zzambrosius_02

Ambros and Kim were setting up the Gigantic Roman Wall Tent, which was the last one up.

“I’m gonna lift this beam up and when the holes line up you jam that pin through...” He grunted as he moved the 2x6 into position. Kim slid the wooden pin in.

“Okay, three more like that and we’re done with tents.”

Kim sighed, then grinned: “It’s hard, but I bet it’ll be worth it.”

“Yeah,” he said. They finished the set-up, and stood breathing for a bit. 

Ambros looked to the west, gauged the wind: “It will rain this weekend.” He glanced around: “Hey!” he shouted: “Three guys to help for a minute?”

Two young men, Squires by their red belts, looked at each other; one of them shrugged and they came over: “How can we be of service?”

A third man walked over: “What’s up?” His red belt looked brand new.

“I want to move this tent two feet north...that way. So the doorway is under the edge of the kitchen. One guy on each corner. Lift smoothly and move it to...there...And then the wedge tent, too...Perfect!”

Ambros looked at the full set-up critically, then said: “We’ll be ready to rope them down if it gets windy, but for now...”

Kim looked at the complete encampment with a little frown.

Ambros took three small silver coins stamped with his arms from a pouch on his white leather belt: “Thank you, gentlemen.” He handed one to each man; they examined them.

“Wow,” said one.

“Thank you, sir.”

The third man looked closely at the coin in his hand: “Your Excellency,” he said, bowing: “Will there be anything else?”

Ambros quirked an eyebrow: “Tell your knight—or knights—that I commend your courtesy and helpfulness, and invite them to come see me...Friday evening, if that is convenient.”

“We’ll do it, Excellency.” They walked off, chatting animatedly.

Kim said: “I see what you’ve done here.”

Ambros eased out of the extra-wide bed and slipped on a pair of trousers, loose around the legs. He pulled the drawstrings tight and tied them off, shaking his hips to settle the waistband.

He pushed the sliding door aside, careful to make no noise. He glanced back at Kim and Jimmy, who had spooned together, still asleep.

He stepped out into the colonnade and leaned on the railing, looking over the City of Athino.

‘I might be looking at any City in the Greek World,’ he thought: ‘Especially from this vantage, one story up from street level.’

He hummed a little off-key as he gazed across the landscape. None of the great landmarks of ancient Athens were visible from that vantage: the General Quarters stoa stood near the Outer Wall, and faced southwest, toward the more open countryside, dotted with farmhouses and barns.

‘And greenhouses,’ he thought. He watched as a crew of Laborers began disassembling one of those, loading the modular panels onto a flatbed trailer.

“More than a tenday into Warming,” he murmured to himself: “and the Summer Solstice is about a month away in the US calendar. I guess it’s time to put away the glass—transparent aluminum, I mean...”

He wondered if Voukli had watched the movie he’d sent her.

“Whatever. It’s time to put the stuff away.”

He felt at peace: ‘I slept all night without grinding my teeth, my shoulders are relaxed, I even feel reasonably loose and mobile through the hips...’ He wiggled those, perceiving the small amount of tension still there, beyond what it took to keep a human upright.

He did nothing about that tension. He was content.

The City slowly woke up, as he watched. The Dawn Bell rang: “About six AM our time. The sun’s been up for a while, though.” He contemplated the way the Commonwealth had recalibrated their clocks when contact with the larger world demanded a global system: ‘In the 16^thcentury, our calendar...’

His MPS lit up, buzzing in alarm. He tapped it and got a message: “Earthquake Drill! This is a Drill! Evacuate buildings, follow the holos!” A deep, almost gong-like bell rang over the City, a warning to anyone whose MPS—or “karpeto”, as they called it in Athino— might be disabled.

I had the weirdest dream last night. I’ve been pondering it all day, and beginning to elaborate it a bit, (For purposes of Fiction...) so I’m writing the bones of it down here before it gets too distorted. 

I “wake up”.

Marian is sitting on the bed beside me, dressed for work and looking at her Mac. I glance at the clock and so does she: 8:06 it says.

She says: “Oh shit!” and closes the Mac and runs downstairs. I can hear her shoes clomping around as she gets her coat and stuff. I get up and start getting dressed: long sleeved red t-shirt, knee-high wool socks, stripy PJ pants and Skechers. While I’m doing that I holler: “If you miss the bus I’ll take you to work!”

She says something but I can’t understand it.

Time skip.

I’m getting off the bus in Downtown Eugene. It is recognizable as such because of the bus station, the Library, and the Atrium Building. But there are a lot of Soviet style “Brutalist” buildings interspersed around the area...like Bauhaus on steroids. There is a lot more auto traffic; there is a freeway flyover that passes over the Library.

 
I’m looking around, confused. I can’t seem to think straight. I say: “What am I doing here?” Then I remember: “I was taking Marian to work...But I’m not in my truck, I rode the bus.”

I start looking for the truck anyway. A lot of the folks walking around—maybe 90%—have various improvised facemasks on. I get nervous, wondering if I should have one, too.

Time skip.

Now I’m at a café called “Jazzy Ladies” (a real place). I decide that since I have a bunch of cash in my pocket and I’m really hungry, I’ll order breakfast and drink a bunch of coffee and see if that gets my head on straight. I order.

The cook comes out from the back and asks me some odd question about my order. I notice that his eyes are bloodshot and glassy and he has a nosebleed. I answer him and he goes back to the kitchen. I decide to leave.

I slurp all the coffee and leave three twenties on the table and get out of there.

Time skip.

I’m in some other café and I look across the street at the overpass (Ferry Street Bridge Access). It’s three times the size of what it is in real life and literally shaking with stop-and-go traffic. For some reason I look at a particular concrete strut/diagonal support and think: ‘I should put one of the bombs right there.’ I start to get up to go do that when I realize that I’m still in my pajama pants and the bombs are in the cargo pants.

Time skip.

I’m heading for a bus stop near Jazzy Ladies to catch the #40 bus to go home. The 40 pulls away before I can board, so I’m stuck for ½ hour. There are even more Brutalist buildings thereabouts.

I notice that some people are wearing masks, but many more have taken them off. The people without masks are bloodshot and glassy eyed and most of them have nosebleeds. I keep moving around, not wanting any of them behind me. When I have a chance to get close to the bus stop, I see signs with OCF “Peach” logos that announce that “due to circumstances etc. only healthy people can board the bus to the Fair Site and once you’re there, you can’t leave.”

I notice other signs saying that healthy people can take any outbound bus, but no passengers may come back inbound. The sick people start to move in my direction.

CHAPTER SIX: Pessimism of the Intellect...

“...the goal of the Spectacle today is to turn revolutionaries into secret agents and secret agents into revolutionaries.”—Guy Debord

Ambros dropped into an underground parking garage in the President Tom Paine Timeline. He stood quietly until his dizziness passed, then glanced around. Col Jackson approached. Jackson’s decorations glittered and his uniform, spotless and perfectly pressed, revealed his perfectionism.

“Right on time, as usual,” he said. He handed Ambros an ID badge, which he clipped onto his shirt.

Ambros smiled: “Frankly, I don’t have the leisure to run late. But you’re welcome. Shall we?”

“Let’s.” Jackson did not ask whether Ambros had any weapons.

They entered a heavily armored motorcar and the driver maneuvered it through the ramps and then through the streets of that Timeline’s version of DC.

Ambros deliberately did not think about comparisons; he didn’t need to know, and his “location sense” stayed dormant.

He concentrated instead on enjoying the sunny weather in that version of Washington.

The window rolled down, seemingly of its own volition, and a cool breeze blew into the limo. Ambros breathed deeply.

Jackson held up his badge.

The gate in front of them slid open, and the car rolled into the White House grounds.

“Now,” said Voukli, an hour later: “Time to start on Line Shifting. Look down near the floor in front of you.”

He did it: “I can see a small holotank, and...” he blinked: “It’s active.”

“Good. Think about Europe, in a Quiet USIT Line...”

“Okay. Whoa!”

“Now choose USIT twenty-three, and lock that in.”

“Got it!”

“Right, now fly forward, slowly at first. As you accelerate, will the Shift.”

The Gate that opened was no bigger than the forward profile of the aircraft, and he actually felt it close behind him, as the machine passed through.

“Okay, that’s creepy,” he said.

“Yes it is,” she said: “And the ATLs do not have this technology, so they have to manufacture—or steal—aircraft in every Line they control.” 

Ambros very deliberately did not nod, but he said: “Because it’s very hard to get a fighter plane through a Gate. Even the geologically-based Gates, the original ones, they are almost never large enough to take anything wider than a tank.”

“Yes. So the Commonwealth Coalition has air superiority, almost always. So let’s Shift back and forth a few times, till you master the skill...”

Ambros looked around the hallway outside the restaurant at the top of Seattle’s Space Needle, in the Alcatraz Quiet Timeline.

“Masters must have found a way to break out those windows,” he said aloud, not too quietly. “Those are supposed to be completely unbreakable, except with artillery.”

The carpets were savagely shredded; enormous rents disfigured the wallpaper.

“That’s a lot of destruction for one bureaucrat to accomplish,” he said, shaking his head: “Masters! You around?”

No answer. He drew and deployed his APS, and cautiously moved along the hall. The remains of the double doors into the restaurant lay on the floor, where he’d left them on his previous visit. The marks of his cuts with the APS showed plainly.

He crept silently through, looking behind both sides of the door as he entered. He surveyed the wreckage of the foyer and bar. 

He drew out his Shifter and activated the MPS on his wrist: “Not a live thing for a hundred miles around, except bacteria and fungi...”

Empty cans and jerky wrappers littered the floor, mixed with vomit and liquor bottles. Ambros estimated the amount of food eaten, and checked the whole area, including the entire restaurant, for other signs.

In the end he said: “Masters fled the joint with about enough food for a week, on very short rations. If he’s really more than a hundred miles away now, he must be getting pretty hungry.”

“Everything that was once directly lived has receded into a representation.” 

—Guy Debord

 Ambros Rothakis awoke, in slow stages. At first he could not move: he wondered why and what that meant.

He began to twist and turn, feeling confined. He grunted in frustration and nearly cried out in panic. Then he realized where he was, and why he was restrained.

He wriggled his left hand out of the patch pocket on his pants and pulled the velcro’d flap loose on the other side. He untied his ankles.

Then he sat up and stretched, pushing the sleeping bag down around his waist. He put his legs into full lotus and meditated for a short time, then dragged himself all the way out of the bag and began a more concentrated stretching routine.

As he finished that, he began to shake his head hard, occasionally hard enough to hurt some. He thought: ‘I keep seeing things outta the corner of my...’

Then he realized: ‘I’m still tripping a little.’

He pondered his memories of the trip: ‘Normally, I’d have at least some experience of “ego dissolution” when Shrooming.’ That puzzled him, and alarmed him somewhat: ‘Seeing things, particularly my own thought processes, without the veils of the ego...that’s a large part of the point of using this sporoid.’

He got out his little stove and heated water for tea. The distortions of his peripheral vision that seemed to almost be meaningful bothered him some, but he could ignore them..

‘But I’d best not head home until I’m all the way straight,’ he thought.

He packed everything up, strapping up his rucksack and setting the rolled tent and sleeping bag beside it.

He climbed slowly and carefully down the ladder to the mucky ground below: ‘Right. I camped at Nail and Claw, across the ‘street’ from Sparrow’s booth.’

He looked around, merely observing the things he could see. He touched his MPS and called up a virtual image of the Country Fair site in that Timeline. He pondered: ‘...Alcatraz semi-Quiet...a Skolo for promising recruits from various Timelines who want to join the Commonwealth military...and now a Diplomatic Deme outpost, too, all at the old prison at Alcatraz, hence the Line’s name...colonies of refugees and POWs in various places around the planet...’

He spoke aloud for the first time since he’d wakened: “I need to go for a hike, to walk this last bit of illusion off.”

He said: “Hi, I’m Jim. You goin’ to Eugene?”

I said: “Yeah.” >Handshake< “I’m Ambrose.”

“What were you doing in Portland?’

I wanted to get my laptop going, but he was being polite and all, so...

Me: I came up this morning on business. Drove a van up for someone.” (I didn’t really want to tell the whole story...)

Jim: Oh. I came up for a job interview.

Me: Ah. You gonna get the job?

Jim: >shrug< Probably not.

(Silence)

Jim: So, what’s with all these homeless people in Portland? We got a lot of them in Eugene, too. I mean, just all over the place, on streets downtown, everywhere that...people, y’know...?

(I waited with amusement for him to say ‘everywhere normal people want to go’; I could read that in his tone, but he paused, then didn’t say it.)

Me: Whattaya mean, what’s with them? Everybody’s gotta be somewhere, right?

Jim: Well, why doesn’t the City move ‘em or...something?

Me : Something?

Jim: Well...

Me: You really want to discuss this with me?

Jim: Um...why not?

Me: I’ll be out of your comfort zone pretty quick here. I expect.

Jim: Oh. What do you mean?

Me: Okay, so I read repeatedly in multiple sources that there are more empty houses and apartments in the US than there are homeless people. I read that in so many places that I think it’s true. Maybe. Likely anway.

Jim: Oh, I can believe that. There are a lot of empty warehouses and stores, too, right? They could put in showers...

Me: Yep. So that means that the ‘Powers That Be’, the Gov’t and the super rich, could solve the homeless problem pretty much overnight, right? If they wanted to...

Jim: I guess.

Me: But they don’t. So...

Jim: I guess they don’t want to.

Me: BINGO!

Jim: But why don’t they...?

Me (interrupting) You should ask them.

(Silence)

Jim: Never thought of it like that.

Me: I did.

Jim: But how did you get there, I mean...?

Me: You wanna know my politics? My opinions on economics and culture?

Jim: (Somewhat uncertainly) ...Sure.

Me: I’m an Anarchist/Syndicalist with a lot of Situationist influence.

(This usually shuts people up, since they don’t know what to make of it. It’s a “shortcut signifier”, but one they’ve never heard before.)

To give Jim props, he asked: What’s that mean? I mean, I’m kind of an anarchist myself...

Me: Really?

Jim: Well, yeah...I mean anarchists are kinda far right, right?

Me: (laughing out loud): That’s not historical. Anarchists are usually seen as a weirdly far-left movement.

Jim: Well, but...I mean the left wants more government and the right wants less, so...anarchists are conserv...

(He trailed off there; I think he saw that he was painting himself into a corner. So I helped paint him in.)

Me: How do you account for George W Bush, then? Gov’t got bigger while he was in. He spent your money like a drunken sailor. 

Jim, grinning a bit sheepishly: I guess that’s true. I never thought of it like that.

Me, twisting the knife: But anyway, I reject the whole bipolar left-right version of reality. I don’t think you can squeeze an anarchist into that imagined reality, nor a real “little c” communist...and where would you put an American Libertarian? I saw a square thing, with two axes, Authoritarian at the top and ‘little l’ libertarian at the bottom, with “economic right” and “economic left” as the horizontal axis...

Jim: Yeah, I saw that, too.”

Me: I still didn’t find a place for me on that square. You’d have to go to the lower left corner and take off ‘downleft’ at a tangent to the plane...

Jim: Huh.

Me: I did warn you, right?

Jim: Oh yeah, oh yeah. You got me thinking...

I rummaged in my briefcase and got out a copy of my short story collection Small Mercies. I stuck one of my calling cards in it and gave it to him.

Me: Here’s a gift for you.

Jim: Really? Hey thanks! (pause, riffle through the book.) Wow, y’know, I think I better enjoy this tomorrow, after I get some sleep. Does this book have a way for me to get hold of you?

Me: I put a card in there...

Jim: Oh, yeah...thanks!

Me You’re welcome.

Jim: I didn’t get much sleep last night...I came up yesterday for that interview, like I said, but I was...unhoused...last night.

Me: Really?

Jim: Didn’t have anywhere to stay, y’know? So I walked around until about 2, then I found this car that was unlocked, so I climbed in there and got out of the cold. The worst of the cold, anyway.

Me: eyebrows raised

Jim: Yeah, I left at about 4 because I didn’t want to get caught. My buddy said I coulda been arrested for “Joyriding” but I didn’t drive the car away or anything. Maybe trespassing?”

Me: Or burglary. Breaking and Entering...

Jim: >Jawdrop< Really? I didn’t do any damage!

Me: Yeah, that’s in your favor. It’d be up to the DA whether to charge you with a felony. Probably depend on the state of his quota...

Jim: Wow.

Me, quoting Jon Minard: “You can’t be too cynical.”

Jim: What do you mean by cynical? What’s a Cynic, in your world?

Me: (thinking on the fly) I’d say a Cynic is one who has seen the consensus narrative turn out to be a lie so many times that the s/he no longer believes it without evidence.

Jim: Huh. That sounds right. How does that compare to a Nihilist?

Me, laughing out loud again: See that building? A Nihilist would not leave one brick attached to another.

Jim, also laughing: Not one, huh?

Me: I have a Nihilist streak in me. Nihilism is when you say: “There’s nothing worth saving in this world. Burn it down and start over.”

Jim, nodding: Yeah.

Silence. Then:

Jim: Y’know...I started this conversation out complaining about homeless folks, but...I kinda got a taste of that last night, didn’t I?

Me: Yeah, I’d say you did. How’d that feel?

Jim: Not good.

Me: nodding.

And Jim took another quick look through the book I gave him, then curled up and fell asleep.

I spent the next 1.5 hours finishing the chapter I’d worked on at the station, and left the train in a thoughtful mood. Jim was sitting up, looking sleepy, when I left; I hope he got off the train and didn’t accidently hitch a ride to Chemult.

Anyway...Gotta go. See ya!

I'm still writing, wondering if my audience will ever reach some (imaginary?) critical mass. 
 

Gotta go. See ya, folks.