all aspects of life: the celestial circles we call earth, sun, and moon, the conceptual circles of friends, family, and community. It represents wholeness, and can be seen as a model for the organizational structure of life itself, a cosmic diagram that reminds us of our relation to the infinite, the world that extends both beyond and within our bodies and minds.

The "circle with a center" pattern is the basic structure of creation that is reflected from the micro to the macro in the world. It is a pattern found in nature and is seen in biology, geology, chemistry, physics and astronomy. The crystals that form ice, rocks, and mountains are made of atoms. Each atom is a Mandala. Within the Milky Way galaxy is our solar system and within our solar system, Earth. Each is a Mandala that is part of a larger Mandala.

Synapses were firing wildly making connections in high speed precision. The coagulated puzzle was itself the agent and simultaneously both medium and message, was a small Mandala that was part of a larger Mandala, intersecting and connecting ad infinitum with even larger Mandalas. I was a Mandala, Sung Wu was a Mandala, the revolution was an even larger Mandala, subsuming us both within its bulk.

The obvious significance was clear. But still, beneath the sheer surface, a slow burbling pulse was flowing. A pulse that was itself the essence.

I struggled with these images for enlightenment. Seeking it like a true mendicant pilgrim. Images charged and collided, broke into smaller pieces, reassembled anew. Each variation visible only through holes of decreasing diameter. Voices leaked into the mix, frantic babbling voices, authoritarian voices, penitent voices, terrified voices. Crawling and slipping through holes they wove their way around the kaleidoscopic color swirl. Names, names, I could hear names coming through. As if receiving a broadcast from beyond the universe, beyond the grave. Then a face, an enchanting face, the small benign face of the young Sung Wu. The girl I had met so long ago. The girl I had immediately fallen ass over teakettle for. Then in geocentric orbit a blazing star began its revolution around this face, a solo explorer in a daunting universe. But this solo orbit was simply transitional as it was soon joined by another face, Sung Wu the present, a hollow, sad, cruel face, a face growing larger and larger and soon entirely eclipsing the smaller. A palpable frost invaded the room, crept beneath my skin. A distant drum beat began an insistent rhythm. Louder and louder it grew, overtaking the entire soundscape until it alone was present. Suddenly, a fireball blasted through into the heavens, suffused with blinding light, intense ultraviolet energy, full scale destruction to all in its path. Then just as suddenly as it had arrived, it vanished, leaving a beguiling emptiness with one solitary entity, the stone, that mesmerizing mysterious stone, its presence unleashing a pounding terror in my soul.

What was this vision trying to tell me? That the sun revolved around Sung Wu? That the present Sung Wu had eclipsed the younger? That the stone eclipsed them both in a terrifying display of self actuating power?

Master Po: Close your eyes. What do you hear?

Young Yang: I hear the water, I hear the birds.

Po: Do you hear your own heartbeat?

Yang: No.

Po: Do you hear the grasshopper that is at your feet?

Yang: Old man, how is it that you hear these things?

Po: Young man, how is it that you do not?

Feeling that I had received a portentous prophecy my legs shivered uncontrollably. Something was here, something complex but ridiculously simple in its complexity. Something utterly invisible by virtue of its place directly before my eyes. The misdirection of the conjuring trade.

I resolved to leave this mystery unresolved until the morning light. Let the whispering night invoke the spirits of the netherworld if necessary. The riddle was indeed a conundrum beyond the reach of the flawed mortal realm. Everything runs in circles. In circles we begin, in circles we return. The answer was gnawing at my ears and tickling my lips yet it was not yet steeped to readiness.

Surrendering myself into the waiting arms of night I fell back into the world of dreams, the birthplace of all answers, the place where souls are bathed in absolute truth sans mental intervention or manipulation.

Light and sight so closely aligned. No light, no sight.

I place all hope on the clarity of morning light.

*****

The village was little more than a cluster of mud-brick huts, interspersed with some two story stone buildings. Destitution held sway in every crevice. Corpses rotted in the rubble. Prostitutes scratched and clawed for compassionate crumbs. A tall, balding, owlish looking man with a long oval face and large bland eyes that looked out from ancient spectacles stood to address the crowd. He was Lu Gong, "the bearded one," easily identified by the oddity of his beard. Thin at the sides and pointed at the chin he looked the quintessential Ming Dynasty Emperor.

"If we control the Central Plains, the region that runs from the Dabie Mountains to the Yellow River and from the Grand Canal to the central Asian escarpment around Xian," he said, "we control China. The Nationalists hold the cities but the northern and western countryside belong to the Separatists. The Nationalists stake their future on military power but the Separatists are battling for Chinese public opinion, and the goodwill of the peasants, workers, and small merchants. Theirs is an army of the people fighting for the people."

Sung Wu, feeling a bit under the weather lately perked up. Her demeanor of wilting iris quickly turned into one of invasive biophage. The Dabie Mountains overlooked the trunk rail lines from Beijing to Canton to Shanghai, and all of the principal overland roads, tails, and shipping lanes along the main rivers of central China. She knew that this meant they had the upper hand. Battles have been fought in the outside perimeters in small villages and outposts. Thousands of lives had already been lost. The Nationalists were keeping pressure up by pushing the Separatists north into the mountain areas, slowly trapping them in the very land they sought to hold. While this holding was indeed strategic in an end game move, it had become a deadly liability that the Nationalists exploited relentlessly.

"We must expand or die," screamed Sung Wu, throwing her fists into the air. "This battle will not be won by talking and shouting and cheering and fussing. It is a dynamic battle won or lost moment by moment. Comrade Gong has neatly summarized our strategic advantages. But what he failed to mention was our troops have been severely impacted as of our last skirmishes. Holding the perimeter is a steady effort. It is true peasants join our ranks daily. This week alone 500 more have joined. We now command an army slightly greater than 69,000. But this is only a drop in the soup bowl compared to the Nationalists who easily outnumber us by a factor of 10. Let us not fall into the trap of reckoning with the abacus when mental agility is our most powerful ally. Our small numbers allow us the benefit of swift execution; strategies conceived one moment quickly put in motion the next. What we lack in numbers we must compensate for with strategy, bold moves wily swift strong and mighty. With a smattering of random disruptions we can keep the enemy off balance. And while in this unbalance takes hold we sweep in swift strong and mighty catching the mouse by surprise. When the mouse sneaks into the cat's lair, death is imminent."

Sung Wu had appointed Lu Gong as her adjutant. As this appointment allowed him unequaled access to her most private world the odds of him being pulled into to a position similar to my own were high. Maybe it was that her tail theory and train theory intersected at the point where the ticket booths ran out of tickets. It could very well be that the particular train the men in her world occupied was at capacity.

Another mystery.

Unless she was going pseudo-monogamous.

Once more back to Sung Wu. Every thread snakes its way back to her magnetic core. We are no more than iron shavings to her electromagnetic force. The topic needing elaboration is the revolution, our place in it, what our current circumstances foretell. As of yesterday closing, we were surrounded to the south and east by the PLA, with places to run but nowhere to hide. We had at the outset beelined for the mountains, a strategy that worked brilliantly for a time. But while the PLA are automatons they are not without stratagem. It is clear that everyone involved in these confrontations is well versed in the Art of War. Sun Tzu is legendary, his logic flawless. Much like the other similarly named person whose name will not be here brought forward for fear of digression regression.

The horrendous images of rawboned girls dissolving before my eyes continue to haunt and torment me. Even in sleep there is no escape. Their hollow eyes plead with me. Their cadaverous hands grope me. And horror of horrors in an act of misguided mercy I even let them take me as they wish. Whether this helps them any further than momentary satisfaction I am unsure. Wishing only to grab them and shake them to understanding saying, "This is no way to handle your problem," but nonetheless fishing in my pocket for some change, it is for me a struggle with no clear way out. The people, MY people, are dying all around me, falling into the streets, selling their bodies, sacrificing their children, all for the bare essentials.

And still, among the relentless suffering, one is privileged to witness one's own soldiers roughly bound and dragged to a hilltop where behind a cluster of bushes the "pop pop pop" of gunfire relays their fate, bringing with it more images that refuse rest.

Yes war is hell. Brutality runs rampant. Indifference spreads its poison. At the very least----and I am grasping at thin straws here for redemption---I am engaged in a massive effort to free the people from oppression, balance the scales of equity, set this broken down world on a straight course to freedom.

During our battle with the Nationalists, there are people who laugh at us, "You have only plows and old rifles," they say. That is true. We have only primitive tools at our disposal, yet with those primitive tools we are winning the struggle. We can take great pride in the fact that our wide range of tradesman abilities allows us to fashion the most powerful weapons from the most meager implements. Guns, rifles, bombs. Within our ranks we have skilled laborers for whom fashioning these staples of war is but a trifling task. This combined with steadily applied organization is primary to our success.

Of course we also have Sung Wu. A secret weapon if ever there was one. A fact of which she is abundantly and ostensibly proud.

"We are organizing the women to spin, knit, and do washing for the sick and wounded. It's amazing how eager and skillful the women of this revolution are. They are not content to stay back and sit around and do nothing but cook and tend the baby."

Sung Wu of course does little else in this regard but delegate and assign. Still, the skillfulness of the women is nothing short of amazing. When new members join, she loves to inquire of them, "Have you had lice yet?" leaning closer to inspect their hair, "You can't be a real revolutionary unless you've had lice. Then she would break into a trilling laughter that said she was making a good-natured joke, one of which she was extremely fond. The person she is speaking to immediately runs her hands through her hair feeling a tingling itchiness where before there was none. The power of suggestion has created more lice infestations that we can track.

"This generation is totally different," says Sung Wu. "There is no feeling of inferiority."

She contends that China's youth know more than they let on, and while they tend to be fiercely proud of their country they are also highly critical of their government. She calls them "a double-edged sword with no handle," because their opinions cut in many directions and are not guided by any single ideology or organization.

"Take a look at this article in today's Sweeping Daily," she says thrusting the paper toward me. "There's no way the Party Daily would cover such incendiary stories. Despite the fact that they are painfully true. I would be surprised if the chief boneheads in charge even lowered themselves to speak of the youth, something they would do begrudgingly only if it was a slow propaganda wheel day. But our people gladly cover any story poking spears at the government."

The New Youth Study Group, a short-lived club of young professionals that met privately to talk about political reform and posted essays on the streets, including one titled "China's democracy is fake." Four of the members were convicted of subversion and intent to overthrow the Communist Party and sentenced to between 8 and 10 years in prison.

With this fear of political dissent, it's hard to tell whether young people like underground musician Li Yan are being shallow or shrewd when they shrug off politics. Li Yan is a performing arts student with a cultivated rebel image.

"Young kids like us are maybe just more into popular entertainment like soap operas. Very few people really care about that other stuff," says Yan, before mounting the stage at a popular nightclub to belt out "Rock 'N Roll for Money and Sex."

Tiananmen veterans read the reaction as apathy and lament it.

"All those magnificent ideals have been replaced by the practical pursuit of self-centered comforts," says Bao Tong, former secretary to Zhao Ziyang, the Communist Party leader justly deposed for sympathizing with the protesters. "The leaders today don't want young people to think."

According to Bao, China's youth are in the arms of the government being fed bullshit and candy. So count on more bread and circuses. They could continue this way if the economy remains strong and the government distributes wealth more equitably, he says, but he doesn't think either is likely.

Others say the reckless optimism of the Tiananmen era, now considered ancient history, is the reason young people today lack ideals. The fearless naiveté of 1989 serves as a cautionary tale, not inspiration.

"This is true," she fumes, "but such horrendous bullshit too. Because the government has done their insidious best to discourage, read that punish, dissent they have robbed youth of any voice at all. Save the echoing voice of party diatribe. Knowing the forces are stacked against us should strengthen our resolve as we go forward. These bastards must be stopped and pushed aside as soon as inhumanly possible. We have been beat down also. The one difference being that we have not sacrificed the right to free thought!"

There are however glimmers of hope. Just yesterday as reported in The Party Daily, a young man, Chow Yinlang, ran into Tiananmen Square, held a bullhorn to this mouth and shouted, "We are smarter than the government. Get lost and we will take over!" A very foolish but brave gesture.

The party was happy to report that the PLA moved in quickly to quell the disturbance.

Not long after that the "pop pop pop" of gunfire ripped through the sound barriers and rattled the city. A tyrant will always find a pretext to justify his tyranny. Our hero was short-lived but is worthy of canonization.

Yet within a few weeks, even among his supporters, some are quick to flap the tongue of vilification in detraction of this instant bravery.

In a gnat's breath, the entire regiment is up in arms over this otherwise brilliant episode of dissent. Voices rise. Tempers flare. Some reach for their weapons.

Not one to suffer fools lightly, Sung Wu steps forward, raises her rifle overhead with one hand, her other hand held up in a halt command. "I am extremely shocked and disappointed," she shouts. "Never in our fast-changing history, until Chow Yinlang, have we managed to quite so swiftly canonize and then pillory another human being, for our own titillation. A man died people. A civilian soldier in support of a righteous cause. Let each man hope that when and if he is caught in the line of fire, his supporters will not be as capricious."

*****

In AFD, a mountain town of 3,400 people, the government built a $27 million jail a couple of years ago in the vain hope it would be a useful. Now they are planning to house hundreds of Separatist detainees at the empty, never-used institution.

The medium-security jail was conceived as a holding facility for drunks and other scofflaws, but leaders said it could be fortified with a couple of guard towers and some more concertina wire. Apart from that, it is a turnkey operation, fully outfitted with everything from cafeteria trays and sweatsocks to 88 surveillance cameras.

The following group of citizens spoke to me freely taking me for a wandering nobody. I was not going to shatter their illusions by telling them the truth.

"These Separatist guys, they're a scary bunch," said Chow Yuligong. "You've got to realize what you're getting into."

Kwai Ching, a 72-year-old retired carpenter who said he keeps his .30-06 hunting rifle loaded and ready, said the detainees would invite trouble, and he would rather see them sent back where they came from. But he joked that his rifle was "very accurate," and backed up the claim by pointing to a pronghorn antelope head propped along his fence line, a hunting trophy.

He was a scary man with his fervent joy of cradling his rifle as if it were his child. Standing in such close proximity to him was causing me to sweat.

His wife, Jiang, squirmed uncomfortably in the face of her husband's bravado, and said she is dead-set against Hanloo becoming China's Alcatraz. As a matter of civic pride, she said she wants to put bad guys in the jail to relieve the town of what has become a community embarrassment. But at the same time, she is unwilling to put herself and family at risk just to help out a situation that in the end is not the citizens' responsibility.

"Housing prisoners here is one thing I would accept if needed," she said. "But not the Separatists. They're the worst of the worst!"

If I was on assignment for The Party Daily, this conversation would never have happened. The candor with which they spoke is best done behind closed doors away from insidious ears.

"Love the country. Love the people. " Still the memories of a distant time better than one hundred years past live on. The horror and betrayal of a day that started simply enough as a group of students went on a peaceful though passionate protest seeking dignity, democracy, economic development, for the Chinese people. Type "Tiananmen Square massacre" into an internet search engine and the first link leads to a video with this title: "The Myth of Tiananmen Massacre." A subhead describes the massacre as "a popular Western myth," and the video features a Chinese man claiming he saw no government violence against civilians. This is called the propaganda ministry in full swing. The Chinese people have lived with disparities between objective truth and manufactured reality for far too long. Still today, many years beyond the nexus, there exist two distinctly different Chinas: one urban and wealthy, the other poor, rural, disenfranchised. Bear in mind that the stated purpose of the Communist agenda was to provide dignity, equality, equity to all. No racial or class boundaries. Clearly, this has benefited only a small handful of people.

During the Tiananmen Square massacre, the PLA fired their weapons indiscriminately, screaming "Love the country. Love the people" the entire time. For those who heard this outrageous disconnect between word and action, for those who let it take root deep inside, for those who thought for sure they must be hallucinating, for them was left little of their fragile sanity and none of their shredded dignity. This was the army, the People's Liberation Army, a force for the people by the people. Another deadly disconnect in the world of perpetuity. Today we are arranging a skirmish with the PLA. Arranged in the sense that we know a skirmish will happen. Not arranged in the sense that it will be a gargantuan surprise to the enemy."

The process is always the same. Sung Wu at the head of our group, gun held high, voice ringing loud and strong, the sense from every part of her being communicating absolute focused rage. We connect with this feeling through osmosis. Her emotions transmit our mission loud and clear. Once again we will reclaim land and property rightly belonging to the people. The people of the "other China." The China that sweats, bleeds, and sacrifices its body and children for simple sustenance. It is for THIS China we raise our ire to the explosion point. It is for this China we shout our battle cry, "Love the country. Love the people" as we cut down the PLA.

Turnabout is fair play.

It is only by stepping back a few paces that one begins to see the opaque veils falter and descend laying bare a world of unrepentant greed, misery and violence. So many lies we have been forced to accept as truth our difficulty is in finding that truth which can be agreed upon by a majority of our peers. We are all familiar with the party truth. Easy enough to discern when one knows the telltale signs. Any pitch that demands we do more for less with heads held high, proud as slaughterhouse peacocks, has the earmarks of propaganda. For the last three years we have worked hours of brutality at the factories. Thirteen hour days. Some longer. Sometimes without needed rest. Every now and then someone falling asleep at their machine, getting injured or maimed. The natural consequences of the slave trade. An arrangement in which we by our silence are complicit.

Brown slithering gloom wraps around us, clouding the air with miasmic repugnance. With air as thick as coal dust breathing itself is offensive necessity. Yet this has been our world. One which we through mute acceptance have forged from the blood of our brothers. Not a one questioned working under atrocious conditions for minuscule pay. The voice was not heard that shouted for pay scales befitting the relentless work we do. Grim persistence was our answer to deprivation and beating. Shock was our customary response to anything untoward that should have eons ago registered as normalcy.

So today it is no surprise that the shocks we now see clearly for the first time wrench our souls and nail our ears to our feet. It is not the blatant horror of sights we see for the first time that topple us, but the self recriminations that cut us off at the knees. We are struck in the face by tomorrow as today crushes down upon us, incapacitating us fully.

Had we known then what we know now, the thinking goes, we would have shut down the bullet train to apocalypse at the conception stage. Sent it back to the pits of hell from which it sprung. Sealed that hostile doorway with a glacial kiss. But instead we welcomed the demon fire with motherly arms of understanding, never once expecting we understood nothing at all.

We only recently took notice of the poisonous exhalations which daily surrounded us and were part and parcel of our production trade. Dangerous chemicals administered with no mind given to worker safety. We were nothing more than expendable animals. And silent we strolled to our deaths, immediate or latent. Each day an implicit promise to face brutal working conditions and low wages, seven days a week, 13 hours a day. This is past now. No point belaboring that which is well known.

The important thing to take away from this is a resolve to set things right. March once more into Tiananmen to finish what was begun over one hundred years ago. A time now foggy in the haze of forced forgetting, as the regime has managed to erase the Tank Man's image---famous throughout the world---from Chinese memory. The massacre and events leading up to it are not remembered, when they are remembered, as good times. They are instead remembered as necessary preludes to a torrential outpouring of freedom's benevolence. An outpouring for which we still wait.

Stop brother soldier, a man pleads. Stop uncle soldier, a child cries. These simple but genius tactics worked once. But no more. Compassion has left our storehouses as we prime for destruction of a massive scale. The regime is an old lion roaring just to prove it still can. But we are hunters of dangerous design. And this time, the guns will be in the hands of the people, for the people.

The Public Security Bureau has been storming the cities rounding up suspected revolutionary sympathizers. "Clearing house" as they call it. From our point of view this is nothing more than misdirected rage as we continue to meet the army head on only to send them running back to mama crying over their losses. This is a grand humiliation for the government so they strike where they can. Peasants have been joining us right from the start. This was accepted by the authorities as no more than the protest of students. Misguided, disorganized, ultimately falling flat. But when the workers began to join us, when the factories began to show declines in personnel and output, it was only then the authorities became terrified. If the core of their constituency joined forces with the revolutionaries, it was just a matter of time before the authorities' power and reach would be first truncated then eliminated.

The writing was on the Great Wall and they knew it.

Making our way to Beijing has been fraught with difficulties but through all faith in our cause has been our salvation. The first time we lost 200 a pall was cast over our people. Questions were pointed and insistent. Did no one consider that lives would be lost in our quest? I would love nothing more than to storm the barriers of entrenched authority without so much as one loss. But this is idealistic and ludicrous. Everybody has to fight to be free. If one is willing to fight for freedom one must also be willing to die for it.

Soon we will march on the Great Hall of the People and shout from the windows of our victory. We will mass the Beijing Hotel and run the balconies with garlands of freedom. We will march the Avenue of Eternal Peace proudly proclaiming the peace that has finally arrived. We will be the harbingers of the new China, gladly accepting the burden of proving ourselves worthy of leadership roles. If we heed the lessons of our past we can measure ourselves against our predecessors and come out smelling like roses in comparison. The sweet smell of death we will relinquish to the corrupt hands of the fallen leaders. It is this legacy that is theirs to imprint.

*****

The moon shivers. Tall, elongated silhouettes appear. They silently slip through the doors, scatter into corners, haunted by memories of the past. It is getting dark and I must clarify this nervous blanket woven from fairytales, a blanket that failed, failed once more to protect me from the monsters of childhood, the uncertainty reigning in the world. The night is tall and violently ill with humor. Wait until morning, I whisper, please wait. Supplication falls cold on deaf eyes. My words chased away like hateful fleas.

Humans are oozing all around me.

I am in the wild zone. Seek salvation through my body. There are so many of you but you are alone. Blinding white clouds berate me. Fevered ground engulfs me. Sprout wings and grow claws, climax, pull the trigger.

Why should you be afraid of me? Why are you afraid of me? Why should you be afraid of me?

The voice echoes louder and louder deafening me with its thunder. I shake in tremors my bones knocking in click clack percussion.

My eyes are torn open, pulled apart by talons. Shrieking eels do not die but multiply. Daylight burns into my skull. Tears roll in frightened waves. Another cruel morning. Another murky scream. One more hunted REM state torture.

Remedy or not I needed to smoke some dàmá so I took out my pipe to enjoy a few bowls. This will surely be my deliverance. Harmonize and regulate. Balance my chi.

Too slow, too slow. Move forward at a faster clip. What will be the next catastrophic happening, the next conflict, the next miasmic meltdown? This the eternal question.

Standing in the declining sunshine listening to a student speaking through a bullhorn, surprised at the strength of the horn. A brisk tattoo of automatic fire and the thinning crowd scatters like chickens on a dusty road. Suffocating silence all around me.

Then a drastic change.

Sung Wu calls. Beckons me forth. I resist. No no no. Come here. Come here. No no no. Grabs and pulls. Will not let go. Begins to scream. Louder louder. Pulls me to her. Pulls me tight. Pulls me to her. Pulls me closer. Shreds my clothes. Pulls me in her. Screams again. Thrashes and scratches. Fingers turn black. Start to drip. Drop hits my leg. Burns a hole. Now I scream. Try to pull away. She will not let go. Claws me to her. Claws me tight. Tighter. Tighter. Delirium takes hold. What I see cannot correlate. Makes no sense. My leg is on fire. Black Death attacks her. Attacks me. Black Death does not attack her. Black Death is her. Cannot be. Something wrong. Must be the dàmá. Dizziness. Dizziness. Cold blackness...

When insincere morning light embraces me, nightmare has manifested reality has birthed an incubus. I wake shivering in sweat soaked sheets. Do not recall coming here. Do not recall anything. Like a violent hangover the heavy air mocks me. I believe my nightmare alone has fueled my confusion. But lurking in the shadows of peripheral thought a sinister something hisses and spits. If what I believe I saw is nothing more than tragic phantasmagoria, then truly my sanity has departed. If instead my vision of Sung Wu's hideous transformation into the rolling Black Death is a cold hard fact, much is explained while at the same time posing new riddles.

What the future holds I cannot know. I can only be certain of my petrifying terror at this newfound knowledge. The vast temporal doom has been with me all along. Right beside me in human form. Not human form, though, cyborg at best. Maintaining a presence here in the hillside caves has been a considerable advantage to our revolutionary aims. Kept everyone secure and close at hand for operations. Has kept me within arm's reach of Sung Wu for her "equilibrium balancing" needs. Yet after this most recent attendance of duties and most unwilling performance on my part, it is clear to me now I have departed my safety zone in this cave, this pursuit, with this enigmatic and deadly girl/woman/monster. Perhaps my efforts in helping her equilibrium balance have stayed the horror of the Black Death. As it has seemed to wane in the recent while maybe this is true. I am the tune which soothes the savage beast. The implications are far too disturbing. All along I have seen, touched, and smelled a rather alluring female. Yet bubbling within was a pestilent pathogen that in its cleverly deceptive configuration escapes detection while going about its deadly evolutionary feeding frenzies. The Yin and Yang must now cleave. The day is young and I am alive. As safety has clearly departed me, my search for its whereabouts must now begin. From this point forward I strike out on my own and depart Sung Wu. Life demands it.

We hold with the Confucian doctrine to "Regard Death as a Returning." We are not afraid to die. No true revolutionary should be afraid to die. These words Sung Wu has quoted me on more than one occasion. She sees me as a scattering chicken when it comes to battle. She sees me as a liability. The weak link in our troop. And maybe I am all of these things. Maybe I am not a true revolutionary. Never said I was. I was working along minding my own dismal business quiet and still and still and quiet as I have done since I do not recall when. Then she sweeps in and decides we are on a rampage for freedom which we will effect with our own blood if needed and suddenly myself and everyone involved are supposed to be magically transformed into "willing to die revolutionaries." For some among us I have found that this does not dissuade them from participating. For others, myself among them, we tend to run when gun fire breaks out, hide when bombs fall, scatter like chickens in general when our lives are the sacrificial beast. And despite my attendance at all of the above, my latest face to face involvement with imminent death and destruction under close fire happened only on the occasion of Sung Wu having me peeled and shivering while she began her transformation into something hideous and otherworldly. This in itself was more than anyone among us has bargained for. I believe anyone would cower and crawl away when they found themselves fully in the clutches of Godzilla. A war involving human creatures is one thing. One involving creatures from the spectral realms is another entirely.

So, why this long diatribe when I have made clear my intention to flee with great haste? Maybe just something I needed to state with clarity so I am certain of my motivation. Yes, a new level of terror has been introduced. Yes I am petrified and confused wishing nothing more than to be back in my meager and dismal little apartment tile. But this, unfortunately, will not happen now or ever again. With my newly adopted classification as a revolutionary there are certain things I can be sure of. One, frequent armed confrontations. Two, squalid living conditions with the added bonus of a bare subsistence. Three, this is the part where adherence to Confucian ideas holds sway--- revolutionaries in captivity typically do not see the next sunrise before feeling the executioner's sting. Of these things alone am I certain. The old apartment tile days are cast into the realm of "the good old days" despite the fact that they were anything but.

And to think now so foolishly of the terror I felt when Sung Wu said she wished to introduce another element into our passion play. She wished to shave me bald "down there." Said she felt the smooth vulnerability really got her motor running. As always, she touched me and I was putty in her hands. Only now do I realize that this mesmerizing power she possesses is very similar to that espoused by the cobra, a necessary prelude to predatory feeding frenzy. Was the primary thought in her mind when she went at me with a razor one of titillation or animalistic feeding? I grab my stomach and shiver at the thought. She has been rather free and loose where concerns that part of my body, willing to cast it in harm's way at the slightest whim. Sending large Neanderthals after me threatening castration is not a term of endearment in any language I know of. Pointing a gun directly at my family jewels, telling me castration suits me. Then finally, planting, peeling and plating me immediately prior to her horrifying metamorphosis into a creature that defies objective description.

Maybe the message was all along in her chosen themes.

My beloved is the Black Death. My mistress of the mausoleum. There was a time in the not too distant past, now suffused in romance hues, that we marched on in groups. From the exterior it was a long stretch to imagine our motley and crusty horde as dangerous. Old people, young people, families, babies, invalids. Many were city-bred intellectuals, farmers and factor workers, not toughened warriors. Still we averaged twenty miles a day through rough, mountainous terrain. And while we marched onward, it was due only to the superb organizational strengths of our Separatist CO Sung Wu that we were able to succeed. Our contingency was divided up into several columns. One included the officers cadre to which I mysteriously belonged. Another was for wives, children, and invalids. Each column had its leading nucleus, and each sent out an advance party early in the morning to requisition caves and mud huts for our night quarters, food and water, and anything else we would need. Large numbers of troops guarded our flanks on either side, taking parallel routes to ours, to insure that PLA forces would not discover our movements and launch sneak attacks against us.

Mangled amongst these thoughts of a better day, the hazy reflections my only comfort in this cold loneliness, are memories that swirl and dive seeking entry or escape. One gnawing memory is presently causing me grievous self recrimination. And filtering in there somewhere a voice, an image, a sensation that all was not right and I had been inadvertently handed the golden key of peace. A sunny day by the burbling lake, ducks massing and paddling, Sung Wu telling me about her habits, her obsessions, her baby stone she had named ji le shi jie. On she went as if in reverie until a grim aspect took hold of her.

"I think the stone is doing weird things to me, Chuli. I really do."

This line of reasoning was so bizarre and so unlike her I scoffed and waved it away.

"Oh, come on. Thinking that way is silly. It is just a stone, after all."

She smiled so sweet and sad, put her hand on mine and thanked me for my strength. Told me if not for me she would cease to exist. Then she spoke so tenderly a warm quote from Lao Tzu, "Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage."

I reached into my pocket and handed her a note she had given me so long ago the exact date escapes me. A final declaration of love and devotion to the woman who was more to me than life itself. I had kept this note close to me, only taking it out when I needed to take comfort in her presence. She could not always be near me, I know, but sometimes weakness took hold and I seized her comfort where I could. Taking my precious note roughly from me she scoffed, "Chu Li this note is not from me, it's from you. Your handwriting resembles mine, this is true, but mine is far more flowery, more feminine."

She shook her head at me, sending her voluminous hair into a swirling cascade of glorious womanhood.

"You are really silly you know, Chu Li."

A tremor ran through me. Her words struck me with the shock of recognition. A shock that reached its large hand into my throat to the core of me and through me, coming back around to slug me squarely in the jaw. An impenetrable fog was dissipating. Sharp focus replaced the comforting smokescreen of delusion. Sung Wu could never truly leave me, as I could never truly leave her. We are of one mind. We are of one body. We are inseparable, we are the Black Death.

She smiles coyly, sweetly, drawing me one last time into the place where word meets action. "The time is now, Chuli. Let's travel this last road together as we must, our last dance."

*****

We are in our private place. The place where she explains to me the shadow play of Journey to the West and the recurring roles of Xuánzàng, Pig, Monkey, and Sha Wujing. Explains how centuries later their iconic presence can be seen everywhere.

"You are the embodiment of Pig," she says. "Banished to the mortal realm for flirting with the Princess of the Moon. Along the journey there are impassably wide rivers, flaming mountains, a kingdom ruled by women, a lair of seductive spider-spirits, and many others."

She tells me this while lovingly caressing a loaded revolver in her hands. Murmurs Happiness is a Warm Gun. A wistful smile crosses her lips. Cocking the hammer she giggles in her girlish fashion. Mischief in her eyes, she pushes the gun against my groin.

Sweat trickles down my forehead.

Terror ripples through me. An electric current seeking ground.

She studies my eyes. Her hand. My groin. My groin which has sprouted a gun barrel and growing erection. We have played this game before. She and I. Each time ending with her, Princess of the Moon, releasing me, Pig, back to the mortal realm.

Now she bites her lower lip and quivers. Cute and vulnerable. This is new. For her. Typically steady as Gibraltar.

"You will not die, you know. You are a martyr. Immortal. Castrated in martyrdom as you were in life. Poetic and fitting, yes?"

This is the crossover point we have talked about. Thought about. She knows it. I know it. We are of one mind. Thought for me swirls ad infinitum. For her, thought turns to immediate action. I am a procrastibator. Procrastinating masturbator. Her words not mine. She is danger girl. My words, not hers.

Here at the crossover point anything can happen at the speed of light. Split second decisions. Long term results.

A speed-of-light decision on her part will bring about a speed-of-sound 35 caliber explosion.

I will die slowly. But beautifully. Achieve immortality.

"Does this excite you?" she says, nodding toward my groin.

My head says no. My eyes say yes. The time is now.

"With five seconds to live, what would you do?"

My thoughts swirl and hit a jam in the mental roadway.

"We did have fun, you and I."

Her sneer tells me I have responded incorrectly.

"I would kill the chicken to frighten the monkey," she says, with smiling eyes and wicked grin. "Now we count."

Five

Four

Three

Two...

BAAAANNNNGGGG!!!!

*****

The assaults of the Black Death faded as did reported sightings of Sung Wu. She had sacrificed her life for the cause. A people bonded through revolution hold to their leaders fiercely. There was even talk of building a statue in her honor. This statue would be the ire of the supreme leader and the glimmering light of hope for the people. A sledgehammer slap to the double faced leaders.

There was a brief ripple of excited gossip about the Sung Wu / Chu Yang Li connection as people sought to come away with a satisfying closing scene. The people of New Khotan are a simple and proud people. High minded concepts such as split personalities and avenging alter egos have little place and are given minimal attention in their world where work begets work begets more work. The efforts of sustenance alone are occupation enough. They settled upon branding Sung Wu a mysterious and strong leader of fortitude, resolving to let history freeze frame her as a beloved cultural hero.

Sung Wu had laid her precious stone down right where she stood before picking up the revolver. So while we evaporate into history, the stone lives on to rise again.

Time has passed and from our vantage point the exact duration is unclear. It seems that all is bathed in a soft shroud of sparkling mist, proportion and perspective in disarray, like viewing the world through the wrong end of binoculars while walking through a foggy desert.

I am satisfied that Sung Wu and I continue on much as before, with a few understandable variations. Our bond grows stronger by hops and back-flips as physical reality is subsumed by spiritual union. She knows this. I know this. We are of one mind.

A faraway voice filters in babbling incoherently about what sounds like the Black Death. But this cannot be! The mysterious mutation died with us!

Or did it???

Last night, nine people died at the hospital and another 28 had gunshot wounds. The nine died from an undisclosed mysterious cause. All hospital employees were crying till dawn. The government removed the dead bodies on the back of trucks, before hospital staff was even able to get their names or other information. What can you say to people who don't even respect the dead?

The massive revolutionary protest continues and openly defies orders from New Khotan's supreme leader. Those who can, do. Those who can't, talk smack about those who can. The battles rage on. The Black Death overpowers.

Sung Wu and I smile and nod in silent approval. We are of one mind. We are of one spirit. We are of one time.

We all live together in a Supremely Happy World.

### About the Author

Fisher Thompson has traveled the world to find that the wonderment of diversity is best experienced firsthand and ethnocentricity is best left at one's doorstep. Furthermore, he steadfastly declares that when all is said and done, all is not, after all, said, done or otherwise unequivocally rescinded.

His books can be found, viewed, purchased and otherwise at: <http://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/fisher>.

