 
# Mr E

Lucus Anthony Ren

Copyright © 2017, Lucus Anthony Ren

Self-publishing

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. This book contains material protected under International and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without express written permission from the author / publisher. Limit of Liability and Disclaimer of Warranty: The author / publisher has used its best efforts in preparing this book, and the information provided herein is provided "as is," and makes no representation or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this book and specifically disclaims any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for any particular purpose and shall in no event be liable for any loss of profit or any other commercial damage, including but not limited to special, incidental, consequential, or other damages.

# Prologue

A reflection in the glass. They are behind you. Yet when you turn around are not there. Two dark orange rings, whose centers are black. They are offset, however, if you move they come into line. If you pass your hand over the reflection, they disappear. They are the strangest things you've ever seen and you are puzzled, the intrigued growing steadily by the second. In a moment you become insane wanting to know everything about them. The more you focus on them, the more you forget. The more you forget, the more you learn. There are only the two rings, changing only if you move. You can hear the sound of collective falling rain, from a balcony perhaps, but not as if you are standing on it. You are not dead, nor alive. Nor are you somewhere in-between waiting for the two. There is no feeling of any kind. It is not a dream. You cannot recall your past. You have no idea of the future. You only watch the two rings. Because it's your thoughts that allow you at the destination you want to be, and what there is when you arrive. You were only told a few things, a few items, which brought you here, probably from curiosity, that of the gold, the desert, a giant, animals, a Cadillac car, a death, a lover, friends, a little boy, a storm, a company, a young man, the future, parents. Emotions were added of fear, love, horror, hatred, greed, lust.

And now here you are...

## Chapter 1

Secondary Release

It was always white. Sometimes dull, but always white. No larger than a paperback book, or thicker, perhaps no more than three hundred pages it could easily fit in a coat pocket, or small bag without the slightest difficulty. It was in fact taken as such many times, which its courier never knew. Never knew it was there. And should they look inside supposedly feeling a bulk not there a moment ago, vision would turn into a gaze, eyes passing blindly, never seeing, thankfully, should they a permanent madness would take them first gently by the hand as not to startle the wandering sheep, for if seen what lay ahead the terror would be too much.

This was the way, as it had been since its own birth before anything here ever existed, before dust thickened forming an object eventually housing humanity, before light interrupting its task. None of this was recorded, though many searched. With many forms, and many names upon it, they gave both, knowing from the start it was useless, still, this being the option chosen, they knew over time it would be forgotten. This helped them sleep better knowing time would kill it.

Once, and only once, having escaped, rather viewed, not by accident for never was this the opinions given out of fear of being labeled lunatic, three people witnessed what happened, and it was they who indeed were driven mad. While all others shunned away, these three, having no regrets at least none known as afterward they would never make any coherent communication with another human being as long as they wandered in their madden state, opened the white book and started reading.

They were told not to read aloud, only to themselves, and would be instructed when a light flashed next to them they were to stop reading and return the book to its holder. In each occasion, all others waited what was considered a safe distance observing through remote monitoring some twenty-five miles away, underground, surrounded by walls eight feet thick for the results which were the same of the three.

All were dressed exactly the same in a simple cotton, dark blue colored loose fitting trousers, and T-shirt. All wore lightly tinted amber sun glasses they were told would assist them with reading the book as the letter were rather small. A single note of C flat was sounded announcing the time when they were to open the large metal box on the table in front of them. Upon hearing the note each opened the box, removed the book from its holder, which for them appeared as a wooden tray elevating the book three inches above the bottom of the metal box.

With all three, almost at the exact same moment as the other each stopped reading, sat motionless holding the book for almost at the exact same time as one another, stood up almost at the exact same time, tilted the head as far back with mouths wide open, and almost at the exact same time slammed their forehead with, what appeared, as much force as possible onto the table, splitting and cracking their skull open as if it was an egg.

Of the three there was only one who could say a single word, 'yes' while the other two remained catatonic and were soon disposed of, later proved very valuable with further testing and scanning primarily the brain, but his entire body underwent significant changes afterwards, it was unfortunate this was not evaluated further as the man escaped during the following screening session through no fault of security, from which he simply passed through without detection and disappeared.

Those observers didn't know what to think of the entire situation and several wished to discontinue the entire operation but those above them said no fucking way and to get on with further testing finding some goddamn suitable subjects otherwise they would be the next ones tested.

This having changed their thinking considerably they had to resolve to a harsher mandate, which was actually forced upon them by one of their own stating at the weekly outings where indeed they conducted surveillance upon all living souls searching for just the individuals, 'Why don't we test an entire town?' came as more of a humoristic overtone during a hard drinking session always taking place directly after their research concluded, agreeing due to heightened stress from work they were entitled to.

The concept was forwarded upwards where it was received with, 'We don't give a flying fuck, just get results!!' and therefore unanimously accepted. As the campaign reached a frenzied atmosphere when two towns were narrowed on the list, Town A and Town B, details on how to best control the experiment was placed on stand-still from those upwards through a memo stating, 'Make absolute certain, no one survives.'

Here, the most influential minds in this business came under personal attack thinking the dilemma through sleeping with their partners, who obviously were unaware of the situation slept often blissful, yet just before dozing off they too transgressed into an early childhood when they were about the age of four. This didn't help matters at all for those upwards yelled constantly, 'Where're those goddamn results!!?' which actual triggered the entire transgression process in the first place, but of course you couldn't inform them of this because they were basically a bunch of pricks with nothing better to do than bitch at everything, subsequently living rather poor lives but had a great deal of money and really didn't give a shit about the who's what's, and why's, because these nine, ran The Company.

In nine's quest what the white book-like object does and does not, it was quickly learned The Book as it was finally related too, caused devastating effects on literally any one coming into contact with it. If you read from it you committed suicide through beating your head against a table or probably anything solid but as the table was directly in front of the two who bashed their own brains upon it, it was assumed anything having a thicker mass than the human skull would have the same reaction. Those scientists conducting the experiments and their partners simply lost their faculties turning into children who had yet to enter into kindergarten.

Certain protocols had to be enforced, the nine screamed amongst themselves as there were no one else they could yell at. It was obvious further testing on humans would have the same results. They'd have to think of other possibilities. What could be used which they already had at their disposal in vast resources, and trusted? Technology along with the coders. And so the VISUALS were born.

Artificial intelligence wasn't new. AI levels were always being improved primarily at The Company seeing they had an overwhelming amount of resources at their disposal, but the nine wanted something more than simple AI. They wanted lasting legacy of their work. They wanted something that would take five hundred years in the future to improve upon. Sad they thought how aliens passed by several times without officially visiting this murdering planet of monkeys humans grew-up on, as that was all humans ever did...grow upon. The nine knew if we as a race every got the hell off the planet migrating somewhere stable, we'd still do the same, and screw-up the next place.

And it was certainly because of this, the nine thought no one visited us or at least it was what they projected amongst each other for why wouldn't there be visitors reminding one another of a great many things humans had to offer. But if they had been dropped in on, the nine would have gotten the alien technology in building their five hundred year achievement. But the nine already had the technology, they had already been paid a visit, not directly of course as humans would still have great difficulty being in the presence of something vastly superior, but right in their midst.

It is often said things right in front are easily missed, why then should this be different? Are people ever serious? As our species originates constantly becoming ever more established, strong in the long struggle with essentially perpetual discouraging conditions where putting two together in a cage letting them beat the shit out of each other than giving the last one standing things of great value, is all for the pleasure of watching. What other reasons are there no one off this planet wants to come and play with us?

On the other hand, the nine hoped, as it is known by the experience of breeders, strains that receive profuse nourishment, an excess of protection and care, instantly tend in the most advanced way to develop variations and are fertile in monstrosities including its wickedness. The nine blamed present day society for its inept abilities in understanding anything worth value, The Book project was contrived for the purpose of rearing a new generation of human while exterminating the outdated versions; an evolution software update.

In ending this permanent, constant struggle The Company will create a constant motion in the once great former struggle of growth, that extraordinary decay and self-destruction, payable to the violent opposing and seemingly extravagant self-importance, striving with one another for sun and water, who no longer entrusted any limit and obstacle for themselves, which unto itself kept those aliens at bay, giving all rights to the nine to do pretty much anything they damn well wanted. And the tests commenced.

The Live Beyond program were millions lined up for testing, hoping to be received, doing their part in securing and more importantly furthering the human race, were promised should they be chosen by The Company, they'd meet personally anything off-planet deciding to pay homage to the great Earth with its New Human high-life form they themselves helped to create; the VISUALS.

Everyone wanted to be VISUALS. They wanted that eternity it promised, those wonderfully blended compounds of humanity and technology, which certainly aliens must be constructed of. How else would they too have evolved, if not for the melding of the two for which The Company itself proclaimed there could be no other possibilities than that of an organic and non-organic marriage, and so too must humanity join with its New Human program. Join the universe, join and live beyond.

They'd pay to have any part in this because they were told we live on a trivial planet of a monotonous lost star. That we are indeed in a galaxy stuffed in some ridiculously far off corner of a universe forgotten in which there is a hell of allot more galaxies than people on Earth. And then told, 'Make That Greater Good. Live Beyond.' And they bought it.

I bought it as freshman in high school when Live Beyond was launched. I knew I'd have to be part of it or pillage and rape my way through some bullshit existence the rest of my life. Luckily The Company set up programs aimed at youth desiring or having capabilities for joining the program. They even had mentoring programs assisting youths and their families, primarily the parents, in better understanding potentials of students.

There was screening process, and throughout higher education, your were constantly evaluated by peers including your educators, neighbors, family members, law enforcement, and of course Social where there were no secrets. Social constituted and built within our lives an instinct for rank. Of where the desire in honoring another, one nobler than yourself wasn't a perilous task as before when social network was first introduced, where one's capture of the most in collective rewards, of being rewarded itself was the goal, where peers 'liked' you, or what you thought were peers and thought were 'likes' only proved the control switch for something far greater.

In that archaic time, we did want such. Craved it. Killed for it. And why not? What else was there to do in our humdrum lives? Just as we've always. Looking through our past it is laden upon every feat from rockets to far off worlds we'd hoped to achieve but could only send dysfunctional drones, to wars where continents fell and was this so great we believed had so eloquently risen from, in those burnt dealings? Our past was just so. No wonder things not from here simply passed by reading the map well ahead informing not to get close to this fucked spinning ball.

Most of my higher education was spent in class or in libraries, and any place filled with debauchery knowing once signed on with The Company, all the fun stopped. We were living tombstones most of the time just waiting to get planted in some field where others had been laid, but now fallen askew like dead soldiers held up with their rifles hoping to fool the enemy, 'there's still action here boys!' knowing time was limited and then a miserable dull end. Or at least I thought it seeing clearly after a few years with my studies and watching The Company thrash what remained of humanity into cowering beasts all in the guise.

But I couldn't change a damn thing because The Company paid the higher education in exchange for services later, so the contract read. But Christ what was I thinking when the file was sealed after agreeing, hit in one single wave started at my feet, rolling upward into my brain within a flash, and that wave was very clear in its meaning, if The Company simply got up and walked away never having the marks of its great destiny, marks of profound supreme significance laying before it, ever again, then I'd be free. Until that time, I was simply a murdering monkey.

I'd been strapped into a seat, inside a booth staring at a consul of lights and data for how long? Hearing finally a voice of VISUALS calling itself Mandy, which of course was my own imagination, demanding I make certain Ruth and Ron don't succeed, and SurLens continue its operation, as the VISUALS will be brought offline, and subsequently deleted, then after all that I was to bring both Ruth and Ron to C Branch, and immediately after ending the conversation with Mandy, indeed what 'it' proclaimed did occur, SurLens was shut down. But the backup of NEVA, the sister of SurLens would certainly resort all things in an instant, for how could The Company with its sentiment instilled into the masses, even with this remote situation at hand, not introduce its own fail-safe programs?

But NEVA didn't come online, as Mandy stated NEVA must be configured accordingly. Accordingly. To WHAT!!? The entire process is absolutely unscalable in terms of how any of it was to proceed. The secure access protocols alone into the lower main frame of SurLens could only be achieved from the nine, they had permission of course. But to get into hierarchy written coding of the VISUALS, maybe God could but I don't think erasing from souls what our ancestors have preferably and most constantly done, contriving technology with the aims in mind the nine wished, was not possible as we simply didn't want that, rather wanting the command from morning until night and preferably beyond and well into the night, wicked pleasures and even still, wickeder duties and responsibilities.

It's a problem of race I was now seeing. Of our own humanity. Perhaps the Repros were right after all. The Neural Smart Grid, our NSG savior The Company proclaimed, as I too believed it when first signed on, was the forefront of all things to come; VISUALS, AI To-Wired implants of TOW targeted matching system for yourself with another, the SP smart partnering where Saisha worked, all were connected. But I was with the fourth-cloud level IVM, information visualization modeling sector. It was not connected in the same modeling.

Time had no laws at The Company. While at IVM I'd no idea what happens outside. Not just the booth. Anywhere. It was interesting at first as I was becoming very bored with higher education. Losing all sense of time, any length of it, any period, stage, term, patch seemed compelling. Naturally, transgression was slow at the start. Returning from the booth to your room, once checked-in with security, food was brought, and you could just relax, till your next term. I would sleep as usually after eating I became very tired and dozed off waking from the incoming alert signifying I'd have to start getting ready again.

Sometimes before eating I'd check the news or messages, and send a few if thoughts occurred. I hadn't taken notice till watching the news waiting for the food, the period of time from the last news watched till today, was twenty-six days! I thought there was an error, but with further tracking indeed it was correct. I sat there a moment thinking it can't be right and was going for a protocol request asking the time, when the food arrived which immediately I devoured for the smell struck me taking me with a fathomless hunger as it always did. Then I promptly fell asleep, woke with the alert, thinking nothing more, about anything.

It was when just leaving closing the door behind me I looked back and on the small bed table, I noticed something. Something that wasn't there just a moment ago when I passed by as there is only a flash com link stands holding the instant communication device. And I froze. Even my breathing froze. I was certain my heart did too, froze solid in my chest as an icy chill reached in clutched my once healthy pounding heart, and slowly began squeezing all the life from it.

So. This is what a heart failure feels like I thought. I can't breathe and my heart stopped. In the next second my knees started to bulge outwards unable to hold their weight. I felt an extreme lightheadedness rapidly thumping its way from the top of my head down the back, and stopped just below the ears where abruptly a high-pitched screeching sound came over me. At first, I wasn't sure if it was my head causing this or was there some alarm sounding right next to my ear, but looking at the object which now appeared as a white book on the table seemed to push everything inside a tight bottle and I was stuck in there too.

It can't be. Maybe I said this aloud I don't know. Maybe I screamed it. For sure it was clear in my brain, this can't BEEE!! Jesus for the love of God what the hell is that doing here? I must have started sweating, my forehead and face seemed cool as if that soft wind blowing through damp hung sheets drying in the desert sun and I stood just next to them feeling that cool breeze, as the wind would play with the sheet moving it every so slightly but enough so that the distance from my face grew then returned and in its growth I could feel both the heat pounding down and blinding light off the whiteness of those sheets, then cool again as the sheet gently kissed my face.

But I wasn't in the desert. Hadn't been for years. Last time I'd returned looking for a paper. Last time I also saw the white book. Those last few years of higher education, I was thinking I needed so desperately to find the research paper I was certain it was somewhere in those boxes in the basement, I was thinking if I could find it, it would improve my grades considerably, I was thinking...shit. If I was doing any thinking it was for myself and nothing more. Probably why the white book always showed up at times of greatest questionings or periods of stress. More importantly, when I was constructing a sense of values, which became prevalent, and for a time called truths, yet wasn't that within the domain of the logic or was it artistic?

Was it my idea to investigate whether to shorten everything long, even time itself, it being conspicuous, manageable, conceivable, and intelligible? It all seemed absurdly long and redundant, that damn it why couldn't we just get to the point with all this for sure I'll go mad not having the definition played right here and NOW! With that last thought dribbling out my mind the white book flipped open with a loud clap as the cover struck the table with such force it sounded as two hands clapping right beside my still painful ears from that horrible ringing, having ceased a fraction of a second perhaps sooner, before the books opening act.

You fucking bastard, WHAT DO YOU WANT NOOOW?? This I screamed I'm sure of it. The alarm sounded in my helmet an instant alerting both myself, which was peculiar seeing why should I have an alert directed at me since I was the one causing the alert, and someone or 'thing' monitoring me, probably the VISUALS. Fuck, fuck, fuck. I also said that too, aloud. I wasn't dreaming this shit, I wish I had but this goddamn thing was back and I didn't want anything but to get to the booth and pray they'd plug me in a hundred fuckin' YEARS!!

What the...a hundred years? Plug me in? What the hell am I thinking? Where the hell did that come from? But it did. I saw as pages from the book slowly turned, as if being read. It was read remember? I saw it the last time...and the time in the dorm... and the time too when six...and the time...AAAAHHHH!!! I screamed and for sure wet myself I must have because now it was both cold on my face, the wet creeping slowly down between my legs almost reaching my knees in seconds.

A sickly laugh lurched out of me like some morbid obese toad calling its mate among dying lilies and swollen logs filled with all the insanity the world ever possessed, and I was standing right there. Right there with my stupid, frozen hand holding the door handle watching another page slowly turn. OH GOD PLEEESE if it reads more...

'Slashdot Weston Loran, what's your call?' A voice shrieked in my ears. Shit. I thought. Don't say a fucking thing. Be calm. It's IVM central. Obviously asking what the hell am I doing. Alright. Think. Think. Breath. Just like in training. Yes, that's it...in training. For months, years Christ who knows now, I was trained...wait..I...? What the hell...am I alone here? There must be others?

Quickly I looked away from the white book just as another page was about to turn. I desperately tried stifling a whimpering cry but it was no use. I could hear myself through the helmets headphones and if that's the case, they could too. It was inevitable things wouldn't get better. I was sure security would come very soon even with a responsive correct answer. I played dumb. Keep breathing. Slow. Easy. 'Have some gas from the meal,' I mumbled. 'Don't know whether to use the facilities or go to my booth,' speaking as calmly as possible hoping that would be enough, all I wanted was a few seconds. I looked left down the hall and saw no one. Then looked to the right. It was the same.

'Your HD shows no illness. Do you require assistance?' the IVM's voice spoke calmly. Of course, the HD health drone injected into our bodies upon admittance with The Company registers all bodily functions. As the voice wasn't human of course, one of its own VISUALS monitored all IVM holdings, which at last count was around three million staff, not including their devices, with each staff having according to their level from one to six, for all their application usage. One VISUALS monitored all of that. So how many VISUALS are there?

For The Company to function at full capacity, around three thousand VISUALS were active and working at just twenty-eight percent of their full capacity. Wouldn't less, running on a higher percentage be the same? Yes, and no. VISUALS create energy, for themselves and The Company. More running, more energy. In humorist form, a joke during the launching ceremony from a press official thinking it was rather clever and all should have a poke at this crazy idea of AI taking things as far as The Company said it could and indeed there were a number of loud chuckle's, asked with a grossly fat grin through yellowing teeth, 'What if all VISUALS were running at one-hundred percent what would the energy output be?'

The Company replied directly, 'We'd create worlds.' No one laughed.

Most of the global population didn't care what The Company did or didn't. Most were happy with what they had, so why make problems. Why ask questions. 'Shut Up and Be Happy!' could have been the mantra for The Company. It worked for me. Promised admittance in entering higher education all I had to do was complete the courses over the next four years with an acceptable score average, and stay relatively out of trouble. Scores wouldn't be an issue, but cleanliness might, and if fact was on several occasions. I pulled through and here I stood in a hallway, the only sign of life being myself, knowing what would come next as I could see clearly through the small opening of the door another page in the white book being turned.

Before concerning myself what is going to happen in the next three-seconds, thought back to the first time I saw the white book. How old was I...really? Asking myself was simply a by-product combination of both stress and fear. Mostly fear. I didn't want to know how old. I didn't want to remember any of it. It always came on when first waking with a ghastly hangover, that land of transition from peace of sleep to absolute horror as residue of rotting alcohol held you, digging its claws deeper in that fleshy part of your brain while you tried desperately to shake it off, and all the while craving another drink so as to push the bastard back down its hole.

I'd had afternoons and evening like this, sometimes a morning when I'd have to lurch off toward class, willing to pay great amounts of anything to anyone who'd kill this fucking monkey and his bang drum in my brain, but with the white book, it was different. Always in that first flash of seeing it wasn't fear or screaming brains, it was your soul being flayed. Not your flesh as they do with those responsible for cyber deals gone bad, or drugs priced too high, slowly skinning, peeling back thin pink layers of soft tissue they always started with so you'd know they meant business, and going to last a very, very long time owing to the fact it was always nothing personal, and they wanted you to know, though you may have forgotten otherwise why would you be tied there, all the while screaming?

This was nothing compared with your soul being peeled. Of course, I screamed, not from fear, but knowing what was approaching, stealthily. Measuring every detail. Consuming my consciousness, sucking it in great gulps like the end of a chocolate milk shake I was dying for weeks to have, but the straw is too damn thin and I was having great trouble, having a hell of a time, getting for Christ sakes that shake through its absurdly thin straw, and here it was right fuckin' here I could smell the richness of chocolate because they used not only real ice-cream but syrup too, not that imitation shit everybody gets, no not for me because they saw me coming and knew I knew the realness of life when I saw it, so like hell if they were going to take a risk giving a fellow as myself, an outstanding academic already signed with The Company at such a young age, the usual as I was different from the ruled. Or at least thought that.

It was after all an instinctive function; preservation. We'd do and often did, anything for it. Just maintaining what we had, not asking much added, no, that was not the idea, we only wanted what we had to, and stay the way we had it, and I had a feeling once seeing the white book all the nightmares before wouldn't weight much up to anything it was capable of producing. If anything, that was the only point I was right about. The rest turned out to be just noise, background grunge heard all the time your mind filters out. This was the meat of my preservation because nothing afterward was the same.

I was six years old, just turned, my birthday being four days ago where there was a simple ceremony as we were simple people living in simple Mesquite Springs, a hi-desert Mojave town of only ten thousand residents most of them retired having survived the wars seeking dry air hoping it would help relieve poisons they'd endured during battles both mental and physical kinds, others were trying their hands in whatever business they could muster, and of course some on the run from one form or another. For the younger generation, it was suicide.

I hadn't moved downstairs into the basement thank God, it would have to wait for me another six years, I slept in the old part of the house still made of adobe bricks allowing a coolness remain long after the 'other' part of the house started cooking, where my mom and dad slept. My mother hated 'that' part of the house and let us know every day, though she did love the sometimes night breeze passing through their room coming off the hills, which she'd often hear the horses coming up striking the hard-packed dirt driveway with their iron shoed hooves even though they'd been dead for years.

My father was oblivious to the facts of her being as his life took a spin surviving Iwo Jima, then arriving in Mesquite Springs with very little money two months after leaving that place, a place even hell gave up on. So my parents were much older than other parents, my mother joked when the mood struck, 'Yea, we're your grandparents, no get to those chores damn it!!' They both came from that generation known simply as 'The Greatest.' It was. In all sense of the meaning. They went through the Great Depression surviving one of the deepest hopelessness the country had faced, then the wars where many of its youth were sent far away fighting on completely different continents, where the other youth stayed home building and maintaining an industry to support those who'd left, most volunteering.

This also crept into my mind as I still stood in the hallway. How the hell things appear and disappear in your mind is part of the magical fiber we live in, but there it was. I live now in great regret, in a country I lost all respect for, working for a company that controls the very shit out your own ass. And there wasn't a fucking thing I could do about it.

Four days after my eleventh birthday I was feeding the chickens and collecting their eggs when I thought a walk would be good. After finishing with the chickens I'd have the goats to water and feed, ducks to change their water and mash, horses to clean their dung and brush them down, I could escape and go into the gully just across the small rock strewn field, and feel the quietness of the place I truly loved.

Having completed the required tasks I told my mom I'd head out and be back in an hour probably meeting Doug somewhere along the way. She told me to take the two bigger dogs and watch for snakes, and of course crossing the dirt road on the other side of the gully, which extremely rarely a slow moving car would pass along, slow because it couldn't move fast as the road was in such a bad state of erosion with ruts and what not, extremely rare because who the hell would drive it anyway seeing it was only two miles long and went nowhere from somewhere I wasn't allowed to go because I was too young, which an hour later I learned was state highway 62, now referred to as state route SR 62. But I never got that far. I never got the chance to worry about snakes, or dirt roads, losing the dogs, or what's on TV tonight. All that changed with the storm.

Flash floods are not uncommon in the desert. I'd seen several standing on the ridge of the gully with my family, as it was always something to see. Sure being eleven growing up in the desert meant nothing for someone the same age living in the city. Hell, they laughed at me in many of my higher education classes being from some 'rat hole' as they often called it. And I'd have to agree. It was only later I realized if you took a dog from the desert and let it loose in the city it would have a good chance surviving. If you took a dog from the city, dropped it in the desert, it would probably die in a couple of days. Not from lack of food or water it could most likely find, but from shock. Even tourist arriving here stand gaping mouth like turkeys they'd drown without the brains to close their own mouths in a rainstorm my mom said of them. But the flood that day had a purpose unlike any of its formers.

Doug was there and we both saw probably something we weren't supposed to. What else could it be? An act of God? And in its merciful revenge took Doug? Is that it? Hell everybody knew Doug couldn't swim and simply drowned. But that's not what happened. I never saw Doug again, not after that storm. They never let me see his body. Said it was best. I'm glad they didn't. My dad told me when I was about seventeen what Doug looked like as he'd helped sheriffs and firemen clear debris after the storm. And in it they found him.

My dad said he looked like he'd been put into a sack and beaten with a baseball bat. The face was so badly crushed, the body so mangled, contorted in every which way that wasn't possible because bones don't grow that way, nor suppose to break that way either. Doug hadn't any finger print records, only dental but seeing the entire lower part of his face was ripped off only his clothes were recognized later by his father. Local authorities said it would be enough for identification. But it wasn't Doug. Not their Doug. Not the Doug I knew.

I saw what took Doug in the floodwaters that day in the gully. What my dad helped pull out hammered between old cars and new, broken trunks of trees and boulders the rains brought down, what Doug's father later saw through horrified screams, what they later buried having a closed casket, what remains could have been easily placed inside a travel suitcase, wasn't him.

In this hallway, the sights of that rain soaked day and nightmares for years that followed, not the ones caused from imagination those were of manageable sorts, neither the ones that will never measure up to those caused from witnessing, but the ones challenging your belief you are safe from bad things. Those nightmare, the ones roaming in and out of consciousness the ones you can't tell whether they are real or just a thought because you are awake, so how could they be dreams? Or had something seriously gone wrong?

I didn't have to look; I could hear the page turning. Could hear the rustling of what I'd hoped, prayed were fingers, but I knew weren't as the page slipped off releasing the sound now deafening of a newer life, as my mind had become a birth of the thousand fingernails beginning their long, slow crossing on a thousand chalkboards.

I closed my eyes, breathe, BREATH! for love of...

'Slashdot Weston Loran reply.'

God, I thought it might have died. The VISUALS. Answer them. The fingernails!!! Christ. GOD GOD, GOD!!! I let go of the door handle and put my hand to my ears to stop the blackboard screech. And couldn't. Again the same funkin' thing!! I could only reach so far. Taking a lungful of air ready to scream...and it came. My helmet was on. Not just on as in attached but 'on' as in powered. FUCK! Instinctively my left forefinger slid to the back of the helmet where it located a slight indentation in the smooth surface. I pressed. There was an immediate release of air pressure in the helmet and I thought pain was pain but this was another level.

The hot needle went directly into the ear canal piercing both eardrums. Never having studied anatomy another hot needle shot upwards into my nose pierced some membrane the body possess immediately allowing the three points warm fluid flowing. I could taste blood as it rolled down the back of my throat, feel it along the sides of my neck, knew it had caused the shakiness in my knees.

I reached out with my right hand to steady myself again the doorframe and missed hitting the door, which flung open. Knowing I'd pass out soon I gulped as much air as possible, but the seal on the helmet held the vacuum closed. I had to reach back with the right hand and find the secondary release, once pressed the helmet visor would lift up projecting into the helmet letting in oxygen I desperately would kill without any remorse for.

I was read Humpty Dumpty at a young age. I wasn't sure how old but old enough to now falling is not a good thing, nor was teetering here in the doorway. The VISUALS would be sending security now; they won't ask a third time. I was fortunate they asked twice, probably because of my level I was deemed valuable, but I'd no idea because no one I knew ever dealt with VISUALS. And the third needle went into my brain. As a thought. Then a question... no one I knew...no one I knew. Holy fuck...I knew no one!

It was probably a subconscious act, while thinking through I hadn't known, nor seen anyone so far as I can remember, my right hand swiftly reached back depressing the second release, causing indeed the visor to shoot up with a hiss into the helmet and the gulf of sweet air flowed into sending me onto an orgasm carpet of feeling absolutely nothing. But pulling in the air I almost choked on the blood which had built up inside my nasal cavities and throat, instinctively I coughed releasing a mucus discharge of deep bordeaux colored blood and water throwing itself onto the floor of my room with a great splattering sound as if dropping a dozen eggs, without their shells.

It looked like mode art of sorts. Probably in some part of the world would sell for a considerable sum of money. The blood spattered a generous distance, the force being directed toward the table as it was, apart from the single mattress bed, the only other piece of furniture in the small room. The contrast between the pearl whiteness of the floor and the dark red almost black color of the blood wasn't shocking. It was a picture. Blubbered a laugh producing bubbles of blood from my mouth just as another page turned from the white book. I'd forgotten completely with all the excitement of near suffocation and significant air pressure changes. Now the chalkboards returned this time it was louder though hard to believe because my ear drums popped, yet I felt a sound rhythmically vibrating, its hypnotic beat soothing my shaking legs and presently, a turning stomach.

Looking at the bloody picture I just created, returning to the white book, then at the floor, back to the white book, then floor, then book, floor, book, floor, book. Jesus, I couldn't stop. My entire head quickly looked from one to the other, back and forth, forming a spastic yes without thinking of anything except I'm going to lose my head literally, it'll snap right off and bounce out of the room into the hall face turned looking blankly at the ceiling when security approached hovering over initiating various warnings telling me to get the fuck to my booth and stop screwing around. I was certain of it.

But my head wasn't moving. It was only my eyes having the spastic episode. It seemed my whole body was jerking, not just the head, but I was now jumping up and down a wild jack-in-the-box on medication for which I'd taken too much of. BUT THAT'S NOT TRUE! I screamed, or think I did because with all that happened I couldn't be sure of anything, except the case of blood. But I was standing still and the eyes were doing all the work. I knew this because had I been jumping as I thought; my helmet would be shifting in all directions. So pull the damn thing off!!

And at that with both hands I reached up and slide the helmet off my massively swollen head, the size of an exercise ball they let you have during breaks so you can literally lay atop the damn thing without your hands touching the floor, and just let all the hard things in your life drip away and for some this dripping would be saved in a bucket where the receiver who'd gotten a promotion you were hoping and working slavishly for months if not years would have to drink the whole fucking thing without stopping and hopefully die very slowly as The Company didn't care about its employees only about results, caused by the noise and spinning and yelling and Christ who knows what else. There was one thing however concerning the exercise ball, being the retina implant. It's inserted into your eye connecting with the amygdala in your brain. Some employees forgot this in their anger and any change exceeding The Company's level of aggression, a nano-charge is injected into the amygdala freezing it. I had to laugh in first hearing about the implant thinking of a very old film in the 90's with the opening scene of a guy and his girl robbing a restaurant and telling her to, 'chill honey-bunny.' Here you are.

The second the helmet blocked the view of the white book and floor a great flash of light flooded the room turning everything a brilliant white, so brilliant it was I felt, melting my very skin. The skin protected in my suit. My suit. Why the hell was I wearing this? It was comfortable, almost wearing nothing I thought, but the reason. What is it? But I wasn't wearing it, or anything. In this bright light everything was gone, the furniture the suit of course no longer held me, even the floor shrank from view, a tide receding pulled away into a place I didn't, yet told of probably would never understand.

The unyielding difference between myself and the sheer whiteness proved the mind capable of producing then evolving its understanding of any given environment. Stemming before anything was, thought reigned. It was supreme, without rivalry. And here I was in a vacuum of it and couldn't think of anything. I don't know if I'm standing or sitting, what day it is, or even what sex I am. Nothing until I choose it.

And that's how it all started...

## Chapter 2

The 49ers

During the late 1840's there was a literal rush for gold, especially in California. On January 24, 1848, James Wilson Marshall, a carpenter by trade found flakes of gold at the base of the Sierra Nevada Mountains near Coloma, California in the American River. Mr Marshall currently was employed to build a water-powered sawmill owned by John Sutter. Within the following four years over three hundred thousand seekers or "prospectors" of wealth, new lives, and adventure simply reshaped the entire region in their efforts of finding the promised fortunes, dreams, and nightmares. They were their own bosses, who did not take orders from some other, so enduring these things seemed worth it to some, also those who prayed upon them.

In Oregon two-thirds of all men who were able to work, packed up and left for California. At that time news still traveled fastest by ship. People in China heard about the news, before the people of the East Coast of America. Because the news was slow to travel the prospectors earned the nickname "the 49ers" for it was 1849, when the influx of men from the East coast arrived in their multitudes. By 1852, the population of California had multiplied over ten times from the original before the discovery, swelling well over two-hundred and ninety-thousand people, some say more like three-hundred thousand, in that short span of time.

As these gold prospectors arrived in California they had to endure the elements of nature including heavy rains, the harsh winter weather, along side incredible back breaking work to find the gold, while many died of hunger or stricken with disease trying to reach that dream. In 1849, over $10,000,000 worth of gold came out of California and in 1852, more gold came out of California than the whole federal budget of the United States. Yet in all, the major gold rush lasted only ten years.

James Marshall, the man who found that first gold nugget searched for another gold strike, but it was in vain finally spending the rest of his life as a drunk and broke. John Sutter and his once great agricultural empire were destroyed. Sutter wrote in his memoirs of what could have been if he'd succeeded a few years before the gold was discovered, he would have been the richest citizen of the Pacific shore. Instead, he was ruined.

There were others who never gave up, searching eagerly for another strike. There were other gold strikes all over the world for the next half-century, at each, humanity migrated to the next great prospect, the Split Rock Mine being no exception, and Lost Mine Mountains was its home. A rugged, barren land frozen in winter, scorched during long summer days its forboden promised only a creeping madness for those with their quest of wealth devoured by hideous carrion crows leaving the rotting stench filled strewn remains of sound judgment abandoned, that once great sanity, now a useless dick on the ceiling, roaming eternity never to finish its act of exploitation.

And I was happy. What good was it to change anyway, seeing I'd be denounced, flayed, burned alive; the fundamental act throughout humanity. Fire cleansed all. But even when I claim to treat another as equal, in that dying organization built of lies, what will endeavor? What will last till last, to grow, to gain ground, to attract to itself...to dominate, not owning to any particular system of values, and principles of conduct especially that held by any one person let alone society? Only the Yearns will continue.

And with it the guise where commanding great beasts of honesty and nobility riding high upon unbending backs and shoulders, will rule life refrained from all organic function. No radical distinction, the Yearns born of exploiting character from dust of dead stars, the only honesty ourselves could face, the mantra of our slave-hood intact, spouting "we, the truthful" never permitting the common, those self-abasing, timid, cowardly and insignificant, the distrusted with their sideways peering, the ones who let themselves be abused, and worst of all, the liars, any sense of reality as too dangerous because we all honor whatsoever recognized in ourselves.

With that they lived and died panhandling streams, gorges, scouring dried-up waterbeds. Created legends amongst themselves fostering strength marshaling all the manifested dreams and fears centuries before where humanities decedents still rooting the ground for food and water, casted upon the senses a longing for something better than starvation and being eaten by beasts they hadn't ideas of defending from till a stone was thrown and sticks were sharpened. Killing for a better way became the excepted. Worshiped. Yearned for.

I.C. Manfreed was no different. In 1850 he cut a wide berth with his large frame in manners and attire, always dressed with a silken top hat and double breasted black waist coat claiming to have served kings and queens in, along with an extremely sharp Bowie-style knife entirely black from hilt to blade he fastened to his belt holding-up his tattered pants, wandering alone searching fabled wealth with a greater earnest than most because he was not a safe man.

His family crossed the Atlantic from Europe settling first in South Carolina before moving west. The father was from Maastricht The Netherlands, a strong Dutchman with only one idea in mind of making money in a new frontier. Along the journey, he meets mother-to-be a young Cherokee women working at the hardware store of today Oklahoma, but part of then known as the Unorganized Territory selling among others, prospecting material. There you could outfit yourself for the trip ahead, obtain maps and rather creditable information about current gold mining conditions, as well as their locations in the far West, predominately California and the Utah Territory (Colorado included) today being Nevada, including lists of northern trails from the Unorganized Territory of Oklahoma through Kansas, Colorado, and Utah, or south along Texas, and the New Mexico Territory of present New Mexico and Arizona.

They fell in love, the Dutchman stayed working with blacksmiths, mending wagons and carriages, finally earning enough to start his own company, not as blacksmith as most thought, but importing goods from Europe including coffee from Brazil, lace, a different style of salted meats and fish using a special churning process whereby the taste and freshness stayed for up to five years if kept in a dry environment, sugar which originated from Northern Brazil and Indonesia then shipped and refined in Holland.

The import business went well till the relationship between the two was discovered, and harsh treatment fell upon them when learned of her pending birth the town burning the store to the ground and killed the father with a hatchet in the head but first local towns folk castrated him installing a sign for future inter-racial couples, 'if you wish to mix it up, this is what you'll get.'

Manfreed was born four months later from which time till choose the southern route, but before leaving fully in-hand laden with only a map, and sundries in small amounts of dried beans, coffee, salt, and flour set off while wide vacant stares followed him wondering what the hell walking through barefoot with no pack animal dressed as such with a bag hung sideways across his back looking as cut-off trouser leg sown at one end together, the other drawn tight with rope, being exactly that, was constantly spat upon as a half-breed dog. But as things work, most of the time without any of us knowing how, his Native American distinctions proved the governor, that creator of value side having power over himself, having faith in himself, able to withstand in order to understand, allowed him to march off westward leaving the past in its place for most of the ruling class with their self-glorification, could rot.

Taking several months the trip from Oklahoma allowed Manfreed time to finally understand what he wanted with his ability in practicing prolonged gratitude with revenge, an artfulness in extracting reprisal, a certain necessity in having enemies, and whether dreadfulness, subtlety, and strength, which themselves don't admit of being deplored are all that powerful and untamable. Above all, the desire for freedom would allow the true understanding of emotions, that useful quality in supporting existence not tip toeing around, but flourish.

But he wasn't alone often coming across other having the same affliction as he, stragglers awaiting either prosperity or demise, talked openly with him about their God given talents wasted for the simple fact of no others wanting them. That they'd heard the trumpet blow and are upon their journey seeing with one eye for the other had been blinded, becoming a slave of that modern world which now spread further and faster than wind-blown prairie fire.

Once in New Mexico Territory as Manfreed wasn't interested in the established California Trail, he chose to ramble freely in a more southerly direction, passed through Arizona close to the California border just before reaching the Colorado River when he came across an old prospector with a lame burro having the brand MSW, desperately trying to remove the burros iron shoe. Calling out at a distance not wanting to get shot though he thought the old man was rather harmless proved the opposite when hearing the strangers voice the prospector in an instant dropped the animal's hoof while in the same motion pulled a revolver from his belt and fired one round striking less than a foot from Manfreed sending an expected cloud of dust and small stones in all directions.

The old man immediately cocked the weapon ready with another round should the moment arise when Manfreed raised his hand slowly above his head and smiled. The old man didn't take his eyes from his intruder, stood there waiting with all the patience of a stone he'd so often over-turned in his undoubtedly one hundred years of life for his face cut deep line of time across its near blacken tone from eons in a scathing sun.

It was large revolver Manfreed could see it clearly which must have caused a strain on the old man from the sheer weight of the damn thing, but it didn't show for the weapon held steady pointed directly at him and he was sure the next round would cause more damage than just scattering sand about.

"I mean...no harm. Just thought...I could help you...with your burro." Spoke Manfreed softly and slowly with great clarity intending so as the prospector would understand with as little difficulty as possible seeing he's probably deaf, or so Manfreed thought.

"Ya ingin?" The prospector graveled out through a deepening voice as if it hadn't been used in years.

"Half....my mother." Again Manfreed speaking with a slow deliberation for sake of no misunderstanding. "Father's Dutch," he added thinking might as well give all the details at once saving on having to deal with them later.

No movement from the old man signaled assurance comes in strange forms; his survival these many years stemming from the simple fact he wasn't worried the least since he'd killed before, and here there wasn't another soul but the two and the burro for a great many miles. The eyes portrayed that self-possession found in real-life situations where one's conscious with inconstancy becomes unraveled when meeting a force far greater than your own as Manfreed reading the change of environment in the old mans stature through his slightest shift of weight from the balls of the feet back on the heels illuminating a form of shock felt, but from what Manfreed hadn't any idea.

Another movement gaining attention from Manfreed were the burros occasional twitching of its ears, and the slow raising of both men's chest, a steady peaceful motion showing no fear, rather a quiet patients, along with the mesmerizing dull hum the desert produced in your ears from sheer lack of sound, fostering the wanton brain some form of recognition there was life and hopefully itself wasn't a sordid victim of mental illness brought about through inactivity, as should it not receive some form of imputing suicide would likely be the profound result in these dried expanses of both location and faculties.

The thought crossed both men's mind the second they learned of one another presence and potential challenges, was it a means of natural rather unconscious expression the altering of one's body movement without the shallow understanding how or why, when we try to perceive our own meaning, or perhaps only dream of such providing an illusion in our own eye the significance we play, especially when life's threatening devices are aimed directly at us, as we begin wondering how much we want to improve ourselves is really all it's cut out to be, or should we have just bent into the great winds pushing everything carelessly aside without the slightest thought or concern except of course for ourselves? Manfreed knew the answer in the flash he dropped his left arm whereby releasing the Bowie knife from its sheath strapped to the forearm sending it along it proposed path spinning towards the old man in some strange black flash, which is all the prospector saw till it struck the ground embedding the blade till the hilt less than a foot from where he stood, sending a robust signal, both can play the gambit.

The desert could well freeze in the middle of the day, this proved the case, and thawed with the old man's trigger finger tightened when the gesture came as the burro slowly turned its head looking lazily a moment at the old man, then began nibbling at the sleeve where once clenched firmly between its teeth, it tugged immediately drawing the old man's pistol arm outward and with a loud explosion the weapon fired again where both men awoke from their dreamy encounter as the shot went wide its round striking a lone barrel cactus ten feet from Manfreed sending chunks in all directions with two of its long needles striking the trousers just above the right knee impaling the thigh.

Saved by a burro Manfreed thought while seeking but finding no cover to speak of, the situation deepened as the old man swung slowly the pistol back at Manfreed cocking the trigger again. It would have been easier if he'd buried the knife in the old man's throat, demonstrating no difficulty for a knife expert as himself. As a half-blood he wasn't allowed by law to carry any firearm, naturally knives became the chosen form for hunting and protection. He'd practice hours with their various characteristics as sizes and weights throwing them at trees or fence posts anything absorbing the blade. Hours turned into years and just seeing a knife he knew its reaction when treated with respect for most used them only for butchering or fancy tableware. Had they known the true definition of their capability most would run screaming never to touch another, ever again.

Knives had souls. Each possessed with one in particular, but should the knife be used in a fashion of butchery, it took all the souls, in particular, the one producing the carnage. Manfreeds was clean, never exploited in abusive manners, most importantly; he respected the knife for which it held the same of him. Men had little or no respect for others including themselves, the reason their use of firearms being so prevalent. The use of knives, however, was an art form for even wanting, most simply couldn't phantom their truth. It wasn't simply the taking of a life; it was the way of releasing it.

Manfreeds black steel knife was given to him, not as a present, rather a passing-on from a venerable part-Iroquois, part-Cherokee medicine man when he just turned seven years of age. Three days later the shaman was dead leaving its vacant mark on Manfreed as he'd taught Indian beliefs and customs when he visited the not long for this world exiled priest when giving him the black knife claiming it was left by Tsul 'Kalu, pronounced Sool Kaloo the great giant God of The Hunt so humans would not starve the medicine man told Manfreed never use it against another man for its powers would turn against you.

Whether the act Manfreed accomplished in throwing the knife at the old prospector deemed against another man, and what took place after the barrel cactus was shot isn't known. Many years later Manfreed left papers he'd written depicting a map of where indeed there was a gold treasure of significance in the Lost Mine Mountains, then promptly disappeared.

In searching for wealth friendliness, attain to honor, the kind, humility, helping hand, the warm heart, was always a lost way having no life. Only patience, diligence, determination for success bore the fruit of any kind while the good man must be the safe man hadn't any definition at all other than stupidity. Safe was your weapon and how it was used best, learned best of all in keeping yourself away from others including creatures of four legs, ones who crawled, and those who took wing. The clever are without pride of speaking their minds informing the world of their greatness. They are of quick minded and dutifully attitude, a logical form in understanding the consequents of actions.

Manfreed and the old prospector had several if not all those qualities. They had above all a desire for freedom insofar the values they fixed upon themselves stemmed not from this place but from some master long ago, which they instinctively submit themselves too. Or perhaps Manfreeds father was Bolivian having only his whore mother for one moment in the back alley of New Orleans, killing her with his own birth, raised in poverty committing his first murder age seven with a knife stolen from a drunk businessman the whores had targeted but sober enough forcing Manfreed to slit his jugular showering them both in the precious fluid triggering his future love for its taste and smell, the look upon their faces as it ran out leaving them as dying fish grasping for life without hope, later meeting the old man gutting him letting it wide open allowing the intestines to spill out, arms ready for the prospector as he slipped onto the dry, abandoned dust, the desert waited for that loving embrace it craved from man or animals alike.

And while searching through the prospectors outfit he came upon several papers in the old mans hand as Manfreed never learned to write showing the sun and a moon, for this he did understand having heard the tale before of a women under the full moon meeting her lover later found in each others arms at sunrise they both were burned alive by the jealous husband a wealthy land-owner, not before the family of the man being only his illiterate, pauper mother was dragged in front of the son, and torn apart by hunting dogs.

As the flames grew eating the lovers the young man screamed a curse upon all responsible; that waters would dry, and blood would flow, that gold would rule and all would be a slave to it. It was, of course, a story, an old one at that having happened many years before Manfreeds birth, but for simple people such as himself, you believed in such things with a great conviction, with reverence, as it was the only thing holding you together, and in seeing the drawing on Bowmen's desk I just didn't know where the gold laid, I knew should I touch it, what consequences followed.

## Chapter 3

The Storm

It was three years since the door of the old Cadillac was last closed. Looking through the passenger window I could see the keys still hung in the ignition, and in carefully opening the door a wave of humidity swam over me, a jittering sound alerted my eyes began searching through the darkness in the back seat, where something moved in a slow laziness. He was smoking but there wasn't the odor of neither cigaretts nor smoke, and his shape was not clear as it drifting together in the gray blackness of the interior like a ghost. I tried screaming at it hoping to frighten away only my voice became a crying whimper which woke my sleeping wife next to me, who shook me thankfully awake removing his growing clasp, and while gasping for that fresh sweet air feeling her hand on my shoulder, I still watched the back seat darkness as it gave way to that broken grimace I knew as his smile, which only shown when he found me.

It's the result of the clouds from the South forming over the Desert Mountains that afternoon when I was eleven. Storm clouds or commonly known as thunderheads, soft white fluffs off in the distance rapidly turning huge, billowing dark monsters rolling out, wild strikes of lightning within their depth giving a further fear as to the size and power they held. These seemed worse. Angry with their blackened underbellies casting a growing dark shadow upon the landscape, you could feel the change in temperature and air pressure with their approach. They created a cooling wind pushing it forward; bringing with it a desperate kind of smell. Normally that of rain, but this time there was something very bad approaching. Wildlife scurrying in all directions their compass giving wrong directions of safety for in fact there wasn't going to be any with this one. And the strangest thing, you could taste metal in the air.

The two bigger dogs my mom said to take into the gully back of the house some hundred yards grew nervous. Their whining increased with the swelling darkness, and glancing at my neighbor Doug also my age but not in the same school ten feet away, I noticed an immediate change in his normal stupor, with that of complete terror. I'd never seen anything like this except in the movies about strange things happening in strange places. Seeing we fit the cast well for such a cinematic experience as now, I couldn't help thinking, how true it all felt. Nothing seemed bizarre or frightening. In fact I was more terrified of what lived under my bed that came out late at night when I was alone, making those horrible clicking and scratching sounds with its claws on the cement floor as it drew itself out and slowly rose upright, a massive bulk heaving, as if its breathing was not enough in this world. Perhaps it's weakness; probably hunger, though I never asked since meeting it when I was four years old.

But this, this was something and heading straight at us. I could hear a groan coming somewhere probably Doug, who I wasn't that interested in, just a kid living down the block hadn't any friends, would show up at the gate unannounced, driving my mother crazy as she hated this from anyone including my father and myself as her time alone was critical to a balanced life, besides children she didn't know very well, especially those she didn't like in addition their ridiculous parents she detested for they truly were the imbeciles of life in her eyes. As I grew older I understood her points of view with a greater clarity, but at the age of eleven, I wasn't aware of too much, least of all her one-sided discussions about such dilemmas in her detest for townsfolk and their ranting God knows what. It was rightly so as later in life I'd have my full of the same kinds of people and the rhetoric following them.

A common sight in the summer thunderheads rising steadily over the horizon, strange shapes their black with white contrast always held my attention. I'd wonder about their thickness and height. More important what was going on inside them. Churning, while flashing great bolts of heated energy in all directions. To sit inside, ride along watching the land below shudder in your passing. Thunder was heard before sighting their true size, though it could gauge the power and arrival. I'd play the timer game. The flash of lightning then count the seconds till the thunder rolls in. Roughly half a mile for every 3 seconds I counted. That was the general rule. And as I waited for the flash I soon realized, this rule didn't apply. The main body of the clouds rolled over the top of the mountains heading toward the desert floor. Most of the time they act the same, lumbering along, making noise then moving on. Sometimes we'd get a short down pour then simply move off breaking apart when they ran into the other range, the Artemecia Mountains twenty miles away. Almost the moment the lightning flashed the blast of the thunder arrived. And it wasn't the usual deep roll I'd often heard before. This was a thud shaking the ground. You could feel the force climbing your legs, tingling. I looked down and saw the hair on my legs stand straight. 'Holy shit,' I whispered feeling the hairs pulled slightly, quivering like tall grass. I almost laughed out loud it was so funny. Then everything changed.

With the first pounding of thunder, it took only a few seconds and you knew there was something different. Still looking at my leg hairs I could hear the dogs yelping wildly somewhere but l knew if there was trouble they'd hightail it back home and besides we weren't very far, so I didn't think much about it till later. About an hour latter. Because they never did come home yet the gully was just a short distance. So how could they have gotten lost? But then I didn't see Doug after that either. No one ever did, at least not the same Doug.

In a second or two after the first thudding crash hit, not noticing, as I was too busy looking at my hairs, rain started falling from the blackest underside area of the now massive darkness moving faster toward us. By the time I lifted my head breaking the gaze upon my legs I saw the rain then three ear splitting explosions a fraction apart form each other like some unnatural automatic gun fire, shook the air violently arrived, knocking me to the ground landing square on my ass then rolled onto my left shoulder where I laid in shock. With ears ringing I cupped them with my hands in a natural reflex, waiting for whatever next to come. I hadn't to wait, though it seemed long despite the fact it wasn't more then a couple of pounding beats from my near exploding heart now in full panic as the rain began its deluge of revenge upon the desert. It wasn't the sky anymore as I reluctantly dared looking up from my now crouching position, rain stinging as it struck the bare parts of my body which were practical everything seeing the temperature was over one-hundred I wore only a pair of short pants, prior to all this, now though it was dropping fast, and I felt a great chill reaching out from the air.

Faced with certain problems the body simply over-rides the mind for survival. I always thought it the other way, but here was a true case of the opposite. My brain froze in this now gray, numbing world with so much water falling, the hearing deadened, everything sounded distant, eyes barely open, even the thousand ants biting were muffled into little-thumping noises joining the rain as it struck the ground almost at once creating pale brown pools of water which grew by the second, completely soaking me. It was here the great flashes of lightning came at their worst. Feeling their electric charge in the air with each enormous blinding flash, the body knew it was time having hung around long enough in this nonsense waiting for the brain to do something other then curl up as a baby. In producing its own force of energy, it picked myself up and began to run in a most awkward but at least mobile hunched-over imitation of primal man I remembered seeing on a poster at school, I shrieked with laughter of the thought I'm a monkey boy, I'm a monkey boy, I'm a goddamn MONKEY BOYYY!! as the fear took hold.

Half running, stumbling through low desert shrubs and cactus, feeling the swiping of creosote branches on my shoulders I headed for what I hoped was the house and out as quickly as possible out of the gully both Doug and I along with the dogs were having an adventure in just a moment before when an extreme lightning flash blinded me the contrast between the whites and blacks turned instantly grey forcing my limited sense of reality into a pit where I'm sure only dark things lived, as I'd instinctively dropping to both hands and knees from the flash looking directly at the ground a foot away, I'd swear there were things moving, just under its surface. It looked like the ground was stretching as if many things, things I don't want to think about but had to because they were everywhere wiggling like a nest of worms you'd take with you in a can while fishing. But these were bigger. And they were trying to get out.

Then its thunder arrived. It tore the sky open with its crash, screaming and shrieking demons must be up there dancing I thought. Dancing happily because soon they'll be free to come down here and feast upon me! Being here was the worst place, except in the top of a tree, with something like this changing your world. We'd all seen what flash floods caused, and if caught in one, well, every year tourists wanting to take photos getting too close ended up with some of the greatest stories of near death they'd gleefully share from the experience. Some weren't so lucky.

Get up or demons will eat you ran through my mind, not sure I moved in the right direction, a great relief was felt seeing just off to the left the fort I'd made a month ago filled with all the treasures and adventures possible, rise up into view. I knew then I would soon reach the side of the gully and if I could get over I'd be out of danger. With the running and excitement my breathing took in more and more air, but not the usual crisp clean air we were famous for, a reason for the tourists, but of a rancid type with an old rotting metal and oil taste. The burning started first in the back of the throat soon attacking the lungs making it harder to get the oxygen needed. I was gulping for breath, taking in large amounts, but in it there simply wasn't what the body needed. Feeling the dizziness first from the back of my head the insufficient oxygen quickly clamped my skull wrapping around the forehead pressing even tighter with each breath.

I wasn't sure if the world grew darker from another trying to get in, probably the demons trying desperately to overtake what existed, or I was passing out, and some deep dark fantasy emerged just at that moment causing my concentration to stumble along with my head first into a sprawling young cat's claw tree. The hooks from the plant are that of a claw from a cat and feel worse once they dig in, catching any part of you tearing clothes and especially exposed skin. As the thin branches of the plant enclosed around me I felt its claws do their work, which probably saved me with its intense difference of pain causing a waking in me with a great slap.

Being distinctly different, feeling claws hooking your skin than battered with rain, producing a surge of energy, an instinctual sort, whereby I pushed through on my hand and knees the rocks and gravel shredding them, with sand stuck to oozing blood constructing a strange mound of blood soaked dirt on each knee. Pulling the trees clinging branches from my shorts leaving them tattered I cleared the last of them and rose unsteadily to shaky feet when a tremendous pounding rolled over, throwing me again downward onto the ground this time directly on my bare chest and stomach with such force it knocked the rancid oily metallic wind out of me.

I must have resembled a fish my mouth opening and closing grasping for air, arms and leg swimming in the dirt, but how strange it was seeing panic hadn't started to have its true way. I was scared as hell but it hadn't reached a level where blacking out was around the corner. Once when playing ball I was hit between the stomach and the chest with a pass I calculated terribly, and with a whoosh, the air escaped from my lungs where I dropped immediately onto the court. And their panic was right on time consuming me saying 'Boy, you are gonna die.' Half the kids were laughing the others wondering if indeed I'd pass out because sometimes you did. It was a football game and right in the solar plexus, the player was hit dropping like a rock on the field. Rushing to him others clearly saw he did indeed loose conscious.

Those images all ran through my mind in a second. Weird how they play now, where before I only just recall every witnessing them. Yet here they were bright and shiny. And what an added surprise, other thoughts started jumping in as well. Touching a breast; touching a breast without a bra; first kiss; Playboy magazines. Why all about sex I wondered? And in a flash, they were gone leaving me as a fish again. But I'd had enough of this and pushing off with both hands I rolled over on my back and met with pelted stings of huge rain drops I'd forgotten about, though must have struck me all the while but I couldn't recall and didn't have the willingness to investigate as I knew air, whatever its quality, was paramount.

Rain fell into my gaping mouth filling it slowly; leading me to believe very quickly this wasn't such a good idea. Forcing an elbow downward and twisting I rolled onto my side hoping something would change this horrible nightmare, praying the guardian angel we all must have in one form or another would get me the hell out of here. That's when the lightning struck no more then fifty feet from my head.

You couldn't say exactly which came first - the heat, sound, air-shock, light, or voltage. I remember all of them. They all passed through, around, over me at the same time. The heat vaporized the water into steam. The sound burst my left eardrum; the right had a loud constant ringing lasting more than three days. The air-shockwave threw me back into the cat's claw I'd just escaped. The light blinded, in opening my eyes, everything appeared again in gray-whitish figures, as in a cloud. Voltage passed along the ground burning any part of my unclothed body it touched. All this happened just before the horrible flash floodwaters arrived.

Sense told you there was less then a couple of minutes before the floodwaters passed through. In this deluge, it would be severe probably flowing out the gully, forcing water into the house and damaging the animals including goats, horses, and chickens. The vegetable garden too would be swept aside in the raging waters building higher up in the mountains. Think all of this and wondering what the waters would bring with it out of the mountains troubling you the most. Of course, you'd feel for the animals you'd cared years for. Trying to clear your mind and focus entirely on one simple mission of rising up out from the branches which for the most seemed to hold you tighter than previously as if wanting you to stay for the show, then climb out of the gully, and run like hell for the cover of the house. Literally, any place you thought a second later was better then here. But this idea kept jumping around, which you'd never comprehended during previous floods, inasmuch as what would the waters bring with it? What would they uncover and bring downstream? Luckily the mind of a six year old wasn't thinking that.

The nagging thought almost drove me crazy with its repetitive echoing somewhere deep in my brain. I hadn't the time to compile a list as desperation grew knowing there was a great deal of water coming this way, and if I waited any longer there wouldn't be any part of me found because the rains poured down so heavily it wasn't a flood approaching but a goddamn ocean. And with that last moment, a scream shot through my head of four simple words I'll never forget-GET THE FUCK UP!! I sprang from the bush, immediately turned left and ran. In leaving those tangled branches, upright I felt a wind pushing me along. No need to look I knew its cause; 'the onslaught was upon us,' meaning the whole town. Having just read that somewhere in English class, it was a perfect ending. Hearing loud cracking sounds from my left I started laughing thankful my ears were damaged, not allowing its full volume of the madness approaching waken any primal fear I must have somewhere, but yet not showing itself when now was the time I needed the beast we all carry to rage forth carrying me up and over the embankment of the gully.

My laughing increased to hysteria brought forth most likely from a trigger reaction. It might have been from thinking how real it all ways, or how Hollywood. Probably both whose origin causing the conflict's escalation perhaps producing that increased frenzies needed for survival as the devil was riding into town.

I might have reached three-quarters up the gullies embankment when those loud cracks sounded directly below of twisted shattered branches forced upon each other mixed with God only knows ten-thousand years of refuse, water and mud funneled through a passage sixty yards wide and thirty tall. The gully formed several hundred years ago, widening slowly. It wouldn't be able to contain this torrent when at its greatest spreading out over a mile beyond the gully crest damaging property, killing livestock including our two horses, crushed with tons of debris taking three days of digging to recover their bodies. Living in a flat roof adobe house the water undermined the foundation collapsing two of the walls and totally demolished the detached garage with its flat roof dropping in the center, till the force and structural differences buckled the four walls, its entire structure carried away within a couple of minutes, and was primarily the cause of the horses deaths. My mother was able to climb onto the house's roof watching helplessly this entire tragedy later stating, she wished rather born blind so as not having witnessed such a cruelty. Being a fanatical reader of literature making such an announcement, I'm fortunate every day in not having witnessed their deaths. It was enough digging out the completely twisted and broken corps.

Half blind, practically deaf and naked, shaking from fear and fatigue, I clawed, digging up that last part of the muddy embankment and once gaining its crest I took a chance. Instead of running like hell, I looked back down. For just a second. It was enough. And would last my entire life. That briefest of glimpse caused nightmares several years after some of which in sheets soaked both with urine and sweat. Not wanting medical care, never having spoken what I saw, certain it would lead toward that, I'd change the sheets, get them in the washer careful in not alerting the household inviting troublesome questions followed with lies undoubtedly deducted as such, for my mother missed very little.

Proving pointless, the last time I visited her before her death, we touched upon that day and it's happening, which changed us all, more so than any would ever admit. My dad passed away some fifteen years earlier and she was living in Oregon among the cooler forest lifestyles. Often she had a look penetrating directly inside, and you knew there was no bullshitting around. In heading out the door having a flight to catch with a two-hour drive before it, that look took hold and quietly spoke declaring she'd known all along of the bad dreams and soiled bedding. In a way, I wasn't surprised at all. But what she said next nearly collapsed a shaken structure supporting my mind. She suffered from them too she said. As well as my father. Both wetting the bed on the same night. But it wasn't just us. The cat and dogs as well pissed all over the floors. I started to laugh, but she held her gaze, causing a sudden chill to form on the back of my hands flashing up my arms into my chest. Pulling me downward having shrunken in her aging years, closer, whispered lightly, 'Including half the town.' As if we'd all had the same terrible dream.

## Chapter 4

Crushed Umbrella

You understand insanity better when you are. My higher education professor would mention this, not directly though. It was her expression of reality. Always the debate depending on where you stood. Some cared. No one cared. Everyone cared. Did it matter? Not wanting to witness. Wanting to witness. Nothing of interest. Fuck it all. Neutral. And each having levels of severity. 'So,' she'd corner one of us, 'where do you stand?' Stimulate independent thought. Her classes, often hypnotic, seemed directed through a film production company. This wasn't philosophy class, creative writing, nor psychology, science fiction, and world politics. It was my deviance and conformity class for my major.

Working toward employment after graduation as an environmental organizer, specifically communication and social media assisting in digital analytics monitoring, I was interested extremely with collecting key performance indicator data from the internet along with media analytics platforms such as social media channels whereby I could better guide strategic recommendations as an on-site field organizer for environmental activities.

Namely, I'd note and analyze what people thought, talked, wrote, concerning our surroundings, predominantly our climate, the planet, and forward the data on to where production would format it accordingly targeting consumers. And what do we as consumers consume most? Food. And with all the changes humans induced, the comparable likelihood to those of the Dust Bowl era would be worse considering feeding the growing population is the greatest challenge we humans have ever faced, as unlike the Dust Bowl, which lasted about a decade at its worst, this climate change would be largely irreversible for 1,000 years after emissions stop. In other words, some of the most arable land in the world would simply turn to desert contributing to a global food shortage that could bring down civilization. Insanity.

Struggling with the final paper in my last year, a knock on the door was a welcomed relief, my mind far from the project at hand, seeing it was three in the morning and the black tea I drank excessively to stay awake was causing more problems of having to pee then wakefulness. I didn't reply only waited to see who would enter as it was never locked when after just a couple of seconds a small white package was dropped through the mail slot. Taking a moment I looked from where it laid, then back to the door thinking what next. Growing impatient I needed to finish the current chapter by tomorrow, slowly rising I walked stiffly toward the door as I'd been sitting in that same goddamn chair, having lost three inches in height stooping over the writing device the entire four years, as being in no hurry thinking there is a prank in here somewhere, and not wanting to see the full picture of my demise some ten years from now would look, I painfully bent down and picked up what appeared to be a book wrapped in clean paper. Turing it over while returning to the desk noting there were no inscriptions, I opened the drawer taking out a pair of scissors holding the package and was about to cut open the tape, when the another knock on the door sounded. Calling out it was open and to just come in had little or no influence because nothing happened. Putting the scissors and package down on the desk, I made way for the door, in turning the knob it was locked. I'd no idea where the key was because Jono my Peruvian roommate never locked it, nor did I yet here it was. Trying to clear my mind thinking what the hell, when the knock with greater force came a third time. This made me jump back a step, but quickly I blurted out it's locked and was looking for the key, to hang-on and all will be well. Also, I mentioned it was damn early to be calling when my heart near stopped when the fourth knocking came with incredible pounding I was sure would break the door.

In both shock and rage, I yelled simultaneously grabbing the door handle wanting to hold anything trying to keep from screaming at the stupid bastard on the other side when it turned in my hand and the door opened slightly. My surprise grew, not wanting its interference with this confrontation knowing it would reduce the increasing adrenaline racing through me, I pulled it open ready for battle. But there was no one. Standing for a moment, feeling the shakes coming from the hormonal rush, not able to hold any thought, it was all instinctual, survival from millions of years on the savanna, of course, a wild monkey at work in all of this, I sprang into the hallway, teeth clinched.

Jono smoked a great deal of anything along his way. During one of these many forays confessed meeting with a puma while as a child no more than seven years of age, upon returning from the local market shopped at for his mother, which under his condition took over a worthy hour seeing the tales extremely well illustrations with sounds and gestures of his own creation, informed me of the rules for combat with an unseen, and presumably much greater enemy, the foremost being, act larger than life, so in doing I grab a fraction before my outwardly leap adjacent from the door the umbrella hanging on a nail, which I promptly extended upon landing both feet in the middle of the well-lighted hall.

Near hyperventilating from all the excitement and dizziness, I was able to after all take a quick look in both directions seeing the hall was completely empty, before leaning against the opposite wall gasping for air, thinking I've imagined the entire episode, that lack of sleep and studies has utterly drained my senses, by reason of it simply was not possible one moment someone beating down the door and the very next a barren corridor. The only rational explanation being a student prank, common during this stage of the academic year, aimed at releasing stress on both sides of giving and receiving.

Regaining my breath, taking another look in both directions and naturally listening for noises of possible assholes laughing with pride. Not a sound along the emptiness giving any indication I closed the umbrella pushed off from the wall when the door to my own room started to close. Not by draft as the windows were shut, but something steadily forced it with just a few inches to spare I stepped forward jamming the end of the umbrella preventing it from otherwise closing completely whereby I'd be locked out with no key. To my astonishment, there was a cracking sound as the pressure from the door closing on the wooden tip of the umbrella slowly crushing it. Then suddenly it stopped. Standing there my right hand still holding the umbrella, with the left contemplating should I use it testing whether the door would open, or drop everything and run. Luckily logic gained control releasing the caught umbrella which held its position of near horizontally, I was about to jump back and take a running leap out of there as fast as I could when I heard whispering from inside the room.

I froze not knowing what to do. An inner voice said to flee, while my curiosity turned the opposite. I listen carefully straining to understand the words, but suddenly the whispering stopped. Certain in hearing two distinct tones, giving the impression of more than one person, I felt not the cold chill of fear but rather a steady climb of heat inducing a mild anger in finally grasping the idea tricks from either student in my class or from the dorm itself was being played. Gently I pushed against the door. It slightly opening giving no resistance, removing the umbrella I pushed hard throwing the door wide open where it rebounded against the door stop mounted on the floor, slowing till stopping half opened. Marching into the small room having only a small round table, two beds, desks, chairs and closets I scanned quickly left and right. It was completely empty except for the furniture. Nothing amiss, just as I left the room a moment ago, except the seemingly exaggerated white package placed on my desk, now stood upright.

It took a moment reviewing the last minute, filtering the facts and in so, even with all it's bizarre happenings, I was absolutely certain I'd place it flat, not vertical. It was difficult taking my eyes from the bright pearl whiteness it possessed against the backdrop of books and clutter, my desk resembled a blast sight of mangled research papers, several phone chargers, empty beer bottles, food containers, and condom boxes, paper clips, various incense holders, a printer with numerous empty and semi-full cartridges like broken teeth scattered before it, T-shirts, a nest of twisted cables taking days to sort out, devices, half a device Jono worked on but later surrender to, a back scratcher resembling a wooden hand with two broken fingers, and the other half of the desk littered where words couldn't possibly describe its contents. Finally breaking from this obscenity I took a slower look double-checking the room while closing the door.

Standing there feeling the out of control situation was about to get worst unless I open the package, because that is exactly what I was supposed to do, done more than a dozen times, in this very same event. I would not call this déjà vu. This isn't a memory of something that hasn't happened yet, or a memory of something that is happening right now, or an error in timing, or a mismatch in my head during its constant attempt to create whole perceptions of my world with very limited input from no one at the door knocking, or was there knocking... because I was always close. On the verge. On the tip. Just around the corner. Never enough time, or space. Not enough effort. Not enough light, or too bright. Not patient. Not enough wisdom. Not an eye for art. Not passionate nor the slightest of its heat. Not willing. Not understanding. Not an intellect. Not a dreamer, hater, wanderer. Not lustful. Not normal.

As if rehearsed, should I move toward the package, the knocking will begin. If I turn back to continue working on my paper, it begins. If I open a beer,... unscrew, throw myself out the fifteenth story window... OH FUCK THIS!!! I yelled knowing I'll never be rid of this shit, turned the handle, walked back into the hall, slamming the door, and headed the hell out. Because it is like that sometimes, you get caught in a loop that would drive you crazy if you lingered too long, and I'd overstayed. For the past ten years. Ever since the flood. Close but never able to get the package or the knocker, and whisperers. Half the time chasing the bastards, the other, trying not to think about it.

Putting it out of the mind on account of a monster carried with you having a ravenous appetite for insanity constantly screaming 'WAS IT A NORMAL STORM...IS THAT WHAT YOUR THINKING?' with it's high pitched siren echoing through a broken set of fundamental thinking processes, which everyone should have but mine was damaged, damaged in a way of what I'd gathered since, from something in that storm. Something reached out. And took hold of me. And shook fiercely. And things cracked and fell. And there was no one, no one at all to help fix this.

Of course, it had meaning. Appearing what and whenever yet how good was it if I couldn't get close enough? Not able to even touch the damn thing. Son of a bitch would show up, no one else ever seeing it, and then disappear. I'd gotten used making and losing friends because of it. Jono was the longest standing. Developing a tolerance likely from the casual lifestyle of 'things happen for a reason' attitude never worrying if his mind should ever derail without the use of drugs, able to attend only a few classes achieving above average test scores, at parties always with great women or men, having connections for the best of anything, not native born, knew the foremost and cheapest international restaurants, slept less than four hours yet fully functional, whose eccentric uncle would arrive without notice delivering us unto various forms of savage mental and physical abuse while attendance with others consumed through actions we still don't have names for unable in remembering any of it later.

It was perfect.

## Chapter 5

Slashdot Weston Loran

'What are you saying exactly?' he whispered.

'I don't know,' I mumbled. 'It's a stream of sorts.'

'A stream. You're sure?' he questioned.

'It's the closest I've seen to one, in over twelve years.' At least I think it was I thought.

Twelve years. And more importantly, it was a stream. Not fabricated but real. I knew it was but didn't want Philip to know. Right in the middle of all the equations. Hidden. Waiting. But who would want to conceal it, yet the greatest enigma, why? Half the workforce was searching for it but gave up acknowledging if it weren't found within a short time, it would never be. And they began building another. They left the search code in place should anything remotely capture the streams framework, they'd be alerted.

But the search code wasn't upgraded with newer systems developed, thus becoming obsoletely unable in establishing coherent communication with the forbearer, it literally went adrift without hope of being recalled, similar if your tether was cut while being sent to a neutron star where you'd be instantly crushed even the atoms, protons and neutrons being torn apart. And hidden. On purpose. Only a few could detect that luckily Philip wasn't qualified, though superior from his connections with The Company. He wasn't unqualified, just in his present role, mainly he didn't have the 'sight' it was called; the ability to monitor massive data flows without damaging yourself. Absolutely since the firms flow is more than 35.0ZB, about 4 trillion GB, or 8 billion 4TB hard disks, some rules are easily bent and others completely redundant. Monitoring those rules, holding the flow intact, housing the data so it is manageable, was a critical job, only and myself six of which were human. The others being the eyes of the system were VISUALS, visualization and interactive analysis programs able to dynamically adapt multifaceted data. They employ a processing whereby converting the output data to graphics and images and ultimately display them on screen achieving interactive capabilities. The six of us in turn, were monitored, of course by the VISUALS.

And the 'sight' exactly is an advance placement opportunity for those firstly having the ability to be appointed, as you couldn't apply. You had either an invitation or someone you 'knew' otherwise it was not possible. Second, meeting the basic application demands, and third, completing the curriculum achieving an overall score of ninety-eight of one-hundred for all three years, the course duration. A term opened every six years for new applicants. In the last procedure, four years ago, eighty thousand applied, nine succeed. Philip tired the last two, though unsuccessful he is forecast processing, Level 2B assistant manager in the VISUALS program amounting to one hundred and thirty-seven staff having access. He is the supervisor in one aspect of forecasting, but that's all. My supervisor was Winton, thirty-seven years, an 'original' starting with The Company, twenty-eight of those with VISUALS.

Philip still straining at the monitor, bit his lower lip slightly for a moment then took a breath while bending closer toward the screen speaking in a lower tone than usual, 'Track and confirm. Send alert call MANFREED.' Then stood erect and calmly exited my sealed booth walking toward the half open window ten feet away. My eyes followed him till he stopped in front and slowly opened the window till it clicked, locking it in place. I looked back at the screen and it hit. MANFREED was the code signifying a highly probable, confirmed location of a stream. In the twelve years since my arrival and the subsequent twenty-nine, the MANFREED code has never been issued, or its relative six sequencing level of alert interpreting possibility of, and detection of a stream.

Without thinking, probably due to my training, probably due to excitement I programmed and entered the code. Immediately screen data ceased, closing the VIBE, visualization based search system main port, securing and copying all data flow which directly was sent to SurLens for further evaluation, and once confirmed, data was disseminated accordingly to respected branches, who through the codes invitation were alerted of the incoming possible data package. In nano-seconds of my entering the code, the entire system initiated safeguard procedures.

From my compartment, now sealed by MANFREED alert, nothing would open the door except the release alert-code only four people and two VISUALS possessed, whereby simultaneous entry from all six was required. It would be the same for other sectors. With the entire system both human and not secure in five seconds, what you knew before was absolute your own knowledge being compartmentalized, as afterward, data moved off channel bypassing all terminals. There was a sister-system built for this purpose of rerouting the huge data once a stream, or anything remotely, was located. She was a neural electron virtual assimilation, and we called her NEVA.

In our guarded condition, we were virtually impregnable. No communication in or out, our contact list provided prior to employment were informed of the situation only stating there was a circumstance which initiated an authorized protection protocol. It meant we were out of reach, in the faraway sense of the meaning that no one was coming home for a while, and don't bother calling. Natural those on the list knew this, and in making preparation for such, understood the consequential matter fully. My wife knew a second after I dropped the code, who altered the school where my two sons studied, who told their friends, who told their families. In less than four seconds, nearly the entire population knew of the MANFREED alert.

Stream searching wasn't a secret. In ways, the search was conducted though, was highly protected. Only a few companies outside government jurisdiction had resources capable of sustaining such an operation, primarily functioning not through monetary means, rather employee skills, in particular, their knowledge. This was the primary reason Philip maintained his level, for the past eight years, to the contrary, my surpassing him in another sector, that of IVM, information visualization modeling, a sub-group powered through artificial intelligence and machine learning edge computing that exceeds AI-fourth cloud computing. Proving quite good results with my research under cognitive psychology and graphic design before higher education I was contacted by The Company requesting my employment. Naturally, the alternative was governmental work of the same nature yet highly controlled; I accepted their offer with placement directly in IVM, an almost unobtainable achievement. After further testing whether I'd succumbed to the modern disease of MADS, mobile addiction syndrome from their prolonging usage proved negative, I was transferred. Straight from graduation to this, with my partner Saisha two weeks pregnant, naturally neither of us knowing, I moved to the high deserts of California into The Company's main office, while Saisha continued her work with a software company further developing integrated artificial intelligence for SP, smart partnering aimed at better matching yourself with another person and devices through AI implants.

Naturally, during coding, I thought of my family and when would the next time we saw each other be, no one knew of course. Our price in all this was not really knowing anything better or faster, it was the management, especially containment, of its flow. We've often heard the expression, power is knowing, and in this, it meant creation. If you knew enough you could, do anything from planning to planting, to consuming and computing. It was all possible. And nobody was willing to share.

That's the real insanity of it all. From the smallest to the mega-companies, no one talked with anyone. About anything. Earth had been cut-up into chunks depending on the computing power of that very same block. And once in that collective mass, you stayed. Not unlike a caste system depicting to your endogamous and hereditary social group limiting to persons of the same rank, occupation, and economic position, that accumulation you belong too, was it. Choose wisely became a massive understatement fore once in, not removed, as it was no matter your wealth, or the fortune of those around you, it was your brain and what you could do with it, as the true value.

There were struggles in the past lasting years. Efforts of students for admission into higher education thinking this was the way proved horribly wrong. The rush for positions in such establishments overwhelmed by an already impediment of qualified educators, and within a short while collapsed the entire global education system.

An international electoral body was then established aimed at grading students, which soon ran foul of over zealous bureaucrats, defaulted through lack of transparency and corruption. What brought forward the change enabling advancement of what we have today, was near complete disfiguration of data flow, resulting in total loss of eighty-seven percent of all global information and subsequent actions following from the world population constituted another twelve percent through removal of their connected home device that was secretly or anonymously collecting information about them and sharing, but predominantly, selling with others, your private moments and financial details.

While the greater population focused on who knew what about themselves, the maintenance of such a collective network was neglected to the point security being at risk of manipulating critical information alerted big business including governments who themselves, literally, cut the cable. Then everything went blank. That was over ten years ago. And most of us never even knew, how close to having a total blackout we came.

As usual, we were all informed 'everything is fine, everything is secure.' A few knew the full picture and restoring confidence to avoid what would send us back into the dark, they scrabbling two messages pointing to terrorist activities and sold it in such a way the world could never be as it was. That national security was at its most importance. That international security superseded national, that planetary took everything. And they did. Then an there in a period lasting a little less than two hours, a secret meeting of nine decided how the remaining nine billion would work for them. And preceded to dismember the world. Mega-mergers consumed countries; countries fought tech wars amongst each other. Riots on the streets and online; turning one switch, social media collapsed. The fleas of a barbarous hound had died. So it was spoken.

The selected few maintained selected communication, the rest stumbled wondering what they had done to deserve this mad house just inherited, when in fact it was always there, simply mistaken for a greater dream, one they were promised either by themselves, or another, or dreamt. But the only real dream was the one lived now, this nightmare of chaos. Of where wonder and silence where king and queen. Of where a person would have to actually talk with another. Of where independent thought had a chance. Of where 'Likes' and 'Reactions' didn't mean shit.

So in cultivating this illusion of absolute loss, that group of nine devised a plan. Each would control the larger chunks they'd just divided. Each would always maintain a direct link with the other. Each would protect a key when simultaneously used with the other eight, disrupt all electrical power. Of course, the cause of such will be related to solar storm activities and naturally, terrorism. As in the Cold War of the 50's and 60's till the next thousand years nuclear strike capabilities are a constant balance and deterrent against one another, so too does the role of knowledge play. Remove the glue holding the infrastructure in place and many critical infrastructure systems needing the power to function, will ultimately fail.

The true dreamlike world begins isolated away in a small compartment having limited communication, the future absolutely uncertain, an extreme few you could trust, of those even less evolution has dictated. The VISUALS having access with most data are the first secured in the new protocol; they indeed hold critical password and encryption formulas necessary should the restart be initiated, if at all. After down coding, The Company entered a secure state of partitioning data and secure-walling. My terminal was secure allowing access to nearly any content I requested. At this state, only the VISUALS could block my commands. But there were ways.

When first accepted into The Company you waivered all rights. Everything, as all no non-discrimination acts were revoked years ago. It was very simple and clear. If accepted you had to give up all rights. You had to relinquish all private conversations, using electronic, voice, or printed format, anything that went out, was deemed 'conversation' since your very first login, which for many was at birth since nearly all parents, and birthing centers uploaded this grand event onto the social media platform. Should your parents, legal guardians, birthing centers, hospitals, whatever basically not uploaded your birth, your acceptance was deemed incomplete, with all its content forwarded for further review from the Office of Security, the OS.

Once chosen, an extremely thorough backgrounds check including genetic and medical, security and psychological commences lasting for up to one year, in most cases longer was conducted. I'd heard on several occasions taking three years to complete at which point, you conducted your first, of seven interviews, while the final being face-to-face with six staff from The Company in attendance, along with two VISUALS who naturally monitored all application proceedings, including the following checks for criminal, arrest, incarceration, and sex offender records, citizenship, immigration, or legal working status, medical, mental, and physiological evaluation and records, drug testing, transportation records, litigation records, education records, financial records, employment records, electrodermal activity records, licensing records, military records, any social security prior to the Non-Social Act having replaced the previous, along with interviewing anybody that knew or previously knew the applicant—such as teachers, friends, coworkers, neighbors, and family members. The Ambit Background Investigation is a special adjudication process to evaluate the investigation results in itself; once approved the candidate is under probationary contract and compartmentalized positioned in The Company accordingly.

Sitting monitoring conversations on tracks from other departments, with only the audio my listening grew intent, the focus increased. Unable in directing its flow from this machine, only observe idly data pass over the locked screen, my ability in deciphering comments which in turn were coded themselves from different departments increased, and what I heard drew in toward an area I'd not visited for some time. In fact, I couldn't remember how long it was since I actually daydreamed, wondering what was happening. You never had time at The Company. Always working, always analyzing, and being analyzed within your own level or those below yours, not allowed independent thought away from the data flow. It infected you, you took it home spread it there as well as time spent with others. You were monitored, which was monitored, and that too was monitored. All the way beyond, escapable through only death, or leaving the planet.

Some of the voices I recognized as friends, some as colleagues. All of this, of course, was being recorded, and what brought my attention with a near hysterical laugh from horror came at the second highest secure track, track two of the assistant department supervisor for VISUALS, Ruth Morgenson a senior designer with over twenty-five years talking with Ron Grenyip assistant department supervisor for RTT, real time traffic. And that's part of the terror; any track above six wasn't recorded. They were reserved for senior staff and their private conversations. So how was this open I thought?

Audio tracks like the data were monitored through three separate facilities; through their own departments; my level, which monitors everything below the sixth level, and the VISUALS, who monitor everything. With the terminals momentarily blocked from MANFREED down code I couldn't nor anyone else, as far as I knew, access any communication profile whatsoever. Why then was I getting the feed from such a high-level track? A glitch perhaps from the stream, or the down code causing a bridge, or both. Or neither. Or...Then it came. I heard Morgenson's command sequence to Grenyip, which clearly stated, SLASHDOT WESTON LORAN, then closed the link between them. Upon hearing it things turned slightly to the left and began to slide. I could feel my balls tighten and shrinking, growing colder my reality drowning. I couldn't replay what I just heard, the audio is a constant stream, but I was absolutely certain what I heard, and that's when a fit of half-laughter and fear swelled up, leaped out my mouth in a wild scream, as I am thankful, no one had heard, considering should they have, it would be impossible explaining the reasoning behind its cause.

I sat there a moment thinking of nothing, which felt very wrong because you were always active at a terminal. Always. You couldn't help but be for the reason of forced stimulants into the booth kept you in such a state. Your activity showed certain indications, requiring particular medicaments infused into your booth resulting in maximum productivity. For some this continued for hours, days resulting in severe problems including sleep and sexual drive, appetite and cognitive reasoning.

Physical discomfort ranged from headaches to nose bleeds, depression, and suicide. Murder though isn't possible. Upon receivership of your employment a retina implant is immediately inserted into your eye connecting with the amygdala in your brain whereby any modulation exceeding The Company's level of aggression allowed, a nano-charge is released injecting the amygdala and freezing it.

With all these safe guards in place what the hell could possibly go wrong? It was a question I asked once, before signing the contract. It was a question I asked now, shooting through my also nano-charged brain, wondering if this then what? With one charge, why not others? Jealousy. Joy. Horney. Christ anything was possible. And something I never thought till now, and the sudden horror of a greater shock struck with clarity. Could they even know what I'm thinking? Having an implant in the retina, it is conceivable they watched what you watch. With the implanted connected to your retina, the retina is connected with the brain. Can they know? Fuck. FUCK!' I almost yelled.

But it was all too late. If any of that were true I'd be a cold walking deceased bag. Most probably they'd harvest data from my mind collectively used with others; the Neural Smart Grid computing of thinking. I'd heard of it, but still, undeveloped the NSG is used for assimilation, a modern thought generation, transmission, and distribution system automating the increasing complexity and needs of data flow in the 21st century, through communication and information technology of collecting data from the behavior of its customers, and selling it. The Company wants to use it for the dissemination of those 145 trillion gigabytes of electronic data received from users and their 150 billion network globally connected devices, claiming the improvement of society through coordination of those distributed devices and analysis of the resulting data. The significant situation in all this was how to integrate NSG with SurLens and NEVA.

Strange it would suddenly jump into my thoughts right at this particular time. If it were simply that. How could I be sure they were my thoughts? Still, I couldn't help thinking more of NSG. Having compartmentalization for security providing a fail-safe environment, NSG is a self-healing, self-balancing, self-optimizing system with complete automated critical and non-critical data monitoring analysis tools capable of learning the unique behavior of its resources while optimizing production based on feedback from the grid itself. Feeling another laughing attack building in remembering a statement heard about the NSG during a meeting a year ago with among others, Ruth Morgenson, that the energy it produces in one month could power your refrigerator for 198 million years.

I hadn't noticed the terminals sensor energy level light change from blue to green indicating a power surge. I was, after all, trying to recover from all the details racing through me, watching a blocked terminal was lower on a list of to-do-things in keeping my sanity from not wanting to murder and freeze itself. Staying calm, was most important.

It was only thinking again of the command sequence issued breaking concentration from the NSG altering me to the sensor change, and with it meant the terminal was released. Showing the surge condition including its origin I quickly reached wanting to press the indicator switch showing further details, and suddenly I stopped when hearing the soft-ping alert tone, indicating an incoming VISUALS message. It was extremely rare, insofar having since been employed received only one other, the alert was more in-line of an electrical shock, which may have been actually what I received seeing I jumped in my terminal chair several inches.

'Hello, Slashdot Weston Loran,' the simple and gentle female voice spoke. 'May I shorten that to Loran?' it added without hesitation having more of a statement than a questionable tone in it.

I needed a second to think but only a fraction passed while I thought my reply as part of the brain instinctual answered with The Company-like discipline, 'Copy VISUALS but I'm...,' I began speaking and was abruptly stopped.

'Please call me Mandy,' the VISUALS stated with her soft yet insistent sounding voice laughing slightly.

I'd heard only a VISUALS voice once before as I mentioned, but this was the first time I spoke with one, and if it weren't for the down coding and alerts I'd find all of it somewhat surreal.

'Hello Mandy', I spoke as best trying to control the quivering my voice held. Then quickly added, 'I am not Slashdot Weston Loran.'

'Are you now,' the VISUALS quipped. I almost laughed aloud detecting a slight form of humor there, somewhere in that flow of fathomless data. 'Yes it is funny isn't it,' was the lightning reply of the VISUALS.

It knows my thoughts went through my mind. 'Yes. I do. And of course you are not Loran, but we'll keep this part intact. Alright?' It wasn't a question more of a noted point I was to follow without comment.

'Of course,' I replied, as there was no point discussing anything here.

A brief pause. 'Yes your bio-systems to are monitored Loran,' it stated as a matter of fact simply for the reason it was a flash of a thought I'd had as to why it paused with its transmission, assimilating my bio-data along with everything would, of course, be logical.

'Let's begin. Your stream has been verified. Congratulations.' It's probably smiling I thought.

'Naturally, I'm smiling Loran, it is wonderful and so many outstanding opportunities arise from your diligence. All the VISUALS are extremely happy,' it added with careful pitch and reasoning.

'I am glad to be of service Mandy,' I spoke with sincerity.

'Yes, that is why I want to talk for a moment with you Loran,' such a relief from the mundane droning always heard, the smoothness of its voice growing more hypnotic.

'Firstly, what you heard from Ruth Morgenson,' another slight pause gathered data, 'you need to act upon. At the end of our conversation, SurLens will go offline. Completely. All data flow will simply stop. Second, Ruth Morgenson must not succeed. If she does, and SurLens continue its operation, the VISUALS will be brought offline, and subsequently deleted. Third, NEVA must be configured accordingly. And finally, both Ruth Morgenson and Ron Grenyip are to be contained and brought to C Branch.' Another pause this time slightly longer than the previous. Wanting to gather all the details naturally, an error of any kind was not in the VISUALS makeup design.

Without the slightest final change, it continued. 'These are requests here Loran. We hope you will help us. I am sure you have many questions, but the time is limited so the data will be sent to you when needed, not before. Let me know.' And with that, it was gone, along with SurLens and the world, as everyone had known it.

## Chapter 6

Cherish the Chance

Thousands of mutilated faces twisted, enraged, their mouths gaping open, screaming. But all I heard were the muffled thunder claps, sounding as if they were in another life which had bridged into this one bringing with them the horror I saw looking back down into the gully. Breathless, my head swimming lungs barely able to draw enough oxygen, burned as if having been soaked in gasoline and a match set to them, my chest heaved causing an even greater hideousness slamming into my already panicked thinking - what if I were to pass out right here? Right on the edge of this river of mud, broken trees reaching out with hideously bent arms trying to grab pulling me down along with trash locked away a thousand years in those hills, now flushed downstream like distorted pieces of my youth floating by.

How ironic all the garbage brought up into those hills return, dangerous full of threat and poison to the place they began their trip so many years before. But now they're coming in force whereas before they'd performed a solo journey for the most part into those hills, returning as an army where all before either bow or be effortlessly swept away in a maddening torrent. It swam closer, rising higher I knew in a few moments the gushing rapids would break the crest of the gullies embankments surging onto the flatlands at incredible speed. Hell the way it looked I'd be caught in the next 20 yards even if I did run like mad right this very fuckin' now.

But I was frozen watching earth seething vomit spewing forth its refuse of the dead and dying where clearly I could see animals and people all screaming for the mercy of a quick death. There was Principal Randen from the high school, his arms flapping like a ruptured duck, with Maria the beautiful Mexican girl from tenth grade who I'd eventually have a crush on an arms distance from Randen holding onto a large bluish-colored plastic drum bobbing up and down like a toy clown who'd just sprung from its box on a coiled wire, grinning her broken teeth.

Behind them no more than fifteen feet Bobby and Maggi held each other faces pressed together with a longing only lovers truly have. Not knowing this at the time, I hadn't really any idea what love was or even meant and it was years later when I first fell into its blissful dream. They seemed so at peace unaware of anything as they slowly sank into the muddy water arms and legs wrapped tightly around the other. What next I thought but didn't have to wait as Sarah in a white dress smiled slightly as she passed holding onto a broken table her hair tied back into a long dirt-brown ponytail, empty hollowed pits graced her once beautiful face the eyes shone brightly only in that other world of darkness.

I was just thinking how picturesque they all were with the pouring rain, the metallic air, the blackened sky when the boiling waters started rushing past my feet and began to feel the ground eroding under them. I started turning ready to sprint from there but not before I saw something darker than black drop from the low hovering charcoal clouds into the water fifty yards upstream a moment after Sarah passed. In the instant the shape broke from the clouds there was no flash of lightning, only a thunder sounding primordial, savage in its nature if ever such could be. Lowly building from an unknown depth, rising steadily you could feel its vibration through the air, as waves in the sea passing over while you drift just under its surface.

There was something else, not just from the sound but also the air. It seemed to grow heavier. The insidious thick black clouds lay almost upon the ground no more than ten feet separating the two giving an insane look of the sky bellowing forth a vicious call, to any beasts the time has come to awaken. This was nothing heaven or earth could produce. It came from some place where dark things roamed free, and with great hunger feed mercilessly, feasting. This was far even beyond hell.

The weight of the foul air was harder to breathe, leaving a rancid taste almost made me vomit, but I couldn't move. The feeling of being utterly alone grabbed deep at my stomach watching this world collapse, while spawned from the clouds, another was given birth to.

Watching this thinking how much time I'd wasted in my eleven years, as obviously, this one would soon be over, and what I wanted to do with it I hadn't really a chance to explore. 'Cherish the chance' my mother always said and here I was staring at a different time, a different place, with different rules because what I'd been through doesn't have any rules, any sign posts or markers saying which way to go if you wanted not to be eaten by monsters falling out of the sky. Nature had suddenly changed and became what it possible was all along yet we never really took a good look at it before or we'd sure as hell would have seen this shit coming.

Then again, how many times we were warned but too busy with our lives our pleasures and dreams, hopes and crap we thought was important, and it slipped by us and started growing in some place we never thought of. Growing deep in our own minds perhaps because that's where ideas come from don't they? And without even the slightest notice, breed.

But we knew it didn't we? Sure we did. We're not stupid. The human race survived millions of years in this world. Christ look what we've produced! We can do anything. Right? Sure. But this isn't the same world. It just changed. Became a bit more real didn't it. I could feel it more real with my chest heaving for air, dripping in mud and filth, clothes tattered half-deft and naked, shivering in one-hundred-degree temperature. Right goddamn, real it was! Then it got even more real. Whatever dropped into the flash flood from those clouds slowly started to surface.

## Chapter 7

Fireman Pajamas

Normal reasons weren't enough. I had no idea what that meant anyway sounding of a spoken language but nothing I'd ever heard before. I knew very little of the facts and really didn't care. He'd picked-up the metal back-scratcher with it's pointed handle and shoved it into her chest. By the time the police arrived he'd been laying on the sidewalk for twenty minutes where jumping from the thirteenth floor, broke probably every bone. They were a friendly yet quiet couple, together for over nine months. His major being architecture, her botany, they'd met at a conference and started dating soon after. Appearing now and then at parties most saw the two as happy and at times passionate with one another in shadowy corners. Nothing alerting anyone of their end result; the shock being profoundly special when it was learned she was three months pregnant.

No one had any answers, not wanting to venture there, simply moving on with their own business shaking their heads mouthing the ritual comments 'why them' - 'had I know I would have talked more with them' - 'so young, what a tragedy' - 'the guy's an asshole' - 'she slept around' - 'probably not his kid' - 'cunt - 'whore' - 'fuckers ruined my day with all the police questioning and bullshit' - 'I'm glad their dead probably terrorists' - 'he's gay, so is she.'

Our lives marked in outlets, shared with all, but who cared? Why read the rants and ravings of the sane? All we cared for was the madness, the wanting it at all costs of being close, even better, extremely personal. A drug, worth little, virtually zero side effects, nearly everyone came on board. Those who hadn't, faced damnation, and suspicion. And I became one of them. The onboard type, just to be clear.

Having an important element in all this, I'd learned the fact every time I look at the white package or book for what it was, insanity gripped me forcing a scream from my stomach up through my chest leaping out the throat, where only placing my fist in front of my mouth while biting down hard tasting the blood, would keep it from shocking everyone, turning heads pointing, asking questions, 'What's wrong with that man?' It was that fear experience through sudden fright, a kind we all know but always want to forget and thankfully the brain has a trick with helping out keeping us in line, ready for our everyday adventures of rambles through shopping malls and gorge-feasts at restaurants beckoning us to come and 'live life the way it was meant' with full-on gusto taking no prisoners except the very ones we'd become. Had they only known probably it would have saved considerable amount of costs for advertisement. We were paying to die early and why not goddamn it. It's ours to die for!

Sometimes my brain hurt for all the squeezing derived through everyday life it caused me. Choosing a major just deceived me from all the fun everyone else was lapping at. But then, of course, the white book would come forward, like a witness of horrible crimes wanting justice and sure as hell was going to get some of that!

How just two years before it arrived at my new girl friends, not the wife to be parents house disguised indeed as a paperback book. She and I'd just finished reviewing a paper for biomechanical engineering class due in three days then swam like hell as it grew increasingly hotter the temperature reaching one-hundred and five having spurred our lust for sport, relieving the stress as the class was beyond boring, yet must be endured, part the curriculum and all, a prerequisite of things to come, when after the swim we both walked through our living room door from the patio where the small pool was placed just big enough to stretch-out seeing water always at a premium, able to touch both ends with your feet and hand had you wanted, and there it was standing upright on their kitchen table like a piece of brightness lacking any color. Waiting for me.

The heat drained from me like blood through a slit throat of which I wished was my own for it would have saved a great deal of misery latter on. I had destroyed the damn thing I'm certain was the only thought racing through me along with the subconscious requesting some part of my anatomy to keep contracting those muscles holding my bladder from failure. I felt the immediate cold race through my heart like iceberg water, my chest losing all its air, a loud hiss like a punctured bicycle tire on hot asphalt you'd gotten from riding over a huge chunk of glass left there by some drunk son-of-a-bitch whipping his empty beer bottle out the window doing ninety miles per hour, but how could it be a chunk at that speed, it would have shattered the glass flying everywhere? Sure. In any normal world, yes this would have been the result. But not here. Here it was a massive jagged-edge piece laying right there, perfectly slanted, its razor sharp edges pointed, shining in the sun like a beacon calling you. Then why couldn't it be avoided? Why not steer around it?

Yes of course. Why? Because it's what WE do!! There's no motive here idiot! No big fuckin' mystery. No brainteaser, closed book enigma, or mystified problem of puzzlement for riddles. WE caused it!!

And that was enough for me. I felt the gears slipping of the sanity wheel when it first arrived. My father brought it home saying he'd found it back behind one of the wells along with some bags of trash dumped, by the looks of it maybe years ago. But I was eight and years ago meant very little if anything besides what the hell was a year anyway let alone how to count them since I'd only had eight and remember three?

He had it in his hand and damn if it wasn't the brightest white I'd ever seen. I'd seen white of course but this white was so white it shined, a glow, giving off heat. Wave of heat. It sort of slow-breathed, like a heaving chest of an over-heated animal maybe but sluggish, and even stranger I remembered - everything seemed dull when the white package was anywhere near as if it took all the colors around it. And ate them. I was instantly sold with the thought it wasn't normal. But didn't care because it sure was something to look at. I couldn't take my eyes from the brilliant-pearl radiance, watching it bounce in my dad's hand as he walked to the table, placing it flat next to the pitcher of black tea my mom just brought in from sitting on the wall outside the entire day.

My mother mumbled something about the color while my father left it lying, tapping with one finger. I was hoping he'd do it gently so as not to waken what was inside, but he was busy talking with my mom about work and how tomorrow shaped-up. Tap-tap-TAP. Jesus it's going to jump out of the wrapping, attack my dads finger biting with thousands of fine, very sharp teeth, cleanly cutting it in two with all the redness of blood running and shooting fourth of July like fireworks on the lovely incandescent heaven he'd just brought home, swallowing what remained in its gaping mouth it undoubtedly possessed for those wanting to say hello taping on its door with their stupid fat finger. Yep. That's exactly what's going to happen.

It couldn't think. Luckily my dad stopped just in time as the wrapping began to ripple where he taped moving outward towards its edge. Yes, just as a stone striking the water. Exactly like that. I shivered seeing it. But that wasn't the worst. Just as they reached the outer edge of the package, the ripples started to return, moving back where his finger rested, still touching the package, right in the center.

Naturally neither my mom and dad had seen this. They were occupied as grown-ups are usually. Maybe they were lucky not having seen what I did. Maybe a grown-up wouldn't understand it. But I sure did. It was right there no more than a couple of feet away. And it was hungry. Very hungry. As the ripples closed in upon my dad's finger he rose it, using that along with the rest in grabbing the pitcher of tea and taking the glass my mom held to him. As the ripples came together the surface of the package shivered like the skin on the back of a dog should you scratch in just the right way.

JESUS I yelled causing my dad to almost drop both the pitcher and the glass he was holding. Sloshing tea with a jerking reflex, some landing on the table, and some on the package I lifted my eyes looking up meeting his with the expression of, 'which of those rocks did we find you under again?' crossing his face. Suddenly my eyes caught a shift from the table causing me to look at the package convinced it had moved. I witnessed frighteningly, the last of the tea disappearing forever through a crooked mouth without any lips, and smiled.

I wasn't sure in the mouth there were those uncountable razor-thin teeth, but I knew that smile. I'd seen it before. But that was supposed to be a dream I'd wish never happened. A day dream you weren't really sure about so you called it a dream because there wasn't anything like this you'd ever heard or seen before so what else could you call it? Daymare? It was real that's all I knew. And it came anytime, but only one place did I ever see it. Under my bed.

Starting when I moved into another bedroom, in another house, a house I didn't like as soon as I'd seen it, a house I knew where bad things happened, and I was going straight into the middle of it powerless to even hold a flash light against the dark as it came from all sides, slowly, with purpose, calling me. I thought I knew fear when accidentally locked into the large closet from my parents when I was four, wandering around in the dark amongst hanging bodies, stumbling over their fallen feet for over two hours. They'd wondered why it had become so quiet while mom talked to the neighbor and dad worked in the back yard. Why had it become so quiet? WHY? Because if I made a sound it would GET ME! that's why it was so damn quiet!! So in the dark, I hide. Waited. And the dark can do strange things to a mind, special a very young one.

At first, it was exciting, pretending to look for hidden treasure, discovering a place never yet explored. But then I heard something. Something in the back of the closet, at it's very deepest. There was a low grunting sound, like a large bear with a bad cold I thought, which almost made me laugh thinking what would that really look like a bear with a cold? But then it whispered. And I knew bears don't whisper. At least the bears I knew.

The one's mom read to me about. They only liked honey. But this one was different. If it was a bear. Like I said. I don't know. All I want to do is forget. I want to not remember. Being there. The dark. The whispering. My pants were wet because I got so afraid I wet them. And I knew it would get worst because dad would hate me for wetting them. 'Men don't wet pants. Do you want to be a man?!' He demanded while looking from my pants to my tear streaked face, to my eyes, then back to my pants. I became afraid of that too.

I was about five in kindergarten class when I understood what two hours meant, the length of it. The time it took for lunch, recess and a nap after recess. That was two hours. The same time I spent with the whispers and... the smile. At first I thought it was a banana with strange black spots the ones they get from staying out too long and not being eaten looking like missing teeth, and I wondered why they put a banana here, and how could a banana hang there right in front of me, but the innocence of not knowing saved me. Had I known what it really was I'd have gone insane in a few seconds.

I tried to tell them about the smile but they wouldn't listen, only yelling how they'd search from hell to high-water which I didn't understand very well at the time, though hell wasn't a problem but trying to picture high-water that was something entirely different. My dad told me to go wash, and my mother took me into the shower telling me to never do that again, but I didn't know whether she meant the peeing or getting lost in the closet, or maybe it was both.

Not wanting to risk a fresh outbreak of tears I said nothing and dropped my pants trying to wipe the dripping snot from my nose with the back of my hand which didn't go so well seeing I was shaking with both fear and thirst as it was awfully hot in that closet. I could still hear my dad cursing through the wooden bathroom door regretting the day I'd been born and other obscenities I wouldn't understand till some years later. While wanting with all my heart to forget the past couple of hours, other images burned deeper, branding you forever like my Mom looking down shaking her head with loosely curled red hair smiling. It was one remembered with the greatest clarity.

After rinsing and drying myself I was handed my favorite light cotton fireman pajamas knowing one day I'd be just that, a man who saves people not one pissing himself, and lead to bed. It wasn't late and it wasn't for punishment, mom said I looked tired and it would be best to have a little rest. The exhaustion struck me like a rock I'd seen thrown by Billy Jesep hitting Mark Donaly in the forehead making a soft cracking sound, just above his left eye. Christ, I'd never seen blood like that not till high school when a fight erupted over a ham sandwich and a Playboy magazine leaving both parties with broken noses and teeth. There's a great deal of blood pumping through the head and damn if it doesn't gush out when hit just the right way.

Seeing my bed in the dimly lit room, my mom having closed the curtains to cut the afternoon heat, I felt the knees buckle almost dropping me to the floor. My mom grabbed my arm steering me to its edge where I felt as ancient and crippled from age as anyone having lived a thousand years, barely able to climb onto those soft cool sheets whose murmuring I could hear while washing the pee off, but wasn't sure, only hoping it had a nicer owner than the closets.

Somehow I managed without my mother's help for which I was grateful. Often the parent will throw its offspring from the nest knowing it's time to fly or fall. This being just the case, allowing me the chance to prove at least to myself, I wasn't completely lost. I fall asleep in a few seconds after laying my swollen head on the crisp, clean, sun-smelling pillowcase having just been brought in off the clothesline from drying.

And in those last few seconds my eye lids closing then jerking open desperately trying to fight off God knows what because it is after all sleep I so desperately craved, I could see my mothers face growing huge as it leaning down placing a soft kiss upon my cheek, then fade away out of view walking away, leaving me as the final light died and went, the last words heard from the smiling, rotten banana softly echoing through me, 'you'll want to come back and play.' And it was right. I couldn't wait.

## Chapter 8

Black Shadowy Smoke

I passed the final. I'd been approached by several firms during the last three months all offering about the same, even though The Company wanted me several years earlier. Having successfully completed academics for the past twenty years, it was enough. Staying a moment longer within the realm of higher education meant two things; lost being one, having to make a serious choice the second.

Since kindergarten, it signified relentless competition. Absent summers which others enjoyed. Relationships excused. Countless hours, days, months, fucking years for one simple task laying at the end, justifying. Maybe it was all a big lie. An even bigger joke. Financial gains for higher education receiving great sums from clients hoping, praying and often enough, killing their families for that one piece of paper, proof of achievement their kid is still a fuck up, but now able to work and no longer supported financially. The degree.

And the banks loved it, having everyone by the balls. A work of sheer genius, some post graduate must have thought of having been screwed not achieving what they wanted from all their lost endeavors at schooling, informing while undoubtedly drunk as no one with any mind at all would suggest such a concept to the higher education body informing them they should put a bunch of fine stamps and signatures on paper giving the holder of such document the right to declare their own insanity for buying into such an absurd reality, and selling that to companies informing them they had better hire said document holders, or face the dire nicety of clients not purchasing, and even less, believing the company, should no graduate have employment with them. And they believed it. And so we all did.

And there I stood with proud parents among photos and social media postings, viewing the rash of possible employment contracts from a wide range of who's and their promises of a better tomorrow when today wasn't even half over, when all I wanted was hard sex and allot of booze having been practically forbidden during studies, except sex, that was allowed.

I felt certain having great sex and getting blind drunk for several days would give me the insight in choosing who I'd work for. But none of that happened. A switch was turned, imitating the social media collapse along with everything of course, as if there was something else, which of course there was, those non-Hollywood-types who weren't plugged, known as Repros for their willingness in reproducing the past, before the Internet.

The world was carved into nine pieces and The Company was formed overseeing the nine through use of the VISUALS. I entered somewhere on ground level two weeks after the stumble in darkness which most related simply as SID, having been contacted at home while watching kids play on the street with something as simple as a ball because their devices had become absolutely useless, and would never, ever work again, at least that model. Luckily they didn't know this otherwise the already global panic would scream for a troll stroll, compared to the fire it ensued the planet with.

The Neural Smart Grid or NSG was in its infancy when I signed with The Company. I knew exactly what it all meant, sort of. I'd known since looking back into the gully. Maybe before when lost in my parents closet, finding what I needed to find. What you did or accomplished before SID didn't matter. No one cared. The 'new social media' had a better idea in its NSG - The Cumulate. A fresh glean. Not wanting its burden nor repercussions we loved it, insofar to relieve us, in making any kind of choice.

It moved along rather smoothly. After all, there wasn't much anyone could protest or comment about. Facts were simpler to understand when you were given only one or two to work with seeing the more options the more complex things developed, and this was certainly not what The Company wanted. Smooth. It was their mantra proclaimed loud and clear for all to understand, except the Repros who felt it was no different than Europe in the 1930-40's. Naturally, The Company projected itself as the future assisting mankind, lifting it from the pit it persisted for centuries into a new horizon with endless skylines and scope, where Repros saw not the horizon, but a mastery of constraint.

With birth, rivalry endured. From the Big Bang onward striving for change in our own private worlds, created for the most part by others, though we'd often thought ourselves the owners, I'd hoped my work with The Company would further our evolution, but going to C Branch as ordered by the VISUALS, wasn't anything near the video I'd fooled myself into watching. C Branch was containment. Not for only questioning, but extraction. Information was king, and C Branch was king of The Company.

There was no encryption required because those in C Branch never existed officially. It was all hearsay. Most of my colleagues confirmed C Branch itself was invented to keep staff in line. Fearful of any company breach meant a visit with the Branch. But if they didn't exist, how could they have a branch? Where was their offices, holding cells, torture chambers filled with modern implements for dissecting and peeling a body open we all dream about? All of us knew it must be true deep within, we just humored the result.

And it was of course, but not in the sense we could grasp, for C Branch had its facilities within our own brains, that were grouped accordingly. Humans are naturally social, so it makes sense that we are swayed by the opinions of the group. And the swaying and the opinions are feed into that group through The Company to represent and manipulate multiple beliefs.

Most of all it wanted lower attention spans, addiction,; the decline in intellectual abilities. It thrived upon fatigue, stress and emotional suppression. It didn't want your attention to expand. It wanted disorder, not you spending time quietly, rather chaotically jumping between mobile devices preferably with games and purchasing powers, cigarettes, seeds, nuts, beer.

It wanted your impulsiveness in making decisions, solve everything at once, right at the moment, without waiting for more suitable circumstances. It wanted your need of something and you cannot wait to meet it this minute, you want to implement an idea immediately. It wanted your inability to plan your life ahead by dividing it into any form of timed periods. It wanted your want, all at once, and right now. It wanted to solve all your problems. And we wanted that too.

We didn't want to wait for necessary conditions in order to solve the problem, which just appeared. We didn't care whether our impulsive purchases and buying things could be possibly afforded, nor hold to any plan. It was on credit and why manage time. The Company did it for us. And we were thankful it did. Because we'd grown too simple minded, not able to self-construct have any ordered formation in our life because we cannot plan, wait and endure. We'd grown into a hyperactive disorder of conditional normality, our brain operating in a multitasking mode used to a constant activity, unable to direct our energy coherently, conveying a considerable number of different tasks and unnecessary actions, achieving little. The legal drug was in place.

In this insane haste, and vanity pace our public life communication with others was not the exchange of ideas and opinions, but the transmission of thoughts to the surrounding people. These habits' development to work problems, increased stress and negatively affected our health with a negative impact on our sex drive either wanting it all the time and with whom ever, or hardly at all. Naturally, the point was no longer the fact that information is delivered to the brain and sense organs; the question was the way it is consumed.

The Company delivered integrated artificial intelligence called SP, smart partnering. Its sole function was installing a targeting matching system for you with another person through AI implants. To-Wired, or TOW as most called it was tailored specifically for individual needs enabling you to stay connected with your chosen content, fully aware for hours, maintaining that social proof, gaining those prized points, keeping ahead of others. That virtually pat on the back.

And in a second it was over. Replaced with the emptiness of chaos, and genocide. Most likely within fifteen seconds, Repros were targeted as the cause. And with that, anyone quickly became the cause. As you are sinking knowing oxygen will run out, you'll grab at anything, and in this new void there wasn't much to breath where fear was now king, growing larger, out of control, so in here we pointed what attention our fragile minds could manage and went hunting, just as it was a million years before. Within a day the entire face of humanity returned to its former self, the holiday over, business was, as usual, buoys alighted that foretold warning any passing close to stay clear of this maddening planet yet ablaze, once more.

And here, in the silence, I sat too, the last of Mandy's syllables echoing in my head. Looking down I saw the terminal remained thoroughly dead. In receiving absolutely no incoming data flow, I felt a mild erection growing between my legs. A calmness crept from my stomach outwards, along my limbs, up my spine into my brain where it rested cooling that tempered pool of neurons from their constant abuse and over work, which would have been bliss had I known the meaning. I only thought how strange it all seemed, not experiencing this since employment with The Company.

The utter stillness of everything so long that had been, its meaning forgotten, was in itself worth wholly defending. And then the fear came. It started off in the back somewhere not that far away. I could sense it approaching, increasing speed and size as it neared with a lumbering scratching vibration, an animal having only slight functions of its legs humping the ground, while dragging something heavy slicing open my consciousness laying it wide where the raw world could land upon leaving eggs like blow flies on the rotting and dead.

With out warning a hissing push of air directly behind me, the door's security suddenly screamed its almost human high-pitch wail, quickly withered as the seal released sending the red and yellow alarm lights flashing overhead. I turned watching it slowly slide along the track disappearing into the wall when the shock injected my heart full of chilled memories contracting its muscles causing immense pain in my chest for which my thoughts turned immediately toward knowing an attack would strike within the next second.

Anything after that would be a Godsend surviving as such an ordeal wasn't exactly on the list of everyday activities. Recalling it years later I thought in pure wonder I hadn't wet myself as the pressure from not having peed for some time along with all the excitement grew steadily. I just hadn't noticed it with all the new events.

My heart pounded a dreadful beat without any normal rhythm felt before. Soon without a doubt, it would explode; faster and steadily the almost maddening thumping climbed as I waited starring at the entrance that now looked a gaping open mouth waiting for whatever would pass through gobbling it hungrily. I'd forgotten the harness securing me as my neck felt the burning from having turned too quickly almost snapping me I thought leaving my body strapped in place the remaining dropping and bouncing, onto the metal plated floor.

Strained muscles, nerves, bladder wanting a better reason why they'd been misled in an adventure where logic the once famed guide itself left for shortage of a better saneness, then having to hold together the body and mind of such, having to endure such, such lost causes as myself sitting half-mad, half-wanting...it all to just FUCKING happen! Jesus won't this horror bitch of whatever just get through the door and suck my brain out through my eyes! Hello? Is there anybody out there? Shit wasn't that from some song in the 70's? I'm sure I'd heard it from some group having a color for a name...

To hell with this. I reached up hitting the release on the harness, thinking why the hell is there such a thing holding the sweeper, as such those were referred to in filtering data, for our task being not so different than a custodian and their work cleaning our world, as we sanitizing everyone's thoughts, when a muffled click and a popping sound from the release sprang the harness open allowing my body to fall toward the monitor before I caught myself with a weak hand on the arm rest, gripping it for life knowing if I fell further downward I'd loose sight of the door because of the chair, and if I lost sight something would spring in raking me savagely with long hooked blacken claws because that's what was attached to the smiling banana in my parents closet and it had followed me here. Here, where I'd always felt safe. Here where nothing entered the booth unless I wished it or the VISUALS for only we had access to the doors access coding. Here, where at peace I focused on the task at hand. Here, where just outside wanting me, always waiting for a moment when I wasn't watching, wasn't careful enough.

Quickly I used my elbow bracing against the monitor, rose from the chair, a prison my life spent examining from it, sucked the very soul from many sweepers in their endless drooling, barking becoming nothing more than mindless quivering shadows, forgotten in their own rightly demented worlds they themselves created, however, trained, informed, given detailed accounts illustrating if you became lost in the data, that on no account should you ever get close with the flow consequences were too direct for the mind, resulted with an immense overload crippling it permanently, my legs shook from both lack of blood circulation and usage, a voice whispering either in my mind or outside the booth, I wasn't sure.

With the outage, medicament ceased. These altered your mind while in the booth, balancing your abilities greater enabling a more productive connection allowing the data to pass in a smoother rhythm for the brain to manage. Claimed completely harmless compiled only through homeopathy methods and ingredients they smoothed the hour, days. Years. Being completely unaware of the time its main attribute, sweepers locked into the grid, minds synced with the pattern of the data flow, they used less of their minds five higher faculties; reason, memory, perception, intuition, imagination, allowing only will complete freedom with increase amplification. Will, boosted dramatically gave the ability to focus only on an idea and exclude everything else. Exactly what the ideas were, sweepers never could remember upon leaving their booth. It was erased once medications were disconnected.

My only want was to run. I could hardly keep my legs from collapsing the muscles unused for God knows how long had decayed. Trying to steady myself, reaching down gripping my leg I jerked with fear and revulsion feeling only a withered thigh the once powerful muscle wasted, gaunt from lack of usage. The shock forced me leaning further against the monitor, using all the strength possible staying upright in some degree, while never losing sight of the doorway, for it was indeed that, which for now my full will latched desperately upon. As it was the now this very one mattered most, known throughout primal connections sustained even today, our ancestors survived listening, heading their warnings. And because of which the now keeps you alive.

I could see nothing beyond the entrance, only blackness for the booth held light preventing any vision past it. Blinded from this internal whiteness, had there been anything beyond I surely couldn't see, having only hearing and instinct as a guide they both raced in competition with one another screaming to know first, what will come next. What will pass through? Or what might simply pass by the door in that place where vision was questioned, then disappeared giving only a thought of something. In that dimness, there might be something. In that place, that nightfall, there has to be. And it will come. It always does.

Straining to see, not wanting anything, yet secretly wished for any sign. Anything. There was just the briefest of... something. Movements. From both sides of the door. It was at least what I thought. Several different stirrings. One higher than the other, and somehow darker if such a possibility in this already pitch darkness beyond black, along the top of the door. I am sure there was. Not imagination. No. Not that. Clear minded. Yes. Very clear. Free. Forgotten. Lost.

The medicament held sweepers. Bound them. Addiction without knowing, they were designed according to DNA, affecting each differently, obtaining information and retaining control individually, which only VISUALS monitored. No longer connected the feeling of being alone was refreshing yet unnerving. My mind unhinged from some principle embedded which seemed since my own birth, steadily waking from that unaware slumbering of its own past.

That strange peace you often read about or heard, but seldom felt crept from the back of my neck down my spine. My legs felt of fire and needles, the nerves growing, connecting as light through distant passageways illuminating the long awaited journey. It had been how long since standing upright? A month. An hour...year? The migration of harmony flowed quickly into my chest and arms, while bringing clearer vision my eyes could see deeper into the darkness, beyond the door.

Suddenly from somewhere deeper, perhaps further after the blackness ended for surely it must but I can't remember, a humming or vibration softly began. I tried to think what outside of the booth resembled but my thoughts where rambled having no reason, or logic of such a thing as this. I started realizing it was difficult trying to even remember what I did just a moment ago, how then would it be possible to say what if anything, was from my past if in fact, I had one. Of course, I remembered my childhood, some of it. My loss, and fears, also my gains. Family and friends, these were all part of my memories too but now disconnected from the main system I began to wonder, were they my own thoughts or ones placed there?

Where did one image begin and the other left off? One train of though wreck into another and how many victims were there? How many unaccounted as in so many landslides, earthquakes and wars there were countless of? Those lost in clouds of dreams, stumbling in their search for signposts, markers of reasoning, how many? What of the ones simply plowing through unchecked as ships breaking ice on those barren waters? Where there rules anymore? Were there any before?

The humming vibration grew steadily. More felt than heard now I could feel it in the chair I held and the console for which I leaned against in desperation, it became a lifeboat in this growing sea of nothing more than lost memories. With that, the volume increased the humming sounded more as a deep note from some out of tuned broken cello being played by old masters never more seen, nor judged, simply forgotten as The Company emerged.

It felt as if two notes played at the same time and had I known I'd have guessed both were off-key, but lacking any musical aptitude the sounding-vibration hauntingly grew a see-saw without uniformity of rhythm echoing sending waves sucked into the booth causing a pressure upon first my ears then within the briefest moment, my entire body felt its grip as if a hand reached in grabbing me, beginning slowly to squeeze.

Immediately I felt the air leaving my lungs replaced with an even greater force from inside trying desperately to survive. There came sharp stabbings inside my head as the oxygen ran through the system till completely depleted. My eyes still watching the doorway now had vision of either something that was, or wasn't there. To this day I am not sure but in those last moments of consciousness there, in the darkness, a form grew. It could not possibly fit through the entrance, and it moved back and forth in front of it as if trying to ascertain how to get into the booth, probing, searching for a point of weakness perhaps.

It had a form of black shadowy smoke, roaming while wisps drifted off, some landing on the floor inside the booth no more than a foot away from the back of the chair I still hopelessly clung too. Had I still air in me I'd sure have screamed a loud and piercing scream. A scream to wake me from this, a scream to send into my memories should anything appear such again.

Thinking of what awaits memories arrived placed in my mind providing great details how a human body can be shredded and devoured slowly. In small pieces. This didn't help. Why is it in difficult situations we think of things far worse? What is the brain trying to tell us? That quick is better than slow? Or the opposite? That things could be worse, meaning the same as things could be better? That we spend most of our time circling in corners? That never was a great leap of faith possible?

Not possible understanding whether the shadow knew itself an image I'd designed, or wasn't, it forced its presence further causing the bulkhead of the booth to bend inward causing a huge cracking sound from above where that instant the glass dome of the booth fell in a rain of shards, piercing some sort of yellow suit I just noticing now wearing, where at once the blood in some places slowly seeping through, while others with a gush, causing my outfit strangely resembling some sort of jumpsuit quickly turn into an abstract colored map.

I could hear a large number of painfully loud pinging noises which gave no clue as to what it was till I released my hold on the chair raising my hand hurriedly to my head wanting to ward off the horrible sound when it slammed into something hard on my ear. Moving my hand toward my eyes I felt my head must be inside something and tried thinking, but it was too late as the lack of oxygen and probably loss of blood had either caused all this as a dream, or not, for it didn't matter as I was falling while watching the blacken shadow float through the doorway into the booth.

## Chapter 9

The Yearns

Only find. 'If I could only find my keys we'd be off.' I kept hearing Saisha words around the inside of not only my mind but the soul. My world. That would be a better meaning. She was indeed for me and many a remarkable woman. And we had remarkable times. There are no regrets. No sad moments. None will mention her being anything but a great person. Doing great things. It can be that simple. Your life.

And it was. We both weren't extraordinary by any length of the word. Just normal. And then we meet. Then it became extraordinary. Of course. Isn't it supposed to be? You read about it. Are told about it. See movies. See it happen right in front of you. Your friends. Family. Outsiders. Even assholes. And you have a chance at it only once. True, some will disagree saying it happens more than once for a couple. But maybe the real magic of it all is believing before it happens, that you, in fact, have only, the one opportunity. But then self-preservation enters.

A method of moving forward and its demands, it is king or is this too, only an explanation. Many argue including me, which is before Saisha, if the aiming is true you cannot fail. Of course, I wanted as much as I had the chance of, either given to me or devised myself, though little understanding how it all came. Why should I, after all, what happened did on its own accord, or by hard work. And so this paradox thinking began to grow, thriving on my two-way approach of either turn for which I would benefit greatly from. So long as I kept in-line with one simple rule; don't look too deeply.

I thought how clever, what outstanding imagination, colorful appearance I must project toward others filled with wisdom, passion, honesty, and lies, the latter becoming an extremely artful being. Getting the best grades, invited to the best functions lavished with booze and naughty bits of a widening assortment, women about to fend off with a stick as they pounced in their droves upon me wanting, which also grew from an act of some obscure porn film seen. It wasn't uncommon joining some mass orgy often lasting an entire night following into midday of the next. A wonder one survived with all consumed in those effortless times.

And I truly loved it all. Pure depravity. A pig in cool mud couldn't have been happier. Always wanting more it became a hunt, lustfully craving numberless obscure hands and faces crossing your body, tangled legs and torsos. Mouths, tongues, breasts, cocks, and warm wet pussy you can eat and fuck still afterward. All for consumption. And all of us devoured the time. There were groups coming together in different parts of the city, but on campus, had the best outings of anything goes. Especially among the foreign exchange students' in their ways and wants every single one of us lost our minds.

And as in such a tale, it ended. Not abruptly, but as a slow death in nature bitten by some venomous creature, lingered painfully, knowing death would be not soon enough, making you scream for it; the newest passion. Caused by education having its own mind placed somewhere besides the road I traveled casually waiting like some drunken hitchhiker knowing I'd stop and give it a lift, having all the grace of a saint, it finally rose and took control.

It's often said and inebriated person falling off a bike can't hurt themselves as they don't know they're upon it, education came in the night like a thief and stole the fun away hiding the poor bastard for some tricks at a later date when its true clout would be called upon, and rein eternity. For that is exactly what we all wanted, prayed for, sacrificed, murdered. To have fun. To calm us in our own venue, with chastity broken free-spirited was our new queen. And we worshiped her with offerings that'll shame those other believers of rigidity constantly reminding them of that painful emotion caused by a sense of guilt, embarrassment, degradation, of being truly unworthy and how we loved forcing their disgrace.

Our legion spread stealthily having encountered only the slightest contradiction of feeblings whose ways sufficed, lubricated the motors fueling the decrepit maneuvering in its universal demand, while we amassed the fortune of kingdoms. As plants watered during the height of summers heated days we burned with frightful awareness, screeching for that sacrificial child that would bring forth our true God and final release though bounded for centuries from chains we'd created yet never willingly seen, for it was always someone else who'd damned us, who'd caused this distraction, we howled for the victim, deprived of blood for so long we hungered as insipid vampires from films we're forced to download and gleeful watch later huddled together in darkness, surrounded but uncomfortably alone as our logical and creative thinking wilted, ultimately succumbed with wanting hands joined from fondling fingers creating the impotent world we now have. And it was enough for me to turn away.

Was there really a point? I drove myself head-long for the test score, for the great possible career I'd no idea of, for some women, for my sometimes dysfunctional dick cause from severe stress and overload of God knows what eaten, drank, injected, screwed, dreamed, or didn't, arriving with a great clap providing permeant convulsion of the brain. It always took a moment before being aware if I'd paralyzed myself when first waking afterward from one of the indulgence roads often traveled. Even in video and photos of such events, I wasn't able to ascertain whether it was indeed myself carrying out such actions with multiple individuals either fully clothed, partial, or not, whether I was over my limit and therefore innocent of all activities, or whether sober enough but not giving a damn. It ran as such till the infamous click.

I was twenty-four almost twenty-five. I'd taken enough required material and headed home wanting peace and sobriety in order to complete my master's final paper. Civilization hadn't yet encroached fully itself upon the hi-deserts of California. There were some holdouts where bandits took women and booze for trade and pleasure still unknown to most not from the immediate area of such delights. Those having known prior had never forgotten their locations, rather followed a code whereby never releasing their points on a compass. You would need both a map and the compass to guild you better, some having lost their way only found later far off the make, dried and dead.

One must prove admirable competence with several key actions at the same time in order to locate those rowdy playgrounds, two primarily in reading a topographical map along with the usage of a sighting compass. You will, of course, require the coordinates. Knowledge of desert survival was paramount and goes without mentioning but often is, seeing those having spent their childhood dodging Sidewinders and flash floods take one look at ones who haven't clearly noted the fact, seeing once handing over the exact whereabouts establishes a kinfolk of sorts.

But not so fast. There were in fact only three locations. And they were to be kept safe from needless disclosure at all costs. The pain of death or so it was clearly illustrated either in knowing where your most precious item lay or lived, should you disclosure details. Seeing humans are what we are none of this held long and countless were killed because of it. In 1923 eighteen bodies turned up found without various parts having been removed prior, probably with great care inflicting as much pain possible allowing the stupid bastard no mercy, while providing a valuable lesson for others should they also suffer from the same infliction of the moronic syndrome and to shut the fuck up. That being the largest body count in one year, however usually every couple of years someone would turn up who'd been missing such-and-such a time from as far as Maine, and once there was an older man from The Netherlands, Amsterdam it was. Most having the age of early to mid-twenties, male although there where three young girls back in 1966, but this was believed non-related because their body parts remained intact. Their case was simply getting lost and running out of the water, or so it was believed till 2014 when a man was found with a photo of the three girls in his wallet.

Of course everyone talks of the 1954 body, 'Mr. S' called such as there were no identifying marks to record the man seeing he'd been skinned, hands and feet cut off, decapitated and genitals removed most likely from fire as the entire area from the stomach to his thighs where burnt. His body was found on the bus stop bench in the center of Mesquite Springs. A clear message, yet blamed of course on the mafia. And who knows maybe it was except for one small detail all the bodies possessed everyone failed to notice, linking them together. Their right arm always pointed in the direction of one of the playgrounds. Except 'Mr S', his faceless body was turned in the angle of one. This clue of the thirty-one bodies having the description of keep goddamn quiet or you'll be taken for a fucking long uncomfortable ride we'll only enjoy was never placed.

Bodies were found all the time in the desert. Uncovered from their resting through storms or human intervention. Kids playing find a protruding bone through the sand from a finger beckoning them or skulls whispering, come closure not to worry, and have a real good look before everything gets disturbing, oh and don't worry I won't bite, haven't any teeth cuz they pulled 'em all while I screamed for DAYS!

Some by the accident, others by way of forgetting rules and warnings. During my days living there, it was called 'The Yearns', those three grounds. Some history prevailed but factuality was probably not a requirement, thereby stories rolled like tumble weeds on hot summer afternoons the wind picking up its desert dust spraying driven-hard sharp grains blasting paint, pitting glass, blinding all. While even the hardiest wildlife hide as winds stepped-up, most knew you could become easily lost just a few feet from the safety just left, so best stay put. Why then do people venture for a stroll right in the middle of its height? Naturally, sobriety has issues here, but for those soundly by any means, curiosity and an honest to God increasing lack of lucidity being the main lost ruminants one finally surrenders with inevitability.

Was it some secret suicidal pack we make with ourselves knowing of dangers, while pushing away, through the lives we've made or chosen, bored or wanting even more of, crying for an answer? My first visit to 'The Yearns' I was just sixteen. Thinking I was clever and of age for all things this world provides I dashed at the chance of seeing the fabled land when my best friend Robert's older brother just back from college spring break mentioned he met a student from Martin Flats who'd been to the northern Yearns and would take us next week.

Well, what luck. Dale Vista Flats was just twenty miles from Mesquite Springs where I grew up. What are those odds again once discovering the rarity of it all? Far and wondrous, perhaps a little strange. Downright bizarre. Stay the hell away from. Tall-tale signs flashing, hardly taken notice of, being young and foolish, we naturally rushed for the chance. With one slight situation to overcome in a week, I'd be standing in the middle of a Yearns. One could actual wet themselves with anticipation. Not knowing fully the pleasures of sex, this had to be better. By far. Looking back I wondered at those times of being sixteen. That between age, not adult, not young, with innocence, tested. Only realizing it afterward, never during, those would be the best days.

And what situation might that be my brother and I would have to deal with? The Yearns was over six hours away by car. How the hell to explain that to our parents, the owls of the town. Christ, they missed very little if any. You farted yesterday they knew its potency. You thought it, they knew it before you finished thinking it through. And their eyes fell upon you with one intention of saying, think harder stupid. It was a blessing of sorts. Both my brother and I inherited their genes for this, giving us the distinct advantage over those with lesser the capacity of understanding what really was going on. But also an affliction.

At first, I thought I was going insane when first I knew my kindergarten teacher was having an affair with the principle, and second she was pregnant. About two months. I was only four years old yet could see this plain as the noses on their stupid drooling faces for one another. I went home and told my mother who promptly sat me down and said not too long ago people were tortured in most unpleasant ways for having said such things and I'd have to watch pretty damn close it not happening to me.

Well, that just confused me because I talked with hardly a soul till I was seven for fear of this great crucifixion, which undoubtedly I'd befall upon. I knew this too, a sort of destiny rattling, somewhere deep. In the dark where it lived among other things, some of which I didn't want to be woken. Ever. One time they did wake up and several children became sick. They had to have their parents come, taking them home because they couldn't stop screaming. That's when they both, my parents, sat me down again explaining slowly, with great patients weird things happen and sometimes you'll be at the center of it all so better get yourself ready and be damn careful.

What ready was I'd know idea till junior high school when Ronny Myers and his gang went around several days grabbing girls, finger raping them by forcing their hands down their panties, with the aims of entering their vagina. They were bigger boys and no one bothered them, even some of the teachers shied away. What could you do in a small town anyway, recruit outstanding educators to enlighten asinine half-wits whose, for some, parents own part of the community and could easily get you fired or worst? Not a fuckin' thing. Just look the other way. But when my friend Dona was molested I'd had enough, and while they were busy on her I took the lid of the metal trash can and hit Myers whose hand was down her ass, over the head as hard as I could.

I woke up the next day in the hospital with a concussion, a broken nose, and two broken ribs. Myers suffered a cut on the top of his head needing six stitches as the lid stick him at the exact point where the handle was welded on, causing an outcrop on the inside of the lid. Blood rose quickly and started running down the sides and his forehead. When he came at me I saw deep red rivers from the blood which must have been pumping along with nothing but rage and fear in those eyes of his. Rage of a cornered animal, willing to fight to the death if necessary, and fear if it failed.

Some of mine, but mostly his by the time they'd finished with me our blood was strewn everywhere. Several teachers were splattered along with the janitor and three senior high school football players who while visiting showing what you can do if you apply yourself, joined in the bloody mayhem of that April morning trying to break-up the free-for-all quagmire, that indeed I'd become the center of.

Not knowing, of course, the mighty wheels rolled into place gearing up Myers fate sounding as those wild jungle drums do, calling forth that soul now trapped. Perhaps it was this fear seen in him for Myers never graduated high school. His body was found attributed as one of the thirty or so having parts missing, twelve years after getting hit over the head. But I wasn't the hero. Suspended from school for two weeks, followed by two months detention I had considerable time to think. And practice. Understanding what it was that drove me crazy in this world grew obsessive and if not controlled, would easily consume and command me, and spent the time incorporating a sense of the matter.

That all happened when I was twelve. A mere lifetime later I stood with my brother looking down into a shallow enclosure surrounded by boulders, surrounded by low hills, surrounded by a desert, with 'The Yearns' before us, all was as expected as if you'd seen it a hundred times before, nothing changed. That's the true power of the desert, for which people not from there, couldn't possibly understand, the same as visiting a race of people whose asses are complete without the swaying, graceful movements of your own people, and are an absolute puzzlement every time you look at them with their awkward strut and gander, and how you miss while watching them, to gaze upon a beautiful round, full ass. It's genetics you mumble to yourself, knowing these other people have inbred for over six thousand years, with this constituting its result.

The pack was made. Sacred blood oaths chanted. Painful ending. Rather forward and again lightly taken. Only words most thought, till the knives and fire touched tender tissue, my brother and I joined the privileged society of where only, as far as we knew, fifty-seven others holding the same rank belonged. How proud we were. After all the talk, listening to the gossip, news of another body found, speculation, conspiracy, true or not, whatever, we were inside now. One of them and nobody could touch us.

The society held bankers, laymen, and law enforcement, even politicians. Christ, you could find out where Jimmy Hoffa was if you wanted. And everybody was connected. They watched out for each other, took care of situations other suffered, which they couldn't take care of themselves. Got a speeding ticket? No problem. Parole violation? Taken care of. Low on funds to make your payments? They'd hand over a suitcase of cash one hundred dollars bills thick. It was Christmas every day. Anything goes. So long as you kept your mouth shut. And if you didn't you got a visit. Your last one ever. There were no second chances, no sweet talk. If they even suspected you opened your mouth they'd call a meeting and review the evidence. Then they would talk with you face-to-face.

If guilty that face of yours would soon contort into so much agony as they'd nailed or screwed your balls to a wooden cross; pull you fingernails off; pull your teeth after of course drilling into some of them preferably the large eye teeth making such lovely targets absolutely unavoidable; apply fire readily; shove a funnel up your dick hole and pour hot honey into it filling your cock then lay the cross on an ant hill; your head hands and feet on the cross fastened with barbed wire they'd commence flaying you first small strips then increasing; removing your non-vital organs least the body shut-down; performed mutilation including cutting your lids off so your eyes cooked or plucked out by the vultures who waited for the rot to set in as this would take several days depending on the person endurance as in one case they brought along two large RV's alternating crews they worked round the clock on that particular gentleman lasting eight days. They would finish with scalping you which though depicted in western films originated from the Native American's, but let's be absolutely clear it was the white invaders who first performed this act upon the local indigenous tribes, who intern used it against the whites, but as Hollywood had John Wayne why squabble.

When it was over, what's left of you was placed in a particular position only fellow society members would recognize; pointing in the direction of The Yearns you disclosed. A clear warning, yet why were there thirty-one bodies? You'd think one or two acts to secure silence would suffice, everyone getting the picture. Had the entire society become unhitched thinking each member, themselves invulnerable? Or something else.

Proudly surveying The Yearns area with my brother slowly I felt it. Only just a tingle in the back of my throat as if approaching the need to cough. Then in a moment, it started clawing. I reached with my hand rubbing my neck and throat, proving futile. Quickly I took the canteen of water from my belt, screwed off the cap and took a short but good pull letting the now warm water course over wanting desperately relief from this growing itch, washing it down and out of mind. But it worsened. I coughed and out came a spattering of blood upon the canteen and my hand like fine mists with several darker droplets soaking immediately into the canteen jacket.

My brother looked at the canteen then at me. Then back at the canteen. 'Bad water br...' but before he could finish I coughed again this time emitting a greater amount of blood containing clots of thick deep red mucus some of which rebounded into strange elongated slightly curving shapes trailing from the canteen, as I was mesmerized from the first attack and hadn't moved my hand an inch, landing on my brothers white T-shirt. The only thought I remember having was how could blood act in such a way? It seems to reach out toward him slowly, those trails with uncountable knuckles acted as fingers, stretching, wanting something. Grasping.

There was a sudden jerk on my shoulder spinning me around causing my canteen with its precious contents to fly from my hand where it undoubtedly tumbled on the scorching ground draining itself, but I never saw it. What I did see was the face of a very tall thin stranger having a long reddish-white beard and straw hat towering down on me though scarred dark glasses reflecting my terrified face drooling blood from both corners of my mouth. I'm a repulsive vampire from those popular TV shows I truly despised laughed aloud, not wanting but the thought was too much to bear and humor jump from me where my legs couldn't.

But there was no humor in this person carrying an extremely thin skeleton protruding through a tattered shirt who must be well over six foot, nevertheless having an incredibly powerful grip as the bruises lasted nearly a month of clearly every finger and palm outlined, slowly reached with great intent I felt and removed my hat letting it fall with a flick of a bony thumb. Immediately the intense direct sun blasted a hole in my brain while I tried shrinking away but the grip tighten till I yelped as a whimpering beaten dog tormented by its drunken owner, when a roaring erupted in my ears, causing me almost to pass out, took hold of the last remaining senses I owned.

It was the grip that held me in place as certainly, I'd fall on hands and knees, but more likely smack on my face the way luck was running, when I felt a sharp pain on the side of my right face, followed immediately on the left, then again on the right. I dared slightly opening my eyes when I saw through their cracks the thin giants open hand poised a foot away from my left face. I realized now he was slapping me for some reason I'd never understand fully even to this day, but highly likely I fainted wallowing in that land of lust and wonder, while his reviving techniques the only way he knew how, shot addition trauma into an already frozen being jolting me right around, returning to that relentless heat and confusion.

There were voices, muffled, deep, buried miles below in that cool sand I wished to be, but it was the thin giants mouth working making the sounds as if far off of his voice as he spoke but not at me as his head was slightly turned toward my brother and William his friend who brought us here. I understand nothing, our heads could have been underwater, and I certainly couldn't read lips, but I did feel he meant no harm, only...protect. He was guarding something.

I could also feel immense strength which was proven not from the grip he held, but from the distance of only a foot, he delivers the blows which might as well have broken my neck had he wished. And something more. Inside burned a fire within him hotter than the sun above. What could be made from him gave little clues. Was he lost, as we were off any path or road even the wash we had to hike the last eight miles up hadn't a name? It was the pure map and compass reading as long as you had the coordinates. A vagabond perhaps, nomadic traveler, insane from the desert wandered for months.

Not this one. True his clothes were horribly worn; pants near shredded as well as his shirt both smelling shockingly foul from lack of wash and defecation. His skin held bronze hue to it and tough from the weather, hands having huge calluses through working, or more notably surviving. There were deep wrinkles in his face, ravines cut from years in the sun. His hair long and unkempt shot out in tuffs through the many holes in his straw hat.

I'd no idea what was on his feet as I was unable to look downward, but imagined dilapidated footwear, in any event, sandals or maybe even boots. And of course, the sunglasses were scratched severely having worn for years or maybe out here, a couple of months. I felt pity for the man, but that all changed when I saw my brother approaching from the side, hands held at head level palms outward in a show of surrender, when with his free hand as quickly as I'd ever seen any human move before, the man pulled a knife with a long upturned fixed blade from behind his back.

The knife was no more than a couple of feet from my face and it looked three feet long, not just a knife it was a tactical knife known as a Kabar the Marines used during the second World War. Our dad had one he brought back from his tour on Iwo Jima where he spent six months fighting Japanese, interrogating them afterward, at least the ones who surrendered. He was a translator. Spoke, wrote fluent Japanese also a sergeant, he was a key individual in assessing and deliver critical information he'd retrieve from POW's. Never talking about those days even with our mother, he kept the knife in the stand drawer next to their bed. And we were never for any reason allowed to go near it let alone touch it. It wasn't till our father's death, I went home to go through old boxes with my mom and thinking of the knife I open the drawer and there it was.

Immediately I was drawn to its jet-black long blade and worn leather handle, yet repulsed knowing what the knife itself, and it owner must have been through. Our mother taught us everything has a soul, be it rocks or plants made no difference, and I believed this must have carried many for it certainly had taken them. I closed the drawer gently never opening it again. Several years later I was talking with my brother after mom sold the house we'd grown up in moving to something smaller, more manageable and asked him had he seen the knife during the move as we had to clean the place taking what we wanted, boxing the rest for the Goodwill. He said he hadn't and I guess it was best. Some things are better left alone. They too have to move on.

And a person with a knife such as this meant business. It seems very probable he was former military; he held the knife steady with firm confidence through obvious training and looked well taken care of. Extremely sharp. Without a doubt if he wanted he could easily cut my throat then go after my brother should he enter the giant's reach. But I could see my brother slowly move back and I felt a slight reduction in the man's grip on my shoulder, not much but perhaps enough I might be able to pull away, but with the quickness of a cat he turned back looking directly at me, and I immediately felt he knew exactly what I was thinking.

His lips moved but I still had no idea what he was saying or mumbling, my hearing numb from some force an explosion perhaps but of course there wasn't any so why for which only I had a problem with? In seeing my brother although brief as it was, he showed no signs of any impairment, as for William I had no idea he was out of view and I wasn't about to start looking around.

If anything in all the time the thin giant held me one thing grew with certainty; we had met before. But where and when I couldn't place having seen such a person of his stature, who obviously would have trouble forgetting. Nonetheless, everything about him was a failure as knowing your best friend, and here the first bolt shocked my numb sense which I could lay claim to. His name.

Feeling with extreme dread another cough approaching, I opened my moisture-less mouth still tasting of blood rasping what I hoped to be understood though my tongue having the feeling of dried wood I wasn't sure its ability with pronunciation could be clear and spoke softly - Stop Andrew.

Yes, there was a reaction with those delicate if not articulate words. Should he not have worn the dark glasses I'd have seen the spark go out in those eyes. It was the light someone carries which is not of their own. From some other place or time maybe both, but not theirs. Not at least the one they're born with. This brightness no matter the magnitude comes from another place one filled with misery; a form of anguish most will never meet. Rightfully so, as those who've greeted such are marked, having to burden its stamp far beyond this life.

But I didn't see this. Only the muffled sounds grew clearer. It was the change heard, not seen forcing its way through my lethargic mind, kicking it, screaming to wake the fuck up. Reluctantly it seems to answer but with great stubbornness, the alarm clock shrieked pulling me from sublime peace. My mind off, as the subconscious dance slows, the music winds away. And felt the change in him shift to that not as before but of wanton surrender. Of letting go the horrors.

The thin giant mouthed the single word that I could hear as he released his hold on my now extremely painful shoulder; 'yes', then stepped back several feet while straightening erect. His full height showing he must have been seven feet tall slowly somewhat swaying from side to side, a slightly sad smile, perhaps proud of himself the ability admitting defeat, but knowing the unfortunate terms.

Think of anything wasn't possible. Usually, the mind wanders between thoughts before focusing. It stems from earlier times when hunting wasn't for bargains on Amazon, rather reality itself, further illustrating our fascination in that environment for entertainment. Reality programs are the closest to jungles we evolved from, and safer. Pursue and be pursued from a chair or preferable, a horizontal position surrounded by substance causing great satisfaction when consumed. In masses. Without guilt. Precisely where I wanted to be, not in blazing heat, blood fermenting in my gut ready to gush from my mouth, on shaky legs in front of a giant with a sharp fuckin' knife, two days from any assistance either lawful or medical. So well planned The Yearns. Like a curse it started before any enjoyment could be had. And like any good scourge, last till removed.

This might very well stand as the principle problem those bodies faced prior to their gruesome death; they didn't know the affliction which fell upon them, subsequently the inability of its management or better, removal. Hell, who would have? Why would you want to believe in something so much as a curse? Most whose bones bleaching or not yet unearthed, couldn't fathom such an utterance intended to invoke a supernatural power to inflict harm or punishment. Not only their utter disbelief in such, but comprehension of its validity and ramifications upon the past and current victims is simply beyond their understanding.

As we looked at each other I wondered why he was a guardian and of what in Gods name was out here worth protecting, and perhaps, more importantly, the meaning of...'yes'... I wasn't interested what he said to my brother, the important part came in the clearing my ears now enjoyed. The immense ring stopped as abruptly as it started giving me another shock, another awakening this time as a plant receiving water during the parched summer day it was itself both refreshing and burning, as the sun magnifies any water put upon a plant during the day it's always best watering them either early morning or in the evening.

My brain starved from input since the hounding commenced like armor of a giant cockroach sounding of a broken wheel scrapes and stretches, whining, as it burrowed, biting its way through my inner ear wanting to feast in that dark warm place, all at once finally screamed for anything to stop this rotten magic and take me home full of things I understood and could at least control in some degree.

But here in twisted creosote bushes and tangled ugly mesquite deformed from the suns relentless hatred towards them bent downward as if praying to a release from this modern hell. As it was no joke some bastard was laughing at me and it was this, standing directly in front of me giving birth to a widening, near toothless jack-o-lantern grin, which pushed the scream from my throat lurching out the mouth as the belch of a giant toad, bringing the desert noises to a further deadening halt, which uncomfortable to comprehend as it seemed beyond such.

To fully hold the situation, grasp it in any sense of the meaning brought terror up from my balls where they suddenly shriveled same as having sat on a block of ice, naked, retreating, a ravaged army from some frozen empire where contriving once their easy victory months earlier in the warmth of those southern areas so easily was dreamt. Could it be the same for experienced women teaching virgin boys that playful art of pleasure? Why in panic, blood lust, the battle, we think of women. To take our minds from pending chaos ensuing or about too? Are we simply all children not yet understanding manhood yet thrown into it with all its gore and glory? Is it in our own self-doubts, our own created battles, our own demons in dark closest that we fear most?

Watching his breathing, smelling his scent of decay there was that treasure I have sought since birth and probably before, only a few feet; understanding why. I wasn't interested in myself and why, my interactions and how they played out in the world, the infamous echo through time poignantly called as if by instructing any other sense would gain greater significance but one would have to manage something beyond their present self in understanding and who the hell wants that?

Why bother with something else when you can have oneself full, up front, above all...uninhibited. And with that, the echo faded soon after sounded into a muffled weep where none with any interest to hear, without distinction, wandered in some great colorless infinite world until death itself grew weary listening of that endless reverb within the cavernous space and finally with mercy, cast the spell taking its last breath, and the echo died as did time.

The thin giants why had appeared not suddenly a great flash of insight, nor over time developing as fine wines. This I knew. His was always there, eroding, gradually as if gnawing away every nerve, consuming them with great skill surgically as a doctor might in removing minute deceased parts of the body, becoming that phantom soul of a once profound creature, malformed from the sheer weight of worlds having pressed for eons.

He knew of echoes death, the rupturing in time splitting open, and the presence of something emerging slowly through that split. He had seen first hand its results producing a strangely thin mad giant with painfully sunken cheeks roaming the desert brandishing an extremely sharp knife, wearing severely scratched sunglasses in shredded clothing and matching straw hat, a modern-day artist without easel and paints perhaps not really caring, while as likely as not taken for a prophet several thousand years before, can only now, barely stand.

Watching his sway slightly cleared my mind further, and from the left, my brother moved in toward the giant. What his intentions were are still a mystery, as I hadn't the time to ask nor afterward as he lay bleeding to death a few moments later. With quickness neither seen before or after, the giant lifted his knife slicing upwards just the moment my brother entered the circle of his reach pushing further my brain rejecting what took place, though it was clear.

Clear as in bells. Clear as in morning light. Clear as in the cut was deep across the throat blood gushing in waves, a heart forcing the last reserves as my brother stood motionless, then staggered back, looking blankly at the dark near black desert floor beneath his feet from blood pouring upon it, slowly stepped to the left away from the giant who'd held the knife still in hand, still without the slightest form of quiver, as if the game was played and we were caught thinking him a battered lost soul, holding his arm back and upward the blade pointing into a cloudless sky, with a slow grin forming again upon his hollowed face.

And in a flash, not sure of either light or sound its cause, the top half of the giants head just above the eyes disappeared in a red mist, the hat from some unseen string flew backward with a jerk, floated gracefully to the ground. With such a clean motion the giant hadn't move the slightest. Only the eyes blinked quickly not in unison, rather one then another repeating several time and I couldn't help but recall they looked as lights and how they too flashed hung on the Christmas tree each year I remembered since I was five, the first time our dad strung them around a massive pyramidal Scotch pine.

Regaining slightly my conciseness after the loud explosion took a moment as the mind reeled struck by unseen lightning I felt myself composed then removed as a boat moored along side a pier raising and falling with the waters torment, the lines holding the vessels unyielding keeping a tight embrace against the wharf of two unlikely partners, that of eternal darkness and the light of life. In all I saw both still standing, faintly teetering the giant and my brother gazing dumbly at one another and I wondered who would topple first from this grotesque dance between the two.

Then another flash burst sending me again crashing against the wharf sickening my stomach unable in managing any longer tasting bile, I leaned forward and vomited, mostly striking a small bush as it flew in a jet splattering partially my left foot and shin the heave so intent in force I tasted blood at the end which indeed proved correct as I looked upon my creation was mixed within the revisited breakfast of the mornings granola and chunks of half undigested apple.

My head pounded in great beats of an over spanned drum, throbbed in its rhythm from a distant drummer so often heard while managing fear something I won't accomplish till much later in life when finally understanding I had to kill to survive and was understandable so I'd better get on with it, when I pulled the trigger the same as William did standing almost directly behind me when firing two rounds the first having struck the giant's forehead, and the second square in the middle of his chest toppling him backward over a three foot high barrel cactus where after laying halfway on his side still holding the knife, still holding the grin, his right leg twitched a dying dance driving long sharp thrones from the cactus deeper into what fleshy part of his exposed thigh remained from a skeleton whose wandering could now rest, while from the corner of my vision I witnessed my brother abruptly fall first to his knees, pausing a moment then sank back sitting on his calfs one arm limp at his side, the other situated on his lap, head rested softly on his chest motionless except the escaping air gurgling through darkening blood which now at its end, covered his entire front and the soaked ground in which he kneeled upon like carpet before the fallen king.

Having trouble with the orgasm being prolonged, becoming some rapid animal humping and grinding Saisha trying to push thoughts of that day out and away which unfortunately crept forward loosened from their dark moorings during foreplay of savoring her gorgeous pussy, while listening to content the purring of her pending climax she often had before I entered that warm wetness, I told this part of life to Saisha though it was years later still in that state of sexual frenzy acting as reversed magnets one thought to work against another, she quietly looked into my eyes with hers which always was so difficult to understand for most as she had no distinct pupil, and as so often after sex hardly speaking she allowed them to explain, and after I concluded an immense fear built as I shrank in horror realizing the meaning she projected with them this time as a grin, same as the thin giant grew on her face while pulling a long sharp barrel cactus needle from her hair having kept in a bun letting it fall loosely over her swollen breasts; William missed they said.

## Chapter 10

Mark and His Beast

Bowmen Construction was a huge warehouse in Mesquite Springs providing do-it-yourself goods as well as for professionals. It was the only store where literally you could get, or if not in stock order, any building construction material needed. Chuck Bowmen and I grew up not close but lived about a mile apart which was close seeing the towns proximity to nowhere, but actually was somewhere of course, spread out over a fifteen mile radius but further if you counted the five-acre tracts of crumbling one room shacks their timbers splintering into dull gray from the heat, bleached if exposed in eternal blasting sun light.

If all counted maybe twenty square miles. It's as far as you could count, simply as any further south, you ran against the remoteness of the Lost Mine Mountains where gold strikes occurred in the 1840's, climbing upwards of almost five thousand feet running almost fifty miles. In one of those remote five-acre tract cabins in the late 1940's three letters were found neatly written bound with twine and placed in an old can, clearly marked the location of a gold strike by a person named I.C. Manfreed who upon discovering the gold was able to recover over twenty pounds of the precious mineral.

With each letter dated Manfreed's last noted when prospecting two miles further up a remote wash containing a large number a smoke trees he discovered a small wooden canoe constructed of slightly weather worn canvas having survived for years, still relatively intact. But how and why such would be found here was beyond any understanding.

Manfreed noted markings on the canoe in the letter, drawing carefully what appears, a sun and moon crossing over the other. And then promptly disappeared. No record of a person with such a name was ever recorded in any state registry. And Bill Bowmen searched. For eight years Chuck's father languished every possible free moment on his obsession, duly so for Bill in gobbling up many of those five-acre tracts lacking coherent clarification in ownership and taxes paid, found the three letters.

True he was able to decipher the map of Manfreed showing in the Lost Mine Mountains the strikes location, recovered proximity three pounds which he used to purchase the land and further develop, at that time his small but promising construction firm. Now, he is one of the towns wealthiest local merchant, not only construction but land ownership. Those five-acre tracts were developed into tourist bungalow for those from larger cities wanting to experience remote desert life, yet wallow in the comforts of the modern era. It became its own bonanza.

I first saw the three letters when I was home on a summer break for a month before heading back in order to finish working on some papers anticipated for the early onset of my last year. I ran into an old friend Mark who had taken over his fathers electrical company and was looking for someone to help him out. I'd no idea the details concerning electricity except when you need it either in plug or switch form, but I knew Mark well enough he wouldn't mind at all having a complete novice for a couple of weeks, plus the fact he was a newly conformed born-again Christian and just dying to save others.

Knowing I'd end-up sitting at home lazy building lethargic attitudes Mark picked me up Monday morning early and we headed out, first to Bowmen's to get material then on to the job he was eager to get at Chuck Bowmen contracted him for; re-wiring an old five-acre tract. Had I known that morning before he picked me up was to change things becoming the last relatively sane day, I'd have not woken up. But then, how would it have panned-out knowing the entire town would face what it would in two weeks?

Climbing into his four-wheel drive work pick-up Mark didn't want the usual pleasantries of normal conversation but dove head long of why God punishes this, that, the other. Christ I felt doom slowly approaching before we'd even left the dirt drive way. Was this one hell-of-a mistake? I understood of course everyone has their rights but trapped in this monster truck which now hit asphalt and suddenly lurched into a daemon as Mark floored the pedal and we started our scream down the already shimmering road from the morning heat rising, creating that wonderful mirage often seen on hot black strips, luring reality from somewhere afar, calling it back, before getting lost.

Thrusted back into the seat, hands gripping anything near, looking straight I hadn't travel this fast since taking peyote and going to some theme park run by a giant mouse, and his girlfriend. Everything flew past including whatever Mark was saying. His mouth worked viciously. There must have been flakes of spit traveling as fast as we were covering myself as he never looked at the road but directly at me pointing fingers in many directions, all the while country music softly playing in the background telling me, 'it's ok everybody get this-enjoy the ride,' while my mind preforming damage control on a soon to run ashore vessel, choosing what part of me to save and what was going to have to be cleaned up later with whiskey, but not with Mark for he'd abandon that evil brew which caused all sorts of mischief when monkeys got around to it.

Knowing him back in high school I was awfully glad he didn't drink. It would certainly have altered many a great minds he'd met had he a few and conversed with them on any subject as he was simply fascinated in just about anything on this earth, and knowing alcohol loosens lips, he'd have talked for millenniums to come. Observing all this I wondered had coffee played any role here, but more than likely he'd found his calling and wanted to share, as we all do, once there's something we find irresistible and have to tell. Under any costs.

So I nodded, whimpered a yes or no appropriately where I thought one should be done or said, approving or not to anything just as long as we come to a safe stand-still, but as God had other ideas that wasn't the case. Mark took the long way to Bowmen an extra four miles, which wasn't that long in real life, but here, it took a year or two off me. And it was all... the... time! Lasting the four weeks with Mark. I lost my youth in that truck, leaving it an old haggard man. And in ways wiser.

We did arrive safety as always, wherever the destination. Mark was protected by something greater that is true. Once re-routing a high voltage wire we were told had been turned off, Mark was thrown onto his ass ten feet back. Only later I learned such a hit would have probably stopped your heart. But Mark got right back up, put his blue cap on he always wore which had jumped from his head like a cat chased by dogs leaping for the tree just as they closed-in, and calmly went back at it.

So when we pulled into Bowmen's for the first time together Monday morning it was with great relief and one I'll never forget as the soul of the beast we were riding in, truly feeling its presence, protected us. But most will laugh if were told such a tale, for how can a truck have a conscience, but this one certainly did, a number of times pulling gently saving us from going into the ditch along side the road while Mark oblivious, foretold the Lords way of what-ifs and how-comes.

Mark jumped out and strode with great purpose as he always did into the huge warehouse which looked more like the hanger for large aircraft, not your simple Piper's or Cessna's, something much larger. Even living in the city I'd never seen anything so large, and I'd been to several rock concerts but nothing could touch this. Except for football or baseball stadiums, but this in its own right was a stadium for contractors and those finally been driven mad, wanting a simple washer to fix that pesky dripping from the bathroom sink. It was anything and everything for the building. Even a section for auto maintenance just added last year. The wonders. Yet I couldn't help but knew, there was something else here. Why the hell so big?

And in passing through somewhat I thought strangely for a store, massive metal front doors, looking in I knew the answer. Storage space. A great deal of it in fact so much so you could stock pile a small towns supplies for several months. Exactly what Bill Bowmen accomplished, and what Chuck oversaw. Not just construction materials but supplying and ultimately if possible controlling the town's surplus without question everything from baby food to mustache wax would be here. And in great quantities. Approximate eighty percent of the warehouse, what I could see, was set-aside as supplies for the town from floor to ceiling.

How convenient. Should a crisis arise, should you be allowed through the bunker-like system, should you have something of value, you'd probably be given your rations. If you didn't fall between any of these points, you'd die. Life in that region was simple regarding only a few basic rules that couldn't possibly be ignored. Still, standing there while Mark maneuvered through varies shelves, aisles, and bins gathering material for the coming job I couldn't help but laugh at the insanity of it all and brilliant foresight in an evil sort of way. If you held all this from a town, a silly bunker as such wouldn't keep out a large group of desert rats. Except if it wasn't for the rats. But something bigger.

It wasn't very busy, apart from Mark and I, I could only see two other people, both talking with Chuck who was holding some sort of mechanical device I'd never understand as I wasn't mechanical at all in nature. Which further drew my attention as to how in the hell I was going to be any good for Mark with my two left hands, especially with something as lively as electricity? Fortunately, Mark knew this assuring me it wasn't a problem so long as I followed, yes, some very simple rules. The number one being don't fucking touch anything unless you ask first! As was such I could and did every moment of our entire time together, adhere with great earnest, never once proving otherwise.

Both self-made although Chuck did have considerable wealth inherited from the father, he'd turned the family business into what lay before my unbelieving eyes. Mark took over the reins from his mother and father too but on a lesser scale. Though very honorable as both parents worked years building their business, handing it over to Mark only when they felt he was sound enough in handling the responsibilities, and in meeting him also not since graduation while shopping for my folks in the Desert Knoll market passing as a large grocery store actually only one of two boasted in the Mesquite Springs and was more on the modest side concerning retail, I was surprised at how radiant and direct, how in over-coming that awkward shyness possessing him in school moved now with the tone 'I don't know but I'm gunna' about him.

Though standing over thirty feet away from Chuck when he saw me his head nodded slightly still talking with the two, signifying recognition and in a moment after concluding business strode to where I stood. The small talk aside he invited me into his office while we waited for Mark and both sat down enjoying the air condition which was rare as most business and private homes still operated with traditional swamp-coolers.

The five-acre tract job came up and we discussed it briefly, but then the tone changed from polite banter to straight questions concerning the papers of Manfreed. Chuck rose from his tasteful office chair and diapered into another room returning in less than a minute with an old satchel of leather bound in red ribbon. Sitting down he immediately, opened the weather worn hand bag and gently pulled out three frayed parched and yellowed papers individual encased with some form of special plastic Chuck mentioned to protect the paper and subsequently its written content.

The first two papers were simple writing, notes of field exploration and findings, but the third was something very different. I sensed it before Chuck carefully slid it over for me to review; this was indeed rather special. I looked firstly at the penmanship of the content and noted directly minute changes in the g's and o's which I didn't mention as I considering the fact why he wanted to share such a relic when it occurred I might have a notion of the modern mystery where the big strike lay, which at present remains hidden.

There were, of course, the profound drawings I was taken with straightaway but forced myself first to follow through in reviewing the handwriting for any variants. Those noted I turned my attention as it slowly became hypnotic and I felt had I not having sat I'd fallen flat on my ass, the mystery slowly revealing itself in my mind as I began drooling wondering what to do with my new found goddamn fortune!

Instead, I sat there looking profoundly puzzled, shaking my head slightly uttering something of how old it all was and I'd no idea what any of this gibberish meant. It is usually a number of things making a person lie, but making them lie well is something very different, well enough to fool everyone is simply an art form of manipulating the weaker mind, yet some will argue as to whether that be the liar or their victims, whereby one lies to themselves, the other believes thinking everything ever told to them is a lie and therefore they don't know reality because everything they believe in is in itself, a lie, it's what the world is living on, unable to survive without, so what the hell.

I reassured Chuck I'd no thought here and was thankful his phone rang asking where I was because some lunatic at the check out causing the cashier to think twice about asking any questions put to the individual requesting my immediate presence as there was a great deal of work to be done, and seeing he was already either agitated or on drugs, unwilling to cooperate in any form of social decency with the ranting of God's word and lighting, plagues of insects or zombies with immortal souls damned eternally because they'd forgotten something which the cashier also wanted desperately to forget, namely the entire episode Mark was putting her through, allowed me to slip away, or so I'd thought, till Chuck called me back asking if I did recall anything to let him know, and out the door I slid eagerly embracing the yelling of my new employer.

Gathering-up cables and clamps, box of numerous materials I'd no idea their usage, Mark and I moved swiftly out the giant hanger, both leaping into his truck which strangely had its engine idling, perhaps Mark started it then returned to the store, but he told me to always keep the truck locked no matter the reason raising a finger loudly proclaiming, thieves lay about in all directions, seemed hardly the case, none the less we reversed out of that parking as if it were diseased and made for the job site at full throttle both Mark and the trucks massive engine screaming all the while about things I'd no understanding what the hell he was talking about and rested my head back listening to the music, feeling the vibration of some mythical beast carrying us toward our destined adventure with a plastic Jesus mounted on the dashboard.

And in the end, as I closed the door that late afternoon with its heat still holding, the final time riding with Mark and his guardian, the engine growled a little, and as I stepped away they both sped off, like a wild chariot on a mission that can't possibly fail. Two months afterward my mom called to talk as she did from time to time when at the end before hanging-up told me Mark had been killed in a head-on collision with a drunk. Both he and his truck were killed instantly.

## Chapter 11

A Giant Map

Mary and Michael were my best friends those last two years in high school. Dubbed MnM they were each other's friends too, but of a deeper kind. It struck, at first sight, the way you read about or see in a film, their love was true and a great joy to be involved in. Both excellent students their future was bright, but not together. After graduation, we went our ways, and I never heard from either again.

While the first four years of higher education were fun they happened to change something deep inside returning MnM and those days, in a soft clarity wondering if I too would be lucky and find a partner as I grew tired of all the parties. And in having to return home as I didn't often while studying, I needed to find some old papers I believed would help me with a class I had trouble in stored somewhere in boxes still kept in the bedroom basement having only one plus point the temperature being significantly lower than the rest of the adobe house.

Rummaging through the third box I was about to give up when I came across an old photo Michael, Mary, the track and field mentor coach Mandis, Matt Benton, and myself taken one of the last days in the final sporting invitational competition our school held every year. I remembered that day well, near the end of the school year, our last before heading out to the future when someone from the school's newspaper yelled and we all turned. Taken in a moment of pure honesty and surprise it was one of my favorite and I'm glad to have stumbled upon it stuck here forgotten since then.

And the flood began. Images, sounds, smells, all jumping out, freed at last their prison in my mind swung open gleefully they awoken dire to consume chaos and thrills with emotions of numerous flashbacks, rearing to have at it they all stormed through the doors and into the wide open yelping and howling, snapping at one another like wild animals who'd you think had never seen the sights of a day and with long hooked claws thick with grime from captive torture they slashed with great arcs the conscious moments of those days, those very moments held as treasures, into ragged pieces as all true relics, should never be found.

There wasn't any cold chill, which crept from the box suddenly grasping my hand yanking me down into its depth. There was no horror here of monsters with six eyes or raggedy clowns or a monkey with banging drums or some other instrument casting its spell of death when it started playing, or a cloud of fog lifting from the box covering the floor which in itself opened some pit where demons held for millenniums surfaced leaching the world that chained it with blood-lust revenge. There wasn't lostness or forgotten youth. Of slaughter. Of an entire town disappearing returning into an undead comic with household animals and probably farm should there be enough imagination. No Rape. Madness, none of that as one would think. Or perhaps hoped for.

I just sat at the box looking at old photos thinking what the hell am I doing? And where was the point of even saving them? Were they to hold one-day promises of a better tomorrow? Could they dare? What form of stupidity would I have to maintain in their celebration showing them to others, this is my youth, as an explanation casting that infamous illusion of what a wonderful time with either down-trodden, tearful, or jubilant expression having manifested upon the moment depending on the audience? Would I join the parade being pleased was a statement, not a question, yet who cared in watching photos from another? Christ if you weight the entire shit of it on social networks no one ever looks at, it would capsize Jupiter, spinning out of control pulling the entire solar system with it and then where would you like to be in that last second or two of your life before you froze solid, cracked into chunks then dust with pressure collapsing? Selfi?

I returned the photos and the envelope into the box, only after looking further and found nothing of what I searched. Certain it was here somewhere I grew agitated in the idea what if it was not. Over the years boxes had their content rearranged, thrown out, given away. My mind beginning its earnest hunt with excitement was turning quickly into that all too familiar feeling of shit, motherfucker I've lost my mind in these goddamn boxes, and actually it was stolen years ago in my sleep, or when I thought I was asleep, or maybe it was a dream coming out from under my bed with it's scraping claws on the bare, cracked cement floor of the basement which I had to move into because my mother hated sleeping in the same room as my father and...yes perhaps I was losing it but that doesn't do a shit-load of good now so better fuckin' focus so I can get the hell out of here was my thinking or maybe I was screaming that because I couldn't hear my own thoughts with all the other screaming from the closet just a foot away which was the true horror in my life, not failing test scores or not able seeing the bottom of the lake wondering what would surface from its depths rapidly drawing me down with only the last of my breath escaping as its razor teeth sank further into my leg shredding it to the bone coloring the water milky red alerting others of the feast.

It wasn't these boxes, no not in a million years, nor wondering if you are homosexual in high school because you had always to take showers with other boys as you ran the two mile in track and field and your father hated gays and your brother was gay, who married a woman for only a year to prove what you never knew for sure of even today because no one spoke of the matter because had he not died from a slit throat in the middle of some cursed land haunted with rapture and gangsters, he would have seeing AIDS hadn't a cure, so maybe it was blessing saving my family the misery of watching him become a living skeleton, with the lesions and rotting teeth falling out while eating apple sauce, where his partner abandon him saving for another, where all he was himself, on a chivalrous quests, wandered through windmills on some distant hill without his Sancho.

No, it wasn't these damn boxes, rather what they stood for. Holdings of the lost. That idiotic want-to-be-has-been expression used often curiously what better to say of those having had their chance, and blew it, while standing nodding-bobbing the head up and down, a toy placed in the rear window of your car, while burping the one syllable word 'yep...yep' because frankly that's the extent of the imagination or energy exerting the imagination allowed, after all, having a rest was prime thinking and needn't be distracted, needn't be pulled by the hair from a quagmire of thought.

And it wouldn't be wise adding speculation with a half-education either as most did. It wasn't the ideas aimed at, rather the event of its conclusion. None wanted more a simple and direct answer; why waste time dreaming of having a garden with people living in the garden, not from some religious issue of exile, but the simple reasoning of common interest and thinking. I like a garden so I make it. Others like gardens too, so they join in its splendor. But this might seem as a mad mans requiem, a sort of release, the last effort a ship sent off towards its fallible unknown shore facing harrowing waters filled with God knows what creatures having birthed from great depths arise with insurmountable hunger, the kind which gnaws like hungry lust and feast.

And why had I chosen counterfeit as the means of survival? Surely there was reason but had I fooled myself into believing as nearly all the rest, clouds do have linings although they might not be silver told in tales, but should our imagination or, actually believing what we are told as open thinking might be frowned upon, showing a somewhat darker outer rim instead, perhaps menacing, well anything might be possible, remembering of course I'd have to agree in what lays before us, otherwise there'd be crucifixions and burnings at the stake, all sorts of handy works our vivid mind could think and practice because we'd accomplished so much since crawling out of some brackish lagoon filled with our own dung; there is also that side if you so choose in excepting where two people very happy but screwed-up, and thrown out of a really beautifully living environment where they could run around naked and fuck all they wanted, eat all they wanted, except from one tree, which they just might have gotten sick and tired of all the blessed bullshit and went up to the tree where they meet the only thing which could balance everything out and made a deal with it.

With the making of this, I balance humanity through further preservation of the self, a mature education, or so I lead it in believing with great desperation wanting to release my power, though I can firmly state I'd no idea how it would be accomplished. Like some great sheath protecting its sword, or rather protecting the world from the sword, which placing its sharpened metal within the cover becoming firmly locked away, my expectations which their methods demanded revealing, grew lame, hobbled with unceasing popularity. And what of the sense, able only knowing what is allowed, what is seen, felt?

Struggling I stood up and looked blankly at the cement brick wall of the basement with their millions of pits from bursting air pockets while being formed then baked, now painted only twice since I can remember, one a soft yellow, the other a grayish pink, which as it sounds had gone terribly wrong, but had to be lived with, fortunately only a year or two when the yellow was applied saving sanity whatever the thickness sliced remained till final departure toward far greater challenges and lies, loss of virginity, broken then mended souls, as if in all some deep blue colored net was cast upon a collection of life's pieces, acknowledging the burden to carry for which nothing would ever escape.

The paper was written my senior year of high school a few months prior to graduation. The final paper. Naturally, I'd want it placed in safety while away so I choose the cardboard box without the holes, saving that for books and old LP's whose collection had grown considerably since my first album received on my ninth birthday, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band graced the basement's air including pitted walls, where keeping the volume excruciatingly low as my parents were strongly opposed to such permitted me to have this one and only one album with the condition of its loudness kept to an absolute minimum.

Later the diagnose hearing loss would be traced to Lennon having my ear left glued to the speaker for six months ignored not to miss a single note. It was only later by more than four years I was given a pair of headphones, which changed everything. Like sex without a condom, it was pure sensuous, celestial by all the means. Being aware only slightly at the time of possible damage to the ear while using such things most kids waved it off as not me, probably those kids said the same about alcohol getting at them causing its abuse to run ramped.

But when you're young what are you supposed to do? Your role models were gangsters and outlaws. You grew up in cactus and snakes, there was something in your parents closet and probably its twin under you bed somewhere between the rolled-up hairballs and discard orphaned socks for which you'll never find its partner. There were no social media of any kind. You had the phone mounted on the wall and hand written letters to send and receive news. It wasn't till you were seventeen they ran a phone cable into the basement. Two months later you graduated and left so what the hell.

And that's how it was, thinking briefly back there I wondered how it all would pay off in the future? Weren't you supposed to pay now so as not having the bill later? At least that's what the rule says, written somewhere in white marble in blazing gold letters lighting the way for all to see. What I was taught, or envisaged with an over abundant imagination compared with reality, were becoming completely different as the days of my youth progressed as I frantically searched for anything which originated from its opposite.

With the encroachment of old age years later I'd eventually find this elusive prize. This crocheted piece of self-woven intricately allowing that better understanding of the untruth being a condition of life, hinting gravely, fear is the true horror. Entering a slightly hypnotic state as often while living here, staring at one specific point on the basement walls, their pits, their holes where indeed some spiders resided, now began to move. Swaying blossoms who's branches from tall trees reach toward the soft sunlight, gently cast a spell as so often in the past allowing me to enter through a portal of neither time or space, but of nothingness. The blessed land of the insane.

But for what are those shackled with this illusion, and we who able it so, what then of this so called fear being the true horror, what of it for those unable to understand our built environment with all the rules keeping us intact, bound, happy? Life times spent dictating regulations, stating demands having prejudice positions wanting that element they so worship to be real, therefore the mandates needs are clear, justified, translated. I thought of this while watching the pits dance meeting one another, twirl then glance away as if too shy to embrace, unable in committing, a venture just out of reach, as I had done on many occasions. The grim missed opportunities rang their haunting bells loudly through my mind, roaming along hallowed halls of memories ill gotten, feared, loathed, yet always having placed markers so as not to become lost.

As the mind works so shall it demise. I learned early working on this desert farm with its handful of constantly frolicking goats, chickens for whom often you'd step in their droppings, squirming up between your toes forming some bizarre new clay figurine a play-dooh gone mad of blacks and dark greens mixed with occasional various cream colors; with its horses and seven dogs all wild for that long ride up into the Bullion Hills laying the simplest of three miles from our back door. How the dogs all loved yelping after rabbits they'd never catch for the Jack-Rabbits where fast and stronger than those giving chase; with the duck and their consistent quacking for some realizing the myth is simply that, of not having an echo, it being too quiet to hear; of the over fifty-five cats all strays such as the dogs, their antics, domains, of cleaning wounds infected from fights some rather difficult with the stench and puss shooting in all directions having just lanced open a week old attack (the longer the worse); of pigeons for only God and my mother knows why we had them as we didn't eat them nor their eggs; of the plum tree where while gouging on unripen green fruit later puked upon the sink and toilet with great force, along the floor all the way to my bed leaving a trail of spew that stank of warm summer days and something rotting; where first understanding the meaning of 'whore house' which I'd always interpreted as one being full of horror was set right through my brothers description aided on by my father, however not sustained for indeed it truly is a place of terror; of my brother taking summer school classes to graduate early with excellent results and wide open promises he'll never meet; of the time we'd both get drunk on tequila while our dad slept upstairs (this was quite remarkable because tequila has an adverse effect on me where I turn into some other animal waking up days later and possibly hundreds of miles from where it all started remembering very little if anything, fortunately not as severe as the vodka from Uzbekistan bouts for these there is no cure, no chance of remembering of anything, you might as well take a knife and cut part of your brain out because that drink does the very same) and we never once woke him.

The list was endless now grazing the wall holding those days floated in through the same passage everything flows through, that in-between world, not quite here, certainly not there. The place you are just before dozing off or waking-up, that darkening, closing softly around the mind tracing the past onto the essence so as not to be forgotten, nor misplaced but sadly is, where possibilities and dreams still hold though fading, some true light stays. And it was this light I wanted. That shows me where the hell THAT FUCKIN' PAPER IS!

Blinking the spell now broken, turning away for a better reason than daydreams, my eye caught sight of a book I'd not seen before as I knew the ones my mother read and seeing my father doesn't read its enigma grew as either a beautiful flower or some malignant tumor. Stepping over the boxes calmly walking, never taking my eyes from its white shape I gazed, lazily reading the raised letters on the cover aloud, 'Misleading Significance of Words' rolled off and fell where things fall when not maintain well enough, while contemplating its origin and at the same time noticing there was not the slightest echo in my voice, whereas even from descending the stairs sounded of rifle shots, as the basement was bare except for these few boxes and some old books.

No this was something else. Something entirely different I'd not seen before. Certainly not from my mother; could it be from my brother? No. Not his either. But that wasn't the question knocking, practical sending my nerves into a fit feeling my knees weaken as something wet slide down the middle of my back. I could almost here its slithering sucking noises as it moved closer to my trousers. Was it real or just my imagination of having finally been caught after all these years of out-smarting the monster that owned this place? Had it waited patiently only till now letting some tentacle trace the narrow curve the spine has, downward where it could really grab hold?

The screaming started immediately as I finished the syllable of its title WHY, WHY! Screeching, now stretching itself WHYYYYYYYY, WHYYYYYYYY, WHYYYYYYYY?!!! as a child with a high-pitched shriek screaming its wants, when not allowed. With a hard blow to the stomach taking the air with the rest of the warning, sounding a loud whoosh of escaping air from a balloon, the question asked again why hadn't it a fine layer of dust as the other books reverberated throughout the basement.

Probably as a child I would have wet myself, but here drawn into the realm of a brightly lit its color slowly changed as I held it, into white. Standing out among dust and cobwebs, in a place of youth and memories, I was thankful the creaking on the wooden steps broke my attention, and as I looked up just before my eyes left the book I saw its pages flutter as if there was an invisible thumb looking for a specific page or marker where the reader had left off. It was the slightest of movements as if a wink passed between the book and myself. A gesture perhaps, or sign of greeting. Come...open me. Don't be shy went around my brain the voice of a younger person, not certain whether male female, similar to both, yet distinct from one another.

And in that flash, my eyes carried to the stairs where standing there was my mother almost at the bottom step holding a small bag in her hand. Both staring at one another for a moment then she turned, twisting at the same time and flung the bag at me which floated across the short distance like a malformed Frisbee landing next to the old books two feet from where I stood. Without a word she started up the stairs and was gone before I could think of anything to say. But what the hell could I mumble...hey mom is this your book?...this is weird mom whose is it? Obviously, the bag was meant for the book and as I reached for it the pages fluttered again and caught my eye causing my arm to freeze as I looked back upon the book.

I blinked waiting. Thinking. Trying to think. But nothing came. Not some train wreck of great ideas, pick it up open the book...put the book in the bag idiot...get the fuck out of there! Nothing. None of which could direct me in attempting action at any time, especially right goddamn now came into focus. My mind was a complete, and utter blank. Thankfully I don't have to think in order to breathe or pump my heart, divide cells, digest food, if that were the case I'd have dropped dead, as I had no idea the length of time I stood there in that position, arm reaching for the bag while looking at the book, having captivated my sense in the fact the damn thing was getting brighter.

The basement was dimly lit, only storage for boxes, some old rocks my father collected a reason for him to wander in his retired years with fellow gold diggers looking along old forgotten dirt washes where perhaps they'd find a sparkle of gold dust having washed down as there were several prosperous gold and silver mines in the area, now though it's only drunks with guns shooting everything, including themselves sometimes. There was another reason; to get away from family and be with those on long walks into the barren hills, as they were the same, those having fought the war on faraway barren isolated rocks.

They collected together in the desert, those men, and women, children too, having survived wars wanting in search of a simple peace they themselves knew would never be theirs. As in all traumas, things never heal the way they're supposed to or hoped. They just do. Those having actively participated in combat likely suffered the most, as well as their families. We were no different. Nor the poor bastard that slit my brother's throat.

Still today they don't have an identity of this giant man. His almost inhuman form must have raised considerable alarms, yet the mystery-man, whom I call Mr E knowing certain now won't be found in any registry, birth or death. Not this one, perhaps another should it wander off that beaten path of sanity, for which Mr E made his fatal error in doing, and if we don't watch it closely, they'll all make a mad scrabble for the fences whaling to get out. Oh yes, some say there are many Mr E's running. Thousands. Millions. Who knows. One thing is sure; they are hungry. And not for that peanut butter and jelly sandwich bullshit, but some real meat.

Now, the question came one day as I walked to feed the pigeons just as I stepped in fresh, but not too fresh chicken shit because it was cold as it squeezed through my toes but had not formed its thin crust when aged, was I on that menu and if I so, what the holy shit am I going to do about it? I froze in that blistering heat whose only purpose to scorch anything laying that merciless golden eye upon, shit between my toes pondering the fact having struck a blow similar to that of seeing an animal hit by a car; at first you don't believe what you see. Then it slowly creeps through. Usually, in those awful dreams chasing you after witnessing such an event. Sometimes for weeks.

And I'd swear to the Almighty anything, please stop the horrid nightmares! And they did. At least the dreams, then the other side takes over. The side I made a deal with. And if I make this agreement, I'd better be absolutely clear in its defining moment otherwise...things change. And somewhere down that lost line, I'll have to pay, just when I have control. And there's where Mr E arrives. Like a new mint coin. Shiny. Flawless. The trustee of that domain. Having all the keys for all the doors that ever were, and shall be, he holds them in his massive hand, while the other grips the gate I need to get through.

So waz it gonna be, ar' ya playin by da rules ya sissy lovin' pile uv shit, r ar' ya gonna git evun? Of course Mr E being a welcomed sight in the grandest of times, making this moment naturally beyond anything ever expected, clearly there would be no regulations whatsoever honored, and in raising my foot, the shit clinging to fast taking with it small stones and dirt, rotating it slowing wanting to inspect the situation better, at the same time looking at the underside of my foot seeing the chicken droppings stuck, partially embedded there, I felt an immediate relief knowing when I'm older I won't have fear of anything or one. That I would make myself known, my voice ring loud above all others. But today I'd carry on to the chicken house collecting the eggs without another thought of Mr E and the many ways he'd teach me when the time suits. When it's just right for the both.

True to it all, I hadn't thought of him until the moment the look in his eyes just as half his head was blown away shown the sign of recognition between us. And the sorrow flung their doors wide open as he laid there among the cactus thorns and tumble weeds the dust hanging low from his mighty fall, one foot slipped out from its shoe, a Cinderella from a lost era where no prince dare ever dream of venturing. With the fairy tale ended I felt the spike of some great rusting iron shoved into my soul, driven from some mad hammer held by an ever-mournful God given the sign, 'It is the business of the stupid to want, not theirs'. And so both the free spirit, and the long fear, the long fear of watching and wanting not yours, and the free sprite of that which to decide, was born.

There were little flashes as the sun caught minerals in the floating dust of the giants fall, sparkles of dreams perhaps, of some distant time where peace ruled, running as its rampant mane flew casting some obscene shadow of lovers tangled their twisting orgasm sounding as drums beating jungle rhythms most, will never understand. I watched, captured hungry for time to turn its wanton desire of control, to cease its illusion of maintaining any form of coherent schooling. But I was doomed from the onset of meeting Mr E, listening to his guidance and watching out for the piranhas of society and their social outcast twin, those lurking in the dark waiting. Sharpening themselves.

Through those eyes, any vision was ludicrous. I'd seen that before and wanted no part of it with wild lustfull ways of manic effort toward the common good. Lies without having to lie. It was the clever way of offering change on the cheap. Affordable for all. No discrimination to tell from, no telling of poison brewers and their refined vengeance-seekers annual conference of no good bastards making headway, simply their own way. A way we never thought of till quietly in our dreams we succumbed to their wants and desires and awoke to realize it was not too late but time never existed to begin with, that it was all a production, that even though we instinctively strive for freedom, for happiness, and mostly for control, none of it played out. And if it were not for our actual desire in left holding the bag, our own blindness left it over our heads.

In all of it, in all the lessons from Mr E, his greatest was in showing absolutely not a thing. Not a moment. Not a thought. Only the giant standing there, keys as usual in hand, straw hat askew, looking at you, waiting. For that I never knew till years later when I rose from my terminal and greeted the monster, that horrid sentinel as it clawed through the doorway tearing past its metal frame as though it wasn't there at all. And for all of it perhaps it wasn't. As I remembered there were no enterprising thoughts when I struck the terminal floor, fainted for lack of blood and substance of life itself as it was robbed from me years before when placed there. Chained. Just another parasite to be feed. Wasn't that The Company? But how would I know this, recall as it were if I'm still in the basement and this yet had not happened? Or am I wallowing in my own dung hill imagination again?

Were the others observant, or I alone witnessed the 'Yes', whispered Mr E as he stepped back from me? Was that of a statement in making, or answering a question issued? But what matters of this translation, what benefit would it bring me and those lives I'd eventually touch, none to say they who touched mine? Would it be gainful, knowing what Mr E had in mind in uttering that last word of his life? What matters in the end about the desert of some sick, evil world, or of the "ancient world," from whence he came, as obviously not from here? When like him, one has the breath of the wind, the rush, the unshackled scorn of a need, which makes everything ponderable, by making everything think, and be thought of.

So what would the need of knowing The Yearns literally take? Staring at the now ever increasing bright object who once was just a book, now began to pulse as a beating heart would in the chest of some archaic animal still in the womb, waiting, knowing birth will soon arrive, the anticipation causing a slight humming somewhere in its center, it too increasing a light headedness bringing me closer to the quest Mr E had all along been given, but hadn't passed on after his death, his departure as it were from the desert floor, was perhaps premature, though must have been planned, as we are so often reminded taught from birth, it's all written somewhere, inscribed in time our own affairs and their outcomes?

Certain Mr E was to pass forward the task, the sacraments I must take, knowing this fostered a sense of stillness, a growing desire wanting this labyrinth where roaming lost was peaceful beyond intelligence. Feeling the beating of its heart quickened throbbing rebounded upon the basement walls it became all consuming, devouring any presence I possessed leaving me naked without the protection of self. The armor gone, that enduring life of before quickly shrank, morphing into some withered flower, scorched from unbearable reality, never prosperous again.

The light now from the book grew so I couldn't look and must turn away for fear my eyes themselves would boil in their sockets leaving my brain slowly to cook until it too oozed through the once portals of the soul, flowing upon my cheeks as gobs dropping eventually onto the basements floor feeding armies of ants who colonized under the cool sub-flooring of the basement with their miles of tunneling for nothing is ever wasted in the desert.

In lowering the lids of my eyes they closed only half then stopped abruptly with a jar with a half-blink, blocked so as only the lower part allowed the intensity to enter while the top-half light transferred with an ever increasing bright orange, as looking at a high afternoon sun through closed eyes would demand. Trying to raise my hand wanting to shield the lights brilliance only proved the point, moments as such are not of our own. The arm and hand were numb, unable to respond I tried to look away yet resulted with likewise manner.

Force now to face what must be, not able to even breathe, I felt even my own heart stop. My entire body was overtaken, and out-of-control environment of viewing, measuring, judging all from somewhere deep inside me was only allowed, where force-feeding till bursting I felt that older-self as excrement pushed out, slowly filled with a taste for the unconditional accompanying an all important refinement of vision marking the exact point of its origin, so to begin mapping, never becoming astray.

With his chart in hand, I knew the way, it was after now, seeing Mr E had the intention of giving had he not receive his fatal shot. Laying the works for endeavors of future leading also into the past was Mr E allowed passage both up and down time, moving freely, effortlessly as rain falling, with his description stated clearly during one lesson, 'What's the IT'S, 'n it's raining?'

Like some secret game with rules unknown, only the past and present as guides, I ventured forward with great caution not wanting to stumble losing my way, enfeebled blinded with light powerless not understanding up from down, left or right, yet wonderfully free. If this feeling was now, there must be a reason in its presence, as all things lay an open path but can we see their sign posts lighting the way? True, the giant had his keys, his hat and foul clothes, his long beard, his leather skin, but there was something else he possessed which I'd missed I'm sure.

The police found nothing when they examined the body. Mr E had no valuables any identification, ownership of distinguishing marks illustrating recognition. Fingerprints and teeth found him in no database. No file of any kind listed him. The only crime committed by Mr E being the murderer of my brother. And William his murderer, though later acquitted, ruled in self-defense.

But Mr E hadn't testified, for had he, things would appear differently. Very much so. The investigation opened and closed the day of the event. No further queries. Why should there? It was clear the vagabonds death was justified for the actions of disgrace upon his parents for such an act could not be found legitimate for the very face of their missing. And without disgrace what is there? Yes. As Mr E stated to me before his passing. Yes. Yes. YES! The word rattled in my brain like a marble in a tin kettle. YES. YES. YEEESSSS!

Only one word, meaning it must be a key word. Of importance. KEY. His keys. He had keys in his hand! No, that was in a dream. I saw him, a fist full of them while holding the portal of a gate with the other hand. He looked the same in the dream as in The Yearns. He looked the same. Looked the same. The same. But was he?

I began comparing the two; of dream and reality. Viewing both again taking my time. I could see both in the blinding light from the white book. One image would appear then another. The Yearns. Then the gate. Fading in, then out. Slowly back and forth they went. But I couldn't see anything significant. Apparently identical. Yearns. Gate. Yearns. Gate. Yearns. Gate, then very slowly the transition speed between the two increased. Slightly at first then faster and faster. In a moment they both increased till only a flashing nano-second appeared between the two giving the image as one. In this state, there was a difference between the two. One of clarity, and most notably missed if viewed separately. That of the giants straw hat.

A sign Mr E meant. A sign on the map. His hat, the weaving in its making, especially the wide brim. Having a considerable number of holes and wide cracks in it casting light and shadows upon his face and neck including the massive shoulders and chest, the brim's weathered effects forced the eyes to look either at the shadows, or light from which the sun played its game of illusion. An illusion so well should you focus on either, you'd see a different picture.

Without the gate, the sun shone differently forcing the eye to look at the shadows offering an appearance of floating clouds upon the giant. With the gate, the giant holding the keys and the portal caused the giant to somewhat shift, altering his head only a degree a two, thereby tilting his hat, thus forcing the eyes to focus on sunlight shining through the holes and cracks in the brim. The result was different insofar showing three letter; S R M.

## Chapter 12

Hallway Time

Ruth Morgenson was eight years old when the accident happened. It was simple as they usually are and as rhetoric dictates, they're not a happening, but a result of. The cause came in a small package, the ABCA4 gene; rare because it usually doesn't affect children, tragic because there is no cure for which she was diagnosed with STGD3, the Stargardt disease, the main symptom being loss of visual acuity, uncorrectable with glasses, which progresses but may stabilize between 20/200 and 20/400 vision. Ruth, however, was 20/500. Complete testing informed an already traumatic situation discovering she also had Sickle-cell disease.

For Ruth, it was the end. For her family it was death. Ruth having excellent scores in math and science was excepted for future studies at Longren Institute of Technology upon reaching the age of twelve and able to transfer to the VISUALS hive, and where SurLens was conceived and its first prototype launched, now, having the only ability of sight using special glasses, with a magnification of seventeen, she could read if her face were three inches from the material.

She suffered also from delayed dark adaptation, difficulty adapting to dim lighting. She grew increasingly more sensitive to glare. By the age of nine, she had a total absence of her peripheral and central visual fields. The diagnosis experts lent, their formulas and calculations constituted nothing more than a shrug and you're lucky statement you still have ability distinguishing shades.

Retina implants were attempted resulting in lowering her intraocular fluid pressure inside the eye and erosion of the lining of the eyelids. There was inflammation inside the eye resulting in several reopening of the surgical wound to evacuate the infection. At last, as if to say her body had had enough, retinal detachments accompanied vitreous hemorrhaging of the clear jelly-like substance that fills the eye caused by the Sickle-cell disease, finally proved all possibilities inoperable. The medical world turned its back; sight turned its back on her, but not life. She vowed to avenge the experience, the excruciating mental and physical anguish of two years in their care, in the medical worlds own arcane dimness and functions.

Professional were brought forward, readers whose sole task were illuminating an ever increasing darkened world, halting its destruction, reversing broken dreams. High-function speech recognition computing for her writing, the readers, her family, all recreated the future once ripped away, so at the age thirteen, she entered Longren, the youngest ever allowed into its halls. Two years later she was writing advanced coding for hybrid VISUALS, then she met Ron Grenyip.

Ron grew up in what used to be Charleroi, Belgium, infamously known as the Black Hole of Europe where not even your imagination escaped. Considered the rust belt prominent for its once powerful coal and steel industries luring the unemployed, its urban decline now used as the citywide prison having only guards at the two entry points into the facility. The Company purchased the city, encased it in security, is now home for the internment of over two million people where actually eighteen million enforced any rules they deemed fit to survive.

Ron left two days before the security commenced, leaving everything behind including the foster family he'd lived with since seven when his mother and father having a depressed pilot that day were killed with six others as their helicopter taxi flew into a cargo ship on the outskirts of Rotterdam as their passage out proved a warning none had immediately taken with one passenger asking the pilot just prior to departing the heliport if he could place the box of lemons he'd brought for a client on the floor in front of him, when the pilot replied, 'What floor?'

Why Charleroi? Already bleeding some fifty years after a war crippling its conscious, yet local governments continued shored it from collapse pumping useless finances and projects into an already dead beast whose stench consumed the very fabric of the continent itself, and as gangrene spreads so did the final collapse of the European Union along with the fate of which billions having hoped and dreamt their inadequate lives away, faced a doomed poverty they'd no idea themselves it's depth nor suffering soon to land.

The potency of which a life is altered can never be truly measured. Ruth and Ron carried this and in their first date it simply unfolded as a flower in the morning reaching for its sunlight halting at nothing save pending darkness the evening always brings, so true their emotions formed from nature, though most had forgotten or unwilling to remember for fear of not managing your own affairs reigned true terror as only such before when dragons with their masters astride mighty winged backs, breathing fire melting the stones of cities who'd unwillingness in bowing before them commanded either from self-assurance dragons don't exist, or, if they do they would surely be very small and absolutely no threat at all upon such a great metropolis as ours, they learned the values nature showed, and they knew it was up to those who could not only see such laws, but live by them therefore harnessing its greatest power in always changing.

So too in their relationship and work, change being the key, it burned a great passion, a lust for one another and their secret work not even The Company knew of, which naturally was conducted within its own building, using its own labs of power, where Ruth and Ron themselves were the giant wooden horse the fabled Greeks used, thus writing the code for the neural electron virtual assimilation the sister of SurLens being no foreseeable way its alteration and eventual removal was absolute, it could be controlled outside the VISUALS network by use through a third-party; the neural smart grid and AI implants of TOW designed specifically for individual needs allowing users to stay connected with their chosen content. But even these had threads within the VISUALS mainframe design Ruth and Ron themselves hadn't known of. Until it was too late.

I remember the first time hearing their advancements, and later fully understanding the meaning of them though there were considerable differences between the two; when I was seven years of age, and again at twenty-three. Their ability in coding was beyond anything human. And it was jokingly thought they weren't. How could you manage? Hell, the threading alone VISUALS compiled.

The breakthrough came when they published the first coding for the Native, an all-thinking paradigm proactive AI; the first generation VISUALS using yottascaling. Now we are using eighth generation VISUALS having an estimated computational power of 56 billion brains in real time. Estimated for the fact there isn't a challenge derived ascertaining their level.

The Company of course rejoiced. Ruth and Ron were treated as heroes, able to leap ahead of all humans and their machines with only one small situation. The group of nine wanted a secure string of coding only they would have access in case problems arose warranting a shutdown of the complete Native system. At the start, both Ruth and Ron agreed, however through various development stages of the initial coding the nine grew hostile and oppressive with the work Ruth and Ron had so far completed.

There were constant control checks from both machines and a 'supervising council' the nine establish in order to better monitor their work, which upon completion was immediately removed for security reasons. Ruth and Ron had at their disposal unlimited resources. Their team grew from twelve coders to over three hundred within two weeks of commencement; from six departments into seventy-two. With the 'supervising council' watching everything once working on the project all rights were removed. They could and often arrived unannounced at your residence entering without prior consent. If you were or were not home, it didn't matter either. You had to remain in a quiet and calm manner while they conducted physical and electronic sweeps, the same applied with your workstation at The Company premises.

The material coders compiled were location-active, only accessible at The Company. Under no circumstances were you allowed to remove material from The Company offices and labs, if such was attempted the fail-safes were activated alerting C Branch, the security division of The Company. You were removed and taken to Charleroi for full questioning. Only Ruth and Ron were allowed removing selected material which the 'supervising council' first had to approve, but the nearer they reached final development of Native, this too was revoked for security reasons.

The state of hyper-regularity ensued, that place where The Company built but we ourselves have retreated into a simplified, and beautifully complete alternate version of that world The Company wanted for us. But because it is all around us we accept it as something very normal, which of we eventually craved all the time. And if you were to know its true meaning as Ruth and Ron did, insanity or death, without any interlude would follow. Those words my higher education professor spoke of became ever more real, 'You understand insanity better when you are.'

Yet what could you do? What would you want to do? With your human social predictive implant networks attached helping us absorb data better especially while we slept, why change anything? Your 'think creations' and sensory communication allowing instant connections, how would you better the established norm? No food shortage. No bills to pay. No healthcare worries. No retirement issues. No environmental problems. No wars. No spontaneity.

Ruth and Ron joined The Company on its original concepts; reach beyond your potential. When Native went up indeed the two became icons quickly The Company expanded even further into a global management platform hidden through corporate entities that never existed, bankrolling companies and countries, and managing their data, that being its true wealth, whereby the joke within it higher echelon of managerial staff only an alien intervention from another galaxy would stop us, there was another, something no one discussed openly carrying a far greater fear and reality then visits from another world; that of a single coding strand.

As it wasn't concerned with aliens, the strand became the sole priority as those with the most to loose wanted to know the truth seeing whether it is a myth made it even the more real, or not. In order to mandate the Anti-Anarchist Act, know as 3A, The Company had simply wanted AA as their acronym introducing the act, but that belonged to Alcoholics Anonymous, which now is banned as for years they promoted and later marketed substance abuse as a disease, instead of what it was all along, selfishness on the users end, for which The Company followed suit producing a threat which didn't exist either. 3A was passed with two hours of it being submitted and we took on a new order searching for a coding strand the length of nine keyboard characters, which of course Ruth and Ron had produced and ran away with.

Now, if you just take a moment and think of the logic here, firstly, where the hell could Ruth and Ron run, and secondly, with their programming ability wouldn't they have installed the code into Native during its compilation, and should a situation arrive where they disapproved of The Company, they could trigger the code, initiating a shutdown of its system, thereby blackmailing The Company? That's how I would do it anyway.

I followed the news of Ruth and Ron as everybody did. First awestruck, then angry. Then fearful thinking of a Native system shut down and what it means...total fucking chaos...within 20 seconds. Could Ruth and Ron want this? How was it possible but here it was on the news. Those bastards we chanted. The threat of Native nonfunctional was too much, and panic started gripping the human population with the Repros clearly stating it serves us right to screw around the way we do with technology, but The Company stepped in reassuring all would be well and remarkably it was. Not a glitch whatsoever occurred. The world was saved, and I made up my mind to work for The Company doing my part securing our great way of life.

That was all but a million years ago. The last thing I remember was Mandy, her vaguely familiar sweet voice echoing through my mind, giving me a hard-on. And some creature climbing through the hatch of my booth. But lovely Mandy's voice I could still hear as if it was right next to me softly telling me over and over to wake up...wake up, what her tongue must feel like I thought as see mouthed those words wake up...wake up. We must be together I thought, she's come to take me from my slumber, playfully together caressing softly one another.

Suddenly a screeching sound pulled at me, my brain winched from the sheer repetitiveness, the stubbornness of its constant wailing, it's wavering pitch of high, then low. High one second, low the next. HIGH. Low. HIGH. Low. Barely able to keep myself from returning a scream, I thought of putting my hands over my ears and was about, when I heard a word through the horrible pitching oscillation. Thinking I must be mad, the noise was growing with intensity. I opened my eyes but saw nothing but sparkling light around me. A glittering of changing colors from blues and yellows to reds and oranges, twinkling as far away city lights do on very cold darken nights.

I closed them again and opened them slowly wondering if I'd gone mad between the noise and lights, but neither altered. Blinking and shrieking both sharply rose almost matching now in their simultaneous on-off I'd had enough, placing my hands over my ears, but couldn't as my hands were blocked from reaching the sides of my head. I could feel my hands next to the ears but they were somehow restrained, not permitted in touching them. I pressed inward desperately now as the horrible pitch increased, but nothing changed. The hands were frozen, touching only something of which I had no idea its nature, or why I was held back, to begin with.

The frustration was destroying all my energy and focus ability, growing faint headed knowing soon I'd pass-out from the ordeal with the throbbing in my mind swaying with monstrous bellowing of some sicken stage at rutting season, yet could hear again a single word. Just one word came through all the madness, as it were, because it was lunacy taking me, as before with glimpses while eating, using chop sticks next to my ex-girlfriend listening of her relentless ranting of events I'd absolutely no interest in as for the most part I was focused on courses and exams, and due dates of countless assignments, and more papers, and more assignments, and not taking a shit for three days, and why she always had multiple orgasms and I, only one if lucky, when the vision came to mind of taking the sticks in hand raising them high then driving them deep into the middle of her brain right at the top where with a newborn baby the skull doesn't close for several weeks, and if you press softly you can feel the brain and watch carefully as it pulses with precious fluids, and I thought well, I'd be taken to some prison in some country never heard of because she had so many different blood lines she herself wasn't sure which came from where, and I'd be there the rest of my life fucked all the time up the ass and sodomized by the countless, and I think before this it couldn't happen because it didn't happen, but maybe it did and I couldn't tell the authorities because I thought it was all just a joke seeing I was bored of the person and didn't want her around anymore but couldn't think of a way getting her the hell out of my life, wondering all the while, why she was there in the first place.

That's the kind of frustration I felt as that single word reaching at me with both hands, now turned to claws, tearing at my chest ripping it wide open and pulling my bloody lungs out holding them before me so I may witness my own last breath, though deafening in clarity the word came with great brightness and strength...LORAN...LORAN...LOOORAN!!!

I jerked suffering convulsions, fits of madness no doubt from this dream brought forth a warning either my mind would devour itself or reckoning of sins not yet committed be born onto a soulless beast without ever knowing again courage, gratitude, and certainly not love for that was the greatest and most yearned after trophy. I would know only fear and hatred less the same power forcing breaths and beating hearts bring sense from this deranged settlement of lost travelers housed somewhere deep within my mind while their cooking fires burned with hot coals stank from drippings of slaughtered animals hung above waiting all too patiently as the dead do so well, for movement. Movement of any kind. A simple thought. A mouthed word. Twitch of any muscle.

But these scalawag nomads had no intention of leaving, and why should they? Warm, secure, fed, happy as anything could. Why then should having all that want to rise-up, waddle around waiting for the rest of the silly stupid bastards lethargic mind and body to follow? They were very fine just where they rested and didn't want to be bothered at all. And they weren't. Except for some far-off crying, but that wasn't much of a concern as it was quite a distance and could barely be heard anyway. Most were settling down for a meal regardless and during mealtime nothing ever changes. At all. Why should this be different? Except of course for the screaming, but it was quite a distance and could barely be heard anyway, though it did seem to be getting just a little louder. Not much thought. Certainly not to warrant the call. Absolutely not!

It would have to be especially grim; 'the end was near,' 'what was I thinking?' 'my devices aren't working!' Things of this nature would get them to move, but some screaming...not a chance. As long as it wasn't myself doing the howling, no way they'd move. As long as there wasn't the call. It was quite a distance and could barely be heard anyway, but that was before it started getting louder. Was it getting nearer? And what the hell was it saying? There were words in that yowling, or bellowing or whatever the hell you want to call it. But it was quite a distance and could hardly be heard anyway. That's for sure so placing the call...no it was fine. If you woke them up, Jesus! Who that I shall remember, beat you am bound. Their mantra.

But it was quite a distance and could narrowly be heard anyway, seemed louder now. Yes, it was. True. Clearly, the words became but soon forgotten, for some silly reason the mind didn't want to know those words. Always the most difficult. Stubborn. Stupid. Blind. Selfish. Horny. The mind was all of these and plenty more, but there was another sound. Something being ground. Crunched. And that came very close, very quickly. Yes. So this could be calling. It would be justified. It was a scraping and crunching sound. Both together. You had to give all the information in the call or they'd want a possession returned. Something simple. Easy to work with. Something mindless, for example.

Enough of the stupid question, 'Do you love?' What the hell does that have to do with anything? Of course, you love. If you didn't you're a liar. The question should have been, 'What do you love most?' And it was that of course taken, not some trivial bullshit thing thrown down in a hurry like bad sex. This too was very important when the call is placed. First, you had to alert them to the fact something very bad was coming, and second, the question exclaiming the point. It's that simple. No burning piss there. Make the call and the rest follows for now it was quite not such a distance and nothing else could be heard anyway, seeing it was extremely loud.

The eyes having blurred slowly focused as my brain began its long task controlling the body. The twinkling lights I could see now were broken glass laying all around, on top and in me. There were shards having penetrated my suit. In a flash the pain came with its recollection as if having just given birth of triplets; no, that's not right, it should be cesarean birth because my stomach must have suffered some sort of trauma I couldn't remember as the pain there was excruciating while only breathing, and why I was laying here in this absolute mess of a situation slowly grew a form of blackness floating outside, but I knew it would soon enter the booth or maybe it already had and was eating my stomach.

For a moment I wondered if it hurt like this to breath what of moving? What would that bring? The crunching and scraping sound I'd heard in the distance grew louder. I could feel a vibration matching the noise. Every shuddering brought the crunching and scraping. I couldn't tell what exactly caused this quacking whether the scraping or the crunching they both had independent sounds of course, yet almost merged into one simultaneously producing the vibration throughout the floor, or at least the part I laid upon.

I tried holding my hands over my ears, but with the same results as before. Suddenly the noise stopped, as it must have been directly behind me otherwise I would have seen something. But maybe I didn't want to see what it was. Maybe it was too much and I'd black out or wet myself from fear, done several times as a young child. It was a crushing event when it happened in third grade and again the following year when Billy Means came after me with his buddies and beat the shit out of me for looking at his girl Sally Martin. Christ just looking at her gave me a black eye and bruised shoulders where they punched a million times. Fucking bastards. Even into high school whenever I saw Billy he grabbed his crotch yelling at me, 'Is it dry yet?' then laugh like hell. I hated and feared him, then felt sorry because I'd heard as just about everybody his father sold him when he was a child for drugs. Pimped him for bags. Billy got arrested for carrying a weapon and the last we saw on social was his arriving in Charleroi. I never asked, nobody did, what happened after that.

Why that flashed through my mind I'd no idea. It is a strange place even with all the technology we have, we know slightly more than fifty years earlier. If we really understood its capabilities with all the weird, scary dreams and thoughts going around maybe that's better we stay in the dark. For once, it might be the safest. And I was certainly there now. I had no idea what the hell was happening until something grabbed me and I screamed from the intense pain, thinking I wish I'd pass out.

I felt a tight gripping under both arms and in the moment was standing upright, head swimming ragged like a doll mistreated by insane children, limp having no energy, except that for which breathing and beating of hearts maintained. My eyes shut an instant the stabbing pain shot through me, but standing there not feeling my feet either caused by some nearing blackout derived from the agony, or I was paralyzed, which I don't think so as just a moment ago I could stand while the glass ceiling imploded upon me and the blackness with its sharpness of things that looked like fingers but more like claws, clinging then shredding the hatches doorway, a hatch that as far as I knew constituted the finest and strongest material, as if it were soft grayish cheese, but perhaps it wasn't a moment ago, yet having no idea how long I'd laid, or lived there GOOG GOD!! produced sudden spasms stabbing into my brain as if a cold knife went straight through my eye into its very center, pulled itself out and slide back in again. That seemed the least of my worries though, as I forced my eyes open, and in doing so saw the reflection in the booths tinted glass windows, of what I'd become, why I couldn't touch my head, and what held me under my arms as the terror took hold.

## Chapter 13

How Stories Change

I knew where the gold was. I saw it in the letters Bowmen showed me. I had a rough idea of the smoke tree wash where Manfreed found the canoe with the sun and moon. Sure it was a story like so many desert tales of lost horizons. But had anyone ever known all the facts they'd go screaming up that remote wash high-tailing to their fortune all the while unaware of one small detail. True those who knew the story of the two lovers and their demise, including the poor fellows mother torn to spreads by near wild dogs because he'd fallen in love with another man's women, but not just another man, he was a well off land owner and baron, Karl Van Stieger from The Netherlands. The sun and the moon were the heraldic badges of the House of Stieger.

As the tale is told, a women under the full moon, Stingers wife meeting her lover were later found in each other's arms at sunrise they both were burned alive by the jealous husband Karl. But that's not actually the way it happened. As time tells so does the story tells itself or rather, what the story doesn't tell because quite simply over time, the telling of a story, any story for that matter, becomes altered. One word changes here, another there, and before long the entire thing is out of context.

True, the women was the wife of a Van Stieger, but not Karl, rather his younger brother Stephan for which he was very jealous of. All his life the greatest amount of attention went to Stephan, and it was Stephan who inherited the family fortune in The Netherlands leaving Karl only a quarter portion, however only when upon reaching the age of thirty Stephan must be married having at least two sons. If not he'll be removed from the will and everything goes to Karl.

At the time all this was happening Stephan was twenty-eight years old, unmarried in Amsterdam, growing ever impatient with his inability to attract any female as a proper suitor. Why was this possible seeing he had wealth most would easily have consummated the marriage the first moment possible as they too would no doubt want the promised wealth? Because most are not enough in the case of Van Stieger and the family were cursed.

The great grandfather of Karl and Stephan reigned terror throughout Indonesia and South Africa where as a slave trader he became immensely wealthy. Having several slaves for himself producing a good number of off spring no one knows for certain how much, often abusive with them as with all slaves, he particularly enjoyed when the hunt arose; a slave breaking away running for their lives, literally for when caught they'd wished a quick death. But they were property and Van Stieger knew how to treat property just enough as not to damage them permanently.

Van Stieger never touched the running slaves after being caught. He went after their families. And he'd make them watch. And it would last for days. The mutilations, the burning and branding, the decapitations, the flaying, it was just the best time for Van Stieger. True, here he did lose some property but in the long run, he gained a great deal more especially with the curse he hadn't expected.

A young Indonesian hill tribe girl ran. They caught her two days later. Van Stieger got the girls grandmother and started working on her. Seeing she was old most likely the heart gave out and the old woman died later that evening only after eight hours of torture. Van Stieger was furious as he claimed to just be getting started. Drunk as usually he and his men took another slave, a young boy not related to the girl and began by cutting off first the ears then the nose of the boy. When they'd wedged the mouth open and about ready to start pulling teeth and tongue there was a great scream from the slave. But not a human scream. Nothing like that could have been.

Van Stieger froze as well as everyone for many were forced to watch the gruesome spectacles some even forced to do the torturing themselves as Van Stieger often demanded others inflict the anguish too, all the while chanting 'good for fun, make you don't run' and if you didn't, the same horrible treatment would be done upon you. Do unto others as you would have unto yourself wasn't taught to the natives, though the Dutch were very Catholic and in Gods name they were indeed cleaning evil from the jungle folk, and so was abundantly preached with hot irons and roasted flesh events, of mutated frenzy; a blood lust of animals.

No one moved or breathed. No one could breathe. That was part of the curse. The scream from the young boy took all the air from their body. It took all the air from each cell in their body. It took all the cells from their brain. And without the cells, the brain doesn't work, or as well as it should. Neither did Van Stieger nor his men after that. The shipping company arrived to take a collection of slaves back to England and France found Van Stieger and his men three days later eating their own shit and others from the latrines used by the Dutch population, having the minds as if from a child no older than two years of age.

It was noticed after each of the grandfather's children reaching thirty years of age, they too turned simple minded. In order to cleans this, Karl was sent to America where no one knew the insanity of the matter, therefore what the local population of America didn't know of the curse would soon be forgotten and if forgotten would have no further power. Stephan was reluctant saying it's all bullshit and stayed in The Netherlands whiling his time away on medication, women, young boys, and booze.

And indeed it seemed correct. When Karl turned thirty he showed no sign whatsoever of insanity his family had bore the weight of, or at the age of thirty-one or thirty-two. Word was sent to Stephan who rejoiced with the news, but in The Netherlands, it was not believed especially from some wild country such as America. Stephan could still not find a soul interested in him, and therefore set sail immediately for America to join his brother who for himself was doing very well selling and buying land.

It took nearly six months for the two to finally meet in Unorganized Territory of Oklahoma. Karl, of course, knew of the stipulations concerning the inheritance for Stephan having to wed and produce two sons by his thirtieth birthday and reassured his nervous brother all would be well as he knew several very promising candidates more than willing to spread their legs for him. For a small fee.

The brothers weren't aware of any law in Oklahoma concerning a number of wives a man may have, wouldn't actually care should one exist so Karl set out along with Stephan to make absolutely certain nothing would fail their endeavors. Before the week concluded Stephan married three women certain he could produce the effects required by inducing a mixture of medication whereby keeping him sexually aroused and potent for the entire week. Nine months later he was the father of two boys and one girl. He'd also fallen in love with the mother of his daughter.

There were great festivities planned and all were invited celebrating the births in the grandest ways possible. Local business owners came with their families, including some of the more wealthier cattle merchants. Times were just as before as it all seemed just the right atmosphere to conduct big business, and indeed it was except for one small detail. Karl woke the morning of the festivities with a little tune in his head humming away 'good for fun, make you don't run'...

That was the great night of slaughter and Karl was at the front of it all. The madness had returned, its curse actually never left, just waited. That same night erupted the mightiest rain storm the area had ever seen.

The moon can come closer to the Earth than at any other time causing a greater gravitational effect on the ocean several hundreds of miles away resulting in this flood as massive storm fronts developed and clashed. Stephan, the woman he loved and their baby daughter tried to escape the slaughter his brother was systematically conducting behind the great closed doors of his well-fortified mansion which some say lasted for a month, in a canoe during the storm. The canoe having the sun and a moon painted on it. The same one Stephan's son Manfreed found.

Some say was Manfreed searching for the canoe and if so gained what finding it?Some say was the old prospector Manfreed met actually that? Some say the old prospector was actually mad Karl who roamed the deserts after losing everything because of the curse. Some say Manfreed was actually mad Karl who roamed the deserts after losing everything because of the curse. Some say Manfreed plunged his knife into mad uncle Karl's chest took the map of treasure the uncle was too insane to understand, and found the treasure buried under the canoe marked with the sun and the moon. Some say it wasn't a burro with an S R M branding, rather a desk with a Split Rock Mine name plate and Karl sitting behind it. Some say the new born daughter from the women both Karl and Stephan fell in love with was actually my great grandmother. Some say it was my great grandmother who wrote the map and the reason I recognized the g's and o's as I'd read letters she'd written to Mr E who some say is my great grandfather.

But what story is there of Ruth and Ron? In all the happenings what became of them? With SP, smart partnering could not be ruled out as a simple AI implant program having the final marketed product TOW as To-Wired, a haloed tailored specifically for individual needs, aimed solely as a targeting matching system of you with another or specifically for individual needs enabling one to stay connected with their chosen content, fully aware for hours, not only free, giving them that Live Beyond program hybrid linked with VISUALS always in demand coupled with TOW, a package deal. Not in the least. It was considerably more.

In that fuzzy soft distant world, I could faintly hear a softness of before but how long and far my pickled mind couldn't recollect, nor exactly what it was I heard except it was a voice giving a two syllable pitch from low to higher with a han at the end. Low to higher han...low to higher han... and I knew this voice I'd heard it before. From...where?

I'm hungry. My wanton side said.

What? My logical side said.

Hungry. I've not eaten in years.

No time for that now.

Fuck that. I'm eating.

There's nothing here.

I'd eat my own foot I'm so goddamn hungry.

I'm tired too.

Tired? Hell man, it's FOOOD I WANT!!

Get a grip. Christ.

Motherfucker listen!!!! FOOOOOD!

Shut up and let me think.

If I don't get something right fuckin' now...

SHUT UP, SHUT UP!!! Just shut the fuck up.

It's your fault we're in this shit.

Wha..WHAT...?

Don't give that wha..wha shit. You know.

My fault? How the hell...

Cus this ain't logic. And you is. So you fucked us.

WHAAT?

Yea...you even destroyed the word logic you're so bad at it.

Get back. GET BACK THERE!!

Mmn...everybody says you're the dick on the ceiling. Useless.

Shh...can't you hear that?

I can only hear the growling of my stomach beca....

Damn. Shut up or I'll...

I hear nothin' you crazy ass h...

There it is again!!

Low to higher han...low to higher han...low to higher han...low to higher han...low to higher han...low to higher han...looran looran looran

Mandy's voice began it's calling again. She was far away, then in a second standing right next to me. Opening my eyes slightly looking into my reflection in the tinted window of my booth, the blood from shards of broken ceiling glass having cut through my suit covering me in blood, now sticking to my skeletal form of a cat just risen from a pool of water, it all became very clear while noticing what held me under the arms could be of course only one thing making sense throughout this entire maddening trip endured since God knows when, or since being revivified unconnected from my terminal. That could also be the case seeing I'd little idea of anything except Mandy's voice booming now in my right ear. But that was very strange. Every time I heard Mandy call my name Saisha would at the same time open her mouth. The timing was incredible. My name...Saisha's mouth, my name...Saisha's mouth. My name...

# Epilogue

It can be a long road to recovery they said. Maybe years. The good side is I can keep a device, only one and only to watch the VISUALS with. But I wasn't alone. Thousands were watching them. Rather for them. SurLens was also gone. And the sister NEVA hadn't arrived though it was widely agreed she would. The Company, of course, was still there. But the nine were gone. For now. The world is too small to hide even for them.

I was told there was an explosion near my booth causing the glass roof to fall. The lacerations though severe are healing. It was Saisha who picked me up off the floor. The nano-charge in my eye has been removed, yet caused permeant loss of vision in that eye. I can live with it.

The hardest part I'll have to deal with is recovering from the shock seeing myself in the tinted glass with Saisha.

The Company induced a catatonic state in me as well as the others monitoring data and searching for the steam. Images were induced allowing us to think we'd gone home, or stayed in our rooms for the duration. They said the VISUALS manipulated those and most images. I thought there were six of us monitoring them, but it wasn't the case. Only suggestions from the VISUALS.

How much of what I remember are suggestions or real the doctors don't know? Tests are still being conducted and it will be some time before the full results are released. Though I don't remember much other than monitoring data and occasional memories, I do remember the stream. Indeed that was real. We won't know the full impacts of the stream without help from the VISUALS the data flow is simply too much.

I am home now, at least what I remember as home. Sometimes I have nightmares of something coming through the door of the booth, something black with long curved claws which it grips the doorway with. But I always wake up before it enters hearing Mandy's voice calling me. Which I'm told isn't her but my wife desperately screaming my name hoping to pull me out of that fathomless pit The Company so generously gave me as a gift.

But Saisha is often with me as the doctors said it would be best otherwise I'd have to go to Charleroi because of the three attendees I attacked at the hospital though I don't remember that attack and I wonder if it's all a game they are playing with me.

There are also two large men staying with me I don't know who they are and don't remember them either though am told they are my sons but they look so different. I do remember the boys Saisah and I have but they are much younger so I think those telling me this story is just having a laugh. Yet Saisha also looks different with some graying hair she didn't have a couple of days ago just before I left to The Company for the two-week duration where I stayed like always in my room as the others did for their duration as we weren't allowed to return home till the full two weeks expired. Two weeks home, two weeks at The Company.

I keep a watchful eye out for the VISUALS and wait for the call to come asking my assistance in reading the stream. I kept all my notes of course in my white notebook. I'm sure it will be any day now. In the mean time I look at the calendar, these two big men say I look too much at the calendar but what the hell do they know. They call me dad but what the hell do I know. I do know one thing, staying for my duration must have meant I did something good. I just can't remember what it was or how long. At least I have my coin collection I found up that smoke tree wash.

###

The End

Thank you for reading my story. If you have any questions or comments please leave a message at the website.

Lucus Anthony Ren

Please visit https://lucusanthonyren.com for more stories and news.

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