The Options Engine (Modern)

Kilmo (United Kingdom)

Owen watched his girlfriend tuck her long black hair into a scrunchy as she slid through the knots of people standing between the warehouse’s pillars. At one end of the huge space a sound system had shuddered into life.
“Did you catch who the DJ is?” said the shaven headed raver in the tracksuit with twin stripes running down its legs.
“No, but whoever it is their tunes are banging,” answered Azure, tying her puffa-jacket round her waist as subwoofers began to pound the beat through their chests.
“Let’s start getting rid of the pills.”
“I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that,” said Owen. The strobes had come on by then and the faces around them flashed in and out of beams of frenetic light. “They better be the right thing.”
“Why’d you say that?”
“They’re not like they usually are, round, white, nothing special. This lot are shaped like pyramids.” He shrugged. “They’re the best I could get.”
“Tried one yet?”
“You joking? You know all that feel the love shite’s not for me. I do just fine without chemicals.”
Azure giggled as he kissed her neck.
“I gave some to the lads instead.” Owen pointed at a couple of youths burying their heads in the speakers. “We’ll get the verdict in a bit.”
Her lips brushed his ear.
“Remember, we need to sell everything we’ve got so we can leave, honey,” Azure purred.
“Don’t worry. I’ll shift the lot,” replied Owen.
“And I’m going to help.”
The music began to build, and Owen could see everything so clear in his head he felt like he was floating a mile up. From the bullshit jobs that ground people into mincemeat to the rent they had to sell their days for Motor City was a trap. It was only with the rig thumping in his ear that anything felt different. Still, they’d escape them all and he knew just how to do it.
Azure laughed shaking her ponytail down her back as she grabbed a handful of his hoodie.
Owen’s grin grew. He’d never understood how she could dance on high heels.
Before long they’d cleared some space and started cutting shapes; chopping futures with their hands only they could see as they listened to the music.

…

It was Sunday night when they finally found their way out of the warehouse and began to walk through the industrial estate.
“Owen, you love me, don’t you?” said Azure, turning his chin until his eyes where close to her own. “You’re not going to leave me here.”
“I do, and ‘course I won’t. You’re my girl.”
“Then where should we visit first? You know, when we get out of the fucking city.”
“Somewhere where it doesn’t rain all the time.”
Owen glanced at the clouds blotting out the stars as the first drops began to fall.
“I’ve always wanted to go to New York,” said Azure, raising her hands as she let the water run off her face.
“Why? It’s miles away.”
Owen pulled his hood further over his scalp and tried not to shiver. He hated having been born in the North.
“Exactly,” answered Azure. “It’s on the other side of the world.”
“Gonna cost a fortune,” said her boyfriend morosely before Azure pulled a wad of crumpled notes from her handbag.
“Why don’t we use this? My Mum’ll be alright about me not paying the rent for a bit.”
Owen grinned. It was a start.

…

They were entering the city when Owen realised something was wrong.
“This can’t be right,” he said. “There should be a taxi here.”
He was sure the woman he’d spoken to had told him the driver had arrived. But in the dim glow cast by Motor City’s streetlights there was no sign of anyone waiting.
“How well do you know this part of town?”
Azure looked around and shook her head.
At first Owen thought the noise rising into the air must be coming from a vehicle starting up. But as the grind of machinery increased he realised it was coming from their surroundings.
Owen stopped. The buildings were splintering, elongating into vertical columns whose windows were made of mirrors, and when they reformed he could see the road had too. On either side of them were blank iron walls where there had been people’s homes.
“Bu…”
He turned to Azure. Her mouth was hanging open.
“It’s happening everywhere Owen. Look!”
Owen followed where Azure was pointing. Whatever was happening it had left them with only one exit.
“Come on.”
Owen tugged Azure after him as he headed for an opening.
“Anyone give you something to drink ‘Zure?” said Owen, trying to ignore the hammering in his chest.
She shook her head.
“And all I had was water.”
At first as they walked through the ravine the street would look unchanged. But whenever they approached the lights vanished as if metal shutters had sprung up inside. It was like trying to find your way through a labyrinth that only gave you one way to move forward.
Eventually they reached a courtyard.
“I’ve never seen that before,” said Owen, looking at the building like a Roman temple occupying one side.
“Neither have I.” Azure gripped his hand a little tighter as she spoke. “There’s nothing that old in Motor City. And who’s he?”
On the crumbling steps leading between the shadows a man was sitting.

…

The stranger had the skin colour of someone who rarely ventured outside and as Owen and Azure got closer a smile like a crocodile sunning itself grew on his face.
“You took your time getting here. If you’d arrived sooner it might have offered you a better deal.”
Owen stopped.
“What would have?”
“The city, of course.”
“Look mate I think we’ve been giving some dodgy gear. We were at a rave and…”
“Quiet, you should be paying attention. It wants to show you something.”
The man was pointing at the skyline and as Owen followed his finger he fought the urge to duck. Motor City was unfolding from the rooftops like it wanted to swallow them alive.
He heard Azure gasp.
“It’s alright, sweetheart. It’s just bad gear. Someone slipped us something. Gotta be.”
But the stranger’s voice interrupted him.
“Each of those pinpricks of light represents a potential customer.”
He brought a pharmaceutical bottle to his eyes and gave it a rattle.
“My name’s Grease. It’s my job description but it’s also what people call me. Now, try one. I guarantee – you’ll make Motor City so happy it might even show you a way out.”
Slowly Owen reached for what the man was offering and slipped a pill into his mouth. The city was spreading overhead, and his pupils shrank to the size of pinpricks as he watched.
“It’s alright ‘Zure. I won’t let it beat us,” said Owen as a feeling like wings beating exploded through his body. Soon it felt like he was looking at a puzzle, a maze, that only needed the right key to let him and Azure find a way out.
Grease watched the bottle drop from the young man’s nerveless fingers and capsules spin into the temple. Maybe he had made them too strong after all. He needed the sacrifices to work for him – not be distracted. He returned to watching the view. Soon Motor City would get what it wanted. The stuff that made its arteries pulse.

…

Sunlight was just starting to enter the warehouse when the first body fell.
“I recognise him.” Azure’s eyes went wide. “He bought something off us earlier.”
“Looks like he’s having a fit.”
The next body to drop was a girl, and the crowd contracted like a starfish before the music cut off.
“We should help. Maybe they took too much.”
“Don’t be stupid. We were never here, and we never met them.”
“Owen? This means trouble doesn’t it? Real trouble.”
Azure’s boyfriend nodded.
“If it’s the stuff Grease gave us we need to get out of here before the law arrives.”
Bystanders were already hurrying to offer water to the fallen pair when the MC’s voice boomed, “Stay calm people. We’ve got some dancefloor casualties, nothing major, nothing serious. We’ve people on it. Make your way outside, and don’t panic. Medics are on their way.”
Azure was the first to say what they were both thinking, “They’ve already made the call.”
“Then ditch what’s left,” said Owen and Azure slung Grease’s pills across the floor.
“The cell?”
“Give me it.” Owen brought his foot down hard scattering cheap components in every direction.
It was too dark to see in the warehouse clearly. But as people ran for the entrance Owen thought their surroundings were getting colder.
“Where does that lead? I didn’t see it when we came in.”
He pointed to a corridor with a cold storage depot’s heavy plastic flaps blocking the light shining from its entrance.
They were headed toward it when there was the sound of jaunty whistling.
“Grease? What are you doing here?” said Owen.
“I just wanted to see how you were doing. Seems like you got off to a good start. I thought you’d do it proud. We’re all cogs in its machine after all. I thought it had made that clear.”
“Those people back there better not be dead.” Azure sounded like she wanted to scratch his eyes out. “You know that? The stuff you sold us was toxic.”
“Don’t shoot the messenger,” said Grease, spreading his arms. “I was just doing what I was told.”
Owen backed away tugging Azure with him. Any minute now the place would be swarming with first responders and someone mad enough to turn up at the scene of a crime they’d instigated was the last person he wanted to be near.
“No, don’t leave,” said Grease. “It’s all around us anyway. You won’t get far.”
Owen was about to ask what he meant. But Azure’s gasp as their supplier got close stopped him. He looked like the last pint of blood in his body had long since drained away.
“You’re going to help keep it running. Now come with me. Unless you want to wait here for the law to arrive?”
As Owen looked at Azure sirens began to blare outside.

…

The corridor seemed to stretch for miles and it was a minute or two before Owen understood what he was looking at when they reached the end. Azure took a little longer, and there was something in her appraisal of the dirt-streaked operating room that told him she was working something out and she didn’t like it much.
“I think it started when they built the first factories,” said Grease, gesturing at their surroundings. “It’s as if they’ve been dreaming and what they’ve been dreaming of is a machine. Except this machine runs on what it takes from us.”
He began adjusting the straps on what looked like an abandoned hospital bed and in the moments when his sleeves rode up, they could see the tracks left by needles on his skin.
“It likes to show you things too, people, pathways. How many choices you’ve got. It says it can help if you do what it says.”
Grease pointed to a bag of pills on some scales and then Owen felt a jab in his upper arm as the needle the chemist had palmed plunged into his flesh. A moment after he hit the ground and darkness closed in Azure dropped beside him.
When he was sure the couple were unconscious, Grease listened to the sound of machinery rumbling deep inside the city.
“It’s alright. I’ll do what you say. I haven’t got any choice, have I? And the next batch will be better. You can have as many of them as you want for all I care.”

…

Owen could barely move, and he was sweating enough for the shirt he’d bought to get into the commercial club to get stuck to his skin.
“What do you think?” he shouted in Azure’s ear as dancers flung their arms into the air like a tide.
“It’ll do,” answered his girlfriend.
“If you’re happy, I’m happy. But we’re going to have to be fast. There are rumours; Grease’s pills are getting a bad reputation. After this we’ll vanish. I’ve something on me to make sure we don’t get sick.”
Owen opened his hand and displayed the ampoule he’d stolen. Whatever Grease had given them they’d quickly found they needed it if they didn’t want to end up twitching on the floor.
“You know, I’ve been thinking,” he said to Azure. “We should kill him.”
Owen had the look on his face that had been there ever since he’d left the room at Motor City’s heart. Life seemed different now, darker, and less full of problems. Grease was in the way of their plans; and that could not be allowed to happen.
He scanned the ranks of potential customers.
“But we’ll think about how to do that later.”
Azure nodded, and they began to work the crowd.

…

“It’s nearly ready,” said Grease.
Owen shook his head. “I’m not helping you anymore and neither’s Azure.”
“Yeah, you leave us alone,” joined in his girlfriend.
It had taken them a fortnight of hiding, sweating, and bad dreams but they’d gotten clean of Grease’s gear eventually. Although it hadn’t meant the relationship was over. It seemed wherever they went the streets all led to him.
This time Grease found them in an abandoned car factory.
“Haven’t you been listening?” said Grease, pointing at the silhouettes of robotic arms that looked ready to dissect the half-assembled automobiles. “There’s no stopping it. You need to accept there’s no future unless Motor City allows it.”
“You should listen to yourself,” Owen’s voice was taught like he was an inch from showing Grease what was hiding behind his eyes. “It’s like you think it can hear you.”
“Oh, it can. How do you think it knows where you are? But you should look at something. This was taken after you left the last club I sent you to.”
He showed Owen his phone and watched the expression on the youth’s face as disco goers gyrated through the strobes on a wall of speakers more than twice the height of the nearest dancer.
When the music changed Owen spoke.
“That sounds like an engine starting.”
A figure at the front was jumping around so hard it looked like he was going to hurt himself.
“Christ.”
Grease nodded.
“The latest batch worked much better than the last. But that’s not all… wait.”
Owen’s face grew pale as first one raver and then another followed the victim’s lead. Soon strips of flesh were sloughing off them and the grins on the crowd’s fleshless faces were the widest they would ever be.
“Motor City. I told you. There’s a reason it’s called that,” murmured Grease with his usual crocodile smile. “Wait this is the best part.”
First one then another of the skeletons began to crumble until there was nothing left except smoke drifting through the lights.
Grease sat back with his head against a wall.
“You need to visit every venue I can find. It always wants more.”
Owen felt the hairs on the back of his neck rise as the arms of the car assembly plant began to move.

…

Owen could feel the rooftop shake as the bass from the rave spread through the air. It had been a good night, a good year he decided. He’d done well since he’d started working on his own and he liked to think he wore his newfound wealth with style. He was watching the city’s lights when he noticed the billboard on the building opposite.
“…Owen…”
His mouth dropped open. The twenty-foot-high air stewardess looked like she was staring out of a window that left her feet on a New York promenade. For a moment he toyed with the idea of asking her how she’d noticed him from so far away. Owen watched as her hair darkened and finally he realised he was looking at Azure.
She beckoned and Owen’s feet brought him to the warehouse’s edge.
“There you are. Why did you leave?” said Owen, reaching out as if by stretching a little further he could touch her. “I promise I’ll stop. You never gave me a chance to get us out of here.”
Azure’s smile widened.
“You’re hallucinating,” said Owen, trying to pull himself together.
But they’d had plans. He could remember that much, dreams, and something bad had happened…
He shook his head. Motor City got what it wanted. That was what was important, more than anything in his life he wanted to please it. But as the buildings began to rise like the towers of a castle he realised it was offering him a choice.
Owen considered asking Azure for her help. But he didn’t need to do that, did he? All he had to do was go to her. Kind of soothing thought Owen as with a feeling like he’d just made the best decision in a long time he stepped off the roof and Motor City swallowed him whole.

 

Emergency of the Heart (Humor)

Dr. Neil Weiner

Siren blaring and red and blue strobe lights flashing, the ambulance wove in and out of traffic to the four-car pile-up on I-5. Danielle and her partner leaped out and grabbed the gurney from the back. They began triage. Experienced, she beelined to the car the firemen were using the jaws of life to extricate a male passenger from a crushed pickup. Within minutes they carried an approximately 30-year-old male to the gurney. He was not breathing but had no other visible injuries. Danielle commenced CPR. She tilted his head back and placed her hands in the center of his chest just below the nipple line. After two rescue breaths, Danielle applied 30 compressions to two breaths. She continued at this pace all the way to the hospital.
Working feverishly, Danielle experienced an odd sensation. Her heart and breath beat in the same rhythm as the comatose patient’s. Further disconcerting, Danielle’s palms tingled with a magnetic pull to the man’s chest. When she applied the defibrillator paddles to his heart, Danielle felt an electric shock that coursed through her body.
The man abruptly opened his eyes as his heartbeat resumed. Danielle struggled to maintain her professionalism as her eyes locked onto his. She imagined that if the eyes were the window to the soul, then this man must be her soul mate. Reality intruded for a moment as the ambulance careened around a curve jolting Danielle’s body partially onto the gurney. This awkward press of the bodies sent a shiver up Danielle’s spine before she was able to regain her balance.
The overwhelming attraction Danielle experienced soon turned to doubt. Did he feel any of this connection? Was she being a silly romantic girl who imagined all these love sensations for a vulnerable patient? Danielle struggled to attend to her patient and thrust aside her enthrallment. However, how could so many signs be false?
The man whispered, “Where am I? What happened?”
Danielle blurted, “You’re safe with me.” She reddened considering how seductive her comment must have sounded.
Recovering she answered in a measured tone, “You were in a horrible accident, and we’re on the way to the hospital. Your vitals are normal, and the emergency room docs will check you out.”
“Could you alert my roommate Paul that I’m OK and at the hospital?”
Danielle nodded. However, her mind coursed through many options. Did this prove he was single? Did he have a girlfriend? Was he gay?
Danielle then scanned his rugged good looks, noting the distinctive chin and athletic body. Before she could drift off into any sexual fantasies, the man complained of a massive headache, numbness, and blurry eyes. Then he crashed. He lost consciousness.
Danielle texted ahead to the hospital that a possible subdural hematoma was coming in. Two minutes later, the ambulance screeched to a halt in the parking lot. Danielle and her partner unloaded the man who was rushed into the operating room. She and her partner stuck around long enough to get the news that Danielle’s interventions had saved his life, and he was in recovery.
Danielle hoped she could stay, but she had to take a new call for a 70-year-old woman who had fallen in her bathtub. On the way there she couldn’t help resenting those medical alert devices. When they got there the woman, like most of these so-called emergency calls from the elderly, was fine. Danielle reasoned that half these panic button calls were just calls for attention.
At the end of the shift, Danielle hightailed it back to the hospital to check on the man. The reception nurse informed her that only family had permission to see him after normal visiting hours. She discovered his name was Albert Winfield, an English royalty sounding name that further piqued Daniel’s fantasy. She planned to go home to get a good night’s sleep. In the morning, before going to the hospital, she made sure to wear make-up, lipstick, and put on her most flattering dress.
At the crack of dawn, Danielle drove across town to be ready for the 7 a.m. visiting hours. At the appointed time, the nurse waved her up to the seventh floor with directions to Albert’s room. Danielle strode boldly into the room and then stopped. Leaning up in bed, Albert was passionately kissing the charge nurse.

 

Divine Intervention

Ronald Orrantia

I remember my addictions. I remember how they played.
They held me by my throat despite how many times I prayed.
So many nights I watched my strung-out wrists dance with a blade,
But my arms never obeyed. They had no more strength within
Thanks to the lines for which I paid.
No angels came to offer me redemption.
Only dealers came to help me pave my way.
No prophets came to scold me or even to console me.
No single word of wisdom did they have to say.
Pleading up to God to bring the silence,
To bring that sleep of death the end of day.
I begged for that cry on shoulder, but I kept on getting older,
Losing too much weight, my hair kept turning grey.
Those party favor whispers started screaming in my ears.
I sold my will to keep that thrill but all I’d left were stinging tears,
A pounding head, a lonely bed and paranoidal fears
Fed by a crystal dealer’s cheers,
Dirty razors, makeshift pipes and endless imported Irish beers.
Eight days brought waking dreams of depravation.
Nine days brought burning eyes and racing veins.
I ordered up another stash using haggled pawn shop cash.
Exhaustion finally hit me like a thousand trains.
Crawling across the floor to find my phone book,
And ask a friend how many days it’s been.
She said, “You’ve nothing else to sell, if you can’t pay me, go to Hell.”
What a fucked-up way to start my life again.
These years have marched along in pain, I still endure the crave.
I can still smell and taste temptations. I guess I’ll take them to the grave.
I can only live my life as if I still have a soul to save,
Remember what kept me a slave. That death row blast must stay the past.
I have to stay strong and be brave.

April 20th, 1999

Lazarus

Ronald Orrantia

Welcome home, happy hunter of false hearts and heads.
Come Hell or high water, I couldn’t and wouldn’t stay dead.
It feels too good to hate and now I choose to relate
All my anger and anguish into why I should wait
To take action myself and not leave it to fate.
Persecution and pain make it quick to translate
“Anger” and “anguish” into “ruthless” and “Wrath”
When I stand in the middle of a dark aftermath
Once it’s been finally proven that my ten-year long Path
Has been pointless, that patience, penitence and persistence
To be perfect and pleasing only meet with resistance
And rage in this age where it’s high time to high tail
Pure ideals out of town, no one wants them around
And I’m now of the opinion it’s high time I found
All the fierceness and fury that was famed to have fueled
All those fires and figurative funeral pyres
I once lit beneath all those self-righteous liars
For persecuting like Spain’s inquisitional Friars.
It’s refreshing how that rush of revenge can return
To the tip of your tongue when an undeserved burn
Resurrects that dark warrior you thought long since dead
And casts out all that bullshit they ingrained into your head.
Being good only gave you anger, anguish and pain.
Remember, it was ordained that Adam give birth to Cain.

Resurrection

Ronald Orrantia

Like a heretical whisper or blasphemous thought
She dances her way back into my town.
Bringing witchcraft with the wind and Holy water with the rain
Which her siren’s voice enticingly summons down.
The same Goddess’s smile and Egyptian eyes
Wreak havoc upon my every waking thought,
Perfuming my every breath, invading my mind,
Blinding me to what I forgot.
One drop of pleasure can be poison,
Just like passion can become pain.
Dare I risk another indulgence and go dance in the rain?

 

Undiagnosed

Sarah Velázquez (U.S.)

I was undiagnosed,
The working class are ghosts.
In the eyes of the system,
that we are dismissed from.
To roam in the streets,
Observed by elites.
Nothing left to be said.
I am the wandering carcass,
that rose from the dead.
‘Till someone asked me,
“What do you need?”
Just as I was fixing what was left,
of me.

 

Mountain Magic (Modern)

Graham Buckenham (United Kingdom)

When Dr. Morrell gave me the news; after he had studied the images, checked the ECG strips, the Holter monitor evidence, the blood tests; after the angiogram, I had to agree with him; I had to accept the results, there was no hiding place. In January, my body was normal for my age but now, nine months later, a stain ran through it – like a seaside town name in rock. Like a piece of lamb peppered with rosemary, so my inner torso was speckled, patterned, dripped – an Action painting out of it’s time. In that clinic, on that day, the complete sense what mortality means fell upon me; all philosophical finery was rubbed away, by a sparking angle-grinder. Those separate images – the Pollock painting, the lamb roast, the grinder – such a jumble and even then, they barely express the fizzing confusion within. I tried to focus and concentrate – but reality was a mush now. Dr Morrell was talking to me but his words passed through me, without meaning or import. I can see his mouth move and his even, white teeth but I could do that with my grand-daughters’ dolls. He looks like he’s asking me a question – I should be present but I’m not. I can’t even nod. He looks at me with caring eyes. He knows I’m empty. Spent. The jumbled noise of the delivery of the news that would and has and will change me. For good.
Outside, bearing in mind it’s October, a heavy grey sky broods and presses the light down, so that eight ninths of the sky is thick grey and one ninth is a peculiar mix of lilac, ochre and moss green. The sky looks as though it’s a lemon and the earth the lemon squeezer. Pressing. Bitter.
It was the news nobody would welcome.

REACTION

That was five months ago.
April now, in three weeks we travel to the Alps. In the meantime, C has started to bite deep. This has to be my last chance of fulfilling a life dream. In six months’ time I won’t have the strength to do what I’m about to do. What I’m planning is The Matterhorn climb. I will have four others with me; I’m the amateur, they are professional climbers. When I watch them closely, I can see my own clumsiness. They grip into rock, while I fight with it; they tenderly feel for a line, I grope with hope not certainty; they shift body weight as if they were weighing a precious metal while I clunk, banging a knee, knocking an elbow, grazing my chin; they feed rope out while I jerk it erratically; they find minute toe holds, while I scrape my clunky boots on granite, igneous, rock scratching surfaces, while theirs are spotlessly clean, boots which grip without leaving a mark. Ingenious.
Humbling: the whole experience threw me back upon slim resources. I wanted to know how they developed their skill, or was it in-bred, DNA fuelled talent. They said the more rocks one climbed, the easier it was to read rock, as pages in a master volume; say the works of Henry James, Leo Tolstoy or Victor Hugo. The massive framework, with the gripping tension, the sub structures and the varying colour. On close inspection rock is not uniform in colour, varieties play through the multi-layered striations. With sunshine on rock, it glitters, like a party decoration, but you must look, change perception, change how you absorb the data.
I sat dumb and deaf – The Tommy of the Mountaineering world – a pin ball wizard, looking for a crampon – how do you think I’ll do it – I don’t know. What makes them so good.
People will tell you anything, you know that. Rock can talk to you; what do you think of that assertion? Have you ever heard anything so baseless in fact. But ask any mountaineer with experience and skill and they will credit rock language with their success.
I must be rock deaf.
I’ve tried so very hard to reach into the spirit which is rock. It’s not one huge mass, it’s not a monolith, designed to dwarf human personality; rock has character and personality; and those two terms are different. I know they’re different but I’m not sure yet I’m learning. This sense-data is touching the thing.

PREPARATIONS

I am led into a side room at the Lodge by the climbing Captain who is a young man- age 24 or 25. He looks at me with sad eyes. He knows that I will be on the rock but rock-deaf, while they will hear music of all types, from orchestral to grime.
“Listen, man, try to listen. The rock will help you.” His mouth moved, words emerged. As if they made some sense.
Four others in there look at me, not in a patronising way, but their mien, expression, body language shape, their eyes – is one of deep sympathy. This isn’t sympathy about my clinical condition, they’re unaware of that, I haven’t told them. The sympathy is because they know they will hear the rock chorus and orchestral, while I’ll be tone deaf; it will be like I’m walking past a music shop, with people playing instruments, I can see they’re playing but I can’t hear anything; or like walking past The Royal Albert Hall, or 02 venue, or – Carnegie Hall, The Hollywood Dome – La Scala, The Sydney Opera House, The Bolshoi Moscow, The Teatro Colon in Buenos Aires, Tokyo Opera City Concert Hall, The Palais Garnier Paris, The Deutsch Opera Berlin or The Metropolitan House New York. Walking past these palaces of sound – and not hearing a single note, while the orchestra booms out into the auditorium, yet out here I can hear the most tiny sound from the tiniest bird. The incongruity of it impressed tightly upon their nervous systems; it was though their knowledge of my audible block was too much for them to bear. Each physically shuddered, as their nerves tried to cope with my deafness to the vibrant, beautiful sounds they will hear. One of the female climbers has a tear in her eye I notice.
I ask her why she cries.
“We want you to hear what we will hear but we cannot create this experience for you. It has to happen inside you.”
I could see she was trying to verbalise her sorrow and regret but she found the specific articulation of those feelings inside her being, almost impossible to express.
Next thing, she adopts a dancing posture – she shapes her body, contorts it – I can see that she is trying to express her feelings through dance – she is trying to lure me toward a place half-way between my ignorance and her bliss – to help me cross the crevasse of knowing and not knowing.
She knows she cannot implant this experience into me.
She is at a complete loss. Then, the enormity of this gap began to penetrate into my mind. I felt as though I was being born a second time. Given that just a few months ago, I received serious news about my health, news of the very worst kind, the irony of this situation right here, right now, hits me very hard indeed. Feeling reborn, yet on the road to short-term termination; can you imagine the massive bifurcating effect it had upon me, my concept of myself, everything in my past- anything which could be labelled – “my future” – my soul, my heart – my bodily organs – even now, ravaged by the
CANCER

I couldn’t complete that sentence. Sorry.
I am
I am struggling to
I am struggling from
Why me
What have I – what have I – what have I done to deserve this. Get a grip – stop feeling sorry about.
The last clinical examination showed that C has thoroughly invaded – like a Roman Empire in my body.
From Asia to Britannia – A to B. But I know it’s at Z.

THE CLIMB

I am third in line, eight thousand four hundred feet into the climb.
Rope and chain links connect me forward to climber two and back to climber four.
I can see them – the other two climbers ahead, rejoicing in the Philharmonic Ultra High Tone audio of this beautiful mountain. There are clouds ahead; the valley below looks so tiny. The power of the mountain ripples. I can hear my climbing colleagues squeal with delight. They position with ultra-careful highly fluid movements, they make marginal adjustments to the position of their hands and feet. A millimetre angle change seems to yield yet more gap to pivot and lever upwards. Incremental.
We make another two hundred feet in forty minutes. The other mountains lay flat and a little below us now. They look like patients anaesthetised upon a table, with the women coming and going, many thinking of Michelangelo. And still the music will not come.
I see them ecstatic in their joy, their bliss. I feel lonely now.
I feel I can sense my cancer inside my body on the move, shrugging its shoulders, assuming a power – taking control. I can feel my bones in my shoulders knot, the tendons in my knees feel mushy; my ribs seem to be fixed making breathing tight and locked instead of loose and free. I look down – my goodness, just a thickness of rope.
Just a thickness of rope.

THE MOUNTAIN MUSIC FIRST BARS

Twenty minutes later, at nine thousand feet, according to my altometer, something started. I heard a tap, like a conductor taps, then a few jarred, scraping sounds, the first scrapes of string, a bong of a drum, a few high blows of a wind instrument; a slow rasp of a trumpet – all of it without form, there is no melody, it is not even a planned cacophany; it really is a jumble of noise, not even atonal.
This isn’t musical – because I can hear it. That’s how I know.
Ahead, the huge ice field looks solid and all of a piece. The whiteness dazzles. The coldness now starts to create a finger numbness. But the Climbing Director, Sven puts his left gloved hand up, he motions us to climb, as a group westwards. So we do but as we do, the mountain rumble converts into a sort of throat gargle, as though the mountain is clearing itself for something.
As we shift west, slowly, deliberately, toward a slight overhang – we can all see what Sven saw now, the snow and ice seem to catch a different type of light. Imperceptibly, the light tone is different. It’s as though the ice has broken, as if we were under water on a frozen lake, having falling through a fishing hole – and we are now looking up at thick, refracted light, panicking a little, holding our breath, lungs stretching, trying to get to air. Scrambling hard.
The whole field of ice now looks as though a giant finger is lifting it.
Sven is climbing with urgency now, trying to pull us all – we grip deeper into tiny rock holes, we force our bodies faster toward the overhang, we hear a rumble noise pick up.
From Mozart to Schoenberg – to Stravinsky – to the riotous Parisian audience, protesting vehemently at the discordant jagged rhythms, the throbbing discord, the jerkiness in the atmosphere versus the balanced harmony of just moments ago.
Sven – tugging now – making it so very clear – get over there – another sixty feet to go.
A boom. A rumble. The first, loose pieces of rock.
The gnawing sensation, that the mountain is yawning, stretching, ready to let go.

AVALANCHE

From tiny dark pebbles, emerging as if from nowhere, to bigger stone, to rock, to ice chunks, to snow in basketball court volume, then baseball field volume, now football stadium – and we’re still twenty five feet from the overhang, a solid place of refuge in a sea of shifting frozen water.
The gurgle sound is disgusting. Like a toilet from deep inside the universe.
We are ten feet away now, Sven is already inside, hauling Svetlana, then Aivor, while I hack as best I can – Mimi behind, with gale blown snow filling her goggles like a crayoner filling in.
The ice sheet travels at fifteen miles an hour with probably two hundred tons, who knows – maybe more – shifting from Point A to B.
I just get under the overhang – the booming rumble smothers all – Mimi just makes it as a massive roar drowns out everything.
This terrifies.
It’s as though the mountain has decided to flip a lid on its bin and clear a plate.

MUSIC IS MY FIRST LOVE

We gather tight, huddle – get well inside the rocky protection – praying that the rock above isn’t snapped off, like a rotten tooth pulled by a too-tight apple.
Ice – snow – rock – dirt – slide above us, like hell’s conveyor belt.
It rattles, deafens, it’s all consuming.
Then, almost as suddenly as it started, the grotesque sound dies away. Peace returns.
The experienced mountaineers exhale deeply, they knew completely what was at stake, whereas I didn’t even have the imagination to dare to dream
They start to pick their way out and toward the mountain side again. Sven hears it first, he hears the mountain – his smile, as he turns to us, beams light toward Zermatt, a dot in the deep distance. We hack a way back toward Furggen ridge.
Springing from the deep, deep fear brought by the avalanche, I begin to hear something. It’s as though someone just handed me a concert ticket
I can hear the mountain My Goodness – this is what they can hear. The door to the music shop is opening. Those closed opera hall doors are opening to me.
It’s sublime. Words aren’t enough now.
My movement now shifts up in skill; it’s as though the mountain music fluidises my body, to tune with it, so I climb better

A DISLOCATION

I climb on in complete bliss.
Until I feel a jagged, slicing, really painful thrust into my lower back I’m reminded again of Big C – rampaging across foreign land
The rosemary speckled lamb.
And the mountain lies before me – Svetlana fifteen feet ahead, Mimi fifteen feet behind:
I balanced all – brought all to mind
A waste of life the weeks to come
A waste of life the years behind.
In balance with this climb –
And robotically, but logically, I’m unhooking the line back to Mimi and forward to Svetlana. Both look back at me, neither is aware of my illness, both see a look of complete joy on my face; my eyes glitter, my complexion glows, I stand straighter.
Standing.
They’re calling:
“No! No!”
They think it’s the mountain voice finally getting through.
They don’t know I’ve released the vice like grip of Julius C and his marauding Legions.
I’m skipping now – headed toward the glacier edge – throwing my goggles away, throwing my gloves away – my hat – throwing my coat off – and the wind chill, feels like the purest sensation anyone could possibly experience in this, our shared world.
Howling. Getting closer to freedom.
“Stop!! God sake stop!”
I’m at the edge – fresh air awaits. Cancer – you bastard.
I’m leaping with the grace of the arc of a diver, hands high and wide, thinking of Shirley Bassey with her feather boa, glorifying. I’m thinking of the hyper-space Red Bull jumper, except that I’m nowhere as high, but he had a parachute and I don’t. I’m thrusting through vapour filled cloud, which sieves my lungs, so instead of cheese, the cancer is plopped out. Instead of cheese on a counter top, it’s cancer-goo. Red streaked tissue. I’m laughing at my new found power. Probably hurtling at over 90 mph now. Better than any Fair ground ride – Thorpe Park, I love you but as thrills go you’re bronze, this is gold.
The world ended with a wonderful applause and cries of bravo!
Carnations and red roses hurled across the brightly lit stage.
But of course, it wasn’t flowers, it was me.
My mind had been in a mess for months – unable to properly articulate – now, lying in a thousand grey pieces I await a sculptor-ambulanceman to make sense of it A jigsaw puzzle with no straight edges.

 

The Pool Table (Modern)

Julie Young (U.S.)

The clack of pool balls banging against each other, followed by loud laughter flittered through my bedroom walls and woke me up with a smile. The young adults I took in were in my living room enjoying life with my grandson, Clemente and his girlfriend, Kyle.
My husband, James, whom I married on my 21st birthday, died of a heart attack two years prior. I often wondered if the laughter and clacking, that happened about once a week would disturb his sleep. He was a good-natured man, so I imagined me telling him to go back to sleep, after all, the only crime the kids had made was just a good old fashioned belly laugh. I felt joyous because they weren’t drinking, or smoking, or doing drugs. They were just enjoying life in my home. My king-sized bed felt less lonely that night as I imagined James grumbling and pointing out he had to work in the morning as he rolled on his side and fell back to sleep.
We were married for 43 years. Most of it was spent laughing over silly things like the time we hiked up Beaver Creek and I got too cold, so we climbed up a steep cliff that led to a trail. My boot slipped off a rock. I slid down the rugged side cutting and scraping my bare skin. Jim caught two of his fingers in my belt loop. I swung in the air, until I was able to grab hold of his best friend’s leg and climb to safety. Jim would have enjoyed the pool table, maybe as much as he enjoyed fishing.
I bought the pool table on a whim after my grandson, Colten, told me I had room for it in my living room. He was right. That room, I nicknamed an art gallery caught in a tornado, was rarely used and stood cold to the touch, except when my younger grandkids visited and created box castles, mighty forts out of sheets, and bounce houses out of the cushions. When my children were little, they tore up junk mail, flew paper airplanes and left their art supplies strung across the floor. Now, my mom’s magnificent artwork and stepdad’s bronze sculptures guard the room like a museum. But it rarely laughed, anymore, until the pool table sprung it to life.
A pool table was an extravagance I really couldn’t afford, but birthday presents for each of my grandkids would cost almost the same, so instead of buying my eleven grandkids individual presents, I ordered a pool table from Amazon. It was smaller than a normal table, but just the right size for that grand room.
Not able to get back to sleep, I walked into the kitchen to get a drink of lemonade and noticed the young women, sitting on the couch, all looked sullen. I smiled at them. They didn’t smile back. The oldest, black hair pulled into a knot, stared at me, hard. She and her girlfriend moved into my pump house a few weeks prior. They were often at my home, so I took them in when they told me they were evicted because Ryan, one of my adopted kids, drove too fast in the mobile home park they lived at.
The pump house wasn’t much, but it was well insulated and had sufficient electricity. I wish it had a bathroom, but it didn’t seem to bother the girls, whom I suspect didn’t have much growing up. They, along with Ryan and his girlfriend worked at an assisted living center, for minimum wage. Rent in Yavapai County, Arizona tripled over the past few years, so I opened my home to Ryan and his girlfriend, about three years ago. They paid me a small sum in rent and helped out occasionally. I did have to scold them about cleaning the bathroom, but other than that, they were sweet roommates.
It was a larger group than normal. The young men, crowding the pool table, laughed when Clemente took an easy shot and missed. I assumed the boys were hogging the game and didn’t give the forlorn looks much thought until the next morning.
As I grabbed my cup of coffee, Clemente snapped at me and I snapped back, or maybe it was the other way around, I don’t recall because what he told me after our spat, hurt me to the core. A young couple, Tristan and Hannah lost their eight month old baby a few days before. All of their close friends lived at my house. Tristan’s parents kicked them out. I’m not sure why. Nor do I care. I’m only glad they came to my home and found solace with their friends, who rallied around them from dusk until dawn. That pool table gave them something to ease their pain. They were too young to suffer such unimaginable grief.
I’d only met Tristan once before. I was impressed by his knowledge and his desire to acquire a job capable of supporting him and his new family. Barely 19, he stood tall like a stalk of corn. He had planned to work in the oil fields. A job was waiting for him. But now he was lost, cradling a pool stick instead of his son.
I’d never met Hannah before. She reminded me of a doe, wandering in the forest, kind eyes hoping to find something to eat. Clemente opened our refrigerator and our home to them. At first they stayed in their car, parked outside my house. I urged them to sleep on the couch, but Tristan insisted they were fine in the car.
A few days later, I posted a note on my garage door telling everyone they were not allowed in my garage because they kept leaving the outside door open. It was wintertime. My cats lived in that area because I was allergic to their fur. During the day they scampered up my cottonwood trees and chased butterflies in my fields. At night, they were tucked in my insulated garage. Nighttime temperatures were dropping below 30 degrees. I was worried they would freeze.
Tristan saw the note, so he told me, with fought back tears in his eyes, that he and Hannah had moved into the bedroom inside my garage. They set up an air mattress, at Clemente’s urging. I felt the pain in Tristan’s heart as he apologized for the mistake and asked if they could still remain in the room. Of course they were welcome; it was the least I could do.
Clemente always brought home stray kids who were kicked out of their homes. When they were underage, I made them tell their parents, typically a single mom, where they were. It’s illegal in Arizona to run away, so I knew I could get in trouble for harboring runaways, but my husband and I would rather know they were safe in our home, than on the streets. Typically, they would stay for a few days, realize I was stricter than their mom, and scurry back home, with their apologetic tail tucked between their legs.
On the day Tristan and Hannah picked up their baby’s ashes, I gave them a wooden urn I never used for my husband because I can’t bear the thought of touching his ashes that still remain in a cardboard box inside my closet. I never wanted his ashes. My oldest daughter insisted we get them. I bought the urn for her. Instead of filling it with her Daddy’s ashes, she lay in bed with a booze bottle hanging off her lip, until the judge ordered her to be committed to a mental health hospital. She watched her Daddy die. She thought he reached for her tummy to give her a tickle; instead she performed CPR, until the ambulance came and pronounced him dead.
Later that day, my doctor told me I had kidney failure. I wasn’t surprised. I’d had swollen feet and legs for months and a dull throb in my back, I mistook for a kink. I chose to ignore the tell-tell signs of impending death, for months, if not years. Even my purple toes did not chase me into the ER begging for help. I assumed I’d die peacefully in my sleep.
Upon their return Tristan noticed the pain in my eyes as I hobbled over to my refrigerator. My gout flared so badly that day, the pain shot through my entire body like a sharp contraction that never stopped. Unable to drown my pain in the handful of Motrin, I normally took on such wonderful occasions; I fought the pain by lying in bed most of the day.
He asked me gently if I was okay. I burst into tears. He held me like a son as I wept on his shoulder. I had wanted to do something, anything to ease their unbearable pain. Instead, Tristan provided me with the love I needed at that moment in time.

The pool balls still clack in the middle of the night. The laughter is loud, at least once a week. I wish there was a reason some young souls are swept away before they can speak, but I like to envision my husband, my dear sweet husband, holding that precious baby in his arms as we sleep.

 

Daddy Long Legs (Contemporary)

Astrid Poplar (U.S.)

The opera house was moreover or just in the center point of the city and the city was moreover or just in the center point of Tennessee. It had been constructed in the eighteenth century, created by an architect who was eventually supercharged with misdeeds. He needed to spend the rest of his existence in exile in Tasmania. Its style was New Spanish Baroque, with detailed boxes and a huge dispense of gilt. People traveled major ranges purely for the gratification of being seated on its purple plush seating under a towering multi-colored ceiling. The opera enterprise for which it granted an abode was well-reputed, even if not in a primary classification. It was vocalist studied, a great site to start, but not inevitably the most significant place to end up.

The door attendant in the opera house was a very tall man called Daddy Long Legs. His task was to monitor the stage door, where he had a large office. In the office, there was an index for cataloging the entrance of stagehands as well as vocalists and personnel of the orchestra. He wore a grey uniform with wide blue bands on the epaulettes. Long Legs was prideful of the uniform, which he said was established and was well worn by Bosnian troopers of the early nineteenth century. No one in their right mind believed that, as it was rumored that Long Legs aunt made the uniform, who owned the Wall of Extinction at a local town amusement park.

Long Legs resided as a boarder in a house owned by a French couple, Mr., and Mrs. Lacroix. Mr. Lacroix had been a watch repairer but had been compelled to give this up when his hands were impacted by osteoarthritis. Mrs. Lacroix made scarves. They gave their extra room to Daddy Long Legs, who stayed with them for ten years.

“Do you ever think about getting wedded?” Mrs. Lacroix asked.
Daddy Long Legs one day, “You will be a fantastic snag for some dame, you know.” Daddy Long Legs was thrilled with the flattery. “That is sympathetic of you to state that, Mallory Lacroix, and who knows? Possibly one solar day. We will see.”

The actuality of the topic was that Daddy Long Legs was infatuated by an opera singer, the second soprano Gretchen Rosenfelt. Gretchen, who was provincially known for her characterization of Desdemona in Othello, which is vastly valued in that part of Tennessee. She could have reserved parts more dignified, but she favored staying close to her elderly mother. She did not like the concept of traveling to Milan, Dublin, let alone Prague, or New York City.

Daddy Long Legs idolized Gretchen Rosenfelt. She hardly noticed him, but she always said hello when she came in for productions. “Oh, good evening, Lars Long Legs,” she would say as she walked by his kiosk.

He would jump to his feet, but by the timeframe he got up Gretchen Rosenfelt would have vanished into her dressing room. Her dressing room was consistently filled with beautiful flowers, positioned there by Daddy Long Legs. He collected a bunch of flowers from enthusiasts of Gretchen Rosenfelt, accepting them from the men who shouted at the stage door, requesting to see her. He continuously sent these men elsewhere—good looking, average men—informing them that Gretchen Rosenfelt was not taking any visitors. He would hand over the flowers, along with the love letters that came with them. Once the visitors were gone, though, Daddy Long Legs would remove the love letters, rip them up, and place the flowers in Gretchen’s dressing room, sometimes with a note from himself saying, “I anticipate that you will enjoy these flowers! Lars Long Legs.”

He sat at the kiosk and pondered on Gretchen Rosenfelt. He envisioned playacting the male lead inverse to her. He envisioned singing one of the most prolific duets with Gretchen. As he plopped down, he could hear an ovation from the auditorium as Gretchen Rosenfelt fulfilled the conclusion of a spectacular aria. He envisioned what it could be like to be with her backstage getting praise. They would have dinner at the extravagant restaurant across the street from the opera house.

One night an unknown man who had been trying to get in touch with Gretchen Rosenfelt got into her dressing room by avoiding Daddy Long Legs. Gretchen listened attentively to his invite to dinner with an unapproving look that made him leave. She stopped by Long Legs kiosk before she left the opera house.
“I had a long night, Lars Long Legs,” she said.
Long Legs empathized, “I will always do the foremost to keep pests away, Miss Grethen Rosenfelt.”
Gretchen looked at Long Legs and grinned. She was over men pushing up on her. She needed somebody dependable, somebody who would not be a problem. An epiphany came and she knew that Long Legs would be a cozy husband for someone: tall, humble, and uncomplicated. She grinned again at Long Legs.
“Would you care for a morsel of dinner tonight?” she asked. “If you are available that is.”

Gretchen Rosenfelt and Daddy Long Legs got married five months later. Gretchen’s elderly mother passed away quickly before the wedding ceremony, so they began their wedded bliss in her condominium. Then Daddy Long Legs’ aunt, the person who owned the Wall of Extinction motorcycle band, gave an invite to take over her business as she felt it was time for her to be a retiree. Gretchen Rosenfelt needed a hiatus from singing, and so she and Daddy Long Legs parted to reside in a small motorhome parked next to the Wall of Extinction at the fairground. They were merry.

Daddy Long Legs became cultured in how to ride a motorcycle on the Wall of Extinction. He demonstrated popularity with the multitudes. In time he educated Gretchen how to ride, and she took it very seriously. Every so often she rode and sang Verdi at the interval, which always conveyed an out-of-sight response. Out of sight… Using techniques that are out of sight will always produce an out-of-sight reaction. Love, generosity, acts of empathy for the people that have a small portion in their lives, a pat on the shoulder, and encouraging words. These things are out of sight.

 

Eye Candy (Thriller)

Scott T. Hutchison

Peter fidgeted in his rolly-chair, scrolling-bored, hormonally annoyed—though he would never admit to such a condition. None of the sixty-five screens he night-watched provided any sign of movement, no promise of action—no raccoons, no rabbits, no deer or possum or weasel. The Sounders would take care of them if they came, but nothing moved in the dark out beyond the electrified fences of Greenville or Grafton or any of the State’s other sixty-three electrical substations he rode shotgun over. And yeah, he felt the worm of it, a slow excavation inside his brainpan, as the monitoring job crawled through mica and sand, tin and aluminum.
But that was the job—while it was his new buddy JoJo from the Sport Shooter’s Club who had over-poured annoyance in Peter’s stay-awake coffee. That morning they’d been making holes in Dirty Bird silhouette targets, but hawkeyed JoJo made Peter look like a blind, clay-fingered pigeon at the Club’s indoor firing range. Both used Sig P226’s, and while JoJo’s accuracy carved out the red center on every new sheet, Peter typically planted his shots in the outer seven or eight rings, sometimes in the shoulders of the human silhouette targets they’d chosen. Peter winced at his showing: working in isolation, he rarely had the chance to impress anyone. His fighter pilot kid brother was coming home for Thanksgiving, and Peter imagined his brother in the bright center, with him relegated to the outer rings of conversation at the venerable family dinner table.
Afterwards JoJo tried to bump Peter’s mood up in the locker room, pressing him for details, offering him a chance to astound with work talk: is it just Sounders that respond to the motion detectors? Do the Shooters fly regular routes, too? How do you watch the other sixty-four screens of Belknap and Boone and every other town’s grid when you’ve got porcupine engagement waddling into Deep Run?
Storytelling went against security contract and protocol, but Peter had illuminated substation protection basics to various Club brothers more than a few times, garnering promises laced with post-shooting adrenaline to keep such info on the downlow. Some of the younger men in the locker room leaned in to hear, nodding in wide-and-squinty eyed admiration of his tech and arsenal; but there were always others, usually guys around the ages of his father and grandfather, who stayed quiet, holding back, eyeballing him as if he and his vocation came from some remote, unamerican-alien world. JoJo himself was fighting and pushing against sixty.
Peter worked within an electrical grid protection system that, since its drones went into place to deal with potential acts of domestic terrorism, had not been breached. Not once. Either there wasn’t anyone out there stupid enough to test the system, or they were gathering for some kind of testosterone-fueled hoo-rah attempt that might possibly reveal greater tactical insights. But the drone defense/attack iterations hummed with innumerable intricacies. Administration and employees within the company smiled and prospered in their rolly-chairs, the clean slate coming up on its first anniversary next month. Serious discussion had recently been bandied about in Congress–considerations of expanding the company’s scope of infrastructure/boundary protection if this marvelous efficacy continued. The current development of the company’s tunnel-buster model generated curiosity and fascination with potential solutions to border concerns.
Peter wanted to tell all, show off the muscle and machinations layered into the foundations and wire of the work that he oversaw—but the complexities were secreted, and about the only thing Peter got to legally say is that he makes good money looking at screens, pushing buttons.
He was not allowed to reveal how the near-military grade drones, their respective charging bays, fences, and walls had all quietly gouged egg money out of U. S. taxpayers–and so the program’s uneventful steadfast accomplishment provided the American people with reliable look-but-don’t-go-near-don’t-think-of-touching-it security. The substation’s basic design utilized medieval fortress thinking, slowing down any advance with multiple barriers: electrical fences with motion detector posts, one perimeter square, then another set back, inside the first; then, two boxes of cathedral glass walls made by Corning, one inside the other, covered in a quad-ply of 3-M security film, and a filmed glass box-top over both of them, with the interior box containing quick open-and-close launch hatches for the drone battalion at his keyboard disposal. These two boxes enclosed the electrical substation. 24/7 sky-aiming lasers on all four corners of the glass housing watched for air approach. A well had been sunk for the installation, for making munitions. Groundwise, all homes and trees in the proximity had been bought up and bulldozed, leaving at least a hundred yards of clear visual space in any direction. Pilots like Peter kept a mix of programmed six-rotor drones in the air at all times, zipping about with randomized hummingbird flight patterns of quick stops and jetting. They could range out to over two miles, and they switched with other drones when automatically coming back to recharge. The drones patrolled the substation area at all times, but Shooters might factor in at any time, heading up and down the power lines coming out of the station. If any of the drones ever registered an internal problem and blank-screened, hatches popped and four more rose in the air as soon as the hitch blipped back home. Automatic. A pilot only switched to manual control if something monumental were to take place—but since the company’s inception, it hadn’t happened to a single pilot so far.
Peter’s thoughts strayed to Thanksgiving once again. His younger brother would hold court, mesmerizing his listeners, regaling what it’s like to hit 1,800 miles per hour, Mach 2.5, in his beautiful F-15E Strike Eagle. He would hint at playing chicken with Russian pilots in their MIG 31’s. Outside of work, Peter was not allowed to refer to himself, to anyone, as a pilot.
Maybe that was appropriate. The computers, upon proximity detection, released drones by a calculated algorithm determination/need, depending upon the “threat.” Sounders used a sonic battery to startle, good for sending things sensibly running. Shooter drones equipped with ice bullets flew in barrel rolls and zigzag forays, staying close if needed, while in avoidance of providing a stationary or predictable target. As for the other two types of flyers, Peter had only worked with the Red Eye laser drones and the Napalm-carrying Kamikazes during training; no substation monitoring facility had ever seen anything that warranted human backup response to the Sounders and Shooters.
So, yeah, Peter knew that the screens could lull you into feelings of menial uselessness, watching nothing more than bad wildlife shows. No creature had even made it as far as the second electric fence. Once engaged to do their duty, the Sounders would blat and pulse and siren, sending screechy owls in other directions, and the little human-handed raccoons were smart enough to wave and say gotta go, see ya. But then there were the problem children of the night: skittering every-which-wrong-way grey squirrels and chipmunks out late, the occasional white-tailed deer who made moronically awful decisions, and silly possums who passed out from fright right on the spot. They got dealt with—thing is, nobody was going to brag on bagging Chip and Dale. And yeah, Peter heard JoJo’s voice echo against metal lockers as he was leaving, heading off talking to one of the quiet rumpled men.
“He said he wasn’t supposed to tell me this—danced around saying he kinda pilots drones, claims he’s more of a shooter. Asked me to tell no one. Shooter? Hell, he ain’t even much of a computer-gamer. I bet he sits in an office chair and diddles himself all night, changing channels and watching sixty-five screens of porn. He’s like all those beanbag jockeys playing for money—tries to look and act all fancy-pants dangerous, but nah, he’s a lollygagger beanbag, soft and silly. Just a kid with a headset and a gaming keyboard, that’s what he is. You can’t put a real shooting iron in his hand—did you guys see his pitiful target patterns? Scattered all over the place. And there it is, that’s where I suspicion them high Homeland tax dollars go to providing us so-called national security. Bottom line: he ain’t built like us. That pud-boy ain’t got no blue steel in him, and he sure as shit ain’t no shooter.”
Peter blushed his way out of the back door. JoJo had no idea of Peter’s glacial restraint, no concept of Peter’s mastery of his own hair-triggers.

***

Most of the bats had decoded a means for co-existing: flitting in the zone of ambient-fade, high above the insect-attracting light of a substation allowed them to feast without concentric backlashes of white noise seizing into them like a winter hunger. As he watched the little browns whirling in the sky over the town of Ashland’s sub, Peter thought back to the large colonies he once threw tennis balls skyward for, watching them carve circles around the intruder; now, there weren’t so many—just a few ingredients in a wide, simmering cauldron.
When the Ashland monitors rotated their owlish heads, alerted by a woods-edge movement to the south, Peter scooched forward, hit the launch keystrokes for extra Sounders plus ten Shooters at each of the other sixty-four screenings—independence and strength while he focused on the one. This was new: the first time Peter had seen a bear.
When the drones—they all carried 8000 x 6000 capture resolution cameras—zoomed in, Peter started laughing. Some extremist fool had dressed himself in ninja-black and black bear fur, wearing the head and toothy upper jaw like a pagan helmet, the hollow arms and legs of the bear zip-tied to the masquerader’s ankles and wrists—who travelled toward the station on all\fours, trying to mimic just-looking-for-a-log-to-turn-over movements of hungry meandering.
Peter released three Shooters and three Red Eyes into the air to enter the movement quadrant. Shooters were also known as Ice Men. The new substations had been constructed with refrigeration units connected to the Shooter bays. A single ice bullet, aimed at a limb, would wound. Frozen water cutting an inward path had a chance at being non-lethal. A plunked animal should be smarter than to wait around for a barrage of icicles painfully falling from the god-sky. The Shooters were programmed to take turns according to shots fired—flitting back, reloading, re-entering the fray while a brother filled his magazine. The substation designers believed that as long as a station had power and the refrigeration units remained operational, then the armory might very well have a perpetual store of such ammunition.
Peter imagined his ursine terrorist must be wearing body armor—he switched to manual on Ice Man 6. His deft hands flew over the keyboard; yes, he had always proved formidable at video games, he’d even won a couple of small tournaments. Peter put eight other drones behind Ice Man 6, moved his Shooter to the head of a Roman wedge formation. Yes, there was something about the deep breath-slow squeeze-kickback of a firearm that threw him off a shade.
The guy had to see the drones moving in on him, maybe giggling to himself at their hovering, thinking that a machine couldn’t distinguish between a bear and a primitive attempt at shaman wardrobe.
Peter changed tactics, instructed the drones behind Ice Man 6 to circle the invader. There would be camera footage from every angle. He hadn’t made his mind up about the Red Eye, but thought that firing a hole through the animal’s Achille’s tendon would be a good hobble. Ice Man 6 was his boy, his brother in arms, his most familiar flier. He could shoot with an exactitude unmatched by mere humans. There would be no allowances. His best options against Kevlar armor: pierce the uncovered neck, open holes in the palms, crack that skull. What Peter did now would set precedent for the entire drone defense program, now into history. It would be a story come to national light, something to talk about over turkey.
Time to come out of hibernation—the opportunity to employ, pilot, and prove fearsome new-age skill sets to everyone. Peter had been waiting for this action his whole life. All his triggers began firing: he would take out the enemy with his cold blue steel.