A note to all the souls that wearily weave their ways across the invisible animal paths in the city: at least one day, one day we’ll all be dead, so with a smile lift that head.

This isn’t the story, but I remember the harsh white floursecent lights and the ever present film of dust in the science auditorium, where one interim when I was idly reviewing Dr Zhou’s students term projects I decided to venture out and ended up running into a one credit hour, two day course on the psychology of dreams.  The professor, being that this was a winterim class (that is a class offered between semesters), was dressed in a somehow “extra shabby” manner… something I had previously thought only computer science instructors could do, this though, did not prevent me from being drawn in.

Dreams.

It’s in the last phase of sleep, REM sleep, that we dream and dreams are never as long as they feel… your mind has a way of making you “time travel” and the mundane events of days blur by, as if on fast forward, and sure, if you pause you can observe a daily ritual, but it is lost in the shuffle and when the dreams are lucid… well… the illusion is complete.

I have this dream.

I dreamt it was summer and I was delivering sandwiches on my bicycle again.

The waves of heat that came up off of the pavement and my bare arms and legs, browning in the sun, mixed with that scent of tire rubber, exhaust, and body odor that was still, still somehow the hallmark of better times.

I don’t remember why I resumed this job… but there I was.  Broke, once again, broke in that way where I never have more than five hundred dollars in my bank account, and I am eating countless bowls of ramen and peanut butter sandwiches or Kraft dinner… but still, I smile.  I feel the bike lean into a turn as I ride with a bag full of sandwiches and my hands off the bars.  I can feel the road through the old chromoly frame.  I ride and then I read novels on my breaks and work on homework in the library after hours.  It’s exhausting and I never have money to do anything substantial, but my heart seems to sing as I skip along.

Funny that.

Today the alarm wakes me and I fumble for my phone… shit… it’s far too early for any decent fellow to be awake, but there you go.  It bleats at me and seems to be falling further into the nest of covers twisted at my feet.  What time did I get home?  Goddamn damn damn.  My mouth still half tastes like gin and my legs feel unsteady.  Oh and that horrible achy feeling that makes me want to lean over onto my knees and vomit?  That is the headache that exists where my brain should be.

Hot hot shower, braced for heat in the suds.

No shave.

No coffee.

Commute.

Now it’s forty minutes of public radio and that sweet burnt smell of dead human skin coming in contact with the hot air in the vents of my late seventies BMW 2001

and a long long walk to the front gate.  For some damnable reason the distance between the gate and the lab is far enough to warrant a shuttle service, but I could use the walk.  I usually walk.  With each thump of a step on the cold hard concrete, I somehow ease my way into hell.

Fuck.

Two years ago, I was a federally funded grad student, living off a meager stipend, teaching introductory computer science courses (”intro to programming”) to flocks of students who were either life long geeks or calculating, opportunistic bastards who thought that “this computer biz” would make them rich.  Half of them would drop out to much less theoretically intense “Information Science” degrees from the college of business and move on to work in IT departments in the basements of giant corporate offices while at least a quarter of them would decide that “this computer stuff was much harder then they though” and become communications colonels.  If they managed to complete assignments, their code would be poorly organized and inefficient, but that was to be expected… most of these kids were learning.  But there I was, working on my dissertation in computational linguistics… shit, I should explain this.

Many years ago… well “once upon a time” there was this bloke, you may have heard of.  His name is Noam Chomsky.  He was a professor of linguistics at MIT, in addition to being a political writer who oft debated human nature and protested the second Bush administration (perhaps before your time) in countless well thought out books, interviews and such.  Well, he wasn’t just a political crank.

He had this notion that all languages, conceptually, boil down to the same… let’s call them “idea patterns”.  There is a sort of mathematically parallel way to describe language processing, or at least syntactical rules, using series of numbers and symbols and letters.  This is called BNF or Backus-Naur form.  Chomsky, well one thing he did, was add further rules and named his “CNF” or “Chomsky Normal Form”.  I guess to keep the status quo.  Whatever.

Shit, I’m probably losing you.

Hang on, I hope it gets clearer…

Well he then theorized that all languages could boil down to a collection of these sort of “equations of language”… basically these rules could be written in such a way as to work with any language.  That there was a “universal grammar” that could express an idea in any language, regardless of weirdness of syntax or verb placement.  You just had to find it.

This was big news.

So how, you ask, does this mesh with pasty dudes in dimly lit rooms, pouring over lines of code beneath posters of anime icons with giant breasts and big watery eyes?

Well, there are lots of places where language processing matters in computers.  From predictive text (getting the language from users) to writing programming languages and building the tools to make them work.  So it is kind of a big deal.  A big deal.

Goddamn, I should have told a joke, but… well… I’m stomping into hell and the rhythmic and body jarring action of walking into work with this bag full of books on my back is forcing me to be more direct.  That and the goddamn hangover that feels like an act of god akin to the twelve plagues of Egypt.  So bear with me and I’m sure the story will pick up.

This is what I was working on, when, after a glorious eight years of the first black president, we got this idiot cunt-bitch hunter from Alaska.  Okay, I added the “cunt-bitch” part, but she certainly didn’t seem to be particularly well informed, nor particuarly adept at applying any sort of logic or rigor to her thinking.  Sad state of affairs, but her twisted logic and bumbling mind seemed to strike a chord with the similarly ignorant, logic phobic masses of middle America who had been whipped into a frenzy over “the real America” by years of reading poorly written books by right wing pundits (the same fuckers who run radio shows that even the FCC won’t classify as “news” but instead as “entertainment”… these are people who wouldn’t even know who De Tocqueville or Buckley are, but who really should).

Well, she came into power and cut funding across the board and there, there went my stipend and tuition.

I tried to finish my dissertation faster, thinking that I could take on work to pay for the rest of my tuition and then coast by teaching the required undergrad courses and not taking classes while I rode out the terms of the degree program (four years, minimum, even if you get all of your other work done).

It didn’t work.

I floated tuition on credit cards and sold records (original pressing of Jawbreaker’s “Want” album and a collection of first edition singles from K Records and Sub Pop that I made a fucking mint on, but still not enough) until I realized that my minimum payments on those stupid debts were going to make me broke as well.

I wasn’t alone, not at all… bloggers and coffee shop patrons alike bemoaned the “robbing of the intelligencia” (note to self: never use this phrase out loud), that the GOP’s heroes had set off.  Institutes of higher learning were closing down post-grad programs and the number of advanced degrees (masters, doctors, master of doctors, ninja) issued each year got startlingly low.  Other countries began to outpace us in technology and the “years of plenty” of my youth were drifting away.

The middle American folks cared little for math and science and cared much for god and low prices and sexual purity.  Oh and bad jokes, shit.

Of course, there was one sector where business was still booming!

The defense industry, or as Dwight D Eisenhower labeled it “the military industrial complex” (in his famous exit speech warning the country of the “danger of feeding that monster” and that came from a war hero).

Guess who wanted to work on natural language processing for battlefield computers?

It wasn’t me, but… there I was, one dissertation shy of changing the ‘M’ in ‘Mr’ to the ‘D’ in ‘Dr’ and debt and sadness and a newly found drinking habit.

I’m going to lose what little breakfast I ate (yesterday), if I don’t stop and collect myself.

How to wake up to the heroes morning:

Obtain a solution of grain alcohol and juniper berries.  Some folks call this gin.  I call it “brain gravy” and it makes it much easier to talk to people.  If it weren’t for “brain gravy”, I’d be a virgin with more money in the bank account and fewer incriminating pictures.  Now, take that solution and add… well, if you’re any kind of gentleman, you’d add dry vermouth and either a twist of lemon or an olive and stir, stir it and pour over ice.  This is called a “martini”.  The fat, classless, but rich housewives who fancy “martini’s” are really just spilling straight, but slightly watered down vodka all over their burberry sweaters and Chanel handbags.  Money may or may not buy you love (apologies to John, George, Paul, and Ringo), but it certainly does not buy you taste.  Or manners.

Anyway, I got lost, but drink about six of these concoctions and then prepare to wake up feeling like a million bucks.  Or like you owe somebody with a short fuse a million bucks.

I don’t know why I do it, but I hit that point of “being drunk” and I don’t stop drinking until I feel the room spin.  I don’t know, it seems like a good idea until the next day, when I wake up still drunk and with a hangover at the same time.  It’s my plan for a slow cowardly death, because, frankly, putting a gun to my head is a little much for me to take.

I mean, it would be romantic to go out in an Ian Curtis sort of way: listen to some excellent album (I think I would choose the brilliantly sad “In the Aeroplane Over the Sea” by Neutral Milk Hotel), and hang yourself.  See the problem was and is that I have no legacy… I need to write a book or record some album or make an excellent contribution to computer science, then I’m cool with doing the deed.

Okay, so yeah, I took this job at this lab, the one I’m about to walk into and they offered to pay me enough to fix all of my problems… but it’s a Faustian bargain and everyday, every fucking day I hate it.

See this weird little out building I’m about to step into?  Looks kind of like a disconnected ATM, right?  Like I’d go in and deposit some money, take my receipt and head to… well whatever: this is the gate.  The fence goes all around the perimeter of the building and no, there is no other way in.

Hmmm… okay, I need to explain something so that this weighs in properly:  I got an email three months ago (I think three… let’s see it’s February now and this was in October… haha, wrong more like four) that addressed increased concerns over “activities in the middle east”.  Bullshit, of course, those fuckers are not going to bomb us and this ridiculous “war on terror” has been going on so long that it should be indicitive of it’s uselessness (eliminating terror is about as reasonable of an idea as eliminating jealousy or… fucking dust… it ain’t gonna happen), but hey, it’s the future, right?  So the base commander, a man by the name of “colonel Leo Vitelli”, became bent on exceeding (not meeting) the standards for security.

I will step into this little booth, where four sort of weird, exercise stand-looking things sit: a gray platform for your feet, a thick black pad for your waist, you put your bag on a little box in the front, stand and lean into the pad.  The idea being that whilst holding yourself up, you cannot easily cheat or manipulate the system.  When leaning forward, you can look out a glass pane and into the courtyard… well if you can see through the four guards on duty at all time, standing at the ready with loaded rifles.  See, they can shoot through the glass and if, if you fail to meet entrance criterea, they will shoot you.  No questions.  No fuss.

I do this every single fucking day.

It’s a weigh in, which tracks your weight for massive instant fluctuations, a retinal scan, a finger print reading, and an auditory test.  The booth is supposed to handle four people at a time, and it’s supposed to automatically “stop” intruders via non-lethal electric shock, but none of that actually works.  So its one person at a time, and a lead hand shake if you fuck it up.

They tell you this on orientation then, the orientation instructor (hey it’s a government job and they have people for everything) says to you, “don’t fuck it up”.

Ugh.

My only goal today is to make it to my office, a tiny, tiny room that was probably once a closet and, under the teetering beige painted steel bookshelves, look like I’m working.  All I’m doing for the next few months is programming this engine to take in audio and do pattern matching, to break up the audio into the appropriate “real words” for processing. I’m doing this using a neural network (a kind of program that builds virtual “neruons” and weights these pathways, via code… it’s for pattern recognition), and that is the part I’m writing.  The output of this will get hooked to my language stuff and figure out, when under duress or whatever, what the hell the battlefield computer should be doing.

You know, killing ill equipped religious zealots and such.

Anyway, very few people here understand what I’m actually doing, so I spend lots of time tucked away in my office, listening to cds (can’t bring in my phone with all of my songs on it) the old fashioned way and half working.  This always catches up with me and I have to work many, many late nights, but today… today is about getting back to bed, not about “getting anything done”.

I want to listen to “Damaged” by Black Flag, but I think instead I will pretend to be scrawling notes in a notebook, with my head being supported by the non writing hand… it’s a tough call, because this will mean that I inevitably drool down my forearm, but that is better than leaning back too far in my chair and looking at the ceiling.  At least then if someone important stops by I can pretend I was deep in abstract thought.

I jot down a few simple grammar productions and some sketches that make it look like I’m debating designs for my neural net and then… then I sleep.

The colonel occasionally stops by.

He calls me hippie and weirdo, but he does do it to my face.  His face, a pock marked, bright red thing is always in mine and he smells strongly of “Lectric Shave”, the same old brand of aftershave my grandfather used, so I know it well.  He’s a man who likes hunting and following the rules and he sees me, the cast down intellectual, with my tattoos and nerd glasses and t-shirts with Wookies on them as some sort of necessary evil.

“You weirdo eggheads are necessary, I don’t doubt that… heckfire, when dealing with a devil, sometimes you just need a few devils yourself.”

He doesn’t drink and he doesn’t smoke and he runs five miles at five o’clock in the morning, has a quiet devotional, then has his driver take him to the base.  He tells me this, every time I complain about being “tired” or “harried” by late nights, because, as he says “Christ didn’t die for your sins, to let you complain to me about your weak will.”

This, of course, doesn’t precisely make sense, but in his overly enthusiastic manner, he will say this and then follow it with some other unrelated phrase, like “no that dog won’t hunt”.  Right.

Working on the base also means I get a litany of spam.  Messages making jokes about liberals that are factually incorrect or in some other way lame, conspiracies about how that last president, the black one, was not really an American and thus anything he did in office was/is/was null and void (easily debunked by professional debunkers on sites that are readily accessible).  That’s why I filter most email to “trash”.

The problem, of course, is that I miss emails I should read and that is why, as I throw my bag down and just begin to get situated behind my desk, I’m getting a phone call.

“Mr Elder, this is Sgt Jones from the entry portal.  We have a situation with one of your guests, please come down to rectify this.”

Shit.

I forgot that my exceedingly tall buddy was in town and had mentioned that he would come see me tonight.  I remembered that last night as I slurped down another gin and tonic, I was fighting with him.

“Well, you can’t just come down to the lab… it’s in a ’secure area’ and without a clearance and a host of other shitty red tape you can’t come in.”

“Right, you’re just saying that because it’s your passive-aggressive way of telling me you don’t want to see me.”

“No, I’m serious… god, what the hell?  Don’t do it, I’ll meet up with you later.”

“I’ve heard that before too, the ‘I’ll make plans with you and break them at the last minute’ trick is old hat to you, dude.”

“Look, I’m not trying to be a dick… you really can’t just ‘come down’.”

“We’ll see.”

We drank more and this continued on into the night.  I think I drank more because I was frustrated… probably… no, if I’m being honest, I definitely did that.  Glug glug glug.

Fuck.

I am racing down the hallway, sans jacket, and out into the long courtyard.  A crowd is forming around the dull gray brick wart of the gate building and I can see the soldiers are aiming at the glass.

Goddamnit, Ryan.

“What’s going on?  What did… what did he do?”

Fuck, I need to run more, I am out of shape.  The hangover is not helping me and now every heartbeat is echoing in my skull.

“Do you know this man, Mr Elder?”

“Yeah, he’s… he’s harmless, let me talk to him and I will send him away.”

“We are putting the gate on lockdown, you cannot exit the facility at this time.  We have escalated the base alert to ‘red’.”

Ryan is standing there, dumbly raising his hands above his head, straddling the entry apparatus the wrong way, with one leg over the pad.  I don’t know how he got in or what he thought he was doing, but the guards’ ire is up.

It’s a little crazy to think that this tiny base, with less than two hundred personnel, that is so far removed from the city has these ridiculous security measures that have never been tested.  Yes, that’s right, in the year I’ve been here there has never been an incident and the security folks brag about never having an incident.

This is certainly going to raise the…

“What in sam hill is going on here?  Elder, Elder is this your doing?  I’ve told you before about abusing the gates…”

The colonel’s bald head is extra shiny today and his eyebrows are looking very disheveled and his face, his face is as red as a tomato.

“This is serious.  You cannot bring your hippie friends in here, this base is like the holiest of holies and I am the high priest and this, this gentile is not allowed hack here.”

He points his stubby finger at Ryan, who is losing the color in his face as he realizes that those are not “prop rifles” that the guards are pointing at him.

“Get that idiot out of there or I will shoot him myself and send him to Jesus.”

This is where cliche is going to take over my internal dialog for a moment and I’m going to skip ahead.

Those shots, in action movies, where the car is about to blow up and injure the hero or his wife or his girlfriend or kid, and the shock wave knocks him to his feet… maybe it’s a moment of reckoning, it really depends on the relative quality of the script (always shitty, usually unintentionally funny), well those shots are always in slow motion, sometimes there is a yell… a cry…. “NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!”

I think it started when a car backfired, but my internal video recorder isn’t always reliable, I do remember the glass breaking and far too many rounds being fired.

Oh my god.  Oh my god.

Oh.

My.

God.

Ryan was unhurt.  He clumsily danced until his lanky frame had maneuvered in such a way that the bullets just missed him and the inner pane of glass, as it filled with cracks, just seemed the obscure their view enough that they didn’t fire every shot as the first ones.  The glass, it seems, was more bullet resistant then they realized.

Ryan was going to be alright, or as alright as he could be.

Bullets, though, are still dangerous and find a way to hit things before they stop… I mean that is usually how they stop.  Hitting things.

This thing, though, is the head of a sixty year old cleaning woman named “Rosa” who’s only crime was being a little late for her mid-day shift and being in precisely the wrong place at the wrong time.  A little mist of blood came out the back of her skull and a similar spray of crimson came as her neck was winged by another round.

I am/is/am running through the door.

My god.

“Oh my fucking god.”

She is most definitely not alive and being this close to real, non simulated, blood and gore is a little much… that said, she was a human being and this, this was not what she deserved.

Ryan was given a ride home, after being harangued for eight hours in an interview room by the colonel’s men, but Rosa was…

The blinds are shut and the lights are off and I have foregone a glass.  There is a bottle in my hand and the television is on, the colors wash my face, and the sounds fill my ears… but I cannot escape.  When human beings first discovered that they could produce enough food to survive and establish sustainable nourishment, they found themselves with idle time and in the whole of the last two hundred years the ways in which that time can be spent has expanded and ever increased.  I’m not paying attention.

“Hello?”

“Mr Elder… are you going to come into work today?”

“I don’t know.”

“Okay, well, we will call it a sick day, but I expect you back in tomorrow.”

“Okay.”

The bottle is empty and I am barely dressed.  An old Archers of Loaf t-shirt and green boxer briefs.  The mailman looks at me oddly as I walk outside to grab the mail.  The light is bright and it is cold.  Fuck you, mailman.

“Fuck you.  Take a fucking picture.”

He looks at me and shakes his head.  Well, damn, mailman.  I didn’t know I had to wear pants to venture outside.  It’s no worse than a department store circular you might find on Sunday morning… except I’m fatter and hairier and more pale.  Deal with it.

Do I have any more scotch whiskey?  Whiskey…. whiskey…  I find a large, black, chisel tipped permanent marker and write “whiskey” on the inside of my door.  Three times.  The smell from the marker is pungent and it squeaks slightly as I write it.

“Hi… I know we haven’t talked in a while, but… I just heard.  That’s weird, are you okay?”

I have not talked to Anne in at least a year.  Things didn’t end well between us and she was the last human being I spent much time talking to.  She had a cute little turned up nose and a smattering of freckles across her fairy cute face.  She kept her hair short and loved books by Neal Stephenson and older music by Spoon and Built to Spill and The Get Up Kids.  Her favorite sandwich was tomato and feta on toasted rye bread and when she ate food that she found too hot she would start to hiccup.  She had a way of standing with her toes bent inwards and cocked at funny angles, her Chuck Taylor’s bending in odd ways and though she was a collage of these brilliant, beautiful idiosyncrasies, they are but the shallow easy things to understand about Anne.  None of these things really make up her… they are more of the bells and whistles that come with Anne, the selling points that fail to convey depth.

I’m going to bring her into this story to act as a bit of Deus Ex Machina… which is, of course, latin for “god from the machine” and is a plot device used to solve an insolvable problem.  This is a cheap way of resolving my conflict, but hey, I never promised that my story was any good.  I suppose it would do to provide a bit more characterization.

I finished my undergraduate degree and could not find work.  Anne, I knew for the past couple of years and we had hung out… there was a snowboarding trip to Breckenridge Colorado where we shared a room in a cabin, and there was a bottle of Malbec and very potent, medical grad marijuana and an afternoon watching Bergman films (her idea).  But that was… that was nothing.  It was that summer, when she house sat for a friend and lived right down the block from me that we spent every day together.  I’d bring over a stack of vinyl records and she would cook me food while I told her stories.  We tried to make banana’s Foster with cheap rum, but that did not turn out.  She made me a cake for my birthday, but had no frosting, so instead dumbed freeze dried strawberries over the top.

The rain had been coming down steadily and the world seemed to glisten, despite the lack of sun, but everything seemed green and fresh.  The air was slightly chilly, but it was… the best day of my life.  We listened to Jawbreaker records and as Bivouac ended, squealing guitars and the raspy voice of Blake Schwarzenbach coming to an end, she leaned over to me.  We were in a basement room, where a sliding glass door lead out to the backyard, which was full of flora: ivy climbed around the chainlink fence and water dripped off of the overhanging branches and the tiny pond in the back showed each drop and it’s rippling echo between the white water lilies.  Her breath was hot and sweet and she looked into my eyes and we kissed right there, on an old couch.  In my mind, we were meant to be… she in her quiet cuteness, full of the love of plants and never afraid to try something new and I, in my introverted cocoon of records, math, and computers.

She left a note on my doorstep.

I don’t know what I was thinking, yesterday… I don’t want to hurt you, you just seemed so charming and fun, but it’s not right.  It doesn’t feel right.  I can’t explain it, but I also can’t tell you this to your face.  I still want to see you, I still want you to come over, so can we just pretend this did not happen, can we just make it like the day before?  You’re a better friend than I deserve.

I stopped reading it at that point and crumpled it in my hand and, yes, I cried.  I went back inside and lay down on the cool hardwood of the floor and stared at the wall and cried.  I cried until it grew dark and then I just lay there.

I did not go back over.  I did not call her.  I couldn’t bear to look at her.

I think, or I thought… I loved her.

I wrote her a letter and I told her that I wasn’t mad at her, that I understood, but I felt like the universe had it out for me… to meet her and to have it fall apart in my hands.  I wrote all of this in a rush that night, but I never sent it to her and we, well, we lost contact.

So we didn’t talk until years later, and even then the meetings were short and I could not help but to feel this sort of tension and pain in my chest when I looked at her.

She wants dinner.

This requires me finding clothes that are somewhat clean and naming a restaurant, and perhaps sobering up.  Perhaps.  Truthfully, I’m not the best at holding liquor and I feel lightheaded and giddy and my face feels warm (though none of this is countering my other emotions at the moment) so I doubt I will be sober in a couple of hours.

She wants Thai and I find a Husker Du shirt and some jeans and a little bit of deodorant.

It’s cold and I don’t want to wear a jacket, so the heat is on high in her old Volvo and it begins to snow outside as we drive through the dark quiet streets.

“I know that you’re probably blaming yourself for all of this, but it’s not your fault.”

She’s trying, at least.

“Maybe.  I don’t know, I should be more forceful with people, maybe.”

“What do you mean?”

“This all happened because Ryan wouldn’t listen to me, he insisted on coming to work.  Fuck.”

“That’s just unfortunate, he’s stubborn.  You can’t stop him from being stubborn.  He just doesn’t get introverts. You know?”

“Hmmm.  Maybe.  Still… I shouldn’t even be working there.”

“You’ll be okay.  You’re still going to go back to school, right?”

“I want to, but I don’t always see the point.  I live, for no reason, than to contribute to an economy that I care little for.  I am a sack of meat and viscera around a crude framework and I can’t help but feel truly ugly.  Both in spirit and in well, everything.”

“You’re too hard on yourself, I’d reassure you, but you have to be a little less needy.  You’re saying half of that just so I will reassure you, and normally I would, but I can’t help but wonder… well I wonder… no, wait.  What I’m trying to say is that you do this sort of thin a lot.  I remember when we last talked, you were joking about killing yourself, because the world didn’t need you.  The world doesn’t need any of us, you know?  We just exist and randomness, both who and what we are born to dictates who we are.  It’s nothing to do with you or the universe hating you.  I mean, the universe doesn’t really care, you know?  You’re just here.  And you are special to me, you know that?”

“I still love you.”

“That’s unfair, and you know it.  You can’t say that to me now.  I feel bad enough for you, this situation you’re in… not just the incident, but the whole thing.  Your… well, everything.”

We are at the restaurant but I do not feel like eating.  I sit and drink.  We are not talking now.  I said too much, I had never said that to her before and I know that she has a boyfriend.  But damn.  This has to mean something, right?

I look at her and see her pushing one last piece of chicken around in her curry.  She looks, despite my comments, happy and content.

I sigh.

I cannot say this to her, but I realize now, more than ever, that what she really wants to be is some type of mother figure… not in this “broken feminity” way, nor I in this “broken masculinity” way… it’s just that I’ve always been that one lost puppy.  Maybe that is just it.  She is happy, though, isn’t she?

“I am going to bypass the base commander and report this incident.”

“What?”

“You’re right, it’s not my fault.  It is, however, the fault of the base commander and his overzealous, ill thought out security.”

“Is that wise?”

“No.  He has it out for me anyway and I don’t know what he will do.  Maybe I will lose my job.  Maybe I will… I don’t know.”

“I hope you know what you’re getting in to.  I wouldn’t want to cross a military man.”

“It’s funny.”

“What?”

“Well, it sounds morbid, but I…”

“What?”

“It’s because I’ve seen too many movies.”

“You’re killing me.”

“I thought it would look more like a watermelon.”

“What?”

“Well… the bullet just went through and there was little blood.  I guess reality is just less glamorous.”

“That is pretty morbid.”

We leave the restaurant, still in silence and I go to sleep.  Drunk, of course.

Goodbye Anne.

I have not heard from Ryan, nor do I care.  She’s right.  He’s the kind of person who’s bored when alone and has to be around people.  I’m the kind of person who generally prefers to be left alone.  He probably won’t call for a while.

When I said I was using Anne as a bit of “deus ex machina” I sort of lied.  She didn’t solve my problems.  She did magically illuminate them.  Also… well, it doesn’t make sense, at least in the manner that I’m telling you this story, that I can make these asides, does it?  Chew on that for a while.

The walk in is harder this morning, and… well, sort of easier.  I have purpose, which allows me to almost ignore the cold, but the sidewalk seems harder and the vintage shearling jacket (orangish brown leather with a faux fur lining) does little to keep out the chill.

“Hi.”

I’ve made it to the security office and I need to find out how to contact the colonel’s superiors and I hate, hate, hate this place.  The lights are too harsh and since OSHA cannot go behind our fence, the hallways are all too narrow and crammed full of old goods and the buildings never have windows.  It’s a labyrinth of old monitors and server cases… a maze of shit and dust.

The chubby black woman behind the counter jots down a number on a canary yellow post it.

“Have your contractor number handy and call this number, they will direct you to where you need to go.”

“Thanks.”

I make it to my desk and throw my bag on the ground.  God damn do I smell.  I need a shower and my hair feels unwashed and seems to be clumping up in greasy strands.

“Elder.”

He’s here sooner than expected.  I have not called the number yet, but certainly someone in the security office would have notified him that I have asked for it.

“I’m inviting you to a dinner at my place.  I will have one of my staff email you the address, but I pray to God I see you there.”

He looks down at me, nods, and walks off, briskly.

What the hell?

He’s going to kill me.  He’s going to poison me or shoot me and blame it on… well, I don’t know.

As eight o’clock approaches, I’m trying to diagram a new layer in the neural network when an email arrives in my inbox.  I’m somewhere on The National’s first album and the music seems to oddly compliment the email.

Dr Elder,

The presence of your company is requested at colonel Leo Vitelli’s residence at 1861 Palamino Dr.  Light refreshments will be served at six o’clock with dinner at seven.  Please RSVP by Wednesday the 16th.

This is sounding more like a sounding board for the base and the colonel’s pride in the fact that he runs a research facility.  Shit, my stomach is clenching constantly and this coffee is not helping.  I need a fucking drink.

The phone on my desk starts ringing.

“Elder.”

The voice does not sound familiar, not even a little bit.

“Yes, who is this?”

“This is… well… nevermind.  I’m calling to warn you.”

“Warn me of what?”

“Recent events might precipitate the command of the base being revoked, if word got out.  In fact, in these economic times, a scandal such as this might result in the base closing.  Think about it.”

“What are you saying?  Is this… is this a threat?  Look, things have gone too far with this security stuff and I…”

“Just think about the repercussions of any actions you might take.  It’s one thing to think something, it’s another to let it out.  You’ll find that those butterflies won’t come back into the net, once they are released.”

“What?”

Dial tone greets me.

I know I’m the last one left in the lab, which means I have to check that all the doors are shut and secured and turn on the alarm.  It means that these twisty, narrow, creaky hallways are all empty and that only some of the lights are on.  It means that I’m pretty much alone… alone.

I peer out into the hallway, the lights at the far end flicker and around the corner it is dark.  Sadly, this is the way out.  I slowly make the rounds to check all of the external doors of the building and each sound, each shift of the building or creak of the floor makes me jump.  My stomach is hurting more now and my hands are shaky.  From lack of sleep and hunger, I hope.  I pause to look at my reflection in a window.  Yes, those dark purple bags are under my eyes.  Shit. Fucking cock-sucking shit.  I look horrible.  I mean, I was complaining about being fat, but now… now I look dirty and disheveled and, ill.  Gaunt.  Like a junky.

It’s been a long day.

I turn on the alarm and exit the building, making for the security booth, it’s distant light a beacon.  The hair on my neck is standing up and I quicken my pace.  I swear I hear footsteps, just off to my right, but it could just be a guard.  I don’t want to jump around, dropping my bag to the ground and scream “aha!” only to be greeted by a very confused looking soldier.  Hell, I might just get shot.  Shit… I almost forgot.

In my mind it’s much more vivid than I think it was.  Ryan, is smoother about dodging the bullets and the guards have larger guns…. I mean they didn’t upgrade to sniper rifles with depleted uranium charges (thanks, comic books and role playing games) or anything.  I mean, fuck… those things would be nuts.  Yet, the effect is the same.  Rosa’s head explodes like a watermelon being dropped off of a building.  Sometimes she just crosses her self and falls to the ground while Ave Maria plays.  Doves fly from somewhere.  It’s pretty shitty.  I mean it’s horrible and haunting that she died… hell, you know that.  But these images in my mind are so exaggerated and play off like so many horrible action movies.  It’s disgusting.

I’m disgusting.

It sounds like I’m making light of the whole thing, but I’ve been thinking about this all the time.  I hate it.  I fucking hate it.

I’m at the gate and the footsteps are gone… what?  I swear I heard someone.

The guards at the gate let me through and I head out to my car.

It’s what… tuesday.  The dinner is on Friday.

I’m going to quit this fucking job.

“Hi.”

“Uh… hi.”

“Anne, look.  I am sorry for laying this all on you.  I really am.  I know you’re happy.  I know I’m too much of a mess… shit, that;s not right.  I’m a mess, but that’s not it, you don’t love me.”

“It’s three in the morning, have you been drinking?”

“Of course.  I am hoping to pass out in a bit here.  Get a few hours of shuteye.”

“I don’t know how you get any work done in this state.”

“Me neither.”

“It’s not that I don’t love you.  It’s… I don’t know.  I don’t want to talk about it right now.”

“I’m going to quit.”

“Really?  Are you going to report your boss?”

“I haven’t figured that out.  I’m starting to think he’s going to kill me, to save his post.”

“You need sleep.  You’re paranoid.”

“I’m serious.”

“Go to sleep.  Drink less.  Go for a run.  Read a book.  Don’t call me for a bit.”

“I’m fine.”

“Seriously.  You’re a wreck.”

“I prefer to think this is helping me maintain the status quo.”

The next three days go like this.

Alarm up.  T-shirt that smells sort of kind of clean.  The same jeans.  Deodorant.  Water on my face.  A can of Red Bull as I drive in.

My hands are pretty damn shaky.

My joints hurt whenever I stand up.

Long, walk to the desk.  The broken glass of the security booth was cleaned up fast, but I still find shards here and there that manage to stick to the bottom of my shoe.

Music.  Whatever.

I get nothing done, but I chew lots of pencils and bite my nails ragged.  I think I might be growing a beard.

Lunch at the desk, end up surfing the web for a few hours.  A couple of meetings where no one wants to sit next to me.  A conference call with some guys at MIT who are interested in my progress.  Staying late.

I still feel followed.  I don’t leave my house.

I drink.

I go through three fifty dollar bottles of Macallan Scotch Whiskey, two four packs of Guiness Draught, and two bottles of Hendrick’s Gin.  In three days.

I get a little over five hours of sleep between those three nights.  Really.

I write more notes in marker on the walls of my apartment when I’m drunk.

“Universal grammar.”

“I love the girl named Anne.”

“Ivy around the fence.”

“Footsteps in the dark.”

“Fucking extrovert Ryan.”

“Riding a track bike.  Riding a track bike.  Track.  Track. Stand.”

“Heat of summer on my face.”

“Fucked.  Fuck up.  Fucked.”

I scribble and I cry in the dark.  My stomach hurts more than ever and I can’t stand the sight of food.  I try to pick up a grilled chicken sandwich from a fast food drive through, but on first bite it tastes bland and I’m no longer interested in eating it.  This could be my last meal and it’s horrible.

Oh Anne.  Why won’t you hold me?  Why won’t you help me?

I cry uncontrollably.  My nose runs, mucus soaks my shirt as I rub my face.  I miss my father.  I wish he were alive to talk to.  I miss my sister.  I wish she didn’t live so far away.  I would miss my mother, but I never knew her.  I miss the mother I don’t have.  I need a blanket and a warm spot in the summer sun, to watch cartoons and kick my feet idly.  To eat otter pops before they are frozen and chase the jingling bells of the ice cream man.  I want to ride my bike again.  I want to see the sun.  It’s so gray out.  It’s so dark in here.  I think I watched DVDs of Dark Shadows the whole time.  Not sure.

Friday.

Home from work.

I’m still alive, but barely.  I find my tweed sport coat and put on some skinny dark brown jeans with some dark, coffee brown mocassin toed Clark boots..  A light blue shirt with a navy bow tie.  A dark brown belt.  My thick black glasses.

I drive over, looking at the cracks on the dash and tapping my wrist against the steering wheel in time to “The King of Carrot Flowers Pt 2″ by Neutral Milk Hotel.  I am going to talk to the colonel.  I have decided it is time.  At least afterwards I will feel relief and I have not felt relief in years.

The party is, well, boring.  Lots of new money republicans.  The type of folks that “done good” on their own.  Selling their parents farms to fund car dealerships and electric companies.  Dabbling in many things to make their way.  They aren’t bad people, we just look at the world differently.  Small talk wears me out, but thenkfully, despite the colonel’s teetotalling, there is a bar.  It helps some.  I can say semi intelligent things.  I avoid people for the most part.  The house is big and the rooms are filled with taxidermy and I am told that it has been in the colonel’s family for some time.

I’m shabbily dressed, but in an odd way.  These men think they dress well, but there is something of class they sort of miss… I mean they are wearing white button down shirts, and ties that certainly cost money (even if they are ugly), but… but they don’t wear undershirts and are blissfully unaware that their nipples look like dark little circles.  Slices of pepperoni stuck under their shirts.  It’s funny.  It would be funnier if I wasn’t getting fuzzyheaded and… I pat the pockets of my sport coat.  Yes!

I have a joint I must have rolled years ago.

I step out onto the deck.  It overlooks a dark, dark forest of a back yard that is really more of an acreage.  I’m told that he has horses.  Hmmm.

There is a woman on the deck, mid forties, she reminds me of Diane Lane.  She is smoking a cigarette and I’m caught looking at the plumes of blueish smoke rising from her nostrils.  She raises her eyebrow.

Fuck it.

“Can I bum a light?”

She blows out smoke and smiles.

“Sure, honey.”

Her voice is smoky and seductive and I notice how under her short fur coat her dress is sleek and she is slender and curvaceous.  I don’t know who’s wife this is, but she is an amazing looking older woman and from her tastefully small diamond earrings to her white evening gloves, she is portrait perfect.

She hands me a little silver colored lighter.

“Oh my.  Don’t let my husband catch you smoking that.”

“Who’s that?”

“My husband?”

“Yeah.”

“You’re in his house, dear.”

“Oh god… uh…”

“It’s okay, we’re separated.  I don’t know why I’m telling you that.  Leo is not a bad man, I’m just saying.  I won’t tell on you.”

“Okay.  Yeah.  No worries.  Cool.”

My stomach is bugging me again.

“Are you okay there?”

“No.”

“Well, explain it to me.”

“I…”

The weed is good and I’m drunk to boot.  So fuck it.  Fuck it.

“…I hate working for the government.”

“You must be Mr Elder.”

“What?”

“Oh he has mentioned you before.  The burnt out scholar.  I should have known.”

“Fuck.”

“Oh, he actually has nothing but good things to say about you.  He’s a lot of things, honey, but he’s not the devil.  He’s not even a republican.  His brother is gay and so is his son and he has never said an ill word about either.”

I’m having a bit of trouble processing this.  I cannot believe that this muscle head… no… this… fuck.  I can’t even think it now.

“I think I am completely wrong about him.”

“I think you should talk to him.”

I go back into the party.

I wander around in a daze, but I cannot find him.

Fuck.  Forget this.  I’m going to not even show up on monday.  I’m done.  This is all too much.

I walk out to my car.

“Elder.”

He’s sitting there on the front porch, far from his guests.

“Sit down.”

I oblige him and join him.  The night is cold, but not as cold as it has been.

He hands me a lighter and, and… one of those pipes that looks like a cigarette.

“Smoke up Elder.”

His weed is better than mine.

“Elder, I know what you want to say to me.  I know you think I am the reason that girl is dead.  I know you think that I am a part of this machine you hate.  I know you wish you were still in school, teaching and working on your degree.”

“Yeah.”

“Well, if you are thinking of reporting me, I’ve already done it.  I want this base to close, Elder.”

“What?”

“It’s a waste of money.  It all is.  The military is filled with waste.  I was thinking of keeping it going so you and others like you could ride out the wave of budget cuts that are keeping you out of school.  I thought that… I thought that and then I thought ‘that dog won’t hunt’.  You’re going to quit anyway, I know it.  I can tell.  I knew it months ago.  And I figured that I too can’t save the world.  Fuck it, for christ sake.”

“Sir I’m a bit taken aback by all of this.”

“What?”

“This whole thing.  You.  The… your wife.  It’s all too much.”

“Shit, son.  I’m mostly an act.  I do it to… I don’t know.  I don’t know why I’m in this game, but I think I’m nearly done.”

“Me too.”

“Fuck.  Don’t you go talking like that.  You will land on your feet.  But get out of here, this job is destroying you.”

I smile, I smile honestly for the first time in months.  It’s not a smile at a thought, but it’s a smile about life and about possibility.

We talked long.  All the guests had eaten dinner and left in a myriad of taxis and expensive foreign cars.

I want to tell you that this is the end.

I do.

But it isn’t.

I mean nothing is ever that simple, though it really should be.

I want to tell you that I quit and that I declared bankruptcy and somehow managed to get back in school and I get to that point where I have no money, but I’m riding my bike daily.  I want to tell you that I finish my PhD and that Anne comes around and we get married and make love every night after reading in bed for an hour.  I want to tell you that.

I want to tell you that the colonel and I actually had a father-son type relationship and he even came to my wedding.

I want to tell you that Ryan apologized and that we all raised money for Rosa’s family.

I can’t.

Because none of that will happen.

I won’t even quit.

I walk to my car in the cold and the engine fights to not start.

It does, and the heater takes forever to come on.  This is an old car.

I didn’t mention that this house is sort of out in the country, in a canyon surrounded by hills.  It is.  It didn’t matter as much before, but it does now.

I am still drunk.  I am still high.

I am still high as I round a corner and the electrical system in my car fails and a truck comes around coming the other way at this exact moment.

I am still high as I swerve back into my lane and the driver side front wheel drops off of the shoulder.

I am still high as we roll down the…

The sun is warm and I’m whistling the song “Common People” by Pulp as I pedal my bike through a grove, into the heart of a little college town.  I lean around cars and cut in and out of traffic and my t-shirt blows in the wind.  My stomach doesn’t hurt anymore and I’m pretty sure I can see Anne walking down the street.  I think we are meeting for lunch.

I smile.

She smiles.

January 20th, 2010 | Category: WTF | Subscribe to comments | Both comments and pings are currently closed