

## A REAL '68

A NOVEL BY

WILLIAM CRANE

Smashwords Edition

Copyright © 2012 by The Red Telephone Press.

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www.real68.com

First Edition

ISBN 978-0-9848482-18

For The Love of My Life, Rebecca.

## PART ONE: RUSTY RAILS
## CHAPTER 1:

PERFECTLY ALIGNED FANTASY

The fury of the shrieking iron made his ears bleed. Cyril walked to the train station fast and lean above the white noise. He staked his path, head down.

"Who are all these cretins?" he wondered. "Petty wage clerks, street sweepers, chamber maids, butlers, automatons, and who knows who else. Shuffling back and forth through the muck. Back and forth from day to day with their hands on their heads and knots stuck in their furrowed minds."

The birth of the evening was always an interesting time of day. The clamped stomachs and sweated brows of the city's residents made today's setting sun even more interesting. The general strike coursed through their veins. Little hope, mostly worried anxiety, shook the mass of labor in the city. The ones who still remained unionized had been threatening for years to bring this aging behemoth to its knees.

This time the threat did not look so idle.

Last week's snow had long since turned to hardened hummocks of dirt and grime. Not even the cold rain could fully wash it away. Lady winter had not been kind. Cyril's black leather boots clipped and clomped through the mess.

As he neared the concrete steps to descend into the subway station, Cyril heard the barkers feverishly calling. Up and down, all around his carefully planned path.

" _Blood is blood and ours is boiling_."

" _Bargains are not made over the backs of our brothers_."

" _We built this city, now we can tear it down_."

Despite the slogans hyped by the workers, their leaders were actually advocating this payment structure or that procedural appointment. Higher monthly wages. Better health benefits. More vacation. Fewer hours. Pensions. Retirement. Money, money, money. Among this racket one thing was clear: none of them were calling for spinning off of the cycles they were already caught on.

A restructuring of the same system? We need a new system, something that let us all be ourselves and out of their iron-hinged grasp, Cyril thought in the back of his mind.

"It always ends up at the same place," he muttered, this time out loud, timidly. "The same resigned compromise."

In dirtied sneakers and cuffed corduroy pants, the merchants of mass protest tightened and converged at the doors to the station, almost blocking Cyril's path. They all agreed the government's power increased and their wages were taxed much too much."

But that is about all they agreed upon.

Factions. Sub factions. Sub-sub factions. All had answers. All fought amongst one another.

The ordinary day workers walked by. Their days were done. Some stopped to talk. Some dropped a few coins in their coffers. Others took one of the varied black and white pamphlets. Thick and photocopied. Others simply avoided the situation all together.

Cyril was the latter. He noticed that most of his so-to-be fellow passengers were not as cynical as he thought himself to be. A tip of the hat and a dollar or two was enough to bring a smile to each one of these grim characters. The giver. The receiver. Smiles. A transaction on both levels. The slightly cosmic one that Cyril floated upon and the burning, oily reality that the other two actors waded in.

"Are they paying men or are they boys"? Cyril asked himself this asinine question. Speaking to himself out loud, he was not bringing in the attention he wanted. People were too busy muttering in their cellphones or punching coded text messages. Everyone was in their own mind.

"Are these poor souls just pantomiming a response that they don't believe strongly enough in to actually fight for themselves?" he asked. This time his verbal communication elicited a confused glare from someone passing near him. With purpose glued on his face, Cyril faced the fellow with a question.

"Are these people paying these unionist beggars to simply have them shut up for a moment and then continue on with their meager existence?" The questions became louder in his mind. The man lost interest and swam back into the rush of people going down the stairs.

Cyril didn't know the answer. Maybe he didn't care.

Continuing on, he carefully marked his steps. Sidestepped the callers, who didn't care since he did not look like he'd have very much in the way of power, clout, or money. They were right. They focused on the suits. The easy marks. Easy converts.

One of them took a chance on Cyril and slid a six-page pamphlet in his hand. Black and white. Jammed with words. Some pictures and photos too. Startled by the man, Cyril shoved it in his jacket. He hoped to convey an abrasive personality. The man just saw someone lost. Cyril managed a meek "thanks man" and continued on. The man did not hear him. Cyril's tired feet inside his black-soled boots descended into the station.

"Keep your head low," he reminded himself, this time in his mind. "You don't want to accidentally glance at anyone. You could be confused for one of _them_."

The soldiers were manned at different points inside and outside of the station. Apparently police were not enough. The government called in the troops. The police had guns, but the military had bigger ones. They kept an eye on the proceedings. Their tense glares opposed the gathering clouds of protest and dissent. They appeared shiftless and wandering—sort of like Cyril, but they had jobs. Maybe they wondered how to keep order or what that order was exactly. The structure faintly trembled underneath their feet. They didn't seem to mind much. It was their duty to follow orders. The structure shading and shifting or the structure clear and steadfast. The people multiplied and solidified into this corridor and that. Hurrying home to watch the television. Logging on to see footage of themselves in the city that they were just in. Inside looking in. Looking in and out.

Whatever the molecular change was, Cyril tasted it. In the air and the space between. He felt it in his mind's eye. He thought that everyone else must have to. Maybe they were all just robots. Maybe.

Maybe it was the fact he had not held a job in more than four years and lived off his girlfriend. Maybe it was the two Klonopin he swallowed before leaving the apartment. Maybe it was apathy. Regardless, this universal feeling was emptiness. Like a hollow campfire sing-a-long. He swore the walls were sweating. Swaying and sweating. He felt a little sweaty himself.

Finally at the bottom of the stairs, deep inside this crowded chamber, Cyril looked at the electric diodes. They shined a bright message. It said this:

*** _Blue Line/BradeshinAttb - 2 min_ ***

"Please, God, let this ride me out of here," he thought to himself. "Goddamn Clementine. Always needing to pack a little hash away for the holidays."

As the true ascender, Cyril always took the bait.

"Here I am, traveling with the always- revolving masses in the pursuit of my personal mental vacation. Ah well, tough times."

Cyril fancied himself a poet of sorts. A street poet. No, he decided right then he did not like that term. A mind poet, that's better. He would've been a good musician too if he learned the guitar. Maybe a star. A writer if he wrote down the songs in his head. Instead, he resigned to be a poet to himself. In his mind.

He plotted his path to the back of the huddled masses, up against a tiled wall. Standing with his back to the wall, he looked down at the soiled ground. The faded blue and grayed white make up some symmetrical design against the backdrop. Cigarette butts. Gum wrappers. A few curiously shaped stones. Omens perhaps? Cyril did not believe in that. He did not believe much of anything.

"Who sweeps up around here?" his voice coughed up. This scene was all too much for his poor, now partially sweaty mind.

With some moments to spare, he snuck a look at a few of the pretty, young girls around. With Clementine, that's all he could hope for. He was not the cheating type, but that did not mean he couldn't look. He spied a girl across the tracks. A girl around twenty, tanned and with shoulder-length black hair. Cyril's gaze was far too subtle to reach her.

She was a lighthouse. A tan really stuck out in the winter. Red pumps did too. He followed them up to her more simple sweater, a black number. He finally rested his eyes on small, square eyes. She jostled up and down as she waited for the train departing away from here. Away from him. She listened to her iPod as her mind heard this:

" _001100101010100110010101001001100_... "

A syncopated binary of some band. The music lightly tap-tap-tapped at her eardrums. Cyril thought she was singing along. She wasn't. She wouldn't ever want to draw attention to herself like that. Cyril would never know this. He would never even know her name.

Of course, she didn't notice Cyril. She was gazing off at an older tanned man in frayed blue jeans and a tidy black sports coat. He, for his part, glanced at her perky breasts. She gave Cyril a perfect addition to this icy evening. A dead stare. This tanned man disgusted Cyril. He interrupted his perfectly aligned fantasy.

"Block him out." Cyril thought. So he did.

Cyril imagined taking the girl in silence. Leading her. Holding her hand. They would undress each other and he would shove her up against some wall in this byzantine structure. Maybe in some deserted storage locker? Maybe there's an old military cot in the back. Behind the imaginary worker staring into the abyss as the black and white TV rattles in the foreground. Just like a scene from TV. Cyril imagined fucking her and having her smile back when finished. They part both partially satisfied without emotion and without an uttered word. He hoped she would be angry with him.

As his daydream slipped into real action, he noticed the cretins boarding the train.

"Fuck, got to hurry on the train. The grand metal slug heaving to and fro, its impatience spewing humans onto the concrete. The cycle is repeated over and over and over," Cyril recited mentally. He really should write these down some day he thought. He liked to think he would make a good poet. The poet who would disappear only to be hunted by those seeking his mind. Cyril liked to think.

He squeezed past the masses huddled around the door, awaiting the stop after this one. Cyril parted them and hurriedly took a seat on the long isle of empty seats. The orange hue of the plastic seats did nothing to pacify him or his latent carnal urges. A friend in unfamiliar climes. This oddly colored chair harkened back to a now past decade. One of decadence and light-hearted whimsy. Nothing like that today. It was as out of touch as he amongst his fellow passengers. He felt as worn as the dull orange hue told him he was.

"Look down, still look down," Cyril reminded himself.

"Focus, still focus," said the orange plastic chair back to him. "You can call me Roger, by the way."

## CHAPTER 2:

A MAN'S SOUL CAN BE SEEN IN HIS SHOES

He remembered Clementine's face when he woke up this morning. Her beautiful smile, white teeth, and perfectly lovely skin. She kissed him softly on the cheek. Out the door. On her way to work. She toiled. He cleaned. She paid for everything. Her parents did too. In a way. Trust funds are strange inventions, he thought. But she earned her own money too.

"She will be the death of me, I'm sure. But a good fuck can go a long way in a lasting, loving relationship." So they all say, or should.

"Sure, I have to say, our conversations can be stimulating. Discussions about the latest record, the latest book. We are skirting the realms of culture in order to appear at the beginning. Or in the middle or at the end, whichever end. Whichever shape suits us best."

He was deep in thought. Dictating his great American novel. The one he was never going to write. He was not a writer, but liked to think of himself as one. He did not have the patience or the skill.

Cyril remembered last night. Clementine's brown hair loosely framed her large, raccoon eyes. Her mouth opened and spilled on and on and on about the Knighted Rails—the new psychedelic masters. The sixth dimension. The shamans of the fourth realm, or however she put it. She had a way with words too, and that annoyed Cyril to no end. He was too stoned to enjoy her words and, more than likely, losing his fucking mind. Nuts. She continued and went on and on and on about how the Knighted Rails were reminiscent of Kak.

"Was this really true?" Cyril thought. Roger listened to his whole incessant story, but was not much of a fan of psychedelic music. Roger preferred drones and ragas with their repetitious, noisy cycles.

Cyril thought he should take the time to listen to the Knighted Rails. But he knew Clementine probably wanted to flirt with the singer or the bassist. He was the jealous type. Cyril really should have played music. What a wonderful lot. He wouldn't mind if she did flirt with them. He convinced himself he cared little about anything. Maybe they'd say a passing "hi" to him afterwards. He would not be heartbroken.

Maybe they did sound like Kak. The Davis psychedelic wondershop of one record. Eleven months. Five righteous brothers. A rather obscure, but timely reference. Cyril liked that about Clementine. She scored high on those sorts of things. She knew when to drop a name or reference. Just the subtle touch to say that she was in the know, but not heavy enough to make the whole pretension shine through. Taste is what they call it. To Cyril, it seemed plastic. But plastic still shined, Roger reminded Cyril. He loved her, Cyril reminded himself.

Roger grew tired of this story. He had heard plenty of these stories. Day in, day out. Night after night. Back and forth. The same cycle.

Cyril always did what Clementine said. No need to really think. She was five years younger. He still made her happy, despite his numerous shortcomings.

"Get this hash, some kebabs and all should be good in the world," Cyril told Roger with his mind. "We'll get stoned, fuck, maybe flip the record, grab some beers, talk a little bit, sleep, wake up."

This was Cyril's living fantasy. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

Next Stop Longhouse Station. Transfer point to A Line and all above-ground trains.

Automated voices always gave Cyril the creeps. Voices of the dead. Voices of machines. More robots.

Four soured souls trudged off the train. Eight more boarded and took their place. Tentacles swirled on the fingerprinted railings. A smeared existence. Smeared traces. Too much thinking going on. Roger agreed. Everyone stared at one another. They were really staring at themselves.

This place was too heavy.

The lights flickered for a second. Maybe two. Cyril wondered what would happen if it all went dark. Roger yawned. Maybe the workers struck early? "A surprise attack," the media would say. Most of the people read between the lines on this sort of social performance. Jobs good. Unions bad. Strikers worse.

"It's one thing to make your point, but just don't fuck up my commute home." Quote of the day. Roger and Cyril agreed.

Pay and pensions were important. They were to Cyril too, once. That was years ago. He would spend the rest of his tiny fortune on a little escape. If it was up to him, he would've just scored some weed across the hall, but Clementine insisted that he went to Sebastian's. The losers across the hall were always playing video games---just one more distraction for Cyril. The self-avowed poet was outwardly lazy. Clementine saw through him like translucent plastic.

Clementine found hash to be more enlightening than weed anyways. It did make a better story, Cyril gave her that. Despite this, she wasn't the one who had to drag herself through the underbelly of the city to go and get it.

Next Stop Milton Avenue

Station/Leicester Park

Three more stops and he was free, Cyril reminded himself. Luckily, the people around him dimmed their minds. He saw a fourteen-year-old boy angrily tapping on his phone.

"Wonder who he's sending a message to?" asked Cyril in his mind.

"Some angry girlfriend?" replied Roger. He had seen it happen plenty of times before.

"No, he's too greasy for that."

"His mom?"

"No, she's probably on the way home from some corporate cubicle. One day she would realize her loser son's obsession. Hmm, no his nicely washed Exploited shirt, means his mother loves him well. A well-adjusted rebel, the best kind. But what do I care?"

Cyril cracked a smile. The boy didn't notice. Roger would have laughed. But he was an orange plastic seat. Nothing to laugh about.

Cyril looked at his boots. They needed to be shined. The black had given way to a well- worn, scuffed quality.

_A man's soul can be seen in his shoes_.

Who says that? Probably just some holiday jingle winding its way through the cerebellum. Dusting off the corporate brain-wash. But it was true. Cyril really should shine them up when he got back to the apartment. The task mesmerized him when a little hash was sprinkled into it. Made the boots really shine.

Sebastian's hash was magic to Cyril's mind. His life, while not very bleak, could only be tolerated at full lucidity for so long.

_Next Stop Saxers Boulevard, transfer to C Line and Greyhound Bus Station_.

Cyril looked at the boarding passengers, envisioning fictional stories of love affairs and political intrigue. Then he spotted her.

"Shit, she sees me," Cyril pleaded. Roger was not listening anymore. He was gone. It was just an orange plastic seat again. Like the others. Faded and empty.

Cyril saw as she targeted her eyes squarely on him.

"It's like I'm pulling her in. What can't this be reversed? Is there a way to repel her with a glance?... Roger?... Roger?" But Cyril realized he was still not there. Just an orange chair, he reminded himself as he mind-lifted off the ground a bit.

It didn't really matter what Cyril did or said to himself. The only thing that could save him was to pull the red emergency handle at the exit. But that was illegal. And a rather uneven solution. Here she came. Cyril did nothing. He wished he was brave.

Mary was one of those girls Cyril wished he had never met.

"Unbelievable, why was I not able to make her laugh. She was never into me. Must be when we first met," Cyril thought.

He was knee deep in thoughts. Most of which escaped him. They fled the scene. He remembered her walk, her thighs and, of course, her mystical mind. She always exposed the latest wondering of those now squalid philosophers. If only Nietzsche looked this good. Maybe the masses might even remember him once they got their degrees.

"Hey, Cyril where you headed to?" Mary whispered softly.

"Ah, you know. Here and there," he replied vaguely. He hoped this showed her the door. Or at least that he meant to be left to his thoughts.

"Ever the mysterious character, my friend. Come on now, where you going?" Mary raised her voice. She caught the ears of those around them.

"Up to the Badlands. I've got my six shooter strapped and another boot on the ground. These are dirtied times, you know. Just a lone wolf out to discover the country."

Cyril was always one to weave a web.

"Seriously, Cyril."

Her voice now levitated to near piercing intrusion.

"Where are you going? I'm bored and want some fun."

"Well, listen here," Cyril slyly had her come closer. He could feel her breath. Sweet. Plain. Nice. "I'm picking up a little fun for Clementine, but you're more than welcome to come with. I'll even palm a little to you if you want. Our little secret."

He had always fantasized about this. Being a good drug dealer someday. That was always something to aspire to. Poets made no money. His uninspiring occupations had always been the ire of Clementine. Dishwasher. Office clerk. Phone answerer. Unskilled. Boring. Now he had none. The death knell. Unpaid. Clementine always said he should pick an interesting hobby. He told her he wrote a book once. He hadn't. But everyone's a writer nowadays. Or a photographer. Or a singer. But a drug dealer—that was where it's at. No unions. No taxes.

"From who, Cyril? Please don't tell me it's Sebastian."

This time her voice curved in a less powerful tone.

"Why?"

"Fuck that. You know. He's a psycho," she laughed. "Does that count? Look, I'm not against a good revolution. But I don't need its tentacles in my brain while I'm just trying to score."

"But you can have a good time with me."

Cyril tried to sound confident but it came off cold and stoic. A dull tone. Mary gave him an odd look, hopped up and stood near the door. She must've thought he was as dull as the seat he was sitting in. Dull, orange, and worn.

_Next Stop Broadway Station, Riverfront. Last stop in Zone 1_.

"Later Cyril, I'm seeing the Rails tonight. Show starts at 10, but they won't go on till later. Bring the good times if you want."

Mary waved.

"He's strange guy, but he's useful," she thought.

"Will do." Cyril hadn't heard of the Rails show.

She slowly left the train. Backed her way into in the crowd. Cyril would love to fuck her. But Clementine would of course hear it from someone. Maybe Mary would tell her. Either way, he would not do it. Probably not. Clementine needed her hash. She said it helped her paint. Bullshit. He reminded himself that he loved her. He did of course. But he sure wished he could fuck Mary.

The train carried on, suddenly emerging, briefly, to cross the river on a rusting iron bridge. Cyril laughed to himself. The east side of the river. No man's land. Not where he wanted to be. But like most things in his life, here he was.

Next Stop Travlador Station, Riverfront

_East. First stop in Zone 2_.

"One more station." Cyril grinned. Given this upturn in his prospects, he rooted around for his cigarettes.

_Be Ready. Be Keen. Be on Time_.

Did he learn that in school? Or was it another billboard? Maybe an online ad. Either way. Corporate education.

This phrase was meant in reference to an actual occupation or some semblance of normalcy. Cyril perverted the remark into a quasi-religious fervor about cigarettes, booze, and women. But he was on time to see Sebastian. And yes, he would have his cigarette lit by the time he could see the light at the top of the station's stairs.

But just then, he realized he was fresh out. He shook the empty carton. Still none there.

"Fuck me."

Now agitated, he rustled through his pockets. He found a lighter, an old train ticket, and other scattered remnants of days past.

"What's this?"

He held the pamphlet. The black and white one from before. Odd timing—nothing to take his mind off of itself like a little light reading. The impending worker's implosion. Corruption of the corporate marketplace. Little historical ditties about mass riots, mass murders, and mass consumer overload. He stuffed it back in his jacket's inside pocket. Later. He'd get to it later.

## CHAPTER 3:

LEAVE THE WORKING TO THOSE WORKING INSIDE

Finally, the train made its destination. The one Cyril wanted. He quickly gathered his wits and departed. Quickening his pace, he half ran, half jogged. That would be his mode of transport until he rose out of this den of musty sweat and corporate anxiety.

Much like the descent into the station, Cyril danced the same dance. Only in reverse. He kept his head down. Past the barkers. Past the papists. Past the day workers. Past the police. Past the military men with the big guns. Past all of this.

He danced the dance in the midst of a terrible fog. The enveloping crisis was just starting to catch fire. Fueled by newspapers and speculators. Insecurity had people on the verge of panic. Not the light kind either. Panic of unsorted fear. Many feared how this strike would change their lives. However temporary, it would shut down the city. Some used the phrase "held hostage." Others said "protest."

A man could hope for this sort of panic maybe once or twice in a lifetime. This was not panic of the deadly sort. Not Belgrade during the carpet bombing of 1941. Not poor Castor. Out of the Paris Zoo and onto the dining room table in 1871. Castor's case was unique. He feared neither fiery death nor slow-cooked madness. He was not deceived by the newspapers because he didn't read them.

The riot police were sandbagging and taking precautions. The military were polishing their guns. The big ones. The labor strikers were pressing their shirts and readying their signs. The students were talking about everything and nothing.

The people already felt the pinch.

Cyril looked over the precipice. This was a moment which could serve as the spark to light this whole dry, rotten structure. However, he was not hoping for a burning city, but not for any one idea. Selfish reasons mostly. He would rather grab the hash and head home for a few moments with Clementine. He felt that would not be the case tonight. Time was not the straight line it seemed, but it always bent backwards to home.

"Must continue," whispered Cyril to himself. He talked to himself just quietly enough so that no one heard. It was a secret pleasure of his. This teetering between inner solace and outward insanity always struck a chord with him. Cyril knew Clementine figured him to be a bit odd, but not really.

All of sudden, a warm feeling took him sweating by the palm. This feeling leisurely guided him on his way, but not forcing his thoughts in any particular manner.

"What's this?" Cyril wondered aloud. An eternity wrapped in five seconds.

Must be the Klonopin wearing off. He realized this was not a feeling at all. It was a warm void, absent of any feeling. Now this was something he could relate too. Cyril walked confidently up the stairs, passed the police line and into the darkening cityscape. The chilling air struck his face.

"C'mon on man, join on up! No blood for brothers?" said a reversed barker.

He shoved the same pamphlet Cyril had almost read on the train into his face. He was much like the man Cyril encountered twenty minutes ago, but this soon-to-be striking worker had an alarmingly empty grin.

"Don't you believe in change?"

Cyril stopped. Hadn't he just heard this?

"You know that change can only come along when we all stand up to those in power. You agree? Better unions, better city."

"No, I don't, my man." Cyril liked the last fragment. He had a sense of knowing this worker who was neither his brother nor friend. Cyril had no job, so really, little in common.

"What? Speak up! Did you say you don't? Don't what?"

The man was visibly annoyed at Cyril. He must have thought this would be an easy conversion.

"Don't believe," Cyril whispered. The words came out through his teeth in a rather serpentine manner.

"Don't believe in what?" the worker demanded an answer. His portly body took on a fierce fighting spirit, resembling a rather paunchy species of cheetah. Ready to pounce, but slow on the uptake.

"Believe in change," Cyril replied, a little louder this time. "But, go ahead and believe. Doesn't matter much to me." Little did to Cyril anyhow.

"Go fuck yourself." The worker degenerated into cold, mechanical hatred. "You're either with us or not, remember that."

"Yeah, alright. Thanks."

The worker created a sense of violence in the chilled night air, but Cyril scurried past. He was finally freed out to the open streets of the rotting city.

"That's why you don't stop," Cyril reminded himself. "Looking down is hard in the darkening night. Still, avoid eye-contact. People can steal your soul."

Weary from the underground train tunnels, he was loose in a cityscape at once familiar and still miles away from agreeable. Living in the same city for the past 15 years can't be good for the psyche, he thought. No good for the body either. But Cyril had little time to think about the last one. He thought it time to grab some smokes before having to deal with that European zealot, Sebastian.

Buying drugs was always an ordeal for Cyril no matter who it was from. Pile on a laundry list of political dogma, revolutionary doctrine and a hint of pure earthly escape—he never could find the right dealer: one who balanced the business side with pleasant conversation and a punctual answering service. Of course, Cyril knew that if he was all of these things, he probably stopped with all that shit years ago. That called for a pack of smokes, a stiff drink, and something to rest in the stomach. But Cyril only had time for one.

"Soon enough, I'll have the hash, hop the train back home and ride out the strike with Clementine. Leave the working to those working inside. The unions to those united. I don't care."

## CHAPTER 4:

BOBBED TO THE SURFACE

Put aside the frivolities of our now dark modern age for a moment. Retreat past Cyril and the flaming minds going back and forth between the rotting sides of a four-sided city. Retreat to a dark cellar in Mainz in the year 1793. Cyril's great-great- great-great-great grandfather, a rather unfortunate fellow named Dieter, was part of a mass of equally oafish men overrunning the stiff resistance of this jewel city, strategically situated on the river Rhine.

Dieter, a rather dumb, brutish farmer, was also a foot soldier of the Austrian Empire. Cannon fodder for the Habsburg's will. He was instructed through a chain of command to crush this newly founded Napoleonic Republic in Mainz. Dieter's job was not to question the way things were, but to follow the orders given. His orders were to torch the city, whether it house man, woman, or child. Teach them a lesson, so to speak. Dieter liked to follow orders.

This day, in 1793, plodded on like so many before it and so many after. Dieter's musket worked rather marvelously on this late spring morning. His shots damned these rats—the fucking Jacobins. Dieter's ideological leanings, as we called them nowadays, had more to do with safety and shelter than actual political consideration. Modern people like to believe that society had moved beyond them. To Dieter, it was simple equations:

A dead Jacobin = Good riddance

Napoleon = Devil

The French Republic = Hell on Earth

For Dieter, evil was not thoughts or imperial desires, but rather focused on the matter of tearing him away from his family and farm. Here he was. Burning and raping to instill the fear of the monarchy. A regal institution enforced by primitive means. The contradiction is clear enough to us now. The constant fear pounded and infected him more than the corpses he left on the ground. They were freed from the madness. Dieter still spun around in the middle of it all. Sick and sad.

He was in the heat of battle, in the waning spring light of a May afternoon, in the year 1793. Dieter came across a huddling mother and child in a dark, dank cellar on the outskirts of Mainz. The grand Rhine ran through town, leaving fear in its brown, swift wake. The river kept rolling from the Austrian hinterland through the castles and steep sided hills, before dumping its contents in the cold, fresh sea. This forward motion was not shared by the huddling family. Starved by the Prussian siege, the family was gaunt, soiled, and utterly stagnant. Sunken skin. Tight lips.

For some reason—was it her scared pupils? Her terrified children or her dead husband lying close by?—Dieter kept his musket at bay and his dick in his pants. His flickering intelligence coalesced, for a brief moment. An enlightened conscious bobbed to the surface. He knew that this family could be saved. He took the youngest girl by the hand and showed the family a narrow passage down the river's edge. It skirted the walls of the now deserted businesses down to muddied, bloodied waters.

The Rhine had always been a boundary, but at no point greater than this moment in 1793. In our modern minds, the river cut a clean path between enlightenment and imperial servitude. To those acting out this military drama, it was a choice between life and death.

Dieter snuck each child one by one. Four in total. He hid them in the tall grass by the river. He reminded them to stay quiet. He went back down to the cellar and told the mother to stay in the cellar under a blanket that he had stolen off a corpse hours before.

The day went and night soon took hold of the rebellious city. Dieter went about his general duties of warfare, but with a secret cause in his heart. At the depth of darkness, he came back for the mother and reunited her with her huddling, shaking brood. He put the children and mother in a small wooden makeshift raft and pushed them away from shore. He believed that this would save the family. Maybe it would atone for one fallen victim. Maybe for his barbaric behavior.

He smiled as the raft crossed from his sight into complete darkness. He came back up the hill almost skipping. A fellow soldier was ahead and out of sight. He was Prussian, an ally but no compatriot. This young soldier was the lookout for the evening. Wary of angry townsfolk. He saw the outline of a man coming fast in front. Moving erratically. The young Prussian mistook Dieter for a rebellious city resident.

Coming up the hill, Dieter turned back for a look at the family. He couldn't see them of course, but he knew they were doing alright on that flimsy raft. He smiled, for the last time. The bullet struck the back of his skull and he quickly bled out his thoughts into the cold night. A slight smile remained on his face.

Dieter's story was never written. In fact, it was really only known to those who acted in its only performance. Cyril's now long gone relatives received word that their father, husband and brother was killed. Some bland excuse about how he gave his life for the Empire and that was it. Nothing about the rebellion. Or Dieter's personal rebellion.

Dieter's act of rebellion served in stark contrast to his family's years of careless indifference to the ways and means of their fellow compatriots. His personal act of rebellion came at a time of a cyclical social re-think. His act was pure. Almost animalistic.

He had no thought of disobeying the Empire or joining the Jacobites. His rebellion simply flowed forth from the chains he had so forcefully placed around his mind.

But this story, and of course its teachings, were all lost. His son, who grew up fatherless, died himself. Undistinguished, he was killed in a minor skirmish with Turkish forces in the outer Habsburg lands. Some said it was in Slavonia. Others felt Wallachia was more common location. But most agreed that it was the Military Frontier. That unfortunate political solution which found former serfs bleeding their lives for an empire in exchange for the illusion of freedom. Unlike his father Dieter, his son died without much life thought and far less learned. Cyril, of course, never caught light of this—a handy tale had been properly saved for his disposal.

## CHAPTER 5:

MORE PALATABLE CREATIONS

Dieter's subsequent generations snaked around the provinces of the Hapsburg Empire until a man in his late 20's crept on a boat to escape the crazed aftermath of 1848. That year, now forgotten by all but the most bearded of state college professors, found the nations of old Europe struggling to keep their system intact. Threats of equality and freedom echoed. It looked like the forces of the working class might once and for all cement a true foothold on real representation. But whatever their gains, they were forcefully and violently swept under.

This man, in his late 20s, was an unfortunate believer on the wrong side of the dispute. His ideas soon changed from sharp, jagged dissent to smooth, round conformity. This process was slow but measurable, like the rocks slowly pounded under his feet as he crossed the shores to his new nation.

One by one, Cyril's family continued to live out their lives in general anonymity and unwavering conformity. Their stories were no longer told, much less written down. However, Cyril's creative mind always helped to fill in the factual gaps.

His great-grandfather, a rather inventive yet mind-numbingly dull personality, spent his life waxing and waning on the best plots of lumber. Buy low, sell high. Business was business. In Cyril's spoken imagination, his great-grandfather fought the Huns in the trenches at the Somme and ended up the poor victim of an errant shell. A heroic story to shore up a man's aptitude for greatness.

Cyril had an uncle who died in Algiers in 1962. A fatal victim of the indigenous bombing campaign. His uncle, whose name and life remained fictional, despite Cyril's insistence, was supposedly on a secret art mission, commissioned by the CIA. Spreading love and life when he was cruelly struck down by an arcing metal of freedom. This was one of Cyril's masterworks. Most of his family stories revolved around the common theme of violent military deaths experienced by male members of his family.

"An irony, that those who spread freedom through paint and love are killed by the same men who aim to be in the same position," Cyril would proudly recount, most recently on a rainy Tuesday evening to an unsurprised Clementine. He always told her that's why it's hard to believe in anything these days.

In fact, his real uncle was a nearly forgotten fellow named Marvin. It was true he did have some skill with paint. His life in Toledo alternated between stoic graveyard shifts behind the counter of a slowly rusting gas station and early morning sessions of painting over last night's graffiti. His life, following the path of a functional alcoholic, moved like an overweight fish in squalid pond. Gasping for air in the dirty water. Cyril's few visits to Toledo were met with such boredom, that they became buried far beneath the more palatable creations his mind had fashioned instead.

Little did Cyril know, but his uncle carried around the same thoughts. He envisioned his current life as something different than the actual squalor it was. Cyril only had to look past the linear sense to see that his uncle would soon hang himself. Dangling, quiet and pretty, Cyril's uncle would finally succeed. A true artistic death.

Despite his tall tales, Cyril's stories usually veered safely away from the females in his family. The truth was that he held these women near to his heart. They were one of the few ideas he grudgingly believed in. Clementine rarely heard any recanted tales of his grandmother or his aunts. While the women led equally dismal lives, Cyril held them to a high esteem whether or not they actually deserved it. Most of what he did happen to share was vague, lending to the mystery surrounding them. But Clementine heard of one woman more than most, his mother Anne.

Born to a wealthy family on the East Coast, Annabelle May Jones was a woman from an outside perspective. Some would say she had it all. In many material ways she did—summer homes, private schools, trust funds—the usual accoutrements of a blue-blooded lifestyle. Paul Schmidt belonged to a decidedly lower standing. He was successful plumber who came from a solidly underclass family in the Midwest. A stern man who had a penchant for long hours and cold, hard stares, he warmed briefly when meeting Anne, but soon turned back inward. It was a brief thaw before a long freeze.

On a cold night in the middle of a hellish summer, Cyril Rutherford Schmidt was born to parents of different social stations and differing views on life. Conceived nine months or so earlier in the rented heat of a hotel room, Cyril was the residual mess of a passing moment. His mother, Anne, and father, Paul rather indecisively decided to keep him. But they went their separate ways.

Careless indifference on both sides marked Cyril's early years. He was not treated badly, as he may like to think back. No, he was loved. But it was a love extended like a formal, stiff handshake. Socially mandated love. He was not unconditionally loved but conditionally tolerated in a family which grew inverted, sideways in the social classes.

His early years saw lengthy travels, torn between stints abroad with his mother at chalets in France and summer homes on the coasts of Massachusetts. His fatherly visits were decidedly lowbrow adventures through whatever place Paul could find work. He was never unemployed. Instead he freelanced his plumbing skills on new jobs. The list of places they went grew as Cyril went on in years. Columbus. Scranton. Wichita. Arkadelphia. Memphis. Tulsa. Shreveport. Tuscaloosa. Evanston. Springfield. Forgotten rusting plots.

He saw less of his mother once she took a new husband. The man took little kindness to this odd bastard child. They settled in Brussels and started a family of their own. Cyril was officially welcomed and even enjoyed a few summers there, but only as an asterisk in their new equation.

This early lukewarm attention descended upon Cyril's still developing mind, spiraling toward the usual outward rebellious attitude. His teenage years were marked heavily by obscure records. Black jeans, amphetamines, and psychedelics were also the trappings of an adolescent's temporary mark.

Cyril tried to forge a parallel track to his peer's pop culture fascination. He lived to the soundtrack of the Bonniwell Music Machine almost exclusively. Cyril chose his band, albeit a quasi- obscure L.A. garage band from the 60s and fittingly adopted the look. Black leather jacket. Black shirt. Black Beatle boots. Black bobbed hair. Black leather gloves. Black sunglasses, indoors and out. Black.

While others bopped to more electronic bleeps, he grooved to his nearly private primitive beats about astrological signs, eagles and flies, double yellow lines and talk-talk.

Cyril wished to be misunderstood.

Later, he tolerated similar obscurity. SRC. Lyres. The Pagans. The Godz. Arthur Brown. Lazy Cowgirls. Love. Rodriguez. The Go. He had a large album collection. His own personal feast. His own secret friends.

He carefully veered, bobbed, and evaded fitting in. This meant avoiding those unseemly souls at school who fought hard to "be different." Cyril saw through them. These characters still made hierarchies and social structures. All rigid. All concrete. All as cold as the next.

Unfortunately, his classmates took a far less sinister approach toward him even through all his attempts to avoid them. They, much like his parents, offered him half-hearted attempts at civility. They put up with him, tolerated him, but generally left him alone.

Cyril had a mission in his enhanced mind. Incorporating lost artifacts like the Music Machine into a forward-thinking movement. To everyone but him his approach lacked clarity, organization and leadership. He was no born leader and people generally steered clear. While he assumed this was their well-planned Fabian strategy, his peers simply didn't give a shit.

Cyril was an original, in his own mind. A walking, talking nihilist. Yes, that's the word he was looking for. One who did what he wanted. No subscription to a yearly ideology. Whether it was the petty hipster skipping from art fair to farmer's market, or the knuckled and boned punk rocker slamming the establishment.

He acknowledged he might be rebellious. He bent his mind's eye to see through the paper-thin present. But Cyril was most definitely not and never would be a revolutionary.

## CHAPTER 6:

NO POINTS, NO ROUNDED EDGES

The darkening streets hid the utter depravity of the situation. Cyril thought it solid that he had someone with whom to debate this fact. His mind's conversations were getting dull. But was this even possible?

Cyril felt as though for the past few years, his mind was rotting. Not fast in a diseased manner, but its elasticity was definitely on the wane. He found himself more and more agitated with the simple aspects of life. Going to the grocery, shaving, and showering. Picking up after himself. Being civil to Clementine. Talking. Walking. Clementine told him to shave the other day. Cyril always despised beards till he actually grew one. He saw it as freedom from one more daily activity. But she hated the beard so he shaved it after a couple of weeks. All this was hard, but so necessary. So Clementine told him.

The decay and rot of the city he saw around him was in his mind. Maybe they were working together? Maybe all of this was just in his mind. Or maybe, he thought, his mind was poisoning this plastic city structure. Either way, they were both going to shit.

"Jesus, I do need this hash."

Waiting at the stoplight, he came across an image he couldn't quite place. In the middle of a poster was an inverted pyramid circled with pyramids and three of the four corners laced with headless nuns. He knew the poster was made by Darius. The city's resident one-word abstract artist. Interesting. Quite.

It was a poster for the show Mary had been going on and on about. The words read:

_A feast for the soul featuring the tantalizing_...

THEE KNIGHTED RAILS

_With support act: Purple and the Back Nine. The Spanish Main. $8. 21+. 9pm. DJ's after_. Yes, now he remembered, he must have seen it online earlier. Maybe it was on Facebook or the Junction Weekly. Or in his email inbox? Either way, he hoped there would not be too many people there tonight. But Mary was right. The Knighted Rails were the talk of the town, at least among the right people.

He thought, almost laughing in a maniacal manner, how weird it was to see an image transposed first through wires and pixels now in the flesh. Seemingly printed just for his eyes.

It was quite a happening. A split-second reaction on the street. Maybe he would go tonight. A little voice deep in his mind suggested maybe there was some meaning to all of this. The flyer. Mary (Sweet Mary). The Knighted Rails (Clementine's new crush). Sebastian (Hash). All were coalescing toward one finite conclusion.

His mind quickly regained its composure. There was nothing. It certainly had no meaning, he reminded himself.

Cyril's trouble with being a nihilist, and nihilism in general, was a point he had labored on for over ten years. It took a large deal of meditation and reminders to stay focused on the fact that nothing has meaning. That you really should not focus on it any way. There are no points, no rounded edges. Just a pure endless expanse of nothing.

With his mind reddened and forced into shape, he took a sharp left into the nearby smoke shop. A dingy little shop. It had a name, but Cyril did not bother to notice it. It was barely known to its neighborhood residents after all. It was unlike most jumping off points for novels and stories. It had no hidden secrets. No passage ways to hidden depths. No storied history about beheadings, love triangles, or shanghaied individuals. No deep metaphors. No symbolism. Nothing. Maybe it did fit Cyril. Empty. It was just a regular smoke shop teetering on the lower class part of town and frequented by the usual lot. Wage workers. Debilitated alcoholics. Out-and-out vagrants. Luckily for Cyril, he fit none of these categories. He was a rare animal in this store. An unemployed asshole struggling at believing he was a nihilist.

"Two packs of regular, unfiltered Camels," Cyril said proudly. Despite living in the post- information age, the fact that he burned unfiltered cigarettes made him feel a bit libertine. Not quite rebellious, but, as Cyril would like to have said, "Right on the edge of nothing."

"Sure you don't want to stock up?" said the clerk half-laughing. Here was this man. An average man of East African descent, laughed at social upheaval in a country which he emigrated to in order to escape far worse social apparitions than a general strike.

"I hear you people are in a for a real treat.

Myself, I live up stairs and will guard my family. I have done it before, you know, I can do it again."

Before the finality of the purchase, these two men struck up a quick, but substantial conversation. While they only stood 24 inches apart at most, their political leanings and overall social stances could not be further apart.

The clerk, Solomon, recalled his days in Northern Uganda. His was a story of epic survival. Christian child-soldiers. Desert-dry drought. Death, disease, and an all-consuming lack of economic activity.

The importance of this conversation came not so much from the content, which was staccatoed and off-paced at best. It came from the lack of interest paid by Cyril. The story mirrored the tales of heroics, both real and invented, belonging to his family. It had all the right ingredients. Military woes. Religious violence. Some sort of reasonable resolution.

Cyril's cards were kept close to his chest on this one. He yawned and thought maybe he should stock up. But he decided against the extra pack or two of cigarettes. Sebastian and his crew were the sharing type.

"Best stick to what I can stuff in my jeans," he reminded himself. "No need for co-oping among the Maoists." Solomon did not hear him. He would not have cared to anyways.

"Nah, two it is. I bet you guys will stay open late, so I'll just be back on my way home."

"We will, god willing. But if the power is cut, I'll fucking kill those looters, man. Steal from me, ha!"

Cyril only caught a few words—the first half of Solomon's half-decent diatribe. He stuffed the smokes down his jeans, lowered his head, and quickly exited the shop, which he thought he would never enter again.

Back into the cold and ever worsening night, he realized the panic of the faces of the people he was passing by. He saw a woman with her red hair pasted to her white face. While the temperature was 10 degrees below freezing, her sweat was obviously from the impeding mystery.

"What will happen in the next day?" she thought. More accurately, what Cyril thought she thought.

He despised all those hurried minds, splattering shit on the city's aura. It wasn't so much that they worried for the safety of everyone or anyone, just themselves. While this sentiment was something that Cyril could relate to, it was not something he liked to indulge in.

It was strange to be in the east part of the city since moving in with Clementine. Five miles and another world away. Her money and superiority in station proved itself with a nice two bedroom apartment. It was a top floor with a spacious master bath, vaulted ceilings, perfectly tread on Persian rugs, contemplative study, and newly finished hardwoods throughout. Cyril forgot if it they were Cherry Oak or Maritime Teak.

Cyril walked the streets, trying to remember his first apartment.

"There you are, you decrepit hole in the wall. Just like I left you. Right on the fifth floor. Or was it the sixth floor? No, no, it must be that tenement across the street. Wait, was it that one?"

That shithole, wherever it was, was the place Cyril occupied when he moved here. Away from his father's dreams of a second-generation plumber. The first place he could afford was shared with five stinking hippies. Cyril didn't despise their subculture nor their technicolor dream. More, it was the individuals involved.

Sure their beliefs based on astrology and I- Ching annoyed Cyril, but the root of his despising them was in their believing in something, not their actual beliefs. No matter how far off base they really were. Beyond that, Cyril could handle their beliefs and constant stoned gibbering.

He joined them quite often with weed, opium, pills or whatever else they had. Those were the days before he met Sebastian. Days populated with dirty weed and dirty drugs. He always got silent and not as earthy as his roomies. Still, he had admitted to some good times there. Like when he fucked one of Matt's girlfriends. She was open to those sorts of things and Cyril was fresh out of better things to do. Matt didn't mind either. She, who Cyril remembered as Summer, was a few years older and what a difference that made.

Quick flashes of Summer jumped through his skull as he stared at the rotting structure. Sweaty tits, moist and full. Pulling off her gray cotton shirt. His pants taken down in a slow rhythmic manner. Before letting him fuck her, she swallowed his cock. Melodic and consistent as first. Then furious. Shoved on her knees face down. Cyril roughly from behind. Summer on top softly moaning to just come inside. Then it's over. That's all he's got. A few precious images of youthful fucking. At least that's what Cyril imagined. He quickly placed these memories back in the box they came from.

She was still one of his great fucks. Not that Cyril had many to begin with. Those memories always flooded back to him when he used to sleep with a boring girl or now those times with Clementine when he was really drunk and needed a little flash of excitement to put him over the edge. Summer was there. Moaning.

The girl herself was probably useless nowadays. Never of much interest to him outside those few times. Her real name, in fact, was Julie. Cyril remembered the heat of those nights. He made up the name Summer. Sounded better to him. Julie was too plain and much too normal. Where was she now? Most likely on some coast or inland city, not small, not large. Working or lazing the days away. Who knows? Maybe she married a prince or killed a queen. Whatever her regal status, Summer held a Dionysian appointment in Cyril.

After the last few diversions, Cyril realized how long it really was to Sebastian's house. It was out there, in the wasteland of lower class suburbia, that he realized how public transportation was bare. One could see the rails in the ground, or at least imagine them, and not quite understand why they were not used anymore. Or ever used in the first place. Walk, walk, walk. Cyril continued.

The last half mile to the house was filled with the usual useless mannerisms Cyril conducted in his social pattern. He looked down. Stared at the ground. If he did look up, he had no worries about making eye contact. Most surely everyone was inside or on their way there. The darkness and growing unease about the general strike wreaked its havoc over this slowly rusting attachment to the larger, also rusting, city to the west.

Cyril clipped forward.

Under the orange lights, cars rushed by. The swish of each passing car lead Cyril's imagination in a new direction. Perhaps it was a perilous gun runner, stocking up before the days ahead. Maybe it was an expectant father rushing to the hospital ahead of his still loved wife's day of ultimate purpose. Cyril was always good at believing his own fictions. Not that he thought he was, but at least it was something. A belief in something.

The streets were nearly deserted of civilians. Riot police milled about and laughed with one another.

"God knows what they're talking about," Cyril thought to himself.

What glee these protectors were having. The men, some serious of course, mostly laughed as they stood and practiced lunging at one another. Perhaps it was in anticipation of a prolonged labor dispute. Or riots. Or worse. Either way, these men tasted blood.

Cyril walked faster when he saw two officers with rifles pacing on the opposite side of the street. He assumed they were up to no good. Oddly enough, that was precisely what he feared they were thinking about him. They, of course, did not notice Cyril, the slight fellow dressed in all black, staring at the ground, walking quickly. These officers, like nearly everyone save Clementine, could give a shit about Cyril.

Finally, the walk across weathered concrete and rusted metal came to an abrupt conclusion. Cyril gazed at Sebastian's enclave. A once majestic, three- story house. Built over a hundred and some years before. Gray on the outside and, in a sense, graying on the inside. It was rather non-descript for the neighborhood. The whole place was a once proud bastion of old shipping money. A giant metropolitan middle man. Now a slowing aged outer ring suburb. A perfect place for the selling and buying drugs. And the revolutionary business Sebastian also dealt in. No need to draw attention to oneself.

There was a five-foot tall brick wall surrounding the yard. A black wrought iron gate imposed in front of a yard speckled with grass and weeds and a weaving walkway to the door. The summer had not been kind and with winter fast approaching, this wasteland would not see green anytime soon.

Cyril was surprised to find the gate unlatched, since Sebastian was notoriously cautious about strangers and unwelcome visitors. He started to walk inside, but suddenly heard footsteps at a fairly fast clip approaching. It was completely dark because the city workers forgot to replace the street lamp. For good reason, Sebastian's house was not lit from the inside. Cyril cowered inwardly in fear.

Was it the cops? Was this really his luck today?

"Fuck me," Cyril said to himself.

## CHAPTER 7:

PROUD FAILURES

Descending from the dark sky into the Victorian home on the eastern edge of a polluted metropolis, one would believe that you descended into another complex of simple family relations. Inside this nondescript house on the rotting fringes, there was a family of sorts. A loose knit clan of revolutionaries.

Smart, incendiary folks were bent on using a strike of this proportion for a greater need. Not for a restructuring involving contract talks and wage scales, pensions, vacation days, or health benefits. But a restructuring of the whole fucking thing.

Their leader was a well-dressed man named Sebastian Took. He was the leader, though not through power or by vote; his sheer persona was enough. His impeccable style mixed with a flair for rhetoric and an unassuming manner made him attractive. His inner circle now gathered around him in the drawing room of this rather large house.

Their party, the Fourth Order Social International League (FOSIL), was a faction to the far left of all the other regional and national parties. It was shunned by the striking labor unions and most centrist parties for being too far off the spectrum. At first, the news media treated the party much as the everyday person treated Cyril. They ignored. However, Sebastian served as a beacon. The membership in recent years had boomed. Rallies around town had seen upwards of 2,000 mostly young and angry, members listening to his speeches. His words were for self-action, "Use your hands to bring about the change we want." Sebastian was not ignored any longer. Accordingly, he trimmed back his more seedy pastimes.

What many saw as radical views, Sebastian saw as necessary rights for all. He viewed the current system as radically unbalanced, especially in this septic city. A place where riches were held in the hands of very few and the masses were left scrambling for the rest. To top it off, the system was structured in order to whip up fear and hatred among the poor. To eat each other, so the rich had food on their tables.

"Most view life as holding on to what they got," Took mused in a recent interview. "To fight for more would be a risk to their already shaky foothold. "

Took generally had a more philosophical eye on life than their founder, Rosa. She was far more focused on action. Real, concrete words and action.

Sebastian's father, Alexsandar, named him after a French soldier his grandfather befriended in Marseilles during the First World War. While he could have been named Boris, Dusan or Slobodan, his name was a source of pride for his family. The would call him enlightened. The Little French One. They would crack jokes about his love of women, champagne, and salons. As he grew up, though, he became more Sartre than de Gaulle.

His father, Nemanja, was a rather aggressive Serbian. A soccer player by traded, he, like most Serbs, was known for hard charging tackles and unsporting play. Quite the opposite of the young Sebastian. He grew up in the failed shadows of a crumbling socialist republic. His father wished to play for the famed Red Star team, but was stuck shuttling back and forth on lower division teams, mostly in Novi Sad or Kragujevac. Wherever they would let him ply his trade.

George Best once quipped about the hard- tackling Serbs. It was a Partizan match. Or maybe Red Star. Either way, he agreed. Georgie, much like Nemanja, soon found himself on the wrong end of the pitch age-wise. And, like the teams they played for, both were sucked into a long, and ultimately futile, relegation battle.

Sebastian's family struggled financially while his father struggled on the pitch. His mother had died shortly after his birth from some sort of kidney infection. Unwilling to give in to his family's desires to make a regular, at least subsistence living, his father's dreams of scoring a goal amidst a crowd throwing smoke bombs and flares never dampened. He chased what he believed in. The young Sebastian carried his father's soiled uniforms back from the match on Saturday afternoons. He was a proud man at this point. Sebastian saw this. Proud even in his losses.

Despite his dreams, Nemanja followed his brother out to America to this very house in the eastern suburbs of this rotting city. Only he and Sebastian remained there. Sebastian's sister married and moved to the west coast. She rarely visited. Sebastian's uncle moved to Omaha to take a job. He was unimportant.

After the move, his father drank his share of plum brandy. It was no use for Sebastian to try to talk to his father in this state. No longer radicalized or inspired, his father turned from a courageous lion in his child's eyes to a broken man. "Too old to even fight against the damned Croats before they moved," his father would lament drunkenly.

Despite a few pick-up soccer leagues, his father's new focus was on drinking. Nemenja grew to be more like George Best the further off the pitch he went, giving up his former love for a dulling medication. Sebastian soon followed suit but instead with more intellectual dedications. Experimentation. He quickly ascertained the silent power which drugs gave him. He fused this admiration with the ability to fund his other interests. Since childhood, Sebastian nurtured a firm, almost natural, belief in the power of social centralism. He saw it fail in Yugoslavia. Proud despite its failure. He knew he could make it work. If done correctly.

Power was intrinsically corrupting. He was taught the essence of that as a child and so he believed. The only way to combat this natural human compulsion to wield their power over one another is to have a planned society in which we all lived. A manufactured nation in which we all lived together. Shared together. Loved together.

Sebastian agreed with his friends that certain concessions must be given to the individual, but overall, he believed the state must be centralized and powerful enough to provide for everyone. Without certain boundaries, men would run freely over one another. He saw this happen in his old country, where the free market bombed their land and poisoned their soil. The market swept up the remains only to resell them to their former owners at a higher price. His new homeland provided more examples of this controlled, modern slavery.

His new home in the outer ring suburb was little more than a metropolized version of the old west company town. The only exception being that it was laid out on the table. The corporations owned everything. Even the government. The workers worked with the hope of leaving with riches intact. Instead through taxes, price hikes on general goods, credit cards and overall corruption, they were forced into a purgatory of poverty, debt, and pain only to be relieved by death or, in his father's case, drink.

Sebastian was quick to see this. His way out of this was to pull everyone along with him. He knew that his beliefs in a monthly minimum wage, planned economics, and shared community co-ops could enlighten and engage if only given the proper voice through the right channels. So far, he had seen his attempts stifled, but his local support grew.

Money was not lacking. His accounts were flush. At the beginning, they were fueled by his sales of illicit drugs. Mostly hash, pot, and psychedelics. Enlightened drugs for the revolution. He saw the other options, such as methamphetamine, coke, or heroin as only detractors from the overall message of togetherness. Even if they were more profitable in the short term, they separated and commodified the youth. And made them pay attention even less.

Unlike many historical socialists, Sebastian viewed his society on a holistic plane, not just from. a community standpoint Nature came included. He shunned animal meat and products. He seriously detracted from many mainstream intellectuals who focused solely on the wants and needs of humans. A self-described visionary, Sebastian spoke as one. He was one with the world around him.

"It is necessary to advance the community and society to a point where we all cared for one another: Earth, Child, and Mother." His early speeches were flowery. Until Rosa took over.

"Marx is no longer as relevant as he once was. Today is now and 1848 was then. To quote Mao, my friends... " And so on, he continued until his crowd of progressives were enraptured.

To be clear, Sebastian insulated himself. His reach was on the fringes of this city. On the fringes of society. The addled population. Diseased, drugged, and unfortunate. Those who had not had a fair shake at life or had shaken it up too much. They were drawn to his mixture of radical social policies, social justice, and revolutionary ethos. Unlike most of the local and national politicians, Sebastian did not need the status quo.

"Less stability in the short term will make a concrete and equal society for our children."

Sebastian said this at many of his recent rallies. It was one of his more well-known euphemisms. A way to justify the policy of radical, direct action favored by Rosa.

His inner circle was infamous for various social uprisings. All were creative. Most were positive. Some had scattered violence. Marches. Speeches. Sit-ins. Protests. Whether it was for labor disputes, homeless shelters or police brutality, FOSIL forced their way onto the local and national media.

Because of their actions and the agendas of other political organizations, the riot police were called in. The threat of a general strike last week gave them reason enough to take aim on his group. They knew he used to sell drugs. Loose ties. Less proof. They wanted to contain him as much as control him. Arresting him would do no good.

Sebastian was desperate to break free from this stigma. He only had a few remaining clients. Mostly his friends and old acquaintances, like Clementine. And by proxy, her odd boyfriend, Cyril.

Enlightened, Sebastian thought this planet was meant for all. As the wall dripped its colors and spoke to him, he slowly rose and spoke to the room, which contained his five Cabinet members.

"We only need look to Seattle as our prime example. Of course, there were the WTO riots and the various Vietnam rallies, but that's not what I'm talking about."

"It's not about the Black Panther riots and the strewn glass on college campuses. No, my friends, let's open our minds and travel further back. Past the collapse of the first wave of social equality. Past the brazen world war which pitted capitalist power against capitalist power to the time occurring right after the first world war. 1919. Seattle, like most West Coast cities, was a major shipyard town. Its longshoremen were educated to the ways and views of Soviet Russia. They fought for higher wages after the first Great War, since they were forced to live on shit while the nation fought in for the past two years. Unhappy with their situation, they held a general strike which created a peaceful, social republic within our borders. It only lasted for a five days. What can be learned from this?"

His compatriots were about to answer, but Sebastian continued. He knew the answer.

"What can be learned was that there was no spark. Of course, the media will be in control as they were then. Of course, they will assume any blockade of industry is a Luddite attempt to block progress. What it really is, is a siege upon the capitalist pig. To bury them. Bleed them.

"We cannot sit idly by and watch this strike go the same way. There needs to be a noose and these pigs need to waddle their way into it. Without a little scare in them, this strike will be resolved without resolving anything and to quote Mao, my friends... "

Just then, Sebastian's words froze. The meeting set to the tune of a frigidly cold evening. A knock vibrated across the room. Shaken, the men and women looked around at one another. Sebastian saw the walls turn from the soft hues of rose and honeysuckle to an ominous purple. Dark, almost blood red.

"Someone answer the fucking door," barked Sebastian.

## CHAPTER 8:

IS WHAT IT IS

"Hey, you got an extra smoke," snaked the older lady as she came into the dissected moonlight.

"Yeah," said Cyril. His fear collapsed. No need to worry about her.

But still. Why did she sneak up on him? Just as he was about to entering the building which houses his hash dealer and whatever else Sebastian was up to.

"Sorry if I startled you, I'm Penny. What are you doing out here on a night like this. Dressed in all black, and leather gloves, almost like a cat burglar?" She laughed. It sounded off-putting and foul.

"You sure have a lot of questions."

Cyril lit himself a cigarette and then hers. He thought he'd kill a few minutes before heading inside.

"Just running a few errands for a friend of mine. What are you doing out? Dancing with the police in the deserted streets?"

"Well, I tell you. I should be home. I should be. I should be a lot more," she said mysteriously. "It's funny when you get to my age, you think everything would've added up to more, but this life is just shit, complete shit. And if this whole place is going to go to shit, might as well get a good look at it before the whole place goes up."

Cyril took a few puffs on his smoke. His mind clouded with her words. _Why was she talking to me_? _Probably another one of the fucking psychos roaming the interior_. He read about the city cutting back funding for the mental joints. He really should stop reading the newspaper, he reminded himself. Two quarters of fear and worry.

"Jesus, I swear Clementine better get a new hash dealer closer to our place. Or she could at least come with me," he thought to himself.

Penny was a cross between a bag lady and some sort of eccentric artist. Trash bags. Ripped neon-colored stockings. Unwashed hair. It was a toss- up. She muttered to herself. She flickered on and off between reality and wherever else she liked to venture to in the depths of her mind. Lights on, lights off.

In the near pitch dark, she had stumbled across a man dressed in black at the crossroads of something. She thought that this was her moment. Finally. Maybe. Her life had been a series of false starts and delays. It all led downward to this point. A shanty apartment on the industrial, yet oddly industry- less, part of town.

"No need to be paranoid; I'm not who you think I am."

"What the fuck do you mean by that?" he said. He took a quick look at her. Actually, she had a rather pretty face. Old and worn, but really if she was twenty years younger or their two souls had crossed at an earlier moment in time, he might have fucked her.

He quickly shook his head and took another pull from his cigarette.

"Stop thinking with you cock," he muttered to himself. "Focus, focus, focus."

He really didn't mind having a cigarette or two out here. She was a bit of loon, but she seemed harmless. And the longer delay before descent into Sebastian's home, the better. Clementine was still working. No texts yet to ask where her stash was. Thank god. He glanced at his cellphone. Nope, still no new messages. Damn.

Cyril had a quick thought of taking the hundreds of dollars he had in his pocket and taking Penny out somewhere. Buy her a cheap dress. Take her somewhere nice. She was useless to him in her present conditions, but maybe they could talk. Eat. He was hungry. He had forgotten to eat anything since breakfast. That happened a lot these days.

He wished he had someone to talk with. To lay down his guard. Clementine was always focused on the peripherals. On Sebastian and his program mostly. And the Knighted Rails. Who cares. He was pretty sure Penny wouldn't try to kill him or rob him. He didn't have much money besides Clementine's. He was nearly certain he wouldn't try to tear off Penny's clothes either. It'd be alright.

"You're a strange one, but me too," Penny continued. Her laughter resurfaced.

Cyril noticed she was putting out her cigarette, rounding off this feat a whole minute before he would. Age will do that to you.

"You know I could have been someone, could have at least made a go at it," she said.

"Yeah, but now you're a sad sack of shit, right? Reciting pre-packaged words like we're in a fucking movie."

Cyril liked to throw in the "pre-packaged" blow. It spoke to his distaste of society. It summed up his position on the phony conversation his friends traded in. Most of all Clementine. Sometimes he wondered why he stayed with her. He loved her. Penny didn't flinch at Cyril's words. They couldn't touch her. She was on another plane.

"I know why you're here. Sebastian is my neighbor. Don't worry I won't tell. I don't give a fuck if you're fighting these pigs. They're all over the streets these days anyways.

"And who really cares? They're doing their job, no matter what we think about it. They're here to stop what they see as those unions stopping progress and capital. They think they're right. The unions know they are. Here we are, stuck between the two. Maybe left out. I don't care. Not for politics, not for me." Her lucid intelligence receded when she finished talking. Her laughter once more. She lit another cigarette and then she took a long, smooth drag. The smoke wrangled in her mind. She saw colorful flashes of when she was something. She knew no one cared for her much in those days.

But at least she did at one point.

When she was younger and thinner, she stayed up all night. Life was wider and more confusing. Money was as sparse as it always has been. Her old friends are dead or married or a little bit of both. She was stuck in the same position, but now without the looks or the good times. A reeling cycle of depression. Confusion and guilt slowly circled within her, bringing her down toward the grave.

"I remember when Sebastian moved here. His father still lived upstairs you know. He died a few months back. There are always people coming and going. They're a bit quiet and paranoid, but aren't we all?"

Penny's voiced droned on in a rather lopsided manner. Her story was well boxed inside the timescape of the cigarette. The smoke and tobacco served as her metronome. Tick-tock, tick-tock. Her story lingered and swayed, but had a dead syncopation to it.

The point of the story was for Cyril. But his mind wandered. He nodded and reacted with platitudes and niceties, but he was dreaming about Sebastian's hash. Contemplating whether the journey back would be more or less troublesome than the journey here. He thought about the new record he won online, would it come tomorrow? Was it really the rare Japanese pressing on thick 180 gram heavy vinyl? Probably a fucking re-pressing. Clementine must be home by now. Inside that house. Her place.

He hoped she would ignore the charge on her credit card. She would. She loved him.

Cyril realized that if he couldn't ignore Penny and her stories of loss, he might as well put up with Sebastian. Grab the hash. Hurry back to Clementine. Maybe she made dinner. He wished. Cyril had a quick vision of strolling triumphantly into their slightly dirty apartment. Rolling a joint. Three parts tobacco to one part pure black hash. Smoking. Stoned. Fucking. All would be well.

"See what I mean, how do we ever get here, I know how I did. I swam my way to the bottom and somehow cemented myself to this tepid waste of a city. But how did you? A bright boy like you?"

Penny finished her story apparently.

"I don't know, don't care really," Cyril was generalizing.

His mind picked its way through her fragmented story. He hadn't been listening. Maybe it was quite a tale. He just made up the bits. He was good at that.

"I can't say I've really struggled to understand much about this place, or myself. It is what it is. I don't work much, maybe an odd job here or there. I used to write, but couldn't really find the time for it. Maybe I'll write a book someday. I think a lot."

"Just like me. I know why you're going to Sebastian. Just remember, the colors you see aren't the ones around us. The bending sounds can be the straightest beacon."

With those parting words she shuffled away almost like she was on schedule. Tick-tock. Tick-tock.

Cyril still had a few drags left on his second cigarette. This whole journey was taking longer than he'd ever imagined. He walked inside the gate and shut it behind him. He saw the lights on inside. Always a good sign.

He had called Sebastian earlier in the day. Sebastian never called back. Typical. He received a chopped text message reading "Swing by. Whenever's clever." The message was vague. Now was definitely not clever. Cyril headed down the broken concrete walkway. The house was a rather shabby antique. A model citizen from the Victorian age. Definite craftsmanship. It was too dark to see much else. Maybe shadows lurked in peripheries. He went up to the door. His head high and proud. He took the iron knocker and knocked on the door. A little more powerfully than he would've wanted to. But it was what it was.

## CHAPTER 9:

FEEL THE PAPER, READ BEYOND

Johnny had been Sebastian's friend for four years. His right hand man and the party's Secretary of Defense. He leapt up off the couch. His response was a little delayed. He stumbled a little. Caught himself. Righted his feet and headed toward the door. Four cans of Hamm's and a few spliffs of fine hash slowed his mind. Not all bad. His mind had been spinning a little too hot. The tension of tomorrow's impending strike loomed.

Sebastian sat calm, cool, and collected. Cross-legged on a well-worn rug. This was the moment he had hoped for. The night before the day Rosa languished on and on about. The importance of the moment would soon here.

Right now, Johnny hurried past them. His boots clipped the floor. He entered the vestibule. He opened the metal port on the door and spied through.

"Who are you, man?"

Johnny was fierce. He sounded masculine, wise, and nonchalant all at once. Like he gave a shit.

"It's Cyril, Sebastian's friend."

"Cyril?"

He had no clue who this guy was, standing in front of the heavy door. He took a second look. Seemed rather harmless. Dressed all in black with Beatle boots and scruffy hair. Probably another wastoid. Johnny wished Sebastian was out of it. Thought he quit the dealing. Sebastian used to assure them it was a way of growing the ranks.

"How do you convert the masses without a little enchantment to help them see? It is one thing to see a book and read the words. It is another to see the book and feel the paper. We do both. We don't read between the lines, we read beyond them."

Now it's changed. Sebastian's ranks were swollen, but they still visited all the time. Closer to greatness than one would think.

"I'm Cyril. Clementine's boyfriend." He knew this was going to happen. Why did he put up with this? Goddamn revolutionaries. At least their ethos prevented them from charging too much. This block of hash made good economic sense, he reassured himself.

"Oh yeah, please come in."

He did remember Cyril once he unlocked and opened the door. Clementine was a beautiful woman. Wealthy—maybe undeservedly so—but smart and considerate. She got the program. Cyril was suspicious. A paranoid type, Johnny thought. Maybe he was an informant. You could never be too sure.

"Anyone see you walk in?"

"You mean here? Nah. No one around on a night like this."

Cyril was getting tired of these pointless questions.

"Good. Well, we're just finishing up a little business and then Sebastian can help you out."

Johnny was excited about tomorrow. Scared too. Rosa was right. You could not force the masses into action, but you could light the spark. That needed to be done. Sebastian could be too relaxed sometimes.

Johnny led Cyril past the vestibule into the drawing room. An antiquated meeting room. Left over from the days before electronic conveniences. Before the days of televisions, laptops, and iPods. FOSIL preferred meeting here. Less distractions. Where old met modern thinking. They had a record player and assorted vintage electronics in the room. Electric yes, but they did not really count. Not with all the newer, smaller, more efficient machines. FOSIL knew the difference. These machines had aged and surpassed their usefulness. They could now be taken under FOSIL's care. Thought had to have some intangible value. These machines harkened back to earlier days. Days more rosy in contrast to our dark present tense. But days were always rosier when you never lived them. None of them had, except Rosa.

Cyril joined the room where the collected five men and women were. Johnny made six. Cyril grabbed a seat on the floor. He completed the circle of the evening. He was number seven. Staring downwards had its advantages. He spied a corner on the Turkish rug and planted himself down. It was dark with only a simple corner lamp shining.

Looking left to right, he saw the brains of FOSIL, an industrious political fraction. A party simultaneously ignored, feared, and spied on. The outside spied on them out of fear, boredom, and sheer procedure. Always suspect those who wanted change. No one was certain. The party thought they could accomplish a great deal. Especially on the precipice of such a momentous occasion.

If you looked left to right in the frozen moment, starting in the corner, you would see:

June, a sulky girl, with ideas flexing beyond her means. A college-educated phenom. She edited a business journal. She was bright, economical, and too smart for the system. A capital drop-out, enlightened, and impressionable. Sebastian took her in more than a year and a half ago. She grew through the ranks and now found herself as the Minister of Outreach and New Recruits. Cyril spoke to her once. He could tell that she found him putrid but that she didn't really mind him too much. As long as he didn't stare at her tits. Her duties were the more interesting of the group.

She collapsed their Maoist ideals into a palatable platform. Thoughts worthy of print in the mainstream.

Next to her, was the Minister of Propaganda, Jerusalim. A looming personality. Dark and brooding disposition. Thick, charcoal colored skin. He was raised politically aware. Both by choice, upbringing, and because of skin color. This rusted city was like others in America and the modernized world. Racist. He had seen his brothers and sisters imprisoned, discriminated against, and even a few unlucky ones killed. He had joined up in other groups before this. Neo Black Power. Quasi Panthers. Resolute. Defiant. But the power struggles were too much. Everyone wanted to be the next Bobby Seale. Or the next Fred Hampton, minus the pig's murder trip. Either way, he ended with Sebastian. He had better hash and Jerusalim trusted him. Not something he did with many people.

He sat next to Johnny, the aforementioned Secretary of Defense.

This trio of J's (Johnny, Jerusalim, June) were seated on a refurbished velvet coach. The group nodded to an earlier, more exquisite time. The upholstery agreed and spoke to them about the common cause they all fought.

Cyril wondered what the red velvet stood for. Not everything was a symbol. For Cyril, it sure was a fun pastime to wonder and dream about the supposed symbolism dripping out of his mind.

In the middle, seated on the floor, nearly 19 feet from Cyril was their leader, Sebastian. Cyril thought he may be fucking Clementine. Like a snake, it gnawed at his inner organs. Probably. Maybe. If so, who cares? Sebastian was the man of the hour. A finely tuned partisan. His ensemble complete with a stunning duo tone tie showed a combination of beautiful indulgence, violence, and subtle grace.

An older woman watched ominously over the scene. She appeared unhappy at Cyril's intrusion. Cyril could guess what she was thinking. That he reeked of commerce. A waste of time. A split from the usual meeting.

Rosa was the founder of FOSIL. And the first, second, and third international versions of the group. Some whispered she was the real leader. Sebastian the party head and Rosa the ideal personified. She spoke only in German and was a good forty years older. Her crisp short-cropped gray hair and finely cut clothing contrasted the flowery sincerity of Sebastian and the brute force of Johnny and Jerusalim.

They called her Rosa. Cyril had only seen her once, but never this close. He thought she epitomized seriousness. The lines in her face receded and protruded with a purposeful aim. She seemed old and ageless. Undying and ghostlike.

Next to her, half perched against the wall in a faded brown beret and rose colored skirt was Bell. She was the undersecretary of Education, under June's watchful eye. A new recruit. Hungry for more. She was once a nanny and, like June, was a wealth drop-out. Her former boss's husband tried fucking her, but of course, she did not give in. He was an ugly fuck. She enjoyed the kids though. They were innocent and impressionable. Now she taught children and youth the twelve tenants of FOSIL.

In theory this educational program was to take place every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon. Alternating between childish activities and the teaching of rudimentary social thought. The type of program necessary to inform and disseminate a true counter cultured ideal.

"The true cosmos is here. We only need to plant the seed, water the plant, and reap its fruit," quoted Bell in her mind. Sebastian was the word. Rosa the thoughts. Bell wanted to be the heart.

Cyril could almost hear what he thought Bell was thinking about him. "The time is tonight and here we are wasting it. Instead of putting our plans into action, we are spent entertaining this clown. What's his name? Clementine's boyfriend."

Cyril laughed to himself on the inside. He felt this group was fucking bullshit. Pretentious. He had not read much about the program, but knew it stood no chance. All Cyril wanted was the block of hash. Stuff it down his tight black jeans and catch the next train. Before the strikers or police shut this whole place down.

He now realized it would not be that simple.

## CHAPTER 10:

CARDAMOM

Sebastian was busy writing down his speech notes. He handed them to June. She would later transcribe them out on her laptop. She edited the speeches according to what she thought Rosa and Sebastian needed to change. And added what they forgot. Then published them in print and sent them through the digital wires and try to reach as many people as possible. This was tomorrow's speech. In support of the strike, in support of the workers, and in support of much more than what everyone else was doing. He jumped up. Rosa cracked a half-smile. He began to read:

"Let us awake from this Earth City slumber. Join hands together and unite under one spirit, and one mind. Take away all thoughts of struggle. That is not what we are engaged in today. We are engaged in a heated battle.

Between those with the power and those without.

( _Applause_ )

But what I see and what you see is different, my friends. We have the power. We have the will. And we have the ability to overthrow all that is unjust. Not just with the transportation workers, not just with the street sweepers, longshoremen, garbage men, but the regular wage slave. The regular person. The one who might not understand why we must stand up.

This, my brothers, is why we must fight.

( _Applause_ )

Today we are on the cusp. Just like the students in France who almost toppled their bloated government in 1968. We have chance. You and me. We all have a chance. The Italians have a saying which means a right, royal mess. Let's make this mess our own. Let's make this time better. Let's make it our 1968.

A Real '68.

Today is why we must stand up to their weapons. We have our books, our records and our thoughts. Those are our guns."

Sebastian interrupted himself.

"Wait, this is all fucked up. What do you mean, June, that our books are our guns? Our guns are our guns, our books are our books. That makes no sense. What you wrote says we can think and fight with our books. They'll mow us down."

June responded, "But I think you're failing to see my point. We don't need the pig's weapons or the pig's message. We need the thoughts. We need Mao, Marx, Luxemburg, and Parenti. We need the thoughts to rip apart our enemies brains. Not the bullets man. That's the establishment's trip. And far from the point."

"That is the point, June. We have the books AND the weapons. We have both. They only have brute reinforcements. We have the reinforcement of the mind. Mother earth. We have the power. Rosa, come on now. You can't really let me take this to the people. They have to see. They have to see what we're capable of doing."

Rosa sat in silence. She looked at both of them through weary eyes. The problem was not new. She had seen it before. But she still had no answer.

June was pissed. "You're capable of killing these people, you're capable of getting us all killed."

Sebastian almost screamed. His reddened eyes glared at his compatriots.

_Who are these cretins_? He thought. Nobody. Nothing. He was forced to put with them, their childish thoughts, and fake utopias. They had not seen death.

They had not seen the police beat. Rape. Kill. He had those memories seared deep in his soul.

"Let's re-work this. We need to get up with it. We need to move. We need to now!"

"So ist das Leben und so muss man es nehmen, tapfer, unverzagt und lächelnd—trotz alledem," rasped Rosa.

Cyril could barely make her out now and had no idea what she was saying. She spoke from the shadows. Rosa went on further and explained, through Sebastian's translation, that they could not create revolution through books or guns. They could not create the causes, but must light the spark. At the right moment, the earth would shake.

Jerusalim continued where Sebastian left off. "These workers are not striking for us. They are doing it for themselves. Their families. Their own selfish reasons. We need to show them that their selfishness is only reinforcing the system. The system bound them to this course. We need to string them up. Books don't draw blood. Bullets do my friend."

The language between Sebastian, Jerusalim, and June bounced back and forth. The walls softened the blow. Cyril watched the verbal match like a spectator. A six-armed tennis match. Sebastian's rhetoric. Return volley. Grunts. Sweat. They all struggled for the party line. The purse strings. The intangibles of power.

Cyril grew tired. He rubbed his left black boot. A nervous tic. Inspected and prodded its depths. He liked his boots. Liked what they represented. He wanted the hash. He liked what that represented, too.

Sebastian continued, "You can bleed all over this fucking city, man, and it won't do us an ounce of good unless we are smart. Smarter than they are. If not, the power birds will simply swoop down. We'll be gone and the strike will resolve itself over human greed. We need focus Jerusalim. But don't forget who brought you here. Rosa and I are leading this whole fucking thing."

"Watch it Sebastian, we got him in the room." "Who?"

"That guy?"

"Cyril," said Johnny.

"It's cool, just here to talk to Sebastian." Cyril's voice quivered. These fucking loons. Their beliefs would just get them into trouble.

"As long as I'm in the now, I'm in the green," prosed Cyril. "I'll be fine. Clementine will be expecting me soon anyways."

"Well, Let's talk then. You want a coffee?" asked Sebastian.

"Yeah, sure."

Serbs, like many people of customary ways, did not accept an answer other than yes. Cyril knew this. But they asked the question anyways.

"Come to the kitchen, we'll talk. I'll show you how to complete this preparation."

Sebastian stood up and grabbed his tan military bag. It was worn, but useful. It was well worth what it contained. He left the others to fend over the scraps of the now settled conversation. He was done with it.

Sebastian and Cyril left the drawing room, through the hallway and into the kitchen. The house itself looked dysfunctional from the outside. Inside, it was a full service cooperative. New techniques mixed with ancient methods. The theme that could not be hidden was the Victorian overtones. The architecture. The look. The feel of the place. Cyril viewed and digested it through his common eye. He dared not ask Sebastian. Sebastian would rather have forgotten the whole coincidence.

It was unmistakable though. In the den of her worst enemies, the long dead Queen Victoria still held court. Her aftermath, her bloody reprisal, and her suppression of any worker or indigenous movement were overlooked by her present influence. Her empire was gone, but her influence is this house still remained. As it did around the world.

"Have a seat."

Cyril took a seat at the kitchen table. A drab brown thing with four legs and a thin wood top. Functional. Nothing more.

Sebastian sat down and placed a bag of coffee, a copper coffee grinder and a golden ibrik on the table.

"Now, I show you the proper method of Serbian coffee." His accent, still noticeable, only added to his charm. His hot temper was cooled now.

Cyril already experienced this lesson once. Sebastian really must not remember him. That time Cyril offended him by calling it Turkish coffee. He accidently stoked the bloody memories of the Ottomans who ruled the Serbs for hundreds of years. Time sometimes moved like sludge.

Cyril thought to himself. He did not understand. Turkish coffee. Bosnian coffee. Serbian coffee. Even the language. Serbian. Bosnian. Croatian. The differences were minute to the outsider, but gravely exacting to the actors in these provincial disputes. Their beliefs engrained since birth. Even Sebastian, a socialist on the grand scale, could not help but be infected by this nationalism.

Cyril did not get it. Maybe it was his experimental country's lack of culture.

"I just don't get it."

"Get what?"

"Never mind."

"Don't worry, you'll soon understand." Sebastian took the coffee and began grinding. Around and around. The whirring noise became almost trance-like. He handed it to Cyril who noticed the letters engrained on the side. Cyrillic letters. Lines that meant little to him. While Cyril ground the coffee, Sebastian grabbed his rolling papers. He laid out a bed of tobacco, sprinkled with hash as thick and dark as tar. Cyril's mouth watered. Progress was seen. Sebastian rolled the joint and put it aside. He took the ground coffee and grabbed a bottle of water. He put both the liquid and the coarse grounds in the copper ibrik. He went over to the stove. On went the gas. The stove hissed. He struck a match. A faint, instant _woohmph_. The blue flame lapped at the copper ibrik. Slowly, gently heating the mixture. Sebastian sat back down. He took the joint and lit it with a match lit by the stove.

The smoke of his first hit lingered around his head. It drew close to him, not wanting to dissipate completely. He passed the joint to Cyril. His first hit was strong and rough. The smoke wafted toward the reddened walls, seeking solace in the paint.

In what seemed like thirty minutes, but was more likely seven or eight, the coffee boiled and bubbled. Sebastian removed it from the stove. He stirred it with the spoon and returned the mixture to heat, and repeated the ritual twice over. Once complete, he stirred a final time and poured it in two gold demitasse cups he pulled from above the stove.

He brought both over to Cyril who was busying himself with the joint. Sebastian took it back. Traded it for the drink. Cyril took a sip and tasted the smell of cardamom. Cyril could not place it. He had the kind of feeling that made one believe in something. Sebastian passed the joint back. Cyril took a hit and passed it back to Sebastian, who quickly put it out.

"I'll save the rest for later."

"Strong."

"Yeah, it's from Yemen. A new supplier, you can taste the freshness. The dry desert mixing with the crisp ocean. It's all in there. The earth. The love."

"I mean the coffee."

"Ah, but do you like the smoke?"

"Yeah, it's good. A new supply? My lips feel a little numb. The hash has little tiny spikes, poking and saying hello."

"From Yemen."

"Yeah, cool. It's good. That's why I'm here."

Sebastian noted this crude conversation.

Almost Neanderthalian. He wanted people to join with, but for the right reasons. To share a drink, a smoke, and maybe trade. Cyril did not get it. He lacked style and tact.

"Where's Clementine? She's a sweet thing. We can always use more of her around. You would not believe how hard she's been working to understand our program. She gets it. She gets us, and she always is talking about you."

"Really? Yeah, she's working. Busy, always busy. Thought we'd stock up a little on some before the strike. Don't want to run dry as the city burns, ya know?"

Cyril took a misshaped wad of twenty dollar bills and placed it on the table. It was $320 to be exact. Enough to buy a good brick of hash. Sebastian rolled his eyes. Fucking Americans. Treat me a like I work at a cafe in Amsterdam. Even after all these years, Sebastian still had a hard time with the Americans their lack of tact. Maybe it's the crude capitalism system, it stymies everything but the bottom line. No time for social instincts. All is lost under the bottom line.

"Ah, straight to the point," Sebastian said.

He put down his coffee as Cyril took a long final sip of his.

"It used to be, men would sit around and talk and drink coffee like this for hours. Did you know you can read your fortune in the grinds?"

"What does mine say?"

"Stick your thumb in and we'll see. It's like looking down a well into the deep depths. Takes time to master it, like all good things."

"Ok." Cyril carefully imprinted his thumb into the grinds.

Sebastian inspected the golden cup. He held it up to light. "Patience."

He waded up the money and put it in his back pocket. He passed a pre-weighed piece of hash back. It was wrapped in a brown paper bag.

"Be careful with this. It isn't the usual night. Wouldn't want it falling into the wrong hands. Say, why don't you stay with us for a few minutes?"

This question again was posed in the Serbian manner. With a sincere desire for acceptance, and an underlying cosmic push. Cyril was stoned now. He thought he might as well regain some mind before hitting the pavement back to Clementine's. Sebastian grabbed a mason jar from the refrigerator and the half-smoked joint.

"Do you know the others? Good people, our people. We are all different, come from different points. But really, we are all tangents meant to meet her. Now, right now."

"Yeah, I think I've met them all, but not well though."

"Good, good. Tonight will be the night then."

## CHAPTER 11:

TOO MUCH MEAT ON THE STREET

Rosa pet Cleo. A street cat who was half calico and half a whole lot more. They were sitting on the velvet couch, when Sebastian and Cyril came back in the room. She chatted with her old friend, without actually saying anything. The hand and the cat's back were enough for a primitive conversation.

June had left to shower and clean up before the night out. Johnny and Jerusalim were busy discussing matters in low and hushed tones in the corner.

Sebastian pulled up two old wooden chairs. He placed them nearly adjacent to the velvet, high- backed couch. Rosa and the cat tried their best not to notice. You could say both were instinctual beings.

Cleo, purred hard and steady. She was nearly twenty-four and had seen a lot for her life and so had Rosa. Both lived far beyond their skin's intentions. Waves and waves of animalistic, innerwardly minimalistic, thoughts played in her small brain. She saw in colors not seen by us. She saw ones different, yet utterly similar. Cleo had primal love, but a wayward heart. She lacked the cold, calculating beat of the human pulse.

"Gather round now." Sebastian joined everyone together again. He had his field marshal, his mentor, his deputies, his cabinet and now Cyril. He was the last one without title. In his mind's revolution, these were the brains. In truth, brains only led him so far. The guns in the closet needed to be consulted too.

Cyril yawned and stretched out on a corner of the large rug. The same corner he sat in earlier.

Funny thing, these rugs. Short and colorful, like a history of all that's happened. One that can be taken with you. Cyril's thoughts bobbed and weaved. He wondered about this piece of woven art. The rug. Where it had been. How it had remained in this house. So on and so on. He quickly distanced himself from the growing crowd.

A few minutes passed. Cyril noticed that Rosa handed a folded paper to Sebastian. She then stood up, ready to retire for the evening. She had no interest in what was happening here. She needed the rest.

Sebastian translated the note for everyone. "We stand today before the awful proposition: either the triumph of imperialism and the destruction of all culture, and, as in ancient Rome, depopulation, desolation, degeneration, a vast cemetery; or, the victory of socialism."

Almost yawning again, Cyril caught himself. He was not caught in this fervor. Hearing Rosa's word. Seeing her honest, stark character. He minded his ways. She was quite a mysterious old woman, he thought. She might have had slight physical appearance, but her icy stare made her seem far grander. She grabbed her things and marched upstairs. She was careful to keep her feet on the runner, grinding her toes into the aging carpeted stairs.

"Where's she going?"

"Upstairs for a while."

"Why?"

"She really doesn't approve of what she calls our 'Kinder Nachsicht.' She gets a lot of things, even more than I do. But not this. It's not a linear misunderstanding I think. More a misconception. She needs clear, undiluted thought. So do I. But I don't see the way she can. I get more crystalline through certain measures."

"You mean the hash?"

"Well, too a certain degree. But it's more than that." Sebastian pulled the mason jar from his backpack.

"This is the stewed remains of a quite large portion of mushrooms. A friend recently returned from a trip in the misty mountains south of the city. He knows his way about these sorts of thing. Again, these things take a gift and they take time. They're a gift from us, for us."

Sebastian's drug use worried Rosa. She was upstairs arranging her thoughts and words. She knew he would grow out of it. She did not mind the sale of them too much. At least it brought money to the organization for the time being. And he was stopping anyways. She knew Sebastian must lead with a clear head or he would soon find himself in trouble.

"Cyril, tell me, what are you up to tonight? Gazing at the stars or the street lamps? It's a funny evening, trying gauge when the rain will fall. And when it will turn to ice."

"Well, I don't know, man. I'm trying to make my way back to Clementine. But I feel really relaxed at the moment. You mind if I stick around?"

"Not a big deal. Do you guys mind?"

Johnny and Jerusalim did not care. They were too busy fussing over the details of tomorrow's planned march. The leaders of the various labor parties were not keen on having FOSIL join them. This, of course, did not please the two men or Sebastian. Fighting the same cause. They thought they should be able to join in. But the unions found their views a little too leftist. Thought it might sour the owner's negotiations.

"Fucking plebeians and papists. We do the work. We do the thinking. What do they have in mind? Just more cash in their pocket. Then back to packing the same boxes and shipping the same crates. No real movement. No real change. We need movement."

June came down the stairs. Cyril saw her and smiled to himself. She might be sort of unattractive, but she did know how to dress. A little on the heavy side, her looks were equalized by a tasteful pair of faded blue jeans, brown riding, boots and a tan suede jacket. Almost chic, but still in earth tones.

Sebastian was busy reading Rosa's preparation. Edited by Bell. A mixture of prose and power. Her words, his thoughts and the power of the group would lead him to something, he thought. "Something" was not the word he envisioned. Never hungry for power, he still yearned to be known. Taken on the upper level. Sebastian re-worked his thoughts. Rosa's words would lead him on. Lead all of them further on till the dawn.

Cyril witnessed this quite infatuating scene, disjointed as it may have seemed. Especially when taken as a static moment. If one took this moment as the liquid linear thought it was, one would see six people. Seven if you count Rosa upstairs. Eight if you counted Cleo. Bound together in mind and soon to be bound further still.

Sebastian spent the next few moments gathering his words among the lines and ink on the page. He knew tomorrow was important. Maybe the most important, despite having no specific engagements, no meetings with the leaders, no negotiations to be had, and no real organization. He had Bell send out a mass email to all FOSIL's friends and followers. Johnny had spent the afternoon postering the town with mysterious flyers, merely displaying the group's even more enigmatic logo. It was striking red circle with interlocking letters circling over top. It symbolized unity and being.

Sebastian motioned toward Cyril, who was still stoned from the hash.

"What are you plans for this evening? Gazing at the gutter or the points between? It's a funny evening, trying gauge when the people will realize they are in it, too."

"Didn't you just ask me?" "Did I?"

"I think you did. I don't know. Clementine's expecting me home soon. But don't really want to wander home by myself. Too much meat on the street with loaded guns and loaded questions."

"Well, my present-day poet. We're all thinking of bending time with Knighted Rails."

Jesus, Cyril thought. Usually those sorts of Aquarian phrases would send his head reeling. At least when someone else said them. Somehow, from Sebastian the words suited him and warmed his mind. He embraced them. He was a leader. Cyril decided to follow, but promised himself that it was just for this one evening.

"Sure, I'll just call Clementine when I'm leaving. She's probably wondering why I'm not back. I love the Knighted Rails. Didn't think that would be quite your thing."

"Why not? We love words. The beat of the drum. We are political, yes. We fight, yes. But it's a mind's folly to think we don't go out for a good time. We are not tee-totalers. Leave that to the failed religions and aging politicians."

Sebastian was right. His inner circle did have a good time, especially himself. Why not? He expanded his thoughts and rhetoric this way. But he did have a rather puritanical streak. He saw no limits to personal exploration, but he kept his body clear. He could smell Cyril's primitive lusting for almost any snatch within reach. Poor for Clementine, he thought. Such a beauty, such a waste of love. Such a common occurrence to find a blossoming flower among these rusted men.

He pulled out the plastic jug of still cooling, stewed mushroom juice. He poured enough Sriracha to fill the bottom of each of the six cups. Then the liquid. He pulled out what resembled an ancient stirring spoon, blackened from use. Probably something easily haggled from the hands of a street merchant at a Saturday market. One man's prized possession can be another's bargain, as it's all in the mind.

He handed a cup to each of the six. They drank together. The burning sensation of the hot sauce helped to mask the awful shit taste of the mushrooms. It would be a few minutes before it all kicked in. Cyril was never one to join in. But he felt different about this. Almost compelled. He thought, _Must be the hash_.

## PART 2: MELTING WALLS
## CHAPTER 12:

THE BIG T

Russell Johnson was an average man. Some said a good man. Others added honest. Either way, however one viewed the situation, it was clear he was a man well-conditioned in life and this city.

He served as a regimented compass. He privately hoped he was a point all others would aspire to. His actions. His lifestyle. His family. His values. At only 29, he had the honor of being promoted to sergeant of the city's police force. In his mind, the promotion was a marker along a carefully constructed course. One which had been run and won by his father. And grandfather before him. Like a prized Thoroughbred, Russell was groomed in manner and appearance. He was next in line to be the next chief. Maybe more.

Born to a nice blooded family, this city had been his home all these years. At least the formative ones. There were the few years at college before he blew out his knee. Those years he was something. Something all his own. A star athlete. Football. Tight End. Full ride. Good times. The games were one thing he did on his own. He lead his conference in scoring for his junior year. The what-might-have-beens started in the fall of his senior year. He was hit hard and low on a night much like the one he found himself in. His knee hit the icy turf. A late hit from behind twisted his whole body. Flash. Career over. Hopes dashed. Like a whip around his neck, he was pulled back into the family business. Luckily, business was good.

The honorable Russell's grandfather, Teddy, was the archetype of the police force. The strong armed, mustachioed Teddy dealt with the blacks and hippies. He brought the city back from the brink of race riots and drugged out happenings. By force, by blood, and most of all by power. His officers busted more than a few heads to keep law and order. At the time, his moves were hailed and accepted as necessary evils by the newspapers and television cameras. Today, he was buried and forgotten underneath his pension.

Russell's father carried on the tradition. Through the gang violence. Through the drug problems. Enforcement. Detainment. Beatings. Torture. The list went on. The law chained in her soiled remnants like a tortured prisoner.

Talk of corruption was only whispered. It swirled around the Johnson's stately Colonial home. Like a fresh turd on a manicured lawn, Russell saw it, but never caught more than a whiff. He didn't seem to care. Teddy took him aside one day and told him the difference between truth and Truth. The capital T was the key. "The Truth," the big one. The little one could be comprised. Small evils for the greater good. Something like that. It was a lesson he would not forget.

There were the values of the Big T. Valor and power were the poisons currently corrupting Russell's body. They made him virile and predatory. Thankfully, these attributes were only in his mind. The way he was raised. He saw his own actions as protecting this city which had, more than not, got the shit end of the deal. First, it was the raping of the city's industry, then the race riots. Now, the fucking labor unions. What once was a proud, tall city was now a groveling, twitching convalescent.

Russell was fed up. He did not understand. As days went by, the city continued to sink into this abyss. He had to wander knee deep through the muck. He helped the helpless, arrested the criminal, and busted the drug addict. It was a thankless job which gave him less power than he had hoped for and far less than he dreamed of as a kid.

No one respected him. Not the citizens he protected. Not his wife. Not his children. Not his father. His father had always seen him as a bit of a rebel for taking that football scholarship out of state. Traitor.

Tonight, he found himself in the eastern part of the city. He should be back at the station getting his men ready for tomorrow. Like the leader in his former star football life. He wanted the role's resumption. He wanted to be a leader among men.

Many of the officers at the station were nervous, but most were just bored. They did not understand what all the fuss was about. The labor unions struck every few years. A few days of distractions and working around the mess, then it was back to normal. Not this time, Russell thought.

The city's new mayor wanted a strong show of force. Russell agreed. The labor unions were the root. They were always a breeding ground for common insurgence. A roiling brew of leftist thought. Of common goals. Common thoughts. And a common distrust for the government. A common disrespect for himself. Russell wanted to nip the whole fucking thing in the bud. If they did not show force, the unions would only prolong the strike. He knew that with this crippled city's industry, the businesses had no more money to give the workers. Greedy bastards.

The Captain told Russell all he needed to know. He spoke earlier to the men like his coach used to. Proud and all-knowing. He relieved the men of their need to think for themselves. Job first, thoughts second.

"Men, listen up. Gather round," said the Captain. "We are here tonight to protect this city. To protect our families. To protect the traditions we all hold near and dear to us. The strike tomorrow will bring out the worst this city knows.

"There will be hijackers from all walks of life. People will take this opportunity to push their own agenda on the people. It is our job to show our power. We are the protectors of the average person. Whether the unions fight us or respect us, we are the protectors of the workers, too. Remember that."

His speech roused little more reaction than a few claps. Except from Russell. He grinned and clapped his meaty paws together.

Despite his enthusiasm, Russell was shuffled away from the action. His name garnered respect, but little else about him did. He was thought of as a man who gained his title and position merely because of his bloodlines, which was true. Russell knew and resented this fact. Everyone could see it as if it was painted on his forehead.

That's why he was chosen for this assignment. They wanted him away from the front lines. If any shit went down, he would be far from it. No swinging batons or arresting deadbeats. Russell was to be protected. Hard to win the mayor's race or be appointed chief if they had photos of you bleeding protestors.

Russell was ordered to head from downtown to the eastern part of the city. The Captain warned of potential disruptions over there. Gave him a few, thin police files. Mostly on various leftists and their causes. Nothing big. He knew it was a rouse. It was a way to keep him occupied and away from the action.

As he drove across the bridge, he looked down at the filmy water—a filthy, brown sludge trudging through the moonlight. It looked like shit.

Russell thought to himself. It was not so much that he disagreed with strikers. "We all want more food on table and money in our pockets," he told himself.

The thing was. It was the way they went about it. As if they were the managers and bosses. They were the workers. Subordinates. Russell laughed and thought if he went up the captain and told him how much pay he wanted it would not fly. The officers themselves were unionized. But they did not strike because they were a noble union. Organized, ball-less, and soulless. Russell glossed over that glaring omission.

Still, most of the police force seemed aligned with the unions. Under their breath. Fucking leftists. No good. Some had families who worked with the unions. Radicals. Others just saw that they were simply fighting for a share of the money they make off the businesses. Russell despised this. If they wanted profit sharing, they should have started their own business.

"You make your own lot in life. No one here is going to hand something out to you," he thought.

Russell went through his banal assignment for the evening. This was the industrial part of town. Filled to the brim with migrants, poor workers, dealers, alcoholics. The kindling for any time of revolt. Dry and ready to burn. But he knew the sparks would be elsewhere.

The eastern side was an interesting place.

Not nowadays, but what it represented remained. It was the underbelly of a once proud city. The twitching muscular stomach had given way to a flabby unused torso. It used to be the place where people, if they were unlucky to pass through it, gasped at its inadequacies for a modern city. The poor. The filth. The death. Now, it just was another decrepit limb. Russell was tired of it.

He got in his black, unmarked cruiser and drove down the deserted streets. He knew there were sympathizers on the streets. Even worse. There were radicals like the guy he read about earlier at the station. He flipped through the thin files on the undesirables. The people who peddled dangerous thoughts and ideas. People who were thirsting for tomorrow. What could it change? In a less modern nation, they would all be rounded up like livestock. Russell sometimes wished he could lock them all up too. Maybe he would release them after the strike or maybe not.

He pulled his cruiser into the parking lot of an empty meat packing plant. He lit his cigarette and sighed. This was going to be a long night. He felt it. A boring one, too. Russell thought he might as well enjoy the last bit.

A slim file stood out from the rest. Maybe it was the color. A forest green among faded tan folders. Little to Russell's knowledge, the file clerk simply ran out tan folders this morning. He grabbed an extra green one from the accounting department.

Russell thought there must be a meaning behind it. A purpose. Inside there was a focus. A man named Sebastian Took. Serbian. Suspected drug dealer. Leader of FOSIL.

_Not so dangerous_ , thought Russell. _Maybe I should take a drive by the place. Just to be on the safe side. They're probably just getting stoned anyways. Losers_.

## CHAPTER 13:

TIME IS FOR TOMORROW

Cyril wandered through his thoughts. Everyone looked like clay. Sweaty faces and sweaty walls. Everyone else talked to each other. As one, they were laughing, agreeing, and dreaming wild schemes. Cyril sat silent. The high was pleasant. Not too strong, but more than enough to help affect his already afflicted evening. Maybe these people were not as bad as he had thought. He laughed to himself, but a little too loud.

"Fuck," he thought, he probably started talking out loud again. "Tough to control volume in this state."

"Hey man, what did you say," asked Sebastian.

"What?"

"What did you say? I swear you said something."

"Uh, no man. I don't think so," Cyril lied.

"Well, maybe it's just your waves. You're putting off some heavy waves. Is everything okay?"

"Yeah, I guess. Want some more hash? I can roll the next joint."

"No, I'm cool for now. But go ahead, help yourself. My treat."

Sebastian handed him a worn, leather pouch with the hash from earlier. He rolled another joint and began to smoke it. Carelessly, he kept it to himself. Not out of spite. Cyril just seemed to forget. The others were not so forgiving.

"What's the deal man?"

"Oh nothing, do you want some?"

The others declined. They all stopped smoking hash some months prior. It was part of a new wellness program, promoted by June and Rosa. Taken seriously by Johnny and Jerusalim. Sebastian and Bell were the lone holdouts.

Still, all of them drank the mushroom tea. The five of them, excluding Cyril, were used to this routine. Sebastian made sure of it. It was one thing to enjoy yourself, but it was another, in his mind, to lose control. Most of all, he wanted productivity. The tea, Sebastian thought, it produced new waves of creative thought. And, like most things in his life, Sebastian got what he wanted.

Johnny, Jerusalim, and June were engaged in a friendly back and forth debate.

"It isn't the action which is the problem. It is the disjointed way we go about it. The way we all go about it."

"Divided we fall."

"That's true, but look at the SEIU. Look at the other organizations. They are united. But united for themselves. Monoliths of themselves. Big hairy creatures."

Cyril, meanwhile, debated himself. "J-J-J, maybe that means something. I am C and then there's Clementine. She's here in spirit. Maybe I could side with Cleo. That'd be three. They are J-J-J. Rosa, then Sebastian. T? What about Bell. Where would she fit in? Maybe right before us, the triple Cs?"

Needless to say, Cyril was on another level. Everything for him took on a reddish, muddy tone. The walls sweated and shined brightly. He shut his mind for the next few minutes, listening to the clever dialectic going on in front of him. He noticed the aging horizontal beams of the ceiling separated himself from Jersualim, Johnny and June. The three Js. There were on a stage in Cyril's mind. He was the audience and the beams were the curtain. Or the lighting fixtures. Or whatever.

J-J-J continued:

"I don't see what's so radical about these groups."

"Yeah, the unions. If anything, FOSIL is their useful radical appendix. But they don't see us like that. They see us as agitators. Like the media has painted us. Red. Agitating."

"We need to show everyone that we are so much the radicals they want us to be."

"But we are radical. Radical if you use where we are as the starting the point."

"Where we are?"

"Here. Now. This city. This stinking shithole. This sunken mass is our here, now, and everything. It is our starting point. Our radius is drawn from here. You can't draw it any other way. We might be radical if we were on a different plain, a different time, or in a different place. That doesn't matter. The matter is here and the time is for tomorrow. To them we are radical. So, we are."

"But that's not my point. It's not as if we are radical. It's if our thoughts are."

"How are our thoughts not? I mean look at it.

Look at the dominant paradigm. Their thoughts are the dripping paint on the walls. They color the room. The citizens thoughts."

"What are we then?"

"We are the chips. The cracks. We are the thoughts which break through the facade of the new thin outer coat. We break through past the paint, to the walls, to the beams, to the bricks, the wood, the mortar, and, finally, to the actual structure itself. That is how we are radical."

"What about the unions then?"

"The unions are only interested in re-painting the walls. The most radical cause they have would change the color, not the texture. Certainly not the structure. They want a change in their salaries and pensions. A fairer wage scale. But they don't care about the rest of the workers."

"They are the painters."

"But that's the thing. They don't think they're painters. They see themselves as the radicals. As the outer circle. As the movers. As the change agents. But really they are swimming in the same sinkhole at the cops and the bureaucrats. They have the same allegiance to the same cracked actors."

"Our job is not to thank the painters. No, our job is to change their brushes in for hammers. All we have to do is stop and show them the cracks they are painting over."

"But I think that would be easier to just put a whole in the wall. It'd be all there for them to see. The paint, the wood, the bricks, and the mortar. Why take the time then to educate them?"

"Johnny, you're either are a painter or you're not. They would just fill the hole and paint over it again. They might or might not know it. Who cares? Paint the walls blue or red, but the paint still covers the actual structure. No matter how rotten it is."

To make her point, June hit the wall with her hand. This wall was not rotten, but her point still responded with a resounding thud.

The words normally would have been acidic to him. Cyril's stomach should have panged with a certain indescribable pain. But for some reason, the words were let past his gatekeeper. The words nestled in his mind. It was probably the analogy of paint and painter. It reminded of his uncle in Toledo. It certainly was not June talking. It was the sweating walls, the atoms. The paint and the house itself. Everything could be seen as another. Cyril was not so sure. The feeling overwhelmed him.

"That was it," Cyril said out loud. His mind grasped the slippery thread.

Everything was a mirror of one another. A different expression of the same particles. A new perspective. A new vision. Bullshit and Truth. All the same. All something. All nothing.

Cyril's mind moved and his body buzzed. Like he won some sort of raffle. An alarm went off. His nihilistic veneer shined, but was deeply penetrated. Not by beliefs, but by a reassuringly vague answer. He was both right and wrong. It all depended on the perspective he looked at it from. The buzzing continued long after his ecstatic feeling subsided. It localized on his upper leg. He squinted and felt around. Maybe he was dying from one of those blood clots he read about. The ones from sitting cross- legged too long. No, Cyril realized was it just his phone. And he missed the call. It was from Clementine.

## CHAPTER 14:

NOT PART OF THE MACHINE

Cyril knew he had to call Clementine back, even in this psychedelic state. He gathered his wits. Surprisingly quick. Cyril was glad. Clementine would be pissed if he was out of touch again with her hash. She would let him have it.

The tea was strong but not overly potent. The high which earlier held Cyril in a blissful, contemplative state peaked. It would linger for another few hours or so, but had subsided to the point where he could handle numerous human activities. Sitting. Standing. Talking. Walking. Cyril stood up to have a smoke and to call Clementine.

"Hey, where you going my friend?" Sebastian was not going to let his cosmic grip dissipate before his eyes.

"Outside, for a smoke."

"Not out front, man. It's much too heavy. Too much heat. Go through the kitchen, there's a covered porch in the back and it's quiet out there. You need to make a call?" Sebastian noticed Cyril clutching his cell phone.

"Clementine's probably wondering where I am. So yeah."

"Cool, tell her we'll be down to the club soon. I'm ready and Johnny's just got to throw on a clean shirt. We'll all see her down there."

"Ok, I'll tell her."

Cyril grabbed his smokes and his phone. His retraced his steps through the kitchen, out in the back, and onto the covered porch. Another relic of days past, but would still be nice in the summertime. He imagined smoking a joint with Sebastian back here, beating the summer heat. He wondered if Sebastian even liked him. Probably just tolerated him. Cyril thought he was an alright dude, but, in the end, he did not really care.

Cyril took out a cigarette. His second pack today. He really should cut back, but he won't. He had another two packs at home. He dialed Clementine's number. (Ring. Ring. Ring.) Cyril thought that it would be great if it went to voicemail. (Ring. Ring. Voicemail.) He felt like he struck gold.

"Hey, it's me. Just wanted to let you know that we're headed to see... "

The phone beeped in his ear. He looked at it. It was Clementine calling him back. He switched over.

"Hey, was just leaving you a message." "Sorry, I was just getting out of the shower." "Yeah, I'm just finishing up over here at Sebastian's. Do you want to go to the Knighted Rails?"

So went the conversation. A rather dull event for outsiders. Twelve minutes of back and forth. No so much a chess match, but maybe checkers. They were looking for each other. Clementine and Cyril had found each other. She was happy he had finally called. Happy that he got the hash. He told her it was "a gift from Yemen." She was excited it was not Sebastian's usual Amsterdam stash, but a tasty treat from the near east. It came complete with a story. Liner notes to its otherwise black, oily appearance. Something mind-altering and, maybe, life changing. They both agreed they should go to the show. At least to make appearances. She did make quite an appearance. People always wondered how Cyril managed to keep her. He was unemployed, not quite attractive, and old by her social standing.

Clementine already knew of the show. Mary had told her. Phoned about an hour before. Sebastian had texted her too. She texted him back. Mary and her would be at the Spanish Main in about an hour or two, maybe stopping off somewhere for a drink first. She would just meet Cyril inside. She asked about Sebastian. She looked up to him. He was a tasteful soul, she thought. Pure, utterly focused, and nonsensical. Fantastic. She liked Cyril too, but he could be a bore.

"So, I'll just see you there I guess. Love you." "Love you too. Say hi to the gang for me." Jesus, Cyril thought. Clementine could always say the corniest shit. Straight out of an Archie strip. Cyril liked the reference. He should say that out loud sometime. It had some punch to it.

"Ok, will do. See you soon."

The phone call was done. He preferred texting. Clementine was the only person he ever called. One-way communication was preferable. Cyril believed he had a way words. Like a Rubik's Cube, he shifted his thoughts to fit his words in a slightly smart, always biting manner. Truth through texting. He really should write these down sometime, he thought. Maybe could make some money. That would get Clementine's parents off his back.

He was almost finished with his cigarette. He took another out and lit it with the still burning embers of his almost-gone cigarette. A repeating cycle. Bought him another few minutes. His mind was clearing, but not to its original state. It was like entering out of fog into a new land. Cyril felt good—a unique feeling for him. All Cyril cared about was this moment.

He finished his cigarette and walked back through the house. He had his head up, back straight, and a proud look. Good posture. Cyril did not notice this. Sebastian really had straightened him out. At least for a little while.

As soon as he re-entered the room, Johnny yelled "You ready yet?" Cyril jumped. The pack of five laughed. The chemistry between them was obvious.

Cyril usually worried about people talking behind his back. Not so much now. Cyril would not say he trusted them. But he did have a place set aside for them. He tolerated them.

Cyril was always a bit jumpy, but he was pretty sure Johnny did not mean to startle him. Johnny liked concerts and going out. Sebastian told them it would calm everyone down for a little while. They would be out for a few hours, come back home, and sleep. Then on to tomorrow. Johnny spoke up. He did not understand tonight's events, but thought maybe it would relax everyone. Anyways, Cyril knew Johnny was not one to question Sebastian's judgment.

Cyril took a glance at the group. They looked the same, but fancied up. Sebastian was wearing a new outfit. His long hair was pulled back and barely combed. He accompanied this with a pair of black dress boots and a black and grey tailored suit with blue accents. The suit was fashionable. It gave him an air of brooding power and earthly understanding.

Johnny and Jersusalim had the look of soldiers. Both had leather jackets, tight blue jeans, and sneakers. Johnny wore a green, short sleeved polo shirt, while Jerusalim opted for a tight black shirt. Bell looked amazing in a fatigue dress. It reminded Cyril of Yoko Ono, except she was not Asian. Still good looking though. June still had the air of socialist chic. Cyril felt half-hard and headed for the door.

"Where you going?"

"Aren't we leaving?"

"Not yet, my friend."

The other five had gathered around in a circle. Cyril hovered slightly outside of it. He found this group strange, but enticing. He could describe the individuals. But really they were one.

One machine. One mission. One goal.

They whispered something to one another. Looked each other in the eyes. Cyril was not invited to join. They stood up in unison. They grabbed their assorted bags, purses and jackets. Cyril was staring at them now.

"C'mon, let's go."

"What was that all about?"

"What do you mean?"

"That. What you just did."

"We are all on the same plain now. I know you don't understand yet, but you might soon though." Cyril laughed in his mind. While he liked what he saw of this machine, he knew what they meant. He was not one of them and not part of the machine. He did not share their beliefs, but he would share a ride. Then he would take off with Clementine. Of course, after a few drinks with his new friends and a little performance by the Knighted Rails.

## CHAPTER 15:

IT'S A PROGRAM

Sebastian started the car. It responded with a defiant KA-WHAMP. CHUG-A-CHUG.GA- ROOVVVMMM. He smiled. A delightful, almost primal conversation with the metal beast. The key served as the tendon between meat and bone.

Cyril noticed Sebastian's strange look from the back seat through the left side mirror. Maybe it was the mushrooms, but he swore he could see Sebastian's mind working. Gears and all. Jane rode shotgun. The four others piled in back. It was a tight squeeze, but Cyril was happy he was sandwiched beside the left door and Bell's exposed leg. She was not as pleased. She tried not to make eye contact. Fucking creep, she thought. The rest did not care one way or the other about Cyril. At least he looked the part, not for FOSIL, but where they were headed. For the Knighted Rails at the Spanish Main.

Cyril looked over Bell. He thought he should strike up a conversation. Get something friendly going. The mushrooms made him less talkative, but maybe more honest. He went through a mental rolodex of possible topics. Himself. Herself. His achievements. Family stories. He was narrowing down his choices when Johnny started talking to her. He made her laugh. They were talking about the flyers for the rally tomorrow. The unplanned rally. Unplanned in the sense it was not sanctioned by the unions, but everyone knew of the rally. Most everyone. Not the kids so much. Sebastian thought that the best way to get the kids on the wagon is to go to them. And with Knighted Rails making an appearance, it was a doubly exciteful event. All winners. Cyril was stumped. He looked out the window. He noticed a car, that was parked across the street when they left, was now down a block behind him. A rather nondescript black sedan. Strange. "Wonder if they're following us," he thought. Cyril thought he should tell Sebastian. But he looked busy driving. He glanced over at the other passengers. Fuck it.

If they were being followed, they were after these guys, not me, thought Cyril. He went on to other thoughts. "Bell is not even my type anyways. Can't wait to see Clementine. Can't wait to see Mary. Should be fun tonight." Simple male thoughts.

For once though, Cyril was not being paranoid. He was spot on. Russell was following them. Not in the inconspicuous manner he hoped, but in a cloddish manner. His car, far from being concealed, was noticed by all the passengers, especially Sebastian. All of them remained silent. Their palms sweated.

Russell wanted to pull the car over. He knew that they would have something on them. Drugs. Pills. Weapons. Something. But the brass would have a complete fit. The law made it this way. Evidence. Presumption of innocent. Pesky values, Russell thought. Sometimes he wondered why he never had a partner. Being a police officer was definitely not like the movies. He had hoped for a partner. A trustworthy guy, preferably black. That made the whole fiction easier to swallow. And more believable. Of course, his partner would be shot, but not before Russell's heroics. This was not, and will not be, the case.

Russell was bleary-eyed and tired. Too little sleep this morning. Too much coffee this afternoon. He had sat outside Sebastian's house for an hour and seen not even a stray dog or cat. He made a note of each person as they walked toward the car. Unquestioningly, he recognized Sebastian. The uncontested star of the slim file he had on FOSIL. He noted each of the rest. Bell. Quiet, no record other than the file in his hand. Johnny, the fire cracker. Hot tempered. He had served some light time for mischievous acts as a kid. Jerusalim. Served time too, but Russell knew, he was the most dangerous one. Felonies for attempted arson and weapons violations. Jane. Sweet girl, but lost her way, he thought.

Russell had only two questions going through his mind as he slowly, persistently followed the car through the deserted, gloomy streets. Where was Rosa? And, who was the other guy? The one in all black. Obviously, the unknown man could be either a more important or less important character. Could be a someone or could be a nobody. Russell decided he must be someone. Made his job seem more exciting. And Rosa was too old to be outside of the house on a night like this.

Russell decided to keep on the car's trail. Sebastian stopped at the red light. He pulled out an old cassette tape. Ton Steine Scherben. A radical German band. Perfectly fit the mood of the city, of the evening, and of this car load of revolutionaries. Sebastian pressed play and laid his foot on the gas pedal. He noticed the car behind him following. He couldn't quite get a good view of the face behind the wheel, but he assumed it was the cops.

"Hey, listen up guys. Think we have someone behind, so no funny business. Just listen, stay calm. We'll be there soon."

The car's stereo pumped out the song:

_Macht kaputt, was euch kaputt macht_!

Cyril noticed that Johnny and Jerusalim were whispering to each other. "This is just fucking great," he thought. "I will be the one who gets arrested. I'll probably go to jail with the hash I got on me."

Russell was never one for music. Thought it just wrapped and sealed off his thoughts. He liked thoughts. He liked people talking to him. Mostly he listened to news talk radio. Sometimes he read the newspaper, but he knew that most of the stories were written by leftists. The same people who were stoking this whole strike. People like the ones in Sebastian's car. He flipped a button on the dash. Automatically tuned to his favorite news station:

Police are preparing for tomorrow's pending strike. With the midnight deadline fast approaching, both sides have apparently stopped talking. There have been no meetings since yesterday. If no deal is reached, all of the city's major unions will go on strike. They also are planning a rally in the downtown Capitol Plaza tomorrow. We go live now to Jerry Silvestre who's at a local restaurant getting the reactions from both sides of the story.

Macht kaputt, was euch kaputt macht!

'Well, Michelle. A lot of people are angry on both sides down here. I spoke with an older woman who has two part-time jobs and recently was laid off from both. She was against the strike for two reasons. She said that not only would it prevent her from traveling across town to look for work, but she also thought the people who have jobs really should not be greedy for more."

Macht kaputt, was euch kaputt macht!

" _The curious thing is the people who are not mad at the unions. Radicals sure are rousing people from all sides of the city. They plan to converge tomorrow. They are handing out flyers and I saw a man with a sandwich board promoting free bus rides. From what I see down here on the streets, the people are in a frenzy. Some are angry, some are confused, but everyone feels like tomorrow will be quite an eventful afternoon, to say the least._

Macht kaputt, was euch kaputt macht! "Thanks Jerry for that insightful report. Don't forget to keep in tuned into WXXT for all of the latest breaking news tomorrow. We want to remind out listeners that the police have imposed a voluntary curfew. They are urging all citizens to stay indoors after dark tonight and throughout the day tomorrow. The police department released a statement saying that this voluntary curfew could become mandatory if this situation deteriorates further. If you are listening to our station, we must say that we hope you stay safe indoors and understand that this situation will soon resolve itself. The worst thing that could happen, one official told me, is to get caught in the middle of this strike.

" _This strike, as we heard from our interviews with union leaders, is between the workers, the government, and the businesses. The worry, by most officials, is that radicals will hijack tomorrow's events for their own aims."_

Macht kaputt, was euch kaputt macht!

"Hey Johnny, call somebody at the club. I want us to get in through the back."

Cyril awed the clout. The power. This was what he had always grasped for. The thing he never received from anyone, not even Clementine.

"You know he's going to speak tonight before the Rails," Bell asked Cyril. She thought she would give him a chance.

"No, really? I didn't know he knew the guys." "Oh yeah, they were, uh, customers for a few years. But they are fully on board with the program. We have ours. They have theirs."

"Yeah, their psychedelic program," retorted Johnny.

"That doesn't matter, it's a program.

Sebastian's coming to feel out the crowd and try out the speech before tomorrow."

Russell radioed into the station. He told them that he was following a potential agitator and was leaving the east. The chief would not be happy, he thought. But he would monitor them and go back east when he felt like it.

When the police chief got wind of Russell's insubordination, he was slightly pleased. "Just make sure he gets back east by the early morning." The assignment was not a concern to him. Sebastian was on the fringes as far as the police were concerned. Keeping Russell on the fringes of this conflict was top priority.

Both Sebastian and Russell drove across the aging metal bridge. It was the line between east and west. Russell knew he should not be following the car, since it was his beat to patrol the east, but this was the only interesting thing going on. He knew Sebastian wanted to get to the somewhere.

The last part of the journey could be seen as a carefully planned dance. The two cars were going the speed limit. Obeying all laws. Inside, both drivers were sweating. The passengers were both aware and oblivious to the high stakes involved. Neither car made a move, but both flirted with one another. Sebastian would lay on the gas while Russell would hold back. Then Russell would speed up and Sebastian would change lanes. This went on for about ten minutes.

They came up to Broadway and 6th, the last stoplight before the club. It was red. Sebastian idled the car. The passengers smiled grimly. Russell was twitchy. He wanted to pull the car over and show them what's what. The light turned green and Sebastian accelerated evenly. Russell followed in pursuit. Right before the street where one would take a left and stop in front on the curb, Sebastian sharply turned into the alley. Russell was caught off guard. He lost them, but not for long. He pulled his vehicle, a visible symbol of lightweight power, around the corner. Far enough away to not be noticed, but still within walking distance. He would go in pursuit.

Russell noticed all the people gathering around the Spanish Main. Heading inside. "What are all these fucking cretins doing out tonight? Didn't they hear about the curfew?" Russell knew it was voluntary, but wished the chief would just put in the order. They could sweep all this trash up. The strike would be settled before it even began.

Sebastian was proud of his evasive maneuver. He swiftly pulled the car over. A burly security guard opened the back door. He was a dimwit with a t-shirt with the word "Security" emblazoned upon it for added clarity. Sebastian, Bell, Jane, Jersusalim, Johnny and Cyril pushed their way past him and down a flight of darkened stairs. In the nearly pitch black, they had reached safety.

Meanwhile Russell loaded his pistol. (Just in case.) Never know what these cretins can be up to. He took off his tie, badge, and scruffed his hair. He thought he would fit in. He looked out of place. He locked the car and walked toward the club.

## CHAPTER 16:

POWER COSMO

The city was on the verge of cracking open. A festering sore had grown through the countless years of industrial drought, weak economics, and greed. The city was dry, ready to burn. City hall did not know how to handle the crisis so they downplayed any chance for a local uprising.

"This is America, my friends," the mayor said earlier in the morning at a hastily arranged news conference. "I am telling everyone to remain calm. The unions are our friends. They are the ones who do so much and we are working with them and the business owners for a solution. We ask that if you are not directly involved to stay indoors tonight."

The kids outside Spanish Main were uninterested in staying indoors tonight. Or any night for that matter. They were an inch from rebelling in the calmest of times, and tonight they were united. Slightly scared, but united. It was one thing to wear patches and read pamphlets with phrases and words covering the insurrection. Class warfare and corporate overthrow. But it was quite another to stare over the precipice at the actual event.

Cyril followed the FOSIL crew. Entered the backstage doors. Inside the green room were the usual accompaniments. Girls. Hot ones, thought Cyril. Drink. Smoke. Drugs. He took notice of a mystical man, the singer of the Knighted Rails. The Power Cosmo. Philip. Cyril avoided eye contact. He nervously tapped his left foot. He was not good at these types of situations. People usually avoided him anyways. This time was no different. Philip was in the middle of conversation with a local reporter. A sleuth on the scoop. Youth expression in the time of revolt.

Or something like that. A tagline. He had 1,700 words and his hip credentials for his editor's approval. This was his break, his byline.

"So tell me, how would you describe your sound?"

"We are great space music." "Ok, but what does that mean?"

"We are cosmic. We are all. We play music.

We are great. Great space music."

Cyril usually found this exchange a screaming example of vapidity, however, Philip had the same enigmatic energy that Sebastian possessed. The same quality Cyril lacked.

"What do you hope to instill in the youth tonight?"

"Instill?"

"Have them take away if you like." The reporter almost had an English accent.

"I don't, my friend. They take away what they take away. They eat their own seeds. Distill their own thoughts. We are unpolluted light. We are the spark." Sebastian thought Philip was being intentionally mysterious. He did not care for this reporter. A snake. The craft writer type. Money from his sweat. He would probably misquote him. The reporter did that before and would do that again. Always made the stories better.

"Is it distracting having all these people here, do you need to concentrate before a performance?" The reporter deliberately stared at Cyril. The first one to do so. Cyril didn't like him and suspected the feeling was mutual.

"Not at all. We are all friends. We are the energy. Without them, how would we create? You see that man over there?"

"The one in the suit?"

"That's Sebastian."

"Sebastian Took?"

"Yes, he's been working on something for us. A collaboration between the Knighted Rails and FOSIL. An equality program. The program."

"He is part of you guys?"

"We are all parts. But yes, they are working on refining our message. We are working with them to create a psychedelic program. To help their social message reach everyone. Starting tonight. Quote me on that."

The reporter nodded. He would not remember. Straight politics bore his readers.

The reporter smiled like a serpentine. His scoop was true. Here was a revolutionary. A revolutionary on the rise. Lots of upside. And he was the only reporter here. He must text his editor. The accompanying photographer snapped a few shots. (Snap. History. Snap.)

"You'll stick around for the performance, right?"

"Of course."

"You don't want to miss it. Sebastian will introduce us with a few inspired words. Speaking of that. Hey, Sebastian! Get over here."

Sebastian joined Philip. The reporter had latched onto this. The story's angle had presented itself. It rolled over on its belly. The reporter would make a portfolio piece on this evening. What was a simple music profile now had a social spin. Philip was asking Sebastian on his group. Sebastian was happy to present FOSIL's eight point statement. He expounded on the program. Not a party, a program. He kept his rhetoric at minimum, he didn't want the kids tuning out the message. He wanted to cement his place amongst the youth culture, among the Knighted Rails, and among tonight's energy.

"While the Knighted Rails are our space cosmonauts, our work is focused in the trenches.

Fighting the rats and pigs." Now there's a quote, thought the reporter.

Cyril felt dizzy. This was too much. All too much. The reporter looked like a fucking cretin. He headed toward the door and down the hallway to the main show room. Most importantly, it was also the path to the bar.

"Where you headed Cyril?" Sebastian asked. The rest of the group could not care less. Cyril did not answer. Instead, he simply pointed his hand toward the door. He opened it and down the hallway he went.

He weaved through the labyrinth and came out of a side door. The place was packed. All young people. A few older folks poking around. Probably cops or pushers. Lots of good looking women. A few men, too. Cyril saw the bar and reminded himself of his drink, "Grey Goose & Soda." He repeated to himself a few times quietly. He took breath, looked down, and proceeded to the bar.

The Stooges were playing over the PA. Loud and fuzzy. Cyril thought it was good choice: _I got a right, right to move, any time I want, any old time_. That's the spirit. The place was packed. Disgruntled students. Addicts. Saboteurs. A mix of vagrants and idealists. Cyril felt at home, sort of. Nobody really paid attention to him anyways. The Knighted Rails could always pull in a crowd. Now that they were pulling them in for Sebastian, this would be massive. A Youth Program. Cyril, though, tried his best to look disinterested. The girl in front of him was quite interesting. Ripped stockings and teased black hair. She reminded him of the first girl he ever masturbated about. She was his neighbor. She was older. He always wished he could've lost his virginity to her. Quite a rebellious thought for Cyril at the time.

He gathered his courage to talk to her.

"Hey Cyril, how you doing you fucking creep?" It was Mary. She had snuck on him from behind.

"Just getting a drink. Is Clementine here yet?

"Yeah, she's around. Over near the booths."

"What are you drinking?"

"I'm in a celebratory mood, how about a glass of champagne?"

Cyril saw that he fell right into the trap. Mary scampered off. He was left to gather the drinks. Expensive ones at that.

"Maybe a new social program will do us good," Cyril thought. "No more being taken advantage of anyways. Maybe Sebastian's right."

"What was that?" asked the bartender. Apparently he could read minds.

"What?"

"What do you want?"

"Oh, can I get a greyhound, glass of cava, and red wine?"

"Sure."

The bartender was gruff. Came with the territory, but it was not just that. He despised Cyril. No real reason for it, Cyril just emitted this unpleasant energy around him. The mushrooms had temporarily removed it, but here it was again. A gray cloud. Only Sebastian and Clementine seemed drawn to it. It was an acquired taste.

"Thanks," Cyril said as he paid and tipped the bartender. A three dollar tip did little to ease the mistrust. Cyril hurried to the corner where Clementine was perched. He loved her. He thought he did at least. A lot could be said for a woman who chooses to fuck a man. Especially a man below her station.

Passing through the crowd was not easy. It was packed tonight. An air of suspicious abandon had taken hold. Every stranger looked like a different mole. German police spy. Underground agent. Terrorist. Whatever one could imagine. They were the true rebels. The strangers were the imposters. Or worse. Everyone united in the fact that they wanted change and scared to death of it at the same time. Clementine chose the booth at the back for just this reason. It was set back, and slightly raised from the black wood of the bar and the lowered concrete dance floor. The tattered booth of red scratched vinyl was a refuge from the confusion of the crowd.

## CHAPTER 17:

LIFE OF SUITS

Clementine was a beautiful, wicked child. Full cheeks and a slender physique. She looked anciently stunning, like a French princess or Aga Khan's lover. She had elegance and wit. She held court as Cyril staggered up to her, drinks in hand. She had the air of royalty among social saboteurs, but she fully supported the program.

Cyril noticed Mary was back and part of the pack. Seated to Clementine's left. Cyril saw her and almost dropped his drink. He thought that this must be some sort of conspiracy. He knew she knew that he wanted to fuck her. She must, he thought. She didn't. And she didn't care.

The group at the table were an assorted bunch. Writers. Actors. Actresses. Activists. Assholes. More or less a buzzsawed cross section of the town's intellectual, leftist base. There they were. Gathered around Clementine. Their queen. Cyril was no king. Just a mere footnote with no regal standing

"Hey, here are your drinks."

"Where are ours? Not enough to go around?" The rest of the circle joked. Lilting and flitting laughter teased the air. Cyril cracked a half smile. He waited patiently for three people to stand up and move out of the booth to let him in to the inner circle next to Clementine. She smiled and gave Cyril a big kiss. She truly loved him. She loved him more when they first met, but it was still good enough now. She continued with her comments on the upcoming labor strike and the student solidarity. She was a former student union president. She won the election partly based on her stately ways. Now she knew the students were the tipping point. She had many valid points. She was not as vapid as Cyril thought. She combed through her mind and delicately placed a few offerings for the table to digest.

"Students might not be workers, but they are the future workers. More than that, they are the future!"

"To have a voluntary curfew is to voluntarily give up. I say that we volunteer to rise up against the police. We should place the curfew on them!"

Each phrase was sharp and sweet. Like honey spread on a blade and then struck into the listener's ears. Each successive phrase was meet with stomps of the feet and chinks of glasses. Cyril thought it was a little much. He would have laughed, but she was too close. He would not want to hurt her feelings. Clementine was smart and beautiful. Cyril was jealous. He would not have admitted as much, but he thought of himself as the one with the answers and charm. He had neither. Never would.

Cyril thought Clementine seemed especially focused tonight. She was. Partly the strike and partly the two grams of coke she bought with Mary on the way over. Her pupils slightly dilated from a few bumps off Mary's back-door key. She concentrated on the people around her. She felt a maternal aspect for them.

Cyril whispered in her ear about the hash. She smiled. He put the drugs in her purse. She was now on to the other, less heavy aspects of the evening. She put down the politics for now. Besides, 'preaching to the choir,' was the saying of the evening amongst the cretins and mischievous souls in Spanish Main.

The support act, Purple and the Back Nine, warmed up the crowd. A few fellows mottled on the floor. A half crescent formed among those deciding to hear the noise up front. The drone noise filled the club like a drill in a sonic mine. Its trigger set. The vocals dripped with reverb. It seemed as though their whole set was one long continuous moment.

Slip inside our dreams

Now, what do you see?

Negative ions pos-s-s-i-t-t-e-e-v-l-l-l-y-y-y

Cyril put his hand deep in his pockets. Amongst the blue jean lint and scrapped train tickets, he found the last vestige of hope. Another Klonopin. He took it. Then a big drink off the greyhound. That should do the trick.

Purple and the Back Nine continued their drone. The crowd was indifferent. They were the Cyril of the music world. People passed through. Anxious. The length of the songs and their sheer inward- looking attitude was a right angle from the moment at hand. The Knighted Rails chose it this way. They painted a path which would form a line from the support act through Sebastian to the ultimate trip. That was their thought.

Cyril, in his own way, was disgusted by the crowd. He saw poseurs of the worse kind. And most likely some traitors to throw in the mix. Must be a few undercover cops hanging about, he thought. He scanned the room. Near the door was Russell. Must be a fucking mod, he thought.

"Look at the Small Face over there." No one at the table laughed. Clementine got Cyril's pointed reference. A little off target, she thought. The Small Faces were one of her favorites. Not a thing to joke about. She thought he could have scored with a reference to Biff-Bang-Pow or Painter Man or any of the numerous Creation songs. Much more timely and a little less obvious.

Russell sweated profusely. He was never one for the undercover scene. His pistol jostled at his walked. He hoped that would not have to use it. Secretly he wished he could. Stick it in the back of Sebastian's head. Then he would give in. Tell everyone that this little program of his was ultimately a hollow sham. No, he thought, not now. Maybe later.

He spotted the table at the back. He recognized the man in all-black. The unknown quantity. The only person from Sebastian's who was not in his file. He seemed to be surrounded by beautiful men and women. Russell had missed out on that. He never had a chance to cut lose. This was the first time he was in the underground scene. He cherished it, because he felt like a spy and felt like busting skulls.

"Hey, aren't they great?" The man talking to Russell was high. Beyond belief. Swishing and swaying forth to the hypnotic swirl of the support act. His breath swooned with whiskey. His eyes told of smoky encounters. Russell was inwardly disgusted.

"Yeah, they're good. Remind me of the Doors." This was Russell's attempt a reference point. He really had none. Not for the band. Not for this man. Not for this club. Definitely not for this program. He could not relate.

"You know Sebastian?" Russell sounded like a detective.

"Who?"

"Sebastian. You look like you know him. FOSIL. He's got a program, I hear." If not for the man's state, Russell had just outed himself. The man was confused.

"Yeah, he's around. Probably. Why?"

"He's an old friend."

"Really?" The man was sort of suspicious, but he also did not care too much. He figured that Russell was one of the city squares out to score a few ounces of smoke. The kind of men who live a life of suits, cubicles, children and wives. The men who snuck off to the garage to have a toke. The men who had comprised everyone. The men that Sebastian would illuminate and instruct. Or destroy.

Purple & The Back Nine wrapped up their set. Their one continuous sonic cycle ended in swirling cosmic mess. The crowd clapped. It was up in the air whether it was for the musicians or for their set finally ending.

Russell headed toward the bathroom. His escape was less than graceful. He knocked into little redhead. She called him a prick. Her boyfriend stared lazily in his direction, slightly menacing. On the hall to the bathroom he nearly ran into Cyril. He was startled. Something about this man in all-black. Maybe the man behind the machine. The one who was the key. He tried to get his attention while waiting for the urinal. Cyril continued to not make eye contact and stare down.

"Who is this fucking creep," Cyril thought. Maybe he heard his joke earlier. Mods could be so paranoid. "Impossible, he was across the room."

Russell followed Cyril out of the bathroom and attempted to strike up a conversation.

"Hey, like your outfit, my man," the word stumbled out of his mouth. Awkward and off-putting.

"Uh, thanks. Do I know you?"

"No, but I'm new to town and just looking to meet some new people." Cyril was wondering if this dude was hitting on him. Either way, he looked like a square and acted like a deranged cop.

"Well, good luck with that. I'm going outside for a smoke. Nice meeting ya."

"Wait, wait a second. Who's playing here tonight?"

"Don't you know? It's the Knighted Rails.

They're on after these guys. And another guy named Sebastian is going to introduce them. They're pretty far out. Don't know if they're quite your style."

"You'd be surprised. I've been known to cut loose every now and then."

Cyril was now very confused by this last remark. Who said 'cut loose' nowadays anyways? Probably a NARC or just past his prime. Either way, Cyril figured this guy was bad news.

"Sebastian? What's he all about."

"What isn't he about."

"Are you part of it?" "Part of what?"

"It."

"It?"

"The program."

"Don't know what you're talking about, man. He's just a friend. Anyways, like I said, I'm heading out for a smoke. See you around. Maybe." Cyril placed his emphasis on "maybe."

Russell was sure he was hiding something. A little smug cretin. From the outside the Spanish Main looked like any other club, but Russell knew it held more sinister secrets. Not only were these kids willfully ignoring the curfew, they were congregating in order to tear down the whole fucking city. Russell thought he ought to do something. Now.

## CHAPTER 18:

GHEIST

Upstairs on the other side of the city, Rosa gathered her things. She neatly packed her clothing into an old leather suitcase. She organized two pairs of shoes side by side on the ground. Cleo swept by her leg and let out a soft meeeoooowww. She reciprocated with a smooth, gentle pet on the back. She felt tomorrow was important. She knew it was. The culmination of all her struggle and thoughts. Tomorrow could reap more benefits that all her brittle years put together. She had no regrets though. She knew that some journeys could be convoluted. This was not one of them. The path was clear to her and had been for some time. It just happened to be a long path. Relatively narrow, but with its requisite switch- backs, hills and dead-ends. None the less, she had arrived at the end.

She sat calmly at her desk. The desk was given to her by her friend Karl. A relic of an earlier, outdated era, but still wholly functional. A piece that could inform the modern times. Like Rosa herself.

She had a type writer and sketched an outline of tomorrow's itinerary. Highly organized. Highly structured. She learned this from her years working. And from her time in prison.

Her mind was focused. Tomorrow's rally was only the beginnings. She thought back to her childhood. A rather monotonous, cyclic time. Poverty. Death. War. Crime. Her mother had died during childbirth and she was brought up by her two brothers. Her father worked and toiled with little time left over for his only daughter. She held little value to him. Or to her country.

Meeting Sebastian was the right thing at the right time. A little lesson in luck, she thought. Rosa's highly planned, organized nature was not air tight. She was fallible to luck, superstition, and myth. In that descending order. For her, to block things out which she may not understand was tantamount to saying that one understood everything. She knew she didn't. No one could. No could understand why they lived like they do. Learned repetitions.

She felt like the great school marm. Educating and informing Sebastian. He was not only the voice. She had planted the seeds. His thoughts now were quite as powerful as hers.

7:15 - Dusche. Vergewissern Sie sich, dass jeder bereit für der morgigen Aufgaben ist.

7:45 – Bereitet Frühstück. Kaffee. Tee.

7:50 – Cleo. Liebe.

8:00 – Wacht Sebastian.

8:30 – Esse. Fokus.

9:15 – Fokus.

9:45 – Verlassen

She stopped there. It was all she needed to remember. She thought of finishing the document, including the points on the march and rally and what everyone should do in relation. She thought she should. She could not. She did not know the particulars about what tomorrow would bring. She didn't dare guess. The walls had as accurate a guess as her.

The thoughts idled in her mind. Round and round. Their engines moaned and roared. She had only a few fears. The only ones which occurred to her were the ones concerning Sebastian. Was he for real? Did he somehow lack the drive to finish what he had started?

She dared not take credit for his current renaissance. But Rosa definitely influenced Sebastian. Groomed, focused, and spurred him on. In many ways, her thoughts and stirring kept Sebastian fresh. She was not a leader in his presence, but in spirit.

Her time had passed. This was not her first general strike. Most likely it would be her last. Physically. But she hoped her germinated ideas would flower many movements and create programs all over this adopted country of hers.

Rosa's life had circulated. Taken in the veins of a variety of human contraptions and meaningless boundaries. She had lived in multiple artificial nations, inspired heroics, and egged on the agitators. She gave grace and humility to those who had deserved it. Her record was glowing, but results were decidedly mixed. She felt the weight of the dead partizans on her mind. She saw the bloodied faces of rioters and rebels. She saw the gleaming smiles of military boys. And the policemen's brutish faces. Crushing. Literally crushing the dreams of those who supported the structure they were beating and forcing to maintain.

She had been beaten. Jailed too. Sequestered. Pestered. All points in between. For the last twenty years, she lived the life of a retired rebel. A little old lady. Why she chose this city, few knew. She spoke only German. She knew English, but despised it. Some say forgot it. Either way, she spoke only in German. Sebastian knew limited German. Enough to get by. They spoke in words, but understood each other through the earth, Sebastian would always say. Before him, she was finished. Before her, he had not yet started. Both idolized Cleo, who spent her nights with Rosa. Her days sleeping. In between, she tried hunting whatever animals were not smart enough to have fled this barren wasteland. The city offered few natural conditions on which life could thrive.

Rosa too was drawn to this barren wasteland which symbolized all that she rallied against. The heart of deepest capitalism. The heart of a rotten beating core. Rosa nuzzled and dug in for the past decades, waiting for the right time to re-emerge with new life and vigor. The up and down swings of the market always made the timing difficult. People were easily swayed with a few extra dollars in their pockets. She knew this. The boom times had passed. The decay of the system had set in. The rust had formed and spread. Now was the time and Sebastian was the one, she thought.

She felt like a ghost—a vision of an earlier, more idealistic time. She craved the youth today. But not their lack of sentiment or idealism. Their stubbornness was both a curse and a blessing. They were not easily swayed nor easily manipulated, and that only made her work harder. She had to form her ideas more sharply to make it successful. She had seen strikes before. The grandiose speeches and enthralled masses ready to fight for equality. She also saw it all swept away so easily. By force or by bribe. All the same. The masses never saw justice. Only bloodied skulls.

She had seen this particular scenario before, but reversed. The students struck first, then the workers joined. That order failed. Now reversed. It may well succeed. The difference she hoped was that the workers had the brawn and the students the ideals. Without both you fail, she thought. But without the force your ideals will be meaningless, she knew.

Rosa's translucent skin was in contrast to her byzantine mind. A tangle of complex thoughts. Whole political systems formed, lived, and died in her cells. The thoughts she discussed with Sebastian were the top. The ones who made it out alive. She wondered about tomorrow and who would make it out alive. What thoughts would rise and whether the revolution would actually come. Would the laborers cave in or would they allow her final deeds to be done?

Who could sleep on a night like this? Rosa wondered. An elderly lady with the need for a full night's rest, she reminded herself. Rosa was a revolutionary, but her ways were as a long as her years. She had seen a lot, but had also lived a lot. She knew she should rest, despite her still busy mind. She lay down on her single mattress. A simple, utilitarian existence. Rosa needed no pleasure. Not today. The pleasure would come tomorrow. At the rallies, in the chaos, and on the streets. From Sebastian.

Cleo jumped on the bed next to her and curled in a tight ball near her feet. She was a companion. A true equal. They loved one another. Cleo purred. Rosa petted. They both fell quietly asleep on the top floor, tucked away in Sebastian's aged house.

## CHAPTER 19:

3 C'S 2 P'S

A smoke ring blew high into the sky. Between the rotting buildings, Cyril and Clementine were sharing a joint. The hash was good. "Yemeni," said Cyril. Clementine liked the story. She thought it sounded exotic with an air of mystery. A celestial spirit to help them forget their surroundings. They focused on the moment and lost themselves.

"I love you," said Cyril. Clementine smiled back in silence. She loved him too, but she didn't need to say it. It was not necessarily a faded feeling, but one she knew was stagnant. She thought earlier in the day that he might be a truly a fake human being. Plastic bones. She assured herself that he felt the exact same way about her. Now these feelings were lost, momentarily disabled and confused in the heightened state both experienced in the deserted alley. Most of the others had gone inside. But, in a sense, Cyril and Clementine were completely alone. Plastic as they may have been.

It took less than a couple of minutes for the high to kick in. A fresh experience for Clementine. Her mind was still focused from the few lines of coke earlier. But that had mostly worn off. Left her twitchy. The hash soothed her out and patted her skull. For Cyril, it was a visit from an old friend. High again. The Klonopin also knocked and said hello. Mixed with the drinks and the mushroom's fading grip, he was elsewhere all together. Sixth dimensional. Still tuned in. Almost too tuned in. He felt the garbage. He felt the cold, almost frozen rain shoot him glares. He saw the faces of the unsanitary alley dwellers melting. They corroded on the spot. Orange faces mixed with rusted faces.

"What did you think of Sebastian?" Clementine asked. Her breath smelled sweet.

"I don't know. An interesting dude to say the least. He has some interesting ideas. Interesting."

'Interesting' was a word some people used when they did not have anything to say. Or did not want to upset someone by saying something contrary to what everyone else thought.

"Did you see my button?"

On her fashionable black pea coat, she had a FOSIL button. Cyril thought it enveloped the three Ps. Psychedelic. Power. Programs, specifically FOSIL's. He just hoped the two Cs, the two standing next to each other getting, could have a future program of their own.

"Do you really agree with their platform? I mean come on. They are arguing for the change that isn't possible. To say 'let's change just wipe the slate clean.' That's strong, man. I think it's hard to wipe that much blood off your soul." Cyril said this quietly. He did not want to raise suspicion. The others around him were unquantifiable. He did not want to be shanked with a knife, drugged, or beaten. His mind cycled through horrific deaths he saw on shady internet sites or lame late night television shows. His demise would horrific. No one would have cared that much for him to give him such a way out. Cyril's paranoia wrapped tightly around his mind.

"Why wouldn't I? Do you like things the way they are? Fuck, you have not been able to get a job for how long? You see me slave my days away. I can't even strike. They are no unions for retail. I wish there were. Maybe then, I could make some money. Maybe we could all live better. We all live in muck, but we all don't have our eyes in it. Of course, I agree with Sebastian. He's the answer."

Cyril laughed.

"Go ahead laugh, sometimes you act like such a fucking old man. Conservative. Cautious." Clementine knew that would hurt him.

Cyril was taken back. He had been accused of many things in their relationship. Lazy mostly. But never this. This comment struck into direct contrast of how he saw himself. He was revolutionary. Did she not see this?

"What do you mean?"

"Look at yourself, Cyril. You bandy about in ancient clothes. Listen to these old pop groups. What do they sing about? You're still stuck on the '60s. What did they ever accomplish? Join the now, _man_."

Maybe she was right, Cyril thought. He had not thought of it in that manner. She said the same thing on many different occasions to him but never in this way. Sacred inflection. He got it. He had always looked back to chart his course forward. Maybe she was right. Maybe he should join up and get with it. Maybe Sebastian was right. Maybe he was extraordinarily high.

"Baby, I'm not trying to pick a fight. Really, it doesn't matter to me."

"You should care. That's my whole point. I mean, when people ask 'where were you when the air of puffery and corruption was put to wind?' Where will you say? Were you standing next to me? Next to Sebastian? Next to the program?"

"I guess." Cyril thought maybe he should go to the rally tomorrow. He could not decide why. Maybe it was Clementine. He did not give a fuck for group gatherings. He fancied himself a writer or a poet. Either way, a secluded artist, but something was dragging him to this. Probably get himself killed, he thought. That would be a good ending. Too bad he had no dusted manuscripts to be turned over by greedy landlords. No hidden gems for shitty younger brothers to cash in on. Also, he never really thought much of labor unions or other groups. They made him think boring thoughts.

"What? Are you too cool for it? I mean really. Sebastian is here tonight. You came with him. Must have been something in it to drag you along. Just give it a chance. I believe in you."

Cyril loved Clementine. She had always tried to change him. In the best ways possible. She molded his unfocused rebellion into a heart-stopping, believable one. Cyril thought about what his friends would think of him now. It did not really matter. He did not have friends anymore. And, truly, he didn't ever have too many friends. Clementine was the only one who put up with him as much as she already had.

"Mary thinks I'm a fucking loon. She keeps on talking as if Sebastian is inconveniencing everyone with his ways. It's not just him. He is a part of everything. We all are. But really he is not. He's not in a union. He's not one of the students."

"But neither are you, Clementine."

"Exactly."

"But you are the furthest from it." Cyril meant this to hurt. Clementine worked at a fashionable boutique in the smoldering wreckage. Frequented by young, rich professionals and young girls with their mother's money in their pockets. Cyril despised her job, but liked her outfits though.

"It's more revolutionary than _your_ job." Clementine fired back. She thought any job was better than none. And who was Cyril to mention this, she thought. She paid the bills. Paid for the food. Paid for his clothes. Paid for this hash. Yemeni hash.

Cyril said nothing. He knew what she was thinking. He did not want to fight with her. The drugs and drinks in his veins put a smile on his face. His perspective was relatively happy. It was a strange wind, this evening, he thought. Felt like it was blowing straight down. From the blackness above to the rusted belly of the city. His thoughts continued, falling one after another into an intangible pattern. Cyril tried to grasp it, but they faded, broke apart, re-appeared, and finally disappeared. He was floating. Almost, but not quite.

"What are you doing after this?" Clementine was anxious.

"Do you want to go home?"

"That's what I was thinking. Mary said she wanted to come too. Maybe we can have a little party; she wanted to listen to the Kak record."

Cyril's heart beat. Dirty thoughts now focused and populated his cells. Dreams which would never come true. Mary thought he was a creep, but at least she would not tell Clementine. She was too sweet, he thought.

"That would be great," Cyril was barely able to speak. "A few more drinks and I won't be able to walk."

"Just keep it up enough to not piss off the security."

"Let's go inside. Sebastian will probably be starting his talk soon. Did he tell you about what he wants with me? He wants me to join in the program. I think he said Secretary of Uniforms. Design what we wear. What I've always wanted to do."

"Uh, yeah. He didn't say that." Cyril tried to smile. It was all decided. At least, Sebastian really did not want to fuck her. He was pretty sure. Cyril did not want to make her sad. He kissed her. She kissed him back. God, he loved her. They were both high and floating together. Above the trash in the alley. They walked arm in arm into the club. For that second it was true.

## CHAPTER 20:

MAYBE SOME OTHER NIGHT

Beads of sweat formed on Sebastian's brow. It was hard to tell whether it was the intensity of the celestial moments, the heat of the blonde stage lights, the hash, or all three. Sebastian calmed himself. If he was a normal speaker, he would be shuffling index cards filled with a little writing. Words. Suggestions. Jokes maybe. He wasn't, so he didn't. He knew the speech word for word. He had gone over with Rosa the necessities of it. In German. German was such an exacting language. To translate it to English, the meaning would be lost. He took the essential ingredients of the talk and made it its own in English. Rosa would approve. She hated English, but liked Sebastian. The crowd rallied around the stage. Some had heard Sebastian before and those who didn't knew of him. The crowd was ripe as he walked towards the stage.

Russell sneered at the crowd with a beer in one hand. Domestic swill for domestic swine. A gun in his pocket that was loaded in many, many ways. He laughed at the security. When he walked in there was no frisk, no pat down. Maybe he would shoot Sebastian right in the fucking head. That would make him a hero. Russell would be a murderer, but maybe a martyr in some circles. His father would be pissed and so he should be. Russell's thoughts masked the clear reality that he stuck out in this crowd. He looked like a cop and acted like one, because he was one. His brawny shoulders and cropped hair only helped that. He saw people talking about him; maybe he was being paranoid. No, he thought, there was Sebastian's secret man pointing right at him. The two girls next to him snickered.

Russell had to get out of here.

He'd probably get lynched. Or worse. You never can trust these cretins, he reminded himself. Russell remembered these same kids he in high school and college. Losers. Rejects. Powerless. The same fucks Russell dealt with in a harsh manner daily. He had a level of contempt for them. It was not such much their differences that bothered him, but the indifference. The indifference toward the sacrifice Russell made to this city. This shitty rotting city. These cretins were the worms feeding off the browning, sweetened core. Russell decided to follow this loopy analogy he invented. It had no end, just went round and round. It made little sense to him. He ended up where he first began, so he forgot it. He had to get out of here.

Russell felt like the walls were whispering to him. _Do it. Do it._ It wasn't the walls though. It was the Pink Fairies. But Russell didn't know that. Russell felt like the crowd was collapsing in on him. A breath seized in his throat. Maybe someone spiked his drink, he thought. He panicked. No one did that nowadays. He pushed his way to through the crowd. Most just stared at him blankly. They were all trying to get closer. Closer to Sebastian and the Knighted Rails. Russell made it easier for them.

Russell suddenly had an overwhelming feeling that nearly choked him. Living fear. Had he wasted his life? Protecting these losers? Who cares if they tear down the place? It's like a dog taking a shit in an abandoned building. Who is it hurting? Russell just didn't want to join them. He still had some self- respect. The city used to mean something. Used to stand for something. Pride. Industry. Wealth. Steel. Free Enterprise. Now it's just poor and rusty. Filled with grime, cretins, and sludge. If he had a gas can big enough, he'd set the whole club on fire. Get rid of them all.

Russell's face burned red. He was furious. Everything he stood for, he had assumed that others agreed with at least to a minimal level. Nobody in the Spanish Main cared to continue things in the same manner which resulted in power and relative wealth for Russell, but also forcibly shoved down these pitiful creatures. As he was in the back of the club, a drunk laborer (soon to be striker) struck up a rather lopsided conversation.

"Pretty wild spot, huh? Not really my taste. My buddies would probably think I'm queer for being down here, but they are our comrades after all. With the students striking, there ain't nothing we can't accomplish."

Russell noticed the man was in his 40s, white, wide, and now blocking his path. The man was not blocking Russell in an aggressive manner, but in a way which made the conversation weigh in on the side of mandatory.

"Well, sometimes it's good to see both sides."

"Yeah, I used to think I spent my days hauling and carting while these kids whittled their time away. Fucking. Getting high. That's what I imagined. Lazy kids. That ain't fair, but then I got to thinking. They aren't just fucking and doing drugs. Of course, maybe they are. Wouldn't we all if we had the chance? But my point is that they are organizing. Helping us. They want to stand with us, kind of a cool thing if you think about it. They are not even working. But they're thinking ahead. Planning. When they're working, they want to life to be good. Well, at least fair. It's got to be fair. Everyone tries to take so much and leaves us shit. Why go to school if you just end up broke, right?" This guy was quite lucid. Made sense even a little, thought Russell. Clearly a functional alcoholic.

The man now completely blocked Russell, who started to panic all over again. He looked over his shoulder. The drunk man swayed and in his mind and he was making Russell feel out of place. But the man seemed like he felt proud, like he fit in. He touched him on the side, right above Russell's gun.

"Hey, it's ok. I'm not gonna hurt you."

"Oh I know you won't." Russell sounded sinister. He did not mean to. He slipped. He fingered his pistol in his jacket pocket. Fuck, he thought.

"You don't seem like you're here for the right reasons my friend. What's your deal? A reporter? A cop?" The man might have been drunk but he noticed Russell's squirrely eyes. The man clearly detested outsiders.

"What? No. But I heard they have a great pension," Russell laughed. Trying to lighten the mood. "Just looking for my daughter. People really should not be out on a night like this."

"Is that a threat?" The man sounded like he could hurt Russell. Probably not. But how quickly the situation can change. Especially with a drunk.

"What? No. I mean the cops could make it a mandatory curfew at any time. People could get hurt, stranded, or worse."

"I think you mean the cops could hurt the people. We're just having a good time."

"Yeah, that's why I'm leaving. Just leaving anyways. So sorry, can I get by?"

"What about your daughter?"

"Huh?"

"Your daughter."

"She must not be here. I looked everywhere." Russell's lie was obvious. The man didn't care. If he hated cops, it wasn't enough to do anything about it. Russell swung around the large man, out the door, and into the street. The air was cold as it mixed with the rain. Just above the temperature for snow.

The coldest rain possible. Felt hard like liquid iron. It knocked on his forehead, trying to get in. The street was empty now. Everyone must be inside. What was inside him? Russell thought. He felt empty.

He walked swiftly back to his car. Russell's life was a shell. He fiddled with the pistol. He looked at it. Shook its hand. He had a fleeting dream of blowing his brains out. What a mess. Someone would have to clean it up. Russell did not wish that fate on this cold, damp night. Maybe some other night, but not now.

Russell's life was hollow. Plastic. Those kids had more than he would ever have. That is the part which ate at him. He had done everything he had been told. Followed every order. For the capital T. His wife was plastic. His kids were ok, but nothing special. Probably resented him. He resented himself. It was all too much. The rain tapped on the windshield. Told him to pull it together, before it froze.

He radioed to the station. He told the dispatcher about the concert and Sebastian. It was 11:32. Dispatch replied that the students would strike at midnight. That was what they had figured out. The curfew would become mandatory then. Russell asked to speak with the chief. He was busy. Too busy for him. Someone would call him back. Later.

Russell froze in his car for ten minutes. He finally got a supervisor on the phone. They agreed. Send in the boys. After midnight. Bust some heads. They told Russell to head back east. He agreed. Just following orders, he thought.

## CHAPTER 21:

THIS IS OUR TOMORROW

Sebastian cleared his throat. He walked purposefully toward the microphone. The moment was his. The crowd was thick. Mostly young. Some students. Some drunk unionists. All were becoming radicalized. Save for the few saboteurs sprinkled in, most were enraptured. The moment was now. He knew it. Cyril and Clementine were the side of the stage to the left of the ratty, red curtain. Cyril, for once, felt like he was part of something. On the inside, looking in.

The crowd knew Sebastian. This speech, though, was special. The dawning of new resistance. There was silence. Sebastian was to introduce the Knighted Rails. The band was magic. Sebastian was reality. Together they were one revolutionary beast. A force for sure, thought everyone.

The microphone buzzed slightly and someone coughed in the silent hall. A glass clinked in the back of the room. The drip, drip, drip of anticipation was felt by everyone.

"Well, thank you all for letting me say a few words before the Knighted Rails. They are classic, are they not? Friends of mine. Not just friends, comrades. Love between us all."

The crowd hollered back and stomped their feet.

"My point tonight is to tell you that tomorrow is not just another day. Not just another solar cycle of our yearly journey around this golden orb. No, tomorrow is special. Tomorrow is the day we take this whole thing back. Starting with this city. This city has been falling apart too long. We work. We study. We toil. The owners have siphoned enough. Let's take it back!"

Sebastian paused. The speech had begun to percolate.

"We are not alone. We're not only the city. The student unions are beginning their strike as we speak. They are joining the other major worker's unions and organizations. This general strike is missing one thing. Every one of you who is not involved. Get involved. Stay involved. The cops may try to stop us. Gas us. Beat us. Whatever. This is our tomorrow."

The crowd egged him on. Sebastian felt like he was floating. Not in a power structure way, but like a joined force. One mammoth being.

"This is not about the business owners, the politicians, or the union leaders. They are doing their thing tonight. Hashing out their own backroom secret deals. Those are their worries. Not ours. We should be worried with what we can do for one another. To make this place better. We've all seen the rust. Hell, I feel a little rusty myself, you know what I mean? We have to take action. Ourselves. Direct Action. That is the only way we can move this whole thing along. Roll it down the road. How many of you have no hope for a good paying job? A hope of actually having a house or apartment you can afford? The hope that maybe you could actually own a place of your own? The hope that we can have a city that in ten years will be better than we are now?"

The questions Sebastian raised made the crowd question themselves. The youngsters in the audience at first shrugged off the obvious political overtones. They'd been conditioned too. Their schools, their movies, their culture was plated for them, devoid of political content. Even for the underground. Politics were one thing: uncool. But from Sebastian, they seemed different. Important. The older types seemed cynical too. For similar reasons, except they were more ingrained and more invested in this broken wheel. Sebastian was starting to warm them on this hard rain evening.

"A lot of you out there are probably wondering what I'm doing interrupting the moments before the Knighted Rails. They asked me out here. The key to remember is that it's not your fault for being politically unengaged. It is what you have been taught to think. Your news, if you actually read it, is lacking in any content or substance related to your existence. You are discouraged from any political action or community cooperation. We are taught to live and die as an individual consumer. This has to stop.

"We have to go beyond the union demands. They might not like me to say it. If we want a better city. A union of us. A community. One not filled with greed, inequality and these racist, bloodthirsty police pigs. We've got to change. We can't wait for empty promises and organized negotiations. Tomorrow is when we show them our strength. Our power.

"They are telling you stay home tonight. Asking us to let the professionals do the job. Well, have they been doing their jobs lately?

"Think about it. They think by letting us march tomorrow they will have us cornered. A lot of noise is what they think. Think of our city as an iron fry pan. The pan is heated over a fire. There's nothing in it. It is just glowing red. They see our march as pouring water on the pan. It will sizzle. It will make noise, but will ultimately cool the whole thing down. That's not what I want. I want to be the oil that fries these fuckers where they stand."

The crowd boiled now. They were illuminated.

"Think of how many people you know that have been senselessly tossed aside. Senselessly tossed in a meaningless war. Blood for the bloodthirsty. What do we see? New schools? New streets? Nothing. We give and they take. It can be that simple sometimes. Not always. But this time is the time for us to take this city back.

"We have simple platform. This is our program. The freedom program. The psychedelic program. To free us. To free you. To free me. So, I'll outline our guiding principles my friends."

"A job for all. Everyone who wants to be employed should be employed.

"A living wage. A monthly wage. Hourly wages are for the dogs.

"A structured economy. One that is structured to fit our needs. To fund not only the progress of our economy but also the progress of our minds. Arts and culture without restrictions. Without bars.

"A guarantee of not only employment, but a guarantee of shelter and security. A home for all. We can't all have mansions, but we can all have a place to live. A place to commune and raise families.

"Universal and mandatory health care.

"An end to all restrictions on drugs. Let us all free our minds.

"An end to modern slavery known as the prison system. Rehabilitate the evil, but free the slaves. The ones drug in because they were drugged up by the government.

"Finally, a system for a city which encourages us to grow together, to grow as one, and to grow ourselves. Separate and together is possible. You know it. I know it. Let's show it. Let's put it into action."

Those last words were the rallying cry. The catalyst for action. For direct action. Sebastian and Rosa were hoping to create this. To force the leaders for all sides to see the wider perspective. Through the fisheye lens. See that this is not about the city. Not about wages. Not about labor talks. This is about society and how to live together on the spinning green and blue orb. How to coexist and beautifully create together. Rosa and Sebastian agreed, though, that this beauty might, in the short term, take a measured shade of red.

"So right now, right now. I want you to get ready. To get ready to get down. To celebrate ourselves. To celebrate freedom and fight for a better tomorrow. I give you the original and soon to be legendary... thee... Knighted Rails!"

Sebastian knew this introductory was mandatory as a way of capping the speech. He was not the support act though. Tonight was a warm up to tomorrow's grand entrance on a larger stage. To more people. The crowd ate him up. The heat of the moment could be felt. It stung the eyes and warmed the soul.

The crowd erupted. It was no longer an assortment of creeps, cretins, misfits, addicts and saboteurs. This was one beating organism. Beating to Sebastian's drum with the Knighted Rails soon to add to the cacophony. Revolutionary sights and sounds. This was the soundtrack to the next day's looming events. The paranoia and tension was stripped away, leaving hope and a righteousness long forgotten in this shallow city. This steel, rotten shell vibrated with energy in the downtown club at the stroke of midnight. The strike of a lifetime.

The eve of a revolution was a strange time. The cycles were constantly overlapping and retracing. This, however, was a new line. Sebastian was sure of it. Cyril and Clementine embraced. Cyril felt it. Maybe the first time he ever had. His cynicism let down its guard. For a moment. The words did not touch him. They were absorbed through his skin. In his blood. A revolution. The one he had envisioned in his mind.

Cyril usually left out the direct political stuff. He was not too bright on those matters. But the revolution. The change. The catalyst. This was here. This was now. Cyril felt it in his veins.

## CHAPTER 22:

FULL IN IT

Cyril took Clementine's hand. This was not just the beginning of a new system, but a whole new city. A new Cyril. One both dedicated and believing. Cyril knew he could make the jump. The Knighted Rails served as the celebration. The ecstasy in the crowd's fervor. Cyril and Clementine soon collapsed on the side of the stage, hand in hand. Sebastian stepped over them and smiled as he walked off. They both seemed very high and happy.

The Knighted Rails quickly took the stage. Running, literally running, to their instruments. No long pulls from a cigarette, they exploded like a bomb on the stage. At once. Immediate. An odd arrangement for a modern rock group. Two drummers, one bassist, lead singer, keyboardist and two guitarists. Seven in all. Must be a lucky number. Mixed bag. Two women. Five men. Some white. Some black. Some Asian. The group never noticed themselves. They were one. The kids in the crowd tried not to. Racial matters were always swept under the rug. Especially in this city. On the mind but not on the lips. Either way, the group struck a chord in the city. Not with the labels. It was a grassroots feeling. BUZZZZZ. They were plugged in. The guitarist struck a chord. In tune. Ready to go.

Their music was like methadone to a youth culture addicted to the latest, newest sounds. A new sound which relied on the past to give it perspective and, more importantly, ideas to choose from. This group melded their influences. Their psychedelia bloomed into fire. Not aggressive, nor passive. The group was rough and well polished, sweet and sardonic.

They were not word of mouth. They had a digital buzz. It allowed them to circle around the labels and strike straight to the kids. The band was not interested in the marketing or business side of things. They had no brand. No PR women or heavy-handed managers. They were musicians through and through. For this, they were appreciated. Even by Cyril.

A mocked man took his sweet lady by the finger

The lonely men shut their bloodied eyes

He told her nothing, leaving no chance to linger

And so they took him off... to die

To die

To die

Too many men have seen their clouded ways

Passed in and forgotten too

The go about and forget their tarnished days

Till their moon's turning blue

Too blue

Too blue

So the song went. So their set went. Inked words did no justice. The crowd knew the words and some sung them back. The Knighted Rails transcended Sebastian and the strike. The revolution. All. They were versatile and showed both the beauty and the depth of the youth in this city.

Cyril and Clementine were frozen in this moment. Their hands were one. Their hearts, too. The linear back and forth of the day had ceased. Nothing held them in place. They could have floated to the top of the curtains and out the roof. Out into space. They were freed from the rules and felt it. Even if it lasted so briefly.

"I love you, Clementin'." He meant it. Even in his fake Southern drawl. She laughed and responded in kind. She meant it too.

Black ice slips on your mind

To this mixture nothing is added

A circle has taken over straight lines

And the pleasure's replaced the sad days

The many sad days

Too many children are now grown

Struggled and toiled with little to show

Without a house or home to call their own

And are now too high to feel too low

The tension had lifted. Cyril's heart was beating fast and steady. His blood felt loaded. His mind was a bright lofty cloud.

The Knighted Rails were known for having little banter and time between songs. The fluid approach helped to keep the feeling together. Transforming the Spanish Main into a hazy, sunlit horizon. The second song ended and the third began. Where the front paw separated the tail of the last was anyone's guess. Connected cosmically. Cyril and Clementine floated above again. Suddenly, they slammed back to the concrete earth. They were shaken to reality.

"Hey Cyril, we got to get out of here." The gruff voice had no immediate recognition. Cyril shook his head. He realized it was Jerusalim. He looked worried. Stressed out.

"What's the deal man?"

"The cops, they're here. Just outside. We have to get going. NOW." He looked freaked. Cyril's paranoia popped through his expression. The reality of the discourse. Both the transcendence of the show and the steel of Sebastian's speech. Dissent personified. Its real force was not in question. But its focus maybe had been too fine. Cyril clutched Clementine's arm.

"Let's go with them."

"I can't. Mary's out there. I have to grab her. She's got our hash too."

"Forget about it. We can get more from Sebastian. We need to go NOW." Cyril wanted to copy Jerusalim's gruff immediacy, but he couldn't. Clementine would do what she wanted to. She always had.

"Just a second. I'll grab Mary and meet you at the back of the club."

"Come on. She'll be fine. Let's go." Cyril knew there was no convincing Clementine. She ran to go get Mary. He could barely see her at the back of the club. She was talking with some guy. It was always some guy. Some guy better looking than Cyril. He was mildly jealous. He had no time to think about it. Jerusalim picked him up and forcefully carried him back. They had all gathered there. The Knighted Rails' crew was unpanicked. They would play until the cops shut off the power, since they were in the right.

Sebastian was not in the same situation. He had somewhere to be tomorrow. So he hustled everyone into the car.

"Let's go."

'Wait, Clementine said she's coming."

"Shit man, we really need to go." Cyril found Sebastian's response odd. Wasn't he the one who wanted Clementine to come along? To join up?

"We have to wait."

"Look down the alley." Sebastian deadpanned his response. It was cold. There was almost no inflection. He did not need any. All one needed to do was look down the street. The flashing lights and cops were ready to pounce. The ecstasy inside matched the bloody fervor by the police outside. They could smell a win. The cops liked sports analogies. Made it feel like high school all over again.

"Fuck." Cyril could muster only that. He thought of what he could do:

One—He could stay here. Be the prince. Hustle Clementine and Mary back.

Two—Go with Sebastian.

Three—Go home by himself.

He quickly weighed all three. His pupils flickered. They grew and receded. The answer was simple. He would wait for as long as he could which was not very long. People started to pour out the back of the club. The raid had begun at the entrance of the club. The cops would soon be coming down the alley. Sweeping the trash off the street, they would say.

Jerusalim did his job one more time. He picked up Cyril, threw him in the car, and slammed the door. They were off. Cyril had no choice. He was saved, unwillingly. Clementine was not so lucky. Cyril noticed a peculiar thing once inside the car. There would've been no room for Clementine or Mary. Was this why they left? Just for the comforts of the car ride home?

"Clementine will be ok. Don't worry. I spoke to her earlier tonight. I told her if she gets arrested to work from the inside." Sebastian's expression seemed calculated. Did he mean to do this? Cyril wondered. What had she not mentioned this?

"I don't get it. What is going on?"

"The curfew is now mandatory. Once the students struck, the labor unions decided it was time, too. The breakdown of labor negotiations. We are now full in it."

"Full in the shit," added June. She was not happy. She thought tonight's excursion put the whole program at unnecessary risk. The cops could find out everyone. Everything.

The car traveled fast. It avoided the police. By luck or by chance. The cops were too busy hauling the cretins away. Some were jailed, but most would be held for a night or two under no law.

Cyril quickly texted Clementine.

"Baby, where you at?" He added another one in succession.

"Couldn't help it. Shoved in car. Let me know u ok."

He held his phone in his hand. Hoped for a response. He had in on silent, but hoped for the vibration to say she was alright. Five minutes and nothing. The car crossed the bridge back to the east. The city was not exactly sleeping. It was empty. They noticed a car two or three blocks back. In that car, Russell coughed. His face lit up a sad smile.

## CHAPTER 23:

A PROFESSIONAL'S GAME

" _The time is 12:07am , Central Standard Time. You are tuned to 1185 WSLZ. Your nonstop network for up to the date traffic, news, weather. All together, all the time. We now go live to Jerry Silvestre, reporting on the spot from police headquarters."_

" _Thanks, Michelle. I tell you, it has been quite a night. Just over ten minutes ago, the police department in conjunction with local law enforcement agencies and federal troops have imposed a mandatory dawn to dusk curfew. Let me repeat that, MANDATORY CURFEW. So if you are out on the streets tonight, I don't know why you would be, but if you are—if you are, get home. And if you see a police officer, make your presence known. They are on strict orders to arrest anyone lawfully disobeying this order. Excuse me, unlawfully disobeying the order._

" _Once again, the curfew is now mandatory. The department did release a short statement, but did not say why the sudden change. But we all can guess. The student unions across the board voted to strike in solidarity with the labor unions who, at midnight, announced they would also go on strike._

" _Let me tell you, Michelle, it will be a mess getting to work in the morning. The police department and civic officials have all said mass transportation will cease operation starting, well let's see. Starting ten minutes ago. All scheduled trash and recycle pickups are canceled. All public universities and public schools, closed. All private schools, closed as well. All public and civic offices, closed. Most private businesses remain open, but all major manufacturing, labor, and construction sites closed. Wait, hold on a second Michelle. I have just got word. All restaurant workers are now on strike. All grocery workers, on strike now as well. The ones who are unionized anyway._

" _Once more, they are advising us to stay off the street. Once I know more, we will let you know. But for 1185 WSLZ this is Jerry Silvestre saying if you want to stay safe tonight, stay off the streets."_

" _Thanks Jerry. For those just tuning in, the city is now under mandatory curfew. MANDATORY CURFEW. All non-emergency activities are being advised against. All people should remain indoors and safely secure. If approached by law enforcement or military personnel, identify yourself immediately. This curfew is in effect until further notice._

" _After the break for station identification, we will resume with our regularly scheduled programming..."_

Russell laughed. He followed Sebastian's car. It was not hard tonight. No other cars for miles. He thought about pulling them over. Giving them a once over. Dragging them out. They must have had some drugs on them, repeating his earlier line of thought. But tonight the station would be filled with cretins. No use. They would just slip by. He had to do something. Something heroic, he thought, something brave. The radio served as a rallying cry. Informed. Straight laced. It pointed his car onward and upward.

Cyril shook his head. He could not believe his luck. The highest of highs. Literally. Lovely. Now this was low. No Clementine. No hash. No nothing. Stuck in a car with the people who caused this whole mess. What did they want from him? He thought. Where were the heroics? The uneasy nature of the car ride was evident. It was tense. Jerusalim fingered the tip of his pistol. He did not want to use it. But he would if he had to. He thought about Cyril. Wished he could have just left him there as feed for the pigs.

Sebastian wanted him to be brought back. Last minute conversion, he said.

Sebastian turned the music up almost too loud. He had switched out the tape. It was a mixtape a friend made. Tunes delightfully out of tune with surroundings. And the moment. A complete _non sequitur_. Status Quo. Doctor Feelgood. Brinsley Schwarz. The Creation. Roy Wood. The Move. The Smoke. They made the whole moment quite surreal. The car ride was tense, but not without small smiles. The fact that the police raided the concert proved one thing: Sebastian was a threat. He smiled at this. The others knew it too. If they could only hold out for tomorrow. That would be the time. The ripened fruit is easy to pick when it's about to fall and rot. The police who disrupted the scene only infuriated the whole situation. They had poked the bear.

Russell twitched his finger on his gun. Like a second cock. Hard. Steel. Direct. He liked the power. Probably why he enjoyed being a cop, despite all the pleasantries and bullshit. He had a quick vision of shooting Sebastian in the head. Again. Pulling the plug on the whole cretin program. It needed to be stopped. Laws went only so far. To enforce them is easy; to see their limitations is even easier. Sebastian was near the line. Not quite at it. But he definitely could see it. So Russell could do nothing. Nothing lawfully. It infuriated him. Sebastian was certainly not the biggest catch of the night. Still small time, however, this was personal. The social slight. He saw tonight what he always figured. These cretins not only were different, but he wouldn't fit in with them even if he tried. He was forever a square. Fuck them, he thought. He had the power. Too bad for them.

Sebastian stepped on the gas. The car was blazing now. He knew it was the same cop behind him. Had to be. Why had he not pulled him over yet? He thought. Mind games. Sebastian did not flinch. He would give him a reason to. He had upped the ante. No worries about pedestrians tonight. This was a professional's game.

Russell thought about pulling him over again. Sebastian was speeding after all, but no dice. Plus, he thought, he was not a traffic cop. That was far below his station. He needed to keep up appearances, however vain they may appear.

He took a deep breath.

Funny how these things happen. No matter how hard he tried to be cool. Even the games he played as a child. The rhymes and reason he learned in school. The rule forced upon him. Even the way his children looked at him. He was the bad guy. The square. He knew it. Wished he had not become this. But he had. Here he was. Chasing down a modern- day Charuga on the deserted streets. He sometimes felt like a hospice nurse. An evil one. Trying to keep the old lady alive and breathing while she sits there smoking. The old lady does not care if she lives. She'd probably rather die anyways. What's the point in hanging on? But there was Russell, yelling at her to keep going. Not inspiring. Perspiring and yelling. The old lady was the city. Russell the nurse. The town was dying. Smoke, ashes, and steel in her corroded, rusting arteries. Another loopy analogy.

Sebastian felt like slamming on the breaks. Cyril lit a cigarette. His earlier euphoric buzz had worn off. The drugs had too. A few drags calmed him down. Still no word from Clementine. Strange. She must have been pinched. The others were quiet. Bell sat next to him, twirling her fingers nervously through her hair. Cyril put his hand near her thigh. She looked at him. Piercingly. His hand quivered but held firm. She looked at him and laughed. She was not about to give him anything. Who did he think he was? She thought to herself. Cyril did not think much at all. He missed Clementine. And Mary. Maybe he had a chance with Bell. Probably not. He removed his hand. Took another drag off the cigarette.

"Hey, I got us some food and drinks at the house. A midnight snack. A little dining before tomorrow's feast." Sebastian sounded perfect. Funny, humble, and proud. A true leader. He drove them confidently through the scattered, smattered streets of the empty east side. Empty already. The curfew had no effect on this part of town. Anyone who was anyone had already left. Years ago. Decades ago even. All that was left was the trash, cretins, and rusting iron. The car pulled into the drive way. Sebastian turned off the ignition. The car gave out a _chuga-chuga-chuga-gaarrummmfff_. And with that, they all smiled and in they filed into the old Victorian house.

## CHAPTER 24:

STEEL PADDING

Russell pulled up near Sebastian's house. Not in front. Around the corner, a little down the street. He had visions of the inside. Snakes in the rafters. Rats in the walls. He twiddled a match between his index finger and his thumb. He could burn it down. This house. Sebastian. Snuff out the competition.

"Hey, you got a joint?" Cyril asked. Coughing simultaneously.

"Sure," Sebastian threw a bag. Hit Cyril squarely in the chest. Fell to the floor. Cyril picked it up and laughed. He started to gather the papers, loose tobacco and hash. A new joint it would be. Always a new joint he thought. It would help him to forget the day.

Everybody huddled in the living room in their own thoughts. Their own mind. Each preparing for tomorrow's events. Bell said goodnight and tromped up the stairs. Cyril hit himself mentally. He knew he should not think about other girls. Especially with Clementine in jail and all. Jerusalim put his gun slowly back into its case, making sure that Cyril saw it. Saw the power. Saw the possibilities. Johnny peered out the window. Looking for any suspicion. He did not see any. Just a few old Buicks up and down the street. Large American cars, obsolete and old. June sat down with her laptop. Click-Click-Click. She was typing something. Sebastian went to the kitchen. He brewed some sweet tea. Grabbed a few semi- stale biscuits. Lemon curd. French butter. Home- canned jams. Drinks and refreshments. He walked back in the semi-autonomous living room. Five separate beings downstairs. Rosa and Bell upstairs.

"Thanks, man. Do you want some of this?" offered Cyril.

"Yes, shortly. Put it down. I want to talk to everyone." Sebastian called everyone around. They were scattered on the couches and chairs.

"I just want to make sure we have everything ready for tomorrow. Jerusalim, Johnny. What is the situation with the action?"

"Good, good," they answered in unison. The plan for them was simple. Sebastian's speech was one thing. The strike was another. The city was a third. All were dry grass in three distinct patches. The match just needed to be lit. Jerusalim and Johnny were assigned to this. Sebastian referred to what he called 'the propaganda of the deed.'

Direct action.

They had it planned out. Cyril was scratching his head. Not really. He did not recognize the term. He thought about June. She was the Minister of Words or something like that. Maybe it was special project for her too.

Sebastian explained it to Cyril using one man's name: Hanns Martin Schleyer. Some fucking German suit—the president of two Capitalist corporations. Kidnapped and murdered. His murder was the propaganda of the deed. An example. Physical violence to prove a point. This murder catapulted the Red Army Faction in 1977 West Germany to a whole new level. Sebastian knew this. Studied this. Rosa agreed.

"What's the point?" Cyril finally asked.

"To get what you want." Sebastian then took the time to explain further. Assassinations. Mostly. Violence. Physical means. A show of power. He explained that FOSIL would have to do this. HAVE TO. There was no other way out. The city and the country as a whole had to fear them as FOSIL now believed the authorities did.

"But I don't get it. What is that going to help? Going to get us all killed," Cyril continued. He stopped when June smiled. It was no use arguing with Sebastian.

Cyril was confused. Where was Sebastian's flowery rhetoric? Too many ideas. Too many square circles, he thought. Nihilism was easy. Nothing. Everything. Whatever. No violent measures. No half steps. No steps at all. He just wanted to be home with Clementine. Now she was in jail. Some sort of sleeper double agent for Sebastian. The hippie magic man turned drug pusher, social revolutionary, and now, he guessed, violent social agitator.

He looked around the room. All smiles now. He felt like the switch had turned. Well, not all smiles. Mostly. Some. Well, just a few. Sebastian brought in the tea and snacks. They ate. Sebastian's phone rang. He left the room. For courtesy to others. And for privacy. It was a call from Phillip letting Sebastian know that all was copasetic.

"Do you all live here?" Cyril hoped to lighten the mood. It was hard to cop a buzz with the heavy vibes, he thought.

"Not all of us," Johnny answered. Clouded answer to a vague question. The mood became heavy again. Sebastian's house was headquarters of sort. They were all staying here tonight. They had various outside lives. At times. Other times they lived as one. This was one of those times.

Jerusalim tended to his weapon. He pulled out another. A large, semi-automatic. And another. A machine gun. He opened a box containing two hand grenades. Ancient looking ones.

"You ever seen this before?"

"Nah, not really one for weapons." Cyril tried to sound tough. His voice quivered. He had his thoughts about violence. He avoided it. He had not killed anyone. And wanted no one to inflict death upon him. No one for both.

"You would be if you're where I came from. Haiti. America's underrated former colony."

His history lesson had begun. The powerfully, yet oddly quiet Jerusalim let Cyril have it knowledge-wise. He explained America's lovely maneuver of colonizing Haiti without making it one. Freeing it from the Huns in 1915. The Huns who were marrying the locals. Co-racial mingling. The United States would have none of that. They would fight to keep their hegemony intact. Reinstituting slavery and corporations, the island was ruined. Still is. Even before the earthquake. Much like the city they now lived in. But much worse, Jerusalim explained. He owed no allegiance to this country. True, it was better than Haiti, but could be much better than it was now. He explained that Cyril ought to own a gun. Feel its power. Steel was what changed the rules. Ideas needed steel padding. Otherwise, they simply disperse into the air.

"You see Cyril, _I_ understand. _You_ don't get it. But look around, my friend. Violence is something no one wants but we all need. This is not just a strike. It has the opportunity for much more. How do you expect to kick this whole rotting structure down? With our minds? Without ideas? Our hearts? No, with our fists, our feet, and our guns."

The plan was clear.

Cyril got it. It was clear, but rather barbarian. Jerusalim continued on. With the ideas of cutting off the head of those in power. It was an offensive putsch. Most of the revolutionary groups claimed weapons for defensive measures. FOSIL knew this was illusionary. They needed the weapons. They would play the bad guys if necessary. They did not need the love of the media. Sebastian wanted change. The change would become necessary if the rules were changed. The deed could do this. Tomorrow. It could change. FOSIL was willing to sacrifice themselves for all of this.

June had finished with her computer. She joined the circle. Johnny was still near the window. Looking for spooks, thought Cyril. Johnny was also a secret poet. In his own mind. Reciting prose and verse as stared as the shaking night. Just like Cyril. Bad poets make bad poetry.

"Finished sending off the email. Tomorrow is all set. We should really all crash. Need to get some sleep. Rest up for tomorrow. Is Sebastian still on the phone?"

"Yeah, he's in the kitchen."

Cyril was happy. The rest were in transition. This particular moment was meaningless to them. Cyril enjoyed it. He liked these moments. The ones others would forget. The others were focused on FOSIL. Tomorrow. The putsch, the strike, the whatever. Cyril was calm. Right now he had almost everything. Some hash. A beautiful girl here, too, who would not fuck him. Two tough guys that didn't like him. A friend. Cyril thought of Sebastian as a friend. And sweet tea. Semi-stale, sugared bread. He missed Clementine. Cyril hoped she was alright.

## CHAPTER 25:

EXHAUSTED PERSPECTIVES

Sebastian and Cyril were the only two left awake. The others were asleep. Or in Johnny's case, in his seat near the door. Always on guard. Tonight was no different. He was more on edge, if that was possible. The early morning light had not yet shined through. Sebastian lit the last joint of the evening. He took a hit and gave it back to Cyril. Reconciliation hash.

Recollection.

Recovery.

Hash.

"I want you to come tomorrow."

"Maybe."

"Stay here tonight."

"I don't know. I really should get back home. With Clementine and all."

"If you haven't heard from her, she's in jail. Believe me."

"Or worse," Cyril uttered. He wished he hadn't. He was superstitious. He didn't like to admit that. Not the way a nihilist should think. Cyril liked to believe he his mind was a dark, blank canvas. Really it was a tangled web of worry, fear, and insecurity. He needed Clementine. He needed to know she was alright.

"The trains aren't running. The cops are prowling the streets. No taxis. How do you expect to get home through this?"

"I'll walk."

"Walk home. Walk away? Are you not tired of that? Let me drive you home. The least I could do. The others are asleep. Or on their way to being. It will give us a few minutes to speak."

Cyril was high, in no mood to argue. He was not a particularly proud man. He took favors more often than not. He would take free couches in first years of freedom, free food too. He was also known to cop some hash from friends. He knew he could return the favor if wanted to. Sometimes he even did, though not too often. So he accepted the ride. It was the least he could do. They quickly left the house. Cyril with some more hash. Clementine's replacement hash. Sebastian with his friend. In the car they went.

_KA-WHAMP. CHUG-A-CHUG.GA- ROOVVVMMM_. Off they went. Russell was close behind again. Sebastian saw this. He had expected it. Part of the reason he wanted to drive Cyril home in the first place.

"Hey, sorry about Clementine. She should be fine. She's tough." Sebastian sounded truly remorseful. Not like he was his fault. More sorrow at the situation, if anything.

"Yeah, it's not your fault really. What do you mean that she be working on the inside?" Cyril wanted to the scoop, just like the reporter did earlier.

"That's what I think she would be doing."

"I thought you said you knew."

"Knew? How would I have? I am a lot of things, but I don't know all. If I had known the cops were to have busted up the show, I would not have been there. Tomorrow is too important for that. I was just trying to make everything feel better."

"Make me feel better." "Yes, you."

Cyril was pissed. Not so pissed as too forgo this man's hash though. But to forgo Sebastian's litany of complaints against this rusting city. How was Sebastian any different? From the cops. From his parents. From his uncle in Toledo. All a bunch of fucking liars, he thought. This was the exact situation which made him believe in nothing in the first place.

Cyril always worried he would hold onto something that wasn't solid. A shaky foothold.

"What do you hope to get out of all this anyways?" Cyril asked.

"I don't hope for anything, I plan."

"But you just said tonight was not in your plans, how do you explain that?"

"Luck."

"Fuck luck. Fuck you." Cyril was serious. Still a personal pacifist, he meant the words. No enough to fight. Cyril was not a fighter. Never even been in one. But he still meant them.

"No need to be angry, my man. I don't mean to sound crass. But the cops created what we were hoping for. A cause célèbre. It will be all over the news. Pigs beating the kids. Arresting pretty Clementine. Ignition. Nobody can trust people who jail a pretty girl." It came off as demeaning.

"Yeah, so? You dragged me into this, that's fine. But now, you expect me to sit back while my girlfriend. That's bullshit. I just came over for the hash anyways."

"To gain, you got to give. And don't forget, I gave you more hash. I always do."

"That's right, you got to give, but nobody said that I am trying to gain anything." Cyril's face was a bright shade of red. He looked almost livid. He stared at his boots as he sat in the passenger seat. He reminded himself that none of this mattered. None of this. Not his battle to fight. Just the unions. The wackos. The pigs. Leave the blood sport to the blood thirsty. Just give him the hash. Sebastian and that car behind them were the same.

The car crossed over the bridge. It was Cyril's fourth trip the evening. West Side. East side. West Side. East Side. West. A cycle he hoped to not repeat again. At least not this week. He wanted to get home. The rusting hull of the city was already fast asleep. The orange rays of morning were soon to jolt it awake. But not quite yet. Forcing it to go through its tedious cycle over and over again. Melting and rotting away.

"Do you really think you're going to change anything?" Cyril's questions were pointed, he thought. Sharp as a sword. Cutting deep. They did nothing to change Sebastian's expression. He just looked at Cyril.

_A confused and utterly hopeless case_ , Sebastian thought. _But Cyril's still an outside perspective. I've seen a lot like him. Thought he was a comrade earlier this evening. Now there was nothing that could cause anything._

"We already have. Tomorrow will change itself. Everyday changes itself." Sebastian spoke in a way that only Buddhist monks and him could get away with. Cyril tried this verbal line before. Came off like a sullen know-it-all. A pompous ass. Sebastian sounded mystical. Cyril tried to not buy it. He still bought it all little. He told himself not to care anymore. Just wished he was at home.

"Cyril, you surprise me. You really don't see or you don't want to see. For a man who prides himself on obscure bands and half-forgotten musical acts. FOSIL is like the political version of your favorites. Who was it? The Lollipop Shoppe?"

"Nope."

"The Litter?"

"Wrong, sir"

"Chocolate Watchband?"

"Nah."

"One of the Nuggets bands right?"

"Yeah, the Music Machine." Cyril sort of laughed when Sebastian said "the Nuggets." The original album complied by Lenny Kaye was acceptable, but the new box sets just made the whole scene seem cheap. Seem like history. It was. Cyril still didn't like it though.

Sebastian continued his thought.

"We might not be heard now by many or understood completely. By give it a few years. Our ideals will be understood."

"But that's the thing. This isn't music. This isn't the Beatles versus the Stones. Or in my taste, Population II versus the Power of Zeus or the Third Power versus Up. That is all on the toy and candy aisle of life. This is serious. This is people's lives. We can waste each other's lives with your views."

"But, Cyril, we have exhausted perspectives. Nobody believes each other anymore. That is why the unions are striking. They are striking, because our system rewards those who already have and goes further to prevent those who don't from getting what the have's have. We need new perspectives."

"Exhausted perspectives?"

"Yes."

"But I don't see it. You're for the future. But what about the people now? What about Clementine? What about the others?"

"They're part of it because they wanted to be part of it."

"Because they think they're making something change for today. Now."

"They are."

Cyril saw this conversation going around in circles. No way to argue in a straight line. Sebastian was not a bad man, he thought. Confused, maybe. He knew Sebastian still saw him as an outsider though.

The car pulled up outside of Cyril's building. Deserted. Few lights were on anywhere. Russell, Sebastian's counter point, was breathing heavily four blocks down the road. Staring, nervously tapping his fingers.

Cyril found Sebastian wearing on his nerves at this point. Around everyone else he had to do no convincing. They followed him. Good friends and complete strangers. They followed him. Few questions. Not Cyril. He wondered if this was why Sebastian seemed to befriend him, the aging nihilist.

"Where do you stand?"

"I'm not, I'm sitting." Cyril thought this was funny. Sebastian sighed.

"I mean with the whole situation."

"I don't. Has nothing to do with me. I told you that."

"Oh, but it does. You live here. You breathe here. You might even work here. Do you?"

"No."

"But you could. You are part of the society. The thing we are changing."

"Want to change."

"Changing."

"The hash you have. Some say it is derived from the Arabic word haschishin. Others say it is taken from the Arabic word for dry herb. It is both really. A sneaky subject. Tinder box. Burns and shoots. The truth can be whichever. Names are given. Meanings shift. Our perspectives change, Cyril. They do. Our ideas can. They will. Trust me."

"Believe what you want."

"I do. So should you."

"Maybe. I guess I'll check out the rally tomorrow." Cyril was resigned. He agreed. Mostly to get out of the car. He still held to a slender hope that maybe Clementine and Mary were upstairs. At the very least he could smoke a joint with them.

"You really should. I want you there."

Cyril was too tired to argue. He gave Sebastian a nod, jumped out the car, and up the stairs into his apartment. Sebastian veered off. Russell close behind.

Cyril turned on the lights in the apartment. Just as Clementine had left it and still no messages on his phone. He rolled a joint. Smoked half of it. He was bored. No Clementine. No Mary. He wondered if she had been arrested, too. Of course, she would have called him if she was roaming about. Maybe. She did not have his number, he remembered. He flipped through an old magazine. Turned the TV on. Nothing on. News about the strike. Scrolling information 24 hours a day. He turned it off. Turned on some music. He was antsy. Maybe Sebastian was right, he thought. Seeds for the future. If he was, he'd be Sky Saxon. But he was dead. He laughed to himself. There was no one else around.

He promised himself to stay up all night. He fell asleep on the coach a few minutes later. Without a sound. His eyes not even fully closed. He let out a loud sigh. A few faint snores. His bed was empty. Tomorrow became today.

## PART 3: FUR IMMER ALT
## CHAPTER 26:

A CIRCLE IS JUST THE SAME AS IT SOUNDS

There were dreams all over the city that night. Small ones. Large ones. Bloody ones. Fucking. Sucking. Dreaming. Some alone. Some together. Some in another city all together. The sleepy consciousness of this once bustling city was still alive and kicking.

Most of the citizens slept. Others plotted.

The rest waited. The sun was still sleeping. A good thing. The day was new still. Officially. Not really. Not till the dawn does the day really start. The paint was still black on the sky. A new chapter with the ink not dry. The words not even written.

Cyril snored. Sebastian lay calmly still. Russell twitched—too much coffee, he assumed. No sleep. None needed, Russell thought. Rosa was up. Still alive, but old. Bell, June, Johnny, and Jerusalim were not yet, still dreaming separate dreams.

Each had their own. Cyril was deep in one himself.

A photographic sequence. Not very evolved but hypnotic nonetheless. At least to him. The scenes were more or less in black and white. It was pure Cyril. Starring at himself as someone else. His mind the observer. Sort of how he saw the living world. An outsider. A narrator. Much the same as his life, Cyril was off in the rafters floating above the scene. In tight. High and to the right. The others in the dream referred to a Cyril. Let's call him Dream Cyril. Tall and muscular. Confident. Deep, dark skin. Well-dressed. All the things Cyril was not. Except maybe the dressing. That depended on who you asked.

The stop action photo sequences started:

Dream Cyril stood tall. Naked. To his right was Clementine. Partially nude.

Her breasts were covered in the glow of the street lights. That weird dark orange glow. Lapped in a golden, white hue. Next to her was a nightstand. Remnants of the scene. Close-up shots now—bottles, beer, drugs, a razorblade, pills, and hash. Next to Cyril was Mary. She was awake. Naked too. A threesome. Cyril's dream.

The dream had the movement of a child flipping through old Polaroids rapidly.

Stop.

Staccato movements.

Mary was on top. Slowly fucking Dream Cyril. Stop.

Start.

Stop.

Start.

Clementine was too quiet to notice. Maybe she was asleep. Her parents always told her she was sleeping through her dreams.

Dreaming inside a dream.

Mary whispered something to Dream Cyril. He did not catch it. It fluttered away. He cupped her breasts. It felt unusual. Not like skin. Like cloth. Coarse. Dirty. She laughed. She continued to fuck him. Grinding her hips as she took him inside of her. Cyril felt proud looking down at Dream Cyril. Felt wanted. He liked watching Dream Cyril fuck Mary. Something he had always wanted. Here he was.

Dream Cyril flipped her over. Mary pressed both hands hard against the wall. This Cyril grasped his dick with one hand and put it inside her. She moaned. Loudly. Clementine smiled. She put her mouth to Mary's tits. Dream Cyril was the leader. He lovingly fucked her. And Clementine. Over and over. Someone flipped the photos.

Start.

Stop.

Start.

Stop.

That someone was Cyril. On and on it went. He felt uneasy. Like someone was watching. Not the scene below, but above him. He pulled back from within his mind. He looked around. He saw Rosa. And Sebastian. Just as he came. Dream Cyril came, too.

They looked puzzled. Cyril looked down. The scene he was watching was all gone. He was no longer floating. Dream Cyril. Mary. Clementine. All gone. Now he stood alone, naked in a room. A small room. Colors filled the air in mostly a raspberry tone. Still, Cyril flipped the photos. The puzzled looks turned to laughter. Cyril's penis shriveled in the cold air. Rosa shook her head disapprovingly.

"What are you doing?" The voices echoed and quivered. The sound leaked through the photos. The space in between.

Cyril wanted to explain himself. Explain the threesome. The power. The fucking. His words leaped and vanished. He tried to scream. He felt like someone was choking him. No words escaped.

The scene became more fluid now. Almost life-like. The tones were less colorful though. No smells.

Rosa and Sebastian stopped laughing. They started to walk away. Cyril followed. Rosa and Sebastian started to run. He ran. Out the door. Naked. He tried to grab his neighbor's attention. She was a middle aged nobody next door. Maybe the one woman he never thought about fucking. She screamed. An echo. Not one of true human quality, but beastly. He continued on. Out the building. Not into the street. He was now in the park near his home. His mother's home in Belgium. He could barely make out Rosa and Sebastian. Quick walkers. His nakedness did little to encumber him.

Suddenly he saw his uncle. The one from Toledo. He ran at him with a paint brush, thinking Cyril was living graffiti. Cyril started to run. He was now in darkness. All colors ceased. Hard to find your way around in such a climate. He could not see. No smells. All was lost. He was in a void and felt cold. A chill ran through him. No stars. No ice. Nothing.

A voice began to speak. Cyril was getting bored. Started to flip the photos again.

Start.

Stop.

Start.

Stop.

Empty photos. All black. Not even Cyril in them. But they moved, interspersed by bits of light.

"Change, my boy. Change."

Cyril could not quite pin point the voice.

"Change is a thing. Quite a thing."

Still, the voice was oddly familiar to him.

"Makes some sad, makes other sing. Sing."

The rhyming pattern was quite simplistic.

Even in a subconscious state. Cyril pointed this in the darkness of his own mind.

"But when you finish your long trip around." Was it his father? No. Couldn't be. He was never a singer. Not a poet. Not like Cyril at all.

"A circle is just the same as it sounds.

Sounds."

"Change is change, sailing on the Spanish Main. Main Change."

"But as things change, it won't take long for things to look the same. Same."

The voice was not a man at all. It was Rosa. Here she was in the dark. The dark of Cyril's mind. Countering her own claims. Her own ideas. In English. "Change was nothing. Nothing was nothing.

That is everything. That is all."

All of sudden the black void Cyril was in, illuminated. Too bright. White light. It was hot, too. Cyril could smell it now. Smelled like burning plastic. His eyes were watering. The light streaked through his mind liked dirty wiper blades. Purple spilled over the golden white hues. He looked around. Nothing. Nobody. He looked down. Nothing. He started to fall.

Cyril started to fall quickly. He flapped his arms. Like a bird. But he could not fly. He saw the street outside of Sebastian's. It was almost like he was flying above it. But this time, it was sideways. He was falling down the street. His worry passed far in front of him. He chased the fear like he was chasing Sebastian and Rosa earlier. This time he was gaining ground.

The fear was lighter than him. He opened his eyes full. Fuller than ever. He stretched his arms. The gained in length. Longer than a car. He hugged the fear. It enveloped him. His heart started to race. He was going to die. He saw an iron bridge at the bottom. He gained speed as he hurtled sideways through the crooked city.

A large crash startled Cyril. A real one. His foot had kicked off a magazine. Its glossy cover smacked the floor. He awoke. Suddenly. The sun had already filled the room. He was alone. On the couch. A half smoke joint in the ashtray.

"Ugh," he muttered to himself.

Cyril was at once calm and ill. His head was not quite pounding, but felt gelatinous. Swimming around in too many thoughts. He remembered to not believe too much. Bad for the brain. He rolled over and went back to sleep.

## CHAPTER 27:

STRAIGHT UP AND DOWN

The sun rose. Diluted. Filthy birds started to sing. The smog glittered in the rising sun, a massive brown cloud to meet the masses. Lessened by the post industrialism, the dirt in the air still matched the dirt on the streets. Made a few angry men cough and rub their eyes.

Cyril snored loudly.

Russell sat in his car. He thought about the previous night. He had him. Sebastian. A few hours earlier, he followed that cretin and his secret friend. Past the checkpoints. Past the other cops. The lazy ones. Back to the west side. The sane side. The cultured and revered side. The side of the city that people who visit, the few who visit, actually think of when they think of the city. The part which comes to mind. The idea. The CITY. Not the down-trodden eastern shithole, he now found himself in. Stalking Sebastian. He should have arrested him. Should have pulled out a gun. Threw the man to the ground. Really gave it to him. He deserved it. They all did. Russell laughed to himself in a sardonic, unloving manner. He thought about the ineptitude of everyone. Everything. The city. The people. Himself. They all came up short. It wasn't even close.

"What's the point of the curfew?" he thought. It was supposed to keep the people off the streets. Specifically the cretins, creeps and, crudes that plug up the streets during the day, every day. Keep them off the street and maybe this whole craziness could be averted. But the curfew was in disarray. He drove from Sebastian Took's house to the secret location where he dropped off the secret man and then back across the bridge. Around ten total miles. No cops in sight. No check points that mattered. The checkpoints were there. There were traffic cones. Cop cars. No officers. Maybe they were sleeping. Maybe they were bored. Maybe they sided with strikers. They just waved the vehicles through if anything. Russell did not understand. He was never one for complex understanding. Protector, yes. Interpreter, no. Strictly an up and down sequence. Your order's from above. You either do what they say or pass it on to someone lower down on the line. Simple. No thoughts in the way.

Russell was disturbed. Earlier he thought about pulling over Sebastian. Searching the vehicle. But he decided against it. Actually, his superiors did. They advised them to not arrest anyone unless they felt it necessary to keep order. Sebastian did not qualify. Apparently, he thought, all the kids at the club did. But they were creeps and losers.

The difference was clear. To his superiors. Sebastian's arrest would be viewed as a spark. A direct slash to the heart of the strikers. It was just spark the interest of all the instigators and would- be rebels. A spark. Arresting a bunch of dopey kids at the Spanish Main was not such a big deal. It was more of a threat to the rest of them that this was what you get. So there, it was. They laid out simple and straight for Russell.

The light felt cold and week. Russell needed some rest. His superiors told him to go home earlier, but Russell ignored them. Today was not the day to sleep he reminded himself. His eyes were tired. So was his mind.

Russell yawned.

## CHAPTER 28:

A SURREAL VACATION

Today had the makings of other days like it. Days in London 1381. Paris 1848. Moscow 1905. St. Petersburg 1917. Seattle 1919. Berlin 1919. Beijing 1947. Paris (again) 1968. Well, maybe today would not be so great. Probably not.

Anyways, people were bored. People milled about. All sides. Left, right, up, down, sideways, and in-between.

Today, the unions were solid with the students. Each was feverishly planning their own march, their own demise. They would meet up together in the city square. Together as one on the steps of the municipal government. Taking back some of their limited power, but that would be later.

Right now, they yawned. People were tired. Not everyone. Maybe not the workers. They were used to these early hours. But the students were tired. Many of them had stayed up all night—the ones who were not arrested. The ones not scared back into their dormitories, apartments, or houses financed by their parents. Those students were there. Assured of the change promised by what they had learned. The difference between real politics and the utopians of books and classrooms was not blurred any longer. It was a utopia of thoughts and feelings. A utopia of expectancy. A future utopia. But for now, they were bored. The students milled about. The previous night's drinks were already dry in their bellies. It made their thoughts queasy. Many were cold. The only hint of warmth was the thin coffee some of them remembered to bring. Maybe a cigarette, but not by drugs. The leaders warned the students not to bring anything. If arrested, they would lead to charges.

Petty charges. Bad press. The unions frowned upon that shit, too. You never saw Marx smoke a joint, they would say.

The unions were a loose knit bunch. Together they made an odd appearance with the students and professors. Academia commingling with the common folk. Many people could see the irony. The students were transcribing their thoughts through digital means. Pictures. Text Messages. Automatic updates. Automatic information. A true vision without actually seeing anything. Most of what these professors taught, or thought they did, was already outdated. It had to be. The new age was here for them. Might not last long, but here it was today. No blue collar, white collar. No collars. Just jackets and mittens on a cold day.

They stared at one another, unsure how to act. There was not much to go on. Some grainy Vietnam protest pictures. WTO protests. No previous strike or protest really fit. Those were political agendas. Foreign sentiment for better or worse. They felt this was different. Not really foreign or domestic. The students and strikers felt it was a human strike.

A humane strike.

Everyone was fighting for equality. Not just to share the wealth. This city had none of that to share or even hoard. But to share in the muck that remained. That was the only way this crazy nation, this crazy experiment, could last much longer. They felt like the city was teetering on shallow foundations despite feeling nearly frozen in these late autumn days. The only heat came from the gathering crowds.

The reddened eyes of the police officers sparkled as they stretched. Pre-game warm-ups. The ex-athletes thought, blood sport. Finally, a game after all this practice. The cops had practiced for this: To save the city from itself. To save it for the invisible masses.

The early morning meant sleep for the rest of the city. Offices shuttered. Workers at home. A surreal vacation. Many went about the usual motions. Taking out the garbage. Cooking breakfast. Many did not want to think about the week ahead. All civil services cut. Struck out. No garbage pickup. No deliveries. The general strike, you could say, was generally on everyone's mind. Even those asleep. They dreamt of better days. The days one never had. The days they tried teaching their kids about. The illusion of how the city used to function. Before the gears became rusted and unable to keep pace. Before the city descended in filth and devolution.

The only people chipper on the morning of the strike were the media. The serious, impartial reporter was no longer in existence. He was probably unemployed, drunk, retired, or dead. Instead the air was filled with propagandists of all shapes and sizes. Different views. Different agendas. Their common hope was to cash in. The country had never seen a strike quite like this. Not so large, but small. Just small enough, quaint even. A perfect moment for a plastic nation. And like perfect plastic journalists, they lined up. Like the poor souls reporting from the eye of the hurricane, they lapped up the sun. Some had been to war zones. Earthquakes. Flood. Natural disasters. Man-made. This was different.

It could be a disaster. It could be a new age. But for now, it was just a slightly different morning.

## CHAPTER 29:

MORE RONNIE THAN DEREK

Cyril snored again. This time he rolled over to his left, right into the base of the couch.

"Ugh," sighed Cyril. He woke with his face against the back of the couch. The outline of the old upholstery stared at him. A foreign sight. He forgot where he was, then remembered like a bad dream from the night before. Well, not all bad. At least he had the hash. But then, he thought about it. He did have some bad dreams. They started off good, but, no, he thought, "It always ends up bad." Dreams have a way of doing that to you.

He stretched. Outside his home, Cyril was slightly neurotic and paranoid, but inside he was the lord. Master of his apartment walls Loose as a goose and in charge. He liked it here. Especially when Clementine was gone. Her presence was felt everywhere. But without her, it made Cyril feel as though he was one the who had the nice apartment, nice things, a nice stereo. He had his records. That was about it. She paid for everything. Including the half-smoked hash joint in the ashtray. True, the original hash was with Mary. Or the cops. But the replacement hash was really hers, too. Cyril took the joint and lit it. Nothing much else to do today, he thought. He yawned. He was tired.

He fiddled around in his pockets. His mind continued to spin. He felt his arms and fingers go slightly numb. They fidgeted on their own. He pulled out his cellphone and it stared at him, with an almost judgmental stare: _11:03AM_.

"Fuck," thought Cyril. Out loud. Too loud. At least for an apartment. But who did it matter to? When alone, thoughts and speech became the same. He debated this briefly while smoking the joint. Do I hear my own voice? Or is it my thoughts? Do they sound different from one another? He went on, but stopped himself before going too much further.

He had missed most of everything. Slept through the revolution. With neat wrapping and a tiny, hand-sewn bow, Cyril thought. Thought it sounded good. He really needed to write these down. Maybe write a few songs with them. That's the ticket. What an outdated saying, he reminded himself. Nobody used tickets anymore. They swiped cards through automated devices. Even that's outdated.

Cyril exhaled and coughed. He was still in his clothes from the night before and smelled like it too. He could still feel the last evening. Quite a night. Quite a night. He wished he would have bought a few mushrooms, too. That would eat up some time before Clementine would be back. He checked his phone, but still nothing. Not much of a surprise. He was hoping to talk with her. He missed her. He loved her.

He put on his jacket. Maybe he could go down to the rally. Probably too late.

"What time did Sebastian tell me?" he asked the wall. No response. The wall was too nice. But it talked behind his back. Thought he was scum. Cyril's mind felt like mush.

The 11th hour of the morning of the revolution was of little use to him. He scraped his pockets. He found the wrinkled pamphlet, the one the dude outside of the subway station palmed him before he caught the train to Sebastian's. The night of the hash. The night of the mushrooms. The time before this was all real.

He figured he was already late enough. He started to read the pamphlet. Reading was always tough for Cyril. Not that he was illiterate. He could read fine. It was the concentrating where he struggled. The morning hash did not help. Stoned reading always ended up with him thinking inane questions about the origins of words and letters or inks and fonts. Of letter presses and publishing houses. On and on. Either way he started to thumb the pages. Cheap paper. Cheap ink. It looked like a day-old relic.

Join us tomorrow brothers.

For freedom, justice and equality.

A march for the city by the city. To take it back.

11:30am meet up at the Stockton Cable and

Rotary building.

March toward to Civic Hall.

_12:00pm-onward, rally_.

**Big Bold letters**. Helvetica font. Timeless and readable. A very informative pamphlet, Cyril thought. At least on the cover. Succinct. To the point. Had everything he needed to know. No bullshit. Sebastian would be at the rally. Or at least along the way.

Cyril was never big on aesthetics. Today was different. He looked at each thinly inked letter on the cheap recycled newsprint for a deeper meaning. He forgot what he exactly looking for however. This hash was strong, he remembered.

The pamphlet went on. He turned the page. Supposedly it was written by the United Service and Hospitality Workers of America. USHWA. A windy sounding acronym. FOSIL must be a little too off the grid. They needed an easy-to-remember acronym.

The rest of the pamphlet descended quickly from the heights of its opening. Words snaked around their meanings. Basically it could be boiled down simply. Cyril never thought in bullet points, but today was different. So he did:

• The workers wanted a share of the profits from the owners.

• To work and get paid so little was not acceptable.

• To express their dissatisfaction, they would strike.

• And ask for donations.

It was fairly straight forward. All print. No pictures. It went through the list of forbearers. Former union heads. Bosses. Wage History. Statistical back up. Really, the strength of the pamphlet was in its opening thoughts. It drugged up the reader. Albeit briefly. It was all about perception.

Cyril got a little bored. He flipped the cover. The back cover had more information. Website. More information. Rally information. A map. And a quote from Michael Parenti. Something about puffery and the class struggle. Cyril remembered a better quote, "Reality is Marxist." It was something he didn't believe, but a quote one of his community college professors told him, before Cyril stopped going all together. But he could see the point. All systems are pointed at the same colored circle target. All were pointed. None reached far enough. Most are not even meant to reach it. Cyril's current cynicism stemmed from this young realization. If all political systems were trying to earn the same stripes. Equality for all. Fairness. Justice. Et cetera. If they were all the same, why did they fight one another? Cyril attributed this to the one thing all systems, and people, he thought too, shared. Bullshit. Believing in nothing was different. Nothing was shielded from this utter contradiction. Even Cyril was not immune. But the difference was Cyril knew he was a contradiction. He was fine with it. Especially at this moment as he remembered the Parenti quote. All he cared for at that moment was one thing. The now finished joint on the table. That point in time was gone. Never captured, and probably, never remembered.

Cyril did remember one thing. He wanted to put on a record.

He spent a few minutes flipping through his record collection. He went through his recent buys. Archie Sheep (re-released on thick, black vinyl). The Godz. Spaceman 3. Red Kross. The Bruthas. The Litter. The Last Poets. Sun Ra. How did Sebastian recall his listening habits? Cyril thought it was strange. His heart pounded fast for a few seconds, his paranoia from thinking of Clementine and Sebastian talking about him.

Cyril picked out the Kinks. Arthur. A little too mainstream for his tastes, he thought. But no one was around to listen so they would not judge. Even if they were hanging about. They would not mind. He liked the record. It reminded him of the city. Ray Davies sung about a crumbling empire—something he could relate to.

Another thing he could relate to were the liner notes on the back cover. He had read them more than once. Continuously. He was stoned now. So he went back and forth with the words. Reading between them. Thinking about them. Were they on the original record? Or added to the heavy vinyl re-release?

He read it one more time. There was one part which stood out. They were explaining Arthur's grandsons. Their father was killed in Korea.

_Ronnie, is a student and he thinks the world's got to change one hell of a lot before it's going to be good enough for him. Derek thinks '''s changed a bloody sight too much_.

Cyril did not remember why he loved that part. He was more Ronnie than Derek. A little bit of both. But deep down he wished things would change. For the better. At least for him and Clementine.

He remembered another thing.

Sebastian would probably be speaking soon. Or he could be speaking now as Cyril spoke to himself.

He should probably get out of the house. The apartment was not extremely small. He had lived in worse. But the walls were closing in. Clementine's absence made the disappearing space fade even faster. He grabbed his keys and pack of smokes.

He looked out the windows down to the street. It looked unusually empty. Maybe everyone stayed in. Or maybe they all had overslept like him. Not likely. Either way it was a good sign. Less people to deal with. Not many cops either. Good sign number two.

The stairs descended downwards. Cyril usually sauntered slowly. Dreading the end of them and entering into a full public society trip. Today was different. Cyril was high. Not as if that was different state than usual. But this was different because it was Yemeni hash. He got a slow start on the eve of the revolution but Cyril told himself that he wanted to see it. Even if he couldn't give a shit about who came out on top. It was all bullshit, he reminded himself.

## CHAPTER 30:

STUFFED FULL OF SMOKE

The frigid air on the day of general strike was like the frigid air on any other day. The strike itself was like other strikes on other days. New workers. New police. New military. New young kids. New saboteurs. The strike was the same. New, but still the same. Forever old.

Cyril didn't fully make it to Sebastian's speech. He found himself huddled with others under a bridge. A concrete mediocrity. Something Cyril and the other poor folks had passed by for months. Probably years. Built by someone no one knew, there was no sign on it like they had for real monuments. It must have been designed by someone everyone had forgotten or no one cared about. Even the creators. No one forgot about the bridge now. Trains went over the top, cars through the bottom, walkers on the outer lanes, and bikers on the inner outer lanes on regular days.

Today, though, the bridge was covered in smoke. Tear gas. The police decided earlier that all the rallies were too much. A strike was a strike. A rally was a rally. And a riot was just that. All were an excuse to gas the masses. Russell and the others wished they could have used real gas. They had the masks. The guns. The sticks which broke bones. All the instruments of bloody, real power. But they could not use them. They used tear gas, shock bombs, and rubber bullets. They confused the masses. Made them hurt. Made them cry. Made them sneeze.

A little earlier, Cyril thought he had arrived late to the rally. He hopped through the crowd. They were in full fury. It felt like the lid was being blown off. Everyone was surprisingly sober. Except for Cyril. He was deadpan stoned. His brain was stuffed full of smoke.

He heard exactly ten words from Sebastian before all hell broke loose:

_And young and old. Poor and rich. That is why_...

His voice reverberated through the packed-in crowd. Then a loud boom. Shrieks from the crowd. The police decided to move in. The laborers were striking. The students were striking. What else could the police do? These people had to learn. Retard the advance. Retard the revolution. Cyril laughed to himself. That would be a good song title. Or poem. A poem collection. Yes, he thought, he really needed to be a writer. No time now though. Cyril didn't have a pen. Everyone fled in different directions. Cyril blindly ran and that lead him under the bridge.

He looked around at the people stuck with him. He wondered if they questioned it all. Whether it was worth it. They heard shooting. The fear was coming down on them. It rattled their bones. The sight of blood blurred their eyes.

Cyril's mind went to Solomon. He was probably sitting there in the corner of his store, eagerly clutching his bat. Waiting for his moment. What were all these people doing anyways? Cyril thought that to himself. He thought the shopkeeper would be thinking that too. Random conversation among the bridge people broke out.

"We have to get out of here"

"No way out."

Loud booms followed. More tear gas. Rubber bullets. People screamed. Maybe they would be real bullets. Maybe they already were. Cyril swore he heard someone cry. Everyone was asking questions.

"What do they expect?"

"Who do they think they are?"

"How do we get home?"

"Is everyone all right?"

"Where should we go?"

"Are they coming this way?"

These were primitive questions, not like the ones being asked by Sebastian. Those high ideals and lofty questions were replaced by animal instincts. Fight or flight. Still, no one had any answers.

Most everyone had tied clothing or scarves around their mouths but the eyes were the problem. A few smart ones, probably those who had been to a rally before, had goggles or some sort of eye protection. The others were fucked. Cyril was fucked. The worst part was that he could not care. He traveled to here Sebastian speak. Hear his pot dealer speak. Now he was stuck like everyone else. It had been an hour and he was still stuck.

Cyril thought it funny that he was disorientated in a city which had changed so little over the years. The city only decayed, new buildings never went up. Old ones went down, but the streets stayed the same. The iron rusted, cement cracked, but still the paths were pretty much the same. Today became different. Cyril's eyes stung. They were red. He was lost without them.

Cyril looked around. He could see little. Tear gas will do that to anyone. He thought about these empty people and the police emptying the streets. Clouded minds. Clouded streets. Clouded eyes. He grabbed his jacket and started running. Another loud boom seemed to follow him. Like a starting gun, it sailed over his head. He ran anyways. He left the helpless people huddled under the bridge. He did not care. He did not believe like they did.

And just like that, he was gone.

## CHAPTER 31:

WE COULD BE THE RISING SUN

Wandering in the eastern part of the city away from the blood scenes was Penny. She talked to herself constantly. Alternating between maniacal laughing and stern syncopated sentences. Shrill and loud. No one heard her. She stalked outside of Sebastian's house. No one was home. She was out of cigarettes again. A story she repeated day after day. All the stores were shuttered and she could no longer buy them. That was what she cared about. Her life had let her down, just like everyone had let each other down in this city.

"Round and round we go, la la la," so she sang. She liked songs, but didn't really remember many of the words. Or the actual songs. She was making them up. Though she did not think she was.

Penny retraced her steps like she did every day, like a living ghost. Her life was going nowhere. She never really thought about it.

Life had dealt her shit. She wallowed in it. She knew only a few people. Most of them were not real to anyone but her. Her imaginary people were not even that nice. Most acted like robots. Deadpan conversation. She grew bored of them. Bored with real people too. Not Sebastian though. And not Cyril. But she felt she might not see either for a long time.

Still, she walked by the house. She had twice today already. She would repeat it twice tomorrow. And the next day. Then only once the next day, because her government check would need to be cashed. But then she would resume the twice a day walk-bys the following day. She stopped there. She was careful to never think too far ahead.

"If you think too far ahead, you might run into yourself."

She laughed. She thought about the now. She loved colors. Even wished she could paint the ones around her. Orange hues. Rust Brown. Rot. Shit. Black. Smoke. Darkness. Night.

Penny trudged on. She had read about the strike. Her mind was on a tape delay repeating. Was on a tape repeating. Was on a tape repeating. Events like the strike attempted to jolt that repetition. It did not. She went on with her daily occurrences.

She saw wispy smoke rise in the sky over the west part of the city. She never really ventured to that side of town unless she had to. It was easier to stay where she knew. She might not be safe, but at least it was empty.

It was easier over on the eastern side. Less people. Less conversation. More time to focus on her mind. On her past. It was all a circle anyways. Penny would have been a great philosopher. If she could study or focus. She never could, so she never was.

The city used to be focused on the east too.

The heart of a commercial behemoth. Thump-Thump-Thump. But it did not beat anymore. A few businesses here and there. Hanger's-on among the empty cargo. It used to be filled with the corner bars and louse- ridden corner markets which people nowadays dreamed about wistfully. Penny was too much in her mind to care. All she knew was she liked the quiet.

Her route took her along the train tracks. Sometimes a train would run fast besides her. The train always beat her. Penny swore she could make sense of the words passing by. She used to write them down. Sentences and sentences. The words on the side of the train cars. She never read them correctly and, instead, wrote sentences of her own creation. She did not think she was creating anything. So here she was, a writer of words and of songs. She thought she was merely regurgitating the world around her. Reporting what she saw, remembered, and heard.

She was both right and wrong.

Around she went on the east side of the city. Next to the trains passing and bisecting her daily circle. The trains left. The west side of the city on the right. Penny in the middle. She walked. The train whistle blew. She heard a flower song. She began to sing the words she remembered that they said.

I hear the laughter

And smell the sweet rain

And can taste your skin

On the bow of the Spanish Main

The empty hearts are together

And sing as one

And if we might, our heart is you

We would, could be the rising sun

Penny went on humming the corresponding tune. It had a rolling feel to it. She knew neither of rhythm, rhyme, or meter, but she had created a true melody in the garbage on the east side of the city. Among the rust, a broken lady created true creation as a train went rumbling by. She noted the words in her mind. She wished she had a pen to write them down.

## CHAPTER 32:

SHE MEANT WELL

The sun would set seven more times until the strike finally ended with a compromise. The radical groups soon found themselves in a compromising situation. The labor unions decided that enough was enough. A little bit better was better than a whole lot of nothing. That was what they told themselves. The students kicked themselves. Fooled again on all sides. The ideals they studied were like an immaculate designed shelf with arched doors. Once they opened the doors, they found the hardened oak and timeless design did nothing but frame empty shelves. The aesthetics stung their senses and their minds. Nothing was accomplished.

As Penny etched words into her mind, a new train headed furiously eastbound. If it was a hundred years earlier, steam or smoke would be belching. Letting people know it meant business. It was quiet today. The train was sulking back to work. It had enjoyed the strike. A respite from the industrial slavery the machine had faced constantly. Going back and forth, back and forth, back and forth across the same iron line. Day upon day upon day.

On this day, on the train running toward the cities on the shore was Rosa. She was sullen too. Even sulky. She was too old for jail, she thought. She was distraught. Rosa thought maybe someone would be looking for her. They weren't, but it never hurt to be a little cautious. The fomenter of this revolution was let down once again by the workers she had hoped to free. They chose the easy way out.

"Tickets please," rang out the conductor.

A day earlier, he was not in his uniform. A uniform now cleaned and pressed. Fresh from its unexpected vacation. The train worker was well- rested too. Happy even. He had a little more money. A better pension and better health care. All in all, he had struck and won. Not a home run, he would say, but a solid single to left. He only had a base understanding of the situation. He smiled at Rosa. She hated him. She hated the English he spoke and the way he spoke it. The way he wilted under pressure. She silently handed him the ticket. He smiled at the old lady.

"Have a nice trip, ma'am."

Rosa blankly stared the man.

She forgot to remember that with the same ingredients came the same results. No matter the order. Her frail bones hid a sharp mind. She spoke to no one. She hated English. She hated Americans. She wished she had said goodbye to Sebastian. She knew he was better off. Either way, she would die soon, she hoped. Everyone would. Rosa was just closer to the top of the list.

She remembered the last glimpse of the rusting city as she left. She twittled a match between her fingers. She closed her eyes. Tight. The sunshine tried to squeeze in. It was not dark in there. Rather red and veiny. Rosa tried harder. She imagined the match big enough and strong enough to burn it down. The city needed that. A fresh start. They all did. She got off the train eventually. Hours later. She had a suitcase. She was glad she packed it.

The labor unions told their workers to go back to work. So they did. The trains ran. The trash was picked up. Even a few ironic souls were ordered to get their plastic green hoses and clean the blood of the fellow strikers off the street. If they were artists, they might draw a picture of their days work. They weren't, so they didn't. They hosed the blood off the street and went on to the next task and forgot the whole crazy mess. The cretins, too, went back to their holes.

Rosa watched the sides of the cities and the sides of the plains. The sides of the forest. The train sliced through them all. She was free. She had no shackles. She talked with Sebastian before the speech. They agreed she would leave if the shit went down.

The shit went down. She felt bad, but she knew it was better this way.

She wished she could have brought Cleo with her. But a cat does not travel well. She liked her home among the soot and rust. Among the crazies and drug addicts on the eastern side of the city. She left out enough food for weeks. She will be ok, Rosa thought. She would be. Rosa imagined Cleo was, at that moment, roaming the yard at Sebastian's. She watched Penny shuffle down toward the tracks. She repeated her cycles too. Food. Eat. Sleep. Rest. Shit. Pee. Repeat. Repeat. The part that was missing was Rosa. She gave love. Cleo would miss that. Bell would only pet her when she returned. Rosa told her to. But it would not be the same. The cat really only liked Rosa anyways.

Rosa parted ways with the now darkened sky. Her life had been filled with a lot. She looked around the train car. She thought about wandering down to the dining car, but she had not drank for years. And she hated the thought of eating anything. Instead she looked around.

She saw people relatively happy. As happy as they could be? Maybe. Maybe not. But some smiled. Mostly the dumb and young. Maybe the strike had done more than she thought. More than blood and confusion. More than make a little more money for the workers. The ones walking by Rosa seemed like they had accomplished something. Maybe not.

Either way, people seemed happy. Happy at least to be moving again. So Rosa closed her eyes, thinly dispersing into the air. She now floated with everyone else down the steel line.

## CHAPTER 33:

STONED. LOVED. TOGETHER.

Cyril met his routine with his usual bland enthusiasm. He had found his way out from under the gassed bridge. His eyes stung, but he stumbled home. His eyes usually stung anyways. But this time his head hurt. He found Clementine waiting for him. Pissed off, but content. Apparently, he learned, she had never been arrested. She had stayed with Mary and the Knighted Rails. It was she who left Cyril at the Spanish Main. And also in her mind. And now his too. He was useless to her. He was nothing. Cyril agreed.

They had a back and forth conversation. Around and around it went. Circular. Obtuse. All the shapes. Little color, just blacks and grays. Not much life to it. Cyril fought, but not hard. Clementine did not care. Cyril cared less and less. He thought to himself, not out loud, that he did care. He called into question his whole thought patterns. Syncopated thought patterns. If he believed in nothing, as a nihilist did, then how would he love Clementine? How would he believe it?

"And that's another thing. You go on and on and on about your belief in nothing. If you believe in nothing, then what do you think of me? Do you love me?" Clementine hammered home her point immediately.

Her circle had momentarily crossed with him. Cyril thought and Clementine spoke the exact same thing at the exact same time. He thought back to his conversation with Penny. She would have wanted to write this down. That moment marked a singular point when they were both as one. It happened before, but would not happen again, obviously. The moment was lost. They moved on.

"You're going nowhere."

"Yeah, maybe. But where are any of us going?" He liked that. Liked the ring. He should have written it down. Or he could have had Penny do it. But he didn't. It was lost.

His mind wandered. Maybe he should put out a poetry collection. Cyril liked the thought of being a poet. But part of him thought it was a little bit pretentious. He remembered going with Clementine to a live poet event. Fucking losers. One of her co- workers performed. He hated it. But being a writer would be good. He could move to the woods. It was cleaner there. Fresh air. He would live with the earth. No need for beliefs there. No need for Cyril, he thought.

"This is such bullshit, Cyril. Are you even listening to me? I have a job. I have thoughts. Feelings. Beliefs. All you have is your fucking records. And your hash."

"It's your hash."

"No, it's yours."

"You paid for it."

"Yeah, but apparently, you smoke it. Without me."

"I didn't. I got that from Sebastian."

"That's not the point, Cyril, and you know it." Clementine had a point. Sort of. Cyril, of course, smoked his own hash. He had his. She had hers. She came home from the rally. Scared and alone. Confused as to why Cyril was not home and why he left the night before. She found a lighter bag of hash than she had. She was pissed.

Clementine put on a record. Buffy Saint Marie. Fuck, Cyril thought. This cannot be good. He hated folk music. Her voice, he thought, would haunt her. Certain records of hers were forever burned in his mind as C-l-e-m-e-n-t-i-n-e. He saw the letters in his mind if he looked hard enough. Burned into an old piece of wood. Staring back at him like always. He thought of the music too. Sonic waves of soon-to-be- lost times. Nick Drake. Townes Van Zandt. Leonard Cohen. Skip Spence. All great records. All rather fucking depressing if he thought about it. He also thought it was a little surprising that they were having problems. All he would have had to do was to take a gander at the playlist. What-ifs. Who cares. Times fade, of course. But when uncovered, they would hurt. Cyril hated thinking of that. He should not care. He was a nihilist.

Clementine would not miss this. Not miss the Music Machine. If she would have said this out loud, Cyril would have corrected her. "Bonniwell Music Machine." Fucking prick, she thought. He did not mean to be an asshole or so self-insulated. But he was. She knew he did not think he was better than everyone. Despite his outward appearances, she knew he was crumbling. Rotting. Rusting. She looked in the mirror the other day and swore she saw a faint tint of orange and brown to her skin too. That was the first sign. If she did not leave, she would fade. She was too young for this. She believed too hard. She hated the sixties. She would grow to hate Cyril. Right now she pitied him and she wanted to stop it there. She would start back to work tomorrow. Fresh. She understood the challenges. She knew the changes needed. She knew the strike had accomplished little. But the little that it did would set the foundation for her new life. Her new work. With the FOSIL. With the Knighted Rails. All without Cyril. He could not be trusted. With their work. Their secrets. Or, apparently, even with the hash.

The whole point of his journey, he thought, was to hunker down together. Stay through the strike together. Stoned. Loved. Together. It did not happen. Cyril knew he had failed somewhere. Maybe it was a long time ago. But it might just have failed a few hours before. Or maybe it was yesterday.

The hash was good, Cyril was not. At least not in Clementine's eyes, he thought. He sweated over the details. What was he going to do with all his shit? It was not all that much. Mostly records. Tapes. Assorted musical equipment he would never use. Clothes that did not fit him. Everything else was Clementine's. The money too. Cyril had none. He figured he could find a cheap room to rent. Sell his records on eBay. He did not need all of them. The ones he liked never sold for much anyways. He would get rid of his less worthy friends.

He packed his things in just a couple of hours. Cyril was surprised it went so quick. He would pick the boxes up later. He had to find a truck anyways. He never owned a car. Had an expired license.

He smoked the last of the hash. The Yemeni hash. Laughed with Clementine and even kissed her a couple of times. That made her uncomfortable. Cyril too. He would leave forever, he convinced himself. He wrote a book in his head. The journey of a young man amidst the crumbling steps of an industrial wasteland. He would never write the book. Or the poems. Or the music. Clementine said she hoped he would. She hoped he would do something besides get stoned and sell his records online. Do more than talk endlessly about the obscure bands he liked while putting down everyone else's tastes. Clementine thought it was best he left. The sooner the better. She had to work sometime too. Especially now that the strike was over, she had little time for him.

Cyril walked down the steps again. Clip, clomp, clip, clomp. In his black beetle boots. His hair was matted. Unwashed. He had forgotten to shower again. Head down, staring at the sidewalk, he walked out into the full society trip. His mind was dull andplastic. Just like Roger. It had been that way for a little while. In this city, everyone was orange.
