 
SURRENDER AURORA

by

W. Strawn Douglas

Surrender Aurora

by W. Strawn Douglas

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2016 by W. Strawn Douglas. All Rights Reserved.

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Library of Congress Control Number: 2016901130

This is a work of fiction. Any views expressed in this work are solely those of the author. Any resemblance of characters in this work to persons living or dead are coincidental.
CONTENTS

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Afterword

From the Vault: Four Short Stories

Immortality Class

Ghost Story

The Piñata

All Jacked Up in 2070

About the Author

A Short Biography

Other Titles by the Author
CHAPTER ONE

Back in the old days, the early '80s, you could sit on a park bench and smoke some pot in complete peace. Now the crackheads had moved in, and the police with them. Much had been lost.

This was not the West Bank of Paris, or Jerusalem. This was the West Bank of Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Time had been hard on this unique little neighborhood. Other shops had opened and closed, their owners moved on. The one constant had been the old hippie vegetarian restaurant, the New Riverside Café. The Riv had in many ways been the community's hub; its informal meeting place was where revolutionaries could foment overthrow in the non-exploitive company of the feminist brigade, a few day-glow mohawks, and fine dining in the form of brown rice with steamed or wokked veggies. It was a place of great comfort to its people. And now the Riv had closed too.

Nestled between the Mississippi River and two huge six-lane highways, the people had developed a unique culture, some residents never leaving the comfort of its confines for years. Comfort brought those seeking refuge from the cold winds of distrust and foreignness. Eritrean and Somali Africans migrated in as old-guard hippies moved out. They settled in and took over the HUD-operated apartment towers and did not cower away from the concrete as had their hippie predecessors.

Five concrete towers made up Cedar Square West. The housing project had been the brainchild of Keith Heller. In the late '60s and into the '70s, the hippies had stopped this corpulent, rich businessman dead in his tracks as he tried to take over the neighborhood, pave its charm, and move on to the next project. The hippies organized, rallied, and conquered Heller. The property was taken over by the federal government entity, the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Forty floors of the McKnight Tower were now available for college students, immigrants, and low- and middle-income tenants. Soon these people began to change the face of the streets below. When once there had been young women in psychedelic tie-dye, there were now African Muslim women clothed from hood to ankle in intricate, colorful wraps and dresses. James called them the Psychedelic Nuns.

James Scott McGregor was five foot eight, slim build, and 160 pounds of weight. An aquiline, narrow face with sharp gestures and curly brown hair, blue eyes. Living on an SSI Social Security check in Section 8 low-income housing in the tower, he was one of the many welfare cases that made Cedar Square West the "ghetto in the sky."

It was a Tuesday, the 10th of November, noonish. He awoke, arose from his futon mattress, and scanned the panorama of his one-bedroom apartment. His computer sat waiting for him on his desk, a former door. He dressed in jeans, T-shirt, running shoes, and vest. He strode to the desk and took a seat in the old gray-green swivel chair. He picked up the inverted Frisbee that served as his marijuana-cleaning tray. He selected a small bud from the bigger stem of buds and began to remove the stems and seeds. He packed the leaves into the brass 'one-hitter' pipe. Clenching it in his teeth, he scanned the tabletop for matches or a lighter. He found a pack of matches with nine matches left. He tore one loose and hit its red head on the striker. The flame exploded with a hiss. After the sulfur fuel of the matchhead was done burning, he touched the flaming stick of paper up to the port end of the one-hitter. He inhaled deeply and brought the thick, pungent smoke down into his lungs. He held this for seven seconds and exhaled. Immediately he began to feel the effect: warmth passed into his brain. A gentle euphoria came over him. A buttery silliness tinged with paranoia.

He lit another match and burned out the last of the green leaf in the pipe, pulling the smoke into his lungs. The effect on his body was minimal. He was already stoned. He found the wonderful euphoria, with its confusion and loss of short-term memory, comforting to him, as always.

James pulled a leather Navy pilot's jacket from the closet. He slid into its cool nylon lining and zipped it up halfway. It was cool out, but not bitterly cold. The flight jacket would be enough. He stepped out into the hallway, locking the door behind him, and headed down the red-carpeted hall. He waited for an elevator; he looked out the window at the street scene below. To the right was the burned-out hulk of Dania Hall, an old turn-of-the-century theater. Left of that was the Holtzerman Building, with its cheap single rooms and extensive fire escape network just out of sight on its east side. The Holtzerman's street-level tenant spaces below were occupied by an art supply store and a furniture and futon mattress store.

James considered stopping in to the Artery. _I do need some more radiograph ink,_ he thought, but then disregarded the notion. _I'll get it on the return trip,_ he decided.

He dug in his pants pocket for a cigarette pack: Rothman Blues.

The bell rang for the elevator. He rode it down, got out, and walked outside in the sun and fresh air. He followed the walkway to the street, noting the security camera and the place where the old walk bridge had once stood. He crossed the street and walked past the Artery, Come to Your Senses, and the bank. Rounding the corner, he soon came upon the Hard Times Café.

"A large cup of coffee, please," he said to the counter worker in tank top and Army dungarees. The worker handed him the paper cup, plastic-covered, and moved on to the next customer. Just as he was about to go back out the way he came, he heard a familiar voice.

"Hey, James, check this out," came the voice of Kermit Suns. "I think you'd like to see this."

"Hey, Frog, what's new?" James joined Kermit, who was sitting at a table. The little man was dressed in a Carhartt tan jacket and faded jeans, his knees showing pale skin through ample holes. Kermit's dark hair was cut short; he had a thick moustache. A mousy man, he was known for his talents at electronic circuitry. Nicknamed "Frog" for the similarity of his name to _The Muppet Show's_ Kermit the Frog, he wore his name with pride. Piercings on his eyebrows marked him as one of the West Bank's newer residents.

"I posted it, Frog," said James.

"What did you post?" inquired Frog.

"I linked four old posts and put them together for a conversation we are having on the interweb," said James. "It's all about the 'higher power' god in Alcoholics Anonymous. It is, of course, a religion unto itself, but its addicts call it 'spirituality' and not religion. I have a friend into that sort of stuff. Every time I get close to government in my life, the State comes at us with that 'higher power' shit. I hope Sean gets a kick out of it."

* * *

Across town, at the Linden Hills "Lunds" upscale grocery store, Sean was reading the post James had put up onto his blog site while using the store's free Wi-Fi. He was a slender, athletic man just under six feet tall. His dark-Irish blackish-brown hair and deep-brown eyes matched his brooding mood.

James had linked the posts as if they were a private note to Sean, which was essentially the reality at hand. Sean skimmed through the introduction and got into the first section, called "Eric the Fish."

Blog Post One

Eric Clapton was once called Eric the Fish

Years ago in a faraway land called London, there lived a guitar player named Eric the Fish. Eric was a bit of a drunk. He shot heroin, tripped on acid, snorted cocaine, and was generally a rake. Whenever dour Christians told him to correct his ways, he pointed to the ritual of the wine. It seemed that the besotted Eric was just as good a Christian as the dour followers of strict god-fearing people were. Perhaps even more so as Eric clung to that god of the wine by consuming that wine and playing guitar and drinking more and more of that wine.

It seems that the Jewish testaments had many references to holy waters and anointing oils. We all in our modern era call these by the name of toxicology and topically applied drugs. The Bible is filled with drug use and many unplanned pregnancies. The glass of wine and other noxious chemicals has had a shared quality to it. Take a sip of my glass means share all of my merriment, drugs, and diseases. Be part of the communion as we share all of our body chemistry from hallucinogens to Eric's heroin and everybody's bodily fluids.

This is what is meant by the ritual of the wine. From AA and NA to the seller's door, it all comes together as communion. We share and take as a community, and there are many ways to enjoy it all. In college we used to joke about it all being Wine, Women, and Bong. In our morning-afters, women take pregnancy tests and men take aspirin and a beer and worry that they may have to call the lawyer just as quickly as a woman calls the obstetrician.

Christianity was created by a group of smart and creative do-gooder men who drank wine and hung out with prostitutes and had many long talks about god and the future. They were just as concerned with the future as Heinlein and Asimov were when they called their sci-fi writers group the "Futurians"... Christ and Luke were talking about the chemistry of shared wine and shared prostitutes and diseases and drugs and pregnancies. They created a few rituals and those rituals got us to Eric the Fish.

Holy waters and wine and anointing oils are all drugs and so is our modern application of Christianity. The only real question is do you have faith that the hangover society is a good thing to endorse. If you say yes to kids taking communion at age thirteen, then give them a sip of wine and stand back as we light the fuse of the cherry bomb, then stand back as the enlightened crowd says it's all the fault of the wine and that fiend in Jerusalem who so thoroughly endorsed all of this merriment. Do you endorse it all as the kids go trotting off to the disco like heifers to the slaughter?

All these things come together in the blood-and-wine ritual of the Christ, and we look at the creative ways of that man and we ask ourselves whether we believe the ritual is sound. If we say the creation of the ritual was a good idea, then we call ourselves Christians. Then that creativity is the will of god and we are exposed to the will of god. If it happened and it was part of the genius of human intellect, then it is god. There is a god for eight-year-olds and a god for teens and a god for adults, parents, and the rest of us too.

Then there is forgiveness and everlasting life. Forgiveness is grand and key to the Christian experience. The world is better for it. There is everlasting life in works and legacies. I cannot agree with the monk spending years in prayer. But that's just my spin on it

On the subject of herbal remedies:

My father once researched colchicine to treat pulmonary fibrosis. This was groundbreaking research as colchicine had been around since 1500. Dad tracked the colchicine in a side-by-side trial of the steroid called prednisone. After three months the patients on the colchicine were doing so much better that the trial was halted, and all the patients in the trial were put onto the colchicine. The colchicine was a 500-year-old gout medication.

The real punchline to this story is that for all of the drama regarding the original discovery of the superiority of the herbal preparation called colchicine, the end result was that newer medications proved both the colchicine and the prednisone to be dysfunctional and somewhat antique. Newer drugs outpaced both of the drugs my father tested.

The original drug trial was done five years prior to the new standard of recovery from pulmonary fibrosis. Five years in the past the test made sense, but now it is obsolete. Other cures got us farther and more healthy than older five-year-old agendas. My father treated it as a commonplace occurrence that all of his work and research was obsolete in a small span of half a decade.

Let's all build something new that's not obsolete. Whether it's thirty years or just five, we all have to come together and create something that works and get us all paid. Have a nice day.

Blog Post Two

Twelve liars and a suicide

There is a thing called Rationalism. From a rationalist's point of view, the great Christian event that led to what is called the "Week of Passion" means that Jesus was a narcissistic suicidal megalomaniac. A social engineer who had no idea that his stunt would take traction and create anything beyond making some friends and getting his favorite prostitute to wash his feet with her long hair. Twelve liars and a suicide.

He knew there were legends of a messiah in Jewish folklore, and he said to himself, "I will dare to see all these legends be claimed and activated by me even if it kills me." The rationalist points to human intellect and infinite chance and calls these factors GOD. If god is everything and nothing at the same time, then these acts are the presence of god with a rationalist's explanation of twelve crafty liars and one host. A host like the host of a party or the host animal to a feeding parasite. A host who offered up his life to be gorged upon and completely consumed by Pharisees and common sinners who were being taught a new way to pray.

From a rationalist's point of view there is no difference from a man intent on pushing all of society's buttons and being a messiah. He wanted people to have hope and the comfort of something to pray to.

The ritual of wine and communion and bread was crafted and devised to remind new followers to think of god every time you ate bread or drank wine. Every sip of wine from all of the unplanned pregnancies to hangovers to petty theft and fights was tied to the wine that created it all. Nobody can understand communion until they have tripped on a drop of LSD served on a sugar cube. There is no better way you can have the consciousness of shared bodily fluids and sweat and blood and shared diseases than to consume that one drop of communion wine that now is more potent than a case of wine.

These rituals were invented by chance and human intellect, which is a rationalist's definition of god. We simply evolved to a point where one day a man like the Nazarene carpenter did his thing and said to the Pharisees, "I will dare"...and they killed him in response, as was their only option.

Kurtz in _Apocalypse Now_ says, "The love that it took to do that. If I had ten regiments of such men, our troubles here would soon be over." Yes, your god is kind and loving. I am not challenging that. I just say it was twelve liars and a suicidal man who created your faith with great calculation and a deliberate mindset that created something that would settle the unpredictable and unfair ways of a selfish, angry world. A suicide that created hope and even that fleeting thing we call love.

As for forgiveness, we assume you are going to screw up and we assume you will come back to us as a prodigal son looking to speak the words "forgive me"... It is assumed you will screw up. We almost take it for granted.

But ultimately it was the love of twelve liars and a suicide that created your superstar of Christian love. And it's a snap to turn water into wine with just the right mushroom juice. From a rationalist's point of view, there is no difference between twelve liars and a suicide and the other explanation of Holy Sacrament and divine miracle. The end result is hope, and in some rare cases, love.

Though I live with the flower of human intellect and a lottery of chance, I serve the same god as you do. I get less trappings and more wine but perhaps we can get along. It's not every day you walk out and say, "I am going out into the neighborhood today to save the world with my friends." That is rare.

The Old Testament is filled with Holy Waters and every crafty herb and anointing oil. Thus religion and Narcotics Anonymous come together.

Blog Post Three

Practical Applications

The whole Christianity obsession thing is still going strong. The human mind is hard-wired to work better when there is some kind of spiritual belief system in place. Alcoholics and narcotics addicts swear by AA and NA and the god component in those programs. Even today when new groups search the soul, they almost always use a god component.

Jesus and his friends created a very significant form of performance art. It was like a designer drug specifically created to feed a hunger that they intuitively saw as a force in the world 2,000 years ago. People feared death as the end of life. They feared being alone in the world. They feared oppressive governments. They feared poverty and disease. They wanted miracles, and Jesus and his twelve friends gave them a faith tailor-made and crafted to fit their needs as carefully and responsively as a scientist would create a new designer drug to fit exactly the receptors in the mind that needed to be fed. The Christian event was one of spiritual feeding, and it really doesn't matter that reason tells us there were frauds; the end result is the same. Mr. Jesus wanted you to pray to god. That is the end result. They want you to pray to god because they know your mind is several gears ahead if you have a spiritual relationship with somebody you can trust.

I see genius and a very clever form of performance art that cost Jesus his life. That genius is the stuff of legend and myth. That is the very best our fragile human race can deliver. It was good art.

Now we prime our kids on a dose of Jesus before they go trotting off to the disco like heifers to the slaughter, off to join a human race filled with disease, exploitation, and so much innocence that only the cruel facts of life will teach them anything. They can come back with disease, or unplanned pregnancies, or in extreme cases, death. We love these kids but they are not designed to know what is wise. They are designed to observe, learn, and participate. We hope they have success and long life, but there are no guarantees.

Jesus created a safety margin. He did not have the power to save all of them, but he could rejuvenate a few of them. It's not an easy fix, but for one suicidal man and twelve of his creative friends, it worked and it continues today on themes of healing the sick and feeding the poor. Christianity is concerned with charity and good works. We are a better people for it all, and Jesus and his friends did a very good job at that performance art.

If you are in forced religion programs like Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous, then you see spirituality being force-fed to people. It's just a fact of life. But there is a god entity that is not even dependent on Jesus. If the best of humanity is your idea of spirit, then you can pray to a god that has given you a Jesus that is one suicide and twelve liars. God is a part of the mind that will run better if you pray. In that there is proof of such a god merely by acknowledging that the need exists.

Think of Jesus as an ambassador of that mindset. He meant well and for 2,000 years our human race has been on an automatic pilot of compassion and kindness. We may now be able to take the automatic pilot system off of the controls of the universe, but we can also acknowledge that it has served us well.

Things have changed since the day Jesus said, "It is finished" in Aramaic and died on the cross. You don't have to forget him. But see him for the love he tried to create and not just the dogma associated with his fans. Obsessed is a good word for them.

I offer this up to us, the elite who get to see what things look like in the backstage areas, rather than what the audience gets to see. It was a cool hustle, and it's never going to go away. It makes people fulfilled and feel loved. In many ways he did love them. But now, in our modern era, we can do more. We have to be the little geniuses in his image. We have to save a world and put food on our table. It's not changed in those regards. It's still the same old grind. We don't need lies or suicidal performance artists. But everyone wants love. That part doesn't go away.

There are several ways you can go:

You can be an atheist and not believe in anything like a god or gods.

You can accept Christianity or Judaism or Islam just as the dogma says it is. You get faith straight out of the book. Pray for a miracle and a magic wish. Care Bears and rainbows. This can go either way. Hobbes envisioned a dark, wrathful god with paradise in the afterlife while others saw a paradise here on Earth.

Or you can believe in a god of infinite complexity that rarely answers prayers. A god that slowly evolved a human race to a point where Jesus the genius and his twelve creative friends cooked up a savior scam. Evolution as a miracle.

What I believe is often immaterial. If a hurricane or earthquake is the hand of god, then so is the savior scam. And so are the Crusades. And so are all the wars of faith. I have more faith in scams than I have in Care Bears or Thomas Hobbes.

You are welcome to create anything you want out of all the component pieces I have put before you. Your existence is the hand of god. If any god exists, then you are his little finger.

Blog Post Four

Christ as a Buddhist???

There are corollaries. Connections if you will. Christ sought balance, harmony, enlightenment, charity, patience, compassion, humility, tolerance, honesty, love, and kindness. He wasn't big on Chakras or Chi. I have been a cafeteria Christian in some ways. Usually it is connected to old partying motifs in my past. I am not fond of fire and brimstone. But if my friend says Jesus was a Buddhist, I kinda see his point.

While Sean read, James prepared to move on from the West Bank to its Eastern counterpart.

"Got a light, Frog?"

"Yeah," said Kermit. He produced a lighter and a flame popped out. James leaned forward, lighting the cigarette, and sat back down.

"Take this and tell DJ I might want a sheet." James got to his feet, jammed his wallet back into his pants pocket, and picked up his coffee cup. "I'm headed out to the East Bank. Catch ya later."

James strode to the door, gave a final wave at Kermit, and crossed the street to the Triangle Bar. Heading around its west corner, he crossed the next street to enter the parking lot of the Humphrey Center on the University of Minnesota campus. It had modern art in its courtyard and an arched brick doorway. James walked on to the Wilson Library. He turned left, went past the music school, the anthropology tower, and made for the bridge. He stayed on the sunny side, the south side. The gleaming steel of the new museum building shone in the bright sunlight. A cool breeze was blowing.

Graffiti covered the brown-painted panels and glass of the bridge's contained interior. Cars ran beneath, one deck down. The covered walkway above was a real godsend in winter when wind-chill factors could reach below zero Fahrenheit.

At the bridge's terminus, it branched off into three main avenues. Right was the Coffman Student Union Hall, ahead lay Stadium Village, and left led toward Dinkytown. He took the left path, past another library and chemistry buildings, with Northrop Auditorium to the north. Past the underground bookstore and a few multipurpose brick buildings and into Dinkytown he went. His coffee cup was empty and he lit another cigarette. He walked north past Annie's, Ragstock, and the Grey Drugstore, crossed 4th Street, and passed the Baskin-Robbins. Bob Dylan had written a song about this very street: "Positively 4th Street." Past the pizza parlor to Giocco's. Go-ko's, he called it. He peered in and spotted Myron.

Myron was a very small man with gray hair and thick glasses. He worked at the university as a research assistant in the chemistry department. James remembered instantly the conversation he'd had with Myron about hydrazine being used by drag racers on the National Hot Rod Association pro circuit. Hydrazine was one of the components of rocket fuel used in the Nazi rocket plane called the Messerschmitt 163. Hydrazine was commonplace in Myron's world.

James walked on to Al's Breakfast. One row of diner stools and standing room only for the next customer was all there was to Al's. James took his place in line, waiting patiently for a seat to open up. He thought about the last fleeting memory of his dreams before he woke. Something about being in a six-engine seaplane and walking the streets of Copenhagen, Denmark.

He thought about the fall colors in the tree leaves now falling: rich golds and yellows were amongst the greenery. He viewed the uncluttered campus quad with Northrop and the Student Union facing each other, the cool breeze blowing through it all. It was a fine day.

After ten minutes, a seat opened up. He sat down before a plate covered with a thin yellow film of egg yolks and a few toast crusts.

The waitress cleared away the former diner's plate and returned to take his order.

"Three eggs over easy, and hash browns, and a short stack of blueberry pancakes, please."

James surveyed the eclectic collection of mementos and centered in on a portrait designed to look like da Vinci's famous painting of the Last Supper of Christ. Six long-haired men and women were gathered in black ink on white paper. It was captioned "The Last Breakfast." He thought of those people, now long gone, and how they must have changed over the years. Long gone in days gone by.

Other things on the shelves caught his eye: a can of Mace, a sign that said _Tipping is not a city in Russia,_ several photographs, a Pez dispenser. He noted the credit books on the lower shelves. One could prepay by buying a book, writing a name on it, and one would have credit until the pages of the book were all torn out. A nice convenience.

The waitress delivered his meal. Nice looking waitress, he thought. Young, twenty-ish. He remembered the can of Mace and the muscle-bound cook. He watched the waitress's reddish long hair, ponytailed but swinging free. He watched her hourglass figure with a heavy chest, all wrapped up in a gray T-shirt with an apron and low-rise jeans. He looked from his food to the waitress's backside to his food and back again. His eggs were perfectly cooked, sharing a plate with the hash browns. He reached for the ketchup and poured some out onto the hash browns. He cut the eggs so that the yolks were trimmed away from the egg whites. He slid the tines of the fork under one of the yolks and lifted the self-contained envelope into his mouth.

He repeated the process until only the hash browns and pancakes remained. As he was working on the remnants of his meal, he listened to the radio and snippets of conversation from the other diners. The heroes of New York on 9/11, the new director of hematology and his plans for revamping some tests, an application to medical school, a new boyfriend, a make-up test in biology. He finished off the meal methodically and paid, leaving a dollar tip. He left and glanced into Giocco's, but seeing only Myron, he started walking back through the campus. He stopped by the physics building and picked up a copy of _The Daily,_ the university's newspaper.

He turned to the classified ads. There were three ads for medical test subjects. The first was for people with Type-II diabetes. The second was for women who had given birth and had postpartum depression. The last one caught his eye.

It read, _New study on monthly medication regimen for sufferers of schizophrenia whose onset predates January of 2015. Requires overnight stay for 24 hours once per month. Compensation is $600 per month. Program duration is six months. Candidates must apply in person, Rm. 213, Malcolm Moos Medical Center._

He thought for a moment. His SSI check was only $924 per month. Added to his state check of $351, it all came to $1,275 per month to live on. Another $600 a month would be great, a godsend. That would mean $3,600 over a six-month stretch of time.

He folded the paper, put it inside his jacket, and began to walk back to the West Bank.

As he emerged from the Wilson Library parking lot to peer at the Hard Times Café's multicolored façade, he noticed Frog still sitting in the window where he'd been an hour earlier. James looked for cars, crossed the street, and went inside.

"Hey, Frog," he said. "You know about Echelon, don't you?"

"What's that?" said Frog.

"Echelon is the computerized scanning program the NSA has on the phones. They listen for key phrases like drugs and terrorism. When they hear a key word like 'heroin' or 'bomb,' they start recording the conversation."

"Are you for real? They can actually bug your phones like that without a wiretap order from a judge?"

"Not a problem with the Patriot Act." He paused and said to Frog, "I want to create an art book that slays all the eavesdroppers. I want to write a book that slays television, that spreads freedom on the Internet like a wildfire of free thought."

Frog looked at James and said, "Has anyone ever written a book like that?"

"I have seen several people try to create art on that level. Ron Hubbard tried to create a religion in books. He went from frustrated science fiction writer to messiah in fifteen short years. Lots of his work was bunk, but there are little spots of gold metal flake in the paint that shine like the color of 1960s hot rods. He had these little nuggets of observation that were good. All in all the Scientology thing is a waste, but in even the most self-serving testaments of Ron, there are little moments of clarity. He was critical of psychiatry. He had nothing good to say about psych meds. I still take Risperdol but I don't like eating pills all the time. I hope this drug trial thing works out well." The medical center wouldn't be open for another two days, Monday being Veterans' Day, a holiday for all state workers, including the university. The real Veterans' Day was tomorrow, Sunday.

"Hey, Frog," he said, "have you tried the new acid yet?"

Whispering, Frog replied, "I might be up for it tonight. I'd hafta check the concert schedule. Maybe if we can find something good, a band or something, we could get DJ to come with. I could call her on the phone."

"It'd be better for us to just walk over to DJ's place and talk to her," said James. "Let's go see the woman with the sheets." They headed east on the diagonal cut of Riverside Avenue, two blocks to a wooden duplex probably 50 years old. The green-painted structure was two stories high. DJ's apartment was on the top floor. The downstairs apartment door was open while the one at the top of the stairs was locked. That door was the one that DJ lived behind.

They climbed the stairs and knocked on the door. They heard the sound of footsteps, and the lock turned with an audible click-snap. A six-foot-three-inch woman opened the door.

"Well, howdy, howdy there, fellahs," said the broad-shouldered woman, round in the middle, with glasses and shoulder-length hair. She beamed a happy smile at them both.

"Hey, DJ, I hear the new shipment is in. How is it?" said James.

"Quite an invigorating blotter. I'd say about three hundred mikes a hit. I dosed on it a week ago. Not a wicked hangover either. I assume Frog told you about it?"

"Yeah, I got ten hits at wholesale. I was thinking about tripping tonight and giving these worlds a test drive," said James.

DJ nodded approvingly. "Do remember to stage yourself in a positive setting," she said. "Acid amplifies whatever emotion you have, so if you're depressed, you'll get really, really depressed. The trick is to feel good and let the trip amplify your good cheer."

"Thanks for the advice, Mom," said James with good-natured sarcasm.

"I just don't want anyone to have a bad trip. You know that. Bad experiences don't bode well for my little cottage industry. The last thing I want is you two in the hospital screaming about spiders and whatnot."

James and Frog sat on the couch, and DJ sat on a chair next to them. She reached for a brass-chambered pot pipe from the end table and began sorting tiny buds of marijuana from a tray.

"I didn't even ask you two if you wanted to smoke. Care to join me?"

"Oh, but of course," said James.

"Good," she said, returning to her task, packing the pipe's bowl with herb.

"I was just telling Frog about Echelon," said James.

"Oh yeah, don't talk about herb or anything illegal on the phone. Those computers will pick it up and start recording in a heartbeat. Nasty Big Brother. Dirty rotten scoundrels. Don't use the phone here without proper protocols. Herb is 'spice' and hash is 'chocolate.' As long as you use the protocols, it's okay." DJ raised the pipe to her mouth and torched the bowl with a butane lighter. She inhaled deeply and choked back a cough before passing the pipe and lighter to Frog. He gave it the same treatment and choked back the same cough. James took the pipe from Frog and inhaled without using the lighter. The pungent aromatic smoke filled his lungs. A feeling of expansion filled his lungs. He stifled a cough for ten seconds and exhaled. The warmth and euphoria came back to him as it had an hour and a half before. There was that tinge of paranoia, though.

_Ah well, nothing's perfect,_ he thought. He gazed at the wallpaper. Green with red flowers. A bowl of fruit on the kitchen table. It would have made a good subject for a still-life painting. He returned the pipe to DJ, who inhaled another hit of smoke. She handed it to Frog, who toked on it. By the time it got back to James, the embers were nearly depleted. He inhaled and watched the coals die out.

"It's cashed," he said. "I'm quite adequately buzzed, though. I'm fine."

"Well, that's good. I wouldn't want to have to get you higher," said DJ with a chuckle.

"I think Robin Trower is going to be at the Medina tonight. That would make a great setting for tripping," said James.

"That's not a bad idea," said DJ. "It's been a week since I dosed. I might not get off, though."

Frog commented, "Perhaps not to the maximum, but would you like to see the show mixed with some herb and a few white crosses?"

"Are you asking me out on a date? One or both of you?" DJ said comically.

"We need the four-door from Mordor," said Frog. DJ's Cadillac four-door automobile was named after the land of evil in the Tolkien _Lord of the Rings_ trilogy of fantasy books.

"Ah, you love me for the 'pleasure barge,' " DJ said with a twinkle in her eye.

"May we propel your pleasure barge, oh queen of the rivertown?" asked James.

"It's a possibility," replied DJ. "Showtime's not till nine p.m."

"We could meet back here at seven-thirty," said James "eat at the Medina from eight till nine, and go to the show directly from the Medina restaurant."

"Sounds good," said DJ.

"Oh, you gotta tell Frog about The Wizard of Oz," said James.

"Frog, you haven't heard about The Wizard of Oz and the Harris Act of 1914?" said DJ.

"What about it? I've seen the movie several times, but that's all I know about it," said Frog.

DJ leaned back in her chair and put on her best storyteller's face. "Back between the Gay Nineties and World War I, heroin and cocaine were legal over-the-counter medications. This was before the time of the Food and Drug Administration. Frank Baum, who wrote _The Wizard of Oz,_ used symbolism in all his books. He wrote about twenty about Dorothy and the Land of Oz. The Tin Man represented American industry, the Scarecrow was the American farmer, and the Cowardly Lion was the military. The drug symbolism came when the Wicked Witch put Dorothy to sleep in a field of poppies and the Good Witch woke her up with snow. The poppies are heroin, which is where heroin comes from. Snow is the cocaine that wakes Dorothy up again." DJ smiled and gave her best "I told you so" look.

"That's incredible," Frog said. "What's the Harris Act about?"

"Well, it's good you asked. The Harris Act illegalized heroin and cocaine and put them both under control of doctors. A lot of doctors were jailed for prescribing heroin and cocaine."

"I'd never do heroin," said Frog. "And I can't afford cocaine."

"But it's good to know we've all been around this dilemma before," said DJ.

Frog was speechless.

James broke the silence. "How are you with the Hard Times, DJ?"

"Well, since their drug bust last spring, they've asked me not to deal on the premises. I deal here on Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday, so going to Trower tonight will cut into some of that revenue."

"No way, man," said James. "There will be lots of customers at Trower tonight."

"You think so?" said DJ. "I hate to sell in unfamiliar territory."

"Bring a few sacks and just check it out," said Frog. "You don't have to market them if you don't feel comfortable."

"Yeah," said DJ, "I could at that."
CHAPTER TWO

... _the material isolated from the bloodstream was given the name "serotonin," while that from the intestinal tract was called "enteramine." Subsequently, both materials were purified, crystallized, and shown to be 5-hydroxy tryptamine (5-HT), which could then be prepared synthetically and shown to possess all the biological features of the natural substance. The indole nature of this molecule bore many resemblances to the psychedelic drug LSD, with which it could be shown to interact on smooth muscle preparations in vitro. 5-HT is also structurally related to other psychotropic agents..._

Frog looked out of the window of DJ's Cadillac as suburban industrial buildings passed by at 65 miles per hour. "Out here rent is a thousand dollars a month," he said. "You'd need two grand a month just to pay off your car and apartment. What a wasteland. Four hundred thousand for a four-bedroom house."

"It's suburbia. Populated by management and software engineers," said DJ.

"I might end up out here after I graduate, "said James. "Get myself a nice trophy wife, two-point-five kids, two cars, and a dog,"

"Don't forget the hot tub and sauna," DJ said.

"Too chic," said James. "A nice conventional swimming pool for the kids to play in."

"What do you do when they get to be teenagers and start to smoke dope and steal from the liquor cabinet?" said DJ.

"Smoke with them maybe," said James. "Out here teenagers have the best grass."

"Mind if I throw in a tape?" said Frog.

"What of?" said DJ.

"Trower, _For Earth Below._ "

"Go ahead."

James leaned forward from the back seat and said, "That'll make a nice break from all that Grateful Dead you keep listening to."

"But I love the Dead," said Frog, slightly wounded. "Jerry's been dead twenty years now. Thankfully enough, we have thousands of hours of bootleg recordings."

James shook his head slowly and sighed. "Billy Brag said the Deadheads would record Garcia's farts if they could," said DJ as she chuckled to herself softly.

"I think our turnoff is coming soon," said James.

"Right up here," said DJ, commanding the huge 1965 black Cadillac and gently moving the "four-door from Mordor" into the turnoff lane, and gazed at the gas stations, restaurants, and strip malls in passing. A lot more open spaces than in hard-core suburbia. Trees and green grass were abundant. The Medina Bar performance space soon came into view. They turned into the nearly empty parking lot and had their choice of parking spaces. DJ parked about three car lengths from the front door. She reached into her red corduroy satchel and began filling a bowl full of herb. She torched it and inhaled, and then she passed it to Frog, who filled his lungs and passed it to James.

James sat back in the soft, gently aged comfort of the Cadillac's back seat. He took out a lighter and torched the bowl while inhaling. It was good smoke, he thought. A good creative buzz. Not the kind of weed that just turns you to a stone. He sought out the good herbs and stockpiled them in small stashes hidden in tiny crevices and cracks in his apartment and belongings. He had a model airplane that carried a load of grass in its bomb bay. That plane hung from the ceiling of his bedroom. Other stashes were inside a TV and inside a light fixture.

After DJ put away her pipe, they realized that the moment of decision had come. It was time to "drop acid" and "dose." After some small talk, each procured from his or her stashes a single hit of lysergic acid diethylamide. All three looked at each other for a moment. This would be the last moment any of the three could make claims on sanity. At least for the next few hours.

James whistled in clear mimic of a bomb dropping. "The smoking crater of my mind," he said.

Each displayed one small square of the blotter paper on the tip of a forefinger. "On the count of three, then," said DJ. "One, two, three." They simultaneously popped the paper squares onto their tongues. DJ raised a finger, calling for silence from the other two. "We gotta suck on these hits for about ten minutes, and then we go in for a nice dinner and swallow the hits just before the meals arrive. Buy our tickets before we go to the restaurant. C'mon, let's go," she said while opening the driver's car door.

A few quiet giggles erupted on the way inside. James opened the door for the others and scanned for a ticket counter. The caged booth was ahead, restaurant to the right, and doors to the bar on the left. They ambled up to the ticket booth and James spoke first.

"One, please, for Trower."

"That'll be twenty-one dollars, please," the young woman said through the bars.

James dug in his wallet, came up with two paper bills, a twenty and a one, and handed them to the worker. "Here's your ticket, thank you," as she slid one ticket to James. He stepped aside and let the others get their tickets.

At the restaurant they were met by a hostess and escorted to a round table with a white linen tablecloth, a candle in a red glass pot, and four place settings. They sat down, still sucking on the little pieces of blotter paper. The waiter arrived with glasses of ice water.

"Bottoms up, kids," said DJ. She washed the acid tab down with a gulp of water. The others followed suit.

"I've heard that you can do a test for LSD with a spinal tap," Frog said.

"No way," said DJ. "LSD is a really small chemical. It's measured in micrograms, not milligrams. The first acid trip in history was done by Doctor Albert Hoffman in Switzerland in 1943. He spilled some on his hand and it went through his skin. He was so intrigued that he tried a small dose a while later. He took one whole milligram. That's a thousand micrograms. That's three times the dose we're doing. He found out pretty quick he'd made a big mistake. LSD is so small it can't be detected at all by any test. Not even a blood test."

"Well, that's reassuring," said James. "We can't get busted if we get pulled over for DWI."

"Unless they find your stash," said DJ. "Lots of folk tales about LSD. Most of 'em are bunk. You should read Doctor Hoffman's own words in his book, LSD: _My Problem Child._ "

"It's out of print. I've looked for it," said James.

They settled in for a respectable dinner and paid, left and headed over to the show. Little black square tables greeted them as they went in. There were about a hundred people crowding around the stage. Another 300 were scattered throughout the cavernous dark space.

"We dropped at eight, so we should be peaking at about ten," said DJ.

James looked at the people crowded around the stage. Long hair was in fashion there. Shiny leather jackets, tie-dye, and bright clothes were all in abundance.

He had felt the acid coming on while he was still in the restaurant. Blocks of color, like walls or the tablecloth, grew moving patterns on them, geometric complexities akin to finer Islamic art. The women and men both looked sexier and more colorful. The colored lights beamed in front of the stage in intricate rods of splashing reds, blues, yellows, and greens.

The main lights went out, the stage lights all went out, and a stout man with a Stratocaster guitar stepped into the one remaining spotlight. A second spotlight opened up on a taller, middle-aged man. They looked at each other as if to ask "ready" and began to make sound. Tough, gritty, pounding sound. The guitar wailed and ripped and popped in one rhythmic sonic onslaught. The singer came in and put words to the rhythms. The concert had finally begun.

* * *

Sean leaned back from the kitchen table. He had printed out James' postings and was going over them with a highlighter pen and scribbling notes with a ballpoint pen. "Where should I begin?" he said and breathed out a soulful sigh. Here was a case for a higher power and a spiritual rebirth. That, of course, would be the easy path. Under his breath he said, "No, this one will take some time. Still, there is tremendous vitality in my long-lost friend. I may be a Buddhist Christian, but I still know that less is less and more is more. That 'less is more' junk is just that. James would spot that in an instant. We will work through this together."

* * *

Trower had finished his last encore. Frog, DJ, and James had watched and heard through their altered perspectives. They slowly moved to the door and their car. Now was the time for DJ to go into business. She asked select concert-goers if they wanted any acid or marijuana. Within ten minutes, she had sold eight sacks of grass and 50 hits of acid. A profitable venture, she thought as she unlocked the Cadillac and slid in. She reached over to the opposite doors and unlocked them. Frog got in the front, James the back. DJ turned the key and the monstrous V-8 engine sprang to life.

The moonlit nightscape was beautiful. The residual hallucinations from the acid enhanced the cool quiet of car engines and motorcycles speeding on in the night air. Stars, moon, headlights, and the lighted signs of businesses passed by at a mile a minute.

DJ turned on the heat while Frog hung out the open passenger window of the car. James leaned forward from the back seat and moved his face into the heated air pouring out of the dashboard.

"A fine evening," said James.

"I hope you budgeted yourself, James. We each spent about forty dollars. Can your SSI handle a dent like that?"

"It can if I sell some trips. Five dollars a hit to the college kids. I have capital. Frog found me a job as a guinea pig. Pays six hundred a month."

"Really? What are you going to be testing?" queried DJ.

"Some new mental illness drug. Monthly dose."

"Be careful. You don't want to end up back in the pen." DJ reminded James about the state hospital he had been in years before.

"If I start having a relapse, I'll just quit the test," James said.

The next morning James loaded his three blog postings for his friend Sean. He chose the "select all" icon and went to "copy." He loaded it all onto the blog's blank page and hit the "paste" button on his computer screen and then hit "publish." The three linked blog posts were on their way to Sean.

Blog Post Five

Alternatively Socialized

Our people come from an alternative socialization. Schooled on liberal Minnesota values from a post Vietnam war experience, we move forward and reinvent ourselves with the same frequency as we invest in a new computer. Lawyers stay lawyers and cooks keep on cooking, but both know it will be a new frontier when marijuana is legalized. We turn to our Native American cousins for guidance on some of these issues. They seemed to be ahead of our hippy hordes when it came to living in synch with a forest full of herbs and a buffalo full of food, clothing, and shelter, and many other useful things. We all saw our native friends get to use peyote, and we were stunned and amazed when the government actually acquiesced and declined to interfere.

There was more to fill that void than we could have guessed. Those same natives faced a tremendous problem in the form of those same drug-addled European Americans who wanted to also consume peyote. For want of a better word, these "hippies" threatened to ruin the benefit to the native peoples that peyote could deliver.

The local natives were recruits to the peyote faith. For the most part the hippies in Minnesota were merely looking to the native population as it pertained to drugs like LSD and cocaine and marijuana. Our whites looked to the natives and saw a 'way' of doing drugs and not any one drug like peyote to focus on. The natives danced and sang and hunted and lived as well as a life could be lived.

The urban 'tribes' clung to such connections. People subdivided into Hippies, Communists, Punks, Anarchists, Feminists, Peace Protesters, and other fringe groups and activists defined by affinities and tastes.

We were leftists who viewed mainstream liberal culture as being way too mild and bland. We were more inclined to take drugs than to drink alcohol, but ultimately all the grander trappings of native, or leftist, or alternatively spiritual ideals fell by the wayside of the highway of life. Eventually it became a thing of paying bills and a decision to find a job rather than the older cottage industries of food service and dealing short-order drugs. We dreaded growing up but eventually even an entry-level job in corporate America became a desirable thing and an unavoidable evil. The corporate reality surrounded us and we were swallowed whole.

It became an afterthought of modern business that had people like Abbie Hoffman taking a job as an investments counselor for a stockbrokers firm on Wall Street. Abbie could market himself as a friendly ear to investors coming into the markets after years of corporate distrust. We all began to move into the corporate sector and bring our values with us. We scanned the frontier and found investments of an ethical nature and hawkish businesses too. We made our peace and put our funds where they would do the most good, and the ensuing growth would be the most rewarding experience.

The mortgage-backed securities imploded. They crashed and in spite of the fact that many Wall Street professionals refused to call it a crash, we felt it was clearly that. The gambling culture of dealing in high-risk investments backfired, and the major banking and investment houses collapsed.

This is nothing new. We did, however, start to rebuild. Many lost jobs and houses. It became a lean world to live in. Underwater mortgages and entry-level paychecks became the new norm. Winning the war on marijuana was a victory for sure, but for most it was a promise and not a product delivered to your door just yet. A goal on the horizon. A light at the end of a dark tunnel, but still a long tunnel to get to that light. For all of the Cheyenne prayers, it was still a long, cold road.

Blog Post Six

Codebreaker

From the moment I wake till the hour I go to sleep, I see codes inside of nuances and ciphers, key phrases, passwords to back doors, and trap doors complete with viruses and diseases.

My books are code manuals, and they are read by people inside of the system. It becomes a grand collection of secrecy and paranoia. All social contacts are part of this base.

Years ago I lost a girlfriend to cocaine. The drug won out and she floated away on a cloud of crack coca vapor. Her name was Patty Fitzgerald. An odd character, to say the least. Her drug of choice was the coca that comes from the richer suburbs of Hennepin County, and our relationship suffered from the combination of coca and mental illness.

Usually the greatest stigma of mental illness comes from the state itself, so I really don't believe that the state's other hand in treating mental illness really believes the complaints about stigma. So it is for me and Ms. Fitzgerald. She has several important friends in the music industry and many friends in suburban rich country-club coca networks. I tend to take on dually paranoid ideas about the paranoia that comes from trafficking drugs to the other paranoia that comes from mental illness. One is fear of the law. The other is a disease-based fear of hallucinations. I have both but Ms. Fitzgerald has only the fear of getting caught at crime.

Ms. Fitzgerald was key to the structure of my illness. Our mutual use of drugs and the black market gave a beginning to my criticism of her coca use. Since then I have always criticized the coca nets while using my books as a kind of code manual.

The whole of the drug networks plot against the release of a new book for fear that I might reveal an identity or let loose a dealer's residence... The paranoid fear is that the whole of Twin Cities arts and entertainment will feel compelled to read my book to see not what is in it but what is not in it. My delusion is that I am so invested in the drug networks that my books only make total sense to somebody inside that machine.

All songs on the radio have points of value similar to a politician's polls of popularity. Fitzgerald was in truth a user, but in all likelihood the greatest reason we parted was a different path in each life.

My symptoms are to believe that every daily motion has a value as part of a vast criminal enterprise that only the folks who are "Turned On" can see. The old tome of Timothy Leary is to say "Tune in, turn on, drop out." My own drug use and that of Fitzgerald have come to be fuel of delusion. That's where it all started. When I publish a book, I release a new code manual. When I advertise, the goal is in part to communicate with the same people I ran drugs with. Nothing goes untouched by the fire of madness.

My books have had several people featured in them as characters who take starring roles in my hallucinations. The Fitzgerald gal and others like her are found in my books. I see and write about secret agents, secret black marketers, purveyors in strange goods, and other oddities of the galaxy who are fashioned after odd characters in my very Earthly experience.

My books are code manuals, keys, and ciphers that show the true reasons behind the goal of trafficking all manner of goods. I see these issues being debated in TV and all other media... Like John Nash, I see codes within codes within politics and slogans,

As John Nash said when asking if he could teach again at Princeton, his friend said, "John, you are an awful teacher," and Dr. Nash says back, "I'm a bit of an acquired taste."

So it will go for me at MCTC...speaking frankly about my symptoms. I tend to practice pharmacy to the drug addicts of the streets. When I do so, I delude myself into believing I am to illegal drugs what the Mayo brothers are to medical doctoring.

Because my past includes this sort of thing as reality, I take a sprout of reality and grow it to be a tree of delusion. With that said, I am a bit of an acquired taste for the folks at MCTC, but I feel they will like what they are getting from me. All I need is my computer and a sketchpad and an MP3 player with a radio in it. My needs are small and I can bring or leave my delusions however I choose.

I remain open to your suggestions. I have a great book on spies coming out soon. Ray Kraker read a rough draft of it, and he actually found it to be a good read. It was filled with sneaky people doing nasty things to lots of people. Filled with drug network imagery and drug folklore, it works well as a cloak-and-dagger espionage piece that can be sold as science fiction.

These books are in part a code. Many lines of code.

Blog Post Seven

Adventures of Conventionality

A more tame view of symbiosis between species can come in the form of variations of the heuristic algorithm. A heuristic algorithm is the mathematical formula by which a computer achieves consciousness and thus a form of life. Nobody has fully figured out how to get a computer to come to life yet. If you could do that, then you could work on variations like how does the human race relate to such life forms as a field of wheat or corn or soybeans and yes, even coca bushes. We eat the corn and relate to it any time we plant seeds, but how can we tap into that shared life status? How can we see these two species relating to each other?

If the corn has us humans planting fresh seeds and defending that species from pests and disease, then that species will go on and on forever. As long as there are humans, there will also be corn.

Ultimately the same is true for coca bushes and poppy flowers. In China there is the Ah-whang plant, which is the source of ephedra, which is used to make all forms of amphetamine. Thus these herbs and foodstuffs have figured out how to survive as servants of humanity. We exist in concert and in shared states.

The real issue is not one of space aliens creating genetically modified vegetation but of where does that heuristic algorithm come from. Did it come from the space aliens or from four billion years of evolution? Who programed those human computers? Was it natural and slow or did we get life to come in from an asteroid? What of prebiotic molecules coming in from asteroids? The pre-life material may have come from other places.

Is there a symbiosis algorithm?

* * *

Sean finished reading the posts and wrote in a small blank book the words _Peyote, Patty,_ and _Symbiosis._

Sean began to type an answer to his friend via the blog's ability to log in responses. "Clearly you are stoned and fixing your mind on whatever fascinates you while you are high. You have taken drugs and are now thoroughly enchanted with the kaleidoscope view of the world from the perspective of habitual drug use."

Sean summed up his thoughts. "The question I want to put to you is: Do you ever feel like getting off the carousel? In your note on peyote I see a national war on drugs with you as a drafted soldier. In the note on Patty I see bitter anguish. In the note on symbiosis I see facts but also hypothesizing way beyond your educational level. You smoke pot to avoid the anguish and slavery of a nation's conflict but also your escape technique is to pontificate beyond your level of education. One can call that 'pedantic.' " He looked over what he had written and hit the 'publish' button with the cursor linked to his computer mouse.
CHAPTER THREE

_Similar observations have also been made in studies carried out on autopsied brain specimens obtained from human subjects. In schizophrenic patients chronically treated with antipsychotic drugs, a significant increase of homo-vanillic acid is found in cingulate and frontal cortex. But not in the putamen and nucleus accumbens, suggesting a possible locus for the therapeutic action of these drugs and providing the first direct experimental evidence that antipsychotic drug treatment increases the metabolism of dopamine in the human brain in a regionally specific manner._

Friday morning the 13th of November had arrived early for James. He'd smoked with Frog last night. Slept soundly after that. His alarm went off at 7:15. He dressed, smoked a hit of pot, and made coffee. He watched the cream make clouds in his coffee cup. He finished that cup, poured another, packed another hit into his one-hitter, and lit it up. He felt great: caffeine and grass, a wonderful way to wake up.

There was terrible news in the world. A terror strike had hit Paris. The American band "Eagles of Death Metal" had been playing a concert that was struck by suicide bombers. All told there were over 170 dead and 340 or so injured. It was a terrible way to start the day. _Not a day to trip on acid, but a small amount of pain reliever might be in order,_ thought James.

He looked around at his apartment and noted the accumulation of lumber and dead TV sets, amplifiers next to a stack of stereo speakers. He'd be back in time to finish the coffee. He set out to the Malcolm Moos Medical Center. Across the campus, over the bridge, and sociologically speaking, into a different world.

A land of medicine, hard-core med students, doctors, and patients. As he walked inside to the elevators, the halls were antiseptically clean, with institutional red brick walls. An elevator opened with the ring of a bell. He looked at his watch and noted the time: 7:53. _Early,_ he thought.

The crowd was clustered around a door, Room 213.

Most of the people were working on paperwork, filling out forms. As James leaned inside the door, a woman both round and short gave him a manila envelope, stiff with paper inside.

"Fill out these forms and we can make you a program candidate," she said. James walked over to an open chair in the reception area, where he began filling out forms. Last hospitalization, diagnosis, current medications, allergies, birth date, and Social Security number were all required. At the end of each form was a small paragraph stating, _Selectees for this program will be notified by mail of their status._

James noticed the man next to him. Middle-aged, brown hair, medium height, round face, blue wool cap pulled over the ears, blue North Face down jacket. The man looked over at James, extending his right hand. "Hi there, my name's Phil. I hope I make the cut," he said.

"James, James McGregor. I hope we both make it. There seems to be a lot of competition." James leaned forward and shook Phil's hand.

"Sure. Six hundred's a lot of money if you're on Social Security. My illness has had me on federal welfare since 2005. How about you?"

"2009, myself. Wasted two years at Anoka, but I am on risperidone now so it really doesn't matter. How about you?"

"Zyprexa, but they're talking about phasing it out because of the cost. The infinite wisdom of the state." Phil shook his head despairingly. "I hope this new stuff turns out to be good. Do you know what it is yet?"

"Yeah," said James, leafing through the pages of documents in his package. "Syntheris." James looked at Phil and said, "Ever heard of it?"

"Never. I am totally clueless on that one."

* * *

One week later James could feel half his mind arise from sleep. Last night had been alcohol-driven. A pitcher of beer with Frog and shots of Jägermeister liquor. The sweet, syrupy licorice flavor played on his tongue, mixed with cigarettes and beer. Chris, the ambulance driver, had once said that the smell of beer and pizza revolted him after giving mouth-to-mouth respiration to a drunk regurgitating such a combination. He thought of Chris and got up out of bed, went to the kitchen, and drank a mouthful of orange juice from a wax paper carton, put scoops of Arabic coffee into the coffeemaker, and then poured in the water. It perked to life, and the flavor wafted through the air in the kitchen.

Sunlight came in through the picture window. He walked through piles of lumber and dead TVs and out onto the balcony. The thermometer needle pointed at 35 degrees. He pulled open the sliding door and felt a rush of cool, crisp Minnesota fall air brace against him. _Brisk,_ he thought. He took in a few deep, cool breaths and went back inside. The coffee was still burping and coughing in the coffeemaker. He slid the door shut and marveled at the sun coming in and hitting the balcony wall; red metal bars with cement on all walls, floor, and ceiling.

In the kitchen he poured himself a cup of the brew, then proceeded, coffee mug in hand, back to his bedroom and sat in his desk chair. His one-hitter was in the cleaning tray Frisbee. He pinched off the top of a bud, and he packed the one-hitter full and spun around in the swivel chair. Picking up his pilot's jacket from the floor, he reached into its inside pocket and retrieved a lighter. Holding his left thumbnail up to the port, he watched the reflection of fire in the shine of his thumbnail. In the reflection, he saw the fire go out. He had caught a buzz, gotten high. He leaned back in his chair. _This is the good life,_ he thought.

He sat there for several minutes. _It's a Monday, and that means mail._

Out the door he went and into the elevator, down thirteen floors and left to the wall covered with modern brushed-aluminum mailbox doors. 1313, the box said. Pulling out his key ring, he slid the key into its slot and twisted it open. Five letters. Columbia House, CCHR, Belle and Blade, Quartermaster, and Bryce Pharmaceuticals. He put all but the last in his inside jacket pocket. _What does Bryce Pharmaceuticals want with me?_ he thought. He tore open the spine of the envelope. He pulled the letter out and read. The first paragraph said it all.

You have been selected as a candidate for a six-month test of the Bryce Pharmaceuticals product Syntheris. Please check in at Room 213, Malcolm Moos Medical Center, between the hours of 8 a.m. and 4 p.m. Monday through Friday for scheduling.

"Yippidy-skippidy," James said out loud, "thirty-six hundred bucks!"

He headed across the campus to the medical center. This time there was no crowd. He dug the letter out of his pocket and said to the receptionist, "Excuse me, ma'am, I got this acceptance letter this morning telling me to report in for scheduling. What does that mean?"

"We need to do a complete physical exam. Blood and urine specimens will be taken, and we need a baseline EEG."

"What's an EEG?"

"That's an electroencephalogram. It's sort of a snapshot of your brainwaves." It was the same short, round receptionist who had given him his forms to fill out a week ago. "Are you free next week?"

"Yeah, anytime," said James.

"Then I'll put you on the calendar for Monday, nine a.m. Report here next Monday morning. You must not eat anything after midnight the day before. You have to fast for this."

"I understand."

"Well, I guess we'll just see you on Monday then," she said.

James turned and headed for the door. "See you all Monday," he said and left.

The air was crisp, cool, and invigorating as James left the medical center. Bright sun streamed down through the old trees of the campus. The grass was a mix of tans and greens. A breeze was blowing gently. It was a great day. James walked past the campus quad and onto the Washington Avenue Bridge. He dug a cigarette from a pack in his jacket pocket and lit it, cupping his hand against the breeze. He walked slowly on the sunny side of the bridge. He thought about how fortunate he was. He walked slowly back to the West Bank, soaking up the sun and breeze and marveling at the bright golds, reds, and greens in the trees on the riverbank. He passed other walkers on the south side of the bridge. He noted the graffiti. No new marks. He reached the other side and into the parking lot and the view of the Hard Times.

Shadow engulfed the north face of the Hard Times as he looked at it over the roofs of the cars. A bus pulled up in front of it. The number seven, he thought. He skirted around a Caprice and a Jeep, and walked on the grass to the street. Traffic was light, and he got across without having to wait. He walked in and saw Janet, Kira, Jerry, and Shelly. A game of chess was on with several spectators. Alice was stocking the cookie display case. Huge six-inch peanut butter and chocolate chip cookies were now on sale.

Jerry turned away from the conversation at the bar and said to James, "I hear you're going to be a guinea pig for the 'U.' "

"I just got accepted this morning. Thirty-six hundred bucks. I gotta do a physical, but from then on, it's just one day per month. Easy." James turned to the worker behind the counter, a mulatto woman, twenty-ish, with tattoos circling her neckline; very tribal and clean, primitive. He paid for a cup of coffee and re-engaged the conversation with Jerry. "The documents they gave me say they're trying to actually rewire the brain to accept prosthetic limbs and the wires in the brain that control them. They say that curing mental illness is an unpredicted side effect. Imagine being cured of craziness by accident."

"You could actually have to get a job and work for an honest wage," said Jerry with a hint of a jeer.

"Let's not get carried away, now. I'm happily retired."

"You're happily lazy," said Jerry.

"That's a part of it, but no one ever wants to incur a handicap," said James.

* * *

Over the next few weeks, James went in for his physical and got his first $600 check in the mail. He celebrated by going out for breakfast at Al's with his friend Frog and buying three new pipes for smoking marijuana. He also bought three new small sacks of that grassy weed from his favorite dealer, DJ.

On weekends James stayed up until dawn and slept the day away, waking at 4 p.m. November 21 was one of these weekend days, and on this Saturday of the pre-Thanksgiving holiday he rose, went through his usual routine of waking, smoking, and coffee. He turned on the radio and tuned in 97.1. Natalie Merchant was singing "Carnival." He went to his balcony, retrieved his bicycle and rolled it through his junk-strewn living room, opened the door, and headed down to the first floor.

The sky was overcast as he headed out on his circuit of the city. First it was a ride over the Washington Avenue Bridge to Dinkytown. Then he went up 4th Street to Saint Anthony on Main. From there it was up Hennepin Avenue to downtown, and through to uptown. He stopped in for a beer at the Uptown Bar and then went east on Lake Street to Chicago Avenue. It was north on Chicago to Franklin Avenue, and on from there to the walk bridge over the highway connecting the Phillips neighborhood with the West Bank. Then it was on to the Hard Times, and people and socializing.

He found Frog and Jerry talking about thermodynamics and entropy. Deep in mathematical theorems, they were. They hardly noticed him as he sat down. Jerry was trying to point out that through entropy, all of humankind's accomplishments were doomed to chaos, and in that chaos all things eventually would fall apart. Frog asked Jerry, "If entropy is going to destroy all things, then how long has the dishwasher got to live?"

James offered an opinion and a question. "Don't be silly, or I mean do be silly, but separate your mirth from your philosophy for a moment. I have a problem in the real world that deals with philosophy and symbiosis. There is a drug trial of a psych med called Syntheris. It is being called an anti-seizure drug that accidentally acts as a mood stabilizer. They are saying it's like Depakote and Tegretol in that regard. They also note that it was developed as a neuro anti-rejection drug for work with brain implants for prosthetic limbs. They stick little wires into the brain to control fake arms and legs. Totally experimental stuff. This Syntheris was designed to counteract the body's tendency to reject things like wires into the motor function parts of the brain. They were even coating the wires with the stuff."

James bought a cup of coffee. They talked for 20 minutes, which is a long while to linger over a cup of coffee. James put his empty cup into a black Rubbermaid tub for dishes and coffee cups. He left his friends and walked down Riverside to visit DJ. He found her in the living room. "Wake and bake," she called it. Getting baked on marijuana and waking up at the same time.

"Care to join me in a buzz?" she said.

"Don't mind if I do." James sat on the couch while DJ roosted in her favorite chair.

"Just how did grass get illegalized?"

"Herb has a long history, going back to very ancient cultures. The horsemen of southern Russia used to make hemp bonfires and breathe in the smoke. That was about the time of the Roman Empire. Before that, it was used by Indians. Not our local type, but the real Hindus. They called it 'Soma.' Here in the States, it was first made illegal in the Mexican border states to try to discourage Mexican laborers from settling down near good-old white America. Then in the thirties, it got tied up with blacks. Here in America, it's always been tied to racism. First the Mexicans and then the blacks. Most recently, it's been tied to liberal politics. During the Vietnam War, it was a talisman of sorts, a mark that stated opposition to the war. But that's forty-five years ago. It's legal in Vancouver in Canada and in Amsterdam, Holland, and now in Colorado, Oregon, and Washington State. California has it for medical purposes. Twenty-three states allow it for medical reasons. It's the new Prohibition. Lots of people smoke and accept the black market status of weed. Muslims smoke hashish rather than drinking alcohol."

"Do you ever think it will be fully legalized?"

"Not for a while yet. Let all the sixties radicals become senators and then maybe something will happen." She lit her pipe, filled her lungs, and passed the pipe and lighter to James. He did the same.

As she reached for the pipe she said, "They first had state laws against grass in Mexican border states with lots of migrant workers. Then in '37, the feds got mad at the blacks for smoking it and passed the Marijuana Stamp Act. To possess grass, you had to have a stamp. The farce was that the feds wouldn't sell stamps to anyone unless they had hemp in hand. You'd get arrested before you got the stamp. They came up with this bright idea from the success they had regulating machine guns with a similar stamp system. Timothy Leary challenged it all in the late sixties and the law was changed, but grass was made just as illegal."

James responded, "I was pretty sure it had to do with racism or some other evil. Just another case of white men on whiskey trying to take over the world." James had no idea as to the prophetic nature of his statement.

* * *

The most distinguishing quality of the doctor's office was its sameness. The white-painted drywall on windowless walls. The exam table and the desk. All summed up by the eye chart of continually smaller letters to guess at. All of this said "medicine."

"Ideally, Colonel, we are looking for a disabled veteran who already possesses a security clearance. To test out the filaments, he would have to have lost partial use of a forearm. With the right financial incentives, it could be done." The doctor looked at the colonel and said, "Finding a few of these youngsters willing to serve their country again will not be difficult. Presently we are testing the prosthetics and a few component parts of the total package, like the anti-rejection drugs. The trials are beginning now."

The colonel considered his words and said to the doctor, "We are going to have security issues to consider with this new weapons system. We will be the rival of the entire world. Hooking a pilot's targeting capability directly to the brain will create a new standard for a good offense being the best defense."

The doctor responded, "We can run some of our funding through the Air Force Academy. They have a virtually unfettered grant system. Getting our pilots to be able to select from twenty weapons in less than five seconds will be linked with theories on air combat. Sad that Boyd didn't live to see the next chapter of his dogfighting manuals get completely rewritten.

"This test program," continued the doctor, "must look for disposable heroes. We need to find good subjects who are not aware of the program's real goals. There will be tests that could damage the minds of the professionals. We need to find these disposable heroes and test them to the fullest. We need the damaged and lame to serve their country in a capacity that has never been seen before. A few minds that can show us what we will need to serve the real soldiers in this cybernetic war. Dazzle them with a paycheck and the VIP status of seeing the bells and whistles, and we can dump them on the streets with tales that will never be believed."

* * *

James sat at his computer desk and began to compose a blog post for Sean.

Blog Post Eight

There are so many good books to consider. Every drug addict loves Frank Herbert's _Dune_ where the entire world of Dune is addicted to the cosmic space-travel drug called "the spice." That drug gives starship navigators the ability to fold space and travel without moving. There is also the anarchist social manual called the "Dispossessed," where an entire world lives without rank or caste. Humans living by a deliberate effort at avoiding a class-based social formation.

This means that after we legalize drugs, we can create a new society without the misfortune of having the top 2% of the world's population owning 85% of the world's property. You have me preaching anarchism here so don't be surprised if I wax poetically for a moment. As I haven't seen you for 20 years, I have a lot to talk to you about. There are books like _The Witches of Karres_ and _Little Fuzzy_ to consider. Piper wrote _Fuzzy_ at just the same time as the Civil Rights revolution was going on in the USA Confederacy south. _Fuzzy_ was about indigenous civil rights for a native species on a distant planet in a future space-opera adventure. There are all sorts of books written with drugs and social revolutions in them. I have even written a few stories myself. I will blog-post a few of them for you. I have a collection called _Unlimited_ that I self-published. Here is one of them. It's short, just 500 words or so. It's no more than a two-page story. I may be a disabled drug addict but my mind is still active.

And what's up with the Republicans wanting to drug test all welfare recipients? I guess I fall into that class. I have a career investment into schizophrenia, so I guess I am just the kind of man who drives Republicans crazy. Ironic to think of Republicans crazy and me being sane. With marijuana going legal, the whole sobriety scene is going to change. I keep seeing chemical dependency literature being written on the pretext of the philosophy of "surrender to win." I think the other team just scored a victory, and the whole sobriety offensive will go through some serious changes.

That doesn't mean I devalue your sobriety. It changes things dramatically. I hear you tangled with cocaine, so I can sympathize. I lost a girlfriend to coca and I still feel regrets over that. Patty was her name. Very Irish Catholic, like you. I must confess I treated her poorly, but the greatest problem with her was that her drug habit was something I couldn't stomach. Ironic for one drug addict to be mad at another drug addict over problems rooted in their mutual chemical dependency.

In any case, we will meet soon, and how did you ever find me on Facebook? It's been 20 years since we have seen each other. I feel mixed emotions about my own drug use. I have a friend who quit the pot after noting that when she was stoned, she didn't feel like interacting with her toddler.

Here is my best short-short work of science fiction. Tell me if you like it. I put it into my collection called _Unlimited_. An ode to self-publishing.

SENSORY PERCEPTION

by James McGregor

The geneticat's pan-sized paw slapped the soldier to the rock face like a toy. Claws tore through his flesh, helmet, and the fabric hood like they were a sirloin steak. Lieutenant Davis had walked into a deadly trap.

Veracruz leveled his 20-millimeter chain gun at the geneticat, just above the now dead Davis, and squeezed off a burst of machine-cannon at the beast. Flesh exploded and the massive, two-ton, genetically engineered death cat went down without accomplishing its mission as sentinel for the people in the megabeam city.

Sargent Veracruz stepped forward and gazed down at the pool of blood issuing from both Davis and the cat. The blend of bloods intermingled into one pool, a deep burgundy red. The piece of Davis's helmet was dangling from half a head. Veracruz picked it up and looked inside. He peeled the strip of mylar tape off the sensor display. Only officers had helmets like these.

Davis never saw it coming. With his heat sensor display masked, he didn't see the heat signature of the cat in its den. Funny that way, but Veracruz had held back and let Davis take the lead on this search mission.

Veracruz checked the safety pin on Davis's gun, then moved the metal tab to unlock it from its safe, non-firing mode. He fired a shot into the mess of geneticat, then studied the two dead and thought of the romance he was having with Davis's wife.

"You never had a clue, did you?" he said.

He folded the mylar strip on itself and put it in his pocket.

He looked down at Davis and never noticed the helmet's disk recorder was functioning. The cat had destroyed the indicator for the recorder, but the disk rolled on.

"I really like your wife," Veracruz said and strolled away to report the tragic death.

Unaware of the operating sound recorder, he never had a clue.

That, my friend Sean, is what a micro story looks like. The big publishers like Ace Science Fiction or DAW or Doubleday or Baen all are looking for works of major sci-fi. They want blockbuster million-sellers about spaceships and future societies. George Orwell and Aldous Huxley wrote future tales of nightmare futures called "dystopias." Technically speaking, these dystopias were sci-fi, but they were more of a type of book you could call "social engineering." I do hope to write something in that vein.

Orwell's books _1984_ and _Animal Farm_ were lessons in totalitarian socialism. Huxley's _Brave New World_ was more of a text on where a future society could end up. Huxley's text was inclusive of drug use and called his drug of choice by the name of "soma," like the Hindu word for cannabis.

Currently the marijuana advocates here in Minnesota are trying to get the state to allow for the treatment of pain with cannabis. I feel that would be a good move. The biggest problem is that the whole recovery/rehab scene has been designed to oppose all drug use and force drug users to surrender their drug addictions to the will of the state. So far that has worked but now, with legal marijuana, the whole thing has been thrown into chaos.

I remember my first taste of forced attendance at a Narcotics Anonymous meeting and watching a tearful woman break down and tell of her personal agony over being tempted to use drugs. She was a single mother of two with a pregnancy on the way. Clad in a gray sweatshirt hoodie, she evoked pathos as she tried to speak on her own personal agony.

It means we have been picking sides in a social war on drugs. Casualties mount.

I look forward to speaking with you in person. I have used marijuana but I avoid the white powders. Sadly, my affection for cheap drugs has obliterated my memory and punished my brain so far into madness that I have to take psych medications just to keep a grip on some part of reality.

My experience is what is called "dual diagnosis," which means the twin addictions of recreational drugs and mental illness. I have gone to the meetings but I find myself to be a social user. My life is a mix of the sobriety scene and psychiatric drugs.

We have a small public radio station just across the street, and once in a while I catch a DJ talking about people I know. When I am paranoid on drugs, I often feel that the radio is in a direct conversation with me. My conscious mind knows that is a paranoid delusion, but I keep on smoking pot. When I start to think that the weather report on a big classic rock station is a secret message made just for me, it's time to take some psych meds. I think of that tearful single mother at the NA meeting, and I wonder if I am going to end up like that.

All is well, Sean. I am at a crossroads in my life. Perhaps you can offer me some guidance.

* * *

James read through what he had written and hit the "publish" button with his cursor. The message text and the micro story he had pasted into the blog went up to the electronic destination in seconds.

He set the marijuana cleaning Frisbee aside and began rummaging through the books on his computer desk and found the book called _Waiting_. It was a guide to the twelve steps of NA for the religiously disinclined to belief in God.

* * *

"That's all of them, Doctor. We have one hundred thirty-three applicants for twenty-four program participant slots. Of that group, only seventeen are veterans. We didn't ask them about security clearances, but you have almost two dozen to choose from." The nurse looked at the gray-haired, rotund doctor and said, "We can ask them more questions after we set them up for their physical exams."

"Yes, that will do quite nicely, Jen. We may get some candidates for the full program. Anything else?"

"One of the candidates was a Marine Corps truck driver assigned to a combined forces communications facility in Kuwait just after Desert Storm in '92. He cross-trained as an admin clerk, and I think he had a security clearance to do that. All of the communications personnel needed security clearances to handle the traffic in computer data and information. He could be your best bet."

The doctor leaned back from his desk, revealing his round form fully. " And who is this fellow? Do you think he is anyone we can use?"

"His forms identify him as James McGregor. Formerly Corporal McGregor. He got the admin job because he could type."

"He has dexterity. That is good. Perhaps we can use him after all. Run him through the usual protocols, and it may work out that he can serve his country once again. Bring him in this week if he clears the tests. We can look him up in the Defense lists of people with clearances. It shouldn't take more than five minutes if he is still in the computer database."

* * *

James got the call from the doctor's office and got scheduled for the first overnight test of the new drug. He also got the news from his mother that his father had appendix cancer. The clinic had removed the appendix immediately, but there was still fear that there would be the need for follow-up chemotherapy. He had his father in mind when he accepted the Syntheris test so quickly. If he could save a life with a drug test, then maybe somebody else could save a life with his father in mind.

His mind was filled with the memories of mutual frustration that came from the way that his father and the classic son had gone out of their way to sabotage each other. Now all that discord fell by the wayside as James faced the possible mortality of his father. Time was running out.
CHAPTER FOUR

_Ecstasy, also known as XTC or E, affects serotonin, a brain chemical that regulates mood, emotion, sleep, appetite, memory, and sexual behavior. The drug typically induces feelings of euphoria, increased energy, and sexual arousal, and makes people feel a need to be touched or hugged._

However, in high doses, the illegal drug known scientifically as methylene dioxy methamphetamine, or MDMA, can cause a sharp increase in body temperature, leading to muscle breakdown, kidney and heart failure, and death...

... _The researchers found that, compared with the brains of women who had never taken Ecstasy, the brains of heavy Ecstasy female users had weaker concentrations of serotonin transporters, the sites on brain cell surfaces that mop up serotonin from the space between cells after it has finished acting on other cells._

If the chemical is not mopped up, further brain signals can't get through.

MDMA gets into the brain through the serotonin transporter. A missing transporter means a dead cell.

December 7, 2015, 8:30 a.m. The moment had come. James arose, dressed, and headed to the East Bank. It was overcast, no visible sun behind the clouds. He plodded along automatically and came to the Moos Medical Center. Its impressive modern architecture loomed before him. He went inside and reported to Room 213. They had him wait there, and a wheelchair with an attendant showed up. James let the process begin by getting in the chair and allowing the attendant to push him to an elevator and over to the University Hospital, one city block away, and into a room with a bed, curtained windows, and a large glass window, mirrored on the inside. James took one look at the mirrored glass and felt a twitch of paranoia. Skilled at defeating this emotion, he put it out of the clear forefront of his mind.

"What's up, Doc?" he said as Dr. Witherspoon and Colonel Devers materialized, looking into the room.

Witherspoon spoke. "We'll need you to change into a hospital gown, and the nurse will help put the electrodes on. You will be monitored by EEG."

"Electroencephalograph? Damn. This must be interesting to you guys," James said.

Witherspoon pulled a clipboard out and reeled back two pages, looking intently at the data on the uncovered page. "You're James McGregor and you're here for the Syntheris trial. Now, Mr. McGregor, we've planned on giving you a sedative with this to calm you generally, and inhibit any adverse reaction to the Syntheris. You're not allergic to Rohypnol, are you?"

"Not that I know of."

"That's good," continued Witherspoon. "We will be monitoring your brain activity in the next room. If you have any problems, we'll be right with you monitoring the EEG. This should go off without a hitch. Get into the gown and into bed, and we'll tell you when we're ready."

James stripped down and donned the gown, slipped into the bed, and waited. A nurse in blue surgical scrubs soon appeared. She peeled backing off of four adhesive electrodes and stuck them onto his temples and forehead.

"That's it," she said. "I'll go and get your medication. I'll be back in a minute."

She left him there to contemplate his surroundings, and the wires attached to his head. He gazed out the window at the houses across the street. It was early December, snow flurries. He watched as flakes sped past his window.

The nurse returned with a small paper cup of pills and a larger cup of water. "Nothing really happens for the first hour," she said. "Swallow these and wash them down with the water."

James took both cups and shot the pills to the back of his throat. One gulp of the water and they would be gone. He swallowed them all, put the extra water down on the bedside cupboard, and leaned back into the pillow. _This is nice,_ he thought.

He stared out the window at the houses and snow. _Overcast,_ he thought. Soon his body felt rubbery and heavy. It felt as if he were sinking into the mattress. He watched the snow streak by the window, lines trailing the flakes. His eyes felt irritated. He closed them for a moment. He looked at the clock. 9:30, it read. From that point on, he could remember nothing clearly. There was that doctor and that other man talking and smiling. Video games. Xbox and PlayStation. Something, a game maybe. He tried to speak, but the words that came to his mind weren't the ones he was saying. He found himself dreaming of an old girlfriend, Cathleen. Her smiling face in fall sun. His dream felt like an assertion. Like someone was dreaming for him, and this dream of an old girlfriend was his own dream. The new dream had won the fight. He felt his dream leave and the stupor of waking take over. He looked around the dark room. He looked outside. It was dark. He looked at the clock. 4:20, it said. 4:20 in the morning. _Christ, those pills packed a punch. A whole day gone, he thought. Still, it's better to sleep till morning,_ and he rolled onto his right side and went back to sleep. He was dreaming of video games and Cathleen.

They woke him at 6:30 and he was alert and conscious immediately. Doctor Witherspoon walked into the room, clipboard in hand, and said, "That's all there is to it, Mr. McGregor."

"Thanks, Doc, I feel all right. Will I be able to walk around? I mean is that sedative out of my system?"

"It should be by now. Get dressed. How were your dreams?"

"I kept seeing video games. Feel like I've been playing an air combat simulator all night."

"Interesting, I'll make a note of that." The doctor wrote a note on his clipboard.

James rose, nude, and walked to the closet where his clothes were and began to dress.

"We'll have a wheelchair here for you in a few minutes," the doctor said.

"That's cool," James said.

Dressed, he sat in a chair and waited for his ride. He reached into his jacket pocket and withdrew his cigarettes. He couldn't get the video games out of his head. Something about them bothered him. Something different than a dream. A dreamlike experience that he just couldn't remember.

The attendant arrived with the wheelchair. A young, smallish blonde woman. Young, in her early twenties, he thought.

"Mr. McGregor?" she queried in the doorway of the room.

"That's me," he replied. He sat down into the wheelchair. "Home, Jeeves," he said as she smiled. She wheeled him through the halls, elevator, and into the front lobby. He stood up as she came to a stop at the glass doors. Reaching into his pocket for his lighter, he lit up his cigarette and kept walking out the doorway onto the early morning, crisp wintry day. The flurries had left about three inches of snow on the ground. It crunched under the soles of his running shoes. He thought of Cathleen and the video games.

Crunching, falling snow was all around. Arriving at Al's, he took an empty seat. He interfaced with the waitress and gave his usual order. He smelled the bacon, eggs, toast, and pancakes cooking. There was a certain something to all those smells that he hadn't noticed before. He began to catalogue all the conflicting aromas. Butter on the grill, aftershave, coffee, deodorant, perfume, starch, wood, maple syrup, jam, and soap. All the smells of freshly showered workers and students beginning a long day. These aromas stood out at him. It felt as if he was bottled up for weeks and like a shaken pop bottle, uncapped violently, he was coming loose of his confines. He felt a tremendous sense of release.

* * *

Sean composed a note for James in the responses section of James' blog.

"Will you be in Rochester for Christmas? I will be visiting my parents for a few days. We have both been so busy that we haven't been able to connect yet. Your blog has been a good communication tool. E-mail cannot contain your collection of stories. I find them to be good but not stellar. To get published they should be truly lurid and tarted up a bit. You tell good tales, but if I can comment on their printable nature, the author of the James Bond stories, Ian Fleming, was described by his wife as a writer of 'cheap pornography.' That is the industry standard and you will have to conform to that norm if you want to actually sell the stuff and get published."

Blog Post Nine

Explosions, the thing that Minnesotans fear the most, the natural gas explosion that claims the houses of three homeowners every year. Here is the year's best demolition I can throw together.

A blog note. Just finished Marya Hornbacher's book Waiting. It is a tome on the concept of spirituality without god. She is a devout nonbeliever but has come to a place of spirituality without god.

Her book is superb use of language. My own science fiction is nowhere near her elegance and subtlety. Her analysis of her twelve-step program is detailed and nuanced. She dissects thoughts and feelings in ways no psychologist could ever do for a dry, soulless report for a judge in a courtroom. Her discipline to the twelve steps is as careful and simultaneously as deft as the simplicity of great artists like Jesus and the Buddha. "Before I achieved enlightenment I chopped wood and carried water. After I achieved enlightenment I chopped wood and carried water."

The simple viewpoint grants access to the complex. My own beliefs truly are a beginning while hers are those from the mountaintop and greased with the experience of drunken binges and dead friends. People beckon to her and say, "Come to the desert in spring, watch the hummingbirds at night as the cacti bloom." She writes of those hummingbirds and finds a whole world described in two pages of text.

Her perspective is at once from the experiences of mental illness medicated by self-induced stupors of drugs and alcohol. A great drunk she was, and Neil Young said, "Every junky is like a setting sun." Oh, that I could have drunk with such a creature. There is time for me to find such addicts, and held them dear till the day that they avoided the tavern.

Never underestimate simple addictions like alcohol. Lives can be had and trashed with the commonality of a couple of martinis. All is well in my life, and the writer's tools of description are beginning to take hold. Soon I will learn to write term papers and five-paragraph essays. I will study the words of psychologists and give them to lawyers to unravel like knots of destiny.

Where can I go to write reports for courts? They require evidence and not just an in-depth version of feelings and emotions. Marya is the perfect subject to write a courtroom report on. "Subject is a 56-year-old divorced female of eastern European descent, Jewish-atheist, and describes herself as an alcoholic with a mental illness. She has published four memoirs on anorexia, chemical dependency, and bi-polar disorder which have been best-sellers and is financially independent. She can and has professed a desire to pay cost-of-care and is currently insured." When such a description includes people like me, I wonder how they do it all. My circumstances are more that of chronic homelessness, a history of drug and alcohol use, and financial irresponsibility. How she could live as colorful a life and still been able to balance a checkbook and a credit card are beyond me. Perhaps she used a debit card.

Fortunes and opportunities surround her like wasps buzzing around a plate swabbed in maple syrup and left outside in the sun to bake and caramelize. The manner of life that has been extremes of success and catastrophic despair has not yet blessed me. I have had the middle of the road, in comparison. She could write a screenplay or do another book. She has the world as an oyster.

I have a Social Security check and a VA Home Loan guarantee. I have a history of enough drug and alcohol use that my inheritance includes a lifetime of membership in the local church basements where twelve-step groups meet. It's not awesome but it works. It is the Subaru and is as disposable as a Bic lighter. It's far from the Maserati and the gold Zippo.

The cause of religiosity rings true in the telling of such life stories. For Jesus and Buddha and even Mohammed, the history of being social leaders and leaving such histories behind to guide their minions runs true in Marya's books. A modern depiction of crime and punishment, despair and redemption, the blues and the ecstasy, all come full circle when the tape is rolling to capture it all. For Jesus it was sheepskin and papyrus, and for the others it was rice paper and the more common wood pulp variety. This is the way we immortalize. Marya has written a chapter in the communion of the wine and come out of it all with her text intact. We are what we leave behind, and some of us, like Marya, barter fame for a nominal fortune. She has left us with a "book of Marya." Or rather five books, to date.

So, Sean, I will meet you this year at Wong's Chinese restaurant and we can dine on lo mein noodles and beef or duck. We can exchange tales of nominal depravity and plan on the next self-published book of science fiction and put our addictions into the context of weird planets and the spaceships that get us there. You be the Jesus this time. Write us a good revelation and I will get you into the awards dinner for the year's best sci-fi. Good luck to us all.

* * *

Evening settled on the West Bank amid snow and slowed traffic. _I really dig this tranquility,_ thought James. He walked into the Hard Times, cruised past the line of people waiting for service from the cashier, and beelined for the pay phones on the wall. He dropped in two quarters and keyed in Cathleen's number.

"Hello," said a mousy-sweet female voice.

"This is James. Got any plans for the evening?"

"I've got a comp class I'm writing for. But I should be done with that in an hour or so. What have you got in mind?" said Cathleen.

"Have you had dinner yet?" said James.

"Not really," said Cathleen.

"Come try the trout at Café Brenda. We can share a bottle of wine and munch on fish. Fishy, fishy," said James.

"That sounds nice. Look, it's six o'clock now. I'll bike over to your place at seven. See you then."

"Okay, you're on. Seven, then." That left an hour to kill. He looked around the customer dining area and spotted Jerry. "Do you still think entropy is going to destroy the dishwashing machine?" he said.

"But of course. It has moving parts so wear is inevitable," said Jerry.

"What's up, buddy?" said James.

"I've been trying to design a hollow turbine fin for use in a turbo jet aircraft. It's for my lab on turbine engines. The curves are being programmed into the computer," said Jerry.

"Is this the old I-5 or the new I-7?"

"Both, but mostly the I-7," said Jerry.

"I hope your calculations are correct," said James.

"My languages are very out-of-date. My first work on the I-5 was in BASIC, and any new stuff is all in FORTRAN 77," said Jerry.

"You need JAVA and C," said James.

"Yeah, that's true, but I'm having fun with what I'm doing. How about you? How's the guinea pig job going?"

"Got my first check, which is nice."

"You gonna be around for awhile?"

"No, as a matter of fact, I'm going on a road trip soon," said James.

"Really? I've got class so I can't go but I would if I could. Where to?"

"Someplace in Rochester," said James.

"Drivin'?" inquired Jerry.

"Yes. Say, I gotta get home soon. Cathleen's gonna meet me there. We're going to Brenda's for dinner."

"Woo! Trez chick," said Jerry.

"Yeah. I'm gonna be gone for awhile, so I want us to part on happy ground," said James.

"Good, see you later then," said Jerry.

"Yeah, see ya." James turned and walked out of the café, into the snow, to McKnight Tower. He checked his mail and found a letter from Bryce Pharmaceuticals. It was an order to report for a psych testing date. The appointment was scheduled for December 20, 9 a.m. Damn, he thought. _This is gonna alter my timetable._

The elevator stopped on floor 13. Cathleen would be there in 40 minutes. He set up a pot of coffee and cleaned his bedroom. The floor slowly reappeared beneath clothes and other debris. He cleaned off his desk and threw a black velvet cloth over the computers. He reached for his candle collection and arranged them around the room, lighting each one. He put two in the kitchen next to the entry hall with its pass-through window port. The place actually looked good. The living room still had piles of lumber and electronics equipment in it, but in the half-light of the candles, that room's debris was darkly concealed.

The buzzer for the door on the first floor sounded. James hit the door latch button without a word. He then lit an incense burner with a small globe of frankincense. It hissed and smoked, filling the room with its rich, timeless scent.

Soon there was a knock at the door. When he answered, there was Cathleen, clad in an outdated leather coat, jeans, and bicycle helmet.

"Come in, come in, you're no doubt cold," he said.

She led her mountain bike in, and he took it from her and parked it alongside his bike on the balcony.

"Care for some hot coffee?"

"Sure, I'll take a cup. It's cold out there."

James poured fresh coffee into a mug and handed it to Cathleen. She unbuttoned her coat and took off the helmet. Laying her cold-weather gear onto a defunct television, she stepped toward the kitchen and he handed her coffee.

"Come into the candlelight," he said. He led her into the half-light of the bedroom.

"So, when do we eat trout at Brenda's?" she asked.

"I've got us a reservation at nine." He set his coffee down on the worktable with the two covered computers. "The next two hours belong to us." Cathleen still cradled her coffee as James began kissing her temple, her cheek, and her neck. She turned away and set her coffee on one of the bedside cabinets and returned to kiss him fully.

* * *

James had taken a booth seat in Wong's. The terra-cotta brown of the booth's upholstery complemented the chrome coat hooks and black-painted trim of the Chinese restaurant. It seemed like a blast from the past to be sitting here waiting for Sean.

The drug test was going well. He felt calmer, more serene, and in that serenity he was comforted. The comfort he felt was that of home. Here was the town where both he and Sean had grown up, both being the sons of famous physicians. Dr. Witherspoon had given him a book called Boyd, which James had read a few chapters of. It was positively enchanting how this fighter pilot, John Boyd, had taken on the whole Pentagon on the issues of defense money. Millions of dollars were at stake. He had been so impressed with the book that he bought a copy for his father for a Christmas present.

James was brooding over the fate of his father's cancer. He hoped they would get many more years of his father's company and leadership as the family's patriarch.

The waitress came to his booth and asked if he wanted anything. He ordered a Coke and a bowl of egg drop soup. He waited.

All seemed well as Sean walked in in dark clothes, and they instantly made eye contact. Twenty years' separation disappeared in an instant.

"Sean," James said.

"Jimmy," said Sean. "What's been keeping you over the last years? You look well. I read your last post and it felt as if you wrote it just for me."

"You noticed that, did you?" James replied. "I don't know many Buddhist addicts so you are an easy one to write for. I like eastern interpretations of western philosophy. I guess it goes with the Thai Stick I used to smoke."

"Used to? Have you given up the old party that never stops?"

"I still dabble but I never got into the expensive habits. Couldn't afford to be a true addict. I have to keep a low profile. I still have a touch of the grass but I always avoided the white powders. I have no money for such things."

"Perhaps that's a good thing. If you ever feel like giving up for good, then give me a call. I noticed you wrote about Hornbacher. She is quietly famous for doing the program without the God effect."

"It's more of a discipline than it is a belief question. For me the higher power and universe are interchangeable concepts. I fear the whole government-enforced higher power concept is too much of a state-sponsored religion for me. I get hung up on constitutional issues," said James.

"Buddhism is more of a mental discipline for people. I got a heavy dose of Catholic Jesus when I was young. For me a resolution of Christ as a Buddhist is an essential end. I will always be partly Jesuit in my scope."

"It's great to see you, Sean."

Sean took off his wool Navy pea coat and slid into the booth across from James. "How's the family? How are the 'rents?"

"The parents are fine. A cancer scare but all else is fine. Dad got the proverbial 'fear of God' moment. He had cancer of the appendix. They cut it out and he seems well. Soon they may do chemo. I don't think it was metastasized but you never can tell."

Sean considered his words for a moment. "We never got onto the treadmill of being doctors. It's kind of one of those Mayo Clinic 'failure to launch' items. We ended up doing more drugs than our fathers were prescribing. But Ann got her MD degree. At least one of us regenerated into a famous doctor. Mike did too. He's trying to break into medical journalism."

"Mike is a good man. Too many of these doctors' kids just get onto the professional treadmill and lose all conscious contact with the soul of mankind and plod on without healing anybody. They forget to be humans and they just become as enslaved as the bulk of humanity, addicted to cable TV and low-calorie precooked dinners. If you are a doctor and you cannot cook, you are a lost cause." James looked at his friend and continued, "I hear you had a cocaine moment and got sober?"

"Got a good dose of it too. Been dry and off the sauce for almost twenty years. I live in recovery. I got you a book to inspire you on your literary journey. Fletcher's _Inside Rehab._ Give it a read and tell me what you think about it. As a writer you should find it tasty."

James took the book from Sean's hand and looked at its cover, a cover with six chairs in a circle. He withdrew a book from his coat. It was his own self-published text. The cover featured a photo of the NASA space shuttle landing at a desert airstrip. The title was superimposed over the photo and was the word "Unlimited" and James's name below that.

"It's not a best-seller but it was my first effort. I have been told it isn't stellar but is 'good.' I guess that means it's a pretty girl but not the homecoming queen."

Sean accepted it graciously and touched the rehab book. "This isn't a homecoming queen either but it is a good beef stew to a starving man. You should create a chemically dependent character in your next story. I notice you have done short stories. Have you ever tried to write a novel?"

"I am toying with the idea," said James.

" _Dune_ was all about drug addiction in its own weird way. We all read that in 1984. We were all teenagers then and all of us were pot smokers too. That's about the time I got my first taste of Cocaine College in 1989."

"I did the Marines soon after that. Got stuck driving trucks until they found out I could type. U-S-M-C. You Signed the Motherfucking Contract or Unmitigated Shit and Massive Confusion. I have papers in progress to get VA benefits. I hope they come through soon. It would mean a raise from the SSI level of finances. I only bring in twelve hundred dollars a month. That's not enough to go to school with. Plus you get a back pay check for all the time you waited to get paid. They start the clock the day you apply for the benefits. It's been two years so I could get seventy-five thousand dollars."

"I hope it works out for you," Sean said.

"I also hear you have two teenagers and no wife. Did that all come as a package or did you acquire it over time?"

"One failed marriage and two kids. They want college money now. I am more gainfully employed than you. I am one class short of a degree in counseling. What kind of school are you looking at?"

James sat up straight and said, "Nursing. I hope to find a good RN program. I think I have found it. I see it as a kind of legal martial art. I got committed six years ago. I felt powerless in court. The RN degree could be a path to empowerment. I still want the VA benefits but I need to learn how to write a good legal report on issues like mental health commitment. There is always funding for the imprisonment side of the house while depressed people get told to be homeless for years before they get any semblance of real care. They only pay for 'forced care.' The prison agenda comes first in the funding equation."

Sean puzzled for a moment. "That sounds like anger and bitterness. You could be fighting your destiny or fate. Most drug addicts go through a stage of fighting the system. I regret to inform but the system will judge any complaint as a resistance to their all-too-necessary will. The numbers aren't in your favor. Most of the time drug addicts either thank their captors for breaking their drug habits or go on to resist time and time again. They say the average is seven runs through treatment before an addict actually gives up their addictions."

"I hope to generate new numbers. I am not a felon and I cannot own handguns. The last thing I want to do is get arrested with a sword or knife in my hand. The law tends to shoot to kill in such scenarios. Most addicts don't go to college. There was a time when we were respected as princes of the city."

"Yes, but there are two thousand doctors here in Rochester. That means four kids per doctor. Of that, half are female. That leaves four thousand princes from the city. You are, thus, one prince among four thousand. I, too, am one of those princes. I now pay out counseling money to put kids through college and the ex-wife still wants some squeeze now and then."

"It's not an easy fix. I have to give up on the herbs to get myself to a place where I can dispense Demerol to an eighty-year-old woman with cancer and a diaper."

Sean smiled and said, "You have enough compassion that you just may be able to do it. You will need straight A's for two years. For that small stretch of time you will have to become a good student. Get used to peeing into a jar to let your investors know you aren't stealing Grandmother's Demerol and they might just let you. You could become a nurse. I hope you get those VA benefits. I hope your pop pulls through the cancer. It's a bittersweet pill to need an inheritance. You will need to stay out of psychiatric jail too. Trust only the ones you truly need."

James considered Sean's words for a moment and sipped at his egg drop soup. "I just don't know where all this is headed. Did you read my blog note on Patty?"

"I read all of them. There were seven notes and one small one written exclusively for me. The one where Jesus was a Buddhist. Then the last one you wrote on Hornbacher's AA experience. That was well-written and, as I was part of its target audience, I thank you for it. It's fun to read a magazine written for me in mind."

"You're welcome. It is sometimes our best writing when we have a specific audience in mind. I write pathologically. I would write when happy, write when sad. I keep on writing. I can type. I can do data entry for corporate customers and bang out reams of code for computer programming. But my real love is science fiction. I have often felt that the Mayo Foundation is eerily similar to the Foundation books by Isaac Asimov."

Sean motioned to the waitress. "Can I get some tea?" he asked. She nodded and disappeared. "I remember you prowling junkyards looking for cars to rebuild. Did anything ever come of that?"

"Owned a Mustang for a week, then smashed it. Bad tires in the snow. It was a heap. Very rusty. But I will buy a new one soon. I know where there are a few that the crusher hasn't eaten yet. I find myself attracted to junkyards as a metaphor for my poverty. So much potential. So much that is just cannibalized. I do hallucinate from time to time. I am getting the guts up to give up the cannabis. Then I will be left to tobacco and coffee. Those are the drugs that have served me well. I made it through the Marines with no pot. I became a tobacco smoker then."

"Actually, that's good. You had enough command over your drug habit that you could stop. Most addicts would have just switched over to alcohol and prostitutes and wasted their paychecks. You are at an interesting juncture in your life, James. Most people would have just given up and surrendered to the drugs. You have the best of both worlds. A small drug habit and a good enough educational platform that you can build something really sustainable. You are in a 'smooth sailing' mode of thought."

"I have twenty-six credits at the U of M. The nursing program I have found covers sixty-four credits in five terms. One year and one quarter and I am done. It starts up next fall."

Sean sipped at the tea that the waitress had just dropped off. "You could do better if you kicked the cannabis."

James replied, "I know, I just don't feel like doing it all at once. It feels like I am missing out on some benefit or privilege I have earned. And I am concerned about my father. This may not be the best time to hit him up for college money. We don't know if the cancer is gone. I don't feel like making massive life changes while he is still in flux. He may not be out of the woods just yet."

Sean sipped more tea. He said, "Anne got her MD ticket. She did well. She went to Notre Dame and then Northwestern for medical school. She is at Johns Hopkins doing neurology. That is the new knighthood. She is the high priestess of our modern culture. Doctors get the respect we used to deliver to the witch doctors of our more primitive selves. The medicine man still prevails. There are hunters like me and malingerers like you but always the chief and the medicine man come through."

"Or medicine woman, as in Anne's case," James smiled.

Soon they dissolved into a list of people they had known. A list of old school chums that they knew in school. O'Malleys and Pruits. Van Essens and O'Gormans. Andy and Bill and Monty and Shawn. What was Connie up to? Nice kids, all of them. With James at 44 years and Sean at 43, they knew all of the same people. They kibitzed and laughed and told stories. Some stories were about drugs and others were about family.

At last the pot of tea was emptied and Sean took it as a cosmic signal to go home. "Can I get you a ride to your parents' place?"

"That will do quite nicely," said James. He looked out as the wind blew whorls in the dusting of snow they had. It was December 23rd, a Wednesday, and getting to be more and more wintery. They got up, paid the bill, and got their coats on. They left together.
CHAPTER FIVE

Colonel Devers sat in the front seat of the F-16 trainer jet. He was in the seat commonly taken by the student. His driver was Major Hendricks. The major moved the throttle forward and the jet began to move faster and faster down the runway. The major said into his cockpit facemask microphone, "Here is where the rubber meets the road, Colonel. If your helmet can get you to be a better fighter pilot, then we are behind you a thousand percent. But if it gets in the way, then we want your assurance it won't be pushed on the Air Force like that F-35 boondoggle. We spent five hundred billion on it and it has still got no rearward visibility. The thing is a textbook case of defense contractors trying to sell a weapons system to the armed forces that they don't want."

"Get us up to fifteen thousand feet and we will see what we can do."

Major Hendricks pulled back on the right-hand joystick and the nose of the aircraft began to rise. Soon the entire airplane began to float above the concrete of the runway. The major retracted the landing gear and began to climb. Within ten minutes they were at 15,000 feet altitude. The major said into his microphone, "Here we are, Colonel. Give that fancy toy a try."

The colonel flipped a switch on a black box full of controls. Three small lights on the box came on and glowed. The central component of the control panel was a video screen framed by 20 buttons. The heads-up display projected flight information onto the forward panel of cockpit Plexiglas. The attitude, altitude, speed, and fuel status was all there, reported with no need to take his eyes off of the forward view.

Colonel Devers remembered being a "shavetail lieutenant" in the Air Force in the mid-1970s. He was as old in the Air Force as the airplane he was riding in. Both had begun their Air Force careers at about the Bicentennial of 1976. He remembered years of training and practice during the Cold War in Europe during the big tank scare of the 1980s. The Soviets had so many tanks in Poland, East Germany, and Romania that the Air Force had created a tank-killer airplane just to deal with the problem.

Here was a new solution. A targeting system linked surgically to the human mind that would grant the power to find and fire at as many targets as the pilot could visualize. He thought, _All these cowboys will face a new frontier. The dogfight will be a thing of the past._ He tuned in the helmet's visual panel and lowered it over his eyes. Like a virtual reality visor, the visual panel reported all the aircraft flying in the local area. The colonel noted six military aircraft and two airliners.

Then the colonel began to adjust the helmet. He tightened the straps and screwed in the temple sensors. Soon the visor began to show more data. Ranges of distance appeared next to every blip in the viewscreen. The screen was three-dimensional. Radar was only displayed in one plane. There were modifications that could judge altitude for radar but the screens on which the results were viewed were two-dimensional plates. The visor was three-dimensional and relative to depth.

The colonel adjusted the black box and released the tight straps of the helmet. "Well, if this is any test, Major, the system looks promising. You will have to keep a lid on this. Security is going to be tight. We are a new project so we are going to be talked about. You have to keep your mouth shut. With any help we will give the Saddams of the world something new to worry about."

The colonel thought to himself, _This will make each individual plane the power of an AWACS-equipped strike package. Mate up this helmet to an F-22 radar invisible fighter jet and a modified air-to-air missile system and we will have an unbeatable team._

All he said was, "It works."

* * *

Gunnery Sergeant Matthew Tanner looked at his stump at the wrist of his right forearm. _Damn,_ he thought. He sat at his computer and typed with his left hand. He filled out resumes and applications. There was less call for a one-handed man. It was hard enough to find a job as a veteran. Harder yet to find one as a disabled vet. He checked his mail at the door and his e-mail at Gmail. He found a job posting looking for a man (or woman) with a combat loss of at least a hand and not more than a forearm. Security clearance desired. That felt Matt Tanner exactly. But then he looked at the fine print. It was run by a pharmaceutical company. _Who knows what it's really about?_ He downloaded the applications and job criteria.

_It's worth a try,_ he thought. Ever since he had tried to throw that grenade back at the Afghan soldier and been surprised that the same grenade had gone off in his hand, it puzzled him. It made him a one-handed citizen. With a chestful of medals and a VA disability check, he added a Purple Heart to the list. It meant a new game for him and his family. He hoped for a new job, a new purpose.

He looked again at the computer screen. The job posting said they were looking for somebody with a security clearance. All non-commissioned officers in the Marines had security clearances. At least staff NCOs had such. That meant he was qualified.

* * *

Colonel Devers spoke. "Boyd in a box. A very advanced chess program with a human along for the ride as a sort of 'safety feature.' Envision a computer system so advanced it can Immelmann, jink, and parry like no other pilot could. Of course no computer can make value judgements but that is what a two-man crew can do. A game plan replotted every two seconds and made available to its crew. It is a big jump for an electronic weapons officer to make but it has passed all synthetic tests. Even going up against the latest, most advanced MiGs and Sukhois, it has so far done well.

"With strike packages including Ravens, Eagles, and even Raptors it has, so far, done well. Remember a good strike capability relies on a good pilot. The human element is indispensable. The black boxes can reroute weapons in a millisecond. Although the tactical maneuvers require a second to be approved by the human but in the long run, five seconds, it is still a step forward.

"The greater fears from science fiction of inappropriately linked computers and sentient machines are tangible but still not able to reckon the human factors."

* * *

"Actually, I am testing a new mood stabilizer. It's not that bad. Mixing it with cannabis may not be what the drug company has in mind but the fluidity of this current med is doing quite well." James lit a cigarette and put the glass of wine down on the garden table in the backyard of his parents' house.

"So, how is the chemo going?" He looked at his father in a moment of concern.

"What I have seen in the literature is that three months of oxaliplatin is very similar to six months. There are anecdotal notes but that's the general consensus." James' father withdrew a piece of Nicorette and popped it into his mouth. "You should really give up the tobacco."

"Yes, this is true, but you employed it for forty years. I have only done half that. It's not the same as med school where you were so poor you stole lunch from the hospital and fried up breakfast leftovers of oatmeal you had in the morning for your dinner. I live on SSI so I don't have to do that sort of thing."

"We were scientists and we knew just how far we could push ourselves and still stay alive. It was a discipline the young pups don't understand. The luxuries you enjoy are a paradise that we did not have in 1954. So how are your student loans doing?"

"Well enough. I might go back to school. Providing, of course, that folks like you do not impose oatmeal sufferings on us."

James looked at his father. Here was one of the top men in respiratory medicine. Top of the world. He was taller than James. White hair thinning. Round belly. Gum chewing and an ex-smoker. He got respiratory complaints whenever he flew places in commercial jets. Interstitial lung disease from smoking.

The white hair was a thing of status. Now retired, he occasionally worked part time. He offered up his services to the Mayo Clinic on special cases. A chest consult.

Eighty percent of the Mayo Clinic's chest section were smokers in 1980. Most had quit tobacco by this time. It was irony to James that these top men in lung disorders would smoke but that was a reflection of a time gone by. They were penniless paupers in their time at med school but now that they were the accepted kings of medicine in the world, they got paid well.

Wallace McGregor was James' father's name. The chest consults came in whenever the current chest experts needed "a little white hair in on this case." That was how they termed his wisdom and the respect it commanded.

* * *

James thought about his time in the Marines just after Desert Storm in '91. He had been stationed in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia at that time. The mental illness had played a role. If he could just make a connection between the illness and his service years, he could get onto the VA payroll.

The doctors were all saying the case should be approved. With all of the soldiers coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan, there was a packed house of other, more needy vets. He thought he could get in on that movement.

He had been stationed at a communications center and had gotten his security clearance by accident. He was a truck driver. A chauffeur to troops and VIPs alike. Then one day they found out he could type. All of a sudden he was treated as a VIP and the world opened up for him. He was soon doing data entry and lines of computer code for the communications mission. Scramblers and encoded transmissions all went through him.

When his term of deployment was up, he went back to the States and the trouble started. He began to feel that radio and TV were in a direct conversation with him. He took the psych drugs but his military career was over. The commanding officer he was working for signed the papers for his discharge but the Corps wrote him up for having a personality disorder and not a true mental illness. James suspected it was done as an effort to keep him from getting a medical discharge. He thought it was done as a financial precaution.

Now he had to rectify that dilemma. In the vernacular of the Marines, it was a call to "unfuck the situation."

He had a good case. He knew it. His first application for benefits went in two years ago. That meant he was due two years of back pay from the VA. That came to at least $72,000. Soon he would be a rich man by his pauper's standard of existence.

He thought about his favorite actor, Sir John Gielgud. Nobody could turn an eloquent insult the way Gielgud could. If somebody was being a low-brow racist, Gielgud could cut into him with the elegance of a rapier sword.

_Someday I will learn how to do that,_ he thought.

* * *

"So he says to me, 'The only way you are going to succeed in therapy is if you are willing to take direction. They say in recovery that you have to hit rock bottom before you can give up on an addiction. You have to give up your hold on being in control of your life to make a new start.'

"So I read a bit out of the _Just for Today_ book and I found myself trying to run my own life and keep control, and that was just the thing the book said was wrong. According to the book, I had to turn my life over to the care of God and trust in my higher power. I felt surrounded so I did the best I could. I tried to surrender but even in that I found myself trying to control my surrender.

"It was really then that I let go completely. I think for me that was really the first step. To admit I was powerless over my addiction and I needed to work the steps again. That's what brought me to a thorough and relentless personal inventory and a good five-hour step five."

The man was in his fifties, short hair, average height and weight. He was talking about his control issues in the Narcotics Anonymous meeting. Sean was on the other side of the ring of chairs and tables. Cross talk was forbidden or Sean would have spoken up. Sean's combination of Buddhism and Christianity provoked him to think of prayer and meditation.

Sean thought of James and his talk of surrender.

Blog Post Ten

Surrender

I don't mind surrendering to the group or an NA program. Most of the group is court ordered. I am not quite the same as that. My biggest drive is that if I want to be a nurse, and Grandma's Demerol goes missing, and I am one of Granny's nurses, they will want me to pee into a jar. I could come up as free from opiate use, but my cannabis habit would show up and the medical career would be done. Have to wait until cannabis is legal for that one. The door is open just a crack now. Cannabis is not legal here in Minnesota yet but with pain patients looking for an alternative to opiates, there is hope for an expansion of the weed to a greater end effect.

I don't mind surrendering to a group of fellow addicts but caving in to the police and the Republicans sounds like a sin. Bill Murray said, "When I won't talk to the government it's called a felony, but when the government won't talk to me it's called politics." To that end I love the company of 60-year-old heroin addicts who got clean years ago. They know the paths I want to walk. I feel life as a nurse will take me to different places than just what the American Medical Association wants me to go in.

Pop was so poor in medical school that he used to eat oatmeal for breakfast, and steal lunch from the hospital he was interning at, and fry up the morning's leftover oatmeal for dinner. The tribe of scientists he was part of knew just how far they could push themselves in the raw survival skills they could do. That was harsh and indicative of the slide-rule mindset that was prevalent until the pocket calculator was invented. Alan Turing and the universal machine. Turing's efforts at creating the world's first computer brought us to the Texas Instruments calculators we now take for granted. A cool hustle. We are all just hustlers looking for a use for our talents. Those talents are our "hustles."

Pop hated oatmeal forever after that. He earned his bacon and eggs after such an ordeal.

That is the curse I give to all my detractors. Let them eat oatmeal. I have earned myself a steak and though it does not come with an ale, I can survive on my meager rations. As a nurse I will have the option of being the dietician. I will plan a menu of bison steaks and a salad of almonds and dried cherries for all the guests to dine on. To such a fate I will surrender, and yes, that it comes out with no Demerol for me, I will be comforted by the fact it is no longer oatmeal. After I feed the masses, I will have leftovers that are not a dinner of fried oatmeal and a pauper with winning cards. So the game goes on and moves forward.

To such a fate I can surrender. They will come to the NA meeting with tales of surrendering to a higher power and I will give them a god that is the universe. I can share a rich man's cup of wine. We will feed the poor and educate a new generation. We will be the envy of the world and my oatmeal will be a New York strip.

We will get cannabis for the pain patients. I will gladly serve as a nurse in such a world. It gets me my steak, and yes, we will feed the masses, but at a rate that feeds us too. The masses will have their Pinot Noir, their Burgundy, and their Chardonnay. We will have sparkling cider and a Monster Green, or Orange, or Java. We will survive as a small nation does, by balancing the greater powers in such a way that we balance their energies and create a small pocket of neutral space between them, for ourselves. They will have their smoke, and the dust of the day, but we will survive too.

We will surrender to the needs of the greater powers but we will have our smaller, more substantial victories. All is well in our little corner of the world.

Free at last, free at last, we will be free at last. There will come a day when everything is free at last. A day will soon dawn upon a world starved for freedoms and liberties to be enjoyed by all of us. To such a world I will gladly surrender. To whom should we surrender? When should we surrender, and on what terms? We will determine our fate and if it is that we should surrender, at least we will cook the dinners and live in the big house. If being slaves is our fate, then let us be house slaves and not have a leaky roof and windows that do not close. Someday we will have houses of our own. Everything in stages, everything modular, everything in pieces. Every day another piece. To this fate we will surrender.

We will not just be swept aside wholesale. We will have our concessions and our little victories. When once we looked out at a world at war with our petty freedoms, we can now look it in the eye and say, "We control the kitchen now, and we decide when it is a good day for steak, and when it is a day for oatmeal."

The day comes nigh that the cannabis is the prescription for many ills. That liberty is upon us now. It is a small thing but it means the door, long shut to us all, is opening just a bit. When we dealt with cop and State, and they said there is no food for any of us, we once tightened our belts and soldiered on, but now things are different. The door is opening, and when we were told to surrender completely, we now can dictate our own terms of surrender, or to never surrender at all.

The State will need us in this brave new world. Our experts and wise men will no longer be hunted. When Marley sang, "How long shall they kill our prophets, while we stand aside and look, some say it's just a part of it, we've got to fulfill the book," then we have arrived, and all is well. We have incurred many casualties but the journey, though hard and agonizingly slow, will have been worth it.

A trail of tears is now over. We have earned this peace, so rejoice in our new frontier, our promised land.

We can surrender to god, or to the universe, or to the group, or to the eternal spirit that is perpetuated endlessly. To a State infected with Republicans, the answer is 'No Quarter.' But to each other the word is given. We are family and we are the same flesh. We survive as a pack and though we war over who gets to be the Alpha of the day, we still live and die as a collective. We surrender to the survival needs of the greater group. And in doing so we prevail. We surrender to win. Those are the terms of our surrender.

Blog Post Eleven

Fritzkrieg

Dear Sean,

My old Jesuit Catholic girlfriend Ms. Fitzgerald (We call her Fritz, or Fritzkrieg) is a tough nut to crack. She is a lovely lady but she has expensive tastes. She liked cocaine in her day. She got the stuff for free so who can blame her. She was very Catholic about the whole thing. Very Christian so I would have to say you would like her. Your tenet that Jesus is a Buddhist may help her someday. I find your Irish Catholic perspective to be honest. It's simple and it does the trick, and especially in this nightmare of twelve-step nonsense that concerns us now. The twelve steps of NA will always bind you, me, and Fritzy, so I feel we can all get to know each other a bit.

You said you were virtually an addict from the first day you did cocaine. I can respect that. I was always appalled at its expense but I did enough cheap drugs that my mind is thoroughly destroyed. I hallucinate without the right drugs for mind control. I still smoke some pot but I have had to accept the fact that I have a mental illness. I have been ill that way since before the Marines. I have a claim in for VA benefits that hinges on some key points. I was hospitalized before the USMC and they will try to say my illness was a pre-existing medical condition. My case hinges on the idea that the Marines made my condition worse, and that I am no longer employable because of that intensified quality of my illness. My tour of duty exacerbated and increased the degree of my unemployable state.

Between you and me, those conditions are true, but I plan on getting the VA benefits and using them to make myself employable once again. While I am permanently disabled, I may be able to work part time in the future. If I can get my VA benefits, I may be able to shack up with Fritz. I will be able to afford to go to school and support a family of one simultaneously. She has expensive tastes but nothing I cannot afford. She is well connected so I don't worry about it.

My point today is that the book you recommended, _Inside Rehab_ by Fletcher, is great. It clearly reports that scientific remedies are better than twelve-step modalities in treating chemical dependency issues. The older notion that you need god and religion is swept aside as a broom removes sugar from a kitchen floor. I feel your own Catholic mindset will be crucial as I try to dissect the mind of my beloved Fritzy. Like a junkie with a fresh bag of goodies, I report to you that the book is just what I was looking for. Fritz is so tuned into the spiritual side of things that my criticisms must feel like atheism to her.

My standard format of writing and speaking is the art of the complaint. I complain well. I am superb at crafting a sensible protest. I guess that's because my best action at seeking what I want out of the world is to complain until I have my needs met. Even my VA claim is a form of that. I could try hard work but I think I will let the VA pay for college first. Then I will try working part time. As it is said, "The squeaky wheel gets the grease." I will endeavor to squeak in just the right way.

Your Buddhist Jesus may save her someday.

* * *

How It Works

If you want what we have to offer, and are willing to make the effort to get it, then you are ready to take certain steps. These are the principles that made our recovery possible.

1. We admitted that we were powerless over our addiction, that our lives had become unmanageable.

2. We came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

3. We made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.

4. We made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.

5. We admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.

6. We were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.

7. We humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.

8. We made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.

9. We made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.

10. We continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.

11. We sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.

12. Having had a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to addicts, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

This sounds like a big order, and we can't do it all at once. We didn't become addicted in one day, so remember—easy does it.

There is one thing more than anything else that will defeat us in our recovery; this is an attitude of indifference or intolerance toward spiritual principles. Three of these that are indispensable are honesty, open-mindedness, and willingness. With these we are well on our way.

We feel that our approach to the disease of addiction is completely realistic for the therapeutic value of one addict helping another is without parallel. We feel that our way is practical, for one addict can best understand and help another addict. We believe that the sooner we face our problems within our society, in everyday living, just that much faster do we become acceptable, responsible, and productive members of that society.

The only way to keep from returning to active addiction is not to take that first drug. If you are like us you know that one is too many and a thousand never enough. We put great emphasis on this, for we know that when we use drugs in any form, or substitute one for another, we release our addiction all over again.

Thinking of alcohol as different from other drugs has caused a great many addicts to relapse. Before we came to NA many of us viewed alcohol separately, but we cannot afford to be confused about this. Alcohol is a drug. We are people with the disease of addiction who must abstain from all drugs in order to recover.

* * *

James bought Anne Fletcher's book _Inside Rehab_ and read 123 pages of it before meeting Sean for an NA meeting in a church basement in Rochester. They both sat in the car outside of the church.

"This is 'creationist health care,' " said James. "This is criminal-grade stupidity. People are actually paying money for this and getting nothing but prayer as a product. No wonder it has such a bad failure rate."

Sean smiled and opened his car door. "You noticed that, did you? It's never meant to work. It's a complete fraud. It's just a spiritual wing of law enforcement. Sending people court-ordered to a God-based program is totally unconstitutional."

"How did this happen?" James asked.

"There were a lot of factors. Actually it has evolved fast. Blame the culture wars of the sixties on some of it. Drug use has drifted in and out of the eyes of society for quite some time. A lot of people feel it is linked to the Vietnam War. The whole war was an embarrassment to the Republicans. They got their Reagan-era revenge by attacking the people they credited with their loss of the war. They saw Democrats as being disobedient soldiers who refused to die to stop communism. The soldiers who had refused to die also used drugs. So the Republicans went after all those people who refused to serve as being the ones most deserving of some revenge."

James withdrew a cigarette and got out of the car. "This is creationist health care. It's like Christian Scientist prayer over surgery. When you need heart surgery you get prayer." He lit his cigarette and said, "I'm beginning to see the light here. There are repeat customers at residential drug treatment getting nothing but prayer and meditation."

Sean cut him off and said, "Don't undervalue meditation. Remember that Jesus was a Buddhist." He smiled.

"Oh yeah. Now you are the one getting ridiculous," said James.

"But I am serious," said Sean. "Completely by accident the Twelve Steps are productive. You may only see the godly rhetoric but the steps have been used for over eighty years. Some of them work."

"Don't be absurd. This is a smokescreen. The evidence-based treatment with doctoral-grade therapists works better than the prayer-based concepts."

"Then why not get both? We can get the religion and the science too. God made science. I am a creationist treatment supporter. I like religion. Thomas Merton may have been assassinated." Sean smiled and lit his cigarette.

"Who is Merton?" inquired James.

"Merton was a revolutionary Catholic priest. He was electrocuted in the Orient. You should look him up. I am a very Catholic man. We were boys when we last met. It's been twenty years since we both shared a beer. Now all you get is a smoke," said Sean. "Care to inspect the state of 'creationist health care'?"

James looked at him and continued to smoke. "Sure, I'm game."

They proceeded to hug the greeter, a middle-aged stout man with brown hair, a beard, and a camouflage ball cap. He was also smoking. Nearly all of the 15 or so people were exchanging greetings with lit cigarettes in their hands.

The people laughed and seemed to know each other. James noticed that a quarter of them were women and most of the men had short hair, a very non-drug talisman.

"So who are you? I am Dale," said the greeter to James.

"The name's James McGregor. I've been sober for twenty-four hours."

"That's a start. This your first meeting?" said Dale.

"You might call it that. I was in a few meetings six years ago but that was court-ordered," said James.

"We are all court-ordered here. But it works so who is complaining?" said Dale.

"Sean! How have you been?" said a young woman, thirtyish and white. Slender and gothically attired in black with beads.

"Simmy! Good to see you. Meet my friend James. It's his first meeting in six years."

"Hello, Simmy. My name's James McGregor. Glad to meet you." James transferred his cigarette to his left hand and offered his right hand to shake, which she grasped. "So what's the drill here? Seems to be a lot of tobacco. I see a few energy drinks too. You guys push the chemical envelope without doing any real drugs."

Simmy smiled. "You noticed that, did you? We get as close as we can to a buzz. Call it old habit. How long have you been sober?"

"One day."

"A beginning is good. Can't say a day is too short." She seemed at a loss for words for a moment and smoked her cigarette, blowing out a series of small, mobile smoke rings.

Sean kept up the small talk with a collection of blue-collar types of both genders. He and James were once princes of the 4,000 but here they were as blue-collar as Dale.

Simmy talked about her daughter to James. The child was four years old and very inquisitive. Preschool programming meant Simmy could go to school. The mother stated she was trying to improve her earning power with an X-ray technician's degree from the local Vo-tech. James offered his interest in nursing but qualified it by saying school could ruin his Social Security status. They continued to talk until just before 8 p.m. Then Simmy and the others put out the tobacco and walked inside to the ring of tables. They each took a chair and sat down.

"Welcome to the Saturday meeting of dopeless hope fiends. I am an addict and my name is Merideth."

The crowd responded, "Hello, Merideth."

The meeting proceeded and James noted the welcome. All interested in sobriety were welcome. If you are looking for a date, please leave. Literature is available. Readings were done. The serenity prayer was recited as a group: "God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference."

The group then did the keychain recitation. James got a white keychain for his first 24 hours of sobriety. Simmy picked up a black keychain for two years or more of sobriety. Page got one for one year. Page's keychain was glow-in-the-dark.

The meeting proceeded mostly as James had remembered it from six years ago. A tearful middle-aged man recounted getting close to injecting speed and at the last minute chose to dump the injection needle's contents into a sink. Another woman spoke tearfully about getting her kids back. Dale spoke of letting go from his behavior of controlling his progress through the steps. He felt better about letting God control his progress.

James thought about his own contention of "creationist medicine" and weighed the claim against these people seemingly working the steps of a program that James found himself trying to dismiss.

James was taken aback by the sincerity of the speakers and was amazed that something court-ordered, so artificial, could be so pithy and real. Here were people targeted by the state for cultural assassination speaking acceptingly of their fate. Even seeing their fate as the will of God and finding love in their process.

The meeting closed with a short reading, a group recitation and group hug, and more tobacco.

* * *

James woke on Sunday morning and walked the half mile to the bus station. He then got onto the 10 a.m. bus and settled in to read more of Fletcher while the bus made its way north.

James was entranced by the mention of corrupt intake procedures at these treatment centers. Often these rehab groups would have an in-house assessor. This person would only recommend placement at the facility that was paying the assessor's salary.

It was just as corrupt as when Merrill Lynch was pushing sales of its corporate customers' products. These stocks were worthless but Lynch still pushed their sale.

Assessors at treatment clinics in the chemical dependency business pushed their own company's products. They were told by administrators to sell the company's product.

James thought there should be some neutral agency doing assessments but if the government got involved, then Republicans could rig the system to be as corrupt as a Ponzi scam. Always one had to be aware of the evil that came from dealing with Republicans.

There were other points of interest. Treatment was costing hundreds of thousands of dollars for families of addicts. Waiting lists for treatment from state-paid avenues had delays of years in duration. The only people who could both afford the treatment and cut the wait times were the super-rich. The middle class got no relief either from the route used by the rich or the poor.

The families of addicts would end up consuming retirement funds and homes. The finances of the families would be sacked and looted for a product of only questionable value. The reality of this arena of health care is that commonly one goes to a doctor and gets a diagnosis that seems credible. In rare cases people get a second opinion. In chemical dependency circles one gets a professional opinion and is so shocked by what that opinion says that all caution and reason halt. When people would be best served by a second opinion, they stop in their tracks and accept the first offer without question. These people were terrified. Of course they were scared. Of course they were desperate.

Worse yet, in repeat addict treatments the treatment centers fleeced the parents of heroin-addicted children for literally millions of dollars. Bills for treatment could range from $35,000 to $200,000 for one-time placements into treatment centers. Multiply that by seven for the many return visits. All of these visits were instigated by predatory biased assessors pushing "in-house" products.

James kept reading but turned on his small FM radio and put his ear buds into his ears. He listened to a song called "30 Days in the Hole." Its lyrics said, "Black Napolese, make you weak in the knees, New Castle brown, really smack you down." James pondered for a moment the end effect of a whole rock-and-roll community obsessed with drugs. The party that never stops.

James took the city bus home from the Greyhound station. He got back to his apartment and put on a pot of coffee and lit a cigarette. He smoked as the coffee gurgled and burped in the "Mr. Coffee" device.

He checked his main stash of marijuana and filled a one-hitter pipe with a small amount of the druggy herb. He lit it and inhaled the pungent smoke. He was immediately high, and slowed, diminished in intensity.

He put his _Inside Rehab_ book aside and settled in for an hour of disorganized lethargy. Slowed and disconnected from the world was how he felt. He remembered his friend describing the experience as being that of feeling disinterest in interacting with her toddler son. He felt disinterest in calling his friends but it diminished after about a half an hour.

He drank coffee while the drug ran its course and moved out of his mind. He added half-and-half to his coffee and watched as the cream made clouds billowing and roiling in his black coffee.

* * *

This was an experiment for James. He was deliberately testing his drug use. He paid attention as the marijuana's tetra-hydro-cannabinol moved through his mind.

He decided to go down to the ground floor. He put his flight jacket back on and walked out into the hall, locking the door behind him.

He found Frog and a few of the others there. Jerry was still puzzling about entropy and the kitchen equipment while Frog and Matt were discussing Air Force use of drones in the Arabic-speaking Middle East. Pashto in Afghanistan was not excluded. It seemed the drone controllers were quitting their jobs rapidly as few had the stomach for such killing.

James and Frog noted that the Air Force used the hand-held controllers for video games to control the drone aircraft. It was all becoming very toy-like. Few could deal with the realities of killing families on roads in Afghanistan. Knocking off a few Taliban was no problem but they used human shields. And those human shields were made up of Afghani families of men, women, children, and the elderly. All of a sudden it was more than just a video game.

James had noted the complaints of these new warriors and he cross-referenced them with his own experience at the communications center in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.

He had freaked out, high on the mania of mental illness when he made it back to the States. The Corps had denied him benefits. Now he was back in the fight. Getting his VA benefits was his new war and he would fight it tooth and claw. He arranged to get an interview with a VA psychiatrist.

He knew what he was up against. The new breed was there with amputations and major freak-out. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder loomed high in the lives of these new shattered warriors. They had Wounded Warrior Project and the Gary Sinise Foundation to get them services and housing. These new kids deserved every penny, he thought. So much for the war on Weapons of Mass Destruction. The Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld wars cost people their lives. The cost was more than just a body count. It was a stinking malaise of false promises and lost causes. Vets raised on Bush worship had been left with a benefits package that amounted to a discount at an Exxon gas station. Like some Soviet war hero getting to ride the trolley in Red Square for free if he wore his medals.

These new kids were coming back with addictions to oxycodone and getting messed up on Afghani heroin. They all said it was just Mexican but James had faith the new smack was coming in from Afghanistan. So much for the booty of war.

I love you, Patty, came the old refrain in his mind. He thought of his old lover in terms of her cocaine and Irish ways. Patriot games over the IRA and the Boys of the Lough. Such bands raised money for the IRA. Patty had a mean streak as wide as an Irish river. Her wild partying put combat troops to shame. As tough as Sinn Fein and as shifty as an IRA splinter group. He missed her in spite of it all. If he ever won his VA benefits, he would buy her an ounce of cocaine, just for old times' sake.

He listened to Jerry and Frog discussing the Internet traffic of video games, looking at the drone vets and wondering if they would ever have a chance to do some real live gaming. Or was it real dead gaming? It looked so neat and clean until they got an order to put a hellfire missile onto one of those new Toyota 4x4 trucks.

Frog looked up at James and said, "Want to trip soon?"

"Not really. You know DJ's golden rule. Don't trip in a bad mood or LSD will only make it worse."

"Yeah, I guess so," said Frog. "But what's got you so down? Would you like to catch a buzz? You look depressed."

"I already got a small buzz going. Just came down to see what's up. Wanna head to the liquor store and pick up a bottle of Jaeger?"

"Going for the alcoholism?" said Frog.

"I want a little bit of everything. Christmas was good. Dad's got cancer. We think we got it all but I worry about the old goat. He's one of a kind and I need the old bastard to live. I don't need an inheritance just now." James pondered over his words for a moment. "The world's going to hell. Imagine how the Eagles of Death Metal must feel. They got hit by terrorists. They got a dose of the hard stuff. I am mad at these terrorists. I used to enjoy hashish but this new push they have come up with is putting me off my THC."

Frog was dumbfounded. "Don't blame growers in Humboldt County for the antics of ISIS. That's letting them win. If you give up on pot, you're caving in to the terrorists. You are letting them get to you. Send the Hell's Angels after them. Give them some good old American steel and a TOW missile and put them back in the Stone Age. Set them back a whole two weeks." He smiled. "Got a smoke? I'm out."

"Sure, here's a Camel Wide." James held a cigarette out to his friend, who gladly took it.

"Thank you. I am going outside to smoke it. See ya soon," and he departed to just outside the coffee shop. He positioned himself out near the bus stop. He could see James and Jerry through the huge picture windows, looking like the famous painting _Nighthawks at the Diner._

"So Jerry, I am going to have to go sober if I want to be a nurse. I will miss the social contact around getting high. It's my entire social scene."

"Then perhaps you better see more nurses socially. What about us? Are you still going to smoke with us?"

"Always. That doesn't stop. I may just cut down. I will need to have friends but I cannot lose my edge for studying. I have to keep up a 3.0 grade point average. That's not going to allow for much social smoking. I have to study. I can't just go all blob-oh on my school work."

James looked at Jerry and considered his camouflage hat, just like the one Dale had at the NA meeting. Both seemed as blue collar as the salt of the earth.

"You need a beer, Cathleen, and a joint. It's American as a Harley Davidson. How long has it been since you had sex?" inquired Jerry.

"Four days. I feel guilty bringing this all to Cathleen. My desire to punish the world doesn't need to include her," said James.

Jerry looked at his friend in disbelief. "Are you so depressed you don't want to proactively seduce your lover? You are a basket case today. Call her and get on with your life."

James reached for his cigarettes and his Android phone. Frog was just coming back in from the cold of the outdoors.

"James is so depressed he is just saying no to recreational sex," said Jerry to Frog.

"That's dire," said Frog. "The very cure for his depression is now looking repulsive. Cathleen's cute. Foolish man."

"I'll call her. Get off my back," said James.

James got up and bid his friends farewell. He pushed the buttons on the phone and soon had Cathleen on the other end of the connection.

She was happy to hear from him and listened to him detail his dilemmas. School was over and she had just returned from visiting her family. All looked well for the couple. Neither had obligations. They had each other and all was well. James felt foolish discussing the fate of Fritz with Cathleen but it was the dilemma of the day. You just didn't discuss one heartbreak girlfriend with a current lover. He felt guilty.

All was well. A few glitches in his social life but all was well and he retreated to her apartment on the park.

* * *

The next morning James awoke and looked at Cathleen's charming form lying in the bed next to him. All was well and he was in homey surroundings. He climbed out of bed and put his clothes on. He stepped out front of the apartment's door and smoked a cigarette. He came back in and sat down on the couch.

Cathleen rose and headed for the shower wordlessly. He pondered his dilemmas. Cathleen would still love him even if he was a drug-addicted former Marine, present Bohemian. She was loyal to the man he was. His depression was momentary. His obsession with Patty Fitzgerald was touching to Cathleen. He was a man of loyalties. His existence as a Marine was endearing. Men would die in Iraq and be comforted with a ration of two bottles of cold Budweiser for the trade in fighting for world peace. She had to admit he was lovable. She sang as she showered and toweled off in a bathroom steamed up with the by-product of 20 minutes of hot water. The bathroom mirror was fogged up.

If Fritzkrieg ever knew how serious James' obsession was, she would no doubt be touched by his loyalty.

"Fritzy loves ko-ko dust, James. Accept it. She is a loyalist and cocaine is Native American. You have lost her to the dust bowl. She's gone and you'll never get her back. Love me now and let her go. You cannot serve two masters. I demand you stay in my arms forever, or at least through spring quarter."

"Oh, you just love my dilemmas, don't you? I love you both. I worry about her but you're right. I cannot obsess on her. She will remain an unwritten chapter."

Cathleen marched from bath to bed and began to dress. "You should write some science fiction about her. Some aliens and spaceships will get your mind out of the brain freeze she puts you into. Have a beer for breakfast and fog your brain over her. You're pathetic," she said in joyful sarcasm.

He looked at her beautiful form and couldn't agree more.

* * *

Sean woke at 6:30 a.m., showered, brushed teeth, shaved, ate, dressed, and headed out to the Honda Accord. It started and he said a short prayer of thanks.

Off to the counseling job and into rush-hour traffic. Thirty-five minutes later he was at a modern brick building, settling his car into his reserved parking space.

Team meeting from 8 a.m. till 8:30. Assignments for new cases. First case? 9 a.m.! Mrs. Fuller. She, no doubt, will have her kids in at daycare and school and be ready for her counseling session. Learning to live free of the grip of alcoholism. Twelve years sober. Six years after divorce. Time off from work to get a session in.

Mildly racist, classist, ageist, she was not Sean's favorite customer, but it paid the bills and she was good at showing up on time. Money ruled the world and she was loaded.

Sean had three sessions before the noon lunch break. Each case was different. All had their points of interest. All were congenial and personable. Sean had worked to create ease and trust even when he was not thrilled to work for each individual.

At lunch he checked James' blog site. It was loaded with a note and two science fiction stories. Clearly James had no clue as to the powers of the leviathan he was working with. He was nothing to them but a small cherry on top of a huge cream pie and the knife was coming soon to take him down in a myriad of small slices.

Blog Post Twelve

F-35 is junk

So far the F-35 has cost over $400 billion and it is almost purely junk. It only has two small items of usefulness. In the vertical takeoff role it can serve the Marines and as a stealth fighter it has a small radar signature. One big catch: With a load of bombs or missiles, it loses its radar invisibility as a full bomb load with racks has the radar signature of a railroad boxcar. It has a forward turbine that serves the Marines requirement as a vertical take-off jump jet. In the Air Force role that space could be used for fuel or weapons. In that role it may prove to have at least some value but it lacks rearward visibility, and as the pilot cannot see what is behind him, it has only limited use as a fighter. Scabbing weapons like missiles to the outside ruins the radar invisibility. It is $500 billion of junk. Like a white elephant, it is a horse designed by a committee.

My own principles on military procurement are simple. Get the Marines what they need and mass produce that for everyone else. The Marines were the first branch of the Department of Defense to use the Thompson submachine gun, they were pioneers of close air support of ground troops, and they have led in the role of amphibious warfare since their inception as the English Royal Marine Corps 400 years ago.

The F-35 has cost over $400 billion, which is the first priority of the Department of Defense, which is to fleece America of as much money for billionaires as is possible. This is said to be an investment in "infrastructure," which is exactly the opposite of the philosophy that commanders in the field have been using since the introduction of maneuverist thinking. Infrastructure means investing in huge corporations, too big to fail. It means the creation of shipyards big enough to build huge aircraft carriers but not small police-action ships like frigates and destroyers. Infrastructure means over-investing in things that are not needed for the actual military but are meant to line the pockets of billionaires and corporations. Waste is their business and we are meant to believe that this investment in infrastructure is in our best interest. Infrastructure investing is not nimble or mobile. It sits there like an obsolete factory that makes nothing useful.

The F-16 was designed in secret by three fighter pilots and a small group of defense contractors who circumnavigated the whole Pentagon community and was started with an investment of less than $180,000. The F-16 shot down a Russian bomber over Thanksgiving of 2015 in Turkish airspace and successfully destroyed Iraq's first nuclear reactor long before any of the Gulf Wars and their search for weapons of mass destruction. Israel did that with a small group of four F-15s and four F-16s, tightly held in formation so to look like one airplane on radar. The Israelis have a long reputation of making do with existing equipment and creating success with what would otherwise be thought of as junk. Give them a star like the F-16 to work with, and they can do miracles.

The F-35 will go down in history as an adequate aircraft but not an exceptional one in any of its roles. The problems that created this mess are being acted out now in the 2015 struggle to seek and take the Presidency of the United States. Newt Gingrich caused a procurement scandal that the Air Force did everything it could to avoid. Gingrich proposed, and forced through Congress, a purchase of ten new C-130 Hercules cargo airplanes that the Air Force did not want. Gingrich did this because the airplanes would be made in his congressional district. The Air Force would have preferred to spend that money on other projects. Gingrich is now pushing Donald Trump to get with other Republicans and target the rhetoric of the Democrats in calling Muslim Terrorists by the name "radical Muslims" in an attempt to attack '60s radical Democrats (of which Clinton is one) who backed the anti-war activists. This may not sound like it has anything to do with buying airplanes, but if Gingrich gets his way through Trump, it will mean years of misdirected military procurement for generations to come. The real war is between Gingrich and Clinton over philosophical differences while the symptom of that divide will be decided in military dollars which are the spoils of such an attrition-style battle.

During the era of the B-1B bomber the Congress placed a mandate on the B1 that it cost less than $25 million per copy and the original procurement order was for 240 of these planes. After the cost went up to $68 million per copy, the B-1 proved to be the costliest order in the history of the Air Force. This was when a duplex house in Minneapolis cost $40,000. Now the same house would cost anywhere between $150,000 to $200,000. This means that in today's dollars, the B-1 would cost a minimum of $230 million per copy. With Trump singing Gingrich's tune, we can expect to have misdirected purchases for the next nine years. The B-1 and the F-35 are prime examples of such misdirected purchase power. Subsequently the order for the B-1 was trimmed back to 60 planes and the F-16 was successfully put into production at a fraction of the cost.

The F-35 has a hot heat signature. It has not got a fully functional afterburner and like all hovering aircraft, it can be flipped upside down with catastrophic results. Sadly, many Democrats will just cancel all weapons programs and not keep the cream of the crop that actually work. Then they lose wars and Republicans get elected and come in, and all of a sudden it's attrition-based warfare all over again with huge, fat, overdone weapons systems that cost zillions and don't work unless you deploy a thousand of these tanks of planes or ships and smother your enemy with pure numbers. That's what is going to happen next year in 2016.

Blog Post Thirteen

I am applying the rules of military engagement to the problems found in how the State tries to get its people to quit getting DWIs... It is tied up in actions of force and Energy Management. Maneuverists think attrition-based warfare is wasteful. Rather than have a huge battle where people mass two huge armies and try to slug it out with a small group of survivors claiming victory, you can outmaneuver the other guy and defeat a big cumbersome army with a nimble mobile force. In DWIs we find huge sums of money being directed at pushing back the alcoholics when smaller sums could be directed at counseling people on concepts other than creating a new religion and having only a 15% success rate. I must not join you in that drink just yet. There is a case to argue. And because it has become a religious case, I only get to participate as a team member of an attrition-based force and as an advocate of cheaper, more effective solutions.

I will be very busy reading on the fighter tactics of John Boyd. He is the hottest thing in war to come out of the Korean War. He rewrote the war college textbooks using Sun Tzu's work from the pre-Christian Taoist text called _The Art of War._

Boyd was called "40-second Boyd" as he could shoot down an enemy plane in 40 seconds or less using energy management. It's the simple concept of using superior firepower against itself. Boyd said that as a warrior you could create chaos for an enemy and paralyze his thinking and thus paralyze his ability to react. In a way this means intimidation. Audacity and Richard Petty win over and over again.

In essence this is also the philosophy of using Special Forces (shock troops) which is tied to my Marine Corps heritage. Marines have no problems being identified as shock troops. The same is true for Green Berets and SEALs.

Nixon and Reagan were both attritionists. Even when the military creates both Special Forces and special weapons, they are often economic attritionists. Reagan sought to bankrupt the Soviet Union in the Cold War. He succeeded in outspending the Soviets. The attrition-based concept worked but it was shamefully expensive. And it cost the world half of its assets for 46 years. That's a lot of money for fat cats and Republicans for nearly half a century.

We had poverty and no education for many while a few got gold-plated spy satellites and a Cadillac war machine for both Soviets and NATO. We may need the satellites to see the rockets firing at us from ISIS.

But the end effect is we now have Russia and most NATO countries on the same page. The only threat to peace is a few die-hard militarists of the attritionist type and a few terrorists who are trying their own hand at being amateur shock troops.

We cannot use shock troops in the war on drugs. That war is over and done with, I hope.

But we can use greater maneuverability and a nimble, mobile force in directing our mental health and chemical dependency dollars, rather than just creating a stone edifice of a religious system feeding more and more dollars into a wasteful form of temple for a 15% that loves an AA/NA-based religion, intent on feeding its troops nothing but belief rather than simpler concepts of avoiding drinking and driving.

That religious concept is a problem for chemical dependency, just as it is creating religious fanatic terrorists in the form of ISIS. In those two applications, the god concept is evil.

The so-called Moral War of guerillas and revolutionaries relied heavily on leadership and trust. Now in American war policy we have a fragile hold on such concepts while Al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and ISIS recruit 1,000 new members every month, and we kill off only 500. Our own war machine is either the stymied efforts of an indecisive Obama or the reckless Trump, and the American people are buying into Trump with a greater enthusiasm than even ISIS can attract. It is our decisions here that will determine whether or not the reckless Trump loses thousands of American troops in an attritionist war or switches to the more Special Forces method of guerilla warfare. Guerillas win wars but often do not win victory parades.

Attritionists win victory parades while small guerilla troops kill off people like Osama Bin Laden.

Boyd's contribution to strategy was called the Boyd Loop or the OODA Loop. It consisted of Observe, Orient, Direct, and Act. The Orient stage was the data process stage. This took in data and created information.

The police often try to approach demonstrators with force in the form of superior firepower and numbers. They rally legislators, who are elected and in debt to their contributors, and rally treatment professionals, who are in debt to the legislature and police, and in doing so create an impenetrable wall in the law. The drug users are on one side while the police and legislature and treatment professionals are on the other side. Only now, with the legalization of marijuana, is there any stopping this iron curtain, this cold war.

As a population that wants decriminalization of drugs, we all see the value in surrendering our small internal population of people who get charged with drunk driving. As long as we are willing to do that we are safe, largely. That is the only response we owe to the State. We get threatened by the local police and when we serve in the military we get threatened by ISIS, Taliban, and Al-Qaeda. We are surrounded by religious doctrines designed to hinder us.

Currently there is no unified front in mental health and chemical dependency. The greatest benefit to the citizen is the smokescreen of chaos in the bureaucracy. Without that chaos the patients and clients would be completely cut off from funding and benefits. That is the Republican, law enforcement point of view. Consolidate and strangle. But there is now an escape clause in marijuana legalization. The pressure cooker has an escape valve.

Whether it is Gingrich and Jerry Falwell or Al-Qaeda or the AA higher power, it is still just religious extremism taking the world for a wild ride. We need a special missile designed to destroy religious fanatics.

It is said that protest is like asking the powers-that-be to dig a well while direct action is digging a well while stopping the powers-that-be from stopping you.

CASE FILE REVIEW

by James McGregor

"Petition for commercial harvest of planet ten three eighty-eight. Our docket number is three-six-oh-eight."

"Defense, your honor, makes the statement that this planet is in the Shurian game preserve and is held in reserve from harvest."

The prosecutor pressed his case. "Here, your honor, is a backward race living on fossil fuels. The bio-mass alone is not being used in a way that reflects galactic needs."

The judge looked at the case file on his visi-screen. "This looks like a case for intervention and cooperative harvest with the local population."

"Defense is petitioning for intervention soon. We have had numerous encounters with their air armadas. They are going through a nuclear weapon stage that is savage and could contaminate any bio-mass to be harvested. We feel that intervention is called for."

Prosecutor Ajin pulled one of his dreadlocks out and tucked it behind the green iridescent antennae coming from his right temple. He spoke. "We have serious needs in our galactic community and turning loose a race of nuclear-era, smog-belching death machines is no way to manage a planet. Currently there is no global government to argue a case with. There are only fractured territorial fiefdoms now. Three are large and should be consolidated. We, your honor, are at the impasse of contact. I feel, and many of our race agree, that this race is young enough to warrant harvest for meat for commercial consumption."

"MEAT?" Defense was enraged. "This species has a multi-cycle growth pattern. We harvested some of this planet's mammals twenty thousand cycles ago and now they are extinct. Some of the aquatic mammals could be farmed or transplanted to an ocean planet. By no means should a nuclear planet be harvested out of spite for its fuel choices."

The judge asked the defense attorney a question. "Do these proto-citizens have a name for this orb?"

"They call it 'Earth.' They call themselves 'Human.' "

"I will order a contact mission. If these barely evolved pond scum can be diplomatic, we may come out with profit for both ourselves and them. We can decide whether or not to eat them later on. At worst we waste a diplomat's time. Next case, Bailiff."

The End

WHEN PIGS FLY

by James McGregor

"You can toss a pig out of the back of an airplane, and for about a minute, as that sow plummets downward, you can say 'Pigs fly'; but the landing may have some explosive qualities," said Daniels, the stellar ship's medic, to his orbital cab driver.

"And the point you're making?" Orton, the launch pilot, said.

"You can engineer anything temporarily."

"I still don't read you."

"If you imprison someone, torture them, and tell them there is no hope of relief for years, then present them with a confession to sign and tell them they can go home after they sign it, they will sign it, if only to move on with their lives. You can dominate and manipulate anything or anyone. Nothing's immune."

"So you can capture a star and send it at lightspeed into another just for the sake of your own amusement."

"Not at all. Shorty can do whatever she wants. She's the heir to the empire on the world we are headed to. I have known her for eighteen years now, and I am finally getting to a point where I can trust her."

"So she's the one who can toss the pig out of the plane. What did she do, inherit a freight company or some mine or plantation?"

"Her tribe owns a lucrative chemical business, and yes, she can afford both the pig and the airplane."

"So this is about a lover? You never told me that a woman was involved." Orton smiled and rolled his eyes and whistled. "Ooh-la-la."

Daniels scanned the cockpit with his eyes. The forward windows would be shuttered closed and dark for the landing. The whole process took a few minutes of skimming through the atmosphere at Mach 12 and decelerating until a speed of less than Mach 1 was attained. From there on the scramjets would carry the launch anywhere it needed to go.

"She is entry level when it comes to over-engineering things. She likes me and says she loves me," he said. "Desire is present but the poor lass is so powerful that most of her social contacts are cronies who lick boot to get favors. She leads a lonely life in the palace grounds. I have been both suitor and target for her every tantrum and breakdown. The empire weighs heavy on this one. She had me imprisoned just to cap her fear of abandonment. She kept me in town quite adequately. I hope I can make things better for her."

"Has she had any lovers? Eighteen years is a long time."

"We have really only had the last six where things were on us. I do love her dearly. She isolates herself so much. I am an extension of that. We met when she was a very young person. I have had lovers who were her age but age wasn't the key with her. Isolation was. At the age of seventeen she was so socially divorced that it was amazing just to converse with her. Beautiful and skinny with youth she was then. And cloistered. She'd escape from the palace in commoner's clothes and come drink with us at the port bars. She is still a source of great spirit. Very much a wild animal."

"Taming on your mind?"

"Taming is not an equation that works well for such a creature. No, no, that would be too artificial and externally disciplined. She needs to meet in the center and share."

"What has a bum of stellar poverty like you got to share with Miss Nitrous Oxide of this whole stellar neighborhood?"

"All I can offer her is what I carry with me wherever I go. Her family likes me because of the medicine men in my ancestry. She can cut off the top of my skull and peer into my magnificent mind. I think it's in part because I know how lonely and cold the shadow of greatness and power can be. That's what she sees in me."

"You're really going to do this then. I mean, like, this is it?"

"This is it. Career move and all. I am going to Tarsus Four with the intent of getting along with her majesty."

"Wow, man, that's so unlike you. You've been a freightlaner since I met you. That was ten years ago."

"I'll still travel, just with an extra rider along with. Love for us has had some bizarre moments, but some good ones too. The best ones are both bizarre and fun. She's a great artist. She's in the lyre guild and sings wonderfully. I actually am getting to like her poetry. The freight end of her inheritance I can help out on. All the social toys that go with being a princess are hers. I can't use protocol."

The window's blast covers slid into place, and they were blind momentarily. The view screen flickered into life and showed a map of the landing site with an indicator in kilometers of how far away they were. The digital numbers clicked by ever slower. Air brakes deployed and the men felt negative gee in the strapped harnesses they wore, keeping them in their seats. Obeying their launch's guidance computer, the ship slowed, dropped landing gear, and lined up on the dry lake bed, coming in for a perfect landing.

The door opened and both men left the aerodynamically heated launch's surface, now distorting their view by superheating the circulating air around it.

In the distance a land car approached, trailed by a rising cloud of dust. A few minutes later it was upon them. It was a limousine.

Daniels turned to Orton and said, "My ride is here. You should be able to get fueled at the town on the north end of the strip. Call them on ship-to-shore. They'll deliver."

"I guess this is good-bye then." Orton reached out his hand to Daniels and shook it. "Good luck with her and the empire."

Daniels walked toward the limousine as a dark-haired, smallish woman got out and smiled at him. She was very beautiful with dark, glittering eyes and an exotic overall look. Daniels hoisted his duffle over his shoulder and walked to her and met her lips square with his. The kiss lasted through a spate of breeze and finally they relaxed their embrace. "It's good to have you back," she said. "What did you say to your cab driver?"

"That's Orton. We were discussing nurturing love as an engineering point."

She held the door of the car open for him as he slid his duffle onto the floor and they both climbed in after it.

"Can love be engineered?" she asked.

"When pigs fly. I'll explain."

The End
CHAPTER SIX

Tanner had a feeling about the Syntheris that puzzled him. He felt a high he had never experienced before. A general calm.

He remembered losing his right hand in combat. The grenade came in. He reached out to grab it and toss it back, but it went off in his hand and he was the recipient of the Chinese military arms industry in all the wrong ways. His hand was half gone and what remained of his fingers was a lost cause.

Medevaced on a Black Hawk with a tourniquet, he was stateside in two weeks after surgery in Ramstein. The fingers had to go but the wrist was still there. Now it was a great difficulty just to dress in the morning. He learned quickly what belts and zippers would serve his new requirements. A uniform was a difficulty. Medals would come.

No gong on his chest would fully tell the story of such a loss. Campaign medals and a Purple Heart would look good on the mantel in a box, but his life was going to move in ways that would hurt. Wounded Warrior would help but there was no turning back now. He felt trapped.

Now they wanted to drill holes into his skull to attach wires directly to the brain to control prosthetic additions to what body parts remained. He would be able to rotate a wrist and grasp a rubber hand.

Just rewards for a military career dependent on four good limbs and a highly trained brain.

They wanted a security clearance for prosthetics. Odd but perhaps they had good plans in mind. A top-secret hand.

There was alcohol. There were some painkiller meds for what remained of the wrist. He was told the Syntheris would have a generally calming effect. It did just that. It mixed well with the warmth of whisky.

He would get a hybrid. A go-between from a full arm. He could get fitted for a claw that he could flex with the muscles of his shoulder.

He could learn to type with his left hand. Learning how to write with the left hand was new.

He learned to keep bottles of alcohol and foodstuff drinks fingertight and not locked into place.

Others had lost all. He had looked at the caskets on the transport aircraft. In Vietnam the drug smugglers had hidden heroin on the bodies being shipped back stateside.

Heroin. The scourge of the Vietnam War. The new kids weren't getting strung out on the new tide of drugs coming back but the States were flush with the drugs and Tanner suspected that some of it was coming back on military aircraft.

The equation was obvious. CIA plus Taliban, times the number of addicts in New York, remove the dead and multiply by kids in small towns across the USA dying of overdoses. Cruel facts. A cruel equation.

He had been able to spend a long leave as a "recuperative leave." Still on the payroll but in civilian clothes. He could retire on disability. He was up for a Congressional Medal of Honor. Best not to let the alcohol or other things take hold but perhaps the gentle lift of the Syntheris was not so bad.

So many cruel equations.

He remembered the first contact with what Colonel Devers had euphemistically called "The Project." It involved using a direct contact with the human brain to manipulate the prosthetic hand he was going to be fitted with. Wires going from just above the left ear to control the right hand. The brain just was that way. Right brain controlled left side of the body and vice versa. Soon he would do the surgery to put the implant in. It was designed to look like a cochlear implant for the deaf, the kind of implant that gave hearing to the deaf. They were going to pay him over $100,000 for it. Still, he would forgo the riches just to be able to get his hand back. If it worked out that he could help other vets, it might just be worth it.

* * *

James read more of Fletcher's _Inside Rehab._ He found several points of interest. Insurance companies and state-supported treatment regarded it as a situation of having two silos of cash. One for chemical dependency and another for mental health. James thought the separation could be a blessing. His experience with mental health commitment led him to the belief that mental health was a disaster looking for a place to happen. In such treatment the practitioners actively tried to "break" people, ostensibly to create a surrender of sorts, like the embrace of sobriety found in CD treatment. Giving mental health practitioners license to assault people was dangerous. That the assault was not physical mattered not to James. It was still fearful and daunting.

If those silos got linked, it could mean an assault of depressive proportions. A new dystopia of trapping people in substandard health care.

He thought of Hank Sadler and the league of funny hats. Hank was the man who told James he had a good case for getting veterans' benefits.

Hank had looked over the military records and found a loophole. James could contend he had come to a disability not just from having a mental illness but by merit of the fact that the Marines had made a pre-existing condition worse. The Corps had intensified and exacerbated his medical condition. It didn't matter if it was a malady that the Marines had not known about.

James had a security clearance from typing in a secured facility. He had a meltdown of sorts when he came back stateside. He broke some windows and threw a beer bottle into a picture window, smashing it.

They sent him to see the doctor and he told the doctor of his prior commitment as a juvenile. He was out of the Corps and a civilian in six short weeks. Records like his prior commitment were usually sealed. His security clearance had been arranged through the Office of Personnel Management and they had done a poor job. They made phone calls and checked police records but James' juvenile record was sealed, so James got his clearance.

Now the people with the Syntheris test wanted him to wear a virtual reality helmet and play video games. Whatever were they going at with this? Top-secret helmets and a mood-stabilizer drug. It was all secret and ever so psychedelic. He loved the video games. He would have three seconds to lock onto 15 targets and fire missiles at all of them in one huge shot. Over and over again, in various configurations, the helmet's virtual reality visor would present targets and he would shoot them down.

James drank his coffee, smoked his tobacco and thought about smoking pot. His mind was clear so he thought about what Sean had said to him. They had been talking about Ecstasy, methylene dioxy methamphetamine. Some people were doing couples therapy with this old designer drug left over from the late '70s.

The drug made people want to touch. Couples found they could get one treatment with MDMA and have it be the equivalent of months of talk therapy with a psychologist. The high was also attractive. It caused couples to feel as if they were "on the same plane." It reinforced their bond in many ways.

Sean had told James to lighten up on the disorganizing quality of the marijuana. MDMA may be good for couples but the pot just turned you into a rock. Still, he enjoyed being a rock now and then.

James thought of Hank Sadler and the league of funny hats. All those Legion posts and VFWs. They all wore garrison caps with little insignias and badges on them. Hank had no clue as to what virtual reality helmets were about.

But if it kept the cash coming in, it was okay with James. Getting $600 a month to play video games was a cool dilemma. And if Doctor Witherspoon could help James get his disability payments, then it was all great.

Winning VA benefits was like arguing a tough case in a courtroom. Evidence and doctors' reports. All submitted to a jury of veterans and experts.

The VA, no doubt, had a lot of experience with substance abuse issues. Alcohol and prescription drugs was cutting a swath through the ranks of the vets returning from Afghanistan and Iraq. These were kids coming back with amputations and shrapnel wounds. Lots of painkillers.

James thought about finding an NA meeting just for medical professionals. Doctors and nurses used to stealing oxycodone pills from the very patients they were tasked with assisting. Perhaps there he could share the unique perspective of being from a medical family and simultaneously being a recreational drug user. It caught him quite unprepared but the thought was there. If pot went legal he would have no problem. But who wants to wait for the law to change.

There was still that thing about "surrender." He felt there were things wrong with it. In life sometimes you had to stand your ground. Times were changing. You could not just smoke a joint of pot in the street but the NA people he was meeting looked at his pot habit and said, "That's just an herb. Unless you're smoking crack, meth, or heroin, you have a small problem."

He remembered hearing a man talk about a drug deal where he realized his dealer was a cop. The deal was going on through the open driver window of a 4x4 truck. The customer realized something was wrong and punched the gas pedal and tore off with the cop stuck half in the driver window. The cop was dragged a hundred feet and then let go. The cop had been wired for sound, wearing a wire. The sound was so distorted and garbled that when the police had tried to get an incriminating statement on tape, all they had was the pleas from the undercover cop as he tried to complete his bust and survive the ordeal at the same time. There was no arrest other than for dragging the cop down the road.

Those were the adventures James was hearing about. He packed his one-hitter pipe and settled in for a smoke. He settled in with his herb and the dedicated confusion that came with marijuana intoxication. He got high for 45 minutes and settled in with coffee and a cigarette.

His high came at a small price but if he wanted to be a nurse, he considered relocating to somewhere that pot was already legal. Perhaps Colorado. There was great skiing in Colorado.

But he would miss his friends. Still, Sean was a friend and there were no addiction issues there.

* * *

Tanner mixed some of his pain pills and some whisky. It was a nice feeling. He found he could position his right wrist on the steering wheel of his car and still drive almost as well as he could with his hand.

It was snowing out. These were the days of Minnesota in winter. A calm downfall of downy flakes coming in. They reminded him of the mountains of Afghanistan. Little people wrapped up in shrouds and shirts down to their ankles. Pashto being spoken with no clue as to what was being said.

Women in coats and burkas. Children in bright colors. Men with guns. Heroin. Afghani soldiers stoned on God only knows what. Opium, pot, heroin, who knew for sure, but you could tell they were stoned by the way they swayed as they tried to stand still. You could see it in their glassed-over eyes.

His own eyes were a bit glassy but not like the Pashtuns he had seen in Kabul.

He thought about the Syntheris, the implant and the helmet. It was obvious what was going on. The helmet and implant had military applications. This was as much innocent video games as was a drone aircraft loaded with real hellfire missiles guided by troops taught how to kill from video games.

It was only a matter of time before the end effect was put into motion. Soon he would be tested on the real thing. It was only a matter of time now. With the latest occurrence of ISIS terrorism in Paris, there could only be one application for this new hardware. He was being directed back to the Middle East. No matter how he got back, there was clearly the push in that direction. The only question was would he be less of a man than before, thanks to the grenade? Or would he be more, with the implant?

* * *

"They are experimenting on us," said James.

"Well, aren't they supposed to do that? It's a trial of a new experimental drug," said Sean.

"Yeah, but this goes more than that. Have you ever heard of the science fiction novel called _Ender's Game?_ " said James.

"Yeah, that's the one where the kids go to space camp and learn to defeat each other. It ends when the kids play a video game that kills off the enemy of the human race while the kids think they are just playing a video game. I have heard of it. It's a movie. Came out three years ago," said Sean.

"Well, they are doing video games with us. Air war. Fighter jets," said James.

"There is no call for that sort of thing anymore. Russia lost a jet around Thanksgiving but people don't send fighter jets out to go beat each other up anymore. That's antique. I mean, yes, there is deterrence with Russia but ISIS is the big threat now. They don't use jets," said Sean.

"I don't have all the answers yet but I am collecting data. They reactivated my security clearance. I am not supposed to be talking about it," said James.

Sean looked relaxed. "All we have to care about is that you are not going back to combat. You're safe. You live in Minneapolis."

James looked at his friend and smiled. "Yeah, man, you're right. All is well. If the Syntheris trial turns out to be video games for the military, then so what. They will get their data from another source if not from me. As far as I can tell they are testing a new drug, but then came the helmet and the virtual reality visor and the video games. I just have no clue as to why the drug is so important to the video games. They aren't telling me anything."

"That's the whole idea to being a guinea pig. They aren't telling you a damn thing. You get six hundred dollars a month. They should even up with you. You should be getting more money and a straighter answer. You could find your brain hooked up to some weapons system and that's not cool for six hundred dollars per month."

James paused for a moment and said, "I think the end result of this is somebody is going to get hurt real bad. The end result of all things military is their philosophy about putting the bad guys into a world of hurt. That's all they care about. Every weapons system in the world ultimately falls into the wrong hands. Then it just becomes a philosophy of the rich getting weapons to fight against the poor. I have no mercy for ISIS but this is getting wicked. Way wicked."

* * *

Jerry and Frog were at the bar in Palmers. A policeman was getting charged with murder after killing a suspect. Cameras on phones were changing the whole face of law enforcement. Now with smart phones the whole experience was moving toward a change from the dominance that voters put into their local police.

For the first time the technology was supporting a greater knowledge of what was going on in the streets. The general evolution was defending the general traffic of people just going about their business.

For the first time in history the general traffic of people had a tool in hand to defend themselves from excessive force. This did not sound like much to Jerry and Frog but they were reeling in amazement as police were increasingly getting caught, "red-handed," abusing people.

"I hope those guys get thrown into prison. It doesn't matter a damn what people used to do. The change is a 'now' thing. It's what's happening in our modern culture. I think these characters are just losing grip of what's really going on. Cell phones are starting to stop police brutality. It's grinding to a halt," said Frog.

Jerry scratched his head and puzzled for a moment. "We can actually fight back? That's new."

"Never surrender, never give in," said Frog. "That's from the movie _Galaxy Quest._ It's a parody of _Star Trek._ It's very funny but you'd have to see it to understand."

"I've seen it. It's funny."

* * *

Lieutenant Andei Sergeiovich looked at his Somalian driver and felt a surge of pride. Here was a global collection of brothers in Islam. The time of the Mahdi must be coming soon. ISIS had taken an airfield from the Syrians under the Assad government and this time they had seven fighter jets captured intact. They were only older MiG-21s but if managed well, they could do great damage to these devils of the west.

Sergeiovich was a Russian Muslim by birth from eastern Russia. At the young age of 42 he had left Russia to fight for the Islamic State. The mosque in Kargan, Siberia, had only a few of the original families keeping the faith, a faith that had lasted for centuries of persecution from the czars and later from Stalin.

He was a pilot and it was his greatest pleasure to serve in the army of the Prophet Mohamed. Here in Syria it was the final chapter in the liberation of the Muslim peoples. He would gladly lay down his life for a Caliph.

His driver leaned forward in the four-door Toyota pickup truck coming onto the air base. There Sergeiovich first saw a glimpse of the silhouette of the impressive outline of a MiG-21 fighter jet, half out of its hangar with its cockpit glass canted to starboard.

The nose of the plane housed the skip spin radar he would need to hunt airliners. He would go aloft into the skies as an ambassador of faith and ambush the devils of the West when they least expected it. It would come as an ambush as laid out in the sword verses of the holy _Q'ran._

He reached into the pocket of his jacket and stroked the top of his Russian translation of the holy book. _Soon we go hunting together, my friend. Soon._

* * *

Tanner accepted his fate. For $135,000 he would allow the implants to be done for the prosthetic hand. He also was finally told the master plan. Flight simulators at Grand Forks Air Force Base would be dedicated for his use. He would be trained to fly with his new helmet and implants as an advanced gunner on a reconnaissance jet.

He would be schooled in how to receive and approve of up to 18 targets at once. These targets would be air-to-air combat units. He would be going up against the tactics of all the world's best fighter pilots. He would approve or disapprove the actions suggested by an air war–based strategy computer. All done in three seconds with the prosthetic hand and the virtual reality helmet.

He was in a civilian hospital in a private room. He reached up with his left hand and touched the bandages over his left ear. A huge bandage covered his entire ear and the shaved portion of his skull.

They told him about his airplane. He would be connected to an RF-111. Its bomb bay had been modified with a cylinder cassette of 11 missiles. Sparrows and Sidewinders would be at his command.

He was dually trained in how to target the rockets from remote locations or from a seat directly in the plane itself. He could control the actions of a plane 6,000 miles away. He was being transformed into the ultimate drone pilot. He would be able to shoot down 11 airplanes with one F-111.

He suddenly found his fate to not only be fulfilling, but even exciting.

He felt something else too. He was back in the saddle again. And it felt good.

* * *

"I like beer, Sean," said James.

"You like some parts of sobriety and some parts of the liquor life," said Sean. "To what do you want to surrender? There are several paths you can choose. Sobriety is only one of them."

"But we have been shoved around for so long it seems like we have waited for these privileges for centuries," said James.

"Indeed we have. But now things are different. Sobriety is a calling, like the draw of God to a priest. Or the call of husband and wife. You cannot do it a little. It's very binary. It's either all the way or none at all. At least that's the twelve-step reality. The therapists will help you quit a drug and if it's marijuana you want to leave behind, then go ahead and do it. You will have my support either way."

"I only need to kick the drugs long enough to get my nursing degree," said James.

"But what then? After nursing, then what? I think you will find a new reason then and a new answer after that, and so on and so on," said Sean. "You seem to be on a path. It isn't festive in the same way but there are moments to celebrate. You have your first-day keychain. I have a black one for two or more years. I have been involved in the scene for half my life."

"How's your wife?" said James.

"Oh! Low blow!" said Sean. "I have a few social contacts of the feminine persuasion. My wife and I are under good terms. We share duties on the kids. We divorced well, my friend. I now have a lover and a few friends. That's all I need. The social ritual of buying you a beer is not my choice but coffee and tobacco are acceptable. Come and let's grab ourselves some fruit of the bean and a smoke."

James reached into his pocket and withdrew a pack of Camel Wides. He pulled out one cigarette and lit it.

* * *

Tabqa Air Base had been taken by ISIS in November of 2014. Sergeiovich had arrived in ISIS-held northeast Syria in April of 2015. Now was the first time the MiGs were getting a serious look. Three were in good working order. Two more required only minimal repair. That meant ISIS had a small air force. Sergeiovich was dedicated to being the first Air Force General of the Islamic State.

Many aircraft mechanics lived in Raqa. The ISIS fighters who took the city went on the usual raping, pillaging frenzy of revenge that they had always done when seizing new territory. Eventually, though, the new landlords and warlords settled in and stole everything they could in a much more organized, sober manner. It was then that they discovered the aircraft mechanics.

That was in July of 2015. By October the ISIS-supervised mechanics had gotten the first three MiG-21s operational. Sergeiovich was the first pilot to even think of flying any of these old hangar tramps. Pilots had not been the highest priority to the ground combat forces of the Islamic State. He had carried an AK-47 for the first seven months of his Islamicist career.

At first the warlords had asked him if he could do a suicide mission to strike at Tel Aviv, Israel, and crash the jet into a large crowd of people.

He had respectfully declined but had put out a competing idea. There was the possibility he could shoot down a commercial airliner. Three hundred international travelers dead in an instant would be of greater impact than a mere 60 dead Israelis.

Plus, if the MiG could survive the attack, it could be used over and over again at the same mission. Sergeiovich put the case forward that if the MiG was repaired to combat readiness, ISIS could kill off 2,000 aviation consumers and air crew rather than just 60 Israelis.

After a while the more suicidal factions in the ISIS voter group turned their sights to more conventional suicide plots. Sergeiovich had no qualms about losing his life but he felt he could kill more infidels if he had an airplane to hunt with than some silly one-time, one-shot suicide vest of explosives and shrapnel. Plus the retirement plan was better for a pilot with missiles to negotiate with.

* * *

"The reason, Mr. McGregor, that you have been brought in to this meeting may now be obvious to you. There are certain defense applications to the project we are working on." Dr. Witherspoon and Colonel Devers sat on the other side of the table in the Malcolm Moos Medical Center conference room, opposite James. Witherspoon continued, "Testing will continue on the other twenty-four participants in the trial but you have been moved through at flank speed for a reason. The project is designed to create an interface between a tactical military computer and a direct connection to the human brain. This technical advancement will make our aviation strike capability the envy of the world's military community. You have been selected to be a part of this."

"What do you want me to do? I was a typist in a communications center. Assuredly you have more qualified personnel than me," said James. He looked at his watch. It was just after 10 in the morning. He was going to meet Cathleen at noon. National Defense could get top priority but he wanted to at least phone her and tell her he would be late.

"The Syntheris trial is designed to see if we can create an anti-rejection drug for the neuroelectrical implants. We are at a crucial time in our trial and certain needs have materialized that make our mission all too timely." Dr. Witherspoon's jowls quivered as he spoke. "We need to move up our timetable. Can you join us for a few weeks in Grand Forks? There are some people we would like you to meet. Also of note, our analysis of your blood chemistry has turned up certain questions."

"Like what?" James replied.

"You are a cannabis consumer. Ordinarily this would be a red flag, but certain developments have arisen in the Air Force Academy's home base in Colorado that point to this as being a small issue. With the legalization of cannabis there, we have had to create special laws on its prohibition on military bases and the war college itself. You, on the other hand, are a liberty we can allow," he said to James. "And we know of your anarchist contacts. You have been under surveillance and investigation for the last two months. We know all about your dealer friend DJ. We know you are a petty trafficker too."

"So what are you going to do about it?" said James with a noticeable degree of defiance.

"We're going to offer you a job," said Witherspoon.

"Doing what?" said James in dumbfounded amazement.

"Last year the Islamic State got several aircraft operational and we can only assume they are going to use them offensively in acts of terrorism. We want you to help us to eventually help shoot them down. When they become a threat, we want you on the team. There are tests you can perform that our other program participants cannot be part of. There are risks we would choose to not have them take. You would be a test subject but a valued and appreciated one. We could reward you well. We will train you as a pilot."

"I am not a pilot. You assuredly have pilots who want that job more than I do."

"Yes, but they are human. With the computer link in our helmet that you have been testing, you no doubt have seen the effect of linking the mind up directly to a targeting computer and reviewing flight plans at a rate greatly advanced in comparison to fighter pilots going after targets one at a time. You will be able to launch eighteen missiles at one time."

"What do you really want from me? I don't have a brain implant to connect me to your computer. And I am not a pilot. I am a pothead, not a soldier."

"We would be moving your pay grade to that of an active-duty lieutenant and granting you pay at that grade for the duration of your participation in the program," said Witherspoon.

"I don't want to do that and have an implant put into my brain. I am not going for it. Furthermore, I don't think I am the best man for the job."

"There is a clause in your inactive reserve status that allows us to call you up for duty in times of war. Think of it as being drafted. But it is different than usual conscription. You will have to leave behind your marijuana but it will be a 'kid gloves' draft. We know you have only a small amount of contacts in your community. You will not be missed and this will only take a short while."

"And after I am on your payroll, I will be obligated for life to be a guinea pig for your experiments." He thought about it for a moment. "I have paperwork in for veterans disability. I will work for my disability. But I am not going to be a guinea pig for life. I am going to go to nursing school when this is over. You can make me an officer, pay grade oh-two, and I don't have to wear a uniform or salute anyone. And when I am done, I get to smoke pot."

"But not today. We need you somewhat sober. Take a vacation from your drugs and alcohol for a while and we can pay for your nursing school and support you in comfort for the rest of your life. You will start your tour of duty in Grand Forks Air Force Base. We have a car waiting for you. There is only one hour left, Mr. McGregor. Your country has a great need for your help."

"Then the nation can drive me to the West Bank and watch me pack a bag. I am going to have to call my friend Cathleen. I am going to need to keep my cell phone."

"It's been tapped for the last two months. Your patriotism is noted with a few blemishes but a notable and tangible point of reference. You may be an oh-two on pay grade and your check will come from Treasury, but your taskmasters will be CIA and/or NSA. This is a black operation. Your participation will be entirely done on American soil so you will never be sent under deep cover to someplace like Egypt with the job title of tenth assistant to the cultural attaché of an embassy. You will be a human computer for now and for the rest of your life."

"So why me?" James asked.

"You play video games very well and you have a security clearance. We like your brain. In spite of what you put in it, we like your brain."

"Okay, okay, I'll do it. Just let me call my girlfriend and tell her I'll be out of town for a while."
CHAPTER SEVEN

Two hours later James was climbing the stairway into a C-26 VIP turboprop airplane headed for Grand Forks Air Force Base. GFAFB was the former home of Strategic Air Command and now hosted America's last big contingent of B-52 bomber aircraft. The fighters were based at Minot, North Dakota. That was only a short hop away from Grand Forks by plane. That meant that most of the fighters were based and supported by trainer aircraft and flight simulators at Minot.

James was briefed on the operational history of the F-111. It had been hoped the F-111 could be used as a fighter and a bomber. As things turned out it was neither, but it filled some strange niches well.

The F-111 was a variable sweep jet. That meant the wings could be folded back for supersonic flight and moved forward for slower operational requirements. Used from before Vietnam until the present day, the Raven model was a full-power electronic warfare platform. Equipped with two pilots and a pod of electronic warfare devices mounted in a bulge at the top of the tail, the EF-111A Raven was used in the first Gulf War of 1991 with a strike package of fighters as an escort and bomb carriers.

Other F-111s scored hits in the Kuwait/Iraq War, launching laser-guided bombs and even deep penetrating "bunker buster" bombs designed for cutting deep into concrete fortifications.

James noted the AN/AVQ-26 Pave Tack system which used a cylindrical carriage that rotated inside the weapons bay. This was essentially the same device Devers was talking about. James pored over the books he was given in an attempt to get "up to speed."

He was going to be testing the ability of the neuro-interface between the F-111 and up to 11 targets, all to be attacked with missiles launched from weapons hidden inside the bomb bay of the Raven.

The C-26 looked like any other business turboprop. Two engines and the look of a Beechcraft King Air.

They got into Grand Forks AFB at 3:45 in the afternoon. James looked out of the plane's oval window at the huge base they were flying into. Bombers with towering tails were lined up at the sides of the tarmac. He counted 25 just among those at a clear state of readiness.

Buildings and hangars stretched for a mile in all directions. The landing runway was clearly made for the monstrously sized bombers. The C-26 looked like a small bug landing onto a huge concrete lake bed in spite of its artificial nature.

After landing, the C-26 taxied into a hangar. James climbed down the stairs of the small plane into the open maw of the hangar. He looked and saw a sign that said _Remain mindful of FOD._

"What's FOD?" James asked of his pilot.

"FOD is 'foreign object damage.' An object the size of a quarter can do a million dollars' worth of damage in the right place on a jet engine."

"Okay. I guess I had to ask." He looked out at the people meeting him in the hangar. There was a crisp-looking Air Force lieutenant in a flight suit and boots. He was flanked by two professional, clean-cut, well-groomed airmen in olive-drab uniforms.

"Mr. McGregor," said the lieutenant, "we are here to get you acquainted with the project. Follow me, sir."

James was dumbfounded. They were calling him "sir" as if he was a VIP. Then it dawned on him that he was a VIP. He was the guinea pig. He felt honored. He followed them to a new gray four-door pickup with Air Force stencils on the doors. He got into the front seat passenger side and the others followed suit. James clutched the backpack that contained his computer while one of the airmen grabbed his bag.

"There is somebody you have to meet, sir. I think you'll like him. He's also a Marine," said the lieutenant. The lieutenant put the truck into drive and they sped off onto the roads and byways of the huge, expansive air base.

They finally came to a building with a sign in front that read _Air Combat Command._ "This is our first stop, sir. I believe you have an appointment with Gunnery Sergeant Tanner. He is acting project briefer. He will tell you anything you need to know."

A muscular man in Marine Corps woodland digital camouflage came out of the front door of the modern office-looking building. He saluted the lieutenant and was saluted in return.

"You're McGregor. Glad to meet you. My name's Tanner. Come on in and meet the crew." He wore gunnery sergeant stripes on his coat.

James noticed the color of his right hand was off somehow. Then he noticed Tanner reached out with his left hand to shake.

"Sorry, McGregor, but the right one's a fake. Lost it in Afghanistan. I use the Syntheris. I have the prosthetic implant. You won't be needing that. Relax, son, they aren't going to cut off your hand to get you into the program. That's what makes me the 'A-Team.' You are still valuable as a consistent member of the second string. Welcome to the team."

James was amazed. "Corporal McGregor at your service, Gunny. I guess this means Semper Fidelis."

"You could say that, Corporal," said Tanner with a chuckle.

* * *

"With the F-111A we had a payload maximum of thirty-five thousand, five hundred pounds. You're going to need all of that to get you to operational altitude with full weapons complement," said Colonel Nagle. His crew cut with white hair and gruff demeanor communicated that he was a career flyer with experience at pushing people into just the right slots to get maximum efficiency from a strike package. He was the boss and the project hovered around him like a halo of flies surrounding a horse in high summer. He knew when to let them land and when to flick them out of his way.

The operations center had a huge, wall-sized, flat-screen monitor 12 feet wide and 6 feet high. On it was a map of the Middle East centering on Syria and Iraq.

"So Tanner, you think we pulled out of Iraq too soon?" inquired James.

"That's an understatement. We created a power vacuum that is now taking the form of ISIS."

James puzzled for a moment. "Why aren't you going after them with laser-guided bombs?"

"We want to do something special. We want to let them know they are under the watchful eye of Big Brother and the Holding Company," said Tanner.

"So the gloves are off. We just accept the dystopia of _1984_ , do we?" replied James.

"If that's what it takes. Nobody has gone after aircraft in flight as a mass attack before. We are hoping we can get a platform positioned at just the time they get operational. Then we take them down as a group. It's a gamble but we think it will give them pause in ways they never dreamed in their worst nightmares."

"A friend of mine said there was 'no head to cut off,' " said James.

"I am the blade and you are something similar. See this?" he said as he held out his right hand. It was a plastic, rubber, prosthetic hand. "I went for the deluxe package," said Tanner.

* * *

Sergeiovich was talking through a translator to the two Syrian Air Force pilot defectors. "We will carry two long-distance, thousand-liter fuel tanks and two heat-seeker missiles. From there we link up with tower radar and go hunting."

"How will we know when the targets are within range?" asked Lieutenant Hafez.

"The tower radar will take care of everything. We have enough missiles to destroy six airliners. God is great. We will be the hand of the Prophet's revenge," said Sergeiovich.

"I am so excited. We will be the wolves among the sheep. Allah will be with us," said Lieutenant Hafez.

Lieutenant Faissal quipped in Arabic to the translator, "We can kill eighteen hundred infidels in one day. More if we can take down six 747s. We can be operational in just a few months. Now we test and practice. Their satellites and drones will be watching so we will employ stealth. We fly one plane at a time and we will not wake the beast. Then when the time is right, we strike."

* * *

James donned the helmet and was connected to an F-111 flying over the deserts of Nevada. Targets appeared and he launched missiles. Then the screens went back to normal and it started over again. This must have happened 20 times before he was told his next target selection would be for real. Then he saw the target. It was a QF-4C, a remotely piloted jet fighter from the Vietnam era of warfare. Orange wingtips and nose made it easier to see.

He launched one Sidewinder missile at it and waited. The rocket first slid from side to side, hence the name Sidewinder. Then its infrared sensor locked onto the Phantom F-4's hot exhaust and homed in on the old beast. The rocket climbed into the fire of the jet engines and detonated mere feet from the tail. The Phantom began to pitch and rock. It was no longer stable.

Tanner said, "Try a Sparrow. They are military surplus from the arsenal so don't be afraid to spend some money. They cost the taxpayers a half a million apiece but they are obsolete now, so go invest some money."

James worked the controller in his hands and popped up a screen with a list of weapons on it. He selected the Sparrow missile and tapped a button to return to the virtual reality screen. He fired the Sparrow at the crippled F-4. He watched as the rocket blazed to the Phantom in less than ten seconds, covering a mile in a few heartbeats of time. The rocket hit the F-4 and blasted a hole in its side just above the left wing. This time the crippled bird gave up the struggle and began cartwheeling down to the ground. This was its last mission.

James was entranced and curious. _Perhaps there is a career here after all,_ he thought.

Blog Post Fourteen

Benevolent Dictator/ Enlightened Despot.

Methinks Lord Trump is going to win the Presidency and all will radically change. Obama just doesn't see the fun and glee of hunting ISIS for sport. That is what America wants at this juncture in history. America doesn't care about Geneva conventions or the harm found in offending Islamic nations. America just wants to have fun and go off on a shooting party. I fear that is the real dynamic of statesmanship for Trump and Obama. Obama takes it too seriously. He refuses to please the crowd with a few Muslims thrown to the lions. He is too diplomatic. The job will be taken from him and given to a used car salesman with a degree in savvy and all the class of a crass comedian. But the crowd will cheer and Gingrich will be back in business and the Pentagon will be a venue to billions of fundraising for corporations that make useless garbage. And ultimately the troops collected to enforce fun like this will march off to war and come back in pieces but smiling in that they got their 15 minutes of fame and had some genuine fun.

Trump is going to take ten minutes to clear the desk of useless treaties and agreements. He will place all these useless items into the circular file of a waste basket and get on to the real job of running the country and then our liberal elite will get a real shellacking. Unless Hilary can appeal to the moonshiners of Georgia and their friends in the NRA and the Republican party, then we are clearly going to war to stop ISIS for no greater reason than it's fun to do that. The little-known "Civilian Marksmanship Program" is going to be a cultural icon. Sad to see Exxon get all the spoils of political war. Hopefully our friend in Georgia may have a connection for some good smoking herb and a yen for legalizing the stuff. All I can say is that the whole Democratic front is going to fail and Trump will win because the Emperor provides the Romans with better gladiators to watch. We will be asking Exxon for mercy and the Pentagon will not be creating good or useful supplies. So much for precision, accuracy, maneuverability, and guerilla warfare. We are going to just be swept aside by a mass of superior firepower that has the subtlety of a tsunami.

It's going to be the end of the Democratic party for the next 15 years. I guess that means it's time to get into Lord Trump's breadline at the soup kitchen. You guys worry me. The F-35 has cost us, so far, $3.8 billion per copy and it does not work. We have 135 of them for a bill of $400 billion. This is terrible. If Trump gets in, the world will end and it's all your fault for not feeding enough Muslims to the lions.
CHAPTER EIGHT

Tanner was trying to catch up. He started with weapons briefings. Missiles and the equipment that supported them. F-4 Phantom Two's were coming up in the analysis as too heavy and clumsy to operate in Vietnam. Tanner was surprised to find out just how good the Soviet jets really were. According to Boyd's book, the Russian jets had the raw power and agility to get the job of dogfighting done. The only benefit to the Americans was that in Korea the Russian MiGs had no hydraulic controls. This meant the Russians were physically exhausted after evasive or predatory maneuvers.

Boyd's book chronologically told the story of how John Richard Boyd created and sold to the Pentagon a new breed of fighter jet. The two products of his passion were the F-16 Falcon and the F-18 Hornet. Both were produced by the fusion of Boyd designing in secret and in cooperation with General Dynamics and Northrop Aviation.

General Dynamics changed its name to General Atomics and now made drones for the Air Force.

Tanner went to his computer, an older Hewlett Packard laptop, and set it up with power supply and mouse. He typed in the names of the first three missiles for air-to-air combat that he had heard of. He looked up the Phoenix, the Sparrow, and the Sidewinder. Boyd's book noted that in Vietnam the performance for the Sidewinder was so poor the pilots called it the "Sandwinder." It hit the dirt commonly. The Sparrow and the Phoenix were long-range radar-guided missiles while the Sidewinder was targeted by an infrared heat-sensing lens at the nose of the missile. The Sparrow and Phoenix were pointed like rifle bullets while the Sidewinder seemed to have a dome for a front end. All three failed to work reliably in Vietnam.

There was an Air Force lieutenant who mentioned a "Kaiten." He looked for a Kaiten torpedo and was amazed to see a Kamikaze airplane's ethic applied to the task of submarines trying to sink ships. The Japanese had invented a torpedo with a human pilot. As usual, the pilot would die when the torpedo struck the ship it was trying to sink. A one-way trip.

Tanner looked at his right hand. Occasionally he felt an itch or throb of pain come from the hand that was not there. He had been warned about it. They had called it "phantom pain." He had been told the pain would go away if he ignored it. He flexed the muscles of what remained of the wrist.

He swallowed another oxycodone and went back to the computer. He found the Triton. Named after a son of the Greek god Poseidon, pictured as a man from the waist up and a porpoise from the waist down, this god Triton was at home while at sea. The device named a Triton was a wide-winged, ungainly contraption. Bulbous-nosed and housing a full rotating-dish radar system, the Triton aircraft was pilotless with an unusual V-tail. Pilots called it a "butterfly tail" and its similarity to the Beechcraft Bonanza was obvious. Buddy Holly, Richie Valens, and the Big Bopper had died in an Iowa winter in a Beechcraft Bonanza. On the Triton the tail seemed to work.

The suggestions were devious. The Air Force intended to use him as a biologically controlled weapon. His arm would somehow be used to guide a weapon.

His left hand stroked the new cochlear implant behind his left ear. He had needed the money. One hundred thirty-five thousand dollars for the implant and now he was finally finding out what it all meant. He was a Kaiten. A human torpedo. The big difference was he was at the other end of a very long wire separating him from the target.

He would live. The target would die. To a military man that was largely the only reason to keep on keeping on. As long as he had a purpose and a role to play, he would soldier on.

From the Boyd book he began to have suspicions. But it was the Air Force that gave Boyd to Tanner. Boyd kept seeing bad weapons get created to fulfill the nuclear missions. Boyd's creation, the F-16, was a prime example. It started out as a pure fighter and became a nuclear bomber. It did great as a fighter but some performance had to be sacrificed for the A-bomb mission. The plane got heavier and poorer as a fighter. That was the problem in Vietnam with the Phantom. Boyd did not like repeating the errors of that Asian war.

There would be a day when the Air Force would want more minds to cut into for the sake of war. What would happen when such people could not be found? Would the war stop or would young kids be getting the surgery in the form of conscription? Would they lop off people's hands and plug them into drones?

He poured himself a shot of Bacardi rum and sipped at it.

_Where are we going?_ he thought.

The more he read, the more he was amazed. The other star of the movie _Top Gun_ was the jet airplane called the F-14.

Now Tanner was finding out that the whole of the three swing-wing aircraft—the B-1 Lancer, the F-111 Aardvark, and the Navy's F-14—were all junk. Billions had been invested into a failing formula. The only saving graces had been Boyd's two fighter jets. The Falcon F-16 and the Hornet F-18 were the two older stars. The F-22 Raptor was healthy at $250 million per copy. As expensive as it was, it was still cheaper than the F-35 at $4 billion per copy.

The whole premise of the _Top Gun_ movie was a fraud. Unstable people don't become fighter pilots, and though Boyd was consistently insubordinate, he was one of the Air Force's most decorated engineering innovators. In spite of the Air Force turning the F-15 Eagle and the Falcon into bombers, they did so well in the multi-use mode that the Israelis used them to bomb Saddam Hussein's nuclear reactor. They destroyed it and Boyd's pure fighter, the Falcon, personally delivered eight bombs of 2,000 pounds each to the evil dictator's doorstep.

The F-14 Tomcat was too heavy and lacked sufficient wing space to truly be a dogfighter. Libya launched and lost two Soviet-built MiG-23 aircraft at Ronald Reagan's Navy force just offshore in the Mediterranean Sea. And those two fighters were Soviet-built swing-wing fighters. Reagan outnumbered Qadaffi. He had a formation of F-14 jets at high altitude pounce on the Libyan jets as they chased a smaller force held out as bait. The MiGs didn't have a chance going up against a carrier group, and their insufficient training failed them against the Americans.

But the F-14 was still a piece of overweight junk.

Welcome to the human race, with its wars, disease, and brutality.

Tanner knew. They were going to deploy a missile with him as a Kaiten human-guided munition. The only difference was that he would be snug in an office building in the United States while the drone missile did its work in northern Syria.

The Pentagon was saying that the pilot was obsolete and an expense that we could not afford. At $40,000 per flying hour per fighter aircraft, the fighter pilot was no longer desirable.

The pilots said the missiles that were going to replace them were defective and useless against piloted aircraft. The enemy aircraft could outmaneuver the missiles. More often than not the missiles did not even fire, their rocket motors never started. In Vietnam only ten percent of the missiles were even coming off of the rails from the host aircraft.

Tanner called his wife and said he would be home soon. He was getting leave and warrant officer bars in a few weeks.

He had tried the helmet without the implant. It had worked well. The Air Force was using a video game handheld console. The device was covered in buttons and had a joystick controller. He had learned how to change weapons quickly. He had learned how to creep up behind an aviation target and get a missile lock onto it with radar.

He had been briefed on the combat record of the missiles that the NATO powers used. They were ill-suited to real combat and they had a terrible record in Vietnam. Asia was hot and sticky while the Middle East was dry like the desert air bases in Nevada.

Tanner looked at his orders. He had to report to Nellis Air Force Base soon. There he would be paired up with a pilot to learn how to work the Aurora missile system.

It was the Aurora that would make him the weapons officer in a team armed with a two-seater F-15 Eagle. The pilot would get him there and his implant would target the weapon.

That is, if the system worked.

* * *

The gadget looked like a child's version of a fighter jet. Air intake on top, butterfly tail, short wings but no cockpit. All of the go-fast goodies but nobody along for the ride. It even had miniature landing gear.

So far this drone fighter had passed all of the tests. It had air brakes, an afterburner, and a turbo fan engine. It could stay aloft for six hours without extra fuel, and with extra fuel tanks it was good for another eight hours.

It could carry a small nuclear weapon and, using that nuke, he could generate a huge anti-aircraft air burst capable of knocking an entire group of aircraft out of the sky.

It could move at Mach 2.7. With no pilot its payload was purely warhead and fuel.

Tanner would be the missile's pilot while a more experienced pilot would handle the Aurora aircraft after the mothership aircraft brought the Aurora to its combat area.

The gadget passed most of its tests with great ease. The E-Systems computer was called a "Boyd in the box." It programmed the missile in just how to overcome a dogfighter from an aggressor-squadron-trained pilot.

The aggressor squadrons were a group of pilots flying aircraft similar to their opponent's. Americans flew F-5 jets originally built for the South Vietnamese Air Force. When the nation collapsed, the planes became available.

Air Force planners had Groom Lake on their side. Long talked about as the home of captured flying saucers from alien races, the reality was that it housed and tested enemy aircraft captured over years of careful deception.

MiGs and Sukhois filled out the ranks at Groom Lake. Korean, Vietnamese, Syrian planes filled the hangars at the dry lakebed test facility often called by the outsiders label of 'Area 51.'

The Aurora was two weapons in one. A carrier which looked like a small one-eighth-sized fighter jet with cameras and sensors instead of a pilot and a smaller rocket-fired missile with its own 70-pound warhead. Clearly it could also carry a small nuclear warhead.

The carrier was reusable while the warhead was a single-use option. Nineteen hours of fuel gave it lots of "loiter time." It was prohibitively expensive to use as a "one shot" device but if used properly, it could return to an airfield under its own power and be reloaded.

The pilot's position would be manned by an experienced fighter pilot while the warhead missile would be guided by a gunner with a bio-neural implant. That was where Tanner and a gang of "gimps" traded a $135,000 implant for the privilege of snuffing out a war or a stout terror flight out of the sky like the mythic pheasant hunters from America's Midwest. Tanner missed hunting but this was an opportunity few could even be jealous of. Hunting MiGs with a robotic-guided miniature fighter jet dazzled the realities of the gunnery sergeant. In two weeks' time he would be a warrant officer and start the grooming process of linking his mind directly to a weapons system. It was a bit of a stretch but it looked like it could work.

He kept up the daily dose of Syntheris and the daily pain pill. The phantom pain persisted but the oxycodone killed it quite adequately. Just a little alcohol in the evening was enough of a boost to give it all of the potency it needed to get him to sleep.

The Aurora project now had a name. It would be called the RQ-99. Reconnaissance drone, number 99.

* * *

James got back into the swing of things quickly. He got back to his apartment and made coffee, laundered clothing, and stroked his left ear. He couldn't pass up the opportunity to get the implant but knew he could never be choosing the option of actively serving his country.

Just getting the implant would be enough. They could take it out again with no ill effects. He would stay a civilian with government service status as a GS-4. He would get retirement and a pension. He could afford nursing school.

It was a strange privilege to be part of the program. Trump and Hillary were at war and James thought to himself just what an odd President Trump would make. Billionaires tended to just make themselves richer and everyone else poorer while Obama was moving slowly and that could be the undoing of the whole Democratic Party. Sad but true.

Trump would make an adequate President while Hillary was not James' top pick either. It was a choice of two evils and the American television audience seemed to love the camera-mugging from Trump. They would be the final judges and the world's fate would be decided by the poll margins of reruns of _Seinfeld_ and _The Cosby Show._ We would be getting a President bound by the ratings from the Trump TV show called _The Apprentice._

James secretly hoped Trump would allow for liberal programs like medical marijuana and a review of military junk like the F-35. Boyd would have wanted it that way, but Trump was a billionaire and all those contracts could go to his friends rather than the best interests of America's fighting troops hunkered down in Syrian foxholes.

Presidents could be forgiving to each other. Carter, Bush one, Bush two, Clinton, and Obama made up a strange club. The way Trump was calling for a vilifying look at all Muslims made enemies of people like the Saudis and Turks. Where was he going to launch jets from if not from Arabic airfields? He was burning bridges fast and it could be the undoing for the American warriors who would be tasked with doing the battle for all that Saudi and Iraqi oil. It wasn't an easy problem to solve.

If Trump got in, it could mean a roboticization of all of the nation's military machine. Take away the pilots and soldiers and be left with nothing but television-guided bombs going after ISIS fighters with Russian guns and tanks.

The new Toyota trucks were an interesting permutation. Obama was blind to the opportunity to bomb Toyotas. He did not deploy the A-10 Warthog tank-killing jet. He destroyed TOW missiles as an environmental threat. There were opportunities he was backing away from.

The entire mindset of Vietnam was moving in the direction of unbridled use of troops. Live bodies killing thousands in retribution for the 2015 December third attack in San Bernardino that left 14 dead in an ISIS-friendly event of homegrown terrorism.

The path of the crusade was moving to an eventual tipping point. Lord Trump would rule if times went as they were going.

Would it be so bad if he won? Would General Motors survive? How would it affect crops growing in Iowa? Where would this Lord Trump stand on the very rural communities that gave America so many of its raw, young soldiers?

Trump was smarter than he looked. He was selling America on a product like it was a K-Mart blue light special. It promised to keep huge American corporations alive and many soldiers dead. But America felt insulted. America had a grudge to settle. Maybe America would survive but there would be high costs.

Could Trump do it without creating a bloodbath? America wondered. If just ISIS troops died, it would be written off as the quenching of anger of lost American pride.

Would that rage transfer into wise decisions? America wondered as the Republicans marched on to victory. Perhaps it wouldn't be that bad but America wondered.

* * *

Tanner had two weeks at home after the warrant officer promotion. Time with the wife and kids. Schoolwork and his wife with three girls making preschool messes and playing with toys. Tanner played and was "Matthew" again

He paid the mortgage and the credit card bills. He bought the warrant officer bars and collected the ribbons and medals from his time in Afghanistan. A Purple Heart, campaign medals, sea service deployment, good conduct medal, a citation for bravery, and room for the Congressional Medal of Honor if it ever came in. He would still keep his Navy Cross.

A career in ribbons on his alpha class uniform. He was proud of his record. They would need to invent a new ribbon for bio-neural warfare.

* * *

Nellis Air Force Base was the neighbor to Las Vegas. Tanner and McGregor were in the base hospital on the same day.

"Feels like a reunion, doesn't it, James," said Tanner as he sized up James in his civilian clothes and Navy flight jacket.

"Yeah, Matt. We're gonna wax some ISIS ass if this all works out. We could be doing MiG-cap on all of North Syria." James referred to the old mission from Korea and Vietnam of covering air superiority from MiG jets of Russian origin for the movement of ground troops and slower, more vulnerable bombers.

"At best, Matt, I am just going to be a civilian consultant. They have me on 'pattern recognition.' That means I learn languages quickly. I also play good video games. I have been on the Syntheris for three months. Now I will get the implant. Time to see if the anti-rejection drugs work."

They waited in the pre-op together. James was told to get into the wheelchair and was rolled into a long hallway. They said their "good-byes" and wished each other luck.

Then James was alone to undress, don a gown, and get rolled into the operating room. They shaved up three inches above the left ear and gave him an intravenous drip of sedative.

James' memory stopped there. When he awoke he was in a hospital bed with IV tubes hooked up to his left arm. He looked around. He looked for his watch. It wasn't there.

His head was bandaged. He reached up with his left arm and found a mass of gauze padding covering his left ear and temple. With his right hand he probed at the protective covering. He had been given a close haircut all over and had the wound site shaved.

A nurse in blue scrubs came in. "Mr. McGregor! You're awake. Everything went according to plan. How do you feel?"

"A bit groggy. How long was I out?"

"It's noon. You went into surgery yesterday. It takes a while to get the drugs out of your system. I'll let the doctor know you are awake. He will have questions for you. Would you like something to eat?"

"Yeah. Soon."

"After you talk to Dr. Henderson. You have him as a post-op. You got lucky. You had Dr. Brown. He is one of the best neurosurgeons in the whole area. He normally does work in Las Vegas but he does special work for us. That means you're special."

She spun on her heel and headed out to get Henderson. Ten minutes later a balding, 60-year-old Caucasian man with a paunch belly and a white shirt and tie under white lab coat walked into the antiseptic, tiled room that housed James.

"Mr. McGregor. I am Dr. Henderson. I see you're awake and you just met Amy. She will be your on-call nurse. She's very good so treat her well."

"I shall. Do I have a choice?"

"Well, you're just a civilian so I can't give you orders but I highly recommend it. You should be out of here by tomorrow. You will be out on the flight line by the end of the week. Usually they give these jobs to old battleaxes who have lost an arm. You are something of an anomaly. How did you get the job, might I ask?"

"I learn languages quickly and I had a security clearance."

"Don't pull out your IVs just yet. You are being fed a cocktail of very special medications to ease your brain's transition to the sixteen filaments over your left ear. You will be able to test out the connection in five days. Getting an implant like this is no small feat. I hope it works for you. You can eat now. Be careful chewing. Your mandible muscles have been traumatized but eating should be no problem. Just go easy with it. Call Amy if you need her and she can get me if you notice any complications."

* * *

Thursday morning came and the bandages came off. The implant was a small disk about as big around as a ballpoint pen but flat. A connector magnetically attached to it.

He was jacked-in.

The first tests he did were basic. A video monitor flat-screen was attached to the cable which fed out of the implant disk. He could feel the points in his skull that had been drilled. They told him to let the wounds heal and not tamper with them. "Don't mess with government property," they joked.

Soon, though, they watched as James was able to make the video screen change from red to blue and back again. Eventually he could create shapes and different color blotches.

Then Tanner walked into the room.

"How's it going, James? I got here yesterday and they already have you with the screen. You're making progress, I see," said Matthew.

"It's just like video games but I am a beginner."

"Me too. We both have a lot to learn. Come by the shop soon. People to meet. Later, dude," Matthew said as he turned and left.

"What's he mean by the shop?" said James to the technician doing the video test.

"You'll see soon. One more hour of this and you can go see the shop."

* * *

Tanner was having fun on the flight line with the other "gimps." He had met seven amputees with military backgrounds, including two Afghanistan vets in similar circumstances. He was trading war stories and tales of medals and combat operations. Nothing classified but many adventures.

He was shown the "shop." It was a building with workstations for drone piloting. Unmanned remotely-piloted aerial vehicles were the norm at the shop.

Inside the sedate office-looking four-story building was a large room 40 feet long with eight drone workstations. Tanner had been briefed on their use.

They worked in pairs. One pilot and one missileer. The pilot guided the weapon in close and countered any evasive maneuvers the enemy could concoct. Then as the pilot brought the Aurora in close, the missileer would fire a rocket and shoot out a heat-seeker rocket at close range.

A civilian in a blue shirt and khaki trousers walked into the crowd. "Welcome, Tanner. I see you have met the other missileers. We are going to run through several combat drills. We will cover enemy flat-plating, half scissors, and high-G barrel roll," he said.

"When do we get the real thing, Mr. Harlow?" asked a tall amputee, an African in descent.

"We expect to get the equipment in next week. But keep your mouths shut. This is still a black project. We don't go public until the President has a successful mission to give to the press."

Harlow guided Tanner to look over the shoulder of one of the workstations. The drone missileer took the left seat. Today the pilot's chair, on the right side, went empty.

First the missileer reached up above his left ear and clipped a cable to an implant cord into place on the shiny, small disk. A lightweight cord ran from the implant to a small black plastic box that hung from the missileer's neck. It was a wireless setup.

Then the missileer reached down on his left and picked up what looked like a standard flight helmet. After placing it on his head, he flipped down the darker lens.

Tanner looked at it twice, as if there was something wrong. The lens was not the imposingly dark lens used by pilots in bright sun at 30,000 feet altitude. The lens was a thin gray. He could still see the missileer's facial features through the lens.

When the missileer began, he was on a sort of recorded synthetic mission where the drone aircraft was sneaking up on an enemy fighter jet and the last quarter mile would be traversed by the missile. The missileers all called it "the package." They called themselves UPS or Federal Express. Their talent was package delivery.

In the recorded mission there were many versions of a good and bad mission. Only on very rare occasions were the missileers not able to deliver the package.

Usually it shot out from the Aurora and followed the enemy in tight turns and rolls. On rare and special occasions the fighter would try to turn back and get the package to lock onto the host aircraft. Most of the time this ended in calamity for the fighter as the package moved quickly, at up to Mach 3. But it did show some creativity on the part of the enemy pilot. At least the programmers had created the teaching videos that way.

* * *

James took a break at noon. He had been tested on pattern recognition software since 9 a.m. Banker's hours to these people. _They have been up since 6 a.m.,_ he thought. Always starting the day with a blood draw. Needles in his arm.

The videos were as simple as Sesame Street but all of the quizzes were done with brain power and not just verbal or pointing with a finger. He had to actually use his mind to control the patterns on the video screen.

But now it was noon and time for a spot of tobacco. He found a coffee bar attached to a dining hall and got himself a tall dark with cream.

There he sat, outside in the Las Vegas sun. It was February of 2016 and James was deeply submerged in a black-op. That meant a secret operation of the type that does not get mentioned in the press. So much for CNN and Fox.

* * *

The Aurora dropped from the wing pylon of the B-52 bomber high above Edwards Air Force Base. The jet engine fired up on cue. The tiny shrunken head of a fighter jet moved forward from 300 miles per hour to just under the speed of sound.

It carried an explosive warhead and a live rocket motor for that cargo.

The Aurora cruised easily to Mach 1 and when the operator was given approval, he took it beyond and into supersonic speed.

On this day the Aurora was not testing the conformal extra fuel tanks. It still had six hours of loiter time.

The operator, Major Davis, tried maneuver after maneuver. Split-S, flat-plate, barrel roll, half scissors.

After the "gadget" and its little brother, the "package," came into the final part of testing, a QF-4C was brought up to 30,000 feet altitude.

The Aurora began to track this remotely piloted F-4 Phantom jet. Left over from Vietnam, the older jet now served as a target drone for the testing of the Aurora.

Edwards AFB had a small missile test range, and the Aurora followed the QF-4 into the designated territory.

The F-4 was made to turn and use its afterburners. The Aurora moved in close behind the QF-4. It was not difficult to keep up with the Vietnam-era old warrior.

On the ground Major Davis gave his missileer the final approval to launch his missile. The package launched with appropriate shock and violence. Smoke filled the viewscreen that Davis was using to guide the Aurora.

Cavanaugh took control of the package for a whole ten seconds as the television-equipped warhead slammed into the aft section of the aging fighter. The warhead exploded and ripped off the back one-third of the Phantom. What was left of the fuselage and wings spun uselessly to the ground.

Scratch one Phantom.

* * *

Monahan collected his papers and put them into his briefcase. The X-47 drone looked good.

These pilots are a cost benefit loss for the whole Pentagon. The job can be done much better with robots. Eighty million dollars per pilot per 2,000 flight hours is money better spent on a force that is more reliable. All we have to do is frontload the budget and get ourselves some more reliable robots and our performance criteria will speak for itself. A robot will cost as much as a fighter jet and be a thousand times more efficient. Get rid of that so-called human factor and we will see some results. This "Boyd in a box" looks promising.

Pilots are ruining a decent strike force. Too expensive. We can get robots to do the job at a tenth of the price. And what of this Aurora project? A fully roboticized force can do the job better at an expense suited more for a job done by scientists.

_These pilots are ruining the Defense Department. It's time to draw back the reins and get some control in this environment of "command and control,_ he thought.

He walked out of the briefing with a sense of pride. "We will take these pilots out of the equation once and for all," he said under his breath.

He walked confidently from the "E ring" of the Pentagon and prepared for his lunch with Senator Quenton. "Now there is a man with real vision." The luncheon was to be hosted by a representative of the "First Republic" contractors.

_Tanks and artillery would still be used for police actions but this whole atmosphere of pilots determining the fate of the defense community has to stop and I will be at its vanguard. The tip of the spear. There has to be a way to tame these hotshots and the arrogance they ooze,_ he thought as he walked out the door to his waiting limousine.

* * *

James had been introduced to "the helmet" back in Minnesota. He had seen it tested in Grand Forks. Now, with his implant, he was getting used to its screen.

Five minutes was all the time the "package" had to nail a target. Once the Aurora gave up its payload, it could take no more than 300 seconds to get the bad guy.

He began on learning of all the aerial maneuvers. The jink was a quick dodge left or right. It had been pioneered in World War Two as a way to move away from an area targeted by ground-to-air cannon fire.

The flat plate was a move to pull back on the stick and radically reduce speed. The pursuing aircraft would shoot forward and become the new prey.

The high-G barrel roll did the same thing but brought the new pursuer in back of the old pursuer without the loss of speed and energy of the flat plate. It dumped energy but not as radically as the flat plate.

When the pilot pulled back on the stick in the flat plate, the aerodynamic of the jet would go from slipping forward to a nose-up position with the whole airplane functioning as one huge air brake. The downside of this was a total loss in speed. The airplane would be like a plate lifted up and catching all of the aerodynamic force of the wing used like a parachute. The plate would catch the air rather than slipping through it.

James knew that the package would never be able to dogfight. That was up to the Aurora. The package had a fully articulating nozzle on its rocket motor. It was a one-shot deal and the bad guy could turn or flat plate and leave the package to shoot forward uselessly. He learned in the simulator to stay back and assess the situation. There would be no second chances.

James worked with the other missileers to apply all of the patterns Boyd had used as a fighter pilot. Immelmann climbs and quick dodges were the defender's only options. With the television screen viewing every move from the front of the package, he could see all the defender's moves.

A special note was the new Sukhoi-35, which had vectored thrust. The exhaust nozzles of the jet engines could be directed left or right. This gave the plane an unprecedented short turning radius. Harrier pilots in Britain's Royal Air Force found this out by directing the hover capability when in a turn. This was called a "vector in forward flight," or VIFF for short.

The Harrier could take off vertically and hover like a helicopter. By turning the jet nozzles halfway, the turn could be very tight. In spite of being subsonic, the Harrier proved to have talents unpredicted and a quality that made it an accidental dogfighter.

The F-15 was a good aircraft while the F-16 turned out to be the best. F-16s had been the mainstay of Europe's fighter forces. The British and others had built the Panavia Tornado, which was also good, but the F-16 was the best.

James trained on the helmet. It provided fighter-style heads-up displays on how to vector the exhaust nozzle on the package. It showed all potential arcs between the target and the package.

The package used a mixture of hydrazine and alcohol for its rocket motor. Ordinarily dangerous, it proved to be flexible and responsive to changes of speed. A solid-rocket-fueled missile like the Sparrow, Phoenix, or Sidewinder could only move forward at top speed. The package needed to be flexible. It needed to counter the jink, barrel roll, and flat plating of an enemy.

The "Boyd in a box" could calculate but it relied on an operator who could select which arc of trajectory to use. The Boyd in a box could only offer three or four arcs to the operator's helmet. It was up to the operator to select the one that worked the best.

E-Systems had created the black box called the Boyd in a box. It was a promising device with half a million dollars in Cray-designed computer chips. Cray had designed the chips for its famous supercomputers.

That meant the robots that Monahan at the Pentagon so clearly loved were only a small slice of the supercomputer pie. Monahan wanted supercomputers to direct entire battles.

James knew nothing of Monahan or "First Republic." James was learning to trust his equipment.

* * *

All eight of the one-armed men had been given 25 hours each in two-seat trainer aircraft. The "one-armed bandits," they called themselves. It was a joke as the coin-operated gambling machines in nearby Las Vegas used the same nickname.

Each implant-equipped missileer had a pilot assigned to him and that seemed to be a winning team. James was about to be surprised.

Harlow was flanked by a woman in combat-green battle dress. She was blonde and stocky. Her rank was a major and her demeanor was like her body, stout and outside of the Barbie-doll envelope.

She reached out her right hand and James felt obligated to reach out his in an obvious token of courtesy.

"James McGregor, Major." Her name on her uniform said "Kohl."

"My name is Barbara Kohl. I will be facilitating your training on the TF-16. I understand you're a Marine veteran."

"Mop-up after Desert Storm in '91. I got the security clearance because I could speak some Arabic and type. I play video games too. This is sort of a dream come true for me. I am just a civilian consultant. Let's hope it's a dream and not a nightmare."

"Call me Barb, or Major. We suit up at 0600. We need to catch the desert sun. It may be a fortuitous training experience. Targets of the day include the Middle East and the desert sun comes up early there."

"Are we going to war in Iraq again?"

"Israel is interested in the options opened by the Aurora program. They employ a strike force of mostly American equipment. They are an ideal test venue for this new technology. They fight the same bad guys that we do. You will need to get ready by five a.m. I hope you remember military etiquette, Corporal."

"You're the boss." He motioned his right hand to his mouth and said, "Brief me," in his best Marine Corps clipped English.

"Right on, soldier," she said with a laughing smile.

* * *

Barb Kohl took the instructor's seat in the TF-16; T for "trainer." She taxied out to the runway and checked in with the control tower. She knew this was a big thrill for James.

She applied thrust to the engine and let go of the brakes and was soon at 120 knots as the plane rolled down the runway.

They lifted off and climbed. James had the visor up. They traveled for 15 minutes and Barbara said, "Try the helmet now."

James lowered the visor and could see airspeed at 410 knots. A menu appeared with a list of target blips on his visor screen.

"It's working fine, Major."

"Then let's take it through some maneuvers. Time to show you what this baby can do," she said in her clipped voice.

She showed him climbs up in a loop upside down rectified by a quick roll taking them right side up again. She took James through flat plating and barrel rolls. She taught him how to jink and how to climb.

Then she told James to put the visor up and try some basic maneuvers. He took control of the stick in the student's role and did some basic turns. He asked her if he got it right.

"Fine so far, McGregor. You need to learn more aggressive technique. Try a little more oomph."

James did the same moves she had been teaching him but quicker and with more power. They worked. He was amazed at the 360 degrees of visibility in the cockpit. The heads-up display on his canopy glass showed him airspeed, G-force, fuel status, and altitude. Other numbers appeared that gave him no clue as to what they pertained to. He could split-S, jink, and barrel roll but he knew he was no fighter pilot. All he wanted to do was direct the package to its destination. Leave the flying to somebody like Barb.

The view was beautiful. He could see Las Vegas on the horizon and the base with its runways in between him and the city.

"Put your visor into gear and do some practice deployments of your weapon."

"Aye-aye, Major." He pulled the visor down and saw his fictional target, just like a video game. Just like she said, the target came into view and he selected, from three arcs, the best one. He shot down three targets and lost another.

Barbara guided the TF-16 into a climb up to a flight of four F-15s cruising above them.

"Pick one out and see if you can get missile lock on it. You won't disturb them. This is all just in a demonstrator upgrade mode," she said.

James picked out the lead aircraft in the formation and his visor gave him five trajectories to choose from. He selected the easiest and launched his fictional weapon.

When the visor showed his weapon streak forward to the F-15, the screen followed the arc and he heard a soft bell sound as the weapon hit the target.

"We should do this more. We are spending forty thousand dollars an hour getting you people up to speed so we should be economical. Do it again," she said.

They spent five hours moving fast and shooting down fictional adversaries.

By the time it was done, James had a much greater respect for what the pilots did in their jobs.

By three in the afternoon, they finished up and headed back to the base. James thought, Nine hours of flying time times $40,000; $360,000 they spent in one day. He was starting to think his $135,000 for the implant was chump change.

He later found out the program was an estimated $40 billion in research of the Aurora and the interface between the implant and the helmet. The costs boggled his mind.
CHAPTER NINE

Tanner and James trained for the next two months. It was April of 2016.

James was in Las Vegas when he got dual calls on his military pager and his cell phone. He was at the buffet at the Golden Nugget casino. He answered his phone.

"Mr. McGregor, you are ordered to return to Nellis immediately. Report to the drone training center. Can you comply?"

"Yes, it will take me twenty minutes to get to the base."

"You are needed ASAP."

"I'm on my way."

He ran to his car in the parking lot behind the casino and jumped in. The Honda Prelude he had bought purred into life as he drove down the strip to the highway exit and off to the base. He fumbled for his wallet with his identification card.

He slowed to a stop at the gate, presented the card to the guard, and was off to the drone center.

He was able to get from the casino to the base in 22 minutes. He parked and trotted to the building. He walked at a quick pace past the receptionist and down a hall to the training center for the crew.

As soon as he opened the door, he saw a full assortment of 25 or so men and women, all in uniform, hovering around eight terminals. Pilots were in place. Drone package specialists were in place. He saw the implant interfaces connected to their wireless harnesses.

There was a thrill of excitement and a tension as thick as a New York strip steak. You could cut it with a knife.

"James," said Tanner with a big smile. "We are going operational soon. We have some targets in Syria and we have clearance to test the weapons there. It's video game time."

"Does that mean we are going to Syria? How does this work?"

"It's all being done from here. We will soon have a B-52 hovering over North Syria with four weapons on its bomb racks. There are three active targets being tested by ISIS. They could launch at any time. The Islamic State has seven captured MiGs and CIA thinks they are going to deploy in the next few days against airliners. We are monitoring communications. They have at least one Russian fighter pilot on their team."

"Seven MiG-21s," said Barbara.

"But they have only been able to get three flying," said Tanner. "We are all going to be on-call for the next few days. Encrypted, intercepted communications lead us to believe they will launch soon. We have F-16s out of Turkey running backup in case the weapons do not neutralize the threat on the first wave. The B-52s can stay on station for thirty hours. They are being refueled by KC-135 as we speak. They will get relieved by fresh crews in from the island of Diego Garcia. It's a long hop but the whole force is energized and everything looks like it's a go."

James looked at Tanner with a big smile and jokingly said with a wave of his hand to his mouth, "Brief me."

* * *

For the next four days the jets of ISIS remained still. They came out in the afternoons and scooted around the airfield. Then they stopped.

They waited a day and on the morning of April 22nd, they made an appearance.

At dawn three MiG-21 aircraft embarked from Tabqa airfield. Three MiGs took off from a darkened runway to climb in tight formation to 20,000 feet altitude heading northeast. Deep into the air traffic lanes between Singapore and England.

747s coming in from Paris to India overnight were within 500 miles of the three MiGs.

Each MiG had two extra fuel tanks and an Atoll missile on each outboard pylon.

Notoriously short-ranged, the MiG-21 had come to fame in Vietnam as the bane of the Phantoms and Thunderchiefs flying out of South Vietnam to targets like Hanoi and Haiphong Harbor.

Back at Nellis AFB, the mood was tight. It was afternoon when four pilots and four missileers approached their workstations. Each had four video screens—two large screens, one on top of the other, a foot-and-a-half square, with two smaller screens nine inches square in a side-by-side formation. The top screen read thermal signatures of the MiG afterburners glowing in the dark cold of the desert in spring.

The B-52 was a hundred miles to the south. The order was given to deploy all four of the mothership's Aurora vehicles.

Each Aurora peeled off from the bomb racks of the huge bomber. Soon they were in formation and opened up their afterburners and climbed in speed up to 1,000 knots in supercruise mode. The distance decreased from 100 miles to 70, then 50, then 30, then 10.

Overhead a Global Hawk RQ-4 monitored the position of the three jets. Closer and closer the Global Hawk's seven blips on thermal sensors crept toward each other. The Global Hawk was the Air Force version of the Triton long-winged drone surveillance aircraft.

At ten miles out Tanner's pilot, Teagarden, told the other two active shooters to close and ready themselves. The dogfight was about to begin.

At 2,000 feet behind the MiGs, Teagarden ordered the group to turn on missile lock radar.

Instantly Sergeiovich and Hafez and Faisal knew the radar had been turned on and was gunning for them. In the high altitude dawn the three jets dove for the deck and kicked in their afterburners. They dove at close to Mach 2 but the four Auroras kept up, copying every move and dodge.

As the MiGs got closer to the ground, Sergeiovich ordered Hafez and Faisal to split up, stay close to the ground, and evade missiles.

The Sidewinders would not work close to the ground. Sergeiovich was confident he had an American fighter jet on his tail and if he had the chance, he would shoot it down with his two Atoll missiles.

He got to within 200 feet of the desert floor and descended gradually to just 30 feet above the deck. Sand whipped up on the wake of his jet blast.

Teagarden closed to within a thousand feet in his remotely piloted Aurora. He told Tanner to ready himself.

Tanner clenched his teeth and grew excited but calm. He said to Teagarden, "I have the shot. Am I clear?"

"Clear," said Teagarden.

"Here goes, fox five," and the package shot out at the MiG, closing the thousand feet in two seconds. Rocketing forward, Tanner kept the MiG in his video screen.

The Aurora captured the scene in live video and the entire crowd in the Vegas base broke out in cheers.

The package had torn the back third of the MiG off in a second.

Sergeiovich never had a chance to eject. The MiG's forward fuselage and wings tumbled to pieces on the desert floor.

Jackson and Rodriguez tracked the other two MiGs from their pilots' stations. Jackson's MiG deployed air brakes but Jackson was quick to deploy split-flap air brakes and held the Aurora on the MiG piloted by Hafez.

Jackson's missileer said, "I have missile lock."

"Take him out," Jackson said and in an instant, the direct brain connection of the missileer sent an explosive package of 70 pounds toward the MiG. The blast erupted in flame and debris. Hafez ejected and the Aurora sped past the descending parachute.

Faisal made an arcing turn to the right, cruising at 950 knots at full afterburner. The flat of the wings was perpendicular to the deck as an Aurora closed in hot pursuit.

Rodriguez called out to his missileer, Waltham, and said, "Got a lock yet?"

"Almost got him. He has to level out soon. I think he's headed back to his base. He thinks we are Sidewinders. He's trying to confuse our radar with the ground. As soon as he levels out, I've got him."

Just as predicted, Faisal leveled out at 20 feet over the deck, screaming forward at full afterburner.

"I've got lock. Can I—"

Rodriguez said, "Take him out. Now!"

Waltham fired his package at Faisal's MiG. Instantly the jet fighter exploded into fragments no bigger than a wheelbarrow. The body of the late Faisal was shredded into scraps.

The ground crew at Nellis erupted into cheers.

The remaining Auroras headed off to a landing at a NATO base in Turkey.

There was a mop-up to do. There was debriefing but there was also relief and joy. They got the bad guys and the operational success of the Aurora had been a certified triumph.

The officers club would welcome James and Barbara and all the civilian contractors. It was going to be a hell of a party.

James sat back, amazed. He had never seen a video game come close to this.

There was no telling who would claim victory for all. The presidential debates would go on but pilots had won the day on time, on budget, and the bad guys were out of business.

* * *

Tanner saw James off to the airport outside of Las Vegas. "You know you can write your own ticket with this, Mr. Guinea Pig."

"It's been great to be involved in all of this. I think I will get that nursing degree. I will see you at the aviation medicine Alamo." They hugged and slapped backs.

"Good luck, kid," said Tanner. "I have a wife and three girls coming to the awards dinner. Gotta go." Tanner walked off to the arrivals section of the terminal, looking for his jet-setting family.
AFTERWORD

"So, Sean, what the fuck do you mean by a day-long step five?" asked James. He looked at his friend and saw a flicker of joy cross his face.

"A day-long step five is an essential move in a real tangible recovery. Look at it like you would a Catholic's confession," said Sean. "You cannot confess your sins and shortcomings in a half an hour. These things have built up in a lifetime."

"So you mean every slight or disrespect from kindergarten to the modern day? That could take a while," said James. "But I am getting mixed messages from these steps. I am not big on miracles," said James.

"Then perhaps you need a miracle in your life," said Sean. "Think of it as an exercise in faith. How long has it been since you last prayed?"

"Try never," said James.

"Well then, you can start with a clean slate," said Sean.

"Well, if that's the way you want to put it, then great, but it's my life, I live it for real. You look at these people as guinea pigs to condition," said James.

"They aren't guinea pigs. We call them clients but that doesn't cover the human connection. Some are unpleasant but all are needy. Sometimes they say things you don't want to hear but they all need to be heard," said Sean.

James looked at his old friend, a friend he partied with in high school and went to school with for ten grades. Sean had strands of gray in his hair over the ears. A few crow's-feet wrinkles framed his eyes. He looked at the coffee cups on the table in the Starbucks coffee shop where they had agreed to meet.

Sean leaned forward and cupped his chin in his palm. "Learning to empty the mind of all of its clutter is essential. We struggle for a fullness in the Western mindset. My path is one of removing the excess. I seek to simplify in a complex world. I work, and in my job I deal with the clutter of packed lives. People in our modern era are pack-rats. New electronics give us the ability to store three hundred video games on a terabyte computer drive. Who needs to play three hundred video games? I deal with people with hoarding disorders. Our society is drawn to psychological pack-ratting. We buy products today and shelve them as soon as we acquire them. Like a fabulous library of books that never get read, we lose our quest for meaning as soon as we buy whatever it is we are looking for. And when we are done, we go out looking for more."

James looked out at the brilliant pinks and blues of a textbook spring sunset in Minneapolis. Through the window of the coffee shop, the cars were caught in the bright sun and long shadows of the day's end. He thought about the lumber and televisions in his apartment and mused for a moment. He knew he was a hoarder. The only question to be asked was whether or not it was a disease.

"The most important steps are step one, where we hope to get an addict to surrender to God all of his or her addictions and ask for help in quitting drugs and alcohol." Sean looked at his friend as a spiritual seeker and continued, "Then comes things like doing an inventory of all your assets and detriments. Doing a step-five confessional is essential and I recommend doing a full version that covers a few hours. To do it fully you need a few days with your confessor. A sponsor or priest work well. I know you aren't big on religion. I recommend Buddhism or other Eastern philosophies in conjunction with your own versions of faith."

James paused a moment and said, "I can live with Buddhism. It's strong on meditation and balance. I just don't know if I am up for the task. I feel the need to give up the marijuana. Ironic that now that it's becoming legal, I find myself drying out. I want to become a nurse. I want to be able to write about the issues of psychiatry and chemical dependency. It would help if I was sober myself."

"What do you really want out of life? I hear you talk about career and sobriety. Where are you at with family and lovers?"

"I have a girlfriend. Sobriety is always there. I seem to have found myself a part-time job as a medical guinea pig. I wouldn't call it a career but they helped me get my VA benefits. I can now, finally, go to school. My part-time job gives me a connection to the aviation community. It's connected to the guinea pig job. They finally explained it all to me but I can't talk about it much. I got my security clearance back and a part-time job doing research for the aerospace community."

Sean looked surprised. "What the hell have you gotten yourself into, Jimmy-boy? Are they going to strap you to a bomb and call you a guidance system?"

"It's not too far from that but the retirement plan is better than you might think. I have seen the Syntheris work at what it's designed to do. It's a cruel world we live in and there are military applications."

"Military applications for a mood stabilizer?" inquired Sean.

"It's a neuro anti-rejection drug. They use it in conjunction with brain implants. I can't go into details but I can tell you it works, after a fashion," said James. "But that's not for me. I am just a consultant. I don't like the idea of getting acupuncture of the brain. That's what they use it for."

"Sounds like science fiction. Are they still running you through video games?" said Sean.

"We are beyond that stage, thank God," said James. "I ran into Patty a while ago at an NA meeting. She seemed well. Two kids and a husband. That means my ambitions there are done."

"How do you feel about that?" inquired Sean.

"I have mixed feelings about the whole surrender issue. The state has insisted that we all surrender. I just got done helping the USA to not surrender. I feel I did the right thing. Now with pot going legal, it seems we won the war. It boils down to who do you surrender to? I can kick the drugs and even kick the state and go it on my own. But I am getting old and I have needs. I am not the fighter I once was. In my old days I could go to war with the state. These new kids don't know anything about Nicaragua or even Vietnam. They just know about Bush and the Arabic wars in the Middle East. It looks to be another clusterfuck. I am a Marine and an anarchist. Those are divergent masters to serve. They go opposite ways. I now get paid as a form of drone pilot instructor tasked with destroying ISIS. I have a job now. My students will drop laser-guided bombs on trucks loaded with two ISIS troops and a Syrian family of five human shields."

"Sounds exasperating and morally questionable. War is ugly. But I think you'll get it sorted out soon. ISIS is an evil. Killing off evil-doers never goes out of style."

"But what happens when this technology comes back to us and gets used against the poor by the rich?"

"That, Jimmy, is the nature of war. Be comforted that you will never get confused with an ISIS supporter. They all get a world of hurt from Uncle Sam. You get secret commendations from generals and privates alike. You have saved lives, if I am guessing right at your covert job. You can do a step five with me and I won't ever tell your anarchist friends about it. Won't tell the government either." Sean smiled and played with his gloves for a moment. "Up for a meeting in the church basement?"

"Yeah. Stop by the gas station so I can pick up a pack of smokes," said James.

"It wouldn't be an NA meeting without a pack of smokes. Choose your addictions well, grasshopper," said Sean.

"This whole thing was based on one fighter pilot who bucked the system and fought for jets that could fight and dance through the skies without relying on fancy toys like foolproof missiles and pushbutton warfare. He would be appalled at what his work had come to. Now it's just another arena of old men giving orders to younger men to die on command. Sure, our men won't get snuffed out that way but the last thing I heard on my way out the door was those old men asking if this new weapon could have a cruise missile nuclear version. They are making those decisions as we speak."

"It's out of your hands, James. Your step five may need a security clearance to hear but you have a cup of coffee and a new pack of smokes. Tell me your step five. I am all ears."

* * *

President Obama approached the podium. He glanced at the White House press corps and recited from memory.

"Today all of the world can celebrate a significant and substantial victory in the battle against terror as the United States Air Force has successfully deployed the experimental Aurora program in Syria against ISIL forces headquartered at the former Syrian Air Force base at Tabqa.

"Three aircraft launched by ISIL in a plot to destroy airliners in the skies above the Middle East have been thwarted and destroyed in a test of the new Air Force drone program code-named the 'Aurora Project.' Although this new weapons program has remained classified, and many of its workings remain so, our country and our global community owes a debt of gratitude to the men and women of the Air Force and the many scientists and technicians of this covert aviation program.

"Our nation is safer and..."

* * *

James demoted himself to just be the reserves. He conceded he could be helpful but it was a thing that came to him in small doses.

His friend Edgar Fong could teach advanced gaming and math to the new breed of Air Force drone gamers.

Sean wouldn't have believed him so he learned to keep his mouth shut. It was a strange discipline but it was necessary.

He returned to Minneapolis with a notable bank account and a reserve status that did not require a haircut and a uniform.

* * *

Tanner got his Congressional Medal of Honor. Plus disability. Plus the cash gotten for renting out his mind as the ultimate military proving ground

He would go on to teach to other people with amputations.

He won the medal for the grenade incident, but quietly it was known his combat against ISIS was a factor that expedited things.

* * *

James went to NA meetings geared toward nurses, anesthesiologists, and doctors. He had enough money that he could go to school.

He got lieutenant's pay full time but only clocked in the hours of a reservist.

Two months later he got his first disability check from the VA. It was a back pay check for $72,000.

James pursued a career as a nurse. Now that he had his college money, there was no stopping him.

He moved out of the Towers called the "crack stacks" and into an apartment that had off-street parking.

He wrote science fiction and sent Sean blog notes.

On May 22nd James' father died of a bad reaction to the oxaliplatin chemotherapy drug. He had interstitial lung disease which was intensified and exacerbated by the oxaliplatin.

Cathleen graduated from the University of Minnesota. She moved in with James.

James taught air combat gaming for the Air Force. He studied Boyd and weapons technology.

He strategically found ways to ignore technologies he did not like. Land mines, nuclear weapons, and chemical or biological warfare disinterested him.

But counterterrorism was good.

Lieutenant Sergeiovich was killed. Faissal died. Hafez was rescued by ISIS troops but died in a firefight on his way back to ISIS-controlled safe areas. The convoy that rescued him was bombed by a French jet.

James wrote science fiction about computers that came alive and took over the military and enslaved the world.

He and Cathleen had three children and got married when the oldest offspring was in second grade and got tired of people calling him a bastard.

For James it was always a balance of a little conformity and a little freedom. It worked for him so he was happy.

* * *

James lit a cigarette outside of the church basement where the Narcotics Anonymous meeting was about to start. He inhaled deeply and exhaled slowly. Sean was there and some other friends were also present.

Sean said with a smile, "I am glad you got your VA disability. Nice to know you can afford school."

"I have enough pennies saved up. I can do just about anything I set my mind to. All is well, Sean. All is well."

THE END
FROM THE VAULT

Four Short Stories

by

William Strawn Douglas
IMMORTALITY CLASS

"How did your immortality class go?" she said.

"Well, I have an assignment from class. I have to choose someone from history who became immortal through fame to a point and degree whereby we still talk about that person."

"Great," she replied, deep-brown eyes raising from the cup of cappuccino to meet his blue irises. "You could go with Hatshepsut, the great female pharaoh of ancient Egypt." His eyes drifted out the window in focus as cars and buses drove by, leaving clouds of smoke and condensation on the cold December day. It was only ten in the morning. She had eaten an omelet in the café and was now working on coffee. He had sat down only momentarily, gone to the cashier and gotten a cup of coffee, added cream and sat down in front of Nancy.

"I don't need to turn every assignment into a feminist statement," George replied.

"It wasn't politics I was thinking about, it's just she was the first woman of power to come around since the Venus of Willendorf was carved by Joe Caveman in twelve thousand B.C. She was fat while Hatshepsut was skinny. You like slim women. No?"

"Yes, I like skinny women. I am guilty of promoting anorexia and Karen Carpenter's demise from that disease." He slid his leather backpack onto the floor below the table opposite from Nancy. "I must debunk Jesus to achieve satisfaction in class."

"Why Jesus?"

"He is the Everest, the Moon, the Marianas Trench. The top challenge on or around planet Earth."

"But why not Crick and Watson and the race for the double helix of DNA?"

"They are fun," he continued, "but with Jesus you have a person claiming to be an emissary of God. He achieved immortality through writing of a kind of software for the computer of the human mind. When people put their lives into devotion to Jesus, they quit drinking, cussing, and sleeping around in a world racked by substance abuse and AIDS. Jesus used the immortal aspect of papyrus and skins to activate the papyrus hard drive. Once his life was invested into that recording, then people hundreds or thousands of years later could read about the bounty of a fisherman's catch, or from the Old Testament you could learn how it is an abomination to lie with a sheep. All of this is on the permanent record. Eighty percent of the population of the USA claims to be involved in the product of that great software engineer. His followers give up their vices, turn over new leaves, and live righteous and honorable lives. With that external memory device in action, this Jesus had an audience to include the multitudes yet to be born. His words transcended time. That's how that technology worked. The era of written script. It became an immortality device."

"I still like Hatshepsut better."

"You would." He tossed light-brown hair out from his eyes and sipped his coffee. "I have lots of research and writing to do. I have to get some accurate DNA stats and pull an article on folded proteins."

"Why the DNA?"

"The DNA has some effect on the God belief systems. Some would say that we are pre-programmed to worship whatever we fear or don't understand. As for Jesus, it may be either righteous fraud or defrauding the righteous. Maybe even both. The DNA stats will confirm the existence of something beyond mere luck at the assembling of DNA chains. It works too well to be just accidental mutation for evolution to get the high sign. With lotteries, every time you play, you eventually get a winner. It may be astronomical odds but someone wins. With the human mind we have five thousand years of papyrus-hard-drive-enhanced consciousness to draw upon. Nature has had five billion years to form earth and try its DNA magic on us all. With the papyrus in place we have just begun to scratch the surface. A ratio of five thousand to five billion."

"Your papyrus hard drive will be a good angle to argue. I haven't taken that class but the Old Testament is really the first collection of folk tales from the early Bronze Age. Those stories were the entertainment and morality plays of that very uneducated era. The split of Israel and Judea is key to most biblical scholars. They point to four authors of the oldest of the books. You choose your words differently when you know you have an audience, let alone an audience of millions for two thousand years plus. That puts a lot of punch into the technology of script. Books like that can make or break kingdoms, societies, cultures."

He pondered her words for a moment. He reached into his wallet and withdrew a bill and held it up to her. "Here is written script on a papyrus that is so evolved that we actually value it as credit. People will steal it, forge it, banks in foreign nations will stockpile tons of it. This is the ultimate expression of papyrus and written script."

"I have to cover a hafnium X-ray reactor before lunch. Escort me if you will, my beamish boy, to the repository of all things printed. Can your brain handle being in the library?" she said.

"But of course. Shall we go? Let us go forth and author great stories for the world to contemplate."

"Lemme pay up. I'll meet you outside," she said as she shouldered her purse strap and folded her long blue wool coat over her arm. She paid her five-dollar bill and some change to the cashier. She had left a one as a tip on the table. He walked outside into the bracing winter air. He withdrew a cigarette and lit it. She came out of the café as he was drawing the first breath of smoke into his lungs. "Do you have oral argument or is it a paper?"

"Both. Some oral discussion and about an essay's worth of written material. There's so much to choose from. I plan on using TV BC and Christ's automatic pilot principle. TV BC's principle is TV before Christ. It's the name of a punk band. Written scriptural stories like the books of Ruth and Ezekiel are the lasting remnants of humankind's first morality stories. These are the first fledgling efforts at entertainment. This is how time was passed, morals disseminated and taught. The technology of this is symbols. Little Hebrew or Roman letters on scrolls. These symbols were external memory. The king no longer had to count chickens. He had someone do it and write down how many chickens got counted. You could write down a memory and recall it a hundred years later. That external memory is the papyrus hard drive effect. This man who filled the empty glove of messianic destiny with himself was totally conscious of the fact that his adventures were being recorded. That's what I believe was his motivation to do what he did. What is written is software. To achieve the written he had to risk the health of the hardware, much to his own demise. Nonetheless, the software did work and we got a world inspired forever by one man's attempt to create an automatic pilot system for the collective computer mind of the human race."

She walked with him through the crosswalks and through the parking lot. "But you'll be making enemies with eighty percent of the nation. That's how many associate themselves with Christianity."

"I'm not disagreeing with them per se. My gig is that the whole passion of Christ was steeped in reality. I just don't support the miraculous aspect. The man was very brave and I can see method to his madness. He tossed a ball into orbit. I think we should catch that ball. We should write some new software for the human computer." They approached the library and went inside, cigarette being discarded by George as breath went from steam to invisibility indoors. Such was the norm on the West Bank campus of the University of Minnesota in early December.

"We have learned to use symbols to convey information on scrolls of paper, papyrus, skins, and hides. The knowledge of ages is written on the books in this library. This building is the software of the human race. Christ was a software engineer. If we see him as altruistic, can we emulate that altruism and all of his 'be nice, righteous, and honorable' software, can we add to it in a positive way?"

"I've gotta do some research. When is your assignment due?"

"Next week. Tuesday the eighth. I feel like Galileo telling the pope the sun doesn't go around the earth. I will be in the smokers' study hall. If you finish your research, you can find me there." He proceeded down the stairs to the basement tunnels to the study hall. He took off his coat and his backpack and sat down and settled into a writing mood. He began to write.

Six days went by until he was reciting the words he wrote that morning. They sounded like this:

"When we talk about immortality, we end up talking about our timeless religious heroes, should they be Moses, Jesus, Mohamed, or Buddha. We always refer to the people who have already achieved immortality in our historical understanding of that concept.

"Here in Lutheran Minnesota USA, we hear sermons in church and the circular logic of god being the word and the word was god. I put to you that evolution invented man, who in turn invented a word for god when he had evolved sufficiently that he could do such a thing. The god concept allowed man to evolve from a hunter-gatherer to one terrified by his world and barely capable of lumping his fears together into one universal fear: the ultimate taboo or great spirit, this god.

"After Og the caveman invented a word for god, his Neanderthal brain was able to first intellectualize an identity for all the mysteries of Og's world. Why does fire burn? Why does water quench fire and thirst? Where does the sun go at night? Og looked to the sun, and seeing something he didn't understand, he declared it god.

"When writing was invented, Og for the first time had memory storage capacity that was from outside his own mind. Using counting sticks or abacus, he would figure out how many sheep were in his herd. When writing was discovered, he could pen an idea, pass it on to his great-grandson who could read it after his death, and there was our immortality. Everything Og believed about god was probably wrong, but there is some kind of spirit that helps DNA evolve faster than mathematical chance says it would. A creative force may exist. That may be the same force that gives us dark matter and galaxies that accelerate away from the big bang.

"Was Jesus touched by a creative force? Quite possibly. His passion for altruism and the creation of a new religious faith was momentous and productive. What makes the Jesus software work is the book, the hardware, that his story is printed onto. The handwritten Bibles from the port city of Biblios were known for being different versions of the same tale. We have the actor being Jesus and the recording machine being the group of scribes such as Mathew, Mark, Luke, John, and others. He wouldn't have done the deed if the scribe was not recording it. He gave his life for that edition.

"Now things are different. We have his incomplete puzzle to put together. The ball that was thrown into orbit calls out to be caught and a new game invented. If some creative spirit exists that we owe the gift of our minds to, then that spirit would want us to use the gift of mind to separate us from the animal and pond scum. Now we have symbols and machines to read those symbols for us.

"Take a look at the magnetic strip on your ID card. A machine reads it and has your grade point average at willful call before you can even guess what's on its silicon memory. We are transitioning from paper or papyrus scrolls to digital disks. What will be the next big thing? If your faith is evolutionary math, then you can tell your fellow that someone will win the evolutionary puzzle. Your chances may be daunting but someone will win that lottery. In the same way you can expect a savior and he will arrive on time.

"The evolutionary math will win whether you call it god or not. The Internet has promise that nobody has yet seen. Every note printed contributes to the next level of critical mass being achieved. Just as the books of Ruth and Ezekiel are sacred, so one day will be my chemistry textbook and reruns of old TV shows. This is media. This is expression. This is art. This is humanity, good or bad. As we drift away from symbols, we dispense altruism without a cross or a star or a crescent. The old divides dissipate and new bonds begin."

A young woman in the classroom spoke at George. "Are you trying to achieve immortality through this assignment?"

"I am intrigued by the subject. I will post a note on a few points on the Internet dealing with the subject." George looked around the room in silence. "A bit over the top?"

"No, no, that's just fine, it goes with the territory, that's just fine," the instructor said.

"Let me give you all something concrete rather than all those questions being answered with other questions. Take a five-dollar bill out and hold it up to the light. You will see the magnetic thread to the left of the portrait, the watermark, the signatures. We are still in the era of data storage on papyrus. We are on the crest of a big change. When it hits us, things are going to be really different. The text that was written two millennia ago lent itself to the performance art of Jesus. The time will come when you will see a website address for the Treasury appear on a dollar bill. That and new forms of plastic money. With the way things are going, I predict a change in the weather and this change is coming soon."

THE END
GHOST STORY

The plum scarf she wore around her neck fluttered in the wind. She looked back to the golden rays of sunlight illuminating the runways of the spaceport. She reached into her leather purse of black hide and withdrew a clove cigarette. She lit it and it crackled.

Although Nikita Bowman was still young in years, she felt elderly in experience. Her trim, athletic body craved a bit of relaxation. She crouched and sat on the steps of the Collective Temple. The cigarette hissed. She drew smoke into her lungs and felt the mild anesthetic effect of the clove spice on her throat.

Her Caucasian skin and blue eyes confessed her Western European biases. She thought about what Tarkus had said. "Endeavor to Persevere" had been the message from Tarkus.

So many things had crossed her mind in the trance with the Collective and its mindset. Here was a being that could exist in 20 multiverses. Tarkus could bring anti-matter back from universes where all was in the antithesis of that which the people of Earth found sensible and logical. She did not find the bomb to be logical.

Tarkus knew what all that was but he wasn't talking much about it.

Nikita remembered it and the first day of her 72-hour coupling with Tarkus. She sucked in smoke from the clove cigarette and noted its sizzle.

She had just saved Andrews from the Morgoth.

* * *

Three days ago Nicky was wandering the streets of Suleman. This town was named after the Muslim version of the name Soloman.

The Temple was a stone cube. The facing wall on the street was one of green marble and stone.

Spaceships negotiated the runways of the dry lakebed.

The ships would kick up dust anytime they ran the circuit of airstrips going up or down. As Nicky looked at the horizon, she saw a small freighter going back up to the sky and the orbiting mother ships. The two tails and two wings, set at 60-degree angles, played a dazzling moment of reflection and veiled translucency. The bright reflection of the polished aluminum and the misty haze of dust created a carnival ride of mirrors and fog, all lit up in an amber glow of late afternoon under the white-hot sun.

* * *

She walked from the Kafir Hotel and out toward the square with its reflecting pool and mosque. The tall, white minarets and turquoise-green stripes around the entrance and the intricate patterns of mosaic tiles shining in a glittering array of precious stones told of an era when all shipping in the sector, headquartered in Medina Prime, had been located in the lobbies of this very mosque.

She chagrined the boys' club of old.

She found shipping out with spacers to be irresistible.

That was what had brought her here. What she risked now could ruin all of the deals she had labored to bring into being. Here was the cube and the cube was Suleman.

The cube was everything from the Mah-dee to the fifth coming of Jesus. Here was the ghost of the Collective.

You could get anti-matter from a ghost on a few occasions. They would not give it away for wars of dominance by big empires. They would give it to small groups interested in growth and corporate start-up.

You could not get it for assassinations or terrorism. Ghosts were not fond of politics, but that was essentially the politic that they chose. The ghosts relished the small.

The meek shall inherit the Earth, but only in sectors where the ghosts were here to enforce the supremacy of the meek.

The 24 columns of fluted Doric style were as Greek as Earth. Nicky's narrow face and sharp features were framed by her mane of dark-brown hair. She stood at the foot of the stairs of this green Parthenon and tried to envision what a ghost could want with her.

"Hey ya, Boss Bowman," cried a voice from across the street. It was Lucas Andrews, Bowman's engineer on board Merchant Stellar 262. He had spotted her on the threshold of the temple and its awesome potential. "Got any money ideas, boss? Yer the ringer there, lady. I know enough to sidestep your money ways, boss."

"Lucas! Good to see you. I had no idea you would be down here on the rock," she said.

"'Tain't my concern, boss, but you got the 'touch,' as we say in engineering. Takes a policy monger to squeeze gold out of a parsec of space. You got my vote, boss."

"Lucas, if you want my vote, you have it because I clearly have yours. I hope I can return the favor," she said.

Lucas got within whispering range, his blonde curls framing his pale skin and fleshy, rosy cheeks. "Are you gonna make a deal with them ghostie mongrels? They are a fickle lot, missy. You best watch yerself around that lot."

"I will, Lucas," she said.

She clenched the cigarette in her teeth and relit it, as it had gone out through disinterest. It spit sparks and billowed sweet smoke around the warnings of Mr. Andrews. "I have an appointment with the main ghost in there, Lucas. He won't let me down. You stay out of trouble, Andrews. I will mesh my mind with the one they call Tarkus in less than an hour."

"Good Lordies, Miss Bowman, sir. I'da not done such a thing. You got more cahones than I do, sir."

"Yes, Andrews, but I need men like you to run a fusion torch into the black hole, and I just cannot do it without good crew. If my brain survives Tarkus, then we can make more money together."

Andrews rolled his golden eyes and said, "Four square, on the even, boss. Good luck, missy." He reached into his back pocket and withdrew a blue bottle, and stretched his hand out to Bowman, offering the beverage to her. "Rigelian ale, boss. It'll give you more spirit. Not saying you don't got that. You got plenty, but it's not a bad idea to sharpen the spear before you throw it. It's got ferrin seed oil in it. That will perk yer spirits some, boss."

She reached out and took the 20-ounce blue bottle from Andrews, and opened it with a quick twist. She sipped its spicy flavor and took in a swallow. "Good stuff, Andrews. Have a seat and tell me what you want me to say to Tarkus."

Andrews swung up to her step and spoke. He sat next to her and said in a low voice, "Get us the golden run that pays off the ship and crew. The golden run is out there, missy. A fine space of anti-matter and fire gems. I know a woman who can rock your world for five grams of thermo fluorescent fire gems. God bless her soul, but I love her for true. Get me that woman, and I'll quit spacing."

Bowman shook her hair for a moment and said to Andrews, "If I did that, Andrews, I would have to find a new engineer. Perhaps I like you enough to want to keep you jumping from rock to rock in the depths of space. Answer me those questions before you wish me good Joss and a profitable run."

Andrews and Bowman kept chattering in small talk for another half-an-hour until Bowman stood and said, "Time for me to go, Lucas. I have to start the process of getting this all going. There are two gates in this cube. A bit like an airlock it is. It takes about thirty minutes to get inside to the main room of the temple."

"Lordy have mercy, lady. That's a lot of trust in there."

"You can watch me sing the door open, but when I go inside, you have to wait out here. I will be inside of the cube for about three days." She stood and walked up the stairs to a vault-style door of circular design. She began to sing in low, almost monastic tones. Be they Gregorian chants or Buddhist droning low tones, they all came out in a language that Andrews could not understand. After five minutes of this went by, the door began to hiss and open. It popped open slowly.

When it was done the vault looked dark, and a mist exited the room inside.

Andrews thrust his hand into hers and shook it. "Good-bye, lady true. Good luck, missy sir."

"Take care, Andrews. I gotta run." She stepped over the threshold and into the dark.

* * *

As the door behind her closed, she centered her thoughts on Tarkus. On previous occasions he had taken the shape of her father, Admiral Proctor Hargraves Bowman. Just a two-star admiral, but quite influential. The admiral had gotten her the first taste of stellar travel about 13 years ago. Now she was 28 years old.

Tarkus could take any form he wanted to. She breathed deep and waited for the second door to open. As the door behind her closed and sealed shut, she watched in total darkness as the inner door began to crack its seals.

Slowly the rim of the circular door illuminated the room Nikita was in. She stepped through the door, and there was a ghostly dog, huge in size, and possessing three heads. One head was her father, and another was the trader baron Artemis, while last of all was a vision of herself.

Slowly these three heads and dog body dissolved into mist, and her father was left standing in front of her. His peaked cap was covered in high-contrast gold braid with a black wool background.

"So, Tarkus, what gives with you projecting me my father? I haven't seen him in over three years. He sent me a hologram about a year ago. You look like that picture," she said.

"That is why I have used your hologram. It is a memory that will open your mind faster and better than any other key I could devise." The ghostly vision of her father in foggy mist lingered and began to dissolve into a mosaic of lines and shapes of mathematically determined, artistically elegant forms. The cloud turned into a large head of an African black man with dreadlocks. It was the trader Artemis. It spoke to her. "The real question I have for you is what do you think I can do for you? You may be deluded. I cannot fulfill every request," it said. "Lend your mind to dissent. Jah rule over us all. We got to fulfill the books."

"Relax, Tarkus. Most of what I desire is only to better myself and search your memory for ideas on how to make money. I have a hobby of taking spacer kids back to Earth for education so they can have a chance to be voters. I have a voters' plot in America and my father has one in France, if you can still call those two by their old nation names."

Tarkus began to metamorphose into being a mirror image of Nicky herself. "So how do you like me now? My speak is your speak. I could program you to do my bidding, and you would have no memory of having served my purposes. Remember that! I do not carry on lightly. You will help my people, and you will be blessed with the memory of it all.

"Now you will know of all this coming to be, coming together. I want you to do something for me. I want you to plant a bomb for me on a ship that will depart in several days." Tarkus dissolved into mist again and surrounded her in a fog of opal colors and glowing flashes, like lightning inside of a cloud.

Slowly she moved to sit down on the green stone. She moved then to lie flat on the cool rock.

Here Tarkus began to move in her mind. He released dopamine and serotonin. The pituitary and pineal glands began to swamp her brain with chemicals of both natural formulas, and some completely created outside of the realm of the human.

For three days Tarkus held her close, and fed and pruned her mind as a farmer might tend crops in the field. As a doctor might treat a patient, the ghost Tarkus manipulated Nicky's brain chemistry until her body was halted in physical age of a 20-year-old human female. She would look young for the rest of her life, and if she kept readjusting her aging, she could live well into a second century.

After poetry and encyclopedias were all implanted into Nicky's mind, she was revived with the vigor and rest of someone who had just slept for three days.

As she awoke she could see the door was open, and Tarkus was nowhere to be found.

There was a box at her feet. It was small. Red in color and shiny in texture, it was the bomb that Tarkus had asked her to plant for him. She had misgivings for sure, but curiosity got the better of her.

She had never thought of her identity as an assassin. She felt compelled to carry out Tarkus' mission. It called to her like an old lover or a wine on a dry day. She picked up the box and put it into her leather satchel.

She left the temple by the same two doors she used to get inside of the cube.

* * *

She walked down dusty streets to the spaceport at the edge of the dry lakebed.

She reached into her satchel and fingered the box. As soon as she got to the main gate, she felt a presence she perceived as something similar to Tarkus. She could feel things. The presence from the box moved her to a Morgoth fleet raider ship. It had obviously been demilitarized. It still had the slab-sided angular features of a war bird. The gun turrets had all been replaced with view plates.

She felt compelled to walk up to its landing gear struts. Her hand went into her satchel and withdrew the red box. It quivered and shook with vibration. She reached up and placed the box on the inside of one of the landing gear doors. It stayed attached as if magnetic.

As she was walking away from the black, sleek lines of the fleet raider, she spied a man coming to her.

It was Andrews.

He hailed her and said to her, "Look at this thing, boss. This rig is a hundred years old if it's a day. I got a free ride on this one! They want me as engineer for a quick run out to Mandilor and back. Just three days. I'll be gone and back quick as a bug in season spring. Ya should come with, boss. I'll bet you never saw Mandilor ever. Finest kind of people there too," said Andrews.

She approached him and reached out her hand to grab his in a handshake.

When she gripped him she felt a bit of electricity run from her mind to his. It was as if all the charge built up from her stay at the temple let itself go into her palm as she gripped the hand of the engineer. It was a ghostly grip.

He jumped for a moment and pulled his hand back and looked at his palm. "Damn, boss. You gotta helluva grip there, missy lady," he said.

"Now that I think about it, I don't really need to see Mandilor for a while. I think I'll just tuck it in at the Kafir and get some shut-eye."

She said, "I am giving you an order, Andrews. On ground I'm not your boss, but I think it's in your best interests if you come with me." She said to him, "We need you too dearly on the 2-6-2. I will walk you to the hotel. Perhaps we can get a meal together."

"That'll be great, boss. Now that I got time to think about it, my lady with the fire gems is a better use of my down time. You got a touch though, boss. Just seeing you gets me thinking of what's best about this rock. Ya gets me thinking, ya do. Maybe it's that ghostie touch you got but I like it here for a while.

After Bowman and Andrews got to the Kafir Hotel, they retired to the bar and had some blue ales. The inside of the drinking parlor was opulent and upholstered with wine-colored red leather heavily padding the walls and doors. The cool air was a nice respite from the heat of the sunny day.

As they looked out of the window to the spaceport, they saw a small mushroom cloud rise up from the flight line.

Andrews was transfixed by the sight of the shattered ship.

Nicky thought of Tarkus, and the mission to place the bomb. It was kind of her ghost to give her just enough ESP to save Andrews. She looked at her right palm and remembered how she changed Andrews' mind with just a spark of Tarkus' energy. She looked at Andrews and said, "Two more Rigelian Ales, Luke. That's what we need now."

"Yeah, boss, what we need now is to drink and catch the news."

"We can drink to the ghosts, and to ourselves," she said as the sun began to set. The orange sun blazed and cooked until it disappeared below the horizon.

"What I can tell you, Luke, is that Tarkus wanted me to get you out of that Morgoth war bird. The junk that used to be a fleet raider is now useless wreckage. Counterpoint that with the fact that you're still alive, and you will have a dose of that ghost energy in you always. It will help you get a feel for things without leaving you as blind as most humans. The slave trade is something even Tarkus hates."

"What cha got up yer sleeve, missy girl? You know more than yer sayin," he said.

"It's nothing a couple Rigelian Ales won't cure. The Morgoth was being fitted out as a slaver. They were fitting out a hundred G-suit harnesses in the cargo bay. They might even have had their sights on you," she said as she looked out the window at a cloud of dust drifting away from the flight line. It had been a zero casualty day with the loss of an old spaceship. Perhaps that was the definition of a good day for Tarkus. That ghost had a knack for helping out the meek. So thought Nikita Bowman on that hot evening.

"Too much Tarkus today, Andrews. Today we drink more ales," she said.

"Cheers," he said, and they clinked glasses and drank. The screen behind the bar bottles sprang from a romantic opera to the breaking news from the flight line as policemen held up the harnesses from the palette cubes in front of the news cameras. "I owe you one, missy. That's for sure."

"We both owe one to the ghost of the moment. He set up this whole deal. He even got you that job on the Morgoth. He is a crafty old devil, he is." She rolled her eyes and said, "That old devil. He knew it all along." She laughed for a moment and sipped her ale.

THE END
THE PIÑATA

_New York City, October 5, 2123:_

Lawrence tilted back his tan fedora hat and looked for an opening on the table where his friends were eating food off of their plastic trays. He found a spot between Kermit and Eddie.

"What's up, Kermit?" said Lawrence.

"Where ya been hiding, Larry?" said Kermit.

"I been researching stuff from the stacks. All that hundred-year-old off-wire data is a goldmine for any retailer as long as you know how to present it."

Kermit smiled and stifled a laugh. "Dust and decay is all you'll find in there. You're a hopeless romantic living in the twenty-first century."

"I need your opinion on something more important than that. I have been seriously thinking about sponsoring a clone."

"Are you crazy? They cost two hundred thousand credits and they rarely stay with their sponsors more than a couple of years. You would be better off spending your weekends in a sex shop if sex is what you want. You'd keep your costs down to a thousand credits a day if you did the weekender thing. Or are you having a perfectly Victorian moment and a quest for an untouched perfectly new human body to have your way with? Do you want to buy a human just to be man numero uno? You just want to be the first lover in a, dare I say it, truly virginal experience. That's really the only real benefit you get."

It was a Caucasian fellowship between Eddie, Larry, and Kermit. Eddie was cooling his six-foot-tall frame while Kermit, the younger by ten years, was interrogating Larry and inspecting him for mid-life dementia signs. The race card was a subtle play. Most of the clones were harvested as ovarian eggs bought from third-world women. They needed money and selling a few eggs was a quick ticket to a year or two's salary. That meant the Caucasian lunch circle of Kermit, Larry, Eddie, James, Ross, and Danny would be broken by a Thai, or East Indian, or Chinese woman being thrown in the mix.

"Yeah," said Eddie as he glanced at Kermit's return to devouring his meal. "You better do some more research before you leap into this."

* * *

Lawrence walked into the church through the west door from the parking lot. He left his car in the lot. He knew the Reverend to be down the east wing hallway. He walked on red carpet and dark oak woodwork walls to the secretary seated behind a desk, computer unfolded and docked. "I am here for my appointment with Reverend Green," he said to the secretary. She was a pretty, young woman, perhaps in her late twenties in age, and dressed in a dress of brown and tan earth tones. Her shoulders matched his hat in color.

The Reverend spotted Lawrence and smiled behind glasses and a balding pate, hair of gray. "Come in, Lawrence, we have something to talk about."

"Thanks for seeing me on such short notice. I am not making an impulse purchase. This isn't a pack of gum or a tabloid. It isn't even a car. This is a form of life."

"I am relieved you see it as such. Souls are my business. You're talking about bringing a new soul into this world. A soul that can live eternal in Christ. I assume this is a sister you intend to introduce to us?"

"Yes, Reverend, I still prefer the company of women in my recreation time."

"There are so very many things this can be and as well so many things it should not be," said the Reverend. "There is great potential to welcome a new soul into this congregation. Even if she's a ninety-day wonder."

"Then you have seen these creatures before? In your congregation?"

"Yes. We live with three created souls in our flock. Judy, Darla, and Karma. Good Christian women, mothers and active members of our group."

"Do they look Asian?" Lawrence asked.

"No, not at all, my son. The only part that is Asian is the genetic data recorded in the shell of the egg itself. They extract an ovarian human egg from a donor mother, then they denucleate it. All of the inside genetic material is removed. Perhaps ten percent of genetic data comes in through the egg's shell. Our sister Karma has blond hair, blue eyes, and a permanent suntan. Judy has jet-black oriental hair and the brightest blue eyes you ever saw. Darla is the essence of Iowa. The ninety-day wonder part comes in that the total gestation period from one cell to a nineteen-year-old female human all comes to fruition in ninety days. They go from zero to voting age in three short months. They get teaching implant data so they don't spend two years in diapers like ordinary children. They are novices. They have implanted knowledge but no experience using it. That's why it's called sponsorship. You raise your clone. You teach her. You help her. You can be charged with a crime if you don't pay attention to her needs. Expect to spend the first three months in close contact. You may want to take a leave of absence from work so you can be with this new sister."

"Thanks for the heads-up, Reverend. I will be back for more talking soon. I am on my way to the Lotus Flower Office right now."

"You're a good man, Lawrence. You can make something like this work well." He paused a moment and spoke. "I once delivered an Easter sermon on how God changed the lives of the women in Christ's life. Mary Magdalene, Mary, mother of James, and Salome came to the tomb and the stone was moved out of the doorway. They had brought spices to anoint the Lord Jesus and God had other plans for them. Perhaps the Lord has plans for you, Lawrence."

"I'll be back when this is all over. Then we can figure out whether we are blessed or cursed."

* * *

Lawrence walked into the high-rise office building and noted the directory table. White letters arranged in alphabetical order told of the contents of the building. Lotus Flower was the office he was looking for. 'Legendary Cruises' was followed by 'Lotus Flower.' Suite 403, it said.

Lawrence walked to the elevator and pressed the button for the fourth floor. After a moment of transit and stops, he walked out of the metal box and onto the fourth floor. 410 to 420 went to the left. 400 to 409 went to the right. He followed the suite numbers to 403 on the right. He turned the knob and was greeted by a statuesque blonde woman receptionist. "Would you be Mister Davies?" she asked.

"Yes, Lawrence Davies," he replied.

"This catalogue is yours." She handed him what appeared to be an ultra slim laptop computer. Each side was a quarter of an inch thick with a hinge on one side. "It's interactive, just fill out your preferences in the questionnaire section. It's electronically sorted data. A paper catalogue would weigh ten pounds. If you can remember page one-one-seventy-four, you'll find me. I was created six years ago. I am so popular over sixty copies of me have been made. Not all exactly the same but I do have my fans. I am Shawna. Your counselor will be with you shortly."

Lawrence sat in a plush chair and opened his catalogue. It was filled with people. Men, women, teenaged boys and girls, all seemingly available. All races, all hair and skin colors.

"Mister Davies," said the tallish white man in the charcoal-gray suit. "Come back to my office and we can talk about this."

Lawrence followed the man down the hall to his office and within were three chairs, a desk, a window, and a view screen on the desk.

"Jack Havens is the name, I work for Lotus Flower on credits and payments. I assume you are aware that we don't do this for free. Purchasing a perfect companion is a big step, like a home mortgage."

"I pull in about eighty thousand credits a year as a legal researcher for the university."

"Well, then I think I see that you should take this as seriously as your job. You can be charged with a neglect or abuse charge. These people may be created but they are still human. Take some time and look through the catalogue and fill out your questionnaire thoroughly. The onboard computer built into the catalogue will guide you to the sample DNA bullets that we have on file here at Lotus. We do require a nonrefundable ten-thousand-credit creation fee and then a sliding fee scale by age and success of the relationship. Your satisfaction is guaranteed, in writing and according to law."

"But I thought the cost was about two hundred thousand credits. This looks more like a mere fifty thousand credits," said Lawrence.

Havens replied, "There have been some changes in how we do things here. Some cost savings. Lowering of our laboratory overhead, etcetera. We also have a new European egg purchase program for an additional six thousand credits."

"I like some of the Asian traits. Still, I will look it over," said Lawrence.

"When you are check in hand and set to go, we begin the ninety-day clock. In three months you have a nineteen-year-old person of your choice in language and customs memory implants and capable of holding down a self-supporting job. Your personal data goes into that memory implanting. They come out with a predisposition toward you in particular," said Havens.

"That's impressive," said Lawrence. "I'd like to see the contract. I'll give it a look and if it checks out, I'll be back with a check."

* * *

Lawrence, Kermit, and Eddie pored through the book, looking at all the potential selections. Kermit was partial toward Polynesian women while Eddie liked the statuesque blondes.

Lawrence settled on a small group of Icelandic pixies. He also found an additional fee option of "maximized autonomy/leadership." That sounded good.

Finally he made his mind up on the blue-eyed, almost black-haired brunette Icelander. He opened the contract with his thumb in the fingerprint scanner. He ordered the pixie named 'Marie Celeste 112.' He paid his ten-thousand-credit fee with his credit signature on the catalog's script pad.

Then something happened that he didn't expect. The catalog didn't register the payment. He looked at the screen and all it said was "Please contact Jack Havens for a personal conference."

He wondered if his request was being taken seriously. Kermit and Eddie said it looked like trouble. Lawrence left them and caught a cab uptown to the high-rise office building of Lotus Flower Offices. After paying the cabbie, catalog clutched in his arm, he entered the building and quickly went through the lobby, the elevators, and up to the Lotus Flower suite.

Suite 403 was just ahead. He paused a moment and composed himself. He leaned forward, opened the door, and saw Jack Havens and the receptionist looking at a catalog just like his, or so it seemed. "Mister Davies, how good of you to come so soon. Can you come with me into my office? I have some good news for you."

Lawrence didn't believe him. How could getting his fee rejected be good? He followed Jack into a hall and into an office. Lawrence sat in a green upholstered chair and Jack took the place behind the desk.

"What's this about? Why was my payment judged unacceptable?"

"You just won a betrothal lottery. All your expenses have been paid in advance. It's what we in the business call a 'dowry.' The original tissue donor put specific requirements on the use of her 'pound of flesh,' as we call it. You went for the leadership option on Marie Celeste 112. That combination guarantees you and your recipient of sponsorship a fortune valued at about twenty-seven million credits. There are taxes, of course, and insurance policies and such. You're a very lucky man. Just sign the papers and you and your companion can start living a very luxurious special life together." Lawrence inked the contracts and watched his credit card upload a credit limit of a million credits. After Jack congratulated him, he took a deep breath and said, "I think I'd like to get some fresh air." He strolled out of the suite, the elevators, and finally out onto the street.

He walked past an automobile dealership. Turbine cars powered by propane went really fast. He walked into the dealership and asked about a smaller four-door model set up as a touring sports car. Four hundred horsepower and all-wheel drive. Automatic pilot and computer-linked communication. He could take the office with him. At last now he could afford to park, drive, and fuel up such a monster.

He bought it and drove home.

Unknown to him, the receptionist at Lotus Flower picked up the phone and dialed in a number. A woman answered, "Yes, Mary speaking."

"We've got a piñata," said the statuesque blonde receptionist.

* * *

Mary Case looked over the boardroom table at Tracy and Faye. Joyce joined the three and Carmen came in late for a total of five.

"We may be able to put a stay on this Davies fellow from being able to spend any more of the target assets. He bought a car for the first time in ten years. He has a very mundane lifestyle. Our petition for a carnival coming-out party will go into court tomorrow. Our status as a charity will stop any probes into our finances until tax time, and we should have this young created personality fleeced and trimmed back down to what her real station in life is."

Mary was the chairman. She said, "This urchin is to be welcomed until she is lightened of her burden. Remember that two percent of the earth's population owns ninety percent of the world's property. The C.O. has asked the Off Our Backs Women's Consortium to spearhead this piñata. It is being processed by the Lotus Flower corporation so we can put an injunction on the sponsor getting into the clone. If we can get her into command of her dowry trust, then merely getting her to tithe one percent grants us one million, two hundred seventy thousand credits. The longer we have to stall, then the longer we have to teach this 'ninety-day wonder.' "

Faye spoke while Joyce and Carmen took notes. "Society can break this piñata on the party-girl circuit. If they can get her to buy the next round of drinks, then it's a rip-snorting good time. When the piñata explodes, then all the spectators get the candy."

Tracey took her cue and continued the briefing. "This is one huge piñata."

"Ordinarily we would argue against the flesh trade totally as racist and sexist, but right now we need that clone in our bullpen batting for our team."

Mary summed up. "We need that little queen to dine at and pay for the circus and its carnival. En-CARN-ay. The carnivores party where we rejoice in spilled blood and the bond only women can know.

"See if we can get an article in American Lesbian about the flesh trade: 'The Chains of Biology' or something on that line," Mary said, then faced the others and said, "If we can win her over with a carnival and get a power of attorney from her, then we might have a chance. If she chooses the fun of a carnival over the droll companionship of one man, then we could get the next revolution's payroll."

* * *

Jack Havens looked at Lawrence and said, "In two months we will begin our merger process. You will be in direct communication with our Marie Celeste 112. That means your brain will be registered on magnetic induction. So will hers. Then you two can have a chat about this all. For right now you both are under the Lotus Flower legal team. The legal contract was very seriously written for MC 112. We have had a look at the legal initiative put forward by our competition and it is common. There is nothing new there. They say she is a virgin and can't be trusted to make her own decisions," said Jack.

"But what about her memory implants? You told me she has the memories of over fifteen women to consult," said Lawrence.

"She does and that's in her favor. These are just court documents and thusly are a collection of every crackpot idea that ever came down the pike hunting for a free ride. They say she's a virgin, they say she rates a debutante's ball and/or carnival of earthly delights. They say she has a station in life that you don't equal or complement. They say they have rights to do this because she can't learn about women's revolution under your wing. Fact is this whole revolution is coming from a communist outfit calling itself the 'C.O.' or 'Communist Organization,' they're Maoists. Last of all they have a religious clause to their organization's by-laws so it's nearly impossible to shut them down. They call girls like Marie by the name of Piñata. That means that with a little motivation, they can explode with little bits of candy for all the spectators to grab at.

"The party people get a good feeding at the trough, and the real professionals steal everything they can get their hands on. So far things are secure. We had one of their people here on staff. There have been some changes. Our receptionist is seeking alternate employment," said Jack.

"So I just cool my heels for two months, then we do this mind-connect thing, then another month and she comes out of fetal position and begins to use her muscles for the first time in her life, right?"

"That's the plan. Don't get kidnapped. The C.O. plays rough. We have set up alternate housing for you downtown. Your security team can be reached anytime by clicking this GPS cricket." Jack handed Lawrence a small square of plastic. It looked like a key ring.

Lawrence held it in his hand.

* * *

For two months Lawrence did cool his heels. He stayed in an apartment in a high-rise tower and ate well from the room service that was provided. He contemplated talking to Marie Celeste 112 over and over again and always he came to the same point. He couldn't guess at what her reaction would be.

He visited museums, ate in restaurants, all with at least two bodyguards with him.

He worked out in a gym, watched his ex-employer, his ex-coworkers, and spent his time wasting time.

Time moved slowly, but it moved. After 60 days had gone by, he was finally ready to link minds with a 60-day-old person, physically a teenager, mentally 15 persons all crowding for a chance to take control. One real mind going through the awkwardness of teenage years.

Lawrence rode in a driven car to the Lotus Flower lab. There he was led to a room with what looked like a dentist's chair and a pilot's flight helmet. Jack Havens was there.

"So how's that thing work, Jack?"

"It's targeted magnetic induction that taps your brain's electronic impulses and we patch her to you and you to her. It's sudden. In a moment you two will be so thoroughly intertwined that you might get a little compressed. You won't have the same breathing room you had as individuals," said Jack. "Do you feel ready to link?"

"I'm as ready as I'll ever be." Lawrence sat in the chair as two technicians strapped on the helmet and restraints on his arms and legs. He waited a moment. "Go ahead and hook us up."

Jack watched the doctors and techs, waiting for their approval. Only after it was a consensus did he say, "Go ahead."

The doctor said, "On my mark. Five, four, three, two, one."

Lawrence was instantly inside the mind of a 15-year-old child bride. In a moment he absorbed the feelings, the faintest and slightest insecurities of teen life as a girl. There were physical worries. How do I look? Am I fat? What's my grade point average going to be this quarter? How's my mom and dad? All these questions flooded his mind.

No, you're fine. No, I like you as you are. Nope, no need for a nose job just yet. No, you look too skinny if anything. Don't worry about it for another month. Bees make honey, we got money, tell me what is sanity.

Lawrence endured through a multitude of 9th grade humor. Clearly she was enthused to speak, to communicate. "I was worried about you but you seem to be fine. Are you sure you're okay in there?"

She spoke to him. "Let me be serious for a moment. You are my sponsor. You're the human who picked out my DNA out of a catalog and ponied up ten grand to grow me." She continued, "My implants are not virgins or unwise. I am not so simple or cloistered. My implants have lived good, fully experienced, rich lives. I think I am prepared for it. As long as we have fun, I think it will work out just fine.

"I am fond of you, Lawrence. We could be lovers or best friends or just get along. I think it will be a great adventure. You don't own me, though. That slightly barbaric tradition is not going to be part of the deal."

Lawrence said, "Perhaps we can unleash a sense of humor on the world. I like the 'as long as it's fun' part. I am here because at sweet sixteen, you fall in love hard. First love."

She said, "The C.O. can't come between us for the moment. We are friends. Even if I am a piñata."

"You'll be nineteen years big when you get out."

"How old are you, Lawrence?"

"I'm just twenty-nine," he replied. "You are, at this point, a screwball kid. We have a large bank account left you and me by your tissue donor. Got any ideas on how you want to use it?"

"Go skiing. Save the third world. Make love and make babies. Can I do that in a month?" she said.

"I recommend you have some fun and get acquainted with the folks out here. Mostly I want you to know I brought you into the world to both cure my loneliness and for the fun of making some art. You're a big piece of self-animated sculpture."

"Are we in the clear yet?" she said.

"For the most part, yeah," he replied. "We'll get through this, no problem."

* * *

Courtroom Stage I. The Honorable Marilyn F. Hobart presiding.

"May it please the court," Mary Case said. "We have put forward this injunction on behalf of Marie Celeste 112, or rather, Jane Doe."

The judge put on her glasses and was handed the file papers on the case. Her slender fingers leafed through the stack.

"We believe this is a Fourteenth Amendment case. A select group has been created without rights given to it. This cloned person needs to be in the company and culture of women at some time in the near future. We can only imagine what the intent was when this Davies fellow paid in fifty thousand credits to buy an underprivileged girl to maul to his own desires. This is not the way to raise or bring into the world a human who is heir to one hundred twenty-seven million credits. She should be with her peers and this dowry should be given back to her, as she is the reason for its existence."

The judge looked at the papers and spoke. "Conservatorship and guardianship would fall to the Aurora Group of women concerned for Marie Celeste 112. I note you have put together a good package here but there are no compelling reasons to invalidate the original clone contract. Mr. Davies has already begun his meetings with MC 112. They appear to be happy together. What compelling reason can you put forward?"

"Under Amendment Fourteen she can't be turned into a drone. Amendment Fourteen says, essentially, you can't keep slaves or other forms of second-class citizens. Until she gets at least half and preferably all of her funds, she is being treated as a cat or dog pet that the court is doling out treats to in an effort to tame. Like 'Mens Rea.' She has the mind of a child."

The judge looked over her papers and the glasses at the end of her nose. "Presently, Mr. Davies is guardian and conservator. I have seen many such contracts go well into middle age on the part of the funds recipient."

Mary Case returned and said, "In the 1800s, your Honor, experiments were done on babies to test their native language. They were kept silent and not spoken to. The idea was to see if they would speak Latin. Instead of speaking Latin, they died. Without a truly comprehensive experience of membership in today's women's community, Ms. Celeste will wither and die educationally, politically, and emotionally. Her needs will not be met at the current rate. She may physically exist but intellectually she will wither and die."

"Your Honor," the Lotus Corporation lawyer spoke, "we have in place the memories of sixteen women and all that could be salvaged from the cerebrum of the donor, that donor being Ms. Anne Harrison, killed in a train wreck three years ago. Ms. Harrison left clear instructions as to the status of her wealth and to whom it may be given. It is presently an offshore portfolio in the free state of the Bahamas Islands and banked in Nassau. She said in her will that should the autonomy maximizer option be selected when cloning from her donor flesh, that the person initiating the clone be made guardian of the assets of Harrison Limited Corporation. What has been done meets with her will exactly."

Mary Case, Esquire, walked to the judge's desk and handed in a stack of papers. "In that case we will sue on behalf of the Aurora Group. We are contesting the status of Mr. Davies as guardian and conservator. We are done here for today."

Chase Nelson, the lawyer for Lotus Corporation, handed his stack of papers to the judge. "Motion to dismiss and countersuit, your Honor."

* * *

Jack said, "They can't sue you directly, but a victory here would bode them well in court in Nassau. Getting Marie to voluntarily hand over a few million credits is what I expect their true aim to be."

Marie spoke thus. "Then why did they try to sue in the first place? I remember being Anne Harrison and knowing about most of this stuff. Anne had a master's degree in multinational finance."

Jack Havens said, "There will be the veridicator to consider."

"What's a veridicator?"said Marie.

"It's a judicial lie detector," said Havens. "You probably remember it as just the phrase 'lie detector.'"

"Oh yeah, it's got a screen that flashes red for a lie and blue for the truth."

"There is a problem with it. If we get one of their worker bees who believes you are being distressed, then the screen will go blue if we ask her where the money should go. The worker bees believe the dogma from the ones on top. We need someone from the steering committee who knows how jaded this whole process is. They'll probably file a friend of the court brief with every women's group from the YWCA to the Daughters of the American Revolution."

* * *

They did just that. They scheduled a day before Judge Marilyn F. Hobart without a jury but with a room packed with people. For the first few witnesses the veridicator stayed an even cobalt blue. It wasn't until the afternoon that Mary Case's protégé, Faye Brooks, was brought to the stand to testify that things got interesting.

Chase Nelson opened up the questioning by asking Ms. Brooks a series of basic opening lines to present the veridicator as a valid instrument of law. When asked if her hair color was natural, Faye said yes but the veridicator flashed purple clouds for a moment, then settled into a crimson red, drawing giggles and sneers from the crowd.

Chase kept up and followed, "You began work on this case with the Maoist C.O. group, didn't you?" The veridicator went brown and then swirled into purple like the previous question. Strands of red began to appear until the swirling screen was totally red.

Faye wiped a tear from her eye and spoke. "We only meant to keep her in a community where she would be cared for, where her money would be put to good use. We don't like this industry. We believe this in our hearts." The veridicator began to swirl green for a while and then slowly it crept into turquoise green, then sky blue. The crowd briefly responded in approval with hand-clapping. Faye smiled, wiped her eyes, and stepped down. The case was over from that point on.

* * *

The court began to treat the various players with a different kind of respect. Judge Hobart ruled that Lawrence should stay on as guardian and conservator. The Davies couple stayed together for five decades until Lawrence died. They had children together and one of them grew to be so successful that she set up a fund for other women to go to school and gain an education. It was a fund for many young women to get schooling and better their lives.

But that is another story.

THE END
ALL JACKED UP IN 2070

"Hauser and O'Brian, get over here," said the gruff police station commander, Captain Richter. His crew-cut hair was white as new-fallen snow and shorter than a buck private on the second day of boot camp. "We got a man down. He was linked. Took three gunshot wounds but they think he'll pull through. You're the only two detectives I've got with any experience on links."

Hauser, the seasoned vet cop, answered first. "We may have worked a few link robberies but it's never been a murder. Most hoods are afraid of being viewed by some tech in a morgue. We've only seen a half-dozen or so muggings, never a homicide."

"Attempted homicide," the captain said. "This one ain't stiff just yet. Go check him out at Mount Sinai Hospital. His name's Granger and his link is still active, so watch what ya say."

* * *

"That ol' boy is jacked," said the skinny female drug addict. Her hair was jet black, as were her eyes. She pranced about the room. "Sure he's got a link, but it's fried now. I jacked him up with a thousand volts and almost a hundred amps. His circuit is fried and his memory is gone. When I shot him I had on my wig and fake nose so he won't get us. Even had sunglasses for the pattern recognition software on the monitor cameras. Those computers ain't got shit and Granger's got his three shots of payback." Sunny's drug dealer friend, Tom, poured out a line of the drug "Heaven Seven." She moved it about the mirror with a single-edged razor and put the line up her nose with a straw. She inhaled it deeply and pinched her nostrils shut while exhaling. Tom, a tall, blue-eyed man, patted the briefcase with the fifteen kilos of Heaven Seven. Then he leaned back into his suspension chair, smiling in satisfaction.

* * *

Hauser, the Kraut, and O'Brian, the Irishman, served on Homicide for the Minneapolis Police Department. A lot of bodies had been piling up with the Winnipeg connection, and it didn't look like the flow of them was going to slow up anytime soon. Canada had a free medical system and relaxed attitudes toward maintaining drug addicts as they were: not going off on some fool crusade to cure them, but giving them just enough of the sauce that they wouldn't be burglarizing the neighborhood to get their next fix.

This led to some problems with the United States, which was still in its vindictive "kill 'em all, let God sort 'em out" stance on illegal drugs. Hence, Canada was the haven for the traffickers on vacation, but the USA was the marketplace where one ounce of Heaven Seven was worth three ounces of gold. If you could get back to Canada to spend your cash, you could afford a fine living. If you didn't get caught in the U.S., that is. That was the dilemma.

* * *

When Granger saw them enter the room, he was groggy from the pain medications and thought these nice men had brought him his briefcase of Heaven Seven. As he looked more closely, he began to realize they weren't just hotheads with his stash but were police, and they intended to read his chip. They had the looks of fiftyish, overweight police detectives, one dark, going gray, one redhead. Each wore a suit and tie.

"Hugo Granger?" said the dark one. "I am Detective Hauser and this is Detective O'Brian. We are here with a warrant to read your chip. Let's get started and jack-in, if you don't mind too much. The warrant is sound. It is signed by Judge Litinsky, Hennepin County."

"Okay, okay," said Granger, his lanky six-foot frame still laced with stitches and bandages. "I may have some surprises for you, though."

"What could surprise us?" inquired O'Brian.

"For one, I'm a cop."

"You're shitting us. You sure ain't local. And I didn't see no badge in your property."

Granger rose a bit and tapped his right forefinger on his temple. "It's in here. I got no amygdala. It's been replaced with a fearless chip."

"I know they all just chat with each other like they got a cell phone in their head. You're gonna have to explain yourself a bit more. Links are out of my price range. What's an 'amygdahla,' anyway?"

"That's the part of your brain that creates the fight-or-flight mechanism. It's like this," said Granger. "I got no fear cuz I'm a no-amygdala person. It was removed and a bio-neural chip replaced it five years ago in Quantico, Virginia. I'm Department of Defense Intelligence. I watch out for drugs on Air Force aircraft traveling from the heroin fields of Afghanistan or cocaine from Colombia."

"What's this amygdala thing?" said O'Brian.

"I got a bio-neural chip where my fear mechanism used to be. It makes me very cool under threat. I don't get scared the way normal folk do. Let's get this main cerebellum chip read. I got two. My link chip and my fear chip. The fear chip is D.O.D. and the link chip is commercial. It's just a Sendai Chronoscope. I want a look at my own shooter. For the moment I can't remember what she looked like."

"She?" asked Hauser.

"It was a girl who did the shooting. She had heavy makeup, I expect a wig, and dark glasses. I'll show you as soon as we jack in," said Granger as he ran his fingers through brown, long-cut hair. He came to the square port installed at the back of the skull, just above the muscular connections to the neck. Hauser opened the case and handed the slender cable to Granger, who inspected the square connector and slid it into the jack plate at the back of his head. The chip reader's screen flickered into life. The pixels swirled into a face and arms extended, holding a pistol, dark scarf, sunglasses, red lips, Middle Eastern hook nose. There was little for a computer to use. Almost all pattern recognition software was disabled by the nose and eyes being obscured.

Was the nose real or fake? thought Hauser. Probably fake, he thought.

"This equipment can only do so much," said O'Brian. "Who were you working with?"

"If I told you, I'd have to kill you," Granger grinned. "It's a joke, dammit. You guys are going to get your security clearances raised by this, though. The briefcase of Heaven Seven is a designer tweaking of Heaven Seven. It was made by Department of Defense chemists. Heaven Seven works on the brain receptor for phencyclidine. Years ago at the turn of the century, a drug called angel dust made a big dent in the business. Very nasty. It was used commercially as a tranquilizer for swine. The vets used it to chill out twelve-hundred-pound pigs for medical care. Heaven Seven uses the same drug receptor in the brain. I got shot over some bait made to trap a trafficker group. Almost got them."

They all watched the girl shoot three times, then pick up the briefcase and run away.

"She has a discriminator chip," Granger added. "One that can't be involuntarily linked. I have one too, but mine is government. Hers is probably from Hong King. We can trace it. She's dressed as a man, but her gait is female. Perhaps the mainframe computers can track that." He smiled. The very precautions taken to keep her anonymous would perhaps give her secrets away.

* * *

"We can get across the border by boat or air," Tom said to Sunny. "All we have to do is get this to Winnipeg and we can retire. Kiss me, lover, and let's plot our exit."

Tom and Sunny poured themselves into each other like water into a thirsty animal.

Afterwards Sunny frowned. "What if he IDs you? Granger has seen me but he doesn't know I am the one who fingered him for you to hit. He might have me in his files but he won't know for sure who to choose. So, shall we cross the border as motorists, fliers, or boaters?"

* * *

"How did you fit all that crap into your head anyway?" asked Hauser.

"I have some of it hardwired into my memory and speech centers," Granger explained. "That way I have recall powers that are playback type and I can use my speech centers to send and compose reports to my boss. Normal linking allows you to do that the same way, but once in awhile you link with someone you don't want to and it can get ugly. My implant is protected by the mainframes in Virginia and Colorado, so I am secure, but someone who has a Hong Kong implant can assault a person telekinetically who has a regular link chip. They don't mention the dark side of chipping when they talk to recreational senders. They just send them e-mail until they think they want a chip installed."

"Okay, so you got the bulletproof version and so do they. How about you read up on your little toy radio and get us some suspects, how's about that, eh?" said O'Brian.

"I can do better than that. The briefcase of Heaven Seven was chip-linked. Here's where you can raid my attempted murderers." He reached over to the keyboard of the chip reader and typed in a series of numbers and letters.

The screen burst to a pale-gray background with black letters. A map and a blueprint design appeared. An address on the map flashed from bold type to regular type and a schematic drawing of the building showed a pulsing dot on the thirteenth floor.

* * *

Hauser and O'Brian sat in the gull-winged police cruiser as the Special Assault Team went into action on floor thirteen. The two seasoned vets had earned the right to watch from the ground floor as the team's helmet cameras recorded the home invasion. The team systematically broke down the door, cleared every room, then used a probe to detect the briefcase. They found the case, but the only thing living there was a cat.

The briefcase was empty. But the fingerprint evidence was rich. The Arab nose and sunglasses turned out to be Marina Anne Parker, and her accomplice a man who was identified as Thomas James Dale. Both files had extensive photos, school records, medical implants, and histories. Dale was ex-military and Parker listed her trade as "entertainer."

The data also showed an airplane belonging to Dale had been fueled that morning and was taxiing to a take-off just as the raid was occurring.

"We can call Air Force out of Duluth and get them intercepted," said Hauser. "Maybe even get someone from around here to take them down. Doesn't Special Assault have an aircraft? Tell them to launch immediately with all they've got. Get back to us with what's proposed, and don't let that airplane get across the border."

"Can you let me observe, Detective?" said an unexpected voice on Hauser's radio.

"Who is this? You're on a government line, buddy, whoever you are," said Hauser.

"It's just me, Granger. This is what advanced linking can do, Detective. I understand your suspects have tried to escape but are finding your air power to be as good as their attempted egress. They are at Holman Field in St. Paul, near downtown. I'll meet you there."

Hauser put down his radio and said to O'Brian, "Remember when I said when pigs fly I'll talk to the dead? That Granger guy was half dead this morning and now he's giving us phone calls from his hospital bed. I have just seen hell freeze over."

* * *

Hauser got to the field with O'Brian and a team from Special Assault. They saw a cordon of guards around a small twin-engine airplane with its engines running, propellers whirling. It must have been a hundred years old if it was a day. Hauser spotted Granger at the terminal and slowed in the van as the gunshot victim bounded to the open door.

"Get in or you'll miss out on the takedown," said Hauser to Granger as the former hospital resident climbed into the moving vehicle.

They gunned the engine and accelerated down the runway. When they got to the circle of National Guardsmen with rifles and pistols, they checked in with the commander of the troops.

Hauser was given a bullhorn. "Shut down your engines and come out with your hands out where we can see them."

The two engines slowed and stopped sputtering. The propellers slowed and came to rest.

The two occupants of the Grumman Cougar airplane emerged from the door with their hands held aloft. They were met by guardsmen who restrained them with handcuffs and led them to the rear of Hauser and O'Brian's car.

When Granger began to walk toward the woman, she began to scream. "Stop him. No-oo-oo-oo. Don't let him do this. He's gonna blank my link. He's gonna steal all my memories. Stop him," she pleaded with Hauser and O'Brian.

Granger pulled a cord out of his pocket and walked up to Sunny. He slipped the jack end of the cord into his hand and moved it toward the base of her skull.

"You can't do that, Granger, she still has local charges here," said O'Brian.

"I have clearance to do this, and it will be done," said Granger as he slipped the jack wire into Sunny's port.

The girl screamed high and deathly until just at the peak of her wail, she was abruptly cut off. An eerie stillness followed and an instant change from pleading resistance to total surrender. Gone was the bubbly inventive drug addict. Now all that remained was the shell. The soul had flown. Maybe it would grow back, but it was gone today.

Hauser and O'Brian looked at each other and shook their heads. The captain would get his report. The department would get cooperation from federal agencies, and both of them would get commendations.

There was something sad, though, about Sunny Parker. Tom seemed resigned to going to prison without his mate.

Hauser and O'Brian closed the door of the car and drove her back to Minneapolis with the fifteen kilos of Heaven. Granger would get it eventually, but they had it now.

Granger had downloaded all of Sunny's memories into his external drive. He had wiped her clean as if she were a slate of chalkboard.

Hauser and O'Brian drove the two drug traffickers back and booked them.

* * *

Granger walked into the lobby of the ancient air terminal. He sat down and began to peruse the data he had gotten from Sunny. He found a node he couldn't identify. Sure, there were all Sunny's connections and contacts in the black market. He touched the node with his mind and it began to expand. It grew and shifted. Of course it was just a mental picture and not a visual one, but the way these things worked for Granger, the picture was real enough. The node uncoiled and moved across the wire to enter Granger's mind.

Sunny had left a trap-door virus for anyone who molested her mind, her implant, or her list of connections. Granger's eyes curled up into the tops of his eye sockets and his body began to shake. The virus removed all of Sunny's data and moved on to Granger's private memories. In two short minutes Granger was stripped of all his higher functions, and the case against Sunny was gone. Hauser and O'Brian had the drugs but Granger's case, so carefully put together, was erased.

The virus expanded its scope to include Granger's bodily functions and began to attack the heart and lungs. Breathing shut down and heartbeat dropped to two beats per minute. Granger's body shook for a final minute, and then he was gone.

It would be two hours before Hauser and O'Brian learned of Granger's passing. For Sunny it was a great benefit. She leaned into Tom's ear at the interrogation center and said, "Granger ate my poison pill. You're gonna have to do the legal stuff, Thomas. I am not feeling well today."

"Yeah, but Sunny girl, you got him. You really got him," Tom said.

She thought back to the memory of shooting Granger and touched her now empty link. "We may have to start all over, but Granger's gone. He's not coming back." She leaned back and smiled.

THE END
ABOUT THE AUTHOR

A Short Biography

William Strawn Douglas writes under the name W. Strawn Douglas, because there are too many more famous William Douglas's he'd otherwise have to compete with for name space!

This Douglas, born in 1961, grew up immersed in the medical system. His father was a physician at the world famous Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. His mother was a nurse and nursing instructor. A grandfather was a physician as well.

Douglas currently resides in the U.S. in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Previous to his 2016 move there, he spent more than two decades as a resident at Minnesota's State Security Hospital, in Saint Peter, Minnesota. He had been committed there by the courts in 1993, diagnosed as Mentally Ill and Dangerous. That was after he assaulted a young woman during a schizophrenic episode, his disordered thinking wanting to create an "incident" to draw "the law's" attention to local drug distribution he found objectionable.

Douglas has attended the University of Minnesota, in Minneapolis. He is a U.S. Marine veteran, and has worked in the oilfields of Wyoming and as a cook at the famed Seward Café on the West Bank of Minneapolis. He has worked as a graphic artist, and in life before Saint Peter, he was also an avid bicyclist.

Douglas admits to having been active for years as a user of what he calls short order soft drugs. He says he has even participated in distributing some of them. But he also claims to have never used the harder addictive street drugs.

These days, Douglas' schizophrenia is stable and controlled by medication. He spent much of his time at Saint Peter reading science fiction and works on philosophy, psychology, psychiatry, conspiracy theories, and drugs and addiction. Within his studies, Douglas has maintained a focus on ideas about how the shapes of future governments could impact personal liberty, and he has tried to combine all of his interests within some of his published science and speculative fiction.

One of Douglas' more recent works, Quarantine of the Mind, is subtitled "Obedience Training for Adult Humans: Preventative Imprisonment for Crimes Not Yet Committed." This work of non-fiction is grounded in his personal battle with mental illness, and his experiences with his illness at the mental institution where he lived for more than two decades under an "indeterminate" sentence.

About his writing, Douglas says science fiction will continue to be one, but not his only emphasis. Science Fiction, he says, oftentimes makes it difficult to make a serious point, because trying to do so "while writing about bug-eyed aliens and flying saucers" and similar things can be pretentious.

Douglas' web site is at: _https://wstrawndouglas.efoliomn.com/Home_
Other Titles by the Author

_Quarantine of the Mind_

Non-Fiction. Copyright 2014. Chipmunkapublishing, United Kingdom.

Ultra Murder - Black Hole Drive (Two Short Novels by W. Strawn Douglas)

Fiction. Revised combined edition. Copyright 2014.

Black Hole Drive

Fiction. Revised and Republished Copyright 2012.

Ultra Murder

Fiction. Copyright 2012.

The Joy Engineers

Fiction. Copyright 2010.

Mental Health Imprisonment: One Case

Non-fiction. Copyright 2007; extensively revised and republished Copyright 2011.

Black Hole Drive and Other Stories

Fiction. Copyright 2001.

