Have you ever seen page five?

20MAY2012 – Concept: a human life is fully-realized within five weathered pages of a paperback novel, one pressed between many on a shelf near the back of an old bookstore, just to the left of a hand-lettered cardboard sign: FICTION.

Background characters in a novel are summoned forth from the No Thing and brought to life with such mastery, such clarity and depth of definition that the Reader can’t help but identify with these imaginary beings, understanding and identifying with them in a sudden flash of entirety. The Devil lives in the details. These fictional lives brush up against the Reader’s own with unexpected force, jarred into creation by vivid descriptions of spilled drink, flowing tears, clever plans, the rasp of whiskers or raucous laughter, such that the Reader can’t help but cheer them on.

Don’t get cocky. They used to cheer for lions, too.

But then the thumb is licked and the fourth page is turned and somewhere near the bottom of page five, the character is killed off. Is this cruel? Not particularly, that’s just how the story needed to be told.

“We are stories telling stories.” We have control over our own story right up until the moment when it collides with the storyline of another character. (Either we happen to them, or they happen to us. Depends on your perspective, really.)

These fictional characters live so completely on these yellowed plains, covered from head to toe in every aspect of what makes them real, existing behind and between each and every single letter on the page. The postcards, the tickets stubs, the dryer lint, the bar tabs, the take-out containers, the music collections, the book collections, the love letters, the grocery lists – all of the debris and mementos of their imaginary lives – are just dust trapped in the cracks and crevices of every foot of serif of every word of every sentence of every paragraph of the few pages they’re given, compacted by years of fucking and fighting and fear of failure, French fries and Friday nights, the whole thing rusted over with sweat like the pocketknife of an old man. Every word breathes, every letter hums. The characters aspire to learn everything there is to learn about the pages on which they exist; the height, the width and the location of the strange indentation at the upper edge of the third page where a worm ate its way into their falsified reality…

We can tell ourselves what free and wonderful beings we are and insist that everything is one big gorgeous goddamn pageantry. But you and I both know that we can’t travel beyond our own sixth page, and we can’t escape what’s coming up fast from the bottom of the fifth one.

Our destiny, too, is to be fed feet-first and screaming into the Great Grinder of Storytelling; we are brought to life so that the Reader may identify with us and we are killed off in such a way as to propel the story along and make the survival of the remaining characters that much more dear.

“All God does is watch us and kill us when we get boring. We must never, ever be boring.” – Chuck Palahniuk

We are trapped like dolphins in a round tank, pinging ourselves into madness. (I think, therefore I am/very sad) We burn brightly while we can, but in the end we simply aren’t equipped to make it to the epilogue.

##

The above (crudely) illustrates a nagging sensation I’ve had for many years, that I left the factory incomplete, minus some very important pages from my owner’s manual, that I’m not a fully fleshed-out character in my own right. I don’t mean that I lack experience – hell, no. I’ve been a-many places and I’ve seen a-many things, and I’m just as impressed by life as you are.

But the miles aren’t long enough, and the dreams aren’t bright enough. I feel like a simulation, a placeholder, the storekeeper in an early Nintendo game, a character on the Holodeck — something programmed with a limited number of responses despite being part of a greater complexity. A one-act play in five pages. Trapped on the stage, unable to see past the lights…

(I can’t give you tomorrow.)

TWM

An Explanation of Subway Stickers and Additional Information

Please refrain from A) the use of a phantom fetus-conjuring blunderbuss B) the levitation of more than three novelty-themed Rubik’s cubes during a single séance, and C) the piloting of a square-wheeled tank boasting ineffective armaments in public places.

We’ll have more news of this at eleven. And now, tonight’s top story:

There’s something living behind the walls of this Brooklyn-time summer moment that paws, sniffs and stamps restlessly at the scattered ground, sifting through the raped and littered soil with a decidedly pointed hoof for telltale signs of a missing future.  And as it just so happens, this creature and I are hunting the same mouse; a secret stashed safely below the surface of the immediate past and cleverly camouflaged by the present tense.

Imagine if the universe worked differently; suppose every minute in history is essentially a separate world which must be built, maintained and torn down once the world finishes with it. And further contemplate that somewhere, someone decided that this particular instance, one containing a living photograph of alien world, needed to archived and viewed again for whatever reason. Okay, but why? What was so important about that moment, that planet and that dimension? Was it worth saving because it wasn’t ours? Was the archivist hoping to somehow rescue this civilization and provide a how-to or an example of how different life could be if it were DIY’d in another part of the universe?  Was this about “art”? Perhaps it was the archivist’s job to catalog civilizations and somehow this fragment was inappropriately absorbed by the bandwidth of my dreams. I have no fucking clue.

What I do know is this: I’m attempting to reverse-engineer a fragment of a memory using the mnemonic equivalent of a gasoline-scented scratch-n-sniff sticker, an oft-folded illustration torn from a science-fiction magazine and a die-cast metal toy.  And someone off-camera is demanding that I use these items to return a forgotten city to its former glory. The simplified instruction manual provided to me was downloaded as a zip file and stored somewhere in my skull but the link is 404’d, and now I’ve got this… thing bumping around in my not-so-big upstairs with a case of amnesia, creating unwanted bulges in my reality.

Anything I attempt to do while in this state becomes ten times more difficult; everything gets sped up and pinched, as though one were fishing for a shell fragment in a bowl of yolk. Time (yolk) is distorted, flowing faster between the outer shell of this 404′d object (thumb) and the walls of my perceived reality (bowl); images of some mysterious and misplaced Martian market become momentarily visible, projected against the ghostly flicker of heat waves of this New York Minute, brought to you in part by Friday, June 10, 2011, the letter thirteen, and viewers like you.

The good news is that I can almost feel what it was like to live in this place, but I can’t put the experience into words. Not yet. The bad news is that it has to come out.

The key to unlocking this thing’s got something to do with the way that Kanji seems at once ancient and futuristic (likewise Arabic, likewise the art of Native American tribes of the Pacific Northwest), so I try to focus on that.  It also smacks roundly of the early issues of Heavy Metal magazine I devoured as a teen, the art of Jean Giraud (a.k.a. Moebius), selected writings of William Gibson and the feel of films like Fifth Element and Blade Runner, where the overt alien undertones are just part of the experience:

- a Bodega cat seeks relief from the summer heat on the lid of an ice-cream freezer.

- a matronly Ugnaught of a woman, with cast-iron breasts like matching Civil War cannons, stomps and sneers and stabs at her sequined-pink cellphone with the gold-painted nails of a velociraptor, talkin’ ‘bout how she gonna “fuck that dumb bitch up!”

- a hovering trade ship from some dusty distant world waits patiently above the East River for permission to land.

… and it’s all part of the Mise-en-scène.

Primarily, it’s got something to do with that fucking sticker.

I scratch at it furiously and press my nose against it, breathing deep. It works, albeit feebly. Something churns in my stomach and my field of vision becomes momentarily faded and narrow.  Encouraged, I scratch and huff at it some more. This goes on for about ten minutes. Beads of sweat begin to form along my arms and a rising sense of vertigo develops in my stomach. Now I’ve got the half-summoned memory of a lost alien world caught like a cat hair at the back of my throat and I’m desperate to cough it loose.

I cram my fingers down my throat and after a moment’s salivation I begin spewing forth watery chunks of buildings and backgrounds which slap at the pavement like horse piss on a flat rock before standing up slowly on their own, like a prizefighter ready to talk serious business at the end of the seventh round. Slumped against a wall with one hand on my knee, the sensation rises up again, coursing through me like a tidal wave as a half-completed grid of city streets soaked in stomach acid snakes forth like umbilical ropes from the enraged space between my lips, anchoring themselves to the soil like plant tendrils and immediately taking root, unfolding like ugly flowers. My jaws are pried open against miles of sewer lines and buried electrical cables and in a brief reprieve I take a few breaths in through my nose. Soon, my abdominal muscles are convulsing and contracting again as the five o’clock skyline of a world I’ve only imagined rockets the wrong way up my esophagus and my mouth gives birth to an alien sunset. It splatters first on the sidewalk before instinct drives it to its feet on doddering legs and it takes its place at the top of the page.

I gasp air for few minutes, wiping the puke from my lips and spitting out the taste of concrete and anodized metal, surveying the half-formed thing that I’ve made.

I’m obviously not done yet, but it’s a start.

TWM

Shimmer Man

(Story originally appeared in Tastes Like Chicken, issue 9, 2005)

The year was 2046.

My parents took me to a fancy restaurant for my birthday; a giant wedge-shaped thing perched on a series of curved, reinforced stilts 200 feet above a forest of deep and infinite green. The sun singed the treetops with an inaudible hiss as it slid below the horizon and a sweet breeze, pumped in from somewhere overhead, made the candles of my birthday cake flicker and sway softly. The light in my mother’s eyes danced and waved like fire. I was nine years old.

As the waiter set the cake down on the table and everyone drew a breath to sing “Happy Birthday”, suddenly there came a terrible pain in my skull, and I screamed like a wild thing. Throwing an arm across my face, I flailed and lashed blindly at the jungle of comforting hands tangled up in mine. My father seized me in his strong arms but was unable to prevent me from flinging myself out of my chair and onto the floor, taking the table cloth and the contents of the table with me. I felt as if the sides of my head were going to burst out like dammed waters, and I could imagine a boiling wave of bloody red breaking like the tide, spilling across the floor.

As I rolled around howling like a wounded animal and nearly blinded by pain, I saw something through my tears. Beyond the enormous picture windows which framed the off-season balcony was a sight unlike anything I had ever beheld– a stack of twinkling lights in the shape of a man, leaning casually against the railing and admiring the view. Those one-hundred-thousand colors I would never learn a name for stood out against the fading twilight, changing and shifting without pattern, without end or beginning. “Shimmer Man,” said my writhing brain. And as I continued to gape in painful amazement, I swear it turned to face me and even waved hello. The knives of pain subsided, and the twinkling lights began to fade.

The year is 2079.

It took the former United States almost 50 years to get it fully functional.

Despite the hundreds who lost their lives before the keel was ever laid, despite two serious on-board fires, despite a near-total fuel contamination which resulted in the jettisoning of a billion-dollar experiment, the Space Orbiting Platform “Promise” was christened on schedule and became a rallying point for post-war citizens. It was our symbol of the pride we thought we’d lost forever.

Nothing lasts forever, except nothing and forever.

When the main stabilizers went offline 72 hours ago, the ship began to slide, drawn ever closer to the Earth’s atmosphere. The captain of the broken Promise gave the order to evacuate the research vessel’s full compliment: giant robotic arms managed to deploy the twin 770-foot life pods before the Earth’s gravitational pull played “she-loves-me-not” with chunks of the mighty ship, dissecting indiscriminately, sending flaming red petals skipping across the sky. It was a horrifying sight, visible from anywhere in the Northern Hemisphere, and covered by every network in every country around the world, simultaneously.

The first life pod was struck by debris from the initial explosion and destroyed immediately. The survivors never had a chance, and the pieces burned up on re-entry. The second managed an emergency crash landing in the North Atlantic Ocean, vanishing under the waves in the time it takes to read this sentence.

The floatation system failed. Two hundred people died, and two survived.

The Promise came down hard. A lot of people wanted to know why, and they wanted to know yesterday. So I admit, I was in a bit of a hurry. And maybe I wasn’t paying enough attention to what I was doing. We were nosing in and around the engine room of the lifeboat, this once-colossal wreck that lay twisted on the ocean floor. Me and Perfect Tommy, my by-the-book dive partner of five years, noting different instrument readings and keeping our eyes peeled for the Engineering Officer’s electronic logbook, which might shed some light on what happened up there. The “black box” system on board the Promise was designed to store reports in triplicate. Two of them were lost forever; the last was here. Somewhere. That’s why we get paid the big bucks.

P.T.’s voice, punctuated by carefully measured gulps of air, came over the Divelink. “Coffee, our window’s up.” Hiss. “Mark position, let’s go.” We use short sentences to preserve energy and air. “Roger.” Hiss. “Mark position.” I removed a luminous wax marker from my sleeve bag and carefully scribed my initials, the time, and a few symbols on the bulkhead in our team-specific color, to show that this space had been checked. “Head for the Bouncer.” Hiss. “Right behind you.” Hiss. “Just want to wave a light in that corner.” Hiss.

“Leave it, kid.” Hiss. “We’ll be here awhile.” Hiss. “Check it later.” But he was out the door, and headed for the Bouncer. He’d probably noticed our mixture running low. He’s good on details.

The remote-operated Bouncer is a combination decontamination station and hyperbaric chamber; it was also our slow boat to the surface. Decom first, depressurise on the way back up. There are formulas to be followed to prevent the dreaded bends.

When high-pressure gases in the air come in contact with water, they dissolve into the water. That’s how carbonated drinks are made– exposing water to high-pressure carbon dioxide gas, and dissolving the gas into water. Surface too quickly, and it’s like uncorking a bottle of champagne. Only really painful, and a lot more fatal. To avoid this, we have to rise slow or make intermittent decompression stops on the way up so the gas can come out on its own. The only solution is to enter a pressurized chamber in which the air pressure matches the pressure at depth (breathing 100% oxygen on the way to the chamber also helps). Then, the pressure is released slowly. But to get to the chamber you have to be “clean”. After all, contaminate the chamber, and we’re all screwed.

P.T. turned to make sure I’d followed him, and I saw his face light up with a smile behind his visor. “Bet I whip your ass in checkers again.” Hiss.

“Sure you will, you cheatin’ bastard.” Hiss. Hearing the sound of your best friend’s digitized laughter in your ears when you’re a mile underwater is a strange experience.

The hatch of the Bouncer is controlled by a gamma-specific fluorometer, which takes a reading from every diver working this wreck before allowing them access. The water passing through a cell in the chamber is exposed to an ultra-violet light from a shielded source. Some molecules absorb the energy from this radiation and give back this energy by emitting a light, which is then read by a super-sensitive detector and transmitted to the Bouncer’s brain. The amount of fluorescent light produced depends on the amount of gamma detected, so a high reading above background in an already hot environment like this means I show up hot. And if I show up too hot, the door won’t open, essentially protecting the rest of the crew, and our only hyperbaric chamber from whatever threat might be present until I can be safely cleaned. If the chamber gets contaminated, you lose eight divers to the bends instead of one to gamma poisoning.

Like I said, that’s why we get paid the big bucks.

P.T. eased the bulk of his suit into the chamber, gave me a thumbs-up, and closed the door. The chamber is only big enough for one diver at a time, and the decon cycle takes about five minutes. As I waited my turn, I nervously eyed the rapidly falling needle that registered the amount of good air available (if you can call this shit “air”). Suddenly, I noticed flashing lights on my BUG. Tiny digital words scrolling across the screen made my blood run cold: my suit was losing pressure! As I was leaving Engineering, I must have snagged my suit on something– I couldn’t tell what, or where, or how bad. Looking up and around me, I could see a tiny stream of silvery bubbles colliding with the overhead, coming from somewhere behind my left shoulder.

“A diver need not worry about having his body contaminated, unless the diving suit or helmet physically leaks.” That’s what the rule books say. Unfortunately, I’ve got some urgent little lights flashing on and off on my BUG that say otherwise. The Bathymetric Underwater Gauge on my forearm provides me with critical information, like updated water temperature, present depth, estimated amount of nitrogen, and in this case, a plus-or-minus-10 reading of gamma in my immediate vicinity. Those numbers are rising. Slowly. I’m hot and getting hotter, fast. At this rate, I won’t be able to get into the Bouncer!

I glance up at the stream of bubbles over my shoulder again. They’ve gotten more pronounced.

“If a leak does occur, the dive must be terminated.” Rules are rules. I tried to remain calm. Water is a very dense material, and acts as an excellent shielding material to protect me from gamma. Because I’m immersed in water, I can control the amount of significant shielding maintained between me and the source by increasing the relative distance. Simple. The water itself is not radioactive– the only radiation that can be detected in the water comes from particles suspended in the water. Gamma and neutron radiation are not particles– they’re pure energy without mass, and must be shielded by material that has a great deal of mass, such as water, concrete, or lead. Of these forms of radiation, gamma is the ionizing radiation source from which the diver will receive the majority of his accumulated dose. Since water is such a great shield to ionizing radiation, I work in an environment which protects me from radiation. Pretty smart, huh?

Unless, as previously mentioned, I happen to tear my suit. And that’s just the beginning of my problems.

At these depths, wreck divers face nitrogen narcosis, high partial pressures of carbon dioxide and physiological mechanisms that experts have yet to understand, which can either lead directly to or contribute substantially to certain death. With the increased use of breathing media other than air over the years, there’s been a dramatic increase in fatalities caused by oxygen toxicity. Central Nervous System Toxicity (CNS) is a real motherfucker. Breathing oxygen at very high pO2s for a short period of time means problems arrive that much quicker. We’re talking visual disturbances, pronounced ringing in the ears, dizziness, mood swings, and convulsions and comas. Oh, yeah. And hallucinations.

So, I may or may not be seeing what I think I see ahead of me at the end of Passageway 4– a stack of twinkling lights in the shape of a man, leaning casually against the bulkhead, staring back at me: a hundred thousand colors I’ll never have the chance to learn the names for, changing and shimmering without pattern, without end or beginning… I shake my head several times to get rid of the vision. Must be ambient light passing through the stream of bubbles, casting a shadow, my eyes playing tricks on me, something. But I can’t shake it away, and I can’t tell myself I’m not seeing what I think I’m seeing.

The great thing about the Divelink communication Voice Recognition Chip is that it isn’t triggered by bubbles or ambient noise. The mouthpiece is a patented silicon rubber speaking cavity, and doesn’t require any straps. The automatic gain and squelch controls leave my hands free while I’m working, and it’s good to a range of 4,500 feet. Furthermore, the system is equipped with an emergency signal that alerts other divers (and the surface!) when a diver is in distress. I’ve had conversations with multi-billion-dollar company heads, sitting safe in their polished offices while I’m surveying a wreck, offering an on-scene, real-time cost estimate as to how much it will cost to salvage their ruined high-tech chunk of shit sitting on the ocean floor.

My words are automatically picked up by the surface unit, relayed through a wireless transmitter, and sent anywhere in the world as streaming audio. In this case, my dying words. Somewhere above me in a Shoreside Control Facility crammed with radio equipment and laptop computers, I imagine my raspy voice floating out of the speakers, filling the crowded room with the sound of a broken riddle.

“…so beautiful….”

“Beautiful?” Big Bobby Keegan grins broadly at the gathered logistics team and keys the mic. “Hey, Coffee! Who the hell ya got down there with you?” Schoolboy titters flash like fish in the water from a group of hardened men who work hard, play hard, and live like kings the world over.

“Cut the crap, Bobby,” barks Cappy. “Play back his last transmission. What the hell’s he talking about?”

The looped playback of my voice crackles over the speakers. “…so beautiful… (crack) …so beautiful… (crack) …so beautiful… (crack) …so beautiful… (crack).”

“Good Christ, he’s hallucinating! How long has he been down there?”

“About 45 minutes, doing an engine room survey with…” checks the roster, “Perfect Tommy.” Checks another gauge. “…who is… in the Bouncer.”

“How much good air does Coffee have left?” Cappy looks straight to Big Bobby for an answer, who checks the dancing LED readouts in a hurry as his grin dissolves like sunset.

“Maybe, uh, five minutes.”

“Maybe?!? Shit! How far is the Assist Team from his position?”

“Far end of the ship, about five minutes away, but they can’t do anything for him, Cappy.”

“Why?!?”

“Coffee’s hot. And he’s getting hotter.”

“Rad! Talk to me!”

During all nuclear diving projects, our dive crew is under the omnipotent control of the senior radiation protection technician, Rad Man. Rad is responsible for the radiation protection of each diver, plus the entire crew. He’s a short, fat bastard with more chins than a Chinese phone book, and total authority on the project– any doubt about conditions, the first sign of trouble, and Rad pulls the plug: all the budgeting issues, scheduling delays, and pissed-off stockholders in the world don’t make a fucking lick of difference. Rad’s word is final law.

Rad checks the numbers, frowning, hesitating. “At present… he’s still ALARA.” As Low As Reasonably Achievable.

Cappy takes a deep breath. “Plain English, Rad. Give me something good.”

Rad looks up from his instruments and returns the deep breath. “He’s got a bad suit tear. If we don’t get him out in the next few minutes, he’ll–”

Cappy pointed a finger in Rad’s face. “I distinctly remember using the word ‘good’ in that sentence.”

Cappy turned to another man. “Can P.T. still get to him?”

“Negative, Cap. Tommy’s already in the chamber, with another two minutes in his cycle. We’d lose two trying to save one.”

“Well, we can’t just leave him there! Think of something, damnit!” He keys up the mic again, and tries to find a smile among the cracks in his voice.

“Hey, down there! You doing okay, Coffee? We’re working on something. We’ll get you back. We’ll get you clean, and you can return to the surface. Don’t forget, you still owe me $500 from that bar in Singapore, remember? Don’t make me come down there and get it myself, over!” His voice is shaky with laughter, but his eyes are far from twinkling. He snaps the mic off again.

In the silence, the drops of sweat forming on his bald head are the only sound.

He snatches up the mic again.

“Coffee? You listenin’?”

Static.

“Coffee? Come on back, brother. Don’t you give up on me, over!”

I can hear the chatter from my Divelink’s cushioned earbuds– a tinny voice from the world far above me, somewhere in the warm, glittering sunlight. A world I know I’ll never see again. According to the BUG I just ran out of breathable air. I can feel it already– that shortness of breath, combined with a burning throat and chest associated with Pulmonary Oxygen Toxicity. Damage to the cell lining of the lungs, the lung walls, the formation of fluid in the lungs. The simple act of breathing becomes steadily more painful. In order to conserve my energy, I kneel down to think. Assess.

What do I have going for me? The surface team will try to come up with something. The Assist Team always carry pony bottles of air, maybe it’ll be enough. Too far… I could… maybe I could… what if I… nothing. Nothing’s coming.

The Bouncer won’t let me in. I’m out of air. The nearest Assist Team is probably 50 yards away. That’s nothing if ship’s in orbit. But when that 50 yards is pitch-fucking-black and twisted like a snake with a broken back… they’ll never make it in time. I’m too weighted with gear and too far down to attempt an emergency ascent. In desperation, I refrain from swallowing. Typically, this action seals the glottis and allows pressure to build in the lungs. “Always exhale before trying to inhale,” says the rule book. I’m hoping beyond hope there might be just a few more breaths in there somewhere, and I fight down panic, forcing myself to keep my lungs at mid-volume. Hoping. Waiting. But the doubt creeps in.

I’m done.

And so I raise my eyes again to the shimmering apparition before me, telling myself again that it isn’t real. It can’t be.

I haven’t seen the Shimmer Man since I was nine years old, but I’d recognize it anywhere. For a thousand nights after that first encounter, I tried in vain to recreate what I had seen with my colored pencils and pens, hiding under a blanket in my room till all hours with a flashlight, but without success. Every time I had a headache, no matter how slight, I looked around for the Shimmer Man, but I never saw him again. Why here? And why now?

Nitrogen narcosis. High partial pressures of carbon dioxide. Pulmonary Oxygen Toxicity. Central Nervous System Toxicity. Gamma radiation poisoning. Sure and sudden death. Drowning. The tremendous pressure of the ocean. A host of problems seeking me out, as I cower in this darkened wreck full of dead bodies on the cold sea floor. That’s why I get paid the big bucks.

And then I can hear the sound of Perfect Tommy’s digitized laugh. “Bet I whip your ass in checkers again.” Hiss. “Sure you will, cheatin’ bastard.” Hiss. I see all the weekends spent at his house on the beach, playing with his kids, and keeping my eyes off his wife. Like any good friend would do.

I stopped focusing on the grim facts and concentrated instead on the glowing apparition before me. “…let go… return to surface….” This thing, this creature of light is speaking to me in soft broken phrases, but the meaning is crystal clear. It’s time to go.

First, I have to purge my suit.

Of course, there’s no way I’ll be able to follow the Shimmer Man to where ever it is we’re supposed to go with all this equipment on. Ignoring the flashing depth gauges, and struggling against the depleted heliox for every breath, I reach up and begin to open the top-mounted helium double exhaust valve on my DESCO 9 Commercial Diving Helmet, and begin working my face free of the chin button, which allows me to regulate my exhaust and control my buoyancy without using my hands.

My heart is pounding, and all I can think about is the water that’s going to rush in and the terrible pressure that will shove the last breath of life from my lungs.

“What the hell’s he doing?!?”

“I can’t tell! He’s just… kneeling in… Passageway 4… outside Engineering near the Bouncer shaft. He’s just staring at a blank bulkhead, I don’t– oh, Jesus….”

“What?!?” Cappy’s face is contorted, the face of calm control is gone.

“He’s trying to take off his helmet.”

Cappy snatched up the mic again. “Coffee!” he shouted into the mic. “Do not take your fucking rig off, Coffee! You hear me?!? Whatever you’re seeing isn’t real! Get it together, son! We can get you out of there! Hang on!” He slams a hand down on a large red button on the console before him, and throughout the cramped quarters of the dive pod, a blaring klaxon wailed.

“Goddamnit, where’s the Bouncer?!?”

“On the way down, 30 seconds!”

A second flashing red light appears on a control panel, and sirens begin to wail. The pressure in my suit begins to drop rapidly.

“Assist Team! Move on Coffee now! Move it!” Cappy’s anguished voice fills the SCF, and desperation grips him in the pit of his stomach.

“Coffee! It’s Tommy!” P.T.’s voice, wrapped in warm echoes, comes to me. He’s safe and sound in the Bouncer. Such beautiful children, a loving wife. He’s fine. He’ll be fine. Looks like we won’t get that last game, though. Pity. “Hang on, man! We’ll get you out of there! Wait! Wait for me, Coffee, please! Wait! What the hell are you doing?!? Wait! Coffee–” The water is absolute cold, and pounds against my head, turning it inside out with blows from a giant hammer. And there is nothing else.

The Shimmer Man smiles at me with infinite patience, one hand extended and waiting for mine. As I turn around, I see the jagged lights of the Assist Team moving as fast as they can down the darkened passageway, skidding to a halt when they see that my lack of a head will more than likely prevent any resuscitative efforts. The bright beams twirl like fingertips in red paint, stirring infinite patterns. I feel bad for them, having to find me this way. “It’s okay, guys. I’m fine. I’m here.” I want to reassure them. I can see them gesturing to each other, and I know they’re talking to the Shoreside Control Facility, delivering the news. They’re going to take it hard. But it will pass. Everything does.

The Shimmer Man smiles at me again with infinite patience, one hand extended and waiting for mine. And there is nothing else.

Charlie Sixteen

14OCT2010 – MSY – I should have known it wouldn’t be that easy to leave New Orleans…

The piece of paper that sent me down here in the first place clearly stated that I was to be “(*)repeatedly stretched to the breaking point, ground into paste, ingested and excreted from the assholes of both September and October for a period of no less than sixty days at the leisure of the King of Hawaii for no good goddamn reason at all.” That I should find myself in the departure lounge, boarding pass in hand forty-four days later is a lucky break, and I have no true business staring into the mouth of a gift horse.

Howe’er.

I arrived at Louis Armstrong International only to discover that my 1130 flight back to LaGuardia had been canceled, and the next one wouldn’t depart until almost 17 p.m., getting me home at 21 p.m.  Lesser men would have screamed, possibly taken hostages.  And still others might have hailed a cab and headed back out in search of debauchery.

But in some weird and admittedly perverse way, this makes me happy. I’ve got the entire gate to myself, I’ve got a seat next to an outlet, and I came prepared: laptop, iPhone, headphones, journal, Sharpies, a brand new copy of Cory Doctrow’s “Futuristic Tales of The Here and Now”, a lightning fast Wi-fi connection, and a damn good cup of coffee.

Pending a zombie invasion, a Die Hard-esque shootout between a burned-out cop and Ze Germans, a colicky baby or some other natural disaster: I’m aces, thanks for asking.

One hour till departure: Seat near the window, bonus! Listening to: Dead Can Dance, Led Zep, Deftones.  Charging: my gadgets.  Checking: my email. Watching: Several hundred tons of taxi gather the much-needed speed to fuck its way into the unresisting sky.  Gravity, lift, drag, and thrust.  Peanuts and Sprite.  Over and over, these common theme of my travels.  All those people, all those aliens, all those dress shirts.., (X) ft of white headphone cord, and (Y) lbs worth of “Compounded Negative Body Issue Monthly” being spread like a fucking virus, their once-glossy corners now gently bent and fetal against the protective interior leather of designer carry-ons.

My eyes move around the room, mining the details, but wholly unable to keep pace with the flow of arriving passengers, the rolling rectangles, the designer sunglasses and three thousand other items of little to no consequence. It makes me wish I could sketch.  Finally, my oculars come to rest on the matched set of thigh-high silver cylinders guarding the entranceway to Charlie Sixteen, my home of record for the next hour.

Trash cans they are, and trash cans they will stay. When one finishes ones damn good cup of coffee, one is expected to do the decent thing and force the empty paper cup into the mouth of said cylinder, where it will tumble briefly southward before coming to rest in the whispered clutches of a petroleum-based, quasi-disposable stomach lining, later to be gutted and gathered by minimum wage taxidermists whose first language is probably not English.

Look at the trash can, now look at me, NOW BACK TO THE TRASH CAN:

Out of sight, out of mind. But when you throw something away, what does away really mean?  The more I stare at the cans, the more I begin to see them as something else, slowly rebuilding them in my head, swapping the plastic intestines for something else:

Suppose that when you tossed a piece of trash into the can, it was instantly incinerated, and that the energy extracted from the incineration process went toward creating the energy required to incinerate the next piece of trash, and so on, and so forth.  How far ahead in our technological evolution would we have to be to pull off a stunt like that? Get back to me on this.

There’s my flight,

TWM

(*not really.)

“KnoWare Man” – my debut novel available on Lulu

It’s taken me ten years, six computers, five drafts, four states, and two operating systems, but the big day is here.

My first novel is available for purchase.

Time to start the next one,

TWM

100507/08

IN WHICH I have less than 48 hours to get to New York City, find a place to live, seal the deal, and return home, victorious. Period. This is my account of my housing reconnaissance, May 7 – 8.

I’ve always had this thing about New York City. Ever since I can remember, it seemed to me a terrifying mixture of too much concrete, too much hype and too many people hell bent on doing each other too much harm. Obviously, I have entire storehouses of negative New York memes running rampant through my already imaginative mind. I pictured NYC as a cruel and uncaring place; a wretched empire for the young, the rich, the jaded and the exceptionally greedy, where being pick-pocketed, mugged, and robbed was just something that happened while you stood in line for coffee.

And then I learned I was being transferred there.

Once I stopped hyperventilating, I began pouring through the history of the city; spending hours hunched over Google Earth, memorizing subway maps, bus schedules, and generally reading everything there was to know about this mecca of perpetual insomnia. I imagined that IF I found a place to live, it’d be an overpriced cubbyhole beneath creaking stairs in a condemned building. I imagined that crackheads, pimps, thieves and junkies would take turns breaking into my apartment while I slept, stealing everything that I owned, over and over, until I went mad. I further imagined that if I went to my employers and complained, they’d somehow blame me for negligence. (I pride myself on being a law-abiding person, but I’ve had some bad experiences with authority figures in the past, instances which I’ll not expound upon here, but which have nonetheless left me permanently mistrustful of bureaucracy of any sort. Die, trust. Die.)

Two pieces of information did wonders for my mood: One, NYCScout, a production location specialist I follow on Twitter, revealed that there were only three “real” New York alleys left in the whole city.  The odds of me being dragged into one of them by a gang of vicious 6th graders and beaten within an inch of my life was officially slim to none. And two, there was the legacy of former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani; a blitzkrieg on the underbelly of New York of old, which many say resulted directly in the dwindling crime rate.

Your predicted response: “But I miss the whores in Times Square!” I realize that NYC means different things to different people, and there are some of you who probably love it. Awesome. I’d like to point out that you already have fond memories and experiences on which to base your opinions. I, at the time of writing this, do not. So please, allow me the opportunity to be wrong.

Housing: I knew I was going to need a place as close to the subway line as possible. There is such a thing as a real estate triangle in NYC; SPACE, LOCATION, and PRICE. You can have two. Unless you’re a household name, you probably won’t get all three. There was no way I could afford anything in Lower Manhattan or Greenwich Village, which was a straight shot uptown on the 1 Red line. My secondary was Brooklyn; specifically, the quiet, tree-lined neighborhoods of Williamsburg.

The subway and bus routes were like colorful rivers that cut through the city, flowing straight toward the mouth of the Staten Island Ferry, and without a better source of info, I based my apartment-hunting strategy on this. A stroke of good luck: a fellow photographer and good friend introduced me to his brother Anthony; an up-and-coming real estate broker who just happened to work for the largest firm in NYC. This made all the difference in the world. I contacted Anthony; we agreed on a time and a place to meet, and he advised me as to what forms I would need to bring along. There was nothing left to do but go.

I caught the 0635 train departing Union Station on Friday, May 7. Next stop: facing my fears.

HOUSTON WE HAVE LANDED. 10:26 AM May 7th via Tweetie

Friday, 10:36 – Climbing up out of Penn Station, I was immediately overwhelmed by the mass, movement, meat, and metal around me. If I were an asthmatic, I’d have been sucking on my inhaler like it was my job. Truth be told, I’m not a big city guy. I like small towns, quiet neighborhoods, and lots of silence. An ideal afternoon is spent hiking along in the woods, or exploring abandoned buildings. I can’t really explain the tightness in my chest brought on by my first glimpse of the city.

Time to focus. I moved east toward my hotel until I looked at my watch — holy fucking fish fingers! I had less than 25 minutes to find the subway, make my way to Brooklyn, and meet my broker! Fortunately, I believe in redundancy and prior planning. I’d already downloaded HopStop and plotted out my course in the event that I ran late, and everything I needed for the weekend was on my back. I tightened the straps and turned South along 6th, making a beeline for Herald Square. After a few wrong turns, I descended into the subway. (I’m going to miss the swipe card technology of Disco Charlie’s Metro system.)

AWAY TEAMS: DEPLOYED, NAVIGATION SWEEP: ACTIVE. SUBWAY: CONQUERED. Good morning, New Yorkers. A tattooed giraffe walks among you… 11:09 AM May 7th via Tweetie

Friday, 11:59 – Now in a rental property office somewhere in Brooklyn. Arrived just minutes before my broker. (Go, me!) I’d dressed sharp for a change; new brown shoes, khaki trousers and a respectable navy blue button down. I lost all sense of “with it” in the restroom when I sprayed room freshener on my hands after mistaking it for hand soap. The upside? I smelled like flowers. The bathroom mirror had fallen from its mounting brackets some time ago and was propped in place with bricks of Styrofoam and blocks of concrete. At least I could see that my shoes were tied properly.

Friday, 1:30 - I found a place! (*sigh of relief*) MAYBE. The property hadn’t even been listed yet. One bedroom, gas stove, new appliances, wood floors, fresh paint, great view, plenty of floor space, tile bathroom, NNE-facing windows with a balcony, and plenty of storage space. Third floor, steel doors, secured building, good locks. I’d have rooftop space with a view of Manhattan, AND it’s in a tree-lined neighborhood just a few blocks from a Lego-simple train ride to the office, AND and it’s within my price range. It even included a giant wardrobe that matched my writing desk and bookshelf. I thought about how great it would be to move in.., clean the place from top to bottom, stock the fridge, arrange my bookshelf, open the windows, light some incense and wait for the rains to fall…

Conflict: I wanted to get my hopes up. / I couldn’t afford to get my hopes up.

Even as we were viewing the apartment, I was told that the top floor apartment had *just* been taken. I immediately staked my claim on 3R, and hoped for the best.

Later: Turns out my broker has a similar interest in pulp sci-fi, and he’s been working on an “old time” radio show, but hasn’t had time to get it off the ground. We talked time travel, wormholes and exchanged globe-hopping experiences over beer and tacos in a Mexican place nearby.

Later still: Man, they aren’t kidding about Williamsburg being the capital of hipsters. I think I’ve seen Beck about thirty-five times in the past 6 hours. Painfully thin and bearded is where it’s at, apparently.

Q: How many hipsters does it take to change a light bulb?
A: It’s a very obscure number, you’ve probably never heard of it.

Friday, 5:00 – I checked into my hotel on 6th and 37th. Unpack, unwind. I laid out my gear in an orderly manner, everything spaced evenly along the counter from largest to smallest and in order of use or importance. (Yeah, I’ve got a little problem…) Ventured out to get some food, returned to my room. “Oh, but you should have explored! I would have looked around! I’d want to see everythin –” Yeah, I’m sure you would. I wasn’t in town to spend money or explore. I needed every penny for tomorrow. There’d be time for that later. Hopefully.

Not surprised, I couldn’t get a signal in my room after 9 p.m. Watched TV, once again reminded of why I haven’t had cable in over a decade: because it sucks.

Saturday, 1230: Once the application forms were signed, I walked around my (hopefully) new neighborhood, figuring the best thing to do with all this nervous energy was learn the lay of the land. I found a grocer at the mouth of the Graham Street subway stop with all my favorite things on the shelves. (see also: Guinness, Naked, fresh fruit and vegetables.) I was so optimistic about my apartment and a new life in this neighborhood that I must have wished ten little old ladies a happy Mother’s Day. (Kind words from a 6-foot boy scout in Buddy Holly glasses makes old ladies smile.) I found a Thai restaurant, a coffee house, AND they’ve got a little something called Barcade; a happy marriage of beer and electronic nostalgia. Galaga and Guinness, here I come!

From their Twitter page:  2 new games just arrived: Satan’s Hollow and Paperboy. 3:41 PM Mar 24th via web

I walked back to the Frost Street apartment and stood across the street, visualizing myself living there, establishing a routine, and becoming familiar with my surroundings, a fixture in the neighborhood.  If this didn’t happen the way I hoped it would, I had no idea what I would do. I wouldn’t have the time and money to make another trip north. This was all or nothing…

Grafitti from Williamsburg, Brooklyn: http://twitpic.com/1m62gn about 21 hours ago via Tweetie

More from Frost Street, Williamsburg, Brooklyn: http://twitpic.com/1m66xw about 21 hours ago via Tweetie

Next objective: I took the subway to my new office and timed the route. Thirty minutes later, I was standing at the front door of the southernmost building on Manhattan Island, buffeted by the wind and squinting from the dust being blown up around me. Easy! I’d be up and out the door no later than 0655 every weekday. Plus, I could work as late as I wanted and still catch a ride home. Checked my watch again. My train pulled out of the station in four hours.

After I left Battery Park, I walked north along Church St to Sixth, to the Avenue of The Americas to Greenwich to 11th the whole way to 35th. I reasoned that with all the tourist traffic this town had, it’d probably worked out the transportation bugs long ago. And if 8,363,710 could live here then I could, too.

Presently on foot moving up Ave of the Americas toward Penn Station, eyes peeled for grafitti… about 20 hours ago via Tweetie

And now, my two-word review of New York City: SHUT! UP! http://twitpic.com/1m6fko about 20 hours ago via Tweetie

Apparently the economy is having an adverse effect on everyone.

Once I got over the vertigo and the overwhelming amount of concrete, craziness and carbon-based lifeforms, I was OK. I tried hard not to get my hopes up about the apartment, but I had to have something positive to focus on. Without a home to call my own, I’d be in dire straits. Imagining that I would have a place to call home in this busy biomass did wonders for my mood. Lately, I’d had the feeling of being backed into a corner. I just needed an even break, and I began to feel that NYC might just be what I was looking for.

I felt as though my perception of the world had just grown from a two-lane dirt road in a school zone to an eight-lane superhighway complete with triple-cloverleaf overpass. Sort of.

7:00 – Saturday evening. Now in Penn Station, waiting for my 9:00 train home. Sipping at an iced coffee with two shots and enjoying a cold Guinness while I recharge my physical batteries, and attempt to replenish my iPhone’s power supply.

BASTARD! My 167 Regional ride home is :35 min late. “…as if millions of voices cried out in terror, and were suddenly silenced.” about 16 hours ago via Tweetie

I talked to a DeNiro look-alike while I waited, another soul hoping to make it as an actor: “So I finish my head shots, ” he says, “and I’m on H street, walking along, minding my own business, right? I put a cigarette out and this guy says to me, ‘Hey, gimme a cigarette.’ I says to him, ‘I got no cigarettes, and I ain’t tryin’ to sell ya one, either!’ And so he says to me, ‘Man, you’re a fucking asshole!’ How the fuck am *I* the asshole, here?” We laughed, then he says, “You’re a pretty big guy, he prolly wouldn’ta said shit to you.” They called Deniro’s train and he walked away.

After a :50 minute wait, I boarded my train back to Disco Charlie. I managed to pick a crap seat. No electricity.

We’re stopped at Newark airport. An express train whips past; a fantastic display of the Doppler effect. WEEEEEEOOOOwwwww…

Moments later, one of the porters comes by and flicks a switch just out of my view. Electricity! “Master Blaster runs Bartertown!” With nothing good to read (William Gibson’s “The Difference Engine” had failed to scratch my itch), I proceeded to Tweet my ass off:

@abitofmybrain I’ve been gassed, shot at, maced, violently ill at sea, divorced, and changed my fair share of diapers. I can take this! about 16 hours ago via Tweetie in reply to abitofmybrain

@myauralfixation He was AWESOME live! He stood with one foot on the rail, poised like a crow, and pointed down at me for “Mercy Seat.” about 15 hours ago via Tweetie in reply to myauralfixation

Thanks to everyone who clapped their hands and cried out, “I DO believe in timely trains!” I am now enroute to Disco Charlie. Later, NYC. about 15 hours ago via Tweetie

Travelling by train is easier than flying, but they should look into installing hammocks – or lining the seats with hippie/gypsy pillows. about 12 hours ago via Tweetie

Apparently May 8 is National Train Day, so if you know any one who’s a train, please show your support and take them to lunch. about 14 hours ago via Tweetie

@myauralfixation Inspired by yr tweet, I’m presently downloading The Cult’s “Fire Woman” while rolling along through the Pennsylvania night. about 13 hours ago via Tweetie in reply to myauralfixation

@troystith “For those about to caffeinate, we salute you!” <– Fact: The original title of the AC/DC classic, it was felt as “lacking”. about 13 hours ago via Tweetie in reply to troystith

Dear @TommyWiseau: while I didn’t grasp the full intensity of your controversial hit “The Room”, I hope you find a home on Twitter. Best! about 13 hours ago via Tweetie in reply to TommyWiseau

L/T: Black Moth Super Rainbow on my way through Baltimore. Can’t sleep, can’t shut up – but you probably know that about me by now. about 12 hours ago via Tweetie

At last, Union Station, Disco Charlie. End of the line. This concludes our programming day. Please stand by for our National Anthem. -30- about 11 hours ago via Tweetie

Home by 3 a.m., up at 7, it’s…

TWM

P.S. I got the apartment.

Control.

It really *is* just out of your grasp.

Note To Self, Buy More Bullets

READING: Clock of the Long Now – Time and Responsibility (“When I pronounce the word Future, the first syllable already belongs in the past.” – Polish poet Wislawa Szymborska)

LISTENING: And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead, OSI, Van Halen, Pre-Stevie Fleetwood Mac, The Mars Volta, Puscifer…

The time has come to pare down my possessions in preparation for my upcoming move to the Department of Awesome.  Now, I happen to like black trash bags.  There’s something final about them.  I buy ‘em by the shitload (metric) and I like ‘em strong.  Once I’ve made up my mind that something has to leave my life, it goes in a black bag sealed beneath a sturdy square knot.  There’s no coming back from one of those.

I’m looking forward to purging.  There’ll be black trash bags of old clothes destined for thrift stores in little piles around the floor; bags destined for the recycling bin, or destined for Freecycle.  Still others will be handed off as fast as I can get on the phone.  I’ve got piles of plain black t-shirts to sort through, and hangars holding up dress shirts purchased with good intention, but never worn.  Turns out I’m just not that guy.

I’ve got five or six pairs of shoes, some I never wear.  Well-polished Doc Martens: stay.  Continent-weary Chucks: stay.  Comfortable and practical Keens: to be replaced by a new pair, the old ones discarded.  The rest: go bye-bye.

I’ve got four or five extra sets of sheets, some of them reserved for guests.  I won’t be needing so many of those,  just as I don’t plan to be entertaining ‘guests’ any time soon.

Craigslist isn’t an option.  As an Aries male, when I make a decision, that’s it — time to carry it through.  I don’t want to wait around for someone else to waffle over their decision, thereby impacting mine.  And I don’t want to hear, “Well, what you might want to consider is –”

No.  I don’t want second- or third-fucking-guesses.  I don’t wanna be told to “wait” or “reconsider”, and I certainly don’t want to be told that I should have done it “this way or that way” after the fact.  That serves no purpose.  Indecision drive me to distraction.  If you’re the kind of person who stands in line hemming and hawing about what looks good on the menu, don’t come around for dinner.  If you need twenty minutes at the post office to decide what kind of stamps best accent your eyes; please, state this on a plain cotton t-shirt, bold letters, both sides, so I know to avoid you.

Now the hard part — how do I make the distinction between what stays or goes?  I’ve got a number of bags: one large suitcase for extended trips three weeks and over; a smaller one for overnight jobs when I need to travel light; a Crumpler backpack that holds all my gear for shoots, including a laptop sleeve.  I’ve got a small hiking pack that perfectly holds a first-aid kit, Camelbak, raingear and a change of clothes.  I’ve got another full-size pack that holds my tent, sleeping bag, mess kit and change of clothes.  Finally, I’ve got a courier bag that I use every day whilst traveling around the city, valued for it’s rugged design.  Getting rid of one impacts the rest.

The books are no problem — there’s always a used bookstore willing to take my dog-eared treasures, and I got rid of my DVD collection years ago — Netflix works much better.  The keepers went into books to conserve space, and the jewel cases found their way to the trash after I turned my CD collection into electrons.

Kitchen stuff is easy: I don’t have a lot of it, ditto for large furniture — a desk, a computer, a papasan chair, a table to hold up the television and DVD player and a table and four chairs with which to support dinner.  Those can: stay.

It’s got to be binary, yes or no.  The weight bench: goes. Space considerations.  The 15-pound barbell: goes, the 25-pound barbell: stays.  The hammock: goes, the bed: stays.  The large black carry-all which holds my emergency radio, cold weather survival gear, .45 holster, knife collection and camp light: stays.  All the crap leftover from being a Windows user: gone.  The old cell phones: destroyed.  The meticulously maintained files of paid bills: inferno.

The love letters: go, the gun: stays.

(Note to self, buy more bullets.)

TWM