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 CHAPTER TEN: The William Marshall and Isabel de Clare Memorial Tournament

 


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.”

 

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 Today is the anniversary of the day when my life began to turn. Even at the tender age of fifteen, it struck me that what happened at Kent State was wrong, wrong, wrong. And if that act by the Gov't was wrong, what else was?

From every adult relative on both sides of my family I heard the same wrong thing: "It should have been done long ago..."

Even at that age, I knew better. I realized that my life was in the hands of people who could not be trusted.

Nixon had turned his rough beast toward another country. Now Cambodia was to be the next domino to fall; not to the evils of "communism", but to the savage bombing, the chemical warfare, and the indiscriminate slaughter due to the pawns on Kissinger's chessboard.

Of course, it was many years before I saw all of it that clearly...why the college kids were protesting, the evil enterprise that was the Vietnam War, the foul calculus that Eisenhower and Kennedy and Johnson and Nixon had *all* engaged in.
My education up till then had been in the hands of people who wouldn't have dared to whisper about things like the Ludlow Massacre, Triangle Shirtwaist, Haymarket or Joe Hill. Nor, of course, would any of them even have thought of questioning the Gov't about the supposed "Gulf of Tonkin Incident."

It was soon after that day that I took things into my own hands: surreptitiously, of course. After all, I still lived among untrustworthy adults, and I was still in their power. But I began to read books and papers that would have been utterly disapproved by my relatives. I began to understand the slow creep toward fascism that was evident even in the early seventies.

Now, I look around me, and I despair. That slow creep is still creeping, so slowly that very few people notice it. We're boiling the planet, like frogs in a slow cooker, and our 'betters' are cranking up the heat. Industrial society is poisoning our air and water and soil, even as it sells us Big Macs 
and Powerbooks. Bread and circuses for high-tech slaves and the plebian underclasses.

This why I write the fiction that I write: to try to turn people's eyes to some better way, in the certain knowledge that I have little chance of doing so. But there's that tiny bit of hope...forlorn, even ridiculous, but it's there.

Slow progress is still progress, right?

Right. Back to the salt mines, I guess.

See ya!
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 CHAPTER NINE: How Do You Own Disorder?

 


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 16thcentury, 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.

 

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 CHAPTER EIGHT: Optimism of the Will

 

Time passed as time does: for humans, anyway; and Ambros was busy enough that it passed at a gallop, seemingly. April 15thcame and went, and they filed Rose House Collective’s ridiculously complex tax forms in the nick of time. Ambros had planned for new students, and cleared part of his schedule to allow for a Beginner’s class. Sweeping and vacuuming had got the Salon as ready for that as he could make it.


He had the comfy chair in his office in reclined position, resting his body while his mind worked. He was in the midst of another routine chore: checking up on the news in his own Line, via the programs he’d written for his desktop. Ambros suddenly sat up, alert.


“Machine! Stop. Go back and get me more about the mysterious flying objects that the US Navy is chasing around San Diego...”


“Dhulyena,” said his machine.


He waited, for an unusually long time. As he waited, he thought: ‘Well, this is definitely more interesting than a crashing stock market or more news about Congress and President Gore...’


Then the machine said: “No other information is available in the Establishment Media. Rumors are transmuting into conspiracy theories in the UFOlogy blogosphere...”


“Skip that generally, but link me to any that look halfway reasonable.”

 

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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.

 

I wake up. I look around. I immediately say out loud: “Was that a dream?” 
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CHAPTER SEVEN: The Chaos of Politics and the Politics of Chaos

 

 

They arrived at Plataeo Sokratenos. Force fields deflected the wind and rain away from the actual plaza, and contained the body heat of the people, making the area reasonably comfortable even in the shifting weather of an Athenian Spring.


‘A tenday after the Spring Equinox,’ Ambros thought.


Ambros scanned the square and saw Ambassador Harvey. He sat by the statue of Sokratos.


Harvey looked downcast, like he had a lot on his mind.


Averos got food and wine; Ambros his usual rice and basil pesto bowl, plus a glass of tea and a shot of spirits.


“The plaza is pretty crowded,” Averos said.


Ambros pointed with his chin: “I know that guy, and he’s sitting at my usual table. Under the circumstances, I think we should join him.”


“Under the circumstances?”

 

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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.

 

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 CHAPTER FIVE: Encounters and Revelations

 

“People who talk about revolution and class struggle without referring explicitly to everyday life, without understanding what is subversive about love and what is positive in the refusal of constraints, such people have a corpse in their mouth.”

—Raoul Vaneigem

 


Ambros’ return to Eugene in his own Line did not occur until almost a week after his post to the Kyklo. On his return from the scouting-and-sabotage mission, he’d found Voukli waiting with a series of RNA training sessions, interspersed with lessons on the practice field. Then he spent most of a day answering inquiries about his short essay; he repeatedly sent lower-ranking Warriors off with assignments to research and document whatever doubts they had about his suggestions. When at last he shook off all of that, he announced his intent to return to Line Seventeen: “That’s where I am supposed to be working most of the time, right?”


Voukli had to admit the truth of that.


When he dropped into the main room of his Salon, he immediately found himself swarmed by the women. Marie dragged him towards the bedroom while Luisa lectured him about such long absences. Kim unbuckled his red leather belt as they hauled him into the back room where his large tourney bed awaited them.


Quite some time later, he lay on his back with his eyes nearly closed.


“Catch me up, please.”


Kim rolled over and snuggled against him: “Well, your friend Arlen is keeping his people mostly in line. They stay in plain sight, but they are very orderly.”


“That guy O’Malley on the other hand...?” said Luisa, acidly: “He doesn’t even seem to try.”


Ambros chuckled a bit: “He’s got a tougher job. Controlling Borderers is inherently more like herding cats.” Luisa lay down and snuggled him on the other side.

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This Chapter has a bit of sexytimes stuff in it: the orgy that Kim has been planning for a couple chapters now. If that seems likely to bug you, just scroll past; there will be a row of ****************************at the beginning and end of that bit. See ya!

 CHAPTER FOUR: Still Flying: Valentine’s Day to the End of February.



“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...”

 

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CHAPTER THREE: Meeting People and Learning to Fly

 


Kim came banging into the living room at Rose House, cursing and stomping. She slammed the front door hard enough to jar Ambros awake, exhausted though he was. 


He shook all over, as he emerged from a dream: ‘Some kind of confrontation with police, with guns in play...don’t remember if I got shot...somebody did, though...’ He pushed those memories aside, for later contemplation.


He sat up in his chair and said: “Hello.”


“Oh dear, I’m sorry. Were you napping?” Kim took off her coat and hung it up.


“No. I fell asleep here last night, I guess. Probably a good idea, I’m not sure I was in any shape to navigate the basement stairs.”


“You do look like shit...”


“Thanks, I think.”


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CHAPTER TWO: Mutants and Monsters 


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.”


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CHAPTER ONE: On Vacation 

Ambros sat in the great room of Arrenji’s apartment in the country house that ‘belonged’ to Estelli’s Line: ‘I feel entirely relaxed, for the first time in a couple of years,’ he thought. He smiled and took another sip of spicy tea.


‘The third week in January in USIT Lines. January 13th, to be precise.’ he mused: ‘The Thirdday of the third tenday after the Winter Solstice.’


He banished such thoughts: ‘I’m here to unwind.’


“Ambros?” Kim’s voice came from out on the balcony.


“Yes?”


“What’s going on over there?”


Ambros knew what she meant: “Across the road?”


“Yeah...”


“Averos told me they were gonna dig the pit for Rose House this morning.”


“Oh. I see him!”


Ambros sauntered out onto the balcony and looked over Kim’s shoulder. She leaned back into him; he put his arms around her. 


They watched as twenty or so people milled about across the way.


Averos seemed to be directing traffic. Ambros could hear snatches of what he was saying: “...is on a municipal water and sewage system in its Home Line...we’ll move it basement and all...hook the water input to a condenser...Keenafthono sewage treatment...”


Tan coats and heavy boots indicated Laborer’s Guild; Tech Guild had no colors, but they were obvious by the machinery they carried or operated.


Averos continued: “Marie is fond of large rocks, so we’ll pile any boulders over here...endaxi, that’s deep enough, let’s smooth the sides...”


Two Builder’s Guild members used tools similar to APSs to make the walls of the pit square and smooth.


Ambros turned around and hollered: “Hey, Marie, Luisa! I bet you’ll want to see this...”

 

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Prolog: Some by Dint Some by Doom



“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.”


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 Today is the anniversary of the day when my life began to turn. Even at the tender age of fifteen, it struck me that what happened at Kent State was wrong, wrong, wrong. And if that act by the Gov't was wrong, what else was?

From every adult relative on both sides of my family I heard the same wrong thing: "It should have been done long ago..."

Even at that age, I knew better. I realized that my life was in the hands of people who could not be trusted.

Nixon had turned his rough beast toward another country. Now Cambodia was to be the next domino to fall; not to the evils of "communism", but to the savage bombing, the chemical warfare, and the indiscriminate slaughter due to the pawns on Kissinger's chessboard.

Of course, it was many years before I saw all of it that clearly...why the college kids were protesting, the evil enterprise that was the Vietnam War, the foul calculus that Eisenhower and Kennedy and Johnson and Nixon had *all* engaged in.

My education up till then had been in the hands of people who wouldn't have dared to whisper about things like the Ludlow Massacre, Triangle Shirtwaist, Haymarket or Joe Hill. Nor, of course, would any of them even have thought of questioning the Gov't about the supposed "Gulf of Tonkin Incident."

It was soon after that day that I took things into my own hands: surreptitiously, of course. After all, I still lived among untrustworthy adults, and I was still in their power. But I began to read books and papers that would have been utterly disapproved by my relatives. I began to understand the slow creep toward fascism that was evident even in the early seventies.

Now, I look around me, and I despair. That slow creep is still creeping, so slowly that very few people notice it. We're boiling the planet, like frogs in a slow cooker, and our 'betters' are cranking up the heat. Industrial society is poisoning our air and water and soil, even as it sells us Big Macs 
and Powerbooks. Bread and circuses for high-tech slaves and the plebian underclasses.

This why I write the fiction that I write: to try to turn people's eyes to some better way, in the certain
knowledge that I have little chance of doing so. But there's that tiny bit of hope...forlorn, even ridiculous, but it's there.

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

Gotta go. See ya, folks.

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I rode the southbound Coast Starlight from Portland to Eugene a week ago last Wednesday. While waiting at the train station I had begun to work on an incident or two in I’KOSMAE, the conclusion to my SALTARAE novel series, so I had stuff to do. But the guy sitting across from me wanted to chat...His name is changed, and the conversation is as I currently recall it. More or less...

 

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!

zzambrosius_02: (Default)

I haven't given y'all a Writing Update for a while.

So here goes. First, *I'KOSMAE*

I've been making slow progress, as measured by # of words written, and by where the *leading edge* of the story is. (End of Chapter Eight) That progress is an illusion, though, in a couple of ways.

First, because a lot more is written *in my head* than on the page, so I'm nearer the end than I sometimes think I am.

And second, because I have been having one satori after another about what this series is actually *about*, sub-textually. This slows me down, even as it (potentially) makes for a much better final book in the series.

Obviously, the SALTARAE series has a surface plot: an adventure story, where Mr Rothakis makes discoveries about the Multiverse and about himself, and makes comparisons between his own world and much better (and also much worse) worlds. The arc of the story leads to an existential crisis for United States Imperial Timeline #17 (or #1, depends on how you look at it).

That crisis affects many other Timelines, though, and Ambros is one of the few in Line 17/1 who realizes what's happening. By this means the reader also realizes what's happening, right?

And the story resolves in the end: revolution or reaction, chaos or community, the end of the world, the beginning of a new world, or both, or neither. 

And Mr Rothakis' experiences affect him, and change him.

You'll see, if you get there.

WELL.

A few months ago I realized that the comparison between Commonwealth Prime and USIT 17/1 is a contrast between one world where the spirit of Festival infuses all of 'everyday life' (in the Situationist sense) and a world where even the most festive occasions suffer from the banes of human existence: exchange economies and the propaganda of late capitalism.

(You see why this part is sub-textual. Very few people would trouble to read a book about *THAT*.)

So I must arrange things in such a way that Ambros "gets it" without A.M. Brosius lecturing you at all.

Now, Magistri Arrenji Athenini, Phalango Iera, may lecture Mr Rothakis: because of who and what she is, and what she can do that you and I cannot, she has that Privilege. But she can't be seen to be lecturing *YOU*.

Then, as if that weren't enough, I had another capital-S-Satori about the sub-sub-textual stuff going on under my nose, that I now need to sub-sub-textually incorporate (or in some senses, merely enhance...) This came about as a result of a fortunate coincidence, reading and thinking about Persistent Non-Symbolic Experience, and also about the work of the Swiss-Polish psychologist Alice Miller...

*ANYWAY* if you got this far without shouting "EEK TMI, roughing the reader!" then you have some idea what I'm up against.

And wow, do I feel up against it, too.

I'm not at all sure I can pull this off, but I feel like it's worth the effort.

And then there's the Thirteenth Century series. I have done very little work on the two remaining books in that series lately. Just occasional "Oh, right!" moments that lead to notes jotted into their word docs. The work I'm doing now will make the last two books in that series WAY better, though.

"Thank you very much and I hope we passed the audition."---John Lennon

Gotta go, see ya!

 
 
 
 
zzambrosius_02: (Default)
I was at the Usual Place (*sam bond’s garage* my local pub) last Friday, and a very small number of the Usual People showed up. We had an interesting conversation for a while, then someone got “political”. In this case, talking about the Economic part of the Economy/Politics/Culture triad that I am known to rant about.

So people started discussing the economy in relation to Global Warming, and I took off:

Me: Y’all do realize that global trade as we know it simply has to end? That container ships must stop travelling the world?
Someone else: >mind boggled<

Me: Those ships burn stuff called ‘Bunker Fuel”; it’s the most greenhouse-y stuff on the planet and terrifically poisonous to boot. Some of it is like asphalt, it has to be heated with diesel before it will flow into the engines.
Others: >horrified silence<


Me: If that fleet of container ships were a country, it would be the third largest polluter on the planet. And the resulting greenhouse gasses are not attributed to any nation in the Paris Accords, which makes that treaty a lame joke. 

One Woman: But...(followed by silence)

Me: Do you have kids? Grandkids? How will they live when Global Warming is the least of their problems? When all of the air, water, and soil is ruined, poisoned beyond use?  

(It’s worth mentioning that I delivered this ‘news’ in a rather jolly, if sarcastic fashion, with a big smile on my face.)

Me: You see me grinning as I tell you this stuff. 

Same Woman: How can you be so blithe about this?

Me: What am I supposed to do, weep? That doesn’t work either. We’re circling the drain and no one cares to discuss it.

Others: >minds boggled/horrified silence/“But...” more silence.<

Me: >shrugs< Asks the other couple about the guy’s music hobby, talks about Billy Bragg’s recent book. That part was fun; I enjoyed myself overall. It’s just...

First Woman: Starts to talk about the new house that she and her sweetie are working on, mentions the CORK FLOORS they plan to install. 

Me: I say nothing, in spite of all the things I thought about that. “Maybe,” I thought... “Perhaps the flooring is made of recycled corks from wine bottles, somehow bound together with a non-poisonous medium that is not ultimately a petroleum product...” So I waited for a chance to turn the conversation back to ‘harmless’ subjects. I got out a copy of my latest novel  and we all discussed that for a bit, then the talk flowed to other subjects, other worlds.

I get it, okay? There’s a natural tendency to look away from the bad, the evil, the foolish. And I understand the implications, all right? I had two beers that night, which were made locally, of local ingredients (or so the label bragged) but I also drank a shot of Jameson’s. If global trade stopped abruptly I’d have to switch to local whiskeys, or do without.
I see us, as a species, painting ourselves into a corner where what we’ll have to “do without” includes breathable air, potable water, and arable land upon which to produce food. 

“What is to be done?” I ask people.

Me? I hope I’m planting seeds, which will grow in the minds of people I talk to, or who read my novels (a small number of people so far). And I hope there are more of me out there, doing similar work.

Maybe it’s too late.

I don’t care, ultimately: “Start where you are, use what you have, take up the task at hand.”

I gotta go. See ya!
 
zzambrosius_02: (Default)

Last night I went, as usual, to sam bond’s garage for a few drinks with friends and acquaintances. I wasn’t there very long before I realized that I really didn’t want to “get started” if you take my meaning. I warned a couple early arrivers, who agreed not to wind me up.

 

Of course, there’s always that one person...

 

Let’s call her G.

 

G (to me): At the risk of being too political, did you vote?

 

Me: “Yeah.” Insert grumpy emoji here.

 

G: “You don’t sound happy about it. How does it make you feel?”

 

Me: Like I cut the cards.

 

G: ???

 

Me: If you are playing poker with a cardsharp, and you get a chance to cut the cards, you do it, right? But you know you’re gonna lose anyway...

 

G: You think we’re going to lose?

 

Me: No, but I am.

 

G: poke, prod, dig.

 

Me: I’m an anarchist, I despise all the candidates and both major parties...

 

G: so you’re a Libertarian?

 

Me: (thinking): ‘Don’t. Just don’t.’

 

Me: (Speaking): O hell no. I’m an anarcho-communist. Only in America could a group of conservatives hijack a perfectly good word like “libertarian” (which means ‘anarchist lite’ everywhere else in the world) in service to a truly idiotic economic theory, obviously false in all of its premises.

 

(I did not confuse her by explaining that there’s a lot I actually do admire about American “Libertarians”.)

 

At about this point someone distracted her. Then she came back to me.

 

Her: About economics, what...?

 

Me: (interrupting): I wrote five novels, more or less about that, and I’m working on a sixth. I don’t want to talk about it.

 

G: What good is it to write novels that almost no one will ever read? Why not do something...?

 

Me: (interrupting again, more rudely): Trust me, I think about that a lot. It doesn’t seem to have stopped me. And I don’t expect that there will be anyone alive to read anyone’s novels, and it won’t be long now, either.

 

G: expresses amazement

 

Me: You really think there will be anyone alive much after 2050?

 

G: O, that’s surely too pessimistic, of course we’ll come through...

 

Me:...slightly drunken version of “We are poisoning the air, water, and soil, and heating the planet and nobody is doing a thing to stop it and...

 

G: O, but things have been bad before this, we’ve come through it all...

 

Me: Begins a discourse on the global nature of the problem, not just a local eco-collapse, soon no usable water or soil, etc.

 

G: O, I know, you don’t have to convince me of that...

 

Me (thinking): ‘Why the hell are even talking about this, then?’

 

Bob, (sitting on the other side of me): I agree with him, mostly. (Explains his prediction about maybe a million people left, all living up around the Arctic Circle).

 

Me: (nodding): Maybe. Antarctica, too.

 

(Side quest about whether Antarctica will be habitable)

 

G, getting my attention again: I really think Jeff Merkley is our best hope...he could run...a better President...

 

Me (not thinking clearly by this point): The trouble with voting for the lesser evil is that things just keep getting more evil. That’s my experience, anyway.

 

“O, I don’t think Jeff is a lesser evil, he is...

 

Me: (interrupting even more abruptly): I’ll just let you have that opinion. I don’t want to argue about it.

 

G How’s your nihilism?

 

Me: Burn it all down.

 

THAT finally discouraged her. Then I drank enough more whisky to quiet my mind. And Bob and I talked about lesser evils, and Whitey Bulger, and dystopian fantasies and realities.

 

I ought not to have let her ask the questions. I ought to have asked the questions, and answered hers with other queries. Oh, well, some other time...

 
zzambrosius_02: (Default)
 Today is the anniversary of the day when my life began to turn. Even at the tender age of fifteen, it struck me that what happened at Kent State was wrong, wrong, wrong. And if that act by the Gov't was wrong, what else was?

From every adult relative on both sides of my family I heard the same wrong thing: "It should have been done long ago..."

Even at that age, I knew better. I realized that my life was in the hands of people who could not be trusted.

Nixon had turned his rough beast toward another country. Now Cambodia was to be the next domino to fall; not to the evils of "communism", but to the savage bombing, the chemical warfare, and the indiscriminate slaughter due to the pawns on Kissinger's chessboard.

Of course, it was many years before I saw all of it that clearly...why the college kids were protesting, the evil enterprise that was the Vietnam War, the foul calculus that Eisenhower and Kennedy and Johnson and Nixon had *all* engaged in.

My education up till then had been in the hands of people who wouldn't have dared to whisper about things like the Ludlow Massacre, Triangle Shirtwaist, Haymarket or Joe Hill. Nor, of course, would any of them even have thought of questioning the Gov't about the supposed "Gulf of Tonkin Incident."

It was soon after that day that I took things into my own hands: surreptitiously, of course. After all, I still lived among untrustworthy adults, and I was still in their power. But I began to read books and papers that would have been utterly disapproved by my relatives. I began to understand the slow creep toward fascism that was evident even in the early seventies.

Now, I look around me, and I despair. That slow creep is still creeping, so slowly that very few people notice it. We're boiling the planet, like frogs in a slow cooker, and our 'betters' are cranking up the heat. Industrial society is poisoning our air and water and soil, even as it sells us Big Macs 
and Powerbooks. Bread and circuses for high-tech slaves and the plebian underclasses.

This why I write the fiction that I write: to try to turn people's eyes to some better way, in the certain
knowledge that I have little chance of doing so. But there's that tiny bit of hope...forlorn, even ridiculous, but it's there.

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

Gotta go. See ya, folks.

zzambrosius_02: (Default)
Anyone who sees this: If you would like to recieve my newsletter "Commonwealth Times" then PM me your email address. Okay thanks! 

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