EOT: ARCHIVES
*
Half the books, acid-etched tablets, clay-and-cuneiform in one particular babel-library bore-hole at archives strobe in and out of existence at something like the sacred frequency (60hz). That great cavernous well, might as well be forever deep, the kind that drinks light and sound and blinks to a singularity–all dot-dashing morse-coding in and out. The whole half wall of the place strobes in and out of existence. I can see this because I found a workaround to the metaphysical ankle-bracelet that keeps me from falling through at night. Don’t worry about the how of it. Just don’t snitch.
“What do we do about this?” Preserve what we can. Preserve a world. The Stewards being, far as any can tell, made of light are quite quick when they want to be. The little Fae librarian lantern-beings snatch books, tablets, and scrolls and the like from the shelves in the second-fragments the texts exist. Every research terminal that’s even semi-sentient just drinks whatever data it can, every record and show and radio broadcast–every mundane moment with a record.
Me, the Man-Named-Dirt mortal in the bunch, I see what I can see, and catch what I can catch–scanning microfiche mostly, and screen-capping.
This world is absolutely wild, Jonah’s world, the Earth with no hex designation–no memory address or route between archives and actual reality (problematic as the term reality is). Every record we add to the pile, every word we read and observe happens–it happens because somebody saw it and read it and said it. Every scrap of information we retrieve becomes a firm record and out on the ash at the EOT two pools of light profanely entangled–one on the altar so another might be blessed–those worlds like two stuck-stubborn pages begin to slide apart.
Here’s a snapshot of Jonah’s corner of the world, about a quarter of the way through the 21stC: Earth(HEX:NULL) probably looked pretty familiar to the Parson–the You-You’s were a big deal. There’s a Democratic Socialist in the White House. Sydney Sanders is big on a lot of worlds out in the multiverse (the ones where she exists or isn’t COINTELPRO killed on the political ascent). It’s Ma Sanders second term, and people love that Bread and Roses shit almost as much as they love the lady herself.
But the Reagan Men are lurking. Oh, Ronnie’s a saint here on HEX:NULL too (for different reasons). He gave Ivan hell near the end of their first Cold War until he and Brezhnev both stroked out on the same night in 1984. But his ghost lives on, like an old man James Dean. Anti-rebel, the establishment guy without a cause taken from this Earth “far too soon” or some such shit. Yeah those guys, the Reagan Men have tapped into the same politico-religious energy (read: money) that they did on my world.
It’s “Revival in America” brought to you by Lockhart Marvin, the Mattress King, and a man named Dan Landers who made his fortune in the Megachurch business.
*
Ann Arbor, MI. Earth(HEX:NULL)
*
Late night in the living room of the lonely, cavernous suburban home. The harsh light from the crack at the base of the office door on the second floor dims and shifts to cool blue. There is occasional noise from the house HVAC cover-competing with the ebb and flow babble of a teevee with sound turned way down low. The murmur of the old time movie station is meant to sooth–to evoke the humanity and comfort and companionship driven out of the house.
Two cats wait. More accurate: Jonah(CAT) cowers and frets while Molly lurks. The loud-muffle of long conversations and fake laughs and scripted donation pitches and prayers end and the man retires to bed. Jonah(MAN) does not leave his second floor home office. He does not walk down the balcony-hall that looms over the lonely living room to the big bed he used to share. No, the two cats heard the man snotty-sobbing while he readied his futon for sleep (or something like sleep, a state adjacent to it).
“He’s not moving. Not leaving. We have to wave off.” Jonah(CAT)’s cowardice is met with a slap to the face from Molly. Between chapters, Jonah(CAT) relayed his sacred vision to the other cat. Between episodes he told her about god and the golden morning, how he had seen where this man–his tiny paw jabbing toward the office door–“this bastard” ends up: helping to end the world, the whole wide world (of course omitting the bit about deciding to save the wretched bastard’s life).
But now, when it’s time to do the deed? Jonah-Cat has lost his nerve: “We gotta’ wave off. We’ll get him tomorrow.”
The vengeful cat slaps the coward twice more. Molly stares daggers then swords. “You told me what this monster goes on to do, that you saw his future. You came across time and space to tell me this guy has got to die. Now you want to wait?”
Indeed, Jonah-Cat waits. Transfiguration into cat form humbled the man. Being crammed into a body something like a poorly drawn cat and an ass-beating (several) by Molly cooled his hot blood. Or maybe it was that he could draw full breaths, unimpeded by tumors. His little cat body, badly sketched as it seemed to be compared to she, didn’t feel like it might fall to ash and into the grave at any moment–didn’t feel like his human form. Maybe living as something other than the skeleton, the fragile fossil of an untended cigarette, maybe that helped him find a little of that lust his life had lost–that whimsy, that joie de vivre.
The man who convinced himself he was holy–same man crammed now into the mangled form of a cat–decided he wanted to live more than he wanted vengeance.
Molly would have none of this. She had convinced herself superior to all other cats long before the interloper, this badly botched feline, arrived and confirmed what she knew in her heart. “He took my family.” She arches her back, with her ears pressed pressed low and mean and with every claw bared and her great fangs in full view: “Jonah dies tonight.”
*
ERSTWHILE
*
Simone’s a ‘game-facer’ and a ‘good sport.’ She has to be. It’s a survival thing. The kid is resilient in the only way anyone ever was: earned it, learned it from surviving and enduring. “That’s not a taught thing” is what Simone or Ruth(Mom) used to say when dad gave his “cultivating resiliency” pep talks in the before times. What put her in the chair? HIPAA applies laterally in the multiverse. Mind your business. Suffice to say, it’s genetic–as if a scribe took a perfect line of poetry and wronged it with his stupid pen and dumb brain.
In the now, while Jonah ‘leans in’ to his status as ‘miracle man’ and ‘human interest story with a happy ending’ his family struggles. Ruth and Simone did not follow the man on his personally-momentous religious conversion. It was as if Jonah, revived and healed, did the Hallelujah dance and frolicked on down the beach holding hands with god–leaving two sets of footprints in the sand (and his family behind).
“I don’t wanna go.” Simone to mom the night before the church service, the one where the teevee crew would get some footage and maybe do a lil’ interview ‘if the family felt comfortable’–and the piss-trickle of local news stations from across the ‘Heartland’ continued apace.
“Mom, please. I don’t want to go. No more church.” I know, hon. Just one more time. “Mom, I’m glad dad lived. I just wish…
“I know.” Ruth’s hand is up hoping to halt the rest of the sentence. Not angry or admonishing. Very much ‘I get it’ empathy. Both of them watched Jonah die and set in to mourn the guy–until he didn’t. And while “give God the glory!” is a rousing sentiment for the faithful, it’s pretty fucking hurtful to the family that fought Jonah’s illness with him (and sat vigil with him when the fight was lost). I’ll show you why.
We’re like a hovering camera in the church, no not like the two local news people taking ‘slice of life’ shots for a fateful news segment later. Reader, you and I are more cinematic, like a camera on a crane, ghosts up in the rafters of the church. No-mega, the place is medium but packed–with a big-deal visiting pastor (one Dan Landers).
Simone feels flushed, sore-thumb, mortification, her chair dangling off to the side of a front pew. She’s in the place where church staff and parishioners have to “Ope! ‘Scuse me!” around her–not in the back where there’s space for her “rig.”
She named the chair Normandy after a hero ship, and like any good captain in moments of doubt, she speaks to her ship. “Oh just praying” when an Usher catches her seeming to talk to herself.
Pray and prey. One letter difference and a world apart. Kid wasn’t prey, but she felt like it. There’s a sermon on forgiveness from the local preacher man. There’s group singing, and it’s lovely. Then Dan Landers takes the stage and all, except Simone, bow their heads in prayer for the “future of America.”
She watches the man work up a sweat, impressed at the way he turns a microphone and a handkerchief into such tools. It’s like a ritualistic dance. When the prayer ends and the second sermon begins in earnest, the girl is not prepared for the thunder. The old-time cadence, spittle flying everywhere.
“God made a miracle. Right here.” And the man points, on a three-count like a choreographed dance, at the ground. “Right here. In America.” Second beat he points at Jonah, no not Jonah, the skinny little nerd’s soul–preacher man points through Jonah. The little man holds a stunned finger to his own chest, as if to say: “Me?”
Third beat, the preacher looks directly at the daughter in the wheelchair (who now does not like where this is going, not one bit). “With sufficient faith, all things are possible.”
All the girl hears is white noise, her pulse pounding in her ears. It’s not anger, not entirely. It is mortification for herself and the idiot father that has now accepted an invitation to join Dan Landers on stage. Landers looks like a pro-wrestling promoter (a job he once held in another life), and that’s about the volume and emotional register he has when he makes his sales-pitch: “I want to invite you, Jonah to join us–to join my movement to heal this great nation.”
When the politico-preacher and her father, and some portion of the congregation gather around her to pray–to posture and holler and plead–as if they were begging her to leap from the chair and sprint, Simone wants to fall through the floor. She wants to fall through the floor until she imagines the Normandy, her rig, full speed until she plows through the wall of the church to be anywhere other than this place.
*
Ruth doesn’t yell. She doesn’t want to with their kid in the car, and they’re in the van in the parking lot of the church still. People milling about, leaving, gaggles ‘visiting’ in the parking lot. She has that cool anger, or maybe quiet-quivering rage. Game face smile, waving through the windshield at other congregants. Her daughter is in the back of the van, sniffling in that ‘never let them see you bleed’ way people do when they can’t get the privacy to cry properly.
Ruth shakes when she says: “You owe your daughter an apology. You owe me an apology.” I’m sorr…”No.” The woman takes a moment to collect herself, bracing against the auto-door and dashboard. “No, no no. You will give that apology when we’re ready to receive it. You want to be some political prop? Be my guest. I do not consent, and your daughter sure as shit did not consent to be part of this.”
There is silence and right-proper apology, later. And maybe with time, in spite of Jonah’s constantly ding-buzzing phone and hushed calls in his office, maybe things would have been calm and cool or even half normal for the family.
Mom and daughter saw the news segment first, on the national news, and some great portion of the country encountered it–the even-more-foreshortened ‘packed-for-export’ canned news blip, or blurb, or blerg. What do you call such a thing? Ah, yes: “content.” When the “content” version of the “Miracle man!” human interest story hits every other Cloud-Channel owned television station in the nation (and the web) it’s a teaser trailer for a revival week movie. Dan Landers shouts “All things are possible..” through editing magic the preacher’s voice overlaps a shot of the church folk praying over the child.
Yeah that did it. That’s what lead to the final fight. Ruth took the kid and left. And Jonah was free to accept Dan Landers invitation to the conservative party’s national convention–the one where he was a political prop for the gerrymandering old pissants effort to ‘anoint’ a slumlord–to try to permanently weld god and strong man politics together.
*
NARRATIVE NOW
*
“Jonah dies tonight!” We’re back in the dark home, two cats on a banister. ‘A second floor on a shelf’ hallway to bedroom, office, and toilet. There’s a fancy guard rail to keep one from toppling to the larger floor below. Jonah waits where he was told, on the rail right outside the door, ready to leap. Molly waits a few yards down the guard rail, ready to strike, and surveying the whole of the scene–the whole chess board.
Molly sounds like a kitten. Not a big cat. She is high pitched and pleading–like she’s starving (she is not starving, she is too-well fed). But if you heard her yowling, “Screaming to wake the dead” is perhaps the phrase you’d reach for. That’s Jonah’s thing. He’s not fond of cats, and they all seem to hate him right back.
And this one has woke him up. Again. “Little Shit” has woken the man. Though Jonah should be thankful for the chance to re-position on the re-bar futon and to take his much needed prostate piss, he is not. Jonah isn’t grateful at all.
When Jonah opens the door to curse at the cat again, he cannot. Jonah locks eyes with Jonah’s glowing eyes–the cat and man caught in ‘the strange’ and transfixed, trapped, eye-to-eye self-associating. I don’t know why the eye contact makes a self-encounter so much worse, but it does (it absolutely does).
Jonah(CAT) is supposed to “strike!” to leap onto the man standing at the top of a flight of stairs, the one staggered \ entangled \ strange from the self-similarity knot he’s caught in.
“Jonah, Now!” Molly screams her ‘mow’, but the little botched-cat is as fucked up as the scrawny man–his brain is in some kinda’ gimble lock \ grinding gears \ in a flat-spin. Best Jonah(CAT) can manage is a flail-fall into Jonah(MAN)’s arms. That’s the pose, the posture, the dance when molly strikes literafiguratively: Jonah-the-man wobbling holding the cat he didn’t expect that does not at all want to be in his arms and wavering on the precipice–heel half-off-the ledge of the first step like a geologically/geographically impossible cliff in an Idaho James movie.
Both creatures, man and cat, wail a sort of exaggerated “AHHHHHH!” As if to say: “what in the fuck is happening?” as both brains actively hemorrhage. Molly bolts, sprinting atop the banister, and leaps. She’s aiming for Jonah’s face and is disappointed in herself when she strikes his shoulder and has to climb to go for the throat.
The thump-crack of a man denting dry wall and the muffled Wilhelm scream that emanates from a drowning brain and ends at his throat–same neck Molly sinks her teeth into now. She tastes pennies and the man cartoon-falls down the stairs to the landing–angled-upright until his head finds the window, shattering it. Just as she’s seen on the nature shows she watched with the child, Molly bites his neck again and twist-rips. She is a leopard about to drag him up a tree. She is all of five pounds. Jonah(MAN) tries to desperate-fling the cat off him–to toss her like a shot-put, fails, and throws himself head-first from the landing the rest of the way to crash in a broke-necked heap, bottom of the stairs.
*
Don’t pity Jonah. I heard you say it, at the very least felt you saying: “Did he really deserve that?” I do not believe what people deserve factors into life very often.
Jonah(CAT) got to make up for the mistake he shouldn’t have had opportunity to make: letting the other ‘he’ live. What’s more, neither the man or man-cat died alone. That’s more than many beings get.
Ruth and Simone would mourn Molly, along-side the memory of Jonah (before the crazy Jonah). The mother and child found some cold comfort in one fact: Molly went quickly, she was crushed with such force by Jonah’s falling body that she was barely recognizable.
*
EOT
*
The mechanical fake-ass angel, looking like bad solder-work still-liquid, like a glob of Mercury. That clown-ass angel with the tin-speaker voice in shitty font speaks to the crowd: Parson, Anne, Wadsworth the baby AI and the congregation of the Church Ethereal. Parishioners still trickling from the escape tunnel, from the perished parish beneath on the packed ash plain past time. The cosmos above slow-rolls on like it can’t even be bothered.
You’ve declared war on the Author. Please understand that all Heaven’s forces are presently arrayed against you. Have a pleasant…
“I surrender.” Surrender hell. Darlin’ what are you doing? “Anne, I got this. I surrender, fake angel.” I’m quite real. “Sure you are, you’re like a pinball made of PFAS.” That’s rude. “Truth hurts, how do I complete the surrender?”
Report to god’s Machine, the One True Author, for immediate–and-permanent destruction.
*
END EPITAPH 7